Seven Up

  “Maybe we should go talk to Estelle Colucci,” I said to Lula.

  “I'm ready to roll,” Lula said.

  BENNY AND ESTELLE Colucci live in a nicely maintained duplex in the Burg. For that matter, just about every house in the Burg is nicely maintained. It's mandatory for survival. Decorating taste might vary, but windows damn well better be clean.

  I parked the bike in front of the Colucci house, walked to the door, and knocked. No answer. Lula pushed into the bushes under the front windows and looked inside.

  “Don't see anyone,” Lula said. “No lights on. Television's not going.”

  We tried the club next. No Benny. I drove two blocks to Hamilton and recognized Benny's car at the corner of Hamilton and Grand, parked in front of the Tip Top Sandwich Shop. Lula and I squinted in through the plate-glass window. Benny and Ziggy were inside having a late breakfast.

  The Tip Top is a narrow hole-in-the-wall café that serves homemade food for reasonable prices. The green-and-black linoleum on the floor is cracked, the overhead light fixtures are dim from grime, the Naugahyde seats in the booths are patched with duct tape. Mickey Spritz was an army cook during the Korean conflict. He opened the Tip Top when he got out of the army thirty years ago and he hasn't changed a thing since. Not the flooring, the booth seats, the menu. Mickey and his wife do all the cooking. And a retarded man, Pookie Potter, buses the tables and washes the dishes.

  Benny and Ziggy were concentrating on eating their eggs when Lula and I approached.

  “Jeez,” Benny said, looking up from his eggs, gaping at Lula in full leather. “Where do you find these people?”

  “We stopped by your house,” I said to Benny. “No one was home.”

  “Yeah. That's because I'm here.”

  “What about Estelle? Estelle wasn't home, either.”

  “We had a death in the family,” Benny said. “Estelle is out of town for a couple days.”

  “I guess you're talking about Louie D,” I said. “And the screw-up.”

  I had Benny and Ziggy's attention now.

  “You know about the screw-up?” Benny asked.

  “I know about the heart.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Benny said. “I thought you were bluffing.”

  “Where's Mooner?”

  “I'm telling you, I don't know where he is, but my wife is driving me fucking nuts over this heart thing. You gotta give me the heart. That's all I hear about . . . how I gotta get the heart. I'm only human, you know what I mean? I can't take it anymore.”

  “Benny isn't well himself,” Ziggy said. “He has conditions, too. You should give him the heart so he can have some peace. It's the right thing to do.”

  “And just think about Louie D laying there without his heart,” Benny said. “That's not nice. You should have your heart when they put you in the ground.”

  “When did Estelle leave for Richmond?”

  “Monday.”

  “That's the day Mooner disappeared,” I said.

  Benny leaned forward. “What are you suggesting?”

  “That Estelle snatched Mooner.”

  Benny and Ziggy looked at each other. They hadn't considered this possibility.

  “Estelle doesn't do stuff like that,” Benny said.

  “How did she get to Richmond? Did she take a limo?”

  “No. She drove. She was going to Richmond to visit Louie D's wife, Sophia, and then she was going to Norfolk. We got a daughter there.”

  “I don't suppose you have a picture of Estelle with you?”

  Benny pulled his wallet out and showed me a picture of Estelle. She was a pleasant-looking woman with a round face and short gray hair.

  “Well, I've got the heart, and now it's up to you to find out who has Mooner,” I said to Benny.

  And Lula and I left.

  “Holy shit,” Lula said when we were on the bike. “You were so freaking cool in there. You actually had me thinking you knew what you were doing. Like, I was almost thinking you had the heart.”

  Lula and I went back to the office, and my cell phone buzzed just as I walked through the door.

  “Is your grandmother with you?” my mother wanted to know. “She walked to the bakery early this morning to get some rolls and she hasn't come back.”

  “I haven't seen her.”

  “Your father went out to look for her but he couldn't find her. And I've called all her friends. She's been gone for hours.”

  “How many hours?”

  “I don't know. A couple. It's just that it's not like her. She always comes right home from the bakery.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I'll go look for Grandma. Give me a call if she turns up.”

  I disconnected and my phone immediately rang again.

  It was Eddie DeChooch. “Do you still have the heart?” he wanted to know.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I've got something to trade.”

  I had a bad feeling in my stomach. “Mooner?”

  “Guess again.”

  There was some scuffling and then Grandma came on the line.

  “What's this business about a heart?” Grandma wanted to know.

  “It's sort of complicated. Are you okay?”

  “I've got a little arthritis in my knee today.”

  “No. I mean is Choochy treating you all right?”

  I could hear Chooch in the background prompting Grandma. “Tell her you're kidnapped,” he was saying. “Tell her I'm gonna blow your head off if she doesn't give me the heart.”

