Sizzling Sixteen

  We sat at the small table in front of the bakery and ate our doughnuts while I read through the files on Mickey Gritch and Bobby Sunflower.

  “We have home addresses for Gritch and his sister, but I can’t see Gritch stashing Vinnie in either of those places,” I said to Lula. “That leaves Bobby Sunflower’s businesses. The pawnshop is on Market Street, the car wash is in Hamilton Township, and the rest are on Stark Street. Let’s do drive-bys and see if anything jumps out at us.”

  “Might as well do the car wash first,” Lula said. “If I like the looks of it, I might let them wash my Firebird.”

  TWO

  BOBBY SUNFLOWER’S CAR wash was next to Figaroa Diner. It didn’t look like it had a lot of room for holding a bail bondsman hostage, but it advertised brushless washing and personal attention, so Lula got into line.

  “I don’t know about this car wash,” I said to Lula. “I don’t like the looks of the attendants.”

  “You mean on account of they’re waggin’ their tongues at us and making kissey sounds?”

  “Yeah.” Plus the multiple piercings, tattoos, ridiculous homey pants, and I was pretty sure one of them had a boner.

  “They’re just bein’ boys,” Lula said.

  I looked in my bag to see if I had pepper spray or a stun gun.

  The pack of idiots swaggered over to us, and one leaned in the window at Lula.

  “Hey, momma,” he said. “We gonna wash your car like it never been washed before.”

  “This isn’t no ordinary car,” Lula said. “This is my baby. I don’t want to see no scratches on it when you’re done.”

  “You be nice to me and my boys, and we’ll wash your baby by hand.”

  “How nice do I gotta be?” Lula asked.

  “Real nice,” he said, smiling wide so we could see he had industrial-grade diamonds embedded in his decayed teeth.

  “That’s disgusting,” Lula said. “You need to show some respect and act like professional car washers. And get your head out of my window.”

  “I think me and my boys need to show you what we got and maybe we teach you some respect.”

  Lula pulled her Glock out of her purse and stuck it in his face.

  “You got ten seconds before I blow your nose off,” Lula said.

  “Yow, momma!” the guy said.

  They all turned and ran, and Lula squeezed off six rounds, managing to miss all of the car washers at pretty much point-blank range.

  “Hunh,” Lula said, rolling her window up and driving out of the lot. “They don’t make these guns like they used to. I can’t believe I didn’t hit a single one of those fools.”

  Next stop was the pawnshop. Lula parked on the street, and we got out and looked around. There was an apartment above the shop, but so far as we knew, it wasn’t owned by Sunflower. A consignment store was to one side of the pawnshop and a pizza place was to the other side.

  “This doesn’t look promising,” I said to Lula, “but I’m going to go in and scope it out.”

  “Who am I?” Lula wanted to know. “Am I good cop or bad cop?”

  “You’re nothing. There’s no cop. We’re just browsing and leaving.”

  “No problemo. I can do that. I’m a excellent browser.”

  We went inside the pawnshop, Lula walked up to the counter, looked in the display case, and called the pawnshop guy over.

  “It’s not like I need the money or anything, but I was wondering how much I could get for this ring I got on,” Lula said. “As you could see, it’s got a ruby in the middle with some diamond chips around the edge. And it’s in a genuine gold setting.”

  “Is that a real stone?” he asked her.

  “You bet your ass it’s real. A gentleman gave me this ring for certain favors. He bought it for his wife but decided I earned it.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any documentation. Like an appraisal.”

  “Say what?”

  “I guess I could give you forty-five.”

  “Forty-five hundred?” Lula asked.

  “No, just forty-five. Cripes, lady, what do I look like, a sap?”

  “No, you look kinda hot,” Lula said, leaning her boobs on the counter. “What have you got in that back room, sugar?”

  “There’s no back room. Just a bathroom that even I won’t use.”

  “Movin’ on,” Lula said. And she turned on her heel and sashayed out of the pawnshop.

  Ten minutes later, we were idling in front of Sunflower’s garage on lower Stark. It was a one-story cinder-block structure with three bays, all doors open.

