Takedown Twenty

  We worked our way through the shells and moved on to dessert. I was debating the wisdom of a second piece of cake when the doorbell rang, and Grandma jumped up and ran to the door.

  “There he is,” she said. “There’s my honeypot.”

  Gordon Krutch was wheezing from the effort of walking into the dining room. He was wearing a collared three-button knit shirt that stretched tight across his big belly and was showing signs of sweat seeping through the material in the chest area. He had a roll of fat hanging over his belt, and his tan slacks had a lot of crotch wrinkles. The wrinkles came down almost to his knees because he had legs like a Hobbit. Gordon Krutch was 5’ 4” on a good day.

  “Howdy do,” he said, smiling wide. “Looks like you’re just finishing up. Sorry, I’m a little early. I like to be punctual. It comes from being a public servant for forty-five years.”

  “Gordon worked for the DMV,” Grandma said. “He made sure everyone’s form was filled out right, and he gave the eye test.”

  “You’d be surprised at how many people try to cheat on the eye test,” Gordon said.

  “I got perfect eyesight,” Grandma said. “Except I gotta wear my glasses for the movies.”

  “Do you belong to the Senior Discount Club?” I asked Gordon.

  “I sure do. It’s a wonderful thing. All the best stores participate.” He looked at Randy. “In fact, I shop at this young man’s deli.”

  “Strip steak and my special meatloaf mix,” Randy said.

  “That’s me,” Gordon said. “Every week like clockwork.”

  “Did you know the women who were killed?” I asked him. “They were members of the Discount Club too.”

  “They sure were. I knew all of them. Lovely ladies. Just a terrible shame.”

  “We’re going to the movies,” Grandma said. “We’re going to see that film where everybody gets eaten by bugs.”

  My father looked over at Gordon. “I’ll give you fifty bucks if you take her to Vegas and marry her.”

  “Your son-in-law is a great kidder,” Gordon said to Grandma.

  “He isn’t kidding,” Grandma said. “You could probably get him up to a couple hundred.”

  Okay, so Gordon Krutch is short, fifty pounds overweight, and can’t breathe without an inhaler. And I can’t see him, gasping and wheezing, choking the life out of even the frailest old lady. And I’m pretty sure Grandma could beat the snot out of him. Still, he made me uncomfortable. He knew all the women, and he was icky.

  “Call me on my cellphone when you get home,” I said to Grandma. “I want to hear about the movie.”

  FOURTEEN

  I HELPED MY mother straighten the kitchen, retrieved my jeans and T-shirt, swapped out my Taurus for the Buick, and went home. Usually I go home with a bag of leftovers, but Randy’d eaten them. The shells, the cake, the antipasto… all gone. He said anytime I wanted to butcher some meat I should give him a call. I told him he’d be the first person I’d think of if I got the urge.

  I drove around the parking lot, and didn’t see any menacing cars. I parked, hustled inside, and locked myself in my apartment. It was almost nine. Too early to roust Sunny out of Rita’s bed, but not too early to call Ranger.

  “Hey, sexy guy,” I said to him. “Guess who?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “I can get to your apartment in five minutes.”

  “No, no, no. That’s not why I’m calling. I thought we could snag Sunny tonight. Maybe around ten o’clock.”

  “Will you still be awake?”

  “I’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”

  “Babe,” Ranger said. And he hung up.

  I did some television surfing but couldn’t find anything wonderful, so I parked Rex in the slow cooker and cleaned out his cage. I was waiting in the lobby at ten o’clock. A new black Porsche Cayenne glided to a stop in front of the lobby door and blinked its lights. I was pretty sure it was Ranger, but not entirely, so I called him on his cell.

  “Is this you?” I asked.

  The lights blinked again.

  I disconnected and got into the SUV. “A girl can’t be too careful,” I said, buckling up.

  Ranger glanced over at me for a beat and moved the Porsche out of the lot. I suspected the glance was the Ranger equivalent of an eye roll.

