Sizzling Sixteen

  “I see what you’re saying,” Lula said. “This had to be one of them opportunistic crimes. Like someone decided to rob Mooner’s RV when Mooner went into the bakery, and they come across Vinnie and decided on the spur of the moment to take him, and then they killed him and put him in the meat grinder.”

  “What’s with the meat grinder thing?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m feeling like a burger for dinner, and I just keep thinking of meat grinders,” Lula said.

  I drove down Hamilton and was happy to see the Love Bus was still in front of the bookstore. I maneuvered the Mercedes into a space at the curb and cut the engine.

  “I want to talk to Mooner,” I said to Connie and Lula. “The pieces aren’t fitting into the puzzle.”

  Mooner was at the door to the RV before I knocked. “I was hoping you’d come back,” he said. “I was wondering if I could plug into your electric. I’m, like, down on my battery, and the Cosmic Alliance doesn’t understand no juice.”

  “Sure,” Connie said. “We’re all going down the drain anyway. You have to unplug when I leave for the night.”

  “Understood. And no worries, I got my own extension cord.”

  “Talk to me about Vinnie disappearing,” I said to Mooner. “Walk me through it again.”

  “Well, like I said, we were groovin’. We were listening to some Dead and gettin’ mellow. I was, like, just drivin’ around spreading the word. And next thing, I spotted the bakery, so I wheeled the old bus into the lot.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Picture the lot. Was it empty?”

  “No. There were, like, two cars. The big car and the little car.”

  “An SUV and a sportscar.”

  “Correcto mundo.”

  “Were the cars occupied?”

  “Don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I wasn’t paying attention. And suppose someone was, like, lying down on the seat taking a nap? I mean, I wouldn’t see them, right? So would that count?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well then, like, dude.”

  “What was Vinnie doing when you left for the bakery?”

  “He was riding shotgun. And I guess he was looking out the window. Except there wasn’t anything to see but the parking lot.”

  “So Vinnie is in the RV in the shotgun seat and you’re walking into the bakery. Was anyone in the lot? Maybe going to their car?”

  “No. The lot was empty except for me.”

  “How about the bakery? Were there any customers in the bakery besides you?”

  “No. But you know how the bakery has those two glass doors? So, like, suppose there were two people going in and out of those doors at exactly the same time? Would they be in or would they be out? And, like, would that count?”

  “Yes, it would count,” I told him.

  “Then there was someone else, and she was either in or out. Now that I’m thinking about it, she might have been a teensy bit more out. It was her gazongas that were over the line. She had, like, massive gazongas. They’d definitely crossed the midway line before the rest of her.”

  “She was coming out when you were going in?”

  “Yeah,” Mooner said.

  “Did you watch her cross the lot?”

  “No, man. I was caught in the cinnamon roll tractor beam.”

  “Okay, so what did she look like?” I asked him.

  Mooner grinned. “She had real big gazongas.”

  “We’ve already established that,” I said.

  “He got a gazonga fixation,” Lula said. “What is it with men and gazongas? It’s not like women got a nut fixation. It’s not like we go around looking for some guy with basketballs hangin’ down to his knees.”

  “Back to the woman,” I said. “How old was she?”

  “She was about our age.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Yeah. She was, like, porn-star pretty.”

  “What the heck is porn-star pretty?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Like, out there with the gazongas, you know?”

  “You say gazongas one more time, and I’m gonna hit you,” Lula said.

  “Moving on,” I said. “What else?”

  “She was wearing a lot of eye makeup, and she had big fat shiny lips, and she was in one of those black leather tops with the shoestrings. And it was, like, hardly holding the . . . you-know-whats in.”

  “She was wearing a bustier,” Lula said.

  “And she was in a black leather skirt that was, wow, really short. And stilleto heels.”

  “Yep, that’s a porn star all right,” Lula said.

  I was pretty sure I knew the porn star, and she was only a porn star in her home movies. “What about hair?” I asked.

  “Red. Like Lula’s, but there was, like, a lot of it, and it was all in waves and curls. Like a red-haired Farrah Fawcett.”

