Plum Boxed Set 1, Books 1-3 Stephanie Plum Novels) (69 page)

“I’ve got to move,” Morelli said. “I’ve got paperwork.”

I had to go, too. I felt like someone stuck a pin in me and let out the air. I fished car keys and a tissue out of my pocket. I blew my nose one last time and pumped myself back up for the walk to the car.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Ranger.

“Feeling fine.”

“Want to run tomorrow morning?”

He raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t ask the question. “See you at six.”

“Six is good,” I said.

I was halfway home before I picked up the headlights in my rearview mirror. I looked again when I turned off Hamilton. The lights belonged to a black Toyota 4x4. Three antennae. Morelli’s car. He was following me home to make sure I was safe.

I gave Morelli a wave, and he beeped the horn. Sometimes Morelli could be okay.

I drove two blocks on St. James and hit Dunworth. I turned into my lot and found a place in the middle. Morelli parked next to me.

“Thanks,” I said, locking the car, juggling the food bag.

Morelli got out of his car and looked at the bag. “Wish I could come in.”

“I know your type,” I said. “You’re only interested in one thing, Morelli.”

“Got my number, do you?”

“Yes. And you can forget it. You’re not getting my leftovers.”

Morelli curled his fingers around my jacket collar and pulled me close. “Sweetheart, if I wanted your leftovers you wouldn’t have a chance in hell of keeping them.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Morelli grinned, his teeth white against swarthy skin and day-old beard. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

I turned on my heel. “I can take care of myself, thank you.” All huffy. In a snit because Morelli was probably right about the leftovers.

He was still watching when I entered the building and the glass door swung closed behind me. I gave him another wave. He waved back and left.

Mrs. Bestler was in the elevator when I got on. “Going up,” she said. “Third floor, lingