Four to Score

  He gave me another whack that had me against the wall. “Maybe you need to be taught a lesson not to mess with Kenny.”

  “Maybe you need to be taught a lesson not to jump bail.” I had my hand in my bag, and I couldn't find the lousy defense spray, so I hauled out a can of extra-​hold hair spray and let him have it square in the face.

  “Yeow,” Kenny yelped, jumping back, hands to his face. “You bitch, I'll get you for this. I'll . . .” He took his hands away. “Hey, wait a minute. What is this shit?”

  Terry's smile widened. “You've been hair-​sprayed, Kenny.”

  The little girl and an older woman hustled down the hall.

  “What's going on?” the woman wanted to know.

  An old man appeared. Vito Grizolli, looking like he'd walked off the set of The Godfather.

  “Kenny's been hair-​sprayed,” Terry told everyone. “He put up a pretty good fight, but he just didn't have the muscle to stand up to extra hold.”

  The mother turned on me. “You did this to my boy?”

  I tried not to sigh, but one escaped anyway. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed. “I'm a bond enforcement officer,” I told her. “I work for Vincent Plum. Your son failed to appear in court, and now I need to bring him in to reschedule and have his case reviewed.”

  Mrs. Martin sucked in air and faced-​off at Kenny. “You did that? You didn't go to court? What's the matter with you? Don't you know anything?”

  “It's all bullshit,” Kenny said.

  Mrs. Martin smacked him on the side of the head. “You watch your language!”

  “And how is this to dress?” she said to me. “If you were my daughter I wouldn't let you out of the house.”

  I scrambled away before she could smack me, too.

  “Kids,” Vito Grizolli said. “What's happening to this world?”

  From a man who had people killed on a regular basis.

  He shook his finger at Kenny. “You should have kept your court date. You do this like a man. You go with her now, and you let the lawyers do their job.”

  “I got hair spray in my eye,” Kenny said. “It's watering. I need a doctor.”

  I held the back door open for him. “Don't be such a big baby,” I said. “I get hair spray in my eyes all the time.”

  Ranger was waiting under the canopy. He was dressed in a black T-​shirt and black assault pants tucked into black boots. He had a body like Schwarzenegger, dark hair slicked back off his face and a two-​hundred-​watt smile. He was drop-​dead sexy, he was as sane as Batman, and he was a primo bounty hunter.

  He gave me all two hundred watts. “Nice touch with the hair spray.”

  “Don't start.”

  * * * * *

  MONDAY MORNING I woke up feeling restless. I wanted to move on Maxine Nowicki, but I was stalled on the clue. I looked at the note again and felt frustration gnawing at me. Sally Sweet hadn't returned my call. I was itching to call him again, but it was eight o'clock, and I thought it was possible drag queens weren't early risers.

  I was on my second cup of coffee when the phone rang.

  “It's me,” Sally said.

  I read the note over the phone, letter by letter.

  Silence.

  “Sally?”

  “I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I've been up all night, looking sexy, shaking my ass. It isn't easy, you know.”

  I could hear yelling in the background. “What's going on?”

  “It's Sugar. He's got breakfast all made.”

  “Sugar makes your breakfast?”

  “I'm on the phone with Stephanie,” Sally yelled back.

  “Boy, I don't have anyone make breakfast for me.”

  “What you have to do is live with a gay guy,” Sally said. “They're into this cooking shit.”

  Something to think about.

  “I don't want to rush your breakfast,” I said. “I'll be home for another hour, then I'm going to the office. When you figure it out you can call me at the office, or you can leave a message on my machine.”

  “Ten four, kemosabe.”

  I took a shower and dressed for another scorcher day. I gave Rex fresh water and some hamster food, which he didn't deem worthy to so much as sniff at.

  I slung my black leather tote over my shoulder, locked up and took the stairs to the lobby. Outside, the blacktop was steaming, and the sun was beginning to throb in a murky sky. I played Savage Garden all the way to the office and arrived psyched because I'd had good traffic karma, sailing through the lights.

  Connie was bent over a file when I walked in. Her black hair was teased high around her face like a movie set that was all facade. Everything up front and nothing in the back. Killer hair as long as she didn't turn around.

  “If you want to talk to the man, he isn't in,” she said.

  Lula popped up from behind a bank of file cabinets. “He's doin' a nooner with a goat today. I saw it on his calendar.”

  “So how's it going?” Connie asked. “Any action on the Nowicki thing?”

  I passed a copy of the note to Connie and Lula. “I have a message from her that's written in some kind of code.”

  “Lose me,” Lula said. “Code isn't one of my specialties.”

  Connie sunk two teeth into a heavily lipsticked lower lip. “Maybe the numbers are really letters.”

  “I thought of that, but I couldn't get it to work.”

  We all stared at the note for a while.

