Lean Mean Thirteen

  “There's no gas in here,” he said. “Everything's electric.”

  “I guess I know gas when I smell it,” Lula said. “My partner and me are from the gas company. We know these things. How about the oven? Are you sure the oven isn't gas?”

  “Waddaya think this is, the Hotel Ritz? The oven don't even work. The oven never worked. I gotta cook everything in the microwave.”

  Lula pushed past him. “Stephanie, you go walk around and make sure there's no gas leakin' out of anything.”

  I stepped in and gasped at the stench. I looked at the fat guy and I was pretty sure I knew what was leaking gas, but I held my breath and did a fast run through the apartment to make sure Dickie's corpse wasn't rotting in the bathtub.

  “This place reeks,” Lula said to the fat guy. “What are you cooking in that microwave?”

  “Bean burritos. It's all it cooks. It explodes everything else.” “Guess we found the gas source,” Lula said. “And you should put a shirt on. It should be illegal for you to go without a shirt.”

  “What about my microwave? Are you gonna fix it? It explodes everything.”

  “We're from the gas company,” Lula said. “We don't do microwaves.”

  “You got a tool belt on,” the guy said. “You're supposed to fix things, and I want my microwave fixed.”

  “Okay, okay,” Lula said. “Let me take a look here.”

  “Careful of the door,” he said. “It sticks.”

  “That's probably your problem. It takes you too long to get the door open, and then you cook everything too long, and it explodes.” Lula gave the door a good hard yank, a couple screws flew off into space, the hinges snapped, and the door came off in her hand. “Oops,” Lula said.

  I didn't waste any time getting out of there. I was halfway up the stairs to the third floor when I heard Lula slam the door on B and come pounding after me.

  “Least he won't be stinking things up eating more of them microwave burritos,” Lula said.

  My cell phone rang. It was Tank.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  Tank disconnected.

  “Who was that?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Ranger's out of town, and Tank's in charge of my safety.”

  “I thought I was in charge of your safety.” I rapped on A. “I'll tell him next time he calls.”

  A tall black guy with red dreads answered the door.

  “Holy cow,” Lula said. “It's Uncle Mickey.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “No. Uncle Mickey's Gently Used Cars! He's famous. He does those commercials on television. 'Come to Uncle Mickey's Gently Used Cars and we'll treat you right.' Everybody knows Uncle Mickey.”

  “What can I do for you girls?” Uncle Mickey asked. “Are you looking for a deal on a car?”

  “No, we're the Fix-It Sisters,” Lula said. “We're going around fixing things.”

  I did a mental eye roll. We were more like the Break-It Sisters.

  “What are you doing in a dump like this?” Lula asked Uncle Mickey.

  “Not as much profit margin as you'd expect in used cars,” Mickey said. “Uncle Mickey's fallen on some hard times. Got a lot of overhead. Had a bad run with the ponies.” He peeked out into the hall. “You aren't going to tell anyone Uncle Mickey lives here, are you?”

  “You living here by yourself?”

  “Yeah, just Uncle Mickey all by himself in the penthouse. I don't suppose you girls would like to come in and entertain Uncle Mickey?”

  “We got work to do,” Lula said. “You're gonna have to entertain yourself.”

  Uncle Mickey disappeared behind his door, and we moved to 3 B.

  “That was sort of depressing,” Lula said. “He looks so sincere in those commercials. You just want to rush out and buy one of his cars.”

  A voluptuous, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman answered my knock at B. She was wearing a red sweater and jeans and had an expensive watch on her wrist and a diamond cocktail ring that went knuckle to knuckle. I put her age at forty with very good genes.

  “Yes?” she said.

  'We're working our way through college fixing things,“ Lula said. ”You got anything broken?"

  “I know who you are,” the woman said to me. “I saw your picture in the paper. You're the woman who murdered Dickie Orr.”

  “I didn't murder him,” I said. “I have an alibi.”

  “Yeah, right. Everyone's always got an alibi. You're in big trouble. Orr embezzled a shitload of money from the firm, and you killed the little worm before anybody could figure out where he put it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The guy I'm living with is a partner. Peter Smullen. He tells me everything. We're getting married as soon as he gets a divorce from his bitch wife. Then we can buy a house and get out of this dump.”

  “Peter Smullen lives here?”

  “Usually. When he's not traveling. Or screwing around. He didn't come home last night, and it's going to cost him big. I've had my eye on a bracelet at Tiffany's. I've been waiting for him to pull something like this.”

  “A woman's gotta plan ahead,” Lula said. “Gotta take advantage of those opportunities.”

  “Fuckin' A,” Smullens girlfriend said.

  “Okay then/' I said. ”Have a nice day. We'll be moving along."

  Lula and I stopped on the second-floor landing to regroup.

  “That was interesting,” Lula said. “Do you want to try the other tenants? We missed a bunch on the first and second floors.”

