Takedown Twenty

  My heart did a painful contraction and a chill ripped through me.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” I said to my mom. “I’m going to use the bathroom, and I’ll call someone for a ride.”

  I didn’t need to use the bathroom. I needed to see my grandmother’s room, and I didn’t want to alarm my mother. She was already ironing. More bad news and she’d be chugging whiskey.

  I went upstairs and looked through Grandma’s bedroom. My mother was right about the computer. It was missing. Grandma had a small desk in her room. I rifled the drawers but found nothing. No names or addresses scribbled anywhere. She didn’t have a cellphone. The single sunflower was in a bud vase on the desk. I looked through her dresser and under the bed. Nothing. I called Ranger and asked him to pick me up and track down the Buick.

  “Who’s picking you up?” my mother asked when I came back to the kitchen.

  “Ranger.”

  My mother’s eyes flicked to the cabinet where she kept the whiskey.

  “What?” I asked. “Now what?”

  “Morelli has turned into a nice boy, but now you have this Ranger. What kind of a person only wears black?”

  “It’s easy for him. Everything matches.”

  “I hear things about him. It’s like he’s Batman.”

  “He’s not Batman. He’s just a guy who owns a security agency.”

  “Why don’t you call Joseph for a ride?”

  “He’s working.”

  I gave my mom a kiss on the cheek and promised I’d call if I heard from Grandma. I grabbed my messenger bag and went outside to wait for Ranger.

  Five minutes later he rolled to a stop in his Porsche 911 Turbo. I slid in and thought there was some truth to what my mother had said. He was Batman without the rubber suit.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I’m worried about Grandma. I think she might be with the Dumpster killer.”

  The Buick had been left in a small parking lot attached to a 7-Eleven on Broad Street. Ranger and I got out of the Porsche and went to the car. It was unlocked. Empty inside. No bodies. No blood. No Venetian blind cord or cryptic messages.

  “Where do we go from here?” I asked Ranger.

  “Do you have suspects?”

  “Randy Berger just got out of jail, and I helped burn down his apartment, so I think he’s off the list. Hard to believe it could be Victor, but he did say he might have a lady friend in for pork chops.”

  “Then let’s visit Victor.”

  “He owns Victory Hardware, but I have no idea where he lives.”

  Ranger made a phone call, and moments later he had an address.

  “He lives over the store,” he said. “He owns the building.”

  We were there in a matter of minutes. The store was still open, so we stopped in there first.

  “Howdy,” Snoot said to me, looking Ranger over. “I see you brought Batman with you.”

  “I’m looking for Victor.”

  “He’s upstairs. He’s got a big night planned.”

  “How do I get upstairs?” I asked Snoot.

  “There’s a door on the street, next to the store. There’s a buzzer, but it don’t always work.”

  We went outside and rang the buzzer. No response.

  “Okay, Batman,” I said to Ranger. “Do your thing.”

  Ranger took a slim jim from a pocket in his cargo pants and opened the door. We stepped inside and I yelled for Victor.

  Victor appeared at the top of the stairs. “Did you come for pork chops?”

  “No. I came to ask a question.”

  “Well, come on up. The missus and me are having a cocktail.”

  “You have a missus?”

  “Don’t everybody got a missus?”

  We climbed the stairs and stepped into Victor’s living room.

  “This here’s the missus,” Victor said, arm around a woman who looked like Victor with a tan. She had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and a martini in her hand.

  “Was real nice of you to give Victor those chops,” she said to me. “We got plenty if you want to join us with your fella.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but we have plans. I just wanted to stop by and say hello.”

  “Okay, then,” Victor said. “Stop around anytime.”

  Ranger was smiling when we got to the sidewalk.

  “What’s with the smile?” I asked him. “I don’t see you smile a lot.”

  “I liked them.”

