“I have your word?”
“I won't arrest you tonight. I'd rather not make a blanket statement that covers eternity.”
He was waiting with the door open when I got off the elevator.
“You look cold and tired,” he said.
“Dodging bullets is exhausting. I don't know how you cops do it day after day.”
“I assume you're talking about Mr. Weinstein.”
I hung my jacket and my shoulder bag on a wall hook.
“I'm talking about everyone. People keep shooting at me.” I sliced myself off a big chunk of spice cake and told Morelli about Snake.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“I think bounty hunters should be tested and licensed. And I think you'd flunk the test.”
“I'm learning.”
“Yeah,” Morelli said. “Let's hope you don't get dead in the process.”
Ordinarily I'd consider a remark like that to be an insult, but I'd actually been thinking along the same lines myself. “What's the deal with Uncle Mo?”
“I don't know,” Morelli said. “At first I was worried he was dead. Now I don't t know what to think.”
“What kind of prints did you get from his store?”
“Yours, Mo's and Anders's from the doorknobs in the rear. We didn't bother with the public areas. Two-thirds of the burg would have showed up.”
“The neighbors see anything?”
“Only the lady across the street who reported the flashlight.” Morelli was slouched against my kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. “Any other questions?”
“Do you know who killed Anders?”
“No. Do you?”
I rinsed my plate and put it in the dishwasher. “No.” I looked at Morelli. “How did Anders get into the store? I heard him fumbling out there, trying the doorknob. At first I thought he had a key, but the door wouldn't open. So then I decided he must be jimmying the lock.”
“There was no sign of forced entry.”
“Can we unofficially walk through this?”
“You must be reading my mind,” Morelli said.
“I'm not saying any of this to a cop, right?”
“Right.”
I poured myself a glass of milk. “This is what I know. The back door to Mo's store was locked. I opened it with a key I got from his apartment. After I was in the store I pulled the door closed. When Ronald Anders tried to get in, the door was locked. At first it sounded like he had a key, but the door wouldn't open. He fiddled with it for a couple minutes, and the door clicked open. Did you find anything on him that he could have used to pick a lock?”
“No.”
“Did you find a key to the store on him?”
“No.”
I raised my eyebrows.
Morelli raised his eyebrows.
“Either someone needed a set of picks, or else someone lifted a key that doesn't work especially well,” I said. “Or maybe someone opened the door with a sticky key, let Ronald Anders into the store, disappeared for a few minutes, returned and killed Anders.”
Morelli and I sighed. The logical person to have a sticky key would be Uncle Mo. And it wasn't so far-fetched that Mo would know Anders in light of the fact that Mo had been seen on Stark Street from time to time. Maybe this was drug related. Maybe Mo was buying. Hell, maybe Mo was selling. After perusing Mo's bedtime books I was willing to believe almost anything about him.
“You have anybody talking to the kids who hang at the store?” I asked Morelli. “When you were working vice did you hear anything about drugs coming out of Mo's?”
“Just the opposite,” Morelli said. “Mo's was a safe zone. Mo was militant against dope. Everyone knew.”
I had another idea. “How militant?” I asked. “Militant enough to kill a dealer?”
Morelli looked at me with his unreadable cop face.
“That would be strange,” I said. “Lovable, out-of-shape ice cream guy turns killer. Revenge of the small businessman.”
Anders was shot in the back. He'd been carrying a gun, but the gun hadn't been touched. The gun had been found when the police rolled the body. The gun had been stuffed into the waistband of Anders's double-pleated rapper slacks. Whoever got nailed for the murder would have a hard time pleading self-defense.
“Is that it?” I asked Morelli.
“For now.”
Morelli was wearing jeans, boots and a long-sleeved driver's shirt with the sleeves pushed up. He had his service pistol clipped to his belt. He grabbed his khaki jacket from one of the wall hooks in the entrance hall and shrugged into it.
“I'd appreciate it if you didn't t take any vacations in foreign countries for a couple days,” he said.
“Gee, and I have tickets to Monaco.”
He gave me a chuck under my chin, smiled and left.
I stared at the closed front door for a moment. A chuck under the chin. What was that? In the past, Morelli had tried to stick his tongue down my throat. Or at the very least he'd make a lewd suggestion. I was suspicious of a chuck under the chin. Now that I thought about it, he'd been a perfect gentleman when he'd brought the pizza. And what about last night? He'd left without so much as a handshake.
I checked myself out in the hall mirror. My hair was still squashed under the knit cap. Not real sexy, but that had never slowed Morelli down before. I pulled the cap off and my hair sprang out. Eek. Good thing I'd left the cap on.
