Smokin' Seventeen

  “All right. I promise, but if I go to jail you have to take care of Bruce.”

  “I can’t take care of Bruce. They don’t allow bears in my apartment building.”

  “I can’t just abandon him,” Belmen said.

  “I’ll figure something out. And just out of morbid curiosity, would he have killed me?”

  “No. Bruce is a pussycat. He was just playing with you.”

  Yeah, right. I’ve never bought off a judge before but in this case I’d do whatever it took.

  SEVENTEEN

  I WAS RELIEVED to see Mooner’s bus was no longer in front of the coffee shop. I didn’t want to face Vinnie and explain to him that the bear was staying with Boris. Vinnie would have a differing opinion. Vinnie would go on a rant and send me back to get the bear. This would be a disaster because not only didn’t I have a clue how to wrestle the bear away from his owner, I also wasn’t sure Vinnie and Mooner were good bear parents. I was worried they’d feed Mooner’s homemade brownies to Bruce, and he’d hallucinate he was a hummingbird or something.

  Aside from the missing bus nothing much had changed since I left. Lula and Connie were still camped out in the window.

  “Hey girlfriend,” Lula said. “How’d it go with the bear?”

  “It went okay. I talked to Boris, and he promised to show up for his court date.”

  “Yeah, but what about the bear? Where’s the bear?”

  “The bear’s with Boris. I made an executive decision to leave him there.”

  The door to the coffee shop opened and Bella marched in. “You!” she said, pointing her finger at me, eyes narrowed. “I know what you do with my grandson. You take advantage. He don’t stay at birthday party like good boy. He come to you for nicky nacky. You slut. I fix you so he see. I give you vordo.” She waved her hand at me, she slapped her ass, and she wheeled around and left the coffee shop.

  “She scares the crap out of me,” Lula said. “And you’re in big trouble. You did nicky nacky and now you got the vordo.”

  I looked to Connie. “What’s vordo?”

  “Beats me,” Connie said. “I never heard of vordo.”

  “It has to be some Italian voodoo thing,” Lula said. “Like if you were a guy it would make your dick fall off.”

  I hiked my bag up onto my shoulder. “I don’t want to think about it. I’m going to see if I can find Ziggy.”

  Lula set a grocery bag on the table. “I’ll go with you. I went to Giovichinni’s while you were gone, and I got stuff for us.”

  “Stuff?”

  She pulled a couple ropes of garlic out of the bag and gave one to me. “All we gotta do is wear this and we won’t get no love bites from vampires.”

  “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t think Ziggy is a vampire.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know for sure, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure don’t cut it,” Lula said, wrapping the garlic around her neck. “I already got one foot in the land of the living dead, and I’m not taking no chances.”

  I drove the short distance from the coffee shop to Ziggy’s house and parked. We got out, rang the doorbell, and waited. No answer. I left Lula at the front door, and I walked to the rear. I knocked. Nothing. I felt for the key. No key. I snooped around, trying to see in the windows but no luck there. I returned to Lula in the front of the house, and Ziggy’s neighbor stepped out with her dog.

  “Are you looking for Ziggy?” she asked. “Because he isn’t home. I saw him leave in the middle of the night. I was up with heartburn that would kill a cow, and I saw Ziggy go out with a suitcase. And his car is still gone. I can’t ever remember Ziggy going anywhere before. He was a real homebody.” She squinted at Lula. “Is that garlic?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Lula’s making marinara tonight. She’s getting into the mood early.”

  I called Connie and told her about Ziggy. “Do you have anything on him?” I asked. “Any idea where he might have gone?”

  “I’ll run a family history.”

  I meandered through the Burg looking for Ziggy’s black Chrysler. After forty minutes I gave up and returned to the coffee shop.

  “Whoa,” Lula said to Connie. “What happened to you?”

  Connie’s hair was like the wild woman of Borneo. Her lipstick was smeared, and she had crazy eyes.

  “What?” Connie asked. “What do you mean?”

  “You look like you stuck your finger in an electric socket and took a bunch of volts.”

