Explosive Eighteen

  I had mixed feelings about going proactive. On the one hand, I was in my take-charge mode, and Lula was right about the FBI not doing a lot for me. On the other hand, I hated to get more involved. I was really hoping that if I just stuck to my story, eventually everyone would leave me alone. And from a purely practical point of view, I wasn’t making money when I chased down the people looking for the photograph.

  “We could start by checking out Brenda,” Lula said. “She works at one of them strip malls before you get to Princeton. And we could look for Magpie on the way.”

  Good compromise, I thought. There were two cemeteries off Route 1. He’d been known to hunker down in both of them. And on the way back to Trenton, I could take an early exit and head for the farmer’s market and flea market. There were acres of woods around the markets, and the woods were laced with single-lane dirt roads used for romance, and drugs, and, in Magpie’s case, camping. Magpie drove and lived in an ancient Crown Vic. In its glory years, the Crown Vic had been a black-and-white police car, but it had been sold at auction, and eventually found its way to Magpie. Magpie had hand-painted black over the white, but the car was still a bashed-in, rusted-out, retired cop car.

  I drove one exit on Route 1 and turned off into the newer and smaller of the two cemeteries. For the most part, it was all flat ground, broken by an occasional tree. All grave markers were the same. Small granite slabs sunk into the grass. Easy maintenance. You could probably get the tractor up to about 40 mph and be done with the whole deal in an hour.

  I took the loop around the cemetery, circled the little chapel and crematorium, and headed out, finding no indicators that Magpie had recently squatted here. No blackened splotch from a campfire. No stains from leaking transmission oil. No bag of discarded garbage. No ribbons of toilet tissue floating across the landscape.

  The second cemetery was ten miles down the highway. It was a real monster, with rolling hills, lush landscaping, and elaborate tombstones. I methodically worked my way through the maze of feeder roads curling over and around hill and dale. Again, no sign of Magpie, so I returned to Route 1.

  Lula had The Hair Barn plugged into the GPS app on her cell phone. “It’s on the left,” she said. “Take the next light.”

  The Hair Barn was located in a complex that included some light industrial businesses, a budget hotel, two fairly large office buildings, and an outdoor shopping mall. The shopping mall was anchored at one end by a Kohl’s and a Target at the other. The Hair Barn was in the middle of the mall. The Scion was parked at the outer perimeter of the lot with what I assumed were a few other employee cars.

  I found a space close to Kohl’s, and Lula and I walked to the cluster of stucco-faced buildings. We stood outside The Hair Barn and watched Brenda fiddle with an older woman’s hair, teasing it up and smoothing it out.

  “That’s not good,” Lula said. “That woman looks like Donald Trump on a bad day. And he don’t look all that good on a good day.”

  Brenda finished, the woman tottered to the desk, and Brenda took a moment to clean up her station. Lula stayed outside, and I went in to talk to Brenda.

  Brenda got steely-eyed when she saw me. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Did you wise up and bring me the photograph?”

  “No. I want some answers.”

  She looked through the front window at Lula. “I see you left your muscle outside. Isn’t that risky?”

  “Lula isn’t my muscle.”

  “Well then, what is she?”

  Good question. I didn’t know the answer. “She’s just Lula,” I said. “Okay, yeah, I guess she’s my muscle.”

  Brenda dropped her brush and comb into a drawer. “So what did you come here for? You want a haircut? I could do a lot better than what you got. You got no style.”

  “It’s a ponytail.”

  “Yeah, but it’s boring. You should add a piece. We got a bunch on the wall. Or you could put some color in it. Like gold streaks. Pull some of the hair out and rat it. You know, mess it up like mine. You see how much better my hair looks?”

  I glanced at her hair and bit my lip. She looked like an exploded canary. “Maybe next time,” I said. “I want to know about the photograph. Why does everyone want it?”

  “I told you why I want it. Poor dead Ritchy wanted me to have it.” She stiffened a little. “Wait a minute. What do you mean everyone?”

