Hot Six

  “We aren't so strange,” Hulk said. “We're just your average couple of guys. Isn't that right, Habib?”

  “That is just so,” Habib said, inclining his head in my direction and smiling, showing a gold tooth. “We are most average in every way.”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  The guy in the passenger seat gave a big sigh. “You're not gonna get in the car, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, here's the deal. We're looking for a friend of yours. Only maybe he's not a friend anymore. Maybe you're looking for him, too.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So we thought we could work together. You know, be a team.”

  “I don't think so.”

  “Well, then, we're just gonna have to follow you around. We thought we should tell you so you don't get, you know, alarmed when you see us tailing you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “That's Habib over there behind the wheel. And I'm Mitchell.”

  “No. I mean, who are you? Who do you work for?” I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but I thought it was worth asking anyway.

  “We'd rather not divulge our employer's name,” Mitchell said. “It don't matter to you anyway. What you want to remember is that you don't cut us out of anything, because then we'd be annoyed.”

  “Yes, and it is not good when we become annoyed,” Habib said, wagging his finger. “We are not to be taken lightly. Is that not so?” he asked, looking to Mitchell for approval. “In fact, if you annoy us we will spread your entrails across an entire parking space of my cousin Muhammad's 7-Eleven parking lot.”

  “What are you, nuts?” Mitchell said. “We don't do no entrails shit. And if we did, it wouldn't be in front of the 7-Eleven. I go there for my Sunday paper.”

  “Oh,” Habib said. “Well, then, we could do something of a sexual nature. We could perform amusing acts of sexual perversion on her . . . many, many times. If she lived in my country she would forever be shamed in the community. She would be an outcast. Of course, since she is a decadent and immoral American she will undoubtedly be accepting of the perverse acts we will inflict upon her. And it is most possible that because we will be inflicting the perversions upon her, she will enjoy them immensely. But wait—we could also maim her to make the experience unpleasant in her eyes.”

  “Hey, I don't mind about the maiming, but watch it with the sexy stuff,” Mitchell said to Habib. “I'm a family man. My wife catches wind of anything like that, and I'm toast.”

  Stephanie Plum 6 - Hot Six

  2

  I THREW MY hands into the air. “What the hell do you want, already?”

  “We want your pal Ranger, and we know you're looking for him,” Mitchell said.

  “I'm not looking for Ranger. Vinnie's giving him to Joyce Barnhardt.”

  “I don't know Joyce Barnhardt from the Easter Bunny,” Mitchell said. “I know you. And I'm telling you, you're looking for Ranger. And when you find him, you're gonna tell us. And if you don't take this to be a serious . . . responsibility, you'll be real sorry.”

  “Re-spons-i-bility,” Habib said. “I like that. Nicely put. I teenk I will remember that.”

  “Think,” Mitchell said. “It's pronounced 'think.' ”

  “Teenk.”

  “Think!”

  “That is what I said. Teenk.”

  “The raghead just came over,” Mitchell said to me. “He used to work for our employer in another capacity in Pakistan, but he came over with the last load of goods, and we can't get rid of him. He don't know much yet.”

  “I am not a raghead,” Habib shouted. “Do you see a rag on this head? I am in America now, and I do not wear these things. And it is not a nice way that you say this.”

  “Raghead,” Mitchell said.

  Habib narrowed his eyes. “Filthy American dog.”

  “Blubber-belly.”

  “Son of a camel-walla.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Mitchell said.

  “And may your testicles fall off,” Habib responded.

  Probably I didn't have to worry about these guys—they'd kill each other before the day was over. “I have to go now,” I said. “I'm going to my parents' house for lunch.”

  “You must not be doing so good,” Mitchell said, “you gotta mooch lunch from your parents. We could help with that, you know. You get us what we want, and we could be real generous.”

  “Even if I wanted to find Ranger, which I don't, I couldn't. Ranger is smoke.”

  “Yeah, but I hear you got special talents, if you get my drift. Besides, you're a bounty hunter . . . bring 'im back dead or alive. Always get your man.”

  I opened the door of the Honda and slid behind the wheel. “Tell Alexander Ramos he needs to get someone else to find Ranger.”

  Mitchell looked like he might hack up a hairball. “We don't work for that little turd. Pardon my French.”

  This had me sitting up straighter in my seat. “Then who do you work for?”

  “I told you before. We can't divulge that information.”

  Jeez.

  MY GRANDMOTHER WAS standing in the doorway when I drove up. She lived with my parents now that my grandfather was buying his lotto tickets directly from God. She had steel-gray hair cut short and permed. She ate like a horse and had skin like a soup chicken. Her elbows were sharp as razor wire. She was dressed in white tennis shoes and a magenta polyester warm-up suit, and she was sliding her uppers around in her mouth, which meant she had something on her mind.

