Motor Mouth: A Barnaby Novel

  Who was this woman? Did she moonlight as the Terminator?

  Rosa was at the wheel of the Camry, Suzanne was riding shotgun beside her, and I was in the backseat with Beans. We were across the street from the condo building, waiting to get the call from Felicia telling us Ray had escaped. Felicia had now been alone with Ray for almost twenty minutes, and I was mentally cracking my knuckles, worried something had gone wrong.

  The call came through just as Ray bolted through the front door and hailed a cab.

  “Felicia says it worked perfect,” Rosa said, following Ray’s cab. “She said it took so long because he locked her in the bathroom. And then she thinks he ate some stone crabs. And she said he took her cell phone and he better not be making any calls to Mexico.”

  The cab went south on Collins, and we all knew the destination. Ray was going to the boat. He didn’t know about the fire. He didn’t know the boat had sailed. He wasn’t sure if Rodriguez and Lucca were at large. He was probably calling them on Felicia’s cell phone from the cab, not happy because they weren’t answering. Hell, what do I know, maybe they were answering. Maybe they were with Hooker, or maybe they were hiding out in Orlando with Mickey Mouse.

  The cab pulled into the lot and dropped Ray off. Rosa idled on the street, and I ran through the courtyard attached to Monty’s so I could spy on Ray when he stepped onto the marina footpath.

  I slipped into place, to the side of the building, just as Ray emerged from the lot and stood, staring at the empty space on the dock. He made a hand gesture that shouted where the fuck did the boat go? And he was back on his phone. Angry. Punching numbers in. Talking to someone. He had his hand on his hip, head down, trying not to go entirely gonzo with the person on the other end. He picked his head up and looked around. Not in my direction. Too pissed off to see anything anyway. He paced up and down the walkway, talking. He disconnected and punched in another number. The conversation was much calmer this time, but I could see the rage simmering below the surface. Not talking to an underling, I thought. Maybe talking to Miranda. At least that was my hope, because now that we were committed to a plan, I wanted to get on with it.

  It was early afternoon. Not a cloud in the sky. Slight breeze coming in off the ocean, ruffling the water and rustling in the palms. Cool enough to wear jeans but warm enough to wear a short-sleeved shirt. In other words, the weather was perfect. And Florida would have been paradise if only I wasn’t wanted for questioning in multiple murders and if only Hooker wasn’t being held hostage, and if only Beans didn’t have a billion-dollar circuit board working its way through his intestines.

  Ray looked at his watch and nodded. He looked in the direction of the parking lot. He did another nod, then he put the phone away. Someone was coming to pick him up, I thought. Be interesting to see if it was Rodriguez or Lucca.

  Thirty minutes later, I was back in the Camry with Rosa and Suzanne and Beans. Ray was waiting at the lot entrance. The black BMW rolled past us and stopped curbside. Ray got in, and the car pulled off into traffic. Simon was driving. Rosa kept them in sight, and she swept past them when the BMW stopped in front of the Pearl. She made an illegal U-turn and parked half a block away, facing the hotel. The BMW flashers went on, and Simon got out and went into the lobby. Five minutes later, Felicia called and said her nephew reported the BMW. Ten minutes later, Simon came out with the luggage, got behind the wheel, and took off.

  “They checked out,” Rosa said. “I guess they didn’t think a fancy-ass hotel was a good place to rough up a hostage.”

  I knew Rosa was just using the phrase as an expression, but the thought of Hooker getting roughed up made my stomach sick.

  The BMW went north on Collins, turned onto Seventeenth Street, and took the Venetian Causeway. We were two cars back, watching carefully. The BMW turned into a residential neighborhood on Di Lido Island, wound its way to the northernmost point, and pulled into a gated driveway.

  “Nice house,” Rosa said, looking through the wrought-iron gate to the house beyond. “I bet they got Dobermans.”

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” Suzanne said. “We’re going to have to scale a six-foot fence to get into this place. And we don’t have any idea how many people are in the house.”

  We were parked down the street, debating our options, when my phone rang.

