Eleven on Top

  I wound through a maze of streets, brought Big Blue to the curb in front of Val's house, and stared at the car parked in front of me. It was Lula's red Firebird. Two possibilities. One was that Valerie had skipped out on a bond. The other was that she'd taken my smart-mouth advice and called Lula for diet tips. I rolled out of the Buick and got on with the brown-bag delivery.

  Val opened the door before I reached the porch. “Grandma called and said you were on your way.”

  “Looks like Lula's here. Are you FTA?”

  “No. I'm F-A-T. So I called Lula like you suggested. And she came right over.”

  “I take other people's dieting seriously,” Lula said to Valerie. “I'm gonna have you skinny in no time. This might even turn out to be a second career for me. Of course, now that I'm a bounty hunter I've got a lot of demands on my time. I've got a real nasty case that I'm working on. I should be out tracking this guy down right now, only I figured I could take a break from it and help you out.”

  “What kind of case is it?” Val asked.

  “He's wanted for AR and PT,” Lula said. “That's bounty hunter shorthand for armed robbery and public tinkling. He held up a liquor store and then took a leak in the domestic table wines section. I bet Stephanie here is gonna be so happy I'm helping you that she's gonna ride along and help out with the apprehension.”

  “Not likely,” I said. “I have to be at work at three.”

  “Yeah, but at the rate you're going, you'll be fired by five,” Lula said. “I just hope you last through dinnertime because I was planning on coming in for a bucket of extra crispy.”

  “Is that on my diet?” Val asked.

  “Hell no,” Lula said. “Ain't nothing on your diet. You want to lose weight, you gotta starve. You gotta eat a bunch of plain-ass carrots and shit.”

  “What about that no-carb diet? I hear you can eat bacon and steak and lobster.”

  “You didn't tell me what kind of diet you wanted to do. I just figured you wanted the starvation diet on account of it's the easiest and the most economical. You don't have to weigh anything. And you don't have to cook anything. You just don't eat anything.” Lula motored off to the kitchen.

  “Let's check out your cupboards and see if you got good food or bad food.”

  Lula poked around. “Uh oh, this don't look like skinny food. You got chips in here. Boy, I sure would like some of these chips. I'm not gonna eat them, though, 'cause I got willpower.”

  “Me, too,” Valerie said. “I'm not going to eat them either.”

  “I bet you eat them when we leave,” Lula said.

  Valerie bit into her lower lip. Of course she'd eat them. She was human, wasn't she? And this was Jersey. And the Burg, for crissake. We ate chips in the Burg. We ate everything.

  “Maybe I should take those chips,” Lula said. “It would be okay if I ate the chips later being that I'm currently not in my weight-losing mode. I'm currently in my weight-gaining mode.”

  Valerie pulled all the bags of chips out of the cupboard and dumped them into a big black plastic garbage bag. She threw boxes of cookies and bags of candy into the bag. She added the junk-sugar-loaded cereals, the toaster waffles, the salted nuts. She handed the bag over to Lula. “And I'm only going to eat one pork chop tonight. And I'm not going to smother it in gravy.”

  “Good for you,” Lula said. “You're gonna be skinny in no time with an attitude like that.”

  Valerie turned to me. “Grandma was all excited when she called. She said they just found out you've been playing the cello all these years.”

  Lula's eyes bugged out. "Are you shitting me? I didn't know you played a musical instrument. And the cello!

  That's real fancy-pants. That's fuckin' classy. How come you never said anything?"

  Small tendrils of panic curled through my stomach. This was getting out of control. “It's no big thing,” I said. “I'm not very good. And I hardly ever play. In fact, I can't remember the last time I celloed.”

  “I don't ever remember seeing a cello in your apartment,” Valerie said.

  “I keep it in the closet,” I told her. I was such a good fibber! It had been my one real usable talent as a bounty hunter. I made a show of checking my watch. “Boy, look at the time. I have to go.”

  “Me, too,” Lula said. “I gotta go get that stupid AR.” She wrapped her arms around the bag of junk food and lugged it out to her car. “It would be like old times if you rode with me on this one,” Lula said to me. “It wouldn't take us long to round up Mr. Pisser, and then we could eat all this shit.”

  “I have to go home and take a shower and get dressed for work. And I have to feed Rex. And I don't want to do bond enforcement anymore.”

  “Okay,” Lula said. “I guess I could understand all that.”

  Lula roared off in her Firebird. And I slowly accelerated in the Buick. The Buick was like a freight train. Takes a while to get a full head of steam, but once it gets going it'll plow through anything.

  I stopped at Giovichinni's Meat Market on the way home. I idled in front of the store and looked through the large front window. Bonnie Sue Giovichinni was working the register. I dialed Bonnie Sue and asked her if there were any Macaronis in the store.

  “Nope,” Bonnie Sue said. “The coast is clear.”