  “Isn't this nice? We were just setting lunch,” she said. “Your mother got some chicken salad and little rolls from Giovicchini's Market.”

  I cut my eyes to the living room. My dad's chair was empty.

  “He's out with the cab,” Grandma said. “Whitey Blocher called and said they needed somebody to fill in.”

  My father is retired from the post office, but he drives a cab part-time, more to get out of the house than to pick up spare change. And driving a cab is often synonymous with playing pinochle at the Elks lodge.

  I hung my jacket in the hall closet and took my place at the kitchen table. My parents' house is a narrow duplex. The living room windows look out at the street, the dining room window overlooks the driveway separating their house from the house next door, and the kitchen window and back door open to the yard, which was tidy but bleak at this time of the year.

  My grandmother sat across from me. “I'm thinking about changing my hair color,” she said. “Rose Kotman dyed her hair red, and she looks pretty good. And now she's got a new boyfriend.” She helped herself to a roll and sliced it with the big knife. “I wouldn't mind having a boyfriend.”

  “Rose Kotman is thirty-five,” my mother said.

  “Well, I'm almost thirty-five,” Grandma said. “Everyone's always saying how I don't look my age.”

  That was true. She looked about ninety. I loved her a lot, but gravity hadn't been kind.

  “There's this man at the seniors club I've got my eye on,” Grandma said. “He's a real looker. I bet if I was a redhead he'd give me a tumble.”

  My mother opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and reached for the chicken salad.

  I didn't especially want to think about the details of Grandma tumbling, so I jumped right in and got to the business at hand. “Did you hear about the fire downtown?”

  Grandma slathered extra mayo on her roll. “You mean that building on the corner of Adams and Third? I saw Esther Moyer at the bakery this morning, and she said her son Bucky drove the hook and ladder to that fire. She said Bucky told her it was a pip of a fire.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Esther said when they went through the building yesterday they found a body on the third floor.”

  “Did Esther know who it was?”

  “Homer Ramos. Esther said he was burned to a crisp. And he'd been shot. Had a big hole in his head. I looked to see if he was being laid out at Stiva's, but there wasn't anything
in the paper today. Boy, wouldn't that be something? Guess Stiva couldn't do much with that. He could fill up the bullet hole with mortician's putty like he did for Moogey Bues, but he'd have his work cut out for him with the burned-to-a-crisp part. Course, if you wanted to look on the bright side, I guess the Ramos family could save some money on the funeral being that Homer was already cremated. Probably all they had to do was shovel him into a jar. Except I guess the head was left since they knew it had a hole in it. So probably they couldn't get the head in the jar. Less of course they smashed it with the shovel. I bet you give it a couple good whacks and it'd crumble up pretty good.”

  My mother clapped her napkin to her mouth.

  “You okay?” Grandma asked my mother. “You having another one of them hot flashes?” Grandma leaned in my direction and whispered, “It's the change.”

  “It's not the change,” my mother said.

  “Do they know who shot Ramos?” I asked Grandma.

  “Esther didn't say anything about that.”

  By one o'clock I was full of chicken salad and my mother's rice pudding. I trotted out of the house to the Civic and spotted Mitchell and Habib half a block down the street. Mitchell gave me a friendly wave when I looked his way. I got into the car without returning the wave and drove back to Moon Man.

  I knocked on the door and Moon looked out at me, just as confused as he had been before. “Oh, yeah,” he finally said. And then he did a stoner laugh, giggling and chuffing.

  “Empty your pockets,” I told him.

  He turned his pants pockets inside out, and a bong dropped onto the front stoop. I picked it up and threw it into the house.

  “Anything else?” I asked. “Any acid? Any weed?”

  “No, dude. How about you?”

  I shook my head. His brain probably looked like those clumps of dead coral you buy in the pet store to put in aquariums.

  He squinted past me to the Civic. “Is that your car?”

  “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes and put his hands out. “No energy,” he said. “I don't feel any energy. This car is all wrong for you.” He opened his eyes and ambled across the sidewalk, pulling up his sagging pants. “What's your sign?”

  “Libra.”

  “You see! I knew it! You're air. And this car is earth. You can't drive this car, dude. You're a creative force, and this car's gonna bring you down.”

  “True,” I said, “but this is all I could afford. Get in.”

  “I have a friend who could get you a suitable car. He's like . . . a car dealer.”

  “I'll keep it in mind.”

  Mooner folded himself into the front seat and hauled out his sunglasses. “Better, dude,” he said from behind the shades. “Much better.”

