Hot Six

  LULA WAS STANDING in the doorway when I parked in front of the bail bonds office. “Okay, I give up,” she said. “What is it?”

  “A Rollswagen.”

  “It's got a few dents in it.”

  “Morris Munson was feeling cranky.”

  “He did that? Did you bring him in?”

  “I decided to delay that pleasure.”

  Lula looked like she was giving herself a hernia trying to keep from laughing out loud. “Well, we gotta go get his ass. He got a lotta nerve denting up a Rollswagen. Hey, Connie,” she yelled, “you gotta come see this car Stephanie's driving. It's a genuine Rollswagen.”

  “It's a loaner,” I said. “Until I get my insurance check.”

  “What are those swirly designs on the side?”

  “Wind.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Lula said. “I should have known.”

  A shiny black jeep Cherokee pulled to the curb behind the wind machine, and Joyce Barnhardt got out. She was dressed in black leather pants, a black leather bustier, which barely contained her C-cup breasts, a black leather jacket, and high-heeled black boots. Her hair was a brilliant red, teased high and curled. Her eyes were ringed by black liner, and her lashes were thick with mascara. She looked like Dominatrix Barbie.

  “I hear they put rat hairs in that lash-lengthening mascara,” Lula said to Joyce. “Hope you read the ingredients when you bought it.”

  Joyce looked at the wind machine. “The circus in town? This is one of those clown cars, right?”

  “It's a one-of-a-kind Rollswagen,” Lula said. “You got a problem with that?”

  Joyce smiled. “The only problem I've got is trying to decide how I'm going to spend Ranger's capture money.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Lula said. “You want to waste a lot of time on that one.”

  “You'll see,” Joyce said. “I always get my man.”

  And dog and goat and vegetable . . . and everybody else's man, too.

  “Well, we'd love to stand here talking to you, Joyce,” Lula said. “But we got better things to do. We got a big important apprehension to make. We were just on our way to go catch a high-bond motherfucker.”

  “Are you going in the clown car?” Joyce asked.

  “We're going in my Firebird,” Lula said. “We always take the Firebird when we got serious ass-kicking lined up.”

  “I have to see Vinnie,” Joyce said. “Someone made a mistake on Ranger's bond application. I checked out the address, and it's a vacant lot.”

  Lula and I looked at each other and smiled.

  “Gee, imagine that,” Lula said.

  No one knows where Ranger lives. The address on his driver's license is for a men's shelter on Post Street. Not likely for a man who owns office buildings in Boston and checks with his stockbroker daily. Every now and then Lula and I make a halfhearted effort to track him down, but we've never had any success.

  “So what do you think?” Lula asked when Joyce disappeared inside the office. “You want to go do some damage on Morris Munson?”

  “I don't know. He's kind of crazy.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “He don't scare me. I guess I could fix his bony ass. He didn't shoot at you, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Then he isn't as crazy as most of the people on my block.”

  “Are you sure you want to risk going after him in your Firebird, after what he did to the wind machine?”

  “First off, assuming I'd even be able to get my full figure into the wind machine, I think you'd need to take a can opener to it to get me out. And then, being that there's two seats in this little bitty car, and we'd be sitting in them, suppose we'd have to strap Munson to the hood to bring him in. Not that it's such a bad idea, but it'd slow us down some.”

  Lula walked over to the file cabinets and gave the bottom right-hand drawer a kick. The drawer popped open; Lula extracted a forty-caliber Glock and dropped it into her shoulder bag.

  “No shooting!” I said.

  “Sure, I know that,” Lula said. “This here's car insurance.”

  BY THE TIME we got to Rockwell Street my stomach was queasy and my heart was tap-dancing in my chest.

  “You don't look too good,” Lula said.

  “I think I'm carsick.”

  “You never get carsick.”

  “I do when I'm after some guy who just came at me with a tire iron.”

  “Don't worry. He do that again, and I'll pop a cap up his ass.”

  “No! I told you before—no shooting.”

  “Well, yeah, but this here's life insurance.”

  I tried to give her a stern look, but I sighed instead.

  “Which house is his?” Lula wanted to know.

  “The one with the green door.”

  “Hard to tell if anybody's in there.”

  We drove by the house twice, and then we took the one-lane service road to the rear and stopped at Munson's garage. I got out and looked in the grimy side window. The Crown Victoria was there. Rats.

  “This is the plan,” I told Lula. “You go to the front door. He's never seen you. He won't be suspicious. Tell him who you are and tell him you want him to go downtown with you. Then he'll sneak out the back door to his car, and I'll catch him off guard and cuff him.”

  “Sounds okay to me. And if you got a problem, you just holler, and I'll come around back.”

