“Yeah, hi, my name is Zack Walker and I think I can tell you what happened to Brian Sandler. Look, I’m heading home, I’ll give you that number.” Which I did, and broke off.

Sandler’s instincts were right. His boss, Ellinger, must have suspected Sandler was up to something after he’d dropped by his office and asked all those questions. And then, and I was guessing here but it all seemed to make sense, Ellinger put in a call to the Gorkins, who brought Sandler in for a visit with the deep fryer.

I imagined Mrs. Gorkin and her girls must have had a few questions for him before they dunked him into the sizzling grease. Like what he was up to, whether he was going to play along, whether he was going to the police.

Whether he was going to the media.

Shit.

I decided that when I got home, I would put in a call to Lawrence Jones. Get a few tips on how to watch my back. Maybe drop enough hints, act frightened enough, that he’d come over and babysit me until I told Detective Herlich everything I knew about the Gorkins and Sandler. Herlich was welcome to hear the audio file as well. Wouldn’t take long, once he had all of that, I figured, before arrest warrants would be sworn out for the Gorkins, they’d be in custody, and I could let Lawrence go home and listen to his jazz collection or surprise philandering husbands in motel rooms.

I parked Trixie’s car in our driveway, got out my keys as I mounted the front porch steps, and opened the front door.

The twins were on me in an instant.

I spotted the one on the stairs first, and would have turned to run, but her clone had been hiding behind the door and slammed it shut once I stepped inside. She came up behind me and encircled me in her meaty, pasty white arms while the other one came at me like I was in a bullring waving a red flag.

I tightened the muscles in my stomach when I saw the fist coming, but I am not exactly a hundred-crunches-a-day kind of guy, and when she drove her hand into me I turned into a rag doll. The one holding me let go and I dropped to the floor, desperately trying to catch my breath.

“Oh God oh God oh God,” I said.

It took a moment before I was able to breathe again, but even once I had air going in and out of my lungs, I didn’t have the strength to get back up. I rolled over onto my back and saw that the twins had now been joined by their mother, who looked down contemptuously at me.

“Where is file?” she asked me.

“Give me a sec,” I said, still gasping. “I can barely breathe.”