Sizzling Sixteen

  “What war? Who’s he fighting?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should go into therapy at one of those sex addiction places. Do you think that would get me off the hook?”

  “Maybe with Lucille. I don’t think Harry’ll buy it.”

  My arm was scraped and the knee was torn out of my jeans from the fall. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t crashed into the SUV. I limped out of the living room, closed the door on Vinnie, started to undress, and noticed I’d missed a call from Morelli on my cell phone.

  “Hey,” Morelli said when I called him back.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Just checking to see if you’re home. Shots were fired at Sunflower’s apartment building tonight.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Good point,” Morelli said. “We also got a report of shots being fired from Vinnie’s house. Lucille said she was shooting at a rat.”

  “That neighborhood’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

  “Should I be worried?” Morelli asked me.

  “Hard to say.”

  Morelli disconnected, and I limped into the bathroom, where I stood in the shower until all the rust was washed out of my hair. When I was done, I looked at the shampoo bottle. Empty. My refrigerator was also empty. I needed money. I needed to make another capture.

  VINNIE WAS BACK to wearing only his underwear. He was in my kitchen, unshaven, his hair spiked up from sleep, his eyes half open.

  “Where’s the coffee?” he asked. “Where’s the orange juice?”

  “I don’t have any,” I told him. “I need to go shopping.”

  “I need coffee. Lucille always had my coffee ready.”

  “There’s no Lucille,” I told him. “Get used to it. And after today, there’s no me. You can’t stay here.”

  “Where will I go?”

  “Stay with one of your friends.”

  “I don’t have friends,” Vinnie said. “I have hookers and bookies. And my bookie wants to shoot me.”

  “Do you have money?”

  Vinnie flapped his arms. “Do I look like I have money? My wallet was left behind with my pants. Maybe we should go back and check out the lawn in front of my house to see if Lucille tossed out cash and credit cards along with my clothes.”

  “What about the office? Don’t you keep petty cash? Doesn’t Connie have a corporate credit card?”

  “We might have a small cash flow problem,” Vinnie said.

  “How small?”

  “We might be a million in the red, give or take a couple bucks.”

  “What?”

  “It’s complicated,” Vinnie said. “Bookeeping issues. We have too many outstanding skips.”

  “I have a stack of skips in my bag that I’m working on, but I don’t think they add up to a million. And what about the bankers who underwrite you?”

  “They aren’t answering their phones.”

  Oh boy.

  “You’ve got three minutes to get dressed,” I said to Vinnie. “I’m taking you to my parents’ house. When they get fed up with you, I’ll think of something else. At least you can get coffee there before my mother kicks you out.”

  I debated calling ahead but decided against it. If I dumped him on my mother’s doorstep and drove away real fast, she’d have to take him in, at least for a while. If I called, she could say no.

  Twenty minutes later, I idled in front of my parents’ house while Vinnie walked to the front door. On the rare possibility that no one was home, I didn’t want to just drive off. He didn’t have a cell phone to call me to come back. I saw the front door open and I laid rubber.

  I drove by the office twice before I parked. I didn’t see the bashed-in SUV, and I didn’t see any angry-looking guys hanging out with guns drawn, so I figured things were quiet this morning. Connie was at her desk. Lula hadn’t arrived.

  “You didn’t bring Vinnie with you, did you?” Connie asked. “I already had a visit from Bobby Sunflower this morning.”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee. “He gets up early.”

  “I guess he was motivated. He wants his money or he wants Vinnie. He said if he didn’t get either of those things by Friday he was going to eliminate the office.”

  “Eliminate it?”

  “Like from the face of the earth.”

  “Could be worse,” I said. “According to Vinnie, this office is about a million in the red.”

  Connie froze for a beat. “Vinnie said that?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you know?”

  “I don’t do the books. Vinnie has an accountant for that.”

  “Maybe we should talk to the accountant.”

  “The accountant’s dead. He got run over by a truck last week. Twice.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “No,” Connie said. “It’s really not good.”