  “You. And everyone.”

  “There’s others?” she asked.

  “You didn’t know?”

  Brenda’s lips curled back and her eyes got squinty. “That sonovabitch. He’s trying to cut me out. I should have guessed.”

  “Who?” I asked her. “Who’s the sonovabitch?”

  “Boy, this really steams me.”

  “Who? Who?”

  “Never mind who. And you better not be dealing with him. He’s a snake in the grass. And he hasn’t got any money, either. Don’t believe him if he tells you he’s got money.”

  “Give me a clue. What does he look like? Old, young, fat?”

  “I can’t chat anymore,” Brenda said. “I got a client.”

  “Well?” Lula said when I left the shop. “How’d that go?”

  “It didn’t go anywhere.”

  “You must have learned something.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Nothing useful.” I felt my ponytail. “Do you think my hair is boring?”

  “Compared to what? It’s not as good as my hair, for instance. But it’s better than lots of other white folks’ hair.”

  We climbed into the truck, and I stuck the key in the ignition.

  “I think we should take a look at Brenda’s apartment,” I said to Lula. “Connie has it in West Windsor.”

  Why not? I thought. If for no reason other than grim curiosity.

  Lula tapped the address into her cell phone GPS. “I got it. It’s not all that far from here.”

  I drove one exit on Route 1, turned off, and followed Lula’s directions.

  “She’s renting, but not an apartment,” Lula said. “Looks to me like she’s renting a house.”

  We were winding our way through a neighborhood of small, single-story homes in varying stages of disrepair. Several were empty with FOR SALE signs planted in their small front yards. Most had curtains hanging in windows. Many had swing sets in the backyards.

  I found Brenda’s house and sat at idle, taking it in. Driveway leading to single-car attached garage. The house had been painted pale green with bright yellow trim. The yard was bare but neat.

  “Let’s take a look,” Lula said.

  “We can’t just walk around and look in windows. There are cars parked in some of the driveways. Probably, there are people at home in some of the houses. We’ll be noticed.”

  “Yeah, but we do that all the time,” Lula said.

  “We do it when we’re looking for a felon and they’ve waived their rights. Brenda isn’t a felon.”

  I returned to the highway, and Berger called.

  “We’d like you to work with an artist again,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s going to accomplish anything,” I told him. “I can barely remember the photograph. And now I’ve got Tom Cruise stuck in my head.”

  “Just try, okay? There’s a lot riding on this … like my pension.”

  If I hadn’t been doing eighty, I would have banged my head against the steering wheel. “When do you want me to come in?”

  “Now.”

  FOURTEEN

  I DROPPED LULA at the office and swung around into town. It was midday and the roads were clogged with cars. Lots were filled, street parking was nonexistent, and after ten minutes of circling several blocks, I gave up and drove into the FBI building’s underground garage. It was public parking, but there was a designated FBI area.

  I took the elevator to the sixth floor and went directly to the conference room. Berger, Gooley, and the artist were already there.

  “We thought maybe it was the last artist who was thinking
about Tom Cruise,” Berger said. “So we’re starting over with Fred.”

  I took a seat and nodded at Fred. “Good luck.”

  Fred managed a tight smile that was a shade away from being a grimace. An hour later, we had a new sketch.

  “How do you feel about this?” Berger asked me. “Is this the guy?”

  I did palms up. I didn’t know. “Maybe,” I said.

  “At least it’s not Tom Cruise,” Berger said.

  Gooley studied it. “It’s Ashton Kutcher.”

  We crowded in to see the sketch.

  “Shit! He’s right,” Berger said. “It’s freaking Ashton Kutcher.”

  I took another look at it, and I had to admit it did look a lot like Ashton Kutcher.

  “Well, they both have brown hair, so we can be pretty sure he has brown hair,” I said. “Do you guys validate parking?”

  “Not anymore,” Berger said. “Budget cuts.”