  Ten minutes later we were in front of Rita’s house. Lights were on in the front room. Drapes were drawn. No car in the driveway. Ranger and I got out and walked to the house. We looked in the dining room window and the kitchen window. We saw Rita but no Sunny. The light went out in the living room, Rita walked through the house, and the light went on in the back bedroom. We had a clear view of the room for a moment before she drew the drapes. No Sunny.

  “Call him,” Ranger said. “Let’s see if we hear a phone ringing somewhere in the house.”

  We didn’t hear any ringing, but Sunny picked up.

  “Hey, handsome,” I said. “Do you need a date?”

  “Yeah. Do you need to die?”

  I disconnected.

  “He knew it was me,” I said to Ranger.

  “Do you have an alternate address for this guy?”

  “I have several.”

  Ranger drove to Sunny’s apartment building at the corner of Fifteenth and Morgan. We parked across the street, stood on the sidewalk, and looked up into Sunny’s windows. All dark.

  “Either he’s asleep or he’s not home,” I said.

  Ranger stepped off the curb. “Let’s find out.”

  “Finding out” with Ranger is a whole different deal than finding out with Lula. Lula and I are Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. Ranger is Batman. I tagged after him into the building and up the stairs to 2B. He knocked twice, bumped the lock, and opened the door with his gun drawn. He paused for a moment, taking the measure of the room, listening for sounds of clothes rustling or a man sleeping. He quietly closed the apartment door behind him and flicked the beam from his Maglite around the room. I followed after him as he moved into the short hallway and the bedroom and looked in the closet and the bathroom. We moved on to the kitchen. He flipped the flashlight off and we exited the apartment, left the building, and returned to the Cayenne.

  “He’s not spending much time there, if any,” Ranger said. “No food in the refrigerator, hardly any clothes in his closet, no razor in the bathroom.”

  “He owns the entire block plus scattered properties in the area, but this was the address he listed as his residence. He rents out a three-story brownstone on Freeman next to the Chestnut Social Club. He uses the third floor as a counting room. It’s got a big safe in it. I know he spends time there, but I can’t see him making it home.”

  Ranger looked down the street. “Let’s take a walk.”

  We ambled along, looking in windows and doorways, listening to sounds of television and conversation that escaped from the buildings. We turned the corner, walked half a block, and entered the alley. It was dark and narrow, a place where trashcans and recycling bins were kept. Some of the houses had parking spaces, and some had outdoor backstairs. Windows overlooking the alley were small, and the lights behind them were dim.

  I stopped and pointed to a redbrick building. “This is the back of the Chestnut Social Club. I broke my finger falling down these stairs.” Lights were shining from every window. “The light you see is from an interior rear stairwell.”

  “Stay here in the shadows,” Ranger said. “I’ll look inside.”

  “There might be an alarm,” I told him, as I moved under the outside stairs and pressed myself against the brick wall. Ranger bumped the lock on the back door, slipped inside, and the door clicked closed. No alarm rang out.

  After what seemed like hours, Ranger reappeared and motioned me away from the building. “Sunny isn’t in there,” he said. “Do you have any other possibilities?”

  “I have too many possibilities. There are all these row houses, plus he’s related to half the Burg.”

>   “Your call,” Ranger said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “How about a beer and onion rings?”

  “I like it.”

  He was very close. I saw his eyes focus on my mouth, and I knew he was going to kiss me. I leaned into him, and his attention went from my mouth to something at the end of the block.

  “I just saw a giraffe,” Ranger said. “He was walking down Freeman.”

  “That’s Kevin.”

  Ranger grinned. “You know him?”

  “I’ve seen him around.”

  There was shouting from the front side of the building, and car doors slamming. An engine caught and tires chirped. Kevin skittered around the corner at full gallop, charged past us, and disappeared into the darkness. A black SUV with tinted windows rounded the corner, obviously chasing Kevin. It blew past us, screeching to a stop at the cross street.

  “They’ve lost him,” I said.

  “Hard to believe you could lose a giraffe.”