  “I can’t see them keeping Vinnie here,” I said to Lula. “There are too many people around, and there’s no space to hide someone.”

  Next stop was the topless bar. The neon sign was flashing, and electronic dance music dribbled out the open door. A wasted guy in a baggy white T-shirt leaned against the graffiti-covered building, smoking. He looked at us through slitted eyes, and Lula drove on.

  “Nothing but trouble there,” she said.

  We parked in front of the mortuary and stared at the building. Brown brick, two stories. Upper windows were blacked out. There was a magenta-and-black awning over the door, and MELON FUNERAL PARLOR was written on the awning.

  “I don’t know what’s more depressing,” Lula said, “this dreary-ass funeral home or a titty bar in the morning.”

  “Maybe the bar was serving breakfast.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Lula said. “I guess that would be okay.”

  “This place has real hostage potential. I’d go in and pretend I’m a customer, but I don’t look like I belong in this neighborhood.”

  “You mean on account of you’re the only white woman on this whole street, dead or alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I see your point, but I’m not going in there. I hate funeral parlors, and I hate dead people even more. I get the creepy crawlies just sitting here thinking about it.”

  “Okay, we’ll do this later. Let’s take a look at the apartment building.”

  The apartment building was half a block away and looked like the Tower of Terror. It was four stories tall, black with grime, and slightly lopsided.

  “Holy bejeezus,” Lula said, eyes bugged out, looking at the building. “This is scaring the crap out of me. This is like where Dracula would live if he didn’t have any money and was a crack head. I bet it’s filled with rabid bats and killer snakes and hairy spiders as big as dinner plates.”

  I thought it looked like it would be filled with despair and craziness and broken plumbing. Either way, it wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go. Unfortunately, it was also a good place to stash Vinnie.

  “How bad do we want to find Vinnie?” I asked Lula, unable to take my eyes off the hellish building.

  “The way I see it, either we find Vinnie, or I’m gonna be working the fry basket at Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Not that there’s anything wrong with the fry basket, but all that grease floatin’ in the air isn’t gonna be good for my hairdo. And what if they already got someone working the fry basket? What if I can’t get another job and they come repossess my Via Spigas?”

  And what if I don’t come through, and they kill Vinnie? How could I live with that? I thought.

  I speed-dialed Ranger’s cell phone.

  Ranger picked up and there was a moment of silence as if he was sensing me at the other end, taking my body temperature and heart rate long distance. “Babe,” he finally said.

  “Do you know the slum apartment building Bobby Sunflower owns on Stark?”

  “Yes. It’s on the same block as his funeral home.”

  “That’s the one. I’m going in to look for someone. If you don’t hear from me in a half hour, maybe you could send someone to check.”

  “Is this a smart thing to do?”

  “Probably not.”

  “As long as you know,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

  “I got two doughnuts left,” Lula said, “and I’m eating them before I
go in just in case I don’t come out.”

  I angled out of the Firebird. “Take them with you. If I don’t go in now, I’ll chicken out.”

  The front door was ajar, leading to a small, dark foyer spray-painted with a bunch of gang symbols. Stairs going up to the left. A bank of mailboxes to the right. No names on the mailboxes. Most were open and empty. Some didn’t have doors at all. The message was clear. If you lived here, you didn’t get mail.

  Two doors led off the foyer. Lula and I listened at the doors. Nothing. I tried one of the doors. Locked. The second door opened to cellar stairs.

  Lula poked her head in the doorway. “There’s stairs going down, but I can’t see nothing. It’s blacker’n night down there. Don’t smell too good, either.”

  “I hear scritching sounds,” I said to Lula.

  “Yeah, I hear it, too. Kinda squeaky.”

  And then a tsunami of rats swept up the stairs and over our feet.

  “Rats!” Lula yelled. “Rats!”

  I was frozen to the spot, too horrified to move. Lula was dancing, arms in the air, shrieking. The rats were wall to wall, scrambling around in a pack, filling the foyer.

  “Kill ’em. Kick ’em,” Lula said. “Help! Police! Call 911.”