  “Might not mean anything,” Lula finally said. “Might be a joke.”

  I nodded. Joke note was a possibility.

  “I helped Ranger with an apprehension yesterday,” I said. “Kenny Martin.”

  Connie gave a low laugh. “Vito Grizolli's nephew? Bet that was fun.”

  “There was a woman with him that I can't place. I know I've seen her before, but it keeps slipping away from me.”

  “What'd she look like?”

  “Slim, pretty, short blond hair. He called her Terry.”

  “Terry Gilman,” Connie said. “Used to be Terry Grizolli. Was married to Billy Gilman for about six hours and kept his name.”

  “Terry Grizolli! That was Terry Grizolli?” Terry Grizolli was two years older than me and had been linked with Joe Morelli all through high school. She'd been voted prom queen and had created a school scandal by choosing Joe as her escort. After graduation, she'd gone on to become a professional cheerleader for the New York Giants. “I haven't seen her in years,” I said. “What's she doing now? Is she still a cheerleader?”

  “Rumor has it she's working for Vito. She has a lot of money and no discernible job.”

  “You telling me she's like a wise guy?”

  “Affirmative action,” Connie said.

  The front door opened, and we all turned to look. Lula was the first to find her voice. “Killer earring.”

  It was a parrot swinging on a gold hoop that was looped through one of Sally's ears.

  “Got it at the shore,” he said. “You buy a pair of thong briefs and they throw in the earring.” He made a grab at his ass and hiked himself up. “Christ, I don't know how they wear these thong things. They're giving me hemorrhoids.”

  He was minus the Farrah wig, and his own hair was a mess of dark brown corkscrew strands. Sort of Rasta without the dreds. He was wearing cut-​off denims, a white T-​shirt, red clogs and was freshly manicured with silver polish.

  “This is Sally Sweet,” I told Connie and Lula.

  “I bet,” Lula said.

  Sally handed me the translation of the coded message and looked around. “I thought there'd be wanted posters on the walls and gun racks filled with shotguns.”

  “This isn't Dodge City,” Lula said. “We got some class here. We keep the guns in the back room with the pervert.”

  I read the note. “ 'One-​thirty-​two Howser Street. Under the bench.' That's Maxine's mother's address.”

  Sally slouched onto the couch. “When I was a kid I watched reruns of Steve McQueen. Now h
e was a bounty hunter.”

  “Damn skippy,” Lula said. “He was the shit.”

  “So now what?” Sally wanted to know. “We going to Howser Street?”

  Foreboding sliced into my stomach. We?

  Lula slammed her file drawer shut. “Hold on. You're not going off without me! Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-​figure woman like me to help straighten things out?”

  I like Lula a lot, but last time we worked together I gained seven pounds and almost got arrested for shooting a guy who was already dead.

  “I'm going to Howser Street,” I said. “Only me. One person. Steve McQueen worked alone.”

  “I don't mean to be insulting,” Lula said, “but you ain't no Steve McQueen. And something happens you'll be happy I'm around. Besides, this'll be fun . . . the two of us working on a case together again.”

  “Three of us,” Sally said. “I'm going, too.”

  “Oh boy,” Lula said. “The three muffkateers.”

  * * * * *

  LULA GAVE THE NOWICKI HOUSE the once-​over. “Don't appear like Maxine's mama spends much time spiffing up the old homestead.”

  We were in Lula's Firebird with Sally in the backseat doing air guitar to Lula's rap music. Lula cut the engine, the music stopped, and Sally snapped to attention.

  “Looks kind of spooky,” Sally said. “You guys have guns, right?”

  “Wrong,” I said. “We don't need guns to retrieve a clue.”

  “Well, this is fucking disappointing. I figured you'd kick the door down and blast yourselves into the house. You know, rough up some people.”

  “You want to cut down on the breakfast drugs,” Lula said to Sally. “You keep going like this all your nose hairs are gonna fall out.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt. “There's a little wooden bench on the front porch. With any luck, we won't have to go in the house.”

  We crossed the patchy lawn, and Lula tested the bottom porch step, pausing when it groaned under her weight. She moved to the next step and picked her way around floorboards that were obviously rotted.

  Sally tiptoed behind her. Clonk, clonk, clonk with his clogs. Not exactly the stealth transvestite.

  They each took an end of the bench and flipped it over.

  No note stuck to the bottom.

  “Maybe it blew away,” Lula said.

  There wasn't a stray breath of air in all of Jersey, but we checked the surroundings anyway, the three of us fanning out, covering the yard.

  No note.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “We been given the runaround.”

  There was a crawl space under the porch, enclosed with wooden lattice. I dropped to hands and knees and squinted through the lattice. “The note said 'under the bench.' It could have meant under the porch, under the bench.” I jogged to the car and retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment. I returned to the porch, scrunched low and flashed the beam around the dirt floor. Sure enough, there was a glass jar directly under the part of the porch that supported the bench.

