I did end up checking out my fruit and Holden's spices. One of my fruits seemed to be hedge-related, and none of the other stuff was. It looks like a plantain/banana.
We paid a visit to the local hedge fruit expert, Jebediah Crabapple. Old and cranky though he was, he gave us some good information about it, which confirmed our suspicions about the fruits being the culprit. We stole into the market that night to steal the remaining hedge fruits from the stall that was selling them and returned them all to Jeb to dispose of. Next time, we will remember to only visit Jeb between the hours of 4am and 7pm.
The next day, we decided to go see the proprietor of the stall at the Vietnamese market and determine where he was getting his fruits from. Tim wandered off to talk to that Tina girl, and Jake essentially harassed the guy into meeting us at a nearby Waffle House to talk. I guess it was pretty obvious from that that he knew something.
We met with Tu Cong Le and discovered that apparently he was being bullied by his son-in-law, a giant dickhead named Dien Ho, who knocked up Tu's daughter, Hua back in the day, forcing the two to get married. Apparently Dien Ho did not get along with Tu or even Hua, and was a member of the Vietnamese gang called “the five Ts” (Tinh (love), Tien (money), Tu (prison), Toi (crime), T?? (???)). As a result, Tu was being blackmailed into selling these hedge plantains in order to be able to see his grandson.
The hedge gate, is therefore, in Tu's garden. I was mostly concerned with getting this gate closed, since in all likelihood, they wouldn't be able to reopen it. ESPECIALLY if we dismantled the doorway that anchored it.
Jake, however, was additionally pretty confident about snuffing all of these guys who were bullying Tu, but that thought didn't really sit well with me. I mean sure, these guys are assholes, but killing people just isn't my thing. And while the suggestion came up, let me just say that there's no way I was letting anyone shove these dickheads into the hedge to rot; that was the antithesis of my very nature, as an escapee. I think Jake agreed with this.
We headed to Glamour Shots, Jake to talk to Violet and I called Massimo in order to have him stop by so I could catch him up with our current progress too.
In the end, both Violet and Massimo agreed that the primary objective was closing the hedge gate, and they did not really condone killing a bunch of people needlessly in the process, even if they were giant assholes. Violet in particular didn't seem too concerned about taking out Dien Ho if he was causing a problem, but taking on the whole gang was right out. Massimo, on the other hand, seemed rather disappointed that this actually turned out to be hedge-related and not one of these other wizards or vampires or whatever! What the heck was his ploy! I would prefer NOT to start an “interracial incident” if I can help it, thank you very much! Well, thank goodness for small miracles.
So anyway, I suppose there's no harm in roughing Dien up a little bit for being such a giant asshole. We can't solve all the world's problems, but we did sort of promise we'd help out ol' grandpa. And so, we came up with a plan that will hopefully give Dien Ho a really difficult time, perhaps ending in his death, without us having to pull the trigger.
And so, on Monday, August 1st, Jake and I headed over to grandpa's house to close the hedge door and dismantle the trellis in his backyard. Holden headed out to make a fool of himself while posing as Dien, to help ruin his reputation in the five T's and possibly get him roughed up in the process.
After Jake and I were done, we headed over to Dien's house in order to… I'm not sure exactly. Give him a hard time I guess. Jake went in, borrowed the phone and called the cops, and then when the cops got there, Dien ran out back. He was chased down by Jake and Tim. They knocked his stupid arse out and left him for the fatass lazy cop, who EVENTUALLY got there to take him in. Hopefully between that and whatever Holden is up to is enough to ruin the guy.
How he was treating his wife made me kind of wish they had killed him, even if accidentally. Too bad. But maybe we'll get lucky and the five T's will bump him off if he becomes too much of a liability for them. That would be nice. I have no patience for such assholes.