Two for the Dough

  “It's against the law to lie to a cop.”

  “Help me get this guy out of my car.”

  Carl rocked back on his heels and smiled. “This is your car?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You want to make something of it?”

  “Hell no. I'm fucking politically correct. I don't make cracks about women's big cars.”

  “She electrocuted me,” Eugene said. “I want to talk to a lawyer.”

  Carl and I exchanged looks.

  “It's terrible what drink can do to a man,” I said, unlocking the cuffs. “The craziest things come out of their mouths.”

  “You didn't really electrocute him, did you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Scrambled his neurons?”

  “Buzzed him on the ass.”

  By the time I got my body receipt it was after six. Too late to stop by the office and get paid. I idled in the parking lot for a few moments, staring beyond the wire fence at the odd assortment of businesses across the street. The Tabernacle Church, Lydia's Hat Designs, a used-furniture store, and a corner grocery. I'd never seen any customers in any of the stores, and I wondered how the owners survived. I imagined it was marginal, although the businesses seemed stable, their facades never changing. Of course, petrified wood looks the same year after year, too.

  I was worried my cholesterol level had dropped during the day, so I opted for Popeye's spicy fried chicken and biscuits for dinner. I got it to go, and I drove me and my food to Paterson Street and parked across from Julia Cenetta's house. I figured it was as good a place as any to eat, and who knows, maybe I'd get lucky and Kenny would show up.

  I finished my chicken and biscuits with a side of slaw, slurped down a Dr. Pepper, and told myself it didn't get much better than this. No Spiro, no dishes, no aggravation.

  Lights were on in Julia's house but curtains were drawn, so I couldn't snoop. There were two cars in the driveway. I knew one was Julia's, and I assumed the other belonged to her mother.

  A late-model car pulled up to the curb and parked. A hulking blond guy got out of the car and went to the door. Julia answered, wearing jeans and a jacket. She called something over her shoulder to someone in the house and left. The blond guy and Julia sat kissing in the car for a few minutes. The blond guy cranked the engine over and the two of them drove away. So much for Kenny.

  I rumbled off to Vic's Video and rented Ghostbusters, my all-time favorite inspirational movie. I picked up some microwave popcorn, a KitKat, a bag of bite-sized Reese's peanut butter cups, and a box of instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. Do I know how to have a good time, or what?

  The red light was blinking on my answering machine when I got home.

  Spiro wondered if I'd made any progress finding his caskets, and did I want to go to dinner with him tomorrow after the Kingsmith viewing? The answer to both questions was an emphatic NO! I procrastinated relaying this to him, as even the sound of his voice on my machine gave me bowel problems.

  The other message was from Ranger. “Call me.”

  I tried his home phone. No answer. I tried his car phone.

  “Yo,” Ranger said.

  “It's Stephanie. What's happening?”

  “Gonna be a party. Think you should get dressed for it.”

  “You mean like heels and stockings?”

  “I mean like a thirty-eight S and W.”

  “I suppose you want me to meet you somewhere.”

  “I'm in an alley at the corner of West Lincoln and Jackson.”

  Jackson ran for about two miles, skirting junkyards, the old abandoned Jackson Pipe factory, and a ragged assortment of bars and rooming houses. It was an area of town so intensely depressed, it was deemed unworthy even of gang graffiti. Few cars traveled the second mile, beyond the pipe factory. Streetlights had been shot out and never replaced, fires were a common occurrence, leaving more and more buildings blackened and boarded, and discarded drug paraphernalia clogged garbage-filled gutters.

  I gingerly took my gun out of the brown bear cookie jar and checked to make sure it was loaded. I slid it into my pocketbook, along with the KitKat, tucked my hair under my Rangers hat so I'd look androgynous, and crammed myself back into my jacket.

  At least I was giving up a date with Bill Murray for a good cause. Most likely Ranger had a line on either Kenny or the caskets. If Ranger needed help with the takedown on someone he was personally tracking he wouldn't call me. If you gave Ranger fifteen minutes he could assemble a team that would make the invasion of Kuwait look like a kindergarten exercise. Needless to say, I wasn't at the head of his commando-for-hire list. I wasn't even on the bottom of it.

  I felt fairly safe driving down Jackson in the Buick. Anyone desperate enough to carjack Big Blue would probably be too stupid to pull it off. I figured I didn't even have to worry about a drive-by shooting. It's hard for a person to aim a gun when he's laughing.

  Ranger drove a black Mercedes sports car when he wasn't expecting to transport felons. When it was hunting season, he came loaded for bear in a black Ford Bronco. I spotted the Bronco in the alley, and I feared the contents of my intestines would liquefy at the possibility of snagging someone on Jackson Street. I parked directly in front of Ranger and cut my lights, watching him come forward from the shadows.

  “Something happen to the Jeep?” he asked.