  Lula cruised away in the Firebird, and I tippytoed up to Munson's back door and flattened myself against the house so he couldn't see me. I shook my pepper spray to make sure it was live and listened for Lula's knock on his door.

  The knock came after a few minutes; there was some muffled conversation, and then came the sounds of scuffling at the back door and the lock being retracted. The door opened and Morris Munson stepped out.

  “Hold it,” I said, kicking the door shut. “Stay exactly where you are. Don't move a muscle or I'll hit you with the pepper spray.”

  “You! You tricked me!”

  I had the pepper spray in my left hand and the cuffs in my right. “Turn around,” I said. “Hands over your head, palms flat against the house.”

  “I hate you!” he shrieked. “You're just like my ex-wife. Sneaky, lying, bossy bitch. You even look like her. Same dopey curly brown hair.”

  “Dopey hair? Excuse me?”

  “I had a good life until that bitch screwed it up. I had a big house and a nice car. I had Surround Sound.”

  “What happened?”

  “She left me. Said I was boring. Boring ol' Morris. So one day she got herself a lawyer, backed a truck up to the patio door, and cleaned me out. Took every fucking stick of furniture, every goddamn piece of china, every freaking spoon.” He gestured to the row house. “This is what I'm left with. This piece-of-shit row house and a used Crown Victoria with two years of payments. After fifteen years at the button factory, working my fingers to the bone, I'm eating cereal for supper in this rat trap.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me at least lock the door. This place isn't much, but it's all I've got.”

  “Okay. Just don't make any sudden moves.”

  He turned his back to me, locked the door, whirled around, and jostled me. “Oops,” he said. “Sorry. I lost my balance.”

  I stepped away. “What have you got in your hand?”

  “It's a cigarette lighter. You've seen a cigarette lighter before, right? You know how it works?” He flicked it, and a flame shot out.

  “Drop it!”

  He waved it around. “Look how pretty it is. Look at the lighter. Do you know what kind of lighter this is? I bet you can't guess.”

  “I said, Drop it.”

  He held it in front of his face. “You're gonna burn. You can't stop it now.”

  “What are you talking about? Yikes!” I was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, tucked in, and a green-and-black flannel shirt jacket-style over the T-shirt. I looked down and saw that my shirttail was on fire.

  “Burn!” he
yelled to me. “Burn in hell!”

  I dropped the cuffs and the pepper spray and ripped the shirt open. I fumbled out of it, threw it to the ground, and stomped the fire out. When I was done stomping I looked around and Munson was gone. I tried his back door. Locked. There was the sound of an engine catching. I looked to the service road and saw the Crown Victoria speed away.

  I picked my shirt up and put it back on. The bottom half on the right side was missing.

  Lula was leaning against her car when I turned the corner.

  “Where's Munson?” she asked.

  “Gone.”

  She looked at my shirt and raised an eyebrow. “I could have sworn you started out with a whole shirt.”

  “I don't want to talk about it.”

  “Looks to me like your shirt's been barbecued. First your car, now your shirt. This could be turning into a record week for you.”

  “I don't have to do this, you know,” I said to Lula. “There are lots of good jobs I could get.”

  “Such as?”

  “The McDonald's on Market is hiring.”

  “I hear you get free french fries.”

  I tried Munson's front door. Locked. I looked in the street-level window. Munson had tacked a faded flowered sheet over it, but there was a gap at the side. The room beyond was shabby. Scarred wood floor. A sagging couch covered by a threadbare yellow chenille bedspread. An old television on a cheap metal TV cart. A beechwood coffee table in front of the couch, and even from this distance I could see the veneer peeling off.

  “Crazy ol' Munson isn't doing too good,” Lula said, looking into the room with me. “I always imagined a homicidal rapist would live better than this.”

  “He's divorced,” I said. “His wife cleaned him out.”

  “See, let this be a lesson. Always make sure you're the one to back the truck up to the door first.”

  When we got back to the office Joyce's car was still parked in front.

  “Would have thought she'd be gone by now,” Lula said. “She must be in there giving Vinnie a nooner.”

  My upper lip involuntarily curled back across my teeth. It was rumored that Vinnie had once been in love with a duck. And Joyce was said to be fond of large dogs. But somehow, the thought of them together was even more horrible.

  To my great relief, Joyce was sitting on the outer office couch when Lula and I swung through the door.

  “I knew you two losers wouldn't be out long,” Joyce said. “Didn't get him, did you?”

  “Steph had an accident with her shirt,” Lula said. “So we decided not to pursue our man.”

  Connie was at her desk painting her nails. “Joyce thinks you know where Ranger lives.”

  “Sure we do,” Lula said. “Only we're not telling Joyce on account of we know how she likes a challenge.”

  “You better tell me,” Joyce said, “or I'll tell Vinnie you're holding back.”