  Here’s the thing about the men in my life. They’re smarter than I am, and they have a profound sense of humanity that I can only see from a distance. They work in the gutter, exposed to all the insanity and violence that human beings are capable of exhibiting, but they aren’t destroyed or overwhelmed by it. They hunt down men who have done terrible things, but they see this as an aberration and not as the norm. And they recognize good people when they see them.

  “Any more suspects?” Ranger asked. “Do we need to look at the man who took your grandmother to the viewing?”

  “Gordon Krutch. My mom didn’t think Grandma was with him, and I think he would need an accomplice, but he’s definitely on the suspects list.”

  Ranger got the address and we drove across town to an apartment building by the DMV offices. We parked and took the elevator to the third floor. The building was very Practical Pig. Sturdy construction. Neatly maintained. Nothing fancy. We rang the bell to Krutch’s apartment, and Krutch answered with his left arm in a plaster cast.

  “What happened?” I asked him.

  “I was picking Myra Flekman up to take her to her doctor’s visit this morning, and I tripped over the curb and broke my arm.” He stared at my nose and grimaced. “What happened to you?”

  “I fell down the stairs.” It was easier than explaining how I’d hit myself in the nose with a gun barrel. “I was looking for Grandma, but I guess you haven’t seen her today.”

  “No. I spent most of the day in the emergency room.”

  We returned to Ranger’s car, and Ranger called his monitoring station.

  “The Buick hasn’t been moved,” he told me. “It’s still parked in the lot.”

  “Grandma left in the middle of the afternoon, so she’s not going to Bingo, and she’s not going to a funeral home viewing.”

  “What about her female friends? Have you called any of them?”

  “My mom might have tried some close friends. I’ll go back to the house and make some calls. I don’t think there’s any more you can do. Thanks for driving me around.”

  Ranger put the Porsche in gear and pulled into traffic. “I’ll continue to monitor the Buick, and I’ll have my men watch for your grandmother when they’re on patrol. And I’ll have your SUV dropped off at your parents’ house.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  MY FATHER WAS in his chair watching television when I walked in. My mother was setting the table for dinner. She set a place for Grandma even though Grandma wasn’t there. And she set a place for me.

  “Did you call any of Grandma’s women friends?” I asked my mother.

  “I called Betty Farnsworth and Loretta Best. She’s been friendly with them lately. I didn’t want to make a big deal of this and call half the Burg when for all I know your grandmother could be shopping at the mall.”

  I helped my mom get the food to the table, all of us trying to maintain some normalcy, trying to push aside the feeling that something was very wrong. My mom was aided in this effort by a large tumbler of whiskey. My dad took solace in gravy. I had nothing. On the outside I think I looked pretty good, but on the inside I was panicked.

  I put my napkin on my lap and went through the motions of putting food on my plate. She’s probably fine, I told myself, but in my gut I didn’t believe it. My gut told me she was in danger, and it was partially my fault. I should have caught this guy by now. I should have been smarter and worked harder.

  I was staring at my food, pushing it around, when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number
, but I recognized the voice. It was Grandma.

  “Where are you?” Grandma asked. “Can you talk? I don’t want your mother to know I’m talking to you.”

  “I’m at the dinner table.”

  “Well, I’m in a pickle. I need a ride.”

  I excused myself from the table and went to the kitchen.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Grandma.

  “Sure I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “There’s a lunatic out there who’s killing women and throwing them in Dumpsters. We were worried about you. We didn’t know where you were.”

  “I’m at Sixteenth Street. I don’t know the number, but there’s a wine shop on the ground floor and I’m on the second floor.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “I’m with Uncle Sunny. Only he’s dead. Don’t tell your mother. One minute he was singing ‘My Way’ and the next thing he was dead.”

  “Omigod, did someone kill him?”

  “I guess you might say I killed him. He was sort of in the throes of passion when he keeled over.”

  I gave a gurgle of laughter, more out of horror than humor. “Did you dial 911?”

  “Not yet. I was waiting for him to get normal, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

  “Normal?”