  “Kevin is wily. And the guys in the SUV might not be exceptionally smart.”

  The SUV moved into the intersection and made a U-turn.

  “Smart enough to come back to run over us,” Ranger said.

  He grabbed my hand, tugging me through the back door and into the social club’s back stairwell. We ran flat-out through the club, past four old men playing cards. One of the men was Joe’s Uncle Chooch.

  “Hey, Stephanie,” Uncle Chooch said. “Long time no see.”

  I looked over at him and stumbled, crashing into a rickety table holding a cappuccino machine. The machine fell off the table, and coffee and cups went flying in all directions.

  Ranger grabbed me and shoved me out the front door. We sprinted to the Porsche, jumped in, and Ranger drove off. I turned in my seat in time to see several men standing in front of the social club with guns drawn. Hard to identify them in the dark, but I imagined they were the usual players. Maybe Uncle Chooch.

  “So that went pretty smooth,” I said to Ranger.

  He glanced over at me. “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll have to kill you.”

  I was almost positive he was kidding.

  “You could buy me off with the onion rings,” I told him.

  “Deal.”

  We went to a downtown pub that was so dark we were almost invisible to each other as we slid into a corner booth. We ordered cheese fries, onion rings, and beer.

  “Are you actually going to eat cheese fries and onion rings?” I asked him.

  “That was my plan.”

  “What about the healthy food thing? Wouldn’t you rather have a salad? Tree bark? A chunk of salmon?”

  “I didn’t see tree bark on the menu. Have you made any progress with the Gillian murder?”

  “Melvina Gillian belonged to a senior discount club. All the murdered women belonged. So they all shopped at the same grocery store, liquor store, and bakery, because they were given a discount. I thought I’d get a list of the stores tomorrow and check them out. Also, Rose Walchek is being buried on Sunday, and there’s going to be a viewing for her tomorrow night. I thought you would want to attend one or both.”

  “You thought wrong. I’ll pay you double if you go without me.”

  “I’ll go to the viewing, but I’m not going to the funeral. I get emotional at funerals.”

  “Good enough.”

  I checked my phone and found I had a message from Grandma. She said she was home and going to bed, and she’d talk to me tomorrow.

  FIFTEEN

  THE BONDS OFFICE is open for half a day on Saturday, but the truth is the bonds office never really shuts down. People need to get bonded out on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, and Vinnie and Connie take the calls on their cellphones. My job is even more unstructured. I get paid when I catch someone, so I’m always looking. The day of the week doesn’t matter to me.

  I parked at the curb just as Connie was unlocking the front door. We went inside, and I got coffee brewing.

  “Ranger and I went looking for Sunny last night, but we couldn’t find him,” I told Connie. “He wasn’t with Rita.”

  “He just took a load of buckshot. He’s probably sitting on a rubber donut somewhere, eating comfort food. Find a nurturing relative.”

  “Anything new come in for me?”

  “Billie Jean Bailey skipped out. I called her mom, and she said Billie Jean followed her boyfriend to Florida. It was a shoplifting charge and not worth a trip south. You can keep it in your bag for when Billie Jean has a fight with the boyfriend and comes home. And the other one to come in is a bad one. Armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Nineteen years old. His file photo shows gang tattoos. He gave Stark Street as his address, but it’s an apartment in someone else’s name. Probably this kid shuffles around.”

  I took both files and shoved them into my messenger bag. “I’m going to mooch breakfast from my mom. Have Lula call me when she comes in.”

  I left the office and drove the short distance to my parents’ house. I parked in the driveway, got out of the car, and almost had an orgasm from the aroma of bacon frying. The smell was positively oozing out of the house.

  “We got bacon and pancakes going this morning,” Grandma said, opening the door for me. “Your mother got a new griddle, and we had to test it out. You’re just in time.”

  I took a seat at the kitchen table and set my bag on the floor. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s off to help your sister unplug a toilet,” Grandma said.