  “Boy,” Lula said, “that's got me thinking twice.”

  “I don't know where he lives,” I said. “No one knows where he lives. But I heard him talking on the phone once, and he was talking to his sister in Staten Island.”

  “What's her name?”

  “Marie.”

  “Marie Manoso?”

  “Don't know. She might be married. She shouldn't be too hard to find, though. She works at the coat factory on Macko Street.”

  “I'm outta here,” Joyce said. “If you think of anything else call me on my car phone. Connie's got the number.”

  There was silence in the office until we saw Joyce's jeep pull away and roll down the street.

  “She comes in here and I swear I can smell sulfur,” Connie said. “It's like having the Antichrist sitting on the couch.”

  Lula cut her eyes at me. “Ranger really got a sister in Staten Island?”

  “Anything's possible.” But not probable. In fact, now that I thought about it, the coat factory might not even be on Macko Street.

  Stephanie Plum 6 - Hot Six

  4

  “UH-OH,” LULA said, glancing over my shoulder. “Don't look now, but here comes your granny.”

  My eyebrows shot up to the top of my head. “My granny?”

  “Shit,” Vinnie said from deep in his inner office. There was the sound of scuffling. The door to his office slammed shut, and the lock clicked into place.

  Grandma walked in and looked around. “Boy, this place is a dump,” she said. “Just what you'd expect from the Plum side of the family.”

  “Where's Melvina?” I asked.

  “She's next door at the deli, getting some lunch meat. I thought as long as we were in the neighborhood I'd talk to Vinnie about a job.”

  We all swiveled our heads to Vinnie's closed door.

  “What kind of job were you thinking about?” Connie asked.

  “Bounty hunter,” Grandma said. “I want to make the big bucks. I got a gun and everything.”

  “Hey Vinnie!” Connie yelled. “You've got a visitor.”

  The door opened, and Vinnie stuck his head out and gave Connie the evil eye. Then he looked at Grandma. “Edna,” he said, trying to force a smile, not having much luck at it.

  “Vincent,” Grandma said, her smile saccharine.

  Vinnie shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wanting to bolt, knowing it was futile. “What can I do for you, Edna? Need to bond someone out?”

  “Nothing like that,” Grandma said. “I've been thinking about getting a job, and I thought I might like to be a bounty hunter.”

  “Oh, bad idea,” Vinnie said. “Very bad idea.”

  Grandma bristled. “You don't think I'm too old, do you?”

  “No! Jeez, nothing like that. It's your daughter—she'd pitch a fit. I mean, not to say anything bad about Ellen, but she wouldn't like this idea.”

  “Ellen's a wonderful person,” Grandma said, “but she has no imagination. She's like her father, rest his soul.” She pressed her lips together. “He was a pain in the behind.”

  “Tell it like it is,” Lula said.

  “So what about it?” Grandma said to Vinnie. “Do I get the job?”

  “No can do, Edna. Not that I wouldn't want to help you out, but being a bounty hunter takes a lot of special skills.”

  “I have skills,” Grandma said. “I can shoot and cuss and I'm real nosy. And besides, I've got some rights. I've got a right to employment.” She gave Vinnie the squinty eye. “I don't see where you got any old people working for you. That don't look like equal opportunity to me. You're discriminating against old people. I've got a mind to get the AARP after you.”

  “The AARP is the American Association of Retired People,” Vinnie said. “The 'R' stands for 'Retired.' They don't care about old people working.”

  “Okay,” Grandma said, “how about this? How about, if you don't give me a job I'll sit on that couch over there until I starve to death.”

  Lula sucked in a breath. “Whoah, hardball.”

  “I'll think about it,” Vinnie said. “I'm not promising anything, but maybe if the right thing comes in . . .” He ducked back into his office and closed and relocked the door.

  “Well, that's a start,” Grandma said. “I gotta go now and see how Melvina's doing. We have a big afternoon planned. We have some apartments to look at and then we're going to stop in for Stiva's afternoon viewing. Madeline Krutchman just got laid out, and I hear she looks real good. Dolly did her hair, and she said she gave her a tint to add some color around her face. She said if I like it, she could do it for me too.”

  “Rock on,” Lula said.

  Grandma and Lula did one of those complicated handshakes, and Grandma left.

  “Anything new on Ranger or Homer Ramos?” I asked Connie.

  Connie opened a bottle of top coat for her nails. “Ramos was popped at close range. Some people are saying it smells like an execution.”

  Connie comes from a family that knows a lot about executions. Jimmy Curtains is her uncle. I don't know his real last name.
All I know is if Jimmy is looking for you . . . it's curtains. I grew up hearing stories about Jimmy Curtains like other kids heard stories about Peter Pan. Jimmy Curtains is famous in my neighborhood.