  “This is Anthony Miranda,” he said. “I know the location of the circuit board, and I see no reason to wait any longer for it. You have one hour to give me either the circuit board or the dog.”

  Ray was a big blabbermouth. “And if I don’t make the one-hour delivery?”

  “I start to cut your friend’s fingers off his hand.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “It’s business,” Miranda said. “Nothing personal. There’s a small parking lot adjacent to a convenience store on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Alton Road. My representative will be there to collect my property. One hour.”

  “I expect to collect my property as well. I’m not handing anything over until Hooker’s released.”

  “Hooker will be released when I take possession of the circuit board.”

  “And Gobbles?”

  “And Gobbles.”

  I disconnected and looked at the ladies. “I have an hour to get the circuit board to Miranda. If I don’t get the circuit board to him, he’s going to start cutting Hooker’s fingers off.”

  “Hard for him to drive without fingers,” Rosa said.

  “I have an idea,” Suzanne said. “If we could get Beans to poop out the circuit board, we could disable it. Remove the battery and ruin the circuitry. Then we could give it to Miranda, and we will have fulfilled his demands without giving him the technology. Not our fault if the circuit board got damaged, right? I mean, it’s been through a lot.”

  We all looked at Beans. He was panting and drooling. He lifted his ass off the seat a little and farted. We all jumped out of the car and fanned the air.

  “Do you think that smelled like prunes?” Rosa wanted to know. “I think I might have caught a hint of prune.”

  We got back into the car and Rosa drove off De Lido and took the causeway to Belle Island Park. She pulled up to a grassy area, and I got out with Beans and started walking him around.

  “Do you have to poop?” I asked him. “Does Beansy have to poopie?”

  He took a seven-minute tinkle, and he did a lot of drooling, but he didn’t poop.

  “It’s not time yet,” I told everyone. “He’s not ready.”

  Suzanne checked her watch. “He has forty-five minutes.”

  Rosa drove to Suzanne’s condo, and Suzanne ran in to get Felicia out of the bathroom. When they came out, they had more prunes.

  “I borrowed them from my neighbor,” Suzanne said. “She actually eats them. Can you imagine?”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I said. “He’s already had a lot of prunes.”

  “Yes, but look how big he is,” Felicia said. “He could take a lot of prunes. Maybe not the whole box this time. Maybe only half a box.”

  I fed Beans a couple prunes, and he started to whine and claw at the door.

  “He’s ready!” Felicia said. “Get him out. Get the bags.”

  “He needs grass,” I told them. “He only goes on grass.”

  “Ocean Drive!” Suzanne shouted.

  Rosa had the car in gear. “I’ve got it covered. Hang on. We’re only a couple blocks away.”

  She rocketed down Collins, hung a left onto Ocean, and slid to a stop at the curb. We all got out and ran with Beans to the grassy stretch of park between the road and beach. Beans reached the grass and abruptly stopped and hunched. I had a plastic bag wrapped around my hand. I was set to catch. Felicia had Beans by the leash. Suzanne and Rosa had spare bags.

  “I knew the prunes would work,” Felicia said.

  Beans put his head down, squinched his eyes closed, and a box and a half of prunes and God knows what else exploded from his back end in a gelatinou
s spray that shot out over a ten-foot radius.

  We all jumped back bug-eyed.

  “Maybe too many prunes,” Rosa said.

  Beans picked his head up and smiled. He was done. He felt fine. He pranced around a little at the end of his leash.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s not panic. He’s obviously empty. So the circuit board has to be here somewhere. Everybody look.”

  “It’s too small,” Suzanne said. “It would have been hard to find in…you know, a pile. It’s going to be impossible to find in this grass.”

  “Maybe they’ll only cut a couple fingers off,” Rosa said. “As long as he’s got his thumb, he could be okay.”

  “We have twenty-five minutes,” Felicia said.

  “We’ll have to fake it,” I told them. “Everyone look for dog poop. Lots of people walk their dogs here and not everyone cleans up. We’ll fill a bag with whatever poop we can find. Then we’ll give the bag to Miranda, and we’ll tell him we didn’t have time to look for the circuit board. And the more poop the better, so it takes a long time for Miranda to go through it. We need time to make a getaway with Hooker.”