  “I don't think Dickie is here, but we might as well finish the job we started. And for God's sake, don't offer to fix anything.”

  Joyce followed me to my apartment building and parked two rows back. I could be a good person and tell her I was done for the night, or I could be mean and let her sit there for a while before she figured it out. I decided to go with mean. She wouldn't believe me anyway. I took the elevator to the second floor and found a guy in RangeMan black waiting in front of my door.

  “I'm supposed to make sure your apartment is safe before you go in,” he said.

  Good grief. I guess I appreciated the concern, but this was feeling a little over the top.

  I unlocked the door and waited while he did his thing, looking under beds and checking out closets.

  “Sorry,” he said when he was done. “Tank made me do it. If something happens to you while Ranger s away, we're all out of a job.”

  “Ranger should get a grip.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  I closed the door and looked at him through the peephole. He was still standing there. I opened the door.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “I'm not allowed to leave until I hear you lock and bolt the door.”

  I closed the door, locked and bolted it. I looked through the peephole again. No RangeMan. I hung my coat and bag on the hook in the hall and gave Rex a cracker.

  “I have a very strange life,” I said to Rex.

  I got a beer out of the fridge and called Morelli's cell phone.

  “What?” Morelli said.

  “I just wanted to say hello.”

  “I can't talk now. I'll call you later.”

  “Sure.”

  “He won't call,” I said to Rex. “Men are like that.”

  I tried Rangers cell and got his answering service. “You're a nut,” I told him.

  I took the envelope filled with reports into the living room and began reading through the material. There was nothing in any of the reports to link Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak together, other than their previous addresses. And that connection was vague. They were all from different neighborhoods in Sheepshead. Ranger had checked not just Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak, but their parents as well. All families seemed to be hardworking and clean. No criminal records anywhere. No indication of mob connections. Gorvich was Russian-born but immigrated with his parents when he was twelve. There was also nothing to link Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak
to Dickie prior to their entering into business together.

  TEN

  I woke UP on the couch with Petiaks credit report clutched in my hand and sun streaming in through the two living room windows. The bad part was I had a crick in my neck from sleeping on the couch all night. The good part was I was already dressed.

  I went to the kitchen and started brewing coffee. I poured out a bowl of cereal and added milk, saying a silent thank-you to Morelli. It had been thoughtful of him to bring food, and I was sure he would have called back last night if it had been at all possible. I felt my eyes narrow and my blood pressure rise a little thinking about the phone call I never got and made an effort at composure. He was busy. He was working. He was Italian. Yada yada yada.

  I finished the cereal, poured myself a cup of coffee, and took it to the living room window. I looked down into the parking lot. No white Taurus.

  Mr. Warnick walked out of the building and got into his vintage Cadillac. He was wearing a sports jacket and tie. All dressed up for church. He didn't look cold. The sky was blue. The sun was shining. Birds were chirping. Spring had sneaked in while I was asleep on the couch.

  My head was filled with miscellaneous facts about Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak. They were all mediocre students in high school. Petiak went to a state college on a military scholarship. Smullen and Gorvich went to colleges that were unfamiliar to me. None of the men had been involved in varsity sports. Smullen had a sweet tooth. Gorvich collected wives but didn't keep them. Smullen had a wife in South America and a girlfriend in a slum in Trenton.

  Smullen had arranged a meeting with me, but didn't show. He'd also done a no-show on his girlfriend. I had bad vibes about Smullen. I was afraid something had gone down, and it hadn't been good for Smullen.

  Next up was a visit to Grandma.

  Unfortunately, all RangeMan vehicles are equipped with a tracking device. Between the bug in my purse and the transmitter in the Porsche, RangeMan knew my every move. And the guys were on high Stephanie alert until Ranger returned. I wanted to take a look at the warehouse this morning, and I didn't want to attract a lot of attention. I didn't want five guys in RangeMan black hovering around the structure, wondering if they should break in SWATstyle. So I was going to leave my purse and Ranger's Porsche at my parents' house and take Uncle Sandor's Buick.

  Uncle Sandor gave Grandma his ' powder blue and white Roadmaster Buick when he went into the nursing home. It's a classic car in cherry condition, and it's eerily indestructible. Men think it's a very cool car, but if I had my choice, I'd go with a red Ferrari.

  I drove the Cayenne to my parents' house and popped inside.

  “I'm going to borrow the Buick,” I told Grandma. “I'll bring it back in a couple of hours.”

  “You could drive it all you want. It almost never gets used.”

  I got behind the wheel of the monstrous Buick and cranked the V-eight over. I put it into reverse and backed it out of the garage and onto the street. The car rumbled under me, sucking gas and spewing toxins. I shoved it into drive and muscled it out of the Burg, took Hamilton to Broad, and cut through the center of town.

