Sizzling Sixteen

“I didn’t know you were going to college,” Vinnie said.

  “Of course you didn’t, on account of you don’t listen. You’re not a listener like me. You’d be a better person if you were a listener.”

  “I’d listen more if you talked less,” Vinnie said.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “Your ass.”

  The crime-scene tape had been stretched across wooden barricades placed close to what used to be the building housing the bonds office. The sidewalk was still passable, and there was still on-street parking. Lula’s Firebird was at the curb, along with Connie’s car and the Love Bus. Mooner and the Hobbits were on the sidewalk, looking at the rubble.

  I parked in front of the Firebird, and walked back to Mooner.

  “Dude,” Mooner said. “Someone was smoking in bed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Not much left of the bonds office.”

  “Too bad,” Mooner said. “I was gonna plug in. The Hobbits need computer juice.”

  “I have to do my blog,” one of the Hobbits said. “I have to Twitter.”

  “Bungo Goodchild,” an old Hobbit said. “Where are your manners? Introduce us to this lovely creature.”

  Mooner pointed to the old Hobbit. “This is Oldbuck of Buckland. He’s, like, the oldest dude, but he’s cool. The little guy standing next to him is Poppy Proudfoot. Then there’s Fredoc Broadbeam. That’s, like, self-explanatory. Twofoot of Nobottle. Fauxfrodo. And Chicaribbit.”

  “That’s a lot of Hobbits,” Lula said.

  “Tell me about it,” Mooner said. “It’s like I need rubber walls on the old bus. And I can’t bake brownies fast enough for these dudes. They sure love their brownies.”

  The Hobbits were all dressed in a mix of shabby chic Hobbit clothes and assorted footgear. Brown hooded capes, green or brown vests over tunics. Peddle pusher–type pants cinched in with a variety of belts from rope to lizard. Chicaribbit was a girl Hobbit, and her purse matched her pink Converse sneakers. Fredoc Broadbeam was as wide as he was tall. Twofoot of Nobottle was a tall, gangly guy with sandy blond hair and a scraggly beard. Fauxfrodo was nineteen or twenty and covered with tattoos and piercings. And Poppy Proudfoot was the youngest. I was guessing he was seventeen or eighteen.

  “How long are the Hobbits going to be with you?” I asked Mooner.

  “A week. Hobbit Con starts today, but it doesn’t really start to swing until Tuesday when The High Holy One proclaims it officially in session.”

  “I need to charge my phone,” Poppy said. “My mom’s going to freak if she can’t call me.”

  “Me, too,” Oldbuck said. “My wife will think I’m fooling around if I don’t answer my phone.”

  “You can plug in at my place,” I said.

  What the heck, I didn’t have anything else to do.

  “Did you hear that?” Mooner said to the Hobbits. “We have juice! Ysellyra Thorney is going to let all you dudes plug in.”

  “Three cheers for Ysellyra,” Broadbeam said.

  “Hobbit hooray!” they all yelled. “Hooray! Hooray!”

  “Let’s do it again,” Poppy said.

  “Not necessary,” I told them. “Get in the bus and follow me.”

  “Boy, Hobbits know how to have a good time,” Lula said. “Don’t take much to make them happy.”

  I drove across town with the Love Bus on my tail. I parked in the lot to my building, and we all trooped into the elevator. Twofoot, Poppy, Broadbeam, Oldbuck, Fauxfrodo, Chicaribbit, Mooner, Vinnie, and me.

  “There are a lot of Hobbits in this elevator,” Vinnie said. “Anybody know the weight limit?”

  Mooner pushed the button for the second floor and the elevator creaked and shuddered and slowly rose.

  “We have lift-off,” Mooner said.

  “Hobbit Hooray!” they all yelled. “Hooray! Hooray!”

  “This could get old,” Vinnie said to me. “They’re just plugging in, right? Like, an hour and they’re gone?”

  I unlocked my door and the Hobbits rushed in. They plugged their phones and their laptops into outlets all over the apartment. They used the bathroom, tested out the couch, turned the television on, cooed over Rex, looked in my refrigerator and cupboards.

  I found a relatively quiet corner and called Ranger.

