Motor Mouth: A Barnaby Novel

  “He didn’t request one. Although, Mr. Miranda has stayed here before, and in the past has used our ser vices to obtain female companionship.”

  “I thought I recognized him. I did him last year. He was here for the Orange Bowl, right? I remember him because he has a crooked…you know.”

  “Don’t you hate that?” the desk clerk said. “Did you charge extra?”

  “What’s his first name again?”

  “Anthony.”

  “Anthony Miranda. Yep, that’s the guy.” I borrowed the pen on the counter and wrote a fake number on the back of a hotel brochure. “Here’s my cell number,” I said to the desk clerk. “Tell Anthony Miranda that Dolly says hello.” I swung my ass out of the lobby, across the street, and into the SUV. “Anthony Miranda,” I said to Hooker.

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s it. Just a name. I probably could have learned more, but I would have needed a manicure.”

  Hooker returned to the marina lot, parked, and got Skippy up on the speakerphone.

  “I need some help,” Hooker said to Skippy.

  “No shit.”

  “I need information on a guy. Anthony Miranda. Know anything about him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Google him or something and call me back.”

  “Whatever happened to the good old days when all NASCAR had to worry about were pregnant pit lizards and trashed hotel rooms? Earnhardt Senior wouldn’t have called up and asked me to Google for him. He was a driver.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Hooker said, disconnecting.

  “You’re a good driver,” I said to Hooker. “You just suck as a detective.”

  A limo pulled into the lot and idled at the path leading to the marina. The limo door opened, and Suzanne Huevo got out. She was wearing a pale yellow suit, her hair was pulled tight, her doggie bag was on her shoulder, and her earlobes were weighed down with diamonds.

  “Damage inspection,” Hooker said.

  Suzanne disappeared down the path, and the limo waited at idle. Five minutes later, Suzanne reappeared, got into the limo, and the limo took off.

  Hooker put the SUV in gear. “Might as well follow her,” he said. “We follow everyone else. And we haven’t got anything else to do.”

  The limo rolled down Collins and pulled into the porte cochere on a condo building a couple doors down from the Ritz. Suzanne got out and strutted into the building. The limo left.

  “Huh,” Hooker said. “That didn’t amount to much. This is where she’s living now.”

  “Do you have any other ideas?”

  “There’s a Starbucks around the corner. We could get coffee and one of those cranberry cakes with the icing on top.”

  “I meant do you have any ideas about how we can get ourselves off the Most Wanted list.”

  “Nope,” Hooker said, putting the car in gear, heading for Starbucks. “I don’t have any of those ideas.”

  Ten minutes later I was leaving Starbucks with two large cups of coffee and two cranberry cakes. I pushed through the large glass door, took the steps to the sidewalk, and looked across the street just in time to see the SUV pull away, followed by the black BMW.

  My first reaction was disbelief. For a moment the earth stopped spinning on its axis and nothing moved. Time stood still. And then a horrible ache grew in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. And my vision blurred behind tears. And I knew it was real. Hooker was gone. The bad guys had him. And these bad guys were a cut above Lucca and Rodriguez. Lucca and Rodriguez were thugs. I suspected Simon and his partner were polished professionals.

  I sat down hard on the cement steps behind me and put my head between my legs, sucking in air. Get a grip, I thought. This is no time to fall apart. I blew my nose in a Starbucks napkin. I sipped some coffee, trying to calm myself, trying to think. “Here’s what has to be done,” I said to myself. “You have to find Hooker before they hurt him. You need help. Call Rosa and Felicia.”

  I was still on the steps in front of Starbucks when Rosa pulled to the curb. I was wired on two cups of coffee and a piece of cranberry cake. I’d managed to stop the flood of tears, but I was feeling horrible that Hooker had been snatched by the bad guys. And I was determined to get him back in useable condition.

  Rosa was driving a magenta Toyota Camry that had been customized with a rear spoiler and a fluorescent red-orange-and-green-flame paint job. Felicia was in the seat next to her. And Beans was in the backseat, his nose pressed against the window, staring out at me.