  “Joyce Barnhardt,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Mooner said.

  “You knew it was Joyce?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask me if I knew her name,” Mooner said.

  “Can I hit him now?” Lula wanted to know.

  I cut my eyes to her. “You’d hit the brownie maker?”

  “Yeah, good point,” Lula said.

  “At least we know where Vinnie’s hiding out,” Connie said.

  “Yeah, he took off sniffing after Barnhardt,” Lula said. “I’m just surprised he’s still there. Barnhardt uses ’em up and kicks ’em out.”

  Joyce Barnhardt is my arch nemesis. I went all through school with Joyce, and she did her best to make my life a misery. In all fairness to Joyce, I wasn’t singled out. Joyce made everyone’s life a misery. She was a fat kid who spit on other people’s food, looked under the stall door in the bathroom, lied, cheated, and bullied. Somewhere in high school, she morphed into a sexual vampire, and eventually she lost weight, bought breasts, inflated her lips, dyed her hair, and honed her skills as a home wrecker and user to an all-time high. She’s had multiple marriages, each more profitable than the previous, and she’s currently single and hunting. She drives a flashy Corvette and lives in a large house not far from Vinnie.

  “Let’s saddle up,” I said to Lula.

  “You going to get Vinnie?” she asked.

  “Yes. I don’t know why, but I feel compelled to retrieve him.”

  “I hear you,” Lula said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  JOYCE LIVED IN a house that was a cross between Mount Vernon and Tara from Gone with the Wind. Professionally maintained green lawn leading to a monster white colonial with black shutters and a columned entrance. I turned onto Joyce’s street and saw that Vinnie was sitting on the curb in front of the house. He was back to wearing only boxer shorts, and he had a two-day beard.

  “That’s disgustin’,” Lula said. “You aren’t gonna let him into this nice car, are you? He’s probably got Barnhardt cooties all over him. Maybe you should strap him to the roof.”

  “I haven’t got any bungee cords. He’s going to have to ride inside.”

  I stopped and let Vinnie into the Mercedes.

  “What took you so long?” he said.

  He was in the backseat, and I looked in my rearview mirror and gave him my death stare.

  “You got no manners,” Lula said to Vinnie. “I’m gonna have to disinfect my eyes with bleach after seeing you in them shorts. Why are you always just wearing shorts whenever we rescue you?”

  “I wasn’t wearing anything when I got kicked out,” Vinnie said. “The neighbors complained, and Joyce threw these shorts out to me. They’re not even mine.”

  “Why didn’t you at least call?”

  “Hello?” Vinnie said. “Do you see a phone on me?”

  “Guess not any of Joyce’s neighbors were gonna open the door to a naked man,” Lula said.

  “Only long enough to send the dog out after me,” Vinnie said.

  “So why’d Joyce kick you out?” Lula asked.
/>
  “She found out I didn’t have any money.”

  A half hour later, I was back at the office and Vinnie was inside, staring down at the electric cord running out to Mooner’s RV. “What the hell?”

  “He needed juice for the Cosmic Alliance,” Lula said. “Are you gonna put clothes on? I’m gettin’ nauseous lookin’ at your nasty weasel body.”

  “My clothes are all in the rolling goof house out there. That guy is a nut. Hasn’t anyone ever told him Hobbits aren’t real?” Vinnie went to his office and looked around. “What happened to my furniture? All I’ve got in here is my desk and a folding chair.”

  “We sold it,” Connie said.

  “Yeah, we sold everything,” Lula told him. “We sold all the dishes, guns, grills, and jewelry. We even sold the motorcycle.”

  “The BMW? Are you shitting me? That was my private motorcycle.”

  “Not no more,” Lula said.

  “We needed the money to buy back your debt,” I told him. “You’re off the hook with Sunflower and Mickey Gritch.”

  Mooner ambled in. “Hey, amigo,” he said to Vinnie. “Welcome back, dude. Long time, no see.”