  I snatched the bakery bag out of her hand and pitched a doughnut out the front door. The rats ran after the doughnut, and I slammed the door shut behind them.

  Lula collapsed against the wall. “Do I look like I’m having a heart attack? Did I get bit? Do I have fleas?” She took the bag back from me and looked inside. “At least you didn’t throw the jelly doughnut. I was saving that one for last.”

  I closed the cellar door and took to the stairs. There were three doors on the second floor. Two were nailed shut with crisscrossed boards. No sound from inside. The third was open, and the one-room apartment was empty of people and furniture but filled with garbage.

  “I’m going home and taking a shower when we’re done here,” Lula said. “I feel like I got cooties.”

  The third floor had three doors, and all were closed. “We need a plan,” I said to Lula.

  “You mean like I be the Girl Scout cookie girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if Vinnie’s in there and he’s with some of Sunflower’s stooges? We shoot them, right?”

  “Only if we have to.”

  Lula took her Glock out of her bag and stuffed it into her pants, snug to her backbone. She looked at me. “Don’t you want to get your gun ready to go?”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Hairspray.”

  “Is it firm hold? I might need some when we’re done here, depending on what we do for lunch.”

  I crept down a couple stairs and pressed myself against the wall, hairspray at the ready should Lula need backup. Lula knocked on the first door, the door opened, and a fat, sloppy, bleary-eyed guy answered. He was maybe fifty years old, needed a shave, needed a shower, needed less alcohol.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “I’m sellin’ Girl Scout cookies,” Lula said, looking past the fat guy into his room.

  “Aren’t you sorta old to be a Girl Scout?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m doing this for my niece,” Lula said. “She got a intestinal disturbance and couldn’t make her quota, so I’m helping out.”

  “What’s in the bakery bag?”

  “That’s none of your business, either. Are you gonna buy cookies, or what?”

  The guy snatched Lula’s doughnut bag, slammed the door closed, and locked it.

  “Hey!” Lula said. “You give me back my bag.” She put her ear to the door. “I hear the bag rustling! He better not be fingering my doughnut.” Lula pounded on the door. “Give me my doughnut back or else.”

  “Too late,” he said through the door. “I ate it.”

  “Oh yeah, well, eat this,” Lula said. And she hauled her Glock out and drilled a bunch of rounds into the door.

  “Holy crap!” I yelled, rushing at Lula. “Stop shooting. You can’t just shoot up someone’s door over a doughnut. You could kill the guy.”

  “Damn,” Lula said. “I’m outta bullets.” She scrounged around in her purse. “I know a got a extra clip in here somewhere.”

  The door banged open and the fat guy looked out at us and ratcheted the slide back on a sawed-off shotgun. He took aim, and I blasted him with hairspray.

  “Yow!” he hollered, rubbing at his eyes. “Shit, that stings.”

  Lula and I flew down the stairs. We took one flight, rounded the corner for the second flight, and crashed into two of Ranger’s men on their way up. We hit them with enough force to knock them off balance, and we all went ass-over-teakettles, rolling in a pack to the foyer floor.

  “Jeez,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect anyone to be on the stairs.”

  I knew one of the guys. His name was Hal. He was a real sweetie, and he was built like a stegosaurus.

  “Ranger sent us to check on you,” Hal said. “We just got here, and we heard shots.”

  “Some moron ate my jelly doughnut,” Lula said. “So I shot him.”

  Hal cut his eyes to the third floor. “How bad is he? Do you want us to, you know, get rid of anything?”

  “Like a body?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Hal said.

  “Thanks, but not necessary,” I told him. “Lula shot through the door, and the moron came after us with a sawed-off.”

  “Gotcha,” Hal said. “I’ll pass it on to Ranger.”

  Hal and his partner got into their shiny black SUV, and Lula and I got into the Firebird, and we all drove off.

  “It’s too bad we didn’t get to check out all the apartments,” Lula said, “on account of I had a real feeling about that place. I could see Vinnie getting hid there.”