  I slid onto the seat next to Beans and my attention was caught by the arsenal tucked into the pockets on the seat backs. Three semiautomatics, two revolvers, a stun gun, and a bear-size can of pepper spray. Plus what looked like a sawed-off shotgun on the floor.

  Felicia saw me looking at the guns. “You never know,” she said. “Better to be prepared, right?”

  Prepared for what? World War III?

  “What do we do now?” Rosa wanted to know. “We’re ready to go get those sonsabitches. Do you know where they took Hooker?”

  “No. But I know where they’re staying. It’s the little white hotel on Collins that has the big front porch with the rocking chairs. I thought we could start looking there.”

  “I know the hotel,” Rosa said, edging into traffic. “The Pearl.”

  I sat back and called Skippy.

  “I’m calling for Hooker,” I said. “Did you get anything on Anthony Miranda?”

  “Turns out there are a lot of Anthony Mirandas. There’s a drummer, a New York cop, a politician, a guy who has a Zurich-based export company—”

  “That’s the one. The exporter.”

  “I knew it would be the exporter. From what I read, he mostly exports guns and illegal military technology.”

  “Not good news. I was hoping for chocolate.”

  “Where’s Hooker?” Skippy asked.

  “You know how there are all those movie-star impersonators? You might want to try to find a Hooker double…just in case.”

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” Skippy said. And he hung up.

  Rosa parked on the street, half a block from the Pearl Hotel. We left Beans in the car, guarding the guns, and Rosa, Felicia, and I took the lobby like here-come-the-hookers.

  The same immaculately turned-out guy was at the desk, and his eyes got wide when we all barreled in.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “Maybe too much of a good thing.”

  “Anthony is expecting us,” I told him.

  “He didn’t say anything…”

  Rosa was wearing a V-neck red sweater that showed a lot of boob squished so tight together a man would suffocate if he got his nose caught in her cleavage. “We’ve been invited for brunch,” Rosa said.

  “He didn’t order any brunch,” the desk clerk said.

  “Honey pie,” Rosa said, “we are brunch.”

  “But they aren’t here. They all went out about a half hour ago. Something about our coffee not being up to their standards, and they were looking for a Starbucks.”

  So maybe Rodriguez and Lucca told them about Hooker, and the Zurich chip buyers ran into him by accident. How crappy is that?

  “Anthony said we should go upstairs and get ready,” I told the clerk. “He said you’d let us in his room.”

  “Oh, no. I can’t do that. I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Okay, then we’ll get ready here,” Rosa said. And she stripped off her sweater.

  “Eek!” the desk clerk said. “No, no, no. You can’t do that in the lobby.”

  “Here goes me, too,” Felicia said, unbuttoning her lavender-flowered shirt.

  The desk clerk clapped his hands over his eyes. “I can’t look. I’m not looking.”

  “Unless you want to see Felicia’s granny panties hit the floor, you’d better give me the key,” I said.

  He shoved a card at me. “Take it. Take it and go! Get out of my lobby. Room 315.”

  Felicia, Rosa, and I flounced off to the elevator
and rode to the third floor. I let us into the room, and we went through everything.

  “This guy has no imagination,” Felicia said. “Look at his boxers. They’re all the same color. No pictures or anything.”

  I turned on his laptop. Nothing on its desktop. Nothing interesting in his hard drive. I went into his mail program. Wiped clean. Nothing on his calendar.

  “There isn’t anything here,” I said. “He must export everything onto a memory stick.” I looked around for a memory stick but came up empty.

  “There’s a little safe in the closet,” Rosa said. “Probably he got the good stuff in there because it’s locked. Nothing in his jacket pockets.”

  Felicia’s cell phone rang. “It’s my niece,” Felicia said, handing the phone to me. “Hooker is there with three men, and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Hey,” I said to Hooker. “How’s it going?”

  “It could be better. I’m here with three gentlemen who are interested in the computer chip. Turns out it’s not behind the picture of Jesus anymore.”