  “Does Sunflower know we were the ones to spring Vinnie?”

  “Yeah, but I think it’s too embarrassing to let go public. And I think he’d rather have the money than to see us shot full of holes.”

  I drank some coffee and took a doughnut from the box on Connie’s desk. “So we need to raise money.”

  “It’s up to a million two.”

  “Chopper is a pretty high-bond. The toilet paper guy isn’t worth much, but he might be easy to capture.”

  “Butch Goodey is worth something,” Connie said. “I thought he skipped to Mexico.”

  “I heard he got back last week, and he’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

  Butch Goodey is 6′6″ tall and weighs about three hundred pounds. He’s wanted for exposing himself to thirteen women over a period of two days. He said they were lucky to get to see Mr. Magic, and he blamed it on a sex-enhancement drug that gave him a thirty-two-hour erection. The judge who set Goodey’s bond asked for the name of the drug, wrote it on a piece of paper, and slipped the paper into his pocket.

  “I’ll put Goodey at the head of the list,” I said.

  Lula swung into the office. “At the head of what list?”

  “The catch ’em list,” I told her. “We need to make money today.”

  “So we’re going after Butch Goodey? I thought he was in Mexico.”

  “He’s back. He’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

  “I hate that place,” Lula said. “It gives me the creeps. You drive by with your windows open, and you can hear cows mooing. You’re only supposed to hear stuff like that on a farm. I mean, what the heck’s the world coming to when you can hear cows mooing in Trenton? And who the heck would work at a meatpacking plant anyway?”

  “Butch Goodey,” I said.

  The meatpacking plant was down by the river, south of town, on the edge of a residential area that was blue-collar or no-collar. It took up half a block, with some of that space devoted to holding pens, where the cattle went in, and some to loading docks, where the hamburger meat came out.

  At nine-thirty in the morning, the plant was in full swing. It was going to be a glorious, sunny, warm day and the area around the plant smelled faintly of cow.

  “You know what this makes me think about?” Lula said, jumping down from the Jeep, standing in the parking lot. “It makes me think I could use a new leather handbag. If we get done early today, we should go to the mall.”

  I didn’t think we were going to get done early. I expected this was going to be a very long day. It was Thursday, and there was no way we could get all of the money by bringing in a few skips. If we didn’t come up with over a million dollars by tomorrow, Grandma Plum and Aunt Mim were going to be wearing black.

  THIRTEEN

  LULA AND I entered a small reception area and approached the woman at the front desk. I gave her my business card and told her I wanted to speak to Butch Goodey. The woman ran her finger down a roster of names attached to a clipboard and located Goodey.

  “He’s helping unload cattle right now,” she said. “The easiest way to find him would be to go around the building from the o
utside. Just go out the door, turn left, and keep walking. You’ll see an area around the corner where trucks are off-loading, and Butch should be there.”

  “I’m glad we didn’t have to go through the building,” Lula said, “because I don’t want to see them chopping up cows. I like thinking meat grows in the supermarket.”

  We turned the corner and came to an area where cattle were milling around in a pen.

  “What kind of cows do you suppose these are?” Lula asked. “Are these hamburger cows or steak cows?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All cows pretty much look the same to me.”

  “Yeah, but some are bigger than others and some got horns. These cows are hefty black cows. I guess they’re my kind of cow,” Lula said.

  I had a photo of Butch. I’d tried to find him before he skipped to Mexico, so I had some idea of what I was looking for, and at 6′6″ and three hundred pounds, he shouldn’t be that hard to spot. I scanned the holding area and picked him out, standing a foot taller than everyone else. He was watching over a gate that fed the cattle from a pen to a ramp that led into the building.

  I had cuffs tucked into the back of my jeans, but I wasn’t sure they were big enough to fit around Butch’s wrists. I had Flexi Cuffs hooked onto a belt loop, but it was hard to be sneaky with Flexi Cuffs. My hope was that I could talk him into going downtown with me to re-up for his court hearing.