  “It’s the coffee. I sit here all day drinking coffee. I’ve got an eye twitch, I’m having heart palpitations, and I can’t unclench my ass muscles. I need a different office.”

  “Now that the bear’s gone you could move back into the bus,” I told her.

  “Not the bus,” Connie said. “I can’t go back to the bus. All that black fur and Mooner smell.”

  “It’s not gonna smell like Mooner,” Lula said. “It’s gonna smell like bear.”

  Connie looked around the coffee shop. “It’s not so bad here. I could try switching to decaf.”

  I gathered Connie’s files and stuffed them into her tote bag. “You could work from home.”

  “I’ve got my mother with me,” Connie said. “She’s staying while she recovers from her hip operation. I love my mother, but I’ll slit my throat if I have to spend more than twenty minutes with her. She hums. Do you know what it’s like to live with someone who hums all day?”

  “I guess it depends if she’s a good hummer,” Lula said.

  A muscle worked in Connie’s jaw, and her right eye twitched. “There are no good hummers. It’s all hummm hum hummm hummm. That’s it. Fucking all fucking day fucking long. Hummmm.”

  “ ’Scuse me,” Lula said. “I didn’t know there was a issue. Maybe you need a pill or something.”

  I unplugged the laptop. “You can use my apartment. It’s quiet. And it has everything but food.”

  • • •

  I got Connie settled in at my dining room table, and Lula and I took off to find Merlin Brown. I pulled into the lot to his apartment building and we immediately spotted his car.

  “I guess it’s a good thing we found him home,” Lula said, “so why does it feel like a bad thing?”

  “Because we don’t have any idea how to capture him?”

  “Yeah, that could be it.”

  I’ve seen Ranger make captures. Eighty percent of all felons immediately surrender at seeing Ranger on their doorstep. He’s not a man you’d want to take lightly. The remaining twenty percent are instantly taken down and cuffed. He makes it look easy. Sad to say, I’m not nearly Ranger. My successes are the result of luck and dogged perseverance. And the dogged perseverance has more to do with desperation to make an overdue rent payment than an innate strength. Still, I usually get the job done, and I’m a better bounty hunter than I was last year.

  I parked beside a broken-down van on the opposite side of the lot from Merlin’s black SUV. “He knows us now,” I said, “and he’s not going to let us into his apartment. Let’s sit and wait for a while and see if he goes out for lunch.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we figure it out.”

  “This is gonna be boring,” Lula said. “Good thing I got a movie on my phone. And I got music. And I could check the weather. I could even surf the Internet, and maybe I could find Bobby Flay makin’ a burger. I’m into cooking.”

  “I didn’t think you had a kitchen.”

  “Well yeah, but I’m into watching cooking.”

  We sat for forty minutes, and at high noon the door to the building opened, and Merlin limped out.

  “I got an idea,” Lula said. “We could run him over with the car.”

  “No.”

  “Boy, you’re a real party pooper. You got a better idea?”

  “He’s going out for lunch. I say we follow him and wait for a good place to take him down.”

  “We aren’t gonna run at him and tackle h
im again, are we?”

  “That wouldn’t be my first choice.”

  Merlin drove down Stark, turned toward the government buildings, and after a block pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot. He cut his engine, left his car, and carefully walked inside, keeping his weight off his bandaged foot. I parked one space away, got out, and arranged my equipment. Cuffs tucked into the back of my jeans. Pepper spray in my sweatshirt pocket. Right to apprehend papers in my jeans pocket. Stun gun in hand.

  “Cover the door,” I told Lula. “And for heaven’s sake don’t shoot him again.”

  It was lunchtime, and the store was filled with government workers loading up on nachos, hot dogs, candy, junky drinks, and cigarettes. Merlin was in line for nachos. I sidled up to him and the man standing behind Merlin elbowed me aside.

  “Back of the line, lady,” he said.

  Merlin looked over his shoulder at me, and recognition registered. I reached out to stun gun him, he batted my arm away, and the stun gun flew off into space. I had pepper spray, but I couldn’t use it in a store filled with bureaucrats. By the time I retrieved my stun gun Merlin had already knocked Lula on her ass and was in his car, spinning his tires, leaving the lot. I was holding a lot of anger, and it was directed at the idiot who elbowed me aside. I casually sidled up to him and accidentally stun gunned him. He went down to the floor, wet his pants, and I felt much better.