  The warehouse Dickie partly owns is on Stark Street. Stark Street starts bad and gets worse. The early blocks are marginal businesses mixed with slum housing. Shady entrepreneurial private enterprise flourishes on this part of Stark. You can buy everything from shoplifted Banana Republic T-shirts to the drug of your choice to a backseat BJ. It's a long street, and the farther you travel, the more the street gives over to anger and despair. Squatters live in the graffiti-riddled, condemned buildings of middle Stark. And finally, Stark turns to scrub fields and the skeletal remains of factories that are too wasted to draw even gang interest. Beyond this moonscape of scorched brick rubble, at the very end of Stark, just past the salvage graveyard, is a light industrial park. The rent is cheap and the access to Route One is excellent. Dickie s warehouse was in this industrial park.

  I turned onto Stark and had the road to myself. Sunday morning and everyone was sleeping off Saturday night. Good thing too, because I would have attracted attention in the Buick. I drove past the junkyard and into the small industrial park. It was dead quiet.

  The warehouse was next to an automotive paint and body shop. No cars were parked in the warehouse lot, but there were a couple cars in the body shop lot. I docked the Buick next to one of the cars in the body shop. Just in case someone happened by, I didn't want to make it obvious I was in the warehouse.

  The body shop was closed up tight, but I could hear a power tool being used inside. The diode on a security camera over a door blinked from red to green. I was being filmed. Probably worked on a motion sensor.

  I was debating moving the Buick when the door opened and a huge, tattooed, wild-haired guy stepped out.

  “Now what?” he said. “I'm clean.”

  It was Randy Sklar. He'd gotten busted for possession about six months ago. Vinnie had bonded him out, and he'd failed to appear. I'd found him in a bar drunk off his ass, and Lula and I had literally dragged him back to the police station.

  Only one reason for Randy Sklar to be up and working on a Sunday morning. This was a chop shop and Randy was taking a car apart. You don't let a hot car sit. You take a torch to it and in a couple of hours, the evidence is gone.

  I smiled at Randy because before he passed out and I slapped the cuffs on him, he'd been fun at the bar. And I was also smiling because this was a stroke of luck. Randy wasn't going to call the police if I broke into the warehouse. He was going to keep his bay doors down and locked and hope no one wanted to talk to him.

  “I'm not looking for you,” I told him. “I heard you managed to wiggle out of the possession charge.”

  “Yeah, there were some problems with police procedure. Are you looking to get rid of the Buick?”

  “No. I just want to park here while I go next door.”

  “Not much over there,” Randy said. “Looked to me like they cleaned house.”

  “I'm looking for the guy who owns it.”

  “Don't know nothing about that. Just know trucks come in and out at night while we're working. Figured it was the mob running a hijacking op, so we stayed away. Like to keep a low profile anyway. Then, a couple days ago, there's nonstop activity, and from what I could see through the open bays, the place got emptied out. And no one's been there since. At least no trucks.”

  “Cars?”

  “Haven't seen any, but they could park on the side. There's a door over there. Looks like there are offices on the second floor.”

  “So how's life?”

  “Life's okay. You should come back to the bar. I'll buy you a drink.”

  “That's a deal.”

  I crossed a small patch of blighted grass and circled the warehouse. Four loading docks in the back. Windows at the upper level. A locked front door. And a locked side door. If I were with Ranger this wouldn't be a problem. There was a frosted window and vent on a back corner. Bathroom. I could break the window and climb in. Probably set off a security alarm, but I'd have at least twenty minutes before anyone would respond to this location. And chances were decent no one would come at all.

  I went back to the Buick and got a tire iron out of the trunk. I whacked the window with the tire iron and cleaned out the glass as best I could. I carefully crawled through the window with minimum damage. A scrape on my arm and a tear in my jeans.

  I was in a bathroom that was best used in the dark. I held my breath and tiptoed out. I'd soak my shoes in Clorox when I got home. I flipped a switch, and overhead fluorescents blinked on.

  Randy was right. The warehouse had been swept clean. Not a scrap of garbage anywhere… other than in the bathroom. Lots of empty shelves. A couple long folding tables. Some folding chairs neatly stacked against a wall. No hint as to the use other than a lingering odor of something chemical. Gasoline or kerosene.

  There was a freight elevator and an enclosed stairwell servicing the second floor. I very quietly took the stairs. T
he door at the top was closed. I opened the door and found another empty storage area. An office with a large, smudged, frosted window looked out at the storeroom. I looked more closely and realized the window was dark with soot. This got my heart to flop around a little in my chest. I tried the door. Locked. I took a deep breath and used the tire iron on the office window.

  I looked inside the office, and it took a moment to figure it out. Sometimes things are so ghastly it takes time for your mind to catch up with your eyes. I was looking at a cadaver sitting in a chair behind a desk. The desk, the chair, the body, and the wall behind it were scorched black. All burned to a crisp. It was so terrible, so far removed from reality, that at first I had no emotional reaction other than disbelief. I was at the broken window, looking into the room, and the room smelled of smoke and charred flesh.