Smokin' Seventeen

  “I agree. I’m not going to order you to stay away from Nick Alpha because giving you orders never works, but I would feel much more comfortable if you let me do the investigating.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Investigate to your heart’s content.”

  Morelli narrowed his eyes. “That was too easy.”

  I shrugged. “I have better things to do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Catch bad guys who have gone FTA. And shop for sexy lingerie.”

  “You’re playing me,” Morelli said. “If you’re going to put yourself in danger at least don’t do it alone.”

  • • •

  I left Morelli and stopped at the coffee shop to read through Connie’s text message one more time. I bought a Frappuccino and a giant chocolate chip cookie and took them to a bistro table toward the front. Connie had texted me an address for Alpha. According to her source he owned a dry-cleaning business on the first block of Stark, and he was living above it. She wasn’t able to get a personal phone or cell phone.

  I was familiar with the first block of Stark. Most buildings were three stories and built shortly after WWII. They were redbrick turned dark with age and grime. Ground-floor units were commercial. Bars, groceries, a pawnshop, a tattoo parlor, hair salon, a storefront church. This first block was relatively stable and reasonably safe, unless Nick Alpha was out and about and trying to kill me.

  I’d never had reason to notice the dry cleaner. I vaguely remembered that it was in the middle of the block. I knew it backed up to a service alley, as did almost all businesses on Stark. I wanted to snoop around the building and assess the possibility of getting into Alpha’s apartment to look for a Frankenstein mask. I realize this was a little illegal, but I didn’t see where I had a choice. I couldn’t sit around and wait for Alpha to decide it was time to strangle me.

  I finished my cookie and my Frappuccino and was about to leave when Mooner walked in.

  “Yo, dudette,” Mooner said to me.

  “Is the bus done?”

  “Negative. This is like a process. I mean you can’t rush an artiste like Uncle Jimmy.” He waved at the girl behind the counter. “Make me something mellow,” he said to her. “I’m feeling pumpkin.”

  I hung my bag on my shoulder and gathered my trash. “Gotta go.”

  “That’s cool. Where are we going?”

  “I have to check some things out.”

  “Excellent. Checking things out is like more than orange. It’s like one of my specialties.”

  “Pumpkin up,” the counter girl shouted.

  Here’s the thing about Mooner. Half the time I didn’t know what the heck he was saying, but I always knew what he was talking about. He paid for his pumpkin drink and ambled back to me, looking like he was ready to go check things out. Don’t get me wrong. I like Mooner. He’s a little eccentric, but he’s a good guy. Problem is he’s like a puppy that’s only ninety percent housebroken. There’s always the potential for piddle on the carpet. Figuratively speaking.

  “I’m just going over to Stark,” I told him. “It’ll be boring.”

  “Awesome.”

  I blew out a sigh. Sometimes it’s best to give up and go with it. “Okay then,” I said. “Let’s roll.”

  I turned up Stark and cruised past Kan Klean dry cleaners. Standard two plate-glass windows on either side of the front door. A roll-down security gate was in place. Kan Klean was closed on Sunday. A side door accessed the two floors above the dry cleaner. Connie said Alpha lived on the second floor. The third floor was a rental unit occupied by someone named Jesus Cervaz. I drove around the block and took the service road. Alpha’s building had a small parking area behind it, an enclosed area for garbage cans, and a back door that looked like it only led to the dry cleaner. A Kan Klean van and a silver Camry were parked in the lot. The second and third floor had rear access onto exterior stairs.

  There were rear-facing windows in the apartments, but you’d have to be Spiderman to get to them. The rear doors were solid, without windows.

  “What are we looking at?” Mooner asked.

  “Real estate.”

  “Are you like buying?”

  “No. Breaking and entering.”

  “Excellent.”

  I returned to Stark and drove past Alpha’s address one more time. A man stepped out of a bar two doors down and bent his head to light a cigarette. It was Nick Alpha.

  “Dude,” Mooner said. “It’s The Twizzler.”