  I scurried around, gathering the bare essentials. A loaf of bread, some sliced provolone, a half pound of sliced ham, a small tub of chocolate ice cream, a quart of skim milk, and a handful of fresh green beans for Rex. I added a couple Tastykakes to my basket and lined up behind Mrs. Krepler at the checkout.

  “I just talked to Ruby Beck,” Mrs. Krepler said. “Ruby tells me you've left the bonds office so you can play cello with a symphony orchestra. How exciting!”

  I was speechless.

  “And have you heard if they found the mole yet?” Mrs. Krepler asked.

  I paid for my groceries and hurried out of the store. The cello-playing thing was going through the Burg like wildfire. You'd think with something as good as Mama Macaroni getting blown to bits there wouldn't be time to care about my cello playing. I swear, I can't catch a break here.

  I drove home and docked the boat in a spot close to the back door. I figured the closer to the door, the less chance of a bomb getting planted. I wasn't sure the theory held water, but it made me feel better. I took the stairs and opened the door to my apartment cautiously. I stuck my head in and listened.

  Just the sound of Rex running on his wheel in his cage in the kitchen. I locked and bolted the door behind me and retrieved my gun from the cookie jar.

  The gun wasn't loaded because I'd forgotten to buy bullets, but I crept through the apartment, looking in closets and under the bed with the gun drawn anyway. I couldn't shoot anyone, but at least I looked like I could kick ass.

  I took a shower and got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I didn't spend a lot of time on my hair since I'd be wearing the dorky Cluck hat. I lined my eyes and slathered on mascara to make up for the hair. I gave Rex a couple beans, and I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. I glanced at my gun while I ate my sandwich. The gun was loaded. I went to the cookie jar and looked inside. There was a Rangeman business card in the bottom of the jar. A single word was handwritten on the card, babe!

  I had a momentary hot flash and briefly considered checking out my underwear drawer for more business cards. “He's trying to protect me,” I said to Rex.

  “He does that a lot.”

  I got the tub of ice cream from the freezer and took it to the dining room table, along with a pad. I sat at the table and ate the ice cream and made notes for myself. I had four guys who were all about the same age. They all had a small business at one time or another. Two bought new cars. They all disappeared on the same day at about the same time. None of their cars were ever retrieved. That was all I knew.

  My hunch about Anthony and Spiro didn't really amount to much. Probably I

  was trying to make a connection where none existed. One thing was certain.

/>   Someone was stalking me, trying to scare me. And now it looked like that person was trying to kill me. Not a happy thought.

  I'd eaten about a third of the tub of ice cream. I put the lid on the tub and walked it back to the freezer. I put all the food away and wiped down the countertop. I wasn't much of a housekeeper, but I didn't want to be killed and have my mother discover my kitchen was a mess.

  Stephanie Plum 11 - Eleven On Top

  SEVEN

  I left my apartment at two-thirty and gingerly circled the Buick, looking for signs of tampering. I looked in the window. I crouched down and looked under the car. Finally I put the key in the lock, squinched my eyes closed, and opened the door. No explosion. I slid behind the wheel, took a deep breath, and turned the engine over. No explosion. I thought this was good news and bad news. If it had exploded I'd be dead, and that would be bad. On the other hand, I wouldn't have to wear the awful Cluck hat, and that would be very good.

  Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of Milton Mann, receiving instructions.

  “We're going to start you off at the register,” he said. “It's all computerized so it's super simple. You just punch in the order and the computer sends the order to the crew in the back and tells you how much to charge the customer. You have to be real friendly and polite. And when you give the customer their change you say, 'Thank you for visiting Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Have a clucky day.' And always remember to wear your hat. It's our special trademark.”

  The hat was egg-yolk yellow and rooster-comb red. It had a bill like a ball cap, except the bill was shaped like a beak, and the rest of the hat was a huge chicken head, topped off with the big floppy red comb. Red chicken legs with red chicken toes hung from either side of the bottom of the hat. The rest of the uniform consisted of an egg-yolk yellow short-sleeve shirt and elastic-waist pants that had the Cluck-in-a-Bucket chicken logo imprinted everywhere in red. The shirt and pants looked like pajamas designed for the criminally insane.

  “You'll do a two-hour shift at the register and then we'll rotate you to the chicken fryer,” Mann said.

  If it was in the cards that the bomber was going to succeed in killing me, I prayed that it happened before I got to the chicken fryer.

  It turns out the three-to-five shift at the register is light. Some after-school traffic and some construction workers.

  A woman and her kid stepped up to the counter.

  “Tell the chicken what you want,” the woman said.

  “It's not a chicken,” the kid said. “It's a girl in a stupid chicken hat.”

  “Yes, but she can cluck like a chicken,” the woman said. “Go ahead,” she said to me. “Cluck like a chicken for Emily.”

  I looked at the woman.

  “Last time we were here the chicken clucked,” the woman said.

  I looked down at Emily. “Cluck.”

  “She's no good,” Emily said. “The other chicken was way better. The other chicken flapped her arms.”