  “Yeah, a lot longer than I wanted. Didn’t you give anybody my note?”

  “You didn’t leave a note.”

  “Of course I left a note,” Vinnie said. “It was on the table. I couldn’t find any paper, so I wrote it on a napkin.”

  “Dude, that was your note? I thought the napkin came like that. You know how you get napkins in bars with funny things written on them?”

  “You didn’t read it?”

  “No, dude, I put my pastries on that napkin. That’s what napkins are for . . . drinks and pastries.”

  “At least I’m back in the office,” Vinnie said. “A man’s office is his castle, right?” He sat in the folding chair and opened his top drawer. “Where’s my gun?”

  “Sold it,” Connie said.

  Vinnie closed the drawer and put his hands on his desk. “Where’s my phone?”

  “Sold that, too,” Connie said.

  “How am I supposed to work without a phone?”

  “You don’t work anyway,” Lula said. “And now you can’t call your bookie, who, by the way, probably isn’t talking to you on account of you got no credit.”

  “Yeah, but you paid everything off, right? How much did it come to?”

  “A million three,” Connie said.

  Vinnie froze, mouth open. “You paid a million three? Where the hell did you get that kind of money?”

  “We sold your phone,” I said.

  “Yeah, and your bike,” Lula said.

  “That’s not nearly adding up to a million three. Where’d you get the rest of the money?”

  “I’d rather not say,” I told him.

  “Stephanie’s right,” Connie said. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I came in to unplug,” Mooner said. “The Alliance wants me to go to the airport to pick up some Hobbits flying in for the big event.”

  “Okay, so I don’t have a phone,” Vinnie said. “It’s still good to be here. I tell you, I thought I was going to die. They were serious. I don’t know what the deal is with Bobby Sunflower, but he was gonzo. And then when the house got bombed, everyone was twice as nuts. I was happy when you rescued me from the rattrap apartment, but I figured my time was short. I never thought you’d get me off. I knew Sunflower would track me down and blow my brains out. I figured he’d find me in Antarctica if he had to.”

  “He needed money,” I said.

  Vinnie opened his middle drawer and rifled through it. “The petty cash is missing.”

  “And?” Connie said.

  “Well spent,” Vinnie said. “It’s not like I’m not grateful.”

  “Why did Sunflower need money?” I asked Vinnie.

  “Bad investments, I guess.”

  “Like what?”

  Vinnie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even care. I just want to relax and enjoy not having a contract on me. I want to sit here in my office and watch television for a half hour.” Vinnie looked around. “Where’s my television? Oh crap, don’t tell me you sold my television.”

  “I got two hundred dollars for it,” Lula said.

  “It was high def!” Vinnie said. “It was a plasma.”

  “Well, if you want, I can call Bobby Sunflower and tell him I want two hundred dollars back so you can repo your high def, plasma TV,” Lula said.

  “Nope, that’s okay,” Vinnie said. “I’m going to sit here and close my eyes and pretend I have a television. I’m calm. I’m happy to be alive. I’m happy to have gotten out of Joyce’s house without getting my Johnson cut off.” Vinnie opened his eyes and looked over at us. “She’s an animal.”

  “Too much information,” Lula said.

  Connie went to her desk to answer the phone. “Vinnie,” she called. “It’s Roger Drager, president of Wellington. He’d like to talk to you.”

  “What’s Wellington?” Lula asked Vinnie.

  “It’s the venture capital company that owns the agency.”

  “Oh yeah,” Lula said. “Now I remember.”

  Vinnie went to Connie’s desk to take the call.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yessir. Yessir. Yessir.” And he hung up.

  “That was a lot of yessirs,” Lula said.

  “He wants me to come to his office,” Vinnie said. “Now.”

  “Be good if you put some clothes on,” Lula said. “He might not like little Vinnie hangin’ out your shorts.”

  “I’ll get them,” Mooner said. “They’re in the Love Bus.”

  “What does he want to talk to you about?” Connie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vinnie said.

  “Maybe it’s the phantom bonds,” Connie said.