  “Twizzler?”

  “That’s what we call him. The dude loves Twizzlers.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “He’s in my bowling league. He took Billy Silks place last month when Silky broke his thumb. Turns out it’s real hard to bowl with a broken thumb.”

  “I didn’t know you bowled.”

  “Every Sunday night. I got a shirt with my name on it. Walter.”

  “Does Twizzler have his name on his shirt?”

  “No. He hasn’t got an official shirt. He’s just a stand-in for Silky.”

  “So he’ll be bowling with you tonight?”

  “Yeah, man. When you commit to a league you show up. It’s like a responsibility, you know?”

  It’s almost always better to be lucky than to be good. By a stroke of dumb luck I just found out when Nick Alpha will be out of his apartment.

  I took Mooner back to the bus and drove home on autopilot. It was one thing to know Alpha would be out of his apartment. It was a whole other deal to get inside. And there was always the possibility the Twizzler would get a stomach flu in the middle of a frame and go home. Ranger would get me in and keep me safe, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to involve Ranger.

  I parked in my building’s lot and walked to the back door. I was halfway there when I heard the car coming. It was crazy Regina Bugle in her black Lexus, bearing down on me. I jumped behind Mr. Moyner’s Buick, and the Lexus careened off, and circled around. I ran flat out and made it into the building just as Regina was about to mow me down. She stopped short, gave me the finger, and sped away.

  Mental note. Next time remember to look for Regina Bugle. I trudged up the stairs to the second floor and peeked into the hall. Thank goodness, no Dave. I let myself into my apartment and got the last beer out of the fridge. Rex came out of his soup can to say hello, and I dropped a couple Fruit Loops into his cage.

  “It wasn’t a completely awful day,” I told Rex. “I brought Ziggy in and now I can pay off my credit card. And Grandma Bella took the vordo off me.”

  I ate Fruit Loops out of the box with my beer, and I went to my computer. I checked my email, and I looked through Craigslist for possible jobs that wouldn’t get me killed. Almost everything on Craigslist paid more than I was currently making, but my qualifications were sketchy. I had a college degree in liberal arts. That and a dollar could get me a soda.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK I called Ranger. “Are you busy?” I asked him.

  “Is this about vordo?”

  “No. This is about breaking into Nick Alpha’s apartment to look for a Frankenstein mask.”

  “If I don’t do this with you, are you going alone?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a beat of silence and I suspected Ranger was thinking about sighing.

  “When and where?” he asked.

  “Now. First block of Stark.”

  “Park in the garage. We’ll take a fleet car.”

  Ranger was waiting for me when I pulled into Rangeman twenty minutes later. He was wearing a black SEALs ball cap, a black T-shirt, black windbreaker, black cargo pants, and black cross-trainers. I knew from past experience he’d be carrying a sidearm, an ankle gun, and a knife.

  He pulled me to him and kissed me, and I had a ripple of panic when I didn’t feel anything. First Morelli and now Ranger. No belly heat. No tingles in private places. No desire. Nothing.

  “Babe,” Ranger said. “Do we have a problem?”

  “Bella removed the vor
do curse, and I think she might have removed too much.”

  “Too bad,” Ranger said, opening the door to his Cayenne. “It would have been interesting to see what you could do in an SUV.”

  Fifteen minutes later we drove past Kan Klean. Lights were off in the building’s second- and third-floor windows. There was moderate traffic on the street. Teens hung in groups in doorways and in front of the pizza parlor.

  We turned at the corner, took the service road, and idled behind the Kan Klean van. There were no other cars in the small lot. No light shining from back windows. No street lights or exterior porch lighting. Ranger parked on the shoulder one door down, we walked back to the Kan Klean building, climbed the stairs, and Ranger tried the door. Locked. He worked at it for a moment, and the door opened. One of his many talents. We stepped inside and closed the door behind us. No alarm sounded. There were no blinking diodes on a control panel suggesting a silent alarm. Ranger clicked a penlight on and flicked it around the room. I did the same.