  “Yeah, let’s just say he was stiff way before rigor mortis set in.”

  “Are you sure he’s… you know?”

  “Got a boner?”

  “No! Dead.”

  “Yep. He’s dead all right.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”

  “Grandma’s fine,” I said to my mother on my way through the dining room. “I’m going to pick her up.”

  “Take your father,” my mother said.

  “Not necessary. He hasn’t finished eating.”

  My father picked his head up. “What? Did I miss something?”

  I grabbed my messenger bag and ran out to the new loaner SUV that was parked at the curb.

  I called Lula from the road. “I found Sunny,” I said. “He’s on Sixteenth Street. I might need help. Are you home?”

  “Yeah. You want me to meet you?”

  “I’ll pick you up on my way across town.”

  Once a felon dies and is in the hands of the coroner, the paperwork is staggering, and it takes forever to get the bail bond released. If I could manage to get Sunny to the police station, claiming he died on the way, the whole process would be simplified.

  Lula was waiting for me in front of her apartment house. “I see you got a new car,” she said, buckling herself in. “It looks like another Rangeman car. You ever wonder where all these new cars come from?”

  “I try not to think about it.”

  “How’d you come to find Uncle Sunny?”

  “Grandma found him. And that’s another thing I don’t want to think about.”

  I parked in front of the wine shop, and Lula and I took the stairs to the second floor. Grandma had the door open when we reached the landing.

  “I was looking out the window, and I saw you park,” she said. “Snazzy new car. I bet it belongs to Ranger.”

  We stepped into the apartment and closed and locked the door behind us. Sunny was stretched out on the floor, covered by a white sheet.

  “Is that what I think it is sticking up like a tent pole?” Lula asked.

  “It won’t go down,” Grandma said. “I even tried bending it. I was gonna try smashing it with a fry pan, but it seemed disrespectful of the dead.”

  “Yeah, the dead don’t like that,” Lula said. “How’d he get in this condition?”

  “Well, we started out at the movies,” Grandma said, “and then we came here to his bachelor pad for some action.”

  Lula and I looked around the bachelor pad. Red velvet couch. White sheepskin rug. King-size bed with a red satin bedspread. Disco ball. A pole that wasn’t intended to be used by firemen.

  “I was stripped down to my new lavender thong, doing some real kinky things on the pole,” Grandma said, “and he was singing Sinatra songs, and all of a sudden his eyes rolled back in his head, and crash he’s dead.”

  “He had a bad heart,” I told Grandma.

  Grandma nodded. “I probably should have gone easy on him instead of using all my hot dance moves in the beginning.”

  “I know some working women who would kill for this setup,” Lula said.

  “He was a real swinger,” Grandma said. “He even has champagne in the refrigerator.”

  “Too bad he had to croak on you,” Lula said.

  “Tell me about it. I finally think I’ve got a live one, and he turns out to be another dead one.”

  “How could you go out on a date with him?” I asked Grandma. “He was wanted for murder. And you knew I was after him.”

  “You gave up on being after him,” Grandma said. “You quit being a bounty hunter. And it’s not like he was ever convicted of murder.”

  “Granny’s got a point,” Lula said. “Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty.”

  “I ran into him at the bakery yesterday,” Grandma said, “and one thing led to another, and we emailed, and before I knew it I said I’d go to the movies with him. I didn’t see any harm in going to a movie with him, but then our hormones took over, and now here he is dead as a doorknob.”

  “What about Rita?” Lula said. “Rita expected Sunny to marry her.”

  “He told me all about her,” Grandma said. “He kept her around for appearances. He didn’t really like her. And she wouldn’t play Bingo with him. I brought my laptop so we could play Bingo if we wanted.”

  Lula looked down at Sunny. “What are we gonna do with him? We gonna drag his behind down the stairs, out to the car, and take him for a ride to the pokey so Vinnie gets his money back?”