I went back to the kitchen and dialed Ranger.
“Yo,” Ranger said.
“Anyone bragging about killing Ronald Anders?”
“No one's bragging about anything these days. The streets are quiet.”
“Turf war?”
“Don't t know. A couple players are missing. A couple dopers are dead. Got some hot shit going around killing people.”
“ODs?”
“That's the way the death certificates read.”
“You think something different?”
“Feels dark, babe.”
I disconnected and a minute later the phone rang.
“We got a situation on our hands,” Lula said.
“A situation?”
“Just got a call from Jackie, and I can't make any sense of what she's saying. Something about how her old man jacked her over again.”
“Where is she?”
“She's at the FancyAss Apartments. She's been there day and night, and she sounds flipped out. I told her to wait right where she was, and we'd come fast as we could.”
Fifteen minutes later I pulled into the RiverEdge lot. The sky was black and dense above evenly spaced pools of artificial light thrown by the overhead halogen lamps. Jackie had parked her Chrysler on the fringe of one of those pools. The river was a block away, and the ice fog swirled around the lamps and settled on the cars.
Jackie stood beside her car, waving her arms while she yelled at Lula, and Lula was yelling back at Jackie.
“Calm down,” Lula was saying. “Calm down!”
“He's dead,” Jackie shouted. “Dead, dead, dead. Fucking dead. Dead as a goddamn doorknob. What a bitch!”
I looked at Lula, and Lula gave me an I-don't-know shrug.
“I just got here,” Lula said. “I can't get her to say anything besides the motherfucker's dead. Maybe she's too coked up. Maybe we need to get something to slow her down.”
“I'm not coked up, you dumb ho,” Jackie said. “I'm trying to tell you he's dead, and you're not fucking listening.”
I looked around the lot. “Is he dead anywhere nearby?”
I really wanted a no on this one. I'd already had my millennium quota of dead.
“You see that big bush by the Dumpster?” Jackie said.
“Yeah.”
“You see that ugly-ass foot sticking out of that big bush?”
Oh boy. She was right. There was a foot sticking out of the bush.
“Shit, Jackie,” I said. “You didn't kill that foot, did you?”
“No, I didn't kill that
foot. That's what I've been trying to tell you. Someone jacked me over. I've been sitting out here, freezing my ass off, waiting to kill that sonovabitch Cameron Brown, and someone beat me to it. It isn't fair!”
Jackie wheeled off for the Dumpster with Lula and me scrambling to keep up.
“I decided to neaten up the car,” Jackie said. “So I come over here with a bag of trash, and I'm throwing it in the Dumpster, and I see something sort of reflecting light. And I look a little harder, and I see it's a watch. And then I see it's attached to a wrist. And I say, Goddamn, I know that watch and that wrist. So I dig around some and look what I come up with. Look what I hauled out of the goddamn garbage.”
She stopped at the bush, reached down, grabbed hold of the foot and dragged a man's body out into the open. “Just look at this. He's dead. And if that isn't bad enough, he's frozen solid. This motherfucker is one big frosty Popsicle. It's not even like I get to see him rot. Damn.”
Jackie dropped the foot and gave Cameron a good solid kick in the ribs.
Lula and I jumped back and sucked in some air.
“Dang,” Lula said.
“That ain't the half of it,” Jackie said. “I've been sitting here waiting to shoot him, and that's what I'm going to do.”
Jackie opened her coat, pulled a 9mm Beretta out of her sweatpants and drilled half a clip into Cameron Brown. Cameron jumped around some from the impact, but mostly the bullets didn't have much effect—except for putting a bunch of extra holes in various body parts.
“Are you nuts?” Lula yelled. “This guy's dead! You're shooting a dead man!”
“Isn't my fault,” Jackie said. “I wanted to shoot him while he was alive, but somebody beat me to it. I'm just making the best of a bad situation.”
“You've been drinking,” Lula said.
“Damn skippy. Would have froze to death if I didn't have a nip once in a while.”
Jackie raised the gun, looking to unload a few more rounds into Cameron.
“Hold on,” Lula said. “I hear sirens.”
We stood still and listened to the whoop, whoop, whoop.
“Coming this way!” Lula said. “Every man for himself!”
We all ran for our cars and took off at the same time, almost crashing into each other trying to get out of the lot.
Stephanie Plum 3 - Three To Get Deadly
7
Jackie and Lula and I rendezvoused at a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, about a quarter mile from RiverEdge. We parked our cars side by side and got out to have a huddle.
“I need a doughnut,” Jackie said. “I want one of those fancy ones with the colored sprinkles on top.”