  THE TRENTON COP shop shares a building with the court. It's a blocky redbrick, no-frills structure that gets the job done—a product of the slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am school of municipal architecture.

  I parked in the lot and shepherded Moon inside. Technically, I couldn't bond him out myself, since I'm an enforcement agent and not a bonding agent. So I got the paperwork started and called Vinnie to come down and complete the process.

  “Vinnie's on his way,” I told Moon, settling him onto the bench by the docket lieutenant. “I have some other business in the building, so I'm going to leave you here alone for a couple minutes.”

  “Hey, that's cool, dude. Don't worry about me. The Mooner will be fine.”

  “Don't move from this spot!”

  “No problemo.”

  I went upstairs to Violent Crimes and found Brian Simon at his desk. He'd only been promoted out of uniform a couple months earlier and still didn't have the hang of dressing himself. He was wearing a yellow-and-tan-plaid sports coat, navy suit slacks with brown penny loafers and red socks, and a tie wide enough to be a lobster bib.

  “Don't they have some kind of dress code here?” I asked. “You keep dressing like this and we're going to make you go live in Connecticut.”

  “Maybe you should come over tomorrow morning and help me pick out my clothes.”

  “Jeez,” I said. “Touchy. Maybe this isn't a good time.”

  “Good as any,” he said. “What's on your mind?”

  “Carol Zabo.”

  “That woman's a nut! She smashed right into me. And then she left the scene.”

  “She was nervous.”

  “You aren't going to lay one of those PMS excuses on me, are you?”

  “Actually, it had to do with her panties.”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Oh, crap.”

  “You see, Carol was coming out of the Frederick's of Hollywood store, and she was flustered because she'd just gotten some sexy panties.”

  “Is this going to be embarrassing?”

  “Do you get embarrassed easily?”

  “What's the point to all this, anyway?”

  “I was hoping you'd drop the charges.”

  “No way!”

  I sat down in the chair by his desk. “I'd consider it a special favor. Carol's a friend. And I had to talk her off a bridge this morning.”

  “Over panties?”

  “Just like a man,” I said, eyes narrowed. “I knew you wouldn't understand.”

  “Hey, I'm Mr. Sensitivity. I read The Bridges of Madison County. Twice.”

  I gave him a doe-eyed, hopeful look. “So you'll let her off the hook?”

  “How far off the hook do I have to let her?”

  “She doesn't want to go to jail. She's worried about the out-in-the-open-bathroom part.”

  He bent forward and thunked his head on the desk. “Why me?”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “I'll make sure she doesn't go to jail,” he said. “But you owe me.”

  “I'm not going to have to come over and dress you, am I? I'm not that kind of girl.”

  “Live in fear.”

  Damn.

  I left Simon and went back downstairs. Vinnie was there, but no Moon Man.

  “Where is he?” Vinnie wanted to know. “I thought you said he was here at the back door.”

  “He was! I told him to wait on the bench by the docket lieutenant.”

  We both looked over at the bench. It was empty.

  Andy Diller was working the desk. “Hey, Andy,” I said. “Do you know what happened to my skip?”

  “Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.”

  We canvassed the first floor, but Moon didn't turn up.

  “I've gotta get back to the office,” Vinnie said. “I've got stuff to do.”

  Talk to his bookie, play with his gun, shake hands with Mr. Stumpy.

  We went out the door together and found Moon standing in the parking lot, watching my car burn. There were a bunch of cops with extinguishers working on it, but things didn't look too hopeful. A fire truck rolled down the street, lights flashing, and pulled through the chain-link gate.

  “Hey, man,” Moon said to me. “Real shame about your car. That's mad crazy, dude.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was sitting there on the bench waiting for you, and I saw Reefer walk by. You know Reefer? Well, anyway, Reefer just got let out of the tank, and his brother was coming to pick him up. And Reefer said why didn't I come out to say hello to his brother. So I walked out with Reefer, and you know Reefer always has good weed, so one thing led to another, and I thought I'd just relax in your car for a minute and have a smoke. I guess a pod must have jumped, because the next thing your seat was on fire. And then it kind of spread from there. It was glorious until these gentlemen hosed it.”

  Glorious. Unh. I wondered if Moon would think it was glorious if I choked him until he was dead.

  “I'd like to stay around and toast some marshmallows,” Vinnie said, “but I need to get back to the office.”

  “Yeah, and I'm missing Hollywood Squares,” Moon said. “We need to conclude our business, dude.”

  IT WAS CLOSE to four when I made the final arrangements for the car to
get towed away. I'd been able to salvage a tire iron and that was about it. I was outside in the lot, pawing through my shoulder bag for my cell phone, when the black Lincoln pulled up.