  “Stay here by the cattle truck,” I said to Lula. “I don’t want to spook Butch by having both of us come at him. I’m going to circle around and try to talk to him.”

  “Sure,” Lula said. “What do you want me to do if he bolts and runs?”

  “Tackle him and cuff him,” I said.

  “Okeydokey.”

  Butch was feeding the cattle one by one onto the ramp, concentrating on his job. I skirted the holding pen, moving behind an empty cattle truck, and I came up behind him. I had my cuff in my hand, taking measure of his gargantuan wrist, when he turned and saw me.

  “You!” he said. “I know you. You’re the bounty hunter.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “I’m not going to jail. You can’t make me. It wasn’t my fault.”

  Butch jumped into the pen with the stupefied cows and ran for the gate by the truck. Lula saw him coming at her, opened the gate to tackle him, and the rest was the stuff nightmares are made of. When the gate creaked open, every cow picked its head up and sniffed freedom. Butch went through the gate first, knocking Lula on her ass against the fence. Butch was followed by a cow stampede. The cows galloped out of the pen, into the parking lot, and scattered. In a matter of seconds, not a single cow could be seen.

  Truck drivers and cow wranglers stood open-mouthed, frozen in place for a full minute.

  “What the bejeezus was that?” someone finally said.

  Lula hauled herself to her feet and adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “I’m gonna sue someone,” she said. “I could have been killed. I’m lucky I wasn’t stampeded on. This cow plant is negligent. I’m calling my lawyer.”

  “You were the one who opened the gate,” I told her.

  “Yeah, but they should have had a lock on it so I couldn’t do that. And what are we doing with cows in Trenton anyway? How many times do I have to ask that question?”

  Someone screamed half a block away, and I heard the sound of cow feet clomping down a street somewhere. Men were pouring out of the plant, organizing search teams. A big black cow trotted into the lot, three men took off after it, and the cow ran away, headed for the 7-Eleven on Broad.

  “Well, I guess our business is done here,” Lula said. “Now what?”

  “Now we ride around and try to spot Butch.”

  And we get out of the parking lot before someone remembers Lula was the one who opened the gate.

  “I kind of worked up an appetite being around all those cows,” Lula said, climbing into the Jeep. “I wouldn’t mind getting a burger.”

  I plugged the key into the ignition. “After we find Butch.”

  “What are we gonna do if we find him?” Lula wanted to know. “Are you gonna run him over with the Jeep? Looks to me like that’s the only way you’ll catch him. He’s as big as one of those cows.”

  I drove out of the lot, turned at the corner, and stopped to let a cow cross the street in front of me.

  “I bet this happens all the time,” Lula said. “These people are probably used to having cows in their yards. It’s probably like living next to the jail. I bet there’s people escaping from the jail all the time, too.”

  Anything was possible, but for all the time I’ve lived in Trenton, which was all my life, I’ve never heard of cows making a run for it out of the packing plant.

  Two cop cars raced through an intersection one street over. I could hear men shouting to one another, and I heard a cow bellow not far off. A man bolted from between two houses with a cow hot on his heels. The guy scrambled on top of a car, and the cow ran off in another direction.

  I doubled back to the plant and spotted Butch getting into his car. The lot was filled with crazed cows and crazed cow catchers, so I decided to follow Butch and attempt a capture somewhere else.

  Butch took Broad to Hamilton, found his way to Cluck-in-a-Bucket, and went straight to the drive-through window. He was driving a white Taurus that was a bunch of years old. Easy to follow.

  “This is enough to give me religion,” Lula said. “How good is this? We follow some idiot to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Just when I’m hungry, too. I bet it’s the bottle. You got your bottle, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I knew it,” Lula said. “The bottle’s working for us.”

  Butch put his order in, pulled up to the next window, and I hung back.

  “I got a order,” Lula said to me. “Pull up to the window.”

  “I’m not getting stuck in the drive-through. If he parks, you can go inside and get your order while I make the capture. If he leaves with his food, you’ll have to wait.”