  “Yep,” I said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Okay, maybe it was slightly unethical, but Sunny was dead. It didn’t matter to him, but it would matter a lot to me. I’d be able to put gas in the car so I could go to the personal products plant to apply for a job.

  I lifted the sheet and looked at him. He was fully dressed in a three-button knit shirt and slacks. This would make things a lot easier.

  “I guess you were the only one in your undies,” Lula said to Grandma.

  “He was crooning, and I was stripping,” Grandma said. “I would rather have had some disco, but I made do with Sinatra.”

  We pulled Sunny up and got him into a chair. He didn’t look too bad. A little pale, but his eyes were open, and he looked sort of alert.

  “We’ll get him by the armpits,” I said to Lula. “That way if someone sees us take him out it’ll look like he’s still sort of alive.”

  I looked down at his feet. He was wearing red socks but no shoes. “Where are his shoes?”

  “He kicked them off over by the bed,” Grandma said.

  I went to the bed to get his shoes, and I almost stepped on a brand-new package of Venetian blind cord that was on the floor, next to the nightstand. I felt my eyes go wide, and my heart skipped a couple beats. “Holy shit.”

  “Now what?” Lula asked.

  I held the package of cord up. “Venetian blind cord.”

  “He said that was in case we wanted to play spanky spanky or bad boys and good girls,” Grandma said.

  “The Dumpster killer strangled all the women with Venetian blind cord,” I told Grandma.

  “I didn’t know that,” Grandma said. “They didn’t say anything about that on television.”

  Lula looked over at Sunny. “Do you think he’s the killer? It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him, being that he probably kills people all the time business-wise.”

  “Hard to believe,” Grandma said. “He’s so gallant. And look how cute he is in his red socks.”

  The bachelor pad was a floor-through efficiency consisting of one large loft-type room and bath. Windows looked out at the street and also at the alley. A shadow passed by an alley-si
de window.

  “It’s Kevin!” Lula said. “I bet he knows I’m here. I’ll be right back.”

  And she ran out the rear door and down the rear stairs.

  “Now what?” Grandma asked.

  “Now we get Sunny to the car without her. I’m not waiting.”

  “Are you going to put his shoes on him?”

  Dead people aren’t on my favorite-things list. I could drag Sunny’s body down the stairs if I really had to, but putting shoes on him was at a whole other creep level.

  “Do you think it’s necessary?” I asked Grandma.

  “Maybe not. It’s not like we have to worry about his feet getting cold.”

  The lock tumbled on the front door, the door opened, and Shorty and Moe stepped in.

  “What the heck?” Moe said.

  I was holding the Venetian blind cord in my hand, Sunny was looking a little droopy in the chair, and Grandma did a little finger wave to Moe.

  “You aren’t supposed to be here,” Moe said to me.

  It was starting to fall into place. I had a bad feeling Moe and Shorty were here to pick up Grandma’s dead body and prepare it for a Dumpster burial.

  “We were just leaving,” I told Moe. “Grandma needed a ride home.”

  “Oh yeah? What have you got in your hand?”

  I looked at the cord. “Sex toy?”

  Moe slid a glance at Sunny. “What’s wrong with Sunny? He doesn’t look good.”

  “He’s dead,” Grandma said.

  Shorty took a closer look. “Hey!” he yelled at Sunny. No reaction. Shorty poked him. Still no reaction. “Yep, he’s dead all right,” Shorty said.

  Moe was looking disgusted. “Perfect. We come to do a simple cleanup, and we end up with this.”

  “Don’t let us stop you,” I said, grabbing Grandma’s hand, yanking her toward the front door. “We’ll be on our way.”

  “You’ll be going nowhere,” Moe said, pointing his gun at me. “You know too much. You’ve been trouble from the start. Always sticking your nose in where it don’t belong. And nothing ever goes right with you. Everyone else dies when we drop them off the bridge, but not you. You have to have some hotshot Batman rescue you.”