  “I'm not telling her that,” Grandma said. “How would that sound? And don't get any funny ideas, either. Just because I'm kidnapped doesn't mean I'm easy. I'm not doing anything with you unless you take precautions. I'm not taking any chances getting one of them diseases.”

  DeChooch came back on the line. “Here's the deal. You take your cell phone and Louie D's heart to Quaker Bridge Mall and I'll call you at seven o'clock. Any cops come in on this and your granny's dead.”

  Stephanie Plum 7 - Seven Up

  11

  “WHAT WAS THAT all about?” Lula wanted to know.

  “DeChooch has Grandma Mazur. He wants to trade her for the heart. I'm supposed to take the heart to Quaker Bridge Mall, and he's going to call me at seven with further instructions. He said he'll kill her if I bring the police into it.”

  “Kidnappers always say that,” Lula said. “It's in the kidnapper handbook.”

  “What are you going to do?” Connie wanted to know. “Do you have any idea who has the heart?”

  “Hold up here,” Lula said. "Louie D don't have his name engraved on his heart. Why don't we just get another heart? How's Eddie DeChooch gonna know if it's Louie D's heart? I bet we could give Eddie DeChooch a cow heart and he wouldn't know. We just go to a butcher and tell him we need a cow heart. We don't go to a butcher in the Burg because word might get around. We go to some other butcher. I know a couple over on Stark Street. Or we could try Price Chopper. They've got a real good meat department.

  “I'm surprised DeChooch didn't come up with this. I mean, nobody has even seen Louie D's heart except for DeChooch. And DeChooch can't see for shit. DeChooch probably took that pot roast out of Dougie's freezer thinking it was the heart.”

  “Lulu's come up with something here,” Connie said. “It might work.”

  I picked my head up from between my legs. “It's creepy!”

  “Yeah,” Lula said. “That's the best part.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “It's lunchtime. Let's go get a burger and then we'll get a heart.”

  I used Connie's phone to call my mother.

  “Don't worry about Grandma,” I said. “I know where she is and I'm going to pick her up later tonight.” Then I hung up before my mother could ask questions.

  AFTER LUNCH LULA and I went to Price Chopper.

  “We need a heart,” Lida said to the butcher. “And it has to be in good condition.”

  “Sorry,” he said, “we don't have any hearts. How about so
me other kind of organ meat. Like liver. We have some nice calf livers.”

  “Has to be a heart,” Lula said. “You know where we can get a heart?”

  “So far as I know, they all go to a dog food factory in Arkansas.”

  “We haven't got time to go to Arkansas,” Lula said. “Thanks, anyway.”

  On the way out we stopped at a display of picnic necessities and bought a small red-and-white Igloo cooler.

  “This'll be perfect,” Lula said. “All we need now is the heart.”

  “Do you think we'll have better luck on Stark Street?”

  “I know some butchers there that sell stuff you don't want to know about,” Lula said. “If they don't got a heart they'll go get one, no questions asked.”

  There were parts to Stark Street that made Bosnia look good. Lula worked Stark Street when she was a ho. It was a long street of depressed businesses, depressed housing, and depressed people.

  It took us close to a half hour to get there, rumbling through center city, enjoying the custom pipes and the attention a hog demands.

  It was a sunny April day, but Stark Street looked dreary. Pages from a newspaper cartwheeled down the street and banked against curbs and the cement stoops of cheerless row houses. Gang slogans were spray-painted on brick fronts. An occasional building had been burned and gutted, the windows blackened and boarded. Small businesses squatted between the row houses. Andy's Bar & Grill, Stark Street Garage, Stan's Appliances, Omar's Meat Market.

  “This is the place,” Lula said. “Omar's Meat Market. If it's used for dog food then Omar's gonna be selling it for soup. We just want to make sure the heart isn't still beating when we get it.”

  “Is it safe to leave the bike parked here at the curb?”

  “Hell no. Park it on the sidewalk next to the window so we can watch it.”

  There was a large black man behind the meat case. His hair was buzzed short and was shot with gray. His white butcher's apron was blood-smeared. He had a thick gold chain around his neck and he wore a single diamond stud. He smiled ear-to-ear when he saw us.

  “Lula! Looking good. Never see you anymore since you stopped working the street. Like the leather.”

  “This here's Omar,” Lula said to me. “He's about as rich as Bill Gates. He just runs this butcher shop because he likes sticking his hand up chicken butts.”

  Omar tipped his head back and laughed, and the sound was a lot like the Harley echoing off the Stark Street storefronts.

  “What can I do for you?” Omar asked Lula.

  “I need a heart.”

  Omar didn't blink an eye. Guess he got requests for hearts all the time. “Sure,” he said, “what kind of a heart do you want? What are you going to do with it? Make soup? Slice it and fry it?”