  Two yellow eyes caught in the light, held for a second, and skittered away.

  “Do you see it?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Yep.”

  “Well?”

  “There are eyes under there. Little beady yellow ones. And spiders. Lots of spiders.”

  Lula gave an involuntary shiver.

  Sally made another adjustment on his thong.

  “I'd go get it, but a big woman like me wouldn't fit,” Lula said. “Sure is a shame it isn't just a little roomier.”

  “I think you'd fit.”

  “Nope, unh ah, I know I wouldn't fit.”

  I considered the spiders. “I might not fit, either.”

  “I'd fit,” Sally said, “but I'm not doing it. I paid twenty bucks for this manicure, and I'm not fucking it up crawling under some rat-​infested porch.”

  I hunkered down for another look. “Maybe we can stick a rake in there and pull the jar out.”

  “Nuh ah,” Lula said. “A rake isn't gonna be big enough. You gotta go in from the end here, and it's too far away. Where you gonna get a rake anyway?”

  “We can ask Mrs. Nowicki.”

  “Oh yeah,” Lula said. “From the looks of this lawn she does lots of gardening.” Lula stood on tiptoes and looked in a window on the side of the house. “Probably not even home. Seems like she'd be out by now what with us up on her porch and all.” Lula moved to another window and pressed her nose to the glass. “Uh oh.”

  “What uh oh?” I hated uh oh.

  “You'd better look at this.”

  Sally and I trotted over and pressed our noses to the glass.

  Mrs. Nowicki was stretched out on the kitchen floor. She had a bloody towel wrapped around the top of her head, and an empty bottle of Jim Beam was on the floor beside her. She was wearing a cotton nightgown, and her bare feet were splayed toes out.

  “Looks to me like dead city,” Lula said. “You want a rake, you better get it yourself.”

  I knocked on the window. “Mrs. Nowicki!”

  Mrs. Nowicki didn't move a muscle.

  “Think this must have just happened,” Lula said. “If she'd laid there for any amount of time in this heat she'd be swelled up big as a beach ball. She'd have burst apart. There'd be guts and maggots all over the place.”

  “I hate to miss seeing the guts and maggots,” Sally said. “Maybe we should come back in a couple hours.”

  I turned from the window and headed for the car. “We need to call the police.”

  Lula was on my heels. “Hold the phone on the we part. Those police people give me the hives.”

  “You're not a hooker anymore. You don't have to worry about the police.”

  “One of them traumatic emotional things,” Lula said.

  Ten minutes later, two blue-​and-​whites angled to the curb behind me. Carl Costanza emerged from the first car, looked at me and shook his head. I'd known Carl since grade school. He was always the skinny kid with the bad haircut and wise mouth. He'd bulked up some in the last few years, and he'd found a good barber. He still had the wise mouth, but under it all, he was a decent person and a pretty good cop.

  “Another dead body?” Carl asked. “What are you going for, a record? Most bodies found by an individual in the city of Trenton?”

  “She's on the kitchen floor. We haven't been in the house. The door is locked.”

  “How do you know she's on the floor if the door is locked?”

  “I was sort of looking in the window, and . . .”

  Carl held up his hand. “Don't tell me. I don't want to hear this. Sorry I asked.”

  The cop in the second car had gone to the side window and was standing there, hands on gun belt. “She's on the floor all right,” he said, peering in. He rapped on the window. “Hey, lady!” He turned to us and narrowed his eyes against the sun. “Looks dead to me.”

  Carl went to the front door and knocked. “Mrs. Nowicki? It's the police.” He knocked louder. “Mrs. Nowicki, we're coming in.” He gave the door a good shot with his fist, the rotted molding splintered off, and the door swung open.

  I followed Carl into the kitchen and watched while he stooped over Mrs. Nowicki, feeling for a pulse, looking for a sign of life.

  There were more bloody towels in the sink and a bloody paring knife on the counter. My first thought had been gunshot, but there were no guns in sight and no sign of struggle.

  “You better call this in for the ME,” Carl said to the second cop. “I don't know exactly what we've got here.”

  Sally and Lula had taken positions against the wall.

  “What do you think?” Lula asked Carl.

  Carl shrugged. “Nothing much. She looks pretty dead.”

  Lula nodded. “That what I thought, too. Soon as I saw her I said to myself, Hell, that woman's dead.”

  The second cop disappeared to make the call, and Lula inched closer to Mrs. Nowicki. “What do you think happened to her? I bet she fell an
d hit her head, and then she wrapped her head in a towel and croaked.”

  That sounded reasonable to me . . . except for the paring knife with blood and pieces of hair stuck to it.

  Lula bent at the waist and examined the towel, wrapped turban style. “Must have been a good clonk she took. Lots of blood.”