  • • •

  I took the elevator to the second parking level and walked to my truck. It seemed to me Ashton Kutcher and Tom Cruise weren’t so far apart. Brown hair, nice-looking, angular face, potential for Top Gun attitude. Maybe it was the attitude that was the common denominator. A quality in their faces that projected a boyishly endearing wiseass personality.

  I pressed the unlock button on my car key, reached for the door handle, and got yanked off my feet from behind. In a matter of seconds, I was dragged across the garage and slammed against a panel van. I was so caught by surprise that I barely reacted, ineffectively flailing my arms and yelling, the yelling getting lost in the cavernous garage.

  I caught a flash of light from a knife blade and felt the tip of the knife bite into my neck. I went dead still, and Raz’s face swam into focus inches from mine.

  “You will be stopping moving,” he said. “You are understanding?”

  I nodded.

  “Into the van,” he said. “Facedown, or I kill you good. I carve you into pieces and eat you for snack.”

  I was too scared to totally focus, but I knew getting into the van wasn’t a step in the right direction. I pulled back, opened my mouth to scream, and he hit me in the face with the butt end of the knife. I tasted blood, a switch got flipped on in my brain, and I went into killer survival mode, kicking, screaming, scratching, gouging. The knife got knocked out of his hand, we scrambled for it, and I got there first. I lunged at him, catching him in the thigh, digging the blade in deep, opening a long gash that gushed blood. He shrieked and grabbed his leg. It was a panicky blur after that. I kicked at him, and he tried to roll away. He was bleeding and cursing, and I kept kicking. I slipped on the blood-slick garage floor, and he took the opportunity to dive into the van and ram the door closed. The motor caught, and his wheels spun and screeched on the cement as he sped away.

  I bent at the waist and sucked in air. I looked down at the ground and realized I was dripping blood. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I walked on wobbly legs to the elevator and pushed the sixth-floor button. The doors opened, and I stepped out and stood still for a beat, not sure what to do because I was tracking blood on the tile floor.

  Several people rushed over to me. One of them was Berger.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry about the blood,” I said.

  I saw his eyes go to my right hand, and I realized I was still holding the bloody knife. I dropped the knife and went down to one knee.

  “I don’t feel good,” I said. And it was lights out.

  • • •

  I had a paramedic bending over me when I opened my eyes.

  “Am I dead?” I asked him.

  “Nope.”

  “Will I be dead anytime soon?”

  “Not from these injuries, but the consensus is you’re a train wreck.”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

  “I bet. You have a cut lip. I don’t think it needs stitches. I put a butterfly bandage on it. I’m going to get you up and give you an ice pack. You might also have a slightly broken nose. I’m giving you an ice pack for that, too. The nose looks okay, but you should see a doctor. You were gushing blood out of it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some superficial cuts on your arms and legs. And you’ll probably have some monster bruises on your face. Do you think you can sit?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. Get me up.”

  He helped me up, and I sat until my head cleared and my lips weren’t numb. I got to my feet and did some deep breathing, trying to calm myself. My clothes were soaked in blood, and there was blood all over the floor.

  “Is this all from me?” I asked.

  “The stuff on the floor is from you,” Berger said. “I imagine some of the blood you’re wearing is from the other guy, since you were the one who ended up with the knife.”

  “Razzle Dazzle,” I said.

  “I have someone down in the garage securing the scene,” Berger said. “If you parked in the FBI area, we’ll have the attack recorded.”

  “He came out of nowhere,” I told him. “I was unlocking my car, and he was on me, trying to get me into a van.”

  Gooley elbowed his way through the crowd around me. “They have the tape up in the conference room,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to preview it.”

  I thanked the paramedic, took my ice packs and towels, and followed Gooley and Berger down the hall to the conference room. We sat around the table, and Gooley pulled the tape up on the flat screen at the end of the room.

  “Are you sure you want to watch this?” Berger asked me.

  “Absolutely.” Mostly because I couldn’t remember anything. It was a total blur after Razzle said he was going to cut me up and eat me.