  I took a deep breath, stuffed my fists under my armpits, and did some chicken-wing flapping. “Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, clu-u-u-u-ck,” I said.

  “I want french fries and a chocolate shake,” Emily said.

  The next guy in line weighed three hundred pounds and was wearing a torn

  T-shirt and a hard hat. “You gonna cluck for me?” he asked. “How about I want you to do something besides cluck?”

  “How about I shove my foot so far up your ass your nuts get stuck in your throat?”

  “Not my idea of a good time,” he said. “Get me a bucket of extra crispy and a Diet Coke.”

  At five o'clock I was marched back to the fryer.

  “It's a no-brainer,” Mann said. “It's all automated. When the green light goes on the oil is right for frying, so you dump the chicken in.”

  Mann pulled a huge plastic tub of chicken parts out of the big commercial refrigerator. He took the lid off the tub, and I almost passed out at the site of slick pink muscle and naked flesh and cracked bone.

  “As you can see, we have three stainless-steel tanks,” Mann said. “One is the fryer and one is the drainer and one is the breader. It's the breader that sets us apart from all the other chicken places. We coat our chicken with the specially seasoned secret breading glop right here in the store.”

  Mann dumped a load of chicken into a wire basket and lowered it into the breader. He swished the basket around, raised it, and gently set it into the hot oil. “When you put the chicken into the oil you push the Start button and the machine times the chicken. When the bell rings you take the chicken out and set the basket in the drainer. Easy, right?”

  I could feel sweat prickle at my scalp under my hat. It was about two hundred degrees in front of the fryer, and the air was oil saturated. I could smell the hot oil. I could taste the hot oil. I could feel it soaking into my pores.

  “How do I know how much chicken to fry?” I asked him.

  “You just keep frying. This is our busy time of day. You go from one basket to the next and keep the hot chicken rolling out.”

  A half hour later, Eugene was yelling at me from the bagging table. "We need extra-spicy. All you're doing is extra-crispy. And there's all wings here.

  You gotta give us some backs and some thighs. People are bitchin' about the friggin' wings. If they wanted all wings, they'd order all wings."

  At precisely seven o'clock, Mann appeared at my side. “You get a half-hour dinner break now, and then we're going to rotate you to the drive-thru window until closing time at eleven.”

  My muscles ached from lifting the chicken baskets. My uniform was blotched with grease stains. My hair felt like it had been soaked in oil. My arms were covered with splatter burns. I had thirty minutes to eat, but I didn't think I could gag down fried chicken. I shuffled off to the ladies' room and sat on the toilet with my head down. I think I fell asleep like that because next thing I knew, Mann was knocking on the ladies' room door, calling my name.

  I followed Mann to the drive-thru window. The plan was that I remove my

  Cluck hat, put the headset on, and put the Cluck hat back over the headset.

  Problem was, after tending the fryer, my hair was slick with grease and the headset kept sliding off.

  “Ordinarily I don't put people in the drive-thru after the fryer just for this problem,” Mann said, “but Darlene went home sick and you're all I got.”

  He disappeared into the storeroom and came back with a roll of black electrical tape. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said, holding the headset to my head, wrapping my head with a couple loops of tape. “Now you can put your hat on and get clucky, and that headset isn't going anywhere.”

  “Welcome to Cluck-in-a-Bucket,” I said to the first car.

  “I wanna crchhtra skraapyy, two orders of fries, and a large crchhhk.”

  Mann was standing behind me. “That's extra crispy chicken, two fries, and a large Coke.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “You'll get the hang of it after a couple cars. Anyway, all you have to do is ring them up, take their money, and give them their order. Fred is in back filling the order.” And he left.

  “Seven-fifty,” I said. “Please drive up.”

  “What?”

  “Seven-fifty. Please drive up.”

  “Speak English. I can't understand a friggin' thing you're saying.”

  “Seven-fifty!”

  The car pulled to the window. I took money from the driver, and I handed him the bag. He looked into the bag and shook his head. “There's only one fries in here.”

  “Fred,” I yelled into my mouthpiece, “you shorted them a fries.”

  Fred ran over with the fries. “Sorry, sir,” he said to the guy in the car.

  “Have a clucky day.”

  Fred was a couple inches taller than me and a couple pounds lighter. He had pasty white skin that was splotched with grease burns, pale blue eyes, and red dreads that stuck out from his hat, making him look a little like the straw man in The Wizard o
f Oz. I put him at eighteen or nineteen.

  “Cluck you,” the guy said to Fred, and drove off.

  “Thank you, sir,” Fred yelled after him. “Have a nice day. Go cluck yourself.” Fred turned to me. “You gotta go faster. We have about forty cars in line. They're getting nasty.”

  After a half hour I was hoarse from yelling into the microphone.

  “Seven-twenty,” I croaked. “Please drive up.”

  “What?”

  I took a sip of the gallon-size Coke I had next to my register.

  “Seven-twenty.”