  I thought the apartment building was too obvious. I didn’t know Bobby Sunflower personally, but from everything I’d heard, he didn’t sound like a dope. If Bobby Sunflower was behind this, probably Vinnie wasn’t on one of Sunflower’s properties. People like Sunflower had their fingers in lots of pies, and that’s where I thought Vinnie was being kept . . . in one of Sunflower’s pies.

  “Now what?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Drop me at Rangeman.”

  THREE

  RANGEMAN IS HOUSED in a discreet seven-story building on a quiet side street in Trenton proper. If you didn’t look closely, you wouldn’t notice the small brass plaque by the side of the door that simply states RANGEMAN. No other sign identifies the business. Ranger’s private lair occupies the top floor. Two more floors are dedicated to employee apartments, and the remainder of the building runs the security operation. Rangeman services private residences and commercial properties for clients who need a high level of protection. Plus, Rangeman does the occasional odd job of guarding bodies, finding bodies, and possibly eliminating bodies.

  Ranger was my mentor when I first went to work for my cousin Vinnie. I suppose he’s still my mentor, but now he’s also my friend, my protector, from time to time he’s been my employer, and on one spectacularly memorable occasion, he was my lover. I have an electronic key to the underground garage and to Ranger’s private apartment. It also gives me access to the building, but today I let the guy at the first-floor reception desk buzz me in. I took the elevator to the control room and walked past the cubbies and consoles, waving to men I knew.

  Ranger’s office was a few steps down the hall. He was on the computer when I walked in, and he smiled when he saw me. A big thing for Ranger, since he doesn’t do a lot of smiling. He was dressed in Rangeman black T-shirt, cargo pants, and running shoes. Everyone in the building was dressed exactly like this, but Ranger’s clothes fit him better. Possibly because Ranger was clearly at the front of the line when God was handing out the good body parts. You could dress Ranger in a black plastic garbage bag, and he’d still look hot.

  “I need a tracking lesson,”
I said to Ranger. “You know how you always know my location? I want to be able to do that. I want to put one of those gizmos on someone’s car.”

  “I can give you the gizmo,” Ranger said. “And I can show you how to install it, but it won’t do you any good if you can’t receive the signals. It would be easier and less expensive if you let me track this person for you.”

  “That would be great. I need to know where Mickey Gritch is going. He’s kidnapped Vinnie, and I have to get Vinnie back.”

  “Why?”

  I blew out a sigh. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  Ranger opened his desk drawer, took out a set of keys, and tossed them to me. “You need a car.”

  “So you’re giving me one?”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Ranger said.

  RANGEMAN KEEPS A fleet of shiny new black cars for employee use. Most are SUVs. There are a couple F150s and a couple vans. And Ranger’s personal car is a Porsche Turbo. The car I drew in the Rangeman lottery was a black Jeep Wrangler.

  It was noon when I parked the car in front of the office, and Lula and Connie had two pizza boxes open on Connie’s desk.

  “That’s a lot of pizza for someone only eating one of everything,” I said to Lula.

  “I’m not eating from Connie’s box,” Lula said. “I got myself one pizza and that’s what I’m eating, but if you want a piece, you could help yourself.”

  Lula’s pizza had the works, and Connie had a cheese and pepperoni pizza. Since I was in a cheese and pepperoni mood, I went with Connie’s pizza.

  “Let me guess where you got the shiny black car,” Lula said. “I’m guessing Ranger.”

  “It’s a loaner.”

  Lula selected another piece. “Do you know what I think? I think that man is all bad and scary silent on the outside and soft and mushy on the inside.”

  I knew Ranger pretty well and I wasn’t sure what was on the inside, but I knew it wasn’t soft and mushy.

  “Have you heard any more from Mickey Gritch?” I asked Connie.

  “No. I got a phone call first thing this morning and nothing since. I guess Mickey called Lucille last night. Lucille called Harry, and Harry made a few inquiries and found out about the hooker. And by the time I talked to Lucille, she was having the locks changed on the house, and Harry was on a rant. I got the clear impression no one on that side of the family cares if Mickey Gritch offs Vinnie.”