  The image was grainy black-and-white.

  “Not in color?” I asked.

  “Budget cuts,” Berger said. “We got discontinued stock from Radio Shack.”

  For thirty seconds, there was only the still image of the parking area. My truck could be seen at the edge of the picture. Finally I appeared and walked across the traffic lane. I approached my truck, pressed the remote, and a man rushed in behind me. He was wearing jeans and a windbreaker. He had a knife that looked like something out of Arabian Nights. It had a big curved blade and a thick handle. He grabbed me by my ponytail and yanked me back, pulling me across the garage to a van. He held the knife to my neck, and got up into my face.

  “What is he saying?” Berger asked.

  “He said he was going to kill me good. And then he was going to cut me up in little pieces and eat me.”

  “Sick,” Gooley said. “I like it.”

  The tape continued, and I watched myself try to pull away from Raz, watched Raz hit me in the face with the butt of the knife, snapping my head back.

  The three of us sucked in air when I got hit. There was a moment of suspended animation where Raz stepped back and I gathered myself together. What followed was pure instinct on my part. I brought my heel down on his instep as hard as I could, catching him by surprise. He bent slightly to look at his foot, and I kicked him in the face.

  “Whoa!” Gooley said. “Ow.”

  Raz tackled me at knee level, we went down, and it turned into a catfight. He was trying to punch me, and I was scratching and biting. I grabbed his hair and kneed him in the nuts.

  “Cripes,” Berger said. “That had to hurt.”

  I saw myself reach for the knife, wrap my hand around it, and slash at Raz, catching him in the leg, opening a twelve-inch gash in his thigh.

  “Holy shit,” Berger and Gooley said in unison.

  Raz reached for his injured leg, and I scrambled to my feet. He was in a semi-fetal position, trying to protect his nuts and the knife wound, and I kicked him as hard as I could in the kidneys a bunch of times.

  Gooley and Berger leaned forward, eyes wide.

  “Fuck,” Gooley said.

  Raz rolled away, managed to get to his feet, catapulted himself into the van, and slammed the door shut. I was waving the knife and ye
lling when he drove away.

  “I need to go home and change out of these clothes,” I said. “Is there anything else?”

  “I’m good,” Berger said.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Gooley said. “I got nothing. I might need some air. I’m lucky I didn’t lose my lunch when you kicked him that last time.”

  “I felt threatened,” I said by way of explanation.

  • • •

  There were no scary cars in my parking lot. No black Town Car, no van, no Scion. I limped into my building and let myself into my apartment. I stood in the kitchen, stripped down naked, stuffed all my clothes into a big plastic garbage bag, and set the bag by the door. The clothes were beyond washing. They were going down the trash chute.

  I limped into my bathroom and stood under a hot shower until all the blood was washed away and I stopped sobbing. I had no idea why I was crying. I mean, it wasn’t like I lost the fight, right? I shampooed my hair and lathered up one last time. I got out of the shower, avoided looking at myself in the mirror, and wrapped myself in a towel.

  I stepped into my bedroom and came face-to-face with Ranger.

  He did a slow, full-body scan. “Babe.”

  “Do not tell me I’m a train wreck.”

  “Have you seen yourself?”

  “No.”

  He handed me a fresh ice pack. “You need to keep this on your face. Has a doctor looked at your nose?”

  “No. Do you think I should get it X-rayed or something?”

  “Can you breathe?” Ranger asked. “Are you in pain?”

  “Yes, I can breathe. And it hurts about as much as the rest of me.”

  “You have some minor swelling. Other than that, it looks okay. If things change, you should get it checked out.”

  “How did you know I was attacked?”

  “We have a friend on the sixth floor.”

  Ranger wasn’t a man who showed much emotion, but I could swear I detected some steam curling off the roots of his hair. “Are you angry about something?” I asked him.

  “Anger isn’t a productive emotion. Let’s just say I’m not happy.”