“You need more than a doughnut,” Lula told her. “You need your head examined. You just shot up a dead man. What were you thinking?”
Jackie was rummaging in her pockets, looking for doughnut money. “I guess I got a right to shoot someone if I want to.”
“Nuh-uh,” Lula said. “There's rules. This man was already dead, and you showed disrespect for the deceased.”
“The deceased didn't deserve no respect. He stole my car.”
“Everybody deserves respect when they're dead,” Lula said. “It's a rule.”
“Says who?”
“Says God.”
“Oh yeah? Well, God don't know jack-shit about rules. I'm telling you, that's a stupid rule.”
Lula had her hands on her hips, and her eyes bugged out of her head. “Don't you talk about God like that, you worthless ho. I'm not gonna stand here and let you blaspheme God.”
“Hold it!” I shouted. “What about the police?”
“What about them?” Jackie wanted to know.
“We need to call them.”
Jackie and Lula looked at me like I was speaking Klingon.
“Someone killed Cameron Brown before Jackie made Swiss cheese out of him. We can't just leave Brown lying there alongside the Dumpster,” I told them.
“No need to worry about that,” Lula said. “That place is crawling with cops by now. They'll find Cameron. He's right out there in the open.”
“Yeah, but shooting dead people is probably a crime. That makes us accessories if we don't report it.”
“I'm not going to the police,” Jackie said. "Unh-uh. No way.
“It's the right thing to do,” I said.
“The hell,” Jackie said. “It's the stupid thing to do.”
“Stephanie's right,” Lula told Jackie. “It's the dope and the liquor that's stopping you from doing the right thing. Just like it's the dope and the liquor that makes you blaspheme God. You gotta do something for yourself,” Lula said to Jackie. “You gotta go to detox.”
“Don't need detox,” Jackie said.
“Uh-huh,” Lula told her.
“Unh-uh. ”
“Uh-huh. ”
“I know what you're doing,” Jackie said. “You've been trying to get me to detox ever since you got straight. This here's just a trick.”
“You bet your ass,” Lula said. “And either you go to detox, or we turn you in.” Lula looked at me. “Isn't that right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That's right.” Seemed like that's what the court would do anyway. Probably the clinic on Perry Street would do it better.
It started with polite rapping on my door. And then when I didn't answer, it turned to pounding. I looked through my peephole and saw Morelli pacing and muttering. He turned and gave my door another shot with his fist.
“Come on, Stephanie,” he said. “Wake up. Get out of bed and answer your door.”
It was eight-thirty, and I'd been awake for an hour. I'd taken a shower, gotten dressed and had breakfast. I wasn't answering my door because I didn't want to talk to Morelli. I suspected he'd just come from RiverEdge.
I heard him fiddling with the lock. The lock clicked open. Thirty seconds later he had the deadbolt. My front door pushed open but caught on the chain.
“I know you're there,” Morelli said. “I can smell your shampoo. Open the door, or I'm coming back with a bolt cutter.”
I slid the chain and opened the door. “Now what?”
“We found Cameron Brown.”
I opened my eyes wider to simulate surprise. “No!”
“Yes. Frozen solid. And extremely dead. Been dead for days is my guess. Found him next to the Dumpster at the RiverEdge condo complex.”
“I'll have to tell Jackie.”
“Uh-huh. Funny thing about the body. Looked like whoever killed Brown had him tossed into the Dumpster. And then someone came along last night, dragged the body out of the Dumpster and pumped half a clip into him.”
“No!”
“Yes. It gets even funnier. Two of the RiverEdge residents came forward, saying they heard a bunch of women arguing in the lot, late at night, then they heard gunshots. When they looked out their windows what do you suppose they saw?”
“What?”
“Three cars leaving the lot. One of them was an old Buick. They thought it might be powder blue with a white top.”
“Did they get a plate? Did they see the women?”
“No.”
“Guess that's a tough break for you guys, huh?”
“I thought you might be able to shed some light on the incident.”
“Am I talking to you as a cop this morning?”
“Shit,” Morelli said. “I don't want to hear this.”
“So, is it against the law to shoot someone after he's already dead?”
“Yes, it's against the law.”
I made a small grimace. “I thought it would be. Just exactly what law is it against?”
“I don't know,” Morelli said. “But I'm sure there's something. I suppose there were extenuating circumstances.”
“A woman scorned . . .”
“Is this scorned woman going to come forward?”
“She's going into detox.”
“Your job description reads 'bounty hunter,' ” Morelli said. “Social worker is a whole different job.”
r /> “You want some coffee?”