Part Four
She flings the leather-bound book with all her might. It crashes into Elizabeth’s outstretched arms, tipping the vial, which promptly spills purple liquid all over her fancy, sequined dress. The rich woman lets out a horrifying scream as she begins to diminish in size. She runs towards the door, only to have it burst open right in front of her.
Standing in the doorway are a blonde and a brunette, both stunningly beautiful. Grace quickly recognizes the blonde as Marilyn. In the brunette’s hand is something that looks at first like a very lifelike doll. It’s only when it waves that Grace realizes it’s Max.
“Mother?” Marilyn calls down to the rapidly shrinking woman.
Elizabeth lets out a shrill squeak and turns in the other direction, only to find herself face to face with Grace’s office pumps. She’s completely surrounded.
***
For a few seconds, no one speaks or moves. The door closes behind the two women. Then Jessica crouches down and places Max gently on the floor. Her hand darts out and wraps around Elizabeth, squeezing her tight. She lifts the squirming woman up to her face.
“Hello, Mrs. Dodgson. Remember me?”
Mrs. Dodgson only screams in reply.
Jessica goes on as if she hasn’t heard her. “I’m your daughter’s lover. The one you looked down on as a freak. The one you tried to keep your daughter away from. The one you banished from your home.”
“No no no,” Elizabeth mewls.
As Jessica leers at the tiny woman, other small things begin stirring on the floor. Tiny men coming out of cracks in the walls and floorboards, looking on in amazement.
“All the men we once had… You stole them from us!” Marilyn gasps.
“All these things you’ve done to us, and to others… You don’t deserve to own all this. You deserve to be powerless.”
Grace, thinking quickly, flips open the journal as Jessica talks to Elizabeth. She lets out a small cry as she reads.
“What?” Marilyn asks.
“‘September 14, 1922’,” Grace reads aloud, “‘Today I gave that fat old bastard just what he deserved. A full vial of concentrated potion, stirred into his evening tea. He looked even more pathetic at one inch tall. I told him just what I thought of him. Then I had an evening snack of my own. I didn’t even chew when he went squirming down my throat. I swear I could hear his screams as he went down.'”
“September fourteenth… that’s the night my father disappeared…” Marilyn says, astonished.
There’s a stunned silence.
“You killed Daddy?” Marilyn demands angrily.
“Honey,” Jessica says to her lover, “Have you ever heard of the Code of Hammurabi? ‘An eye for an eye’…”
“No! I’m your mother, Mari, don’t let her! Don’t let them do this to me!” The tiny woman cries out.
Marilyn looks completely unemotional. “Goodbye, Mother.”
And with that, Jessica lifts the shrunken heiress and tosses her into her mouth. She closes it but does not chew. She swallows hard and forces the one-inch-tall woman down her throat.
Just then, the door bursts open once more.
“Nobody move!” shouts a woman in office attire. “I am an officer of the law!”
“Rebecca?” Max calls up, puzzled.
“You escaped? I’ll deal with you later. For now, all of you put your hands behind your head.”
“You don’t understand, let me explain…” Marilyn says.
“I heard everything,” Rebecca says, “I know exactly what’s going on. And I know that you’re under arrest for possession of …” She looks around the room. “At least one hundred gallons of illegal substances. And your girlfriend is now wanted for murder.”
“Wait!” Max yells, as loud as he can. “Hear me out!”
Rebecca looks down at him imperiously, and pauses to think. Then, against her better judgment, she picks up the shrunken private eye.
“I understand that you want to make a big arrest. I used to be a fed too. And I know what it’s like for dolls in the Bureau. You get all the shit jobs, and none of the respect the guys do. You just want to make one big arrest, so that they’ll finally treat you like you deserve. So that they see you as an equal.”
Grace sees that Rebecca’s lip is quivering. She bites down on it and nods.
“What you don’t understand is, you are equal. You’re more than equal. You’re the only one who managed to get to the bottom of this whole mess. And in my eyes, you’re already quite the powerful woman.”
At this, the agent smiles. “You’re all talk.”
“I swear, I’m telling nothing but the whole truth. You’re beautiful, gal, and you’ve got lots of spunk, and even more brains. But look into your heart. You know that arresting these girls isn’t the right thing to do.”
Rebecca closes her eyes briefly, and sighs. “You’re right. That rich bitch deserved to die. But I have to arrest somebody for this mess. Do you know how many cop cars have been shot?”
“We’re forgetting somebody, I just know it,” Max says.
“Loretta!” Jessica cries. “She’s still tied up back down at the docks.”
“And Katya Ivanovich’s corpse is lying next to her.” Marilyn adds.
“Do you have the murder weapon?” Rebecca asks.
“It’s in the car. We used gloves when we were holding it, so there are no prints.”
“Ladies, I think we have ourselves a patsy,” Rebecca says, sounding like she can’t believe what she’s saying. “But I will have to take all of those vials of shrinking potion as evidence. And the FBI will also want to have some of the shrunken men as witnesses.”
“Will you guys testify on our behalf?” Marilyn calls down to the little men around them. They nod, and she smiles.
“One more thing,” Rebecca adds. “I’m doing you a huge favor for all of this, and I need something in return.”
“You want money? A car? Name your price,” Marilyn says.
Rebecca smiles tightly. “I want the men the FBI doesn’t take. Somebody has to take charge of them. And… And I like feeling powerful. I like being around admirers.”
Marilyn frowns, but Jessica speaks up. “You’ve got a deal. But you have to let us keep a few. Some of them are very dear to us.”
“Like?”
“The one you have in your hands,” Marilyn says. “He just saved our skins. Plus, he’s so cute!”
There’s a yelp from Grace’s direction, and a small man appears in her hands. “I want to stay with Grace!” He says. “That is, if she’ll have me.”
Grace smiles down at Ritchie. “Of course I will, little guy.”
Rebecca slowly lowers Max to the floor, so that he’s looking up at her. “You’ve got yourselves some very special men, ladies,” she says. “I’ll be back for the potion and the men in two days.”
***
Three Months Later
***
Loretta wound up getting fifteen years in the slammer after a very speedy trial. The papers were all over the case, and it wound up getting lots of publicity. Unfortunately, this created even more demand for shrinking potion, which caused several new “shrinker cults” to spring up. Rebecca, who’s now head honcho of her branch at the Bureau, has got her hands full with the issue. Her hands are full of paperwork at her job, and when she gets home, they’re full of her new friends, admirers and lovers, each of whom can easily fit in her pocket.
She still comes ’round every so often, and she and the Dodgsons have become very good friends. They even give her a little dough so she can keep the little guys and herself in clover.
Another frequent visitor to the Dodgson Estate is my former secretary, Grace. She and her fella Ritchie are pretty well off too, now that Grace has her own peeper agency, which I’m ashamed to say makes my own look like a trip for biscuits. She and her guy are totally dizzy for each other, but sometimes Grace comes over and joins in our games here at the mansion as well.
And what kind of games do we play? Well, let’s just say that we’ve pitched woo and made whoopee in just about every way possible with three people, and done it almost every way you can with four. I’m actually eating better off the gals’ table scraps than I could when I was feeding myself. Hey, I’m sharing a four-post bed with two hot mamas, and we’re all gaga over each other. Life could be worse.
So that’s my new job. Private house dick, the flatfoot who can be flattened underfoot. My name’s Max Salem, and if you’ve ever got a very small problem, give me a call.