  “I’m gonna need some Pepto-Bismol when I’m done here,” Rosa said.

  “Sorry,” I said to Suzanne, “you’ll have to replicate the circuit board. But at least your technology won’t get stolen.”

  “What’s this?” Simon wanted to know.

  “Dog poop,” I said, handing the bag over to him. “We didn’t have time to look through it for the circuit board, but I’m sure it’s in there. Beans is all cleaned out.”

  “No kidding. This is a gallon bag of dog shit. Jeez, you could at least have double bagged it.”

  “I was in a hurry. I didn’t want Hooker to lose any fingers.” I looked around. “Where’s Hooker?”

  “He’s in the car with Fred. I’m going to have to call Miranda on this. I wasn’t expecting a sack of shit.”

  “It was the best I could do on short notice,” I said.

  Simon and I were standing in the parking lot next to the Royal Palm Deli. Rosa was idling in the slot closest to the driveway. Suzanne and Felicia had Simon in their sights, giving him the squinty-eye, guns in hand, ready to “take him down” should I give the signal. An SUV with tinted windows idled at the other end of the lot. Hard to tell who was inside the SUV.

  Simon studied me behind his dark glasses. “Just between you and me, if I hadn’t left you at the bar last night, would I have gotten to nail you?”

  “You don’t expect me to tell you, do you?”

  He looked at the gallon of dog poop. “I guess I know the answer.”

  Simon put the poop in the back of the SUV and flipped his cell phone open. He held a short conversation with someone at the other end, presumably Miranda, the phone was flipped closed, and Simon walked back to me.

  “Miranda says we bring the bag and Hooker back to the house, and when we find the circuit board we’ll let Hooker go.”

  “The deal was that we’d swap here. I want my poop back.”

  “Lady, I’d love to give you your poop back, but no can do. The boss wants the poop.”

  I trudged back to the Camry and got in next to Beans. “They’re going to release Hooker when they find the circuit board.”

  The black SUV pulled away, and Rosa cranked the Camry over. “Okay, ladies,” she said. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked Rosa.

  “It means we have to kick some ass and get Hooker out.”

  “That sounds good on paper,” I said to Rosa. “But we’re not exactly a SWAT team. I think it’s time to bring in the police.”

  Suzanne was in the back with me, sitting on the other side of Beans. “Easy for you to say,” Suzanne said. “You didn’t just kidnap Ray Huevo. I’m in favor of us going in and solving the problem ourselves. I work out, and I can shoot, and I’m in the mood to do some damage,” she said, selecting a gun from the pocket in front of her. “I’m putting my name on this Glock nine.”

  We drove to the house and Rosa sat at idle in front of the gate. The gate was closed and attached to a six-foot solid-stucco fence that encircled the property. From what we could see of the grounds, we would have to get over the fence and then cover some open grass before reaching the house. A small metal medallion attached to the front gate told us the property was protected by All Season Security.

  “It would be better if we could do this in the dark,” Rosa said.

  I looked at the sky. The sun was low. Maybe an hour until sunset. Maybe a little more. An hour felt like a long time to leave Hooker in there with the finger chopper.

  “It’ll take them a while to go through a gallon of poop,” Felicia said. “They gonna have to put it in a strainer little by little and power wash it.”

  We all made gagging sounds.

  “I think we have until the next phone call,” Suzanne said. “If they don’t find the circuit board, they’ll call. They don’t know for certain that this was a setup.”

  SIXTEEN

  We were parked four houses down from the estate where they were holding Hooker hostage, the Camry tucked back into the driveway of an ungated and unoccupied house. We’d carefully watched the street for activity, but there’d been nothing to see. No cars coming or going. No one out for a stroll. We watched the sun set in a brilliant display of fluorescent orange and pink. We watched the sky change from dusk to dark.

  “This is it,” Rosa said. “Showtime.”

  We armed ourselves, got out of the Camry, and started walking down the street. Rosa, Felicia, Suzanne, and me. Beans was left behind, and he wasn’t liking it. Beans was in the car, barking loud enough to raise the dead.