  “This is getting real old,” Lula said, back on her feet. “On the bright side we’re at 7-Eleven, and I can get nachos for lunch.”

  Lula and I ate our nachos in my car and washed them down with Slurpees.

  “This isn’t such a bad job,” Lula said. “We get a lot of personal freedom. We could eat lunch wherever and whenever we want. And we meet a lot of interesting people. Vampires and such. I don’t especially want them suckin’ on me, but aside from that it’s pretty good. And I already got some mileage out of seeing Merlin Brown naked.”

  I scooped up the last of my nacho cheese and a small sigh inadvertently escaped.

  “You on the other hand, don’t look so happy,” Lula said.

  “I feel like my life isn’t going anywhere.”

  “And?”

  I did another sigh.

  Lula drained her Slurpee. “Why do you gotta be going somewhere? Seems like it should be enough that we had nachos. And we got meaningful jobs. We catch bad guys. If it wasn’t for us there’d be vampires and all kinds of shit running around loose.”

  “Actually the vampire is still at large.”

  “Yeah, but we’re thinking about catching him.”

  “And what about my relationships?”

  “Here we are back to the relationships,” Lula said. “I knew it was gonna come to this. Your whole problem is you turned yourself into a glass-is-half-empty person. You got two hot men on the line, and you look at it like a bad thing, but I see it like hitting the jackpot. You probably could even have three hot men if you put an effort into Dave Whatshisname.”

  I looked down at my jeans. I still couldn’t button them. “And on top of everything else, I’m getting fat,” I said.

  “That’s not your fault. You had the hex put on you. Bella gave you the boils and all. And now you got the vordo.”

  I put my phone to my ear and called Connie. “Have you had a chance to find out about vordo?”

  “No,” she said, “but I’ll ask around.”

  “Not that I believe in it,” I said to Lula, hanging up.

  “Sure,” Lula said. “I don’t believe in it either. Whatever the heck it is. Still, I’m glad I don’t got it.”

  I put the Escort into gear and drove Lula to the coffee shop so she could get her Firebird.

  “What are you gonna do now?” she asked.

  “I guess I’ll go home.” Okay, I guess I was feeling a little defeated. And I guess I was sort of embarrassed about stun gunning the guy in line, but if we’re going to be brutally honest here, I was just glad I wasn’t the one to wet their pants.

  EIGHTEEN

  I PULLED INTO THE LOT to my apartment building and realized Mooner’s bus was parked there. When I offered the use of my apartment to Connie I hadn’t anticipated Vinnie and Mooner hanging out there. I took the elevator to the second floor, walked down the hall, and even before I inserted my key, I caught the smell of pot.

  I kicked the door open and stormed into my apartment. Connie was at the dining room table, working at the computer. Vinnie was slouched on the couch watching television. Mooner was slouched next to Vinnie.

  “Who’s been smoking pot in here?” I yelled. “There is no smoking in my apartment. Especially pot. This is a total drug-free zone.”

  “I wouldn’t let anyone smoke in here,” Connie said. “I made them go out to smoke.”

  “Yeah,” Mooner said. “We like had to smoke in the hall.”

  I felt my eyebrows go up into my hairline. “You were smoking pot in the hall? Are you insane? That is so rude. It’s illegal. It’s unhealthy. It’s smelly. It’s irresponsible. It’s unacceptable!” I was halfway through my rant when my attention was diverted to the television screen. Two huge-breasted naked women were trying to have sex with a monkey and a little man dressed up like a hobbit. “What the heck are you watching? That’s not pay-per-view, is it?”

  “It’s like great that you’ve got cable,” Mooner said. “You can’t get quality film like this on network. Okay, so it might cost dinero, but dude, you’ve got hobbit movies. That is so like rare.”

  The hobbit had his business hanging out, and it was hard to tell if he was interested in the women or the monkey. I didn’t especially care about the hobbit’s sexual orientation. What I cared about was that this was going on my bill. Not only was I going to have to pay for this, but it was going to be public record that I bought hobbit porn. Someone in the cable company billing department would know.