  “I had Felicia take it. I thought I might need it to ransom you.”

  “Oh man, that’s a relief. So you have the chip with you?”

  I looked over at Felicia. “You have that little chip from the back of the Jesus picture, right?”

  “Yes and no,” Felicia said. “I got it, and then when I was looking for the guns, I put the chip on the table, and Beans ate it.”

  “What?”

  “How was I to know? I left the room for three seconds and when I come back, Mr. Sneaky Dog had his tongue on the table and the chip was gone.”

  I was speechless.

  “It could be worse,” Felicia said. “At least we know where it is. You just have to wait for him to poopie.”

  “Hello,” Hooker said. “Are you still there?”

  “The chip is temporarily unavailable,” I told him. “Let me talk to Miranda.”

  There was some fumbling and Miranda came on the phone.

  “Listen,” I said, “there’s a small problem here, and the chip is temporarily unavailable, but we know exactly where it is, and we’re going to get it to you as soon as possible. Now here’s the thing, if one hair is out of place on Sam Hooker’s head you’ll never see the chip.”

  “Now here’s my thing. Get me the chip or you’re going to have a dead boyfriend.”

  “Technically, he isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Miranda said. He gave me his cell phone number and disconnected.

  “We have twenty-four hours to swap the chip for Hooker,” I said to Rosa and Felicia.

  “Maybe we feed doggie some prunes and it make things go faster,” Felicia said. “Works for me.”

  “Maybe we wait for the bad guys to return and we kick their ass,” Rosa said.

  I thought they both sounded like okay ideas. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “One of you can do surveillance on the hotel, and the other can come with me to buy prunes.”

  “I don’t want to do surveillance,” Rosa said. “It’s just sitting and waiting.”

  “I don’t want to do it either,” Felicia said. “I want to be where the action is. I’ll call my nephew Carl. He can do surveillance. He’s between jobs. He’d be happy to have something to do.”

  “Carl,” Rosa said. “I know him. Wasn’t he busted for possession?”

  “Yeah, but he’s clean now. He lives in a group home a couple blocks from here, and he’s probably sitting around watching television. He used to bag at a supermarket, but they switched to plastic bags, and he couldn’t get the hang of it.”

  Ten minutes later, we were out of the hotel and across the street with Carl. He was a chunky five seven, with dark skin, shoulder-length black hair, too big jeans, and a shiny gold tooth in the front of his mouth. We sat him on a curbside bench and gave him descriptions of the men and cars, including Hooker. He had a cell phone, a quart bottle of soda, mirrored sunglasses, and a ball cap…everything he needed for a day of Miami surveillance.

  “Carl don’t look too bright,” Rosa said when we got back to the Camry.

  “He’s fried his brain a little with the drugs, but he’ll be fine,” Felicia said. “He’s very conscientious. He found Jesus.”

  “He looks like he found Him in a pool hall,” Rosa said.

  “There’s a convenience store attached to the marina,” I told Rosa. “We might be able to buy prunes there, and we can check the parking lot for the black BMW.”

  Beans was sitting beside me on the backseat, breathing hot dog breath down Felicia’s neck.

  “Someone give doggie a mint,” Felicia said. “He needs a mint real bad. Next time no breakfast burritos for him.”

  “We’ll get mints when we get the prunes,” I told her.

  “I brought him with because we have to watch him all the time so we don’t miss the big event,” Felicia said.

  I didn’t want to think about the big event. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to find the teeny-tiny chip in the midst of the big event. I was going to need a contamination suit and gas mask.

  Rosa went all the way on Collins, rolled past Joe’s Stone Crabs, and cut into the parking lot next to Monty’s. She crept up and down the aisles, so we could check out the cars, but we didn’t see the BMW.

  “I still want to take a look at the boat,” I said. “And I’d like to let Beans stretch his legs.”

  Felicia turned and looked Beans in the face. “Do you have to poopie?” she asked him.

  “It’s too soon,” Rosa said, nosing the Camry into a slot and cutting the engine. “He hasn’t had any prunes yet. And anyway, it doesn’t just go in and out bing, bang, boom. It’s not like it’s sex!”