  “What’s all that noise?” Ranger asked. “It sounds like you’re having a party.”

  “It’s Hobbits,” I said. “They’re using my electric. I saw the Meagan Building this morning. There was a lot of damage. Will they have to raze the building?”

  “I don’t know. They’re checking the structural integrity. The bonds office burned like it was made out of cardboard. Ten minutes after you left, the roof went down. Whoever set the fire must have used a decent amount of accelerant.”

  “Do you think this is the end of it?”

  “If Bluttovich destroyed both businesses to cover his tracks, it’ll end here. That would be the good business decision. If this has become a personal vendetta against Vinnie, it’s probably not over.”

  “Hard to believe Vinnie is that important to Bluttovich. He doesn’t even know Vinnie.”

  “From what I can tell, Bluttovich is a power-hungry maniac. If he thinks Vinnie is a threat, he’ll take him down.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “I have men working on it. I’ll get back to you in a couple hours.”

  I disconnected and went to the kitchen for a soda. Mooner was watching Rex. Everyone else was in front of the television, except Vinnie.

  “Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Mooner.

  “Bathroom.”

  The doorbell rang, and Mooner answered.

  I looked out from the kitchen and saw two guys.

  “Vincent Plum?” the one guy asked.

  “No, dude,” Mooner said. “I’m, like, the Moon Man. I’m Bungo.”

  “Cripes,” the guy said. “He’s stoned.”

  “He’s the right height. Brown hair. Slim weasel body,” the other guy said. “Hit him.”

  I saw the guy’s arm extend with the stun gun, and I ran for Mooner. I reached the door just as Mooner collapsed, and I got tagged, too.

  BY THE TIME my brain unscrambled, I was tied hands and feet and had duct tape across my mouth. I was rolling around on the floor of a van, bumping into Mooner, who was also bound and taped. It was a panel van with solid sides and two doors in the rear with small windows. The driver and his partner were up front. I didn’t want to go there. I could mostly see sky through the windows. A streetlight flashed by. A tree. No way of knowing where we were going. The driver and his partner weren’t talking.

  The van turned from a smooth road to a bumpy road, hooked a corner, and the road was smooth again. It came to a stop, and the rear doors opened. Mo and Eugene looked in at Mooner and me.

  “What the hell’s this?” Mo asked.

  The driver came around. “What do you mean? It’s Vincent Plum and some girl. She got in the way, so we took her, too. She looks like fun.”

  “That’s not Vincent Plum, you moron.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever seen Vincent Plum?”

  “I saw him when he stuck his head out of his office. We followed him and the girl from the bonds office to the apartment. That’s how we knew where to find them. We would have snatched him then, but Larry was whining and bleeding all over the place.”

  Eugene joined the group and looked in at Mooner and me. “What the fuck’s this?”

  “Exactly,” Mo said.

  “We took the wrong guy,” the driver said.

  “No shit,” Eugene said.

  “How was I to know? He’s the right height. He’s got brown hair. He’s sort of weasely.”

  “Gregor is going to be pissed,” Eugene said. “We already called and told him we had Vinnie. He’s coming out to personally cut off his nuts.”

  “Call him and tell him we made a mistake,” the driver said.

  “What are you, crazy?” Eugene said. “Remember what happened to Ziggy when he brought
Gregor the wrong Dairy Queen Blizzard?”

  “Yeah,” the driver said. “Gregor hit him in the head with a hammer, and now Ziggy falls over when he takes a leak.”

  “I got an idea,” Eugene said. “Why don’t we douse the van with gasoline, set it on fire, and shove it off a cliff? Then we tell Gregor there was a faulty gas pedal, and the van went out of control and crashed, and we all got out just in time, except we couldn’t rescue Vincent.”

  “That might work,” Mo said.

  “Wait a minute,” the driver said. “We don’t have to get all that elaborate. Has Gregor ever seen Vincent Plum?”

  “Not that I know,” Eugene said.

  “Then what’s the problem?” the driver said. “We tell him this is Vincent Plum. That way, Gregor gets to cut someone’s nuts off, and he won’t be disappointed that he made the trip out here.”

  “Yeah, but this guy will tell Gregor he’s not Plum,” Mo said.