  “Stolen.”

  “Word is there's going to be a gun deal going down tonight. Military weapons with hard-to-get ammo. The guy with the goods is supposed to be white.”

  “Kenny!”

  “Maybe. Thought we should take a look. My source tells me there's gonna be a yard sale at two-seventy Jackson. That's the house facing us with the broken front window.”

  I squinted at the street. A rusted Bonneville sat up on blocks two houses down from 270. The rest of the world was empty of life. All houses were dark.

  “We're not interested in busting up this business deal,” Ranger said. “We're going to stay here and be nice and quiet and try to get a look at the white guy. If it's Kenny, we'll follow him.”

  “It's pretty dark to make an identification.”

  Ranger handed me a pair of binoculars. “Night scope.”

  Of course.

  We were heading into the second hour of waiting when a panel van cruised down Jackson. Seconds later the van reappeared and parked.

  I trained the scope on the driver. “He seems to be white,” I told Ranger, “but he's wearing a ski mask. I can't see him.”

  A BMW sedan slid into place behind the van. Four brothers got out of the BMW and walked to the van. Ranger had his window down, and the sound of the side door to the van swinging open carried across the street to the alley. Voices were muffled. Someone laughed. Minutes passed. One of the brothers shuffled between the van and the Beemer carrying a large wooden box. He popped the trunk, stored the box, returned to the van, and repeated the procedure with a second wooden box.

  Suddenly the door to the house with the car on blocks crashed open and cops bolted out, yelling instructions, guns drawn, running for the Beemer. A police car barreled down the street and swerved to a stop. The four brothers scattered. Shots were fired. The van revved up and jumped away from the curb.

  “Don't lose sight of the van,” Ranger shouted, sprinting back to the Bronco. “I'll be right behind you.”

  I slammed the Buick into drive and pressed my foot to the floor. I shot out of the alley as the van roared past, and realized too late that the van was being pursued by another car. There was a lot of screeching tires and cussing on my part, and the car in pursuit bounced off the Buick with a good solid whump. A little red flasher popped off the roof of the car and sailed away into the night like a shooting star. I'd hardly felt the impact, but the other car, which I assumed was a cop car, had been propelled a good fifteen feet.

  I saw the van's taillights disappearing down the street and debated following. Probably not a good idea, I decided. Might not look good to leave the scene after trashi
ng one of Trenton's finest unmarked.

  I was fishing in my pocketbook, looking for my driver's license, when the door was opened and I was yanked out and onto my feet by none other than Joe Morelli. We stared at each other in openmouthed astonishment for a beat, barely able to believe our eyes.

  “I don't believe this,” Morelli yelled. “I don't fucking believe this. What do you do, sit in bed at night and think about ways to fuck up my life?”

  “Don't flatter yourself.”

  “You almost killed me!”

  “You're overreacting. And it wasn't personal. I didn't even know that was your car.” If I'd known I wouldn't have hung around. “Besides, you don't hear me whining and complaining because you got in my way. I would have caught him if it hadn't been for you.”

  Morelli passed a hand over his eyes. “I should have moved out of state when I had the chance. I should have stayed in the navy.”

  I looked over at his car. Part of the rear quarter panel had been ripped away, and the back bumper lay on the ground. “It's not so bad,” I said. “Probably you can still drive it.”

  We both turned our attention to Big Blue. There wasn't so much as a scratch on it.

  “It's a Buick,” I said, by way of apology. “It's a loaner.”

  Morelli looked off into space. “Shit.”

  A patrol car pulled up behind Morelli. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Wonderful.” Morelli said. “I'm fucking fine.”

  The patrol car left.

  “A Buick,” Morelli said. “Just like old times.”

  When I was eighteen I'd sort of run over Morelli with a similar car.

  Morelli looked beyond me. “I suppose that's Ranger in the black Bronco.”

  I cut my eyes to the alley. Ranger was still there, doubled over the steering wheel, shaking with laughter.

  “You want me to file an accident report?” I asked Morelli.

  “I wouldn't dignify this with an accident report.”

  “Did you get a look at the guy in the van? Do you think it was Kenny?”

  “Same height as Kenny, but he seemed slimmer.”

  “Kenny could have lost weight.”

  “I don't know,” Morelli said. “It didn't feel like Kenny to me.”

  Ranger's lights flashed on, and the Bronco eased around the back of the Buick.

  “Guess I'll be leaving now,” Ranger said. “I know how three's a crowd.”

  I helped Morelli load his bumper into his backseat and kick the rest of the debris to the side of the road. Around the corner, I could hear the police packing up.

  “I have to go back to the station,” Morelli said. “I want to be there when they talk to these guys.”

  “And you're going to run the plates on the van.”

  “The van was probably stolen.”