  “Okay, I could do that,” Lula said. “That sounds like a plan.”

  Butch got his food and parked nose-in, facing the side of the building. Lula jumped out of the Jeep and hustled inside, and I parked directly behind Butch, blocking his exit. My first choice was to talk to him and convince him to come downtown with me. My second choice was to give him a shot with my stun gun and handcuff him to his car. Then I’d pay a tow truck to drag him to the police station. I’d still be way ahead. Ordinarily, I’d stun a guy and Lula and I would wrestle him into my backseat. Since Butch was three hundred pounds soaking wet, wrestling wasn’t practical.

  I trotted up to the Taurus and bent to talk to Butch. He jumped at my voice, a piece of burger fell out of his mouth, and he shrieked like a girl.

  “I just want to talk to you,” I said.

  “I’m not going to jail!” he yelled at me.

  He threw the Taurus into reverse, I hit him once with the stun gun, and he twitched and squeaked, but that was it. The Taurus plowed into Ranger’s Jeep and knocked it back about ten feet, totally bashing in the entire left side. Butch slammed the Taurus into drive, jumped the sidewalk, made a sharp turn, and took off out of the lot.

  Lula sashayed out with two bags of food and stood looking at the Jeep. “You’re in trouble,” she said. “You wrecked Ranger’s Jeep.” She looked around. “Where’s Butch?”

  “Gone.”

  “He must be a real fast eater.”

  “I walked up to his car, and he panicked. I hit him with the stun gun, and it had no effect.”

  “No shit,” Lula said. “You need a cattle prod for him.”

  I hauled my cell phone out and dialed Ranger.

  “Babe,” he said.

  “Bad news,” I told him. “I sort of wrecked your Jeep.”

  “It was only a matter of time,” he said. And he disconnected.

  Five minutes later, a Rangeman SUV drove into the parking lot. Hal and another guy got out, looked at the Jeep, and smiled.


  “No disrespect,” Hal said to me, “but you’ve done better.”

  This was true. I was driving Ranger’s Porsche one time, and it got smashed flat as a pancake by a garbage truck. Hard to top that.

  “Raphael will take care of the Jeep,” Hal said. “And I’m at your disposal. Where would you ladies like to go?”

  “The bonds office,” I told him. “We need to regroup.”

  “HOW’D IT GO?” Connie asked. “Did you catch anyone?”

  “Nope,” Lula said. “But we trashed Ranger’s Jeep. And we did some other stuff, but I might not want to talk about it.”

  Connie gave me raised eyebrows.

  “Lula opened a gate at the packing plant and set a whole bunch of cows loose,” I said. “They’re probably in Bordentown by now.”

  “They were like Born Free cows,” Lula said.

  “We aren’t doing so good in the money-raising department,” Connie said.

  I slouched in the orange chair in front of her desk. “Maybe we should call the police.”

  “Or we could ship Vinnie off to Brazil,” Lula said. “We could put him in nitwit protection.”

  My phone rang, and I groaned when I saw the number. It was my mother.

  “When are you picking him up?” my mother wanted to know.

  “Who?”

  “You know who! He’s in your father’s chair, watching television, drinking coffee.”

  “Lucille kicked him out.”

  “Good for her,” my mother said. “I’d kick him out, too, but I can’t get him out of the chair. When are you coming to get him?”

  “Here’s the thing,” I said to my mother. “He doesn’t have anyplace to stay.”

  “He can’t stay here. And I swear I’ll never make you another pineapple upside-down cake if you don’t get him out of here.”

  “I’ll be right there.” I grabbed my tote bag and stood. “We have to get Vinnie,” I said to Lula. “My mother’s done with him.”

  “You can’t bring him back here,” Connie said.

  “Can I put him in your house?”

  “Not even for a moment.”

  I looked at Lula.

  “Nuh-uh,” Lula said. “I don’t even like him. And soon as he’s left alone, he’ll be tryin’ all my special dresses on.” Lula’s attention moved to the plateglass window in the front of the office. “It’s the Moon Man,” she said.