  Vinnie’s eyebrows lifted. “You know about that?”

  “We scoured the office, looking for money, and I found the file.”

  “It started out small. I swear on my mother’s grave I meant to pay Wellington back.”

  “Your mother isn’t dead,” I said to Vinnie.

  “She will be someday,” Vinnie said. “Anyway, it got out of hand. In the beginning, I just wanted a short fix to pay Sunflower back on some bad bets, but Sunflower came in and wouldn’t let go. Before I knew it, his bookkeeper was helping me keep two sets of books.”

  “Is this the dead bookkeeper?”

  “Yeah,” Vinnie said. “Sudden death with tire tracks on his back.”

  I thought about Victor Kulik and Walter Dunne, executed behind the diner. Life expectancy with Wellington wasn’t good.

  Mooner came back with Vinnie’s clothes. “I fixed them for you, dude,” Mooner said. “They’re, like, awesome.”

  Vinnie stepped into his slacks and looked down at himself. The slacks had been shortened to just below his knees, and his shirt had been turned into a tunic with a rope belt. It went well with his black dress shoes and black socks. Mooner had printed Doderick Bracegirdle with black magic marker on the shirt pocket. Vinnie looked like a wino Hobbit coming off a three-day binge. His gelled hair was stuck every which way, his clothes were wrinkled and smudged with grass stains, his beard belonged to Grizzly Hobbit.

  “I’d kill him,” Vinnie said, glaring at Mooner, “but you sold my gun.”

  “Probably, this Drager guy wants to have you arrested for embezzling,” I said to Vinnie. “He’s not going to care that you’re a homeless Hobbit.”

  “I haven’t got a driver’s license,” Vinnie said. “I haven’t got a car.”

  I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. “I’ll take you. Where are we going?”

  “He’s downtown in the Meagan Building.”

  THE MEAGAN BUILDING was a black glass and steel high-rise built several years before the commercial real estate market crashed. The Wellington Company was on the fifth floor. We stepped out of the elevator into a carpeted hall. Pale gray carpet, cream walls with cherry chair rails and cherrywood doors. Classy. Wellington
occupied the entire floor. It was getting to be late in the day and the Wellington front desk was unmanned. Roger Drager was waiting for us in the small reception area.

  Drager was in his forties, nicely dressed, had severely receding brown hair, was around 5’10”, and his body was going soft. His hand was clammy when we shook. He led us through a room with cubicles and banks of file cabinets. There were private offices with windows on the perimeter of the room. Doors were open, and most offices were empty. Desks and chairs. Same with the cubicles. Just a few guys slouched back playing computer solitaire. Not much work going on. No phones ringing.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked Drager.

  “Flex hours,” he said. “Most everyone prefers to come in early and leave early.”

  We followed him down a long hall to his corner office. Large ornate desk and credenza on one side of the office. Seating area with a small couch and two chairs and a coffee table on the other. He directed us to the seating area. So far, he hadn’t seemed to notice Vinnie was a Hobbit.

  “Let me get right to the point,” Drager said to Vinnie. “I know you’ve been stealing from Wellington. I want full disclosure, and I want the money you’ve embezzled. I want the names on all the bad bonds you’ve written.”

  “Yessir,” Vinnie said. “I’ll cooperate totally. I don’t know where I’ll get the money, but I’ll pay it back somehow. Are you calling the police in?”

  “Not if you repay the money.” Drager stood and looked at his watch. “I have another meeting. You can let yourselves out?”

  “Absolutely,” Vinnie said. “No problem.”

  Drager walked partially down the hall with us, said good-bye, and entered another office. Vinnie and I continued on toward the room with the cubicles. The building was eerily quiet, with the exception of a room to the right. I could hear machinery working on the other side of the closed door. I opened the door and looked in. There was a large paper shredder working. A bored-looking kid stood beside the shredder. Black garbage bags presumably filled with paper were stacked against a wall.

  “What?” the kid said.

  “Sorry,” I said to him. “Looking for the ladies room.”

  “By the elevator.”