  I returned to the Buick and backed down the alley to avoid the broken glass in the road. I took the first driveway to Jackson and headed for home. After several blocks I swung around and drove to the police station. I parked deep in shadow, a car length back from the corner, across from the bar with the RC Cola sign. I'd been there for less than five minutes when two blue-and-whites rolled into the station parking lot, followed by Morelli in his bumperless Fairlane, followed by one of the big blue-and-white Suburbans. The Fairlane fit right in with the blue-and-whites. Trenton doesn't waste money on cosmetic surgery. If a cop car gets a dent, it's there for life. There wasn't a car in the lot that didn't look like it'd been used for demolition derby.

  At this time of night the side lot was relatively empty. Morelli parked the Fairlane next to his truck and walked into the building. The blue-and-whites lined up at the cage to unload prisoners. I put the Buick into drive, slid into the lot, and parked next to Morelli's truck.

  After an hour the chill had begun to creep into the Buick, so I ran the heater until everything was toasty. I ate half the KitKat and stretched out on the bench seat. A second hour passed, and I repeated the procedure. I'd just finished the last morsel of chocolate when the side door to the station opened and the silhouette of a man appeared backlit through the door frame. Even in silhouette I knew it was Morelli. The door closed behind him, and Morelli headed for his truck. Halfway across the lot he spotted me in the Buick. I saw his lips move, and it didn't take a genius to figure out the single word.

  I got out of the car so it'd be more difficult to ignore me. “Well,” I said, all little Miss Cheerful. “How'd it go?”

  “The stuff was from Braddock. That's about it.” He took a step closer and sniffed. “I smell chocolate.”

  “I had half a KitKat.”

  “I don't suppose you still have the other half?”

  “I ate it earlier.”

  “Too bad. I might have been able to remember some crucial piece of information if I had a KitKat.”

  “Are you telling me I'm going to have to feed you?”

  “You have anything else in your pocketbook?”

  “No.”

  “Any more apple pie at home?”

  “I have popcorn and candy. I was going to watch a movie tonight.”

  “Is it buttered popcorn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Morelli said. “I guess I could settle for buttered popcorn.”

  “You're going to have to give me something pretty damn good if you expect to get half of my popcorn.”

  Morelli did the slow smile.

  “I was talking about information!”

  “Sure,” Morelli said.

  Stephanie Plum 2 - Two For The Dough

  7

  Morelli followed me from the station, hanging back in his new 4 x 4, no doubt worried about turbulence caused by the Buick as it plowed through the night.

  We pulled into the lot behind my apartment building and parked side by side. Mickey Boyd was lighting up under the back door overhang. Mickey's wife, Francine, got a nicotine patch the week before, and now Mickey wasn't allowed to consume tar in their apartment.

  “Whoa,” Mickey said, cigarette magically stuck to his lower lip, eye squinting against the smoke, “check out the Buick. Sweet car. I tell you, they don't make cars like that anymore.”

  I looked sideways at Morelli. “I guess this big car with portholes stuff is another one of those man things.”

  “It's the size,” Morelli said. “A man has to be able to haul.”

  We took the stairs, and halfway up I felt my heart contract. Eventually the fright of having my apartment violated would dissipate, and the old casual security would return. Eventually. Not today. Today I struggled to hide my anxiety. Didn't want Morelli to think I was a wimp. Fortunately, my door was locked and intact, and when we entered the apartment, I could hear the hamster wheel spinning in the dark.

  I flipped the light switch and dropped my jacket and pocketbook onto the little hall table.

  Morelli followed me into the kitchen and watched while I slid the popcorn into the microwave. “I bet you rented a movie to go with this popcorn.”

  I opened the bag of peanut butter cups, and held the bag out to Morelli. “Ghostbusters.”

  Morelli took a peanut butter cup, unwrapped it, and lobbed it into his mouth. “You don't know much about movies either.”

  “It's my favorite!”

  “It's a sissy movie. Hasn't even got DeNiro in it.”

  “Tell me about the bust.”

  “We got all four of the guys in the BMW,” Morelli said, “but no one knows anything. The deal was set up by phone.”

  “What about the van?”

  “Stolen. Just like I said. Local.”

  The timer pinged, and I removed the popcorn. “Hard to believe anyone would bop out to Jackson Street in the middle of the night to buy hot GI guns from someone they'd only dealt with on the phone.”

  “The seller knew names. Guess that was enough for these guys. They're not big players.”

  “Nothing to implicate Kenny?”

  “Nothing.”

  I dumped the popcorn into a
bowl and handed the bowl to Morelli. “So what names did the seller use? Anyone I know?”

  Morelli stuck his head into the refrigerator and came out with beer. “You want one?”

  I took a can and snapped it open. “About those names . . .”

  “Forget about the names. They aren't going to help you find Kenny.”

  “What about a description? What'd the seller's voice sound like? What color were his eyes?”