  The driver shrugged. “We’ll leave the tape on his mouth.”

  “Gregor won’t like that,” Eugene said. “He likes when people scream and beg.”

  “So we wait until Gregor starts working on him,” the driver said, “and then we take the tape off when this guy’s in the screaming stage.”

  Everyone thought about that for a beat.

  “It could work,” Mo said.

  Eugene agreed.

  “Okay, so we have a plan,” Eugene said. “Let’s haul these two into the house. We’ll put them in the tower room. When Gregor gets here, we’ll take this guy to the kitchen, because it has a tile floor for easy cleanup. And then we’ll save the girl for ourselves for later.”

  “Mmmrmph,” Mooner said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eugene said to Mooner. “It only hurts in the beginning, and then you faint.”

  I was dragged out of the van, and Mo put me over his shoulder like a bag of sand. This was the first chance I had to see the house and its surroundings. There was a large lawn surrounding the house. Beyond the lawn, there were dense trees. Long, paved driveway leading to the house. The house itself could hardly be called a house. It was a fortress. It was ominous gray stone and huge. It defied description. It had a tower with turrets, like a medieval castle. If I had to imagine a house for a Bulgarian maniacal mobster, this would be it.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WE WERE CARRIED inside and up to the tower room. The bindings were cut away from our ankles but left on our wrists. The tape was ripped off our mouths.

  “Gregor won’t be here for a while,” Eugene said, “so make yourself comfortable.” And he closed and locked the door.

  “I like my nuts,” Mooner said. “I don’t want them cut off. I’d be, like, nutless then.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get rescued.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Sure.” Truth is, I didn’t have a lot of faith in a rescue. Time was too short. Ranger was good, but this would require a miracle. I looked around the tower room. Not a lot going on. Stone floor. Circular stone walls ringed by long, narrow windows without panes. Thick wood door that didn’t give when I kicked it.

  I went to a window and looked out. The house was on a hill surrounded by woods. I could see the Delaware River in the distance. I was pretty sure I was in Pennsylvania. I paced the room for an hour, burning off nervous energy. Mooner was quiet, sitting on the floor, chanting softly.

  “Ohmm mooon,” he said, eyes closed. “Ohmm mooon.”

  Another hour went by, and I saw a car turn into the driveway. It was a big black Lincoln Town Car. It rolled to a stop in front of the house, and the driver got out. Large man, dark wiry hair streaked with gray. Couldn’t see much of his face from where I stood in the tower. I suspected it was Gregor Bluttovich. Mooner was still convening with his inner self. I didn’t want to disturb him. I think he’d made peace with the fact he was going to lose his nuts, and I don’t think it occurred to him that death would follow.

  After a couple minutes, there were loud voices on the stairs, accompanied by heavy footsteps. The tower door banged open, jolting Mooner out of his contemplative state, filling me with renewed fear. Eugene and Mo rushed in, and the man who’d arrived in the Lincoln labored up the stairs behind them.

  “We would have brought them down,” Eugene said to the man.

  “Shut up, you idiot,” the man said. “I’m not an invalid. I’m a Bulgarian bull.”

  The Bulgarian bull lunged into the room, and I thought he looked like a bull having a stroke. His face was purple, and he was sweating and breathing heavy. He was close to six feet tall and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. His eyes were dilated black and glittered in his feverish face. His jowls shook when he talked. He had small, square, yellow teeth behind fleshy protruding lips. He was dressed in bagged-out dark dress slacks and a white dress shirt, open at the neck, showing a mat of graying chest hair.

  “So,” he said, looking down at Mooner with his mean little pig eyes. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  “Dude,” Mooner said.

  The Bulgarian bull leaned over and got so close to Mooner their noses were touching. “Do you know who I am?” he yelled at Mooner. “I’m Gregor Bluttovich. I’m the man you cheated.” And before Mooner could say anything, Bluttovich hit him open-handed on the side of the head and knocked Mooner over.

  “That isn’t Vinnie,” I said.

  Eugene and Mo sucked in air and froze.

  Bluttovich turned on me. “Who’s this?”

  “She was with him,” Eugene said. “We thought you’d like her.”