  My mother gave me a plate heaped with pancakes and bacon, and my grandmother brought a mug and the coffeepot to the table. I added butter and syrup and dug in.

  “How’d the date go?” I asked Grandma. “Sorry I missed your message.”

  “It went real good. We went to the movies and then we stopped at the diner for pie. He even paid for it. And he told me all about when he was in the Army, and how his gallbladder almost burst last year, and how he only has four toes on one foot. Can you imagine?”

  At the risk of being politically incorrect and an insensitive idiot, I thought four toes on one foot when coupled with the flab belly, wheezing and sweating, and zombie complexion might significantly lower his hotness rating for me.

  “Gee,” I said. “That’s different.”

  “Yeah,” Grandma said. “Good thing he has a car. It makes up for a lot of deformity.”

  “There’s going to be a viewing tonight for Rose Walchek,” I said to Grandma. “Do you want to go with me?”

  “I already promised Gordon I’d go with him. He’s picking me up early, so we get a seat with a view of the casket. And then we’re going out after. They’re having a wine tasting at the liquor store. You get to try all the wines for free.”

  “You shouldn’t be drinking with him,” my mother said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “He was a perfect gentleman last night,” Grandma said. “He didn’t cuss or pass gas or nothing.”

  “How about you?” I asked Grandma. “Did you do any of those things?”

  “I might have slipped one out in the movie,” Grandma said, “but I don’t think anyone noticed.”

  I was on my last piece of bacon when Lula called.

  “I’m at the office,” she said. “Do we have anything to do today?”

  “We could track down a gang guy wanted for armed robbery and assault.”

  “That sounds like a lot of fun, but I might have to pass on account of I don’t want to die right now.”

  “We could visit some of Sunny’s relatives and ask if he’s staying with them.”

  “Ditto for the above reason.”

  “We could do some leg work for Ranger on the Dumpster murders.”

  “I might be willing to help you with that if you bring me some bacon from your mama’s kitchen.”

  “Too late. I ate it all.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  Five minutes later I picked Lula up, and we drove to the Senior Center to get a complete list of bus
inesses involved in the Senior Discount Club.

  “We only give this list out to members,” the woman in the small administrative office said.

  She had short brown hair, narrow lips, military posture, and eyebrows that looked like they’d been drawn on with a brown crayon. She was in her mid-fifties to early sixties, and she was taking her Saturday job seriously.

  “I realize that,” I said, “but my granny is thinking about becoming more active at the Senior Center and she’s interested in this program. I thought it would be helpful if I got some information for her.”

  “If she’s thinking of becoming more active she should start now and pick our program brochure up for herself,” the woman said.

  “Good point,” I said. “But this is a busy day for her, so I’m helping out.”

  “The rules say the list only goes to members,” the woman said. “Your grandmother will have to become a member, and then she’ll get the list.”

  “Fine. I’ll sign her up to be a member.”

  “Impossible,” the woman said. “She has to do that in person. How would we know whom we were signing up? It could be anyone. It could be a twelve-year-old.”

  “What’s with this?” Lula said. “You could vote in this state with less fuss. Nobody cares how old you are or if you’re dead. All’s gotta happen is someone signs your name and they can vote. And here you are saying we can’t get a list of stores for her granny. It’s because I’m here, isn’t it? You’re doing racial profiling. You don’t want no big and beautiful black woman to have the list. I’m gonna call people. I’m calling the newspaper and Oprah. I’m gonna organize and get some signs made. I got posterboard and Magic Markers in my trunk.”

  “Rules are rules,” the woman said.

  “Well, I’m not leaving without the list,” Lula said. “I’m gonna sit here in this stupid little sad-ass office until I get it.”

  “I can have you removed,” the woman said. “I can call the police and have you arrested.”

  “Oh yeah, I like that,” Lula said. “I got my iPhone all ready to record. Prune-face volunteer in old people’s home has big and beautiful black woman arrested for wanting to help her friend’s granny. That’s going viral on YouTube. I bet I get famous. I could get a model contract from that.”