  “You got to do something with doggie,” Felicia said. “People gonna call the cops on us.”

  I went back to the car, opened the door, and Beans bounded out. I took the leash, and he pranced beside me. He was happy. He was going for a walk with everyone.

  “When I die I want to come back as this doggie,” Felicia said.

  We stopped when we got to the gate. It was still closed and locked. Beyond the gate we could see the BMW parked in the courtyard. The house was dark. Not a single light burning.

  “Maybe they have black-out shades,” Rosa said.

  “Maybe they’re watching a movie on television,” Felicia said.

  Maybe they’re waiting for us, I thought.

  Lights were also off in neighboring houses. This wasn’t high season in Florida. Not a lot of the rich folks in residence. We walked off the road and chose a spot where the shadows were deep.

  “We gonna have to alley-oop over the wall,” Felicia said.

  Rosa and I linked hands and gave Suzanne a boost up.

  “Everything looks quiet inside the wall,” Suzanne whispered. She straddled the wall and silently dropped out of sight.

  Felicia was next to go.

  “I can’t reach,” she said, one foot in our hands. “I have to climb on your shoulders. Hold still.”

  Felicia managed to get onto Rosa’s shoulders, I got my hand under her ass and gave her a shove, and she went over the wall and landed on the other side with a thud.

  Rosa and I looked at Beans. He was alert, watching us, watching the wall.

  “I swear, he’s waiting to go over,” Rosa said.

  “We need one of those bucket trucks the phone company uses.”

  “If we can get Felicia over the wall, we can get him over the wall,” Rosa said.

  We stood him up on his hind legs with his two front paws against the wall, and we got our hands under his big dog butt.

  “Heave,” Rosa said.

  We both gave a grunt and got Beans about three feet off the ground.

  “Christ,” Rosa said, “it’s like lifting a hundred-and-fifty-pound sandbag.”

  “Here, doggie,” Felicia whispered from the other side of the wall. “Nice Beansy.”

  “Come to Aunt Sue,” Suzanne cooed. “Come on. You
can do it. Come to Aunt Suzy Woozy!”

  “On the count of three,” Rosa said. “One, two, three!”

  We took a deep breath and hefted Beans up another foot and a half. Somehow he got a back paw on Rosa’s chest and pushed himself high enough to get his two front feet dug into the top of the wall. I got my head under his rear end, and when I stood straight he went over. There was a gasp and a thud and then there was silence.

  “Is Beans okay?” I whispered.

  “Yeah, he’s fine,” Suzanne said. “He landed on Felicia. It might take her a minute to catch her breath.”

  Rosa went up next, with a lot more blind determination than grace. She straddled the wall, turned onto her stomach, we locked hands and everyone pulled me over.

  We were all plastered against the wall. A swath of grass lay between us and the house. Maybe thirty feet deep. When we ran across the grass, we’d be exposed to view.

  “There’s no way around it,” Suzanne said. “We have to make a run for it. When we get to the house, we’ll be hidden again, and we can creep along and try to find a way in.”

  We got halfway across the grass, and all the outdoor lights flashed on.

  “We tripped the motion sensors,” Suzanne said. “Don’t anyone panic.”

  “They gonna let the Dobermans out next,” Felicia said, running onto a patio. “I’m not waiting for that. I’m going in where it’s safe.”

  She whacked a patio door with her gun butt, the glass shattered, she reached inside and opened the door, and the alarm system went off.

  We all rushed into the house, Beans included. We fumbled our way through the house in the dark, guns drawn, going room by room. No reason to go slowly or quietly. The alarm was whining. The phone was ringing. No one was answering the phone. Undoubtedly the security company calling. Their next call would be to the police.

  We crept into the kitchen, Beans gave an excited woof, and ran forward. Hard to hear much over the alarm, but there was the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor in front of us. Rosa flipped a switch, the kitchen came up like daylight, and we all gaped at Hooker. He was tied to a kitchen chair that Beans had tipped over. Beans was on top of him, giving him slurpeys, and Hooker was looking stunned.