  I wrestled the remote away from Vinnie, clicked the television off, and pointed stiff-armed at the door. “Out!”

  “I have to meet with the contractor anyway,” Vinnie said, pushing up from the couch. “They’re taking the crime scene tape down tonight, and we can get back to work on the office tomorrow.” He stopped at the door. “Where’s my bear?”

  I dropped a peanut into Rex’s cage. “I’m working on it.”

  Rex rushed out of his soup can den, stuffed the peanut into his cheek, and rushed back into his soup can.

  Mooner held the door open for Vinnie. “Dude, we could get satellite television for the Moon Bus.”

  “Yeah, and we could rob a bank to pay for it,” Vinnie said.

  “No!” I yelled into the hall, after them. “Don’t say that to Mooner. He’ll do it!”

  “At least somebody’ll be bringing in money,” Vinnie said.

  I closed and locked the door and looked in on Connie in the dining room. “You don’t think they’ll rob a bank, do you?”

  Connie shrugged. “Anything’s possible, but Vinnie would be more inclined to hijack a truck.”

  “Anything new come in?”

  “No. It’s deadly slow.”

  I took a nap and when I woke it was a little after five and Connie was packing up to leave.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said. “Do you have anything fun planned for tonight?”

  “I’m helping Ranger with a new account.”

  “Good thinking to take a nap.”

  “It’s business.”

  Connie hiked her tote bag onto her shoulder. “I’ve seen him look at you. It’s like you’re lunch.”

  I grabbed my sweatshirt and my shoulder bag and walked with Connie to the parking lot. Rangeman was located on a quiet side street in the center of the city. I took Hamilton and did a quick detour into Morelli’s neighborhood. His SUV was in front of his house, so I pulled in behind it and parked. Morelli inherited the house from his aunt and has since become surprisingly domesticated. There’s still some wild beast left in the man, and he doesn’t own a cookie jar, but he’s better than I am at stock
ing his refrigerator and from time to time he puts the seat down on the toilet.

  He was pouring Bob’s dinner kibble into a bowl when I walked into the kitchen. Bob did his happy dance when he saw me, whipped around, and dove for his food when Morelli set the bowl on the floor.

  “What’s up?” Morelli asked.

  “I just stopped in to say hello. I’m on my way to Rangeman. Ranger asked me to go over a security system.”

  “After hours?”

  “It’s never after hours at Rangeman.”

  Rangeman ran a very specialized high-end security service, and unlike most large security firms, they monitored their accounts locally from a monitoring station in the Rangeman building. The building ran 24/7 and many of the men rented small efficiency apartments on site.

  “Anything new on the bonds office bodies?” I asked Morelli.

  Bob had scarfed up all his food and was pushing his bowl around on the floor. Morelli grabbed the bowl and put it in the sink. “Nothing earth-shattering. Positive IDs on both of them. Dugan and his lawyer, Bobby Lucarelli. No surprise there. Put into the ground a week to a couple days apart.”

  “Dugan and Lucarelli were involved in something bad.”

  “That’s a given,” Morelli said. “The question is which bad activity got them killed. Dugan had a laundry list of bad activities.”

  I was having a hard time concentrating on Dugan’s activities, because I was thinking Morelli looked unusually hot. He was in jeans and sweat socks and a T-shirt that wasn’t tucked in. And he was developing a nice five o’clock shadow. I mentally undressed him, my eyes lingering over critical areas, my body heat notching up a couple degrees.

  Morelli grinned over at me. “Cupcake, that is such a dirty smile.”

  I dropped my gaze to his feet. “It’s the socks. Very sexy.”

  “I’ll leave them on next time. The way my schedule is looking that’ll be next month. These bonds office murders are attracting attention. I have to be at a press conference tonight at seven. After the press conference I have a meeting with the mayor.”

  “Wow, the mayor.”

  “I’m one of many attending, and I’m not one of the more important. I’m cannon fodder. Someone to throw under the bus if it becomes necessary.”