  “They’re lying,” I said. “They took the wrong man, and they were going to keep me for themselves.”

  Bluttovich looked over at Eugene and Mo. “Is this true?”

  “She’s trying to make trouble,” Eugene said.

  Bluttovich grunted. “I’ll give her trouble.” He turned away and powered himself to the door. “I’m hungry,” he said. “I want something to eat, and then I’ll deal with these two.”

  Bluttovich led the way down the stairs, and Eugene and Mo stumbled after him, closing and locking the tower door. Mooner was still stretched out on the floor, a trickle of blood oozing from a split lip.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “He’s a scary dude,” Mooner said.

  I went back to the window, desperate to see Rangeman in the driveway. I was counting down to the moment when Bluttovich was done eating and the real horror would begin. I was staring so intently, and wanting to see help so badly, I almost missed the movement in the woods to the right. There was no wind, but something was disturbing the undergrowth. Animal, I thought. And then more movement a few feet over. And next thing, the woods were alive with Hobbits. They were everywhere, creeping forward out of the woods onto the grass, inching up to the fortress. I ran around the room, looking out all the windows, and everywhere I looked I saw Hobbits. There were hundreds of them.

  “Hobbits!” I yelled to Mooner. “Get up! There are Hobbits out there!”

  Mooner got to his feet, and we looked out at the Hobbits. They were up and running now, brandishing golf clubs, baseball bats, and tennis rackets.

  “Get the Orcs!” they were yelling, led by Vinnie and Chicaribbit. “Down with the evil Orcs!”

  Vinnie was back in his Hobbit clothes, sprinting across the lawn, cape flying, pumping the air with his fist.

  Mooner yelled at them from the tower. “Go Hobbits!”

  The Hobbits looked up at Mooner and cheered. “Hobbit Ho!” they yelled, and they went into the house like Hobbit SWAT. They hurled themselves through windows and doors.

  A cavalcade of black cars and one red Firebird raced up the driveway, and a chopper whirred overhead. Ranger was out of the first car. Morelli followed. They went in through the front door. Guys in FBI jackets poured out of the cars. Local police cars rolled in and parked on the grass.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs leading to the tower room, and Mooner and I pressed ourse
lves flat against the wall, praying it wasn’t going to be Bluttovich who came through the door. The door opened and Chicaribbit burst into the room. She went straight to Mooner and threw her arms around him and kissed him.

  “I was so worried, Bungo Goodchild,” she said.

  Mooner grinned. “No problemo,” he said. “And I’ve still got my nuts.”

  Ranger was next through the door, followed by twenty or thirty Hobbits, who swirled around Mooner and looked out the windows and commented on the woods and how this would make a wonderful Shire.

  Ranger cut the plastic cuffs off my hands. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. How did you find us so fast?”

  “Vinnie and the Hobbits got to the parking lot just as the van was leaving with you and Mooner. Vinnie had your purse, so they were able to follow the van in the Mercedes.”

  “What was Vinnie doing with my purse?”

  “He thought you’d have a gun in it. And you did have a gun, but turns out you had something even better. You had car keys and a cell phone.”

  “Vinnie called you.”

  “Yes. And I called Morelli, and he did his cop thing. Turned out it was easy to organize. The feds have been following Bluttovich for months.”

  “Who called the Hobbits?”

  “The Hobbits called the Hobbits. They were uncontrollable. The fear was that they would rush the house before Bluttovich got here, and the police wouldn’t be able to charge him with anything.” Ranger grinned. “The truth is, the Hobbits saved the day. They caught Bluttovich by surprise and no one got hurt.”

  Lula and Connie came through the door.

  “Heart attack,” Lula said. “I’m having a heart attack. How the heck many stairs is that? Give me room. Give me air.” She spotted me and grabbed me and hugged me. “Connie and me were so scared for you.”

  Connie joined in the hug. “It’s over,” she said. “They got all the Orcs.”

  “We were in communication with Vinnie and the Hobbits right from the beginning,” Lula said. “So we know all about Orcs.”

  “They’re the enemy of Hobbits,” Connie said.

  “I want to see Bluttovich,” I said to Ranger.

  “Babe,” Ranger said.