  “I don't suppose you have any human hearts?”

  “Not today. They're special order.”

  “What's the next closest thing, then?”

  “Pig heart. Can't hardly tell the difference.”

  “Okay,” Lula said, “I'll take one of those.”

  Omar went to the end case and pawed through a vat of organs. He picked one out and put it on the scale on a piece of waxed paper. “How's this?”

  Lula and I looked around the scale at it.

  “I don't know much about hearts,” Lula said to Omar. “Maybe you could help us out here. We're looking for a heart that would fit a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound pig who just had a heart attack.”

  “How old is this pig?”

  “Late sixties, maybe seventy.”

  “That's a pretty old pig,” Omar said. He went back and picked out a second heart. “This one's been in the vat for a while. I don't know if the pig had a heart attack, but the heart don't look all that good.” He poked it with his finger. “It's not that it's missing any parts, or anything, it just looks like it's been around the block, you know what I mean?”

  “How much is it?” Lula asked.

  “You're in luck. This one's on sale. I could let you have this one for half price.”

  Lula and I exchanged glances.

  “Okay, we'll take it,” I said.

  Omar looked over the counter at the cooler in Lula's hand. “You want Porky wrapped up or do you want him packed in ice?”

  ON THE WAY back to the office I pulled up for a light, and a guy on a Harley Fat Boy eased to a stop beside me.

  “Nice bike,” he said. “What have you got in the cooler?”

  “A pig heart,” Lula said.

  And then the light changed and we both took off.

  Five minutes later we were in the office, showing the heart to Connie.

  “Boy, it looks like the real thing,” Connie said.

  Lula and I gave Connie some raised eyebrows.

  “Not that I'd know,” Connie said.

  “This is gonna work good,” Lula said. “All we have to do now is swap this for Granny.”

  Tendrils of fear curled in my stomach. Nervous little flutterings that took my breath away. I didn't want anything bad to happen to Grandma.

  Valerie and I used to fight all the time when we were kids. I always had some crazy idea and Valerie always snitched on me to my mother. Stephanie's up on the garage roof trying to fly, Valerie would scream to my mother, running into the kitchen. Or, Stephanie's in the backyard trying to tinkle standing up like a boy. After my mother yelled at me, when no one was looking, I'd give Valerie a really good smack on the head. Whack! And then we'd fight. And then my mother would yell at me again. And then I'd run away from home.

  I always ran to Grandma Mazur's house. Grandma Mazur never passed judgment. Now I know why. Deep down inside Grandma Mazur was even crazier than I was.

  Grandma Mazur would take me in without a word of admonishment. She'd haul her four kitchen chairs into the living room, arrange them in a square and drape a sheet over them. She'd give me a pillow and some books to read and send the into the tent she'd made. After a couple minutes a plate of cookies or a sandwich would get passed under the sheet.

  At some point in the afternoon, before my grandfather came hone from work, my mother would come fetch me and everything would be fine.

  And now Grandma was with crazy Eddie DeChooch. And at seven I'd trade her for a pig heart. “Unh!” I said.

  Lula and Connie glanced over at me.

  “Thinking out loud,” I told them. “Maybe I should call Joe or Ranger for backup.”

  “Joe's the police,” Lula said. “And DeChooch said no police.”

  “DeChooch wouldn't know Joe was there.”

  “Do you think he'll go along with the plan?”

  That was the problem. I'd have to tell Joe I was trading Grandma for a pig heart. It was one thing to disclose something like that when it was all over and it had worked perfectly. At the moment it sounded a lot like the time I tried to fly off the garage.

  “Maybe he'd come up with a better plan,” I said.

  “Only one thing DeChooch wants,” Lula said. “And you've got it in that cooler.”

  “I have a pig heart in this cooler!”

  “Well yeah, technically that's true,” Lula said.

  Probably Ranger was the better way to go. Ranger fit in with the nut cases of the world . . . like Lula and Grandma and me.

  There was no answer on Ranger's cell phone, so I tried his pager and got a call back in less than a minute.

  “There's a new problem with the DeChooch thing,” I said to Ranger. “He's got Grandma.”

  “A match made in heaven,” Ranger said.

  “This is serious! I let it be known that I had what DeChooch was after. Since he doesn't have Mooner he's kidnapped Grandma so he has something to trade. The swap is set for seven.”

  “What are you planning on giving DeChooch?”

  “A pig heart.”

  “That sounds fair,” Ranger said.

  “It's a long story.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I could use backup in case something goes wrong.” T
hen I told him the plan.

  “Have Vinnie wire you,” Ranger said. “I'll stop by the office later this afternoon to get the receiver. Switch the wire on at six-thirty.”