“What the heck?” I said. “Is he okay?”
“I think he tried to lick his dog balls and fell off the couch,” Glo said.
Rutherford arrived fifteen minutes later. We were outside on the sidewalk with Ammon. Ammon was no longer bound, but Diesel had a grip on him so he wouldn’t chase after cars or squirrels.
“I found him on my doorstep,” I said to Rutherford. “He seems confused.”
Ammon growled at Rutherford.
“He must be in shock from the traumatic fire,” I said. “He’s not himself.”
“It’s true,” Josh said to Rutherford. “He thinks he’s a doggy. You’ll want to watch him on the carpets.”
Rutherford gaped at Ammon. “He’s bloody!”
“Yeah,” Diesel said. “He might have fallen down.”
Rutherford loaded Ammon into the Mercedes sedan, and they drove off with Ammon’s head out the window, his nose pointed into the wind.
“Go figure,” Glo said.
We drove the van back to Dazzle’s. We all got into our own cars and drove home. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that Diesel was following me. I parked in my space alongside my house, and Diesel parked on the street one house down.
“Not going home?” I asked him.
We were on the sidewalk in front of my house, and Diesel looked toward the front door. “I left my monkey here. And Wulf is here.”
“How do you know Wulf is here?”
“I have a cramp in my ass.”
Diesel went in first, flipped the light on, and I saw that Wulf was sitting in a chair in the living room. He looked deadly calm and perfectly at ease. He didn’t blink in the sudden bright light. He didn’t smile. He didn’t scowl. He didn’t look surprised to see Diesel.
“Hello, cousin,” Wulf said.
Diesel gave a small nod of recognition. “Wulf.”
“I’ve been admiring the map,” Wulf said. “Pity it’s useless without my piece of the coin.”
“What’s the deal?” Diesel asked him.
“You keep the treasure, and I get the stone if I give you my piece.”
“Not gonna happen,” Diesel said.
“Martin Ammon looks the fool right now, but he’s no fool.”
“He’s also no demon,” Diesel said.
“There’s a demon inside all of us,” Wulf said. “Ammon’s demon is greed. He will always want more wealth and more power. He’ll stop at nothing to get it. And there are those who follow him doglike, if you’ll excuse the expression. Mammon has his disciples, whether they be misguided or not.”
“And your point?” Diesel asked.
“My point is that for all purposes he now owns Miss Tucker. She’s signed a contract that gives Ammon control of her professional future. She’s been caught on security cameras kidnapping Ammon. She’s in possession of stolen property from his house. He will use all this to blackmail her into helping him find the treasure. And if that doesn’t work, he’ll raise the stakes until she agrees. He’ll burn down her house, kill her cat, and kidnap her mother and chop off her fingers one by one.”
This was all said very matter-of-fact, without any emotional inflection or doubt that it would happen. It was the word of Wulf, and Diesel and I knew that everything he said was true.
“Better I get the stone than Ammon and his Mammon worshippers. I can control the power. Followers of Mammon will unleash it.”
“We could just leave the stone hidden,” I said. “Even someone as crazy as Ammon would understand that we’re at an impasse.”
“It won’t stop them from chopping off your mother’s fingers,” Wulf said.
“Even a crazy person has to realize I have no control over you, and can’t get you to give me the last piece,” I said to Wulf.
Diesel and Wulf exchanged glances.
“You do have control over him,” Diesel said. “Wulf couldn’t allow anything bad to happen to you or your family. He would have to act.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason I couldn’t allow it,” Diesel said. “We’re bound to you.”
“Jeez,” I said. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means there would have to be a price paid for destroying what I’m bound to protect,” Wulf said. “And that would be a large, tiresome project if my targets were Mammon followers.”
“I don’t get it,” I said to Wulf. “You threaten me all the time.”
“There’s me, and then there’s them,” Wulf said, laying his single piece of the coin on the coffee table.
Diesel took the piece and joined it to the other seven pieces. We put the coin on the map, and Diesel recorded the letters that resulted when we rolled the coin around the rings.
“What does it say?” I asked Diesel.
“?‘In the deep water west of Gull Rock lies Babur’s cursed gemstone. It may find ye a treasure but the price be your bones.’?”
“Oh boy,” I said. “A cursed gemstone.”
“Whatever it is, you need to find it,” Wulf said.
Phuunf! There was a flash of light and some smoke and Wulf was gone.
“How does he do that?” I asked.
Diesel grinned. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”