It turns out that my mother’s boyfriend Frank was none other than the slightly well known, Francisco Bonanno of Arizona mafia crime family fame. Had Pete and Ernie and I been aware of this little tidbit of information earlier, surely, we would not have been in such a hurry to sabotage his car, and then his palatial home in the suburbs of Seattle. No, I’m quite certain that, had we been aware of this fact in advance we would have employed a totally different approach, like leaving the man alone altogether! But at the time, we just didn’t know.
“Pete!” I called in a loud whisper from behind a tree across the street from Frank’s house. I knew Pete and Ernie were around there somewhere because I could see Ernie’s pickup parked in a field a couple of blocks away. But I couldn’t see them anywhere.
“Pete!” I called again.
“Johnny Ray!” Pete called back.
“Pete!” I replied back, “What are you doing up in that tree?”
Pete had found a perch high up in the tree next to the one that I was hiding behind.
“I’m keeping an eye out for Ernie!” Pete said in a loud whisper.
I looked around but I could not spot Ernie anywhere. And so, I asked Pete the obvious question.
“Where’s Ernie?”
“Shhhhh…” Pete said. “He’s up in the top of that telephone pole over there!”
Quickly I scanned the telephone poles on the street and finally located Ernie, waaay up at the top of one nearby.
“You guys got everything set up?”
“Yeah!” Said Pete. “We’re just waiting for Frank and your mom to come out of the house so that we can set off our little fireworks display!”
“Alright.” I said, “But what if they don’t come out for a while?”
“Oh!” Said Pete. “We’ve got that all taken care of. They’ll be coming out just as soon as we release a box full of bats in through one of them side windows. And then they won’t be wanting to go back in there for at least a couple of days, prob-ly.”
A box of bats huh? Nobody mentioned a box of bats before. Probably because they knew that I would be concerned about my mother getting bit by a bat, and I would reject that idea.
“What if one of them bats bites my mom?” I asked.
Even though I could not see Pete’s face from where I knelt behind a big fir tree, I could just imagine the look of disdain on his face when he said, “Bats don’t bite people Vance! Unless you are stupid, like Ernie, and you stick your finger in their mouth!”
I could just imagine Ernie playing around with the bats and getting bit. The mental picture caused a smile to cross my face and a chuckle to break the silence of our little stake-out.
“You guys shut up!” Ernie loud-whispered from his position near the top of the telephone pole.
Just then Pete dropped down from the tree he’d been hiding in and then tippy-toed over beside me.
“I’m gonna go get the bats!” He said and then signaled Ernie with a couple of short clicks from his flashlight. Ernie acknowledged Pete’s signal with a signal of his own and then Pete disappeared into the darkness.
Several minutes had elapsed when all of the sudden, there arose a piercing scream from inside the house, followed by another, and then the sound of a stampede of footfalls, just before the big double doors of the mansion were flung open and its occupants came scrambling out onto the long, circular driveway. Two maids and an old man who appeared to be the butler joined Frank and my mother outside as an occasional bat could be seen fluttering out through the open front doors.
As soon as it appeared that everyone was out of the house, I could see Pete’s signal to Ernie. Shortly thereafter, the first explosion rocked the big house. This caused everyone to move even farther away, which is what Pete and Ernie intended when they placed their charges.
Next, a series of explosions designed to weaken all of the verticle supports in the house blew out all of the windows and toppled the six Roman style columns that gave the front of the place its expensive ambiance. Several seconds passed before two additional large explosions erupted and brought the entire structure collapsing in upon itself in a massive cloud of smoke and dust. I stood across the street with my hands on my head in astonishment and disbelief as Pete came sneaking up and hid behind a tree, a big grin across his face.
“Pete!” I said in utter shock and bewilderment. “I thought we were only going to blow the columns off the front porch!”
Pete snickered mischievously as his eyes shifted back and forth in a combination of fear and delight. And then he said, “Ooops!”
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