  “It does if you eat enough prunes,” Felicia said. “And you should stop having sex with bing, bang, boom men. That’s married sex. If I was divorced like you, I’d set the egg timer on me first. No bing and bang without a boom.”

  “It’s a crap shoot out there,” Rosa said. “You roll the dice and sometimes you get a bing and a bang and sometimes you get a boom. That’s why God gave women shower massage.”

  We all got out of the car and walked toward the marina.

  “You better watch what you say about God,” Felicia said. “He listens, you know. If I was you, I’d say some Hail Marys tonight just in case.”

  Rosa looked sideways at Felicia. “I suppose you never used the shower massage?”

  “Well, sure, but I don’t bring God into it. I think shower massage might have been invented by the devil. God invented the missionary position.”

  We were on the dock, looking out at the piers. Everything was business as usual, except the Huevo yacht was missing. I walked Beans down to the pier where the yacht used to be tied and approached a guy who was getting ready to shove off on a Hatteras.

  “Where’s the Huevo boat?” I asked.

  “It just left. It’s going to Fort Lauderdale for repairs. They had a fire in the main salon.”

  One less place to look for Hooker.

  We went up the steps, past the outdoor bar, and walked around the building to the deli on the street side. I stayed outside with Beans and ten minutes later Felicia and Rosa emerged with two bags of food.

  “Wow,” I said. “Is that all for Beans?”

  “No,” Rosa said. “The prunes and the gallon-size plastic bags are for Beans. The rubber gloves are for you. The macaroni salad, chocolate cake, meatball subs, and soda are for all of us.”

  We sat on a bench outside the store and Felicia opened the box of prunes. “Anybody want a prune?” she asked. “Prunes are good for you. Full of iron.”

  We all declined prunes. Saving ourselves for the chocolate cake.

  “How about doggie?” Felicia said to Beans. “Does doggy want a prune?”

  Beans was sitting straight, eyes bright, ears perked. He sniffed the prune Felicia held in her hand and then very delicately took it from her. He held it in his mouth for a while, drooling, no
t sure what one actually did with a prune. He opened his mouth, and the prune fell out.

  “We got him a meatball sub,” Felicia said. “Just in case.” She unwrapped one of the subs, stuffed prunes into the meatballs, and gave the sub to Beans.

  Beans wolfed the sub down.

  “Now we just have to wait for the poop to come,” Felicia said, handing us our subs, passing plastic forks around for the macaroni.

  We ate our lunch, drank our sodas, and Felicia called her nephew for a progress report.

  “He reports no progress,” she said. She stuffed the crumpled wrappers and used forks into the bag we’d designated as trash, and she looked around. “Where’s the box of prunes? I had it on the bench next to me.”

  All eyes focused on Beans. He was sitting on the grass not far from us. He was drooling, his eyes looked droopy, and there was a piece of the cardboard prune box stuck to his lower lip.

  “Oh boy,” Rosa said. “He ate a lot of prunes.”

  Beans stood and lifted his tail and there was a sound like air escaping a balloon. We all jumped off the bench and moved away.

  “He could peel paint off a building,” Rosa said.

  Felicia was fanning the fumes away with the garbage bag. “It smells like burrito. And look at him. I think he’s smiling.”

  I felt like I should be doing more to find Hooker, but I didn’t know where to start. Maybe a property search. I hauled my phone out and called Skippy.

  “I was wondering if you could get some more information for me,” I said. “I want to know if Anthony Miranda has property in the Miami area. A house or an office building. Anything.”

  “I want to talk to Hooker.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?” Skippy asked.

  “He’s sort of…kidnapped.”

  There was silence on the other end, and I was worried Skippy had fainted or had a heart attack.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m dandy. My scrotum is so tight my balls are choking.”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said to Skippy. “I’ll be able to get Hooker back as soon as the dog poops.”

  “I’m not even going to ask,” Skippy said. “Do you have a phone number I can call when I get information on Miranda?”