  We systematically moved through the apartment, beginning with the small eat-in kitchen. We were looking for anything that would tie Alpha to the killings. The mask, the jumpsuit, clothesline, notes, personal items removed from the victims, dates marked on a calendar, car keys. We didn’t find anything in the kitchen, so we went to the living room.

  The living room was filled with guy furniture. A flat-screen television, a big leather couch, and two leather recliners in front of the television. The coffee table in front of the couch was loaded with newspapers, two cardboard boxes filled with file folders, a take-out pizza box, empty beer cans, a box of Sugar Smacks, and a giant bag of Funyuns. We each took a file box and picked our way through.

  “He used Bobby Lucarelli for some of his transactions prior to his time in jail,” Ranger said. “I don’t see anything else of interest.”

  I returned my file box to the coffee table. “Nothing here. Miscellaneous receipts.”

  We had a bathroom and two bedrooms to go. The first bedroom was standard fare. Rumpled bed. Dirty clothes on the floor. A dresser with man junk on it. Keys, a watch, a couple empty beer cans, a couple girlie magazines, an open box of condoms. There was a clock radio and more girlie mags on the single nightstand. A small armchair with a flowery print had been shoved into a corner. We didn’t find anything incriminating in the closet or dresser. Nothing under the bed. Nothing incriminating in the bathroom.

  Ranger stood in the doorway to the second bedroom and flashed the penlight at the middle of the room. “Nice,” he said, his light shining on a monster of a freestanding safe. “They had to bring this in with a skyhook.”

  “Seems excessive for a Stark Street dry-cleaning operation.”

  He toed the door open. “It’s not locked. And it’s empty.”

  I looked in. “No Frankenstein mask.”

  Ranger went still. “Someone’s on the back stairs.”

  I froze and a moment later a door creaked open. I heard footsteps in the kitchen. Men’s voices. The door slammed shut. The footsteps and voices moved through the kitchen. They were walking in our direction. Ranger pulled me into a closet, wrapped an arm around me and closed the closet door. It was completely black in the closet. I was smashed into Ranger, and I could feel his heart beating against my back. His heartbeat was even. Normal. Mine was racing. A slim bar of light appeared at the bottom of the closet door. The light had been switched on in the room.

  “Now what?” one of the men said.

  “Now we put the bags in the safe.”

  “Do we need to count it?”

  “No. It’s already been counted. Just shove the bags in.”

  The closet door muffled sound, but I heard a thud and some scuffling.

  “Close the door and lock it,” one of the men said. “Then we can watch TV until Nick comes home.”

  The bar of light disappeared from the bottom of the door and the men left the room. A couple beats later the television droned from the living room.

  “What are we going to do?” I whispered to Ranger.

  Ranger’s voice was low, his lips skimming across my ear. “We’re going to stay here until either all of them leave or Nick goes to bed.”

  “That could take hours!”

  “Yeah,” Ranger said, his hand sliding up to my breast.

  “Stop that!”

  “I liked you better when you had vordo.”

  “You’re not suggesting we do it in this tiny closet with two men watching television in the next room, are you?”

  “It’d be limiting,” Ranger said, “but at least you wouldn’t have your ass on the horn.”

  After what seemed like three days but was closer to an hour, Nick Alpha came home. He stomped around in the kitchen, moved to the living room, and talked to the guys watching television. I caught a few words, but for the most part the conversation was lost to me. The television was silenced, and a short time later a door slammed shut. And a few minutes after that a toilet flushed.

  “I’m going to take that as a good sign,” Ranger said.

  We waited a while longer, and Ranger cracked the door. The apartment was dark and silent. Ranger took my hand, and we ever so quietly crept out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out of the apartment. We were down the stairs, running for the car when Alpha’s door crashed open, and Alpha fired off a shot at us. He was firing at sound and not sight, and his shot went wild. He squeezed off a second and third at the Cayenne, but we were already in motion, racing to the side street.

  “Light sleeper,” Ranger said.

  “What do you suppose he had in the safe?”

  “Money from something illegal. The possibilities are endless.”

  “Do we care?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you think he’s the killer?”

  “No. He’s the right height, and he was involved with some of the victims, but he feels wrong. I think he’s a gun guy. I don’t see him strangling four people.”

  I hated the idea that Alpha might not be the killer. If he wasn’t the killer I had to add him to the list of people who were out to get me. Now the list would be Nick Alpha, The Killer, Regina Bugle, and possibly Dave. Although I didn’t actually know if The Killer wanted to eliminate me. Maybe he just enjoyed creeping me out. That was a comforting thought. If it was true, it meant only two people wanted to kill me for sure. It wasn’t clear what Dave’s plans were at this point.

  Ranger drove through town and pulled into his building’s garage. He parked and turned to me. “Would you like to come upstairs?”

  “Thanks for asking, but I think I’ll head home.”

  “Still not feeling the vordo?”

  “The vordo is gone.”

  In the beginning it was a huge relief, but now I was starting to worry. I’d just been locked in a dark closet with Ranger for an hour, and I’d felt nothing. It was like the dead zone down there.

  “I don’t need vordo, babe,” Ranger said.

  Possibly true, but I didn’t want to find out. What if he was wrong, and I’d never be the same again? I was going with the head-in-the-sand program tonight.

  “Rain check,” I told him.

  A half hour later I was idling in my parking lot. I’d driven around and didn’t see Regina Bugle lurking anywhere. Dave’s parents’ car wasn’t here, and I didn’t know if Dave had his own. Probably he wasn’t driving anyway. I was pretty sure I broke his nose, and his eyes would be all swollen shut. I parked, ran across the lot to the safety of the building, took the stairs, and cautiously checked out my hall. No Dave. Yea!

  Most of the bloodstain was gone from the carpet, and Dillon left the coffee cup sitting by my door. I took the cup inside, locked and bolted my door, and said hello to Rex. I poked around in the refrigerator, but it was pretty much empty. No more beer. No more leftovers. I finished off the box of Fruit Loops and went to bed.

  • • •

  Monday morning, a little before eight o’clock, I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled into
the kitchen. I stared at the empty shelves in the refrigerator and went through the cupboards. No milk. No coffee. No cereal. I shuffled out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. I took a shower, got dressed in my usual uniform of jeans and girlie T-shirt, and went back to the kitchen to see if food had magically appeared. The doorbell rang and without thinking I opened the door to Dave Brewer.

  Brewer had two black eyes and a Band-Aid across his nose, and he was holding a grocery bag and a bag from the coffee shop.

  “I brought you breakfast,” he said.

  I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know whether I should get my gun out of the cookie jar on the counter and shoot him, or apologize for breaking his nose.

  He moved past me, put the bags down, pulled out a large coffee, and handed it to me. “I thought I’d make an omelet. And I got fresh croissants from the bakery.”

  “I don’t want an omelet.”

  “Have you already eaten breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “Then you want an omelet. I make an awesome omelette,” Dave said.

  “Aren’t you mad that I broke your nose?”

  He found the fry pan, put it on the stove, and added oil. “I guess I was out of line. I read the cues wrong.”

  “I’m happy to have the coffee, but I don’t want you in my kitchen,” I told him.

  He stood hands on hips and looked at me. “Why not?”

  “You make me uncomfortable.”

  He got the cutting board out and chopped onion, ham, and red pepper. “You have to be more specific than that.”

  “I already have a boyfriend, and I don’t want another one.”

  “Morelli? You’ve been fooling around with him since you were in kindergarten, and your mother says it’s not going anywhere. We think you need someone new.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not you.”

  He dumped the chopped stuff into the hot oil and stirred it around. “Why isn’t it me? I’m very likable. I’m attractive. I’m really good in bed. You wouldn’t know because you’ve never given me a chance, but I know what I’m doing.”

  What is it with men? They all think they’re great in bed and women want to see them naked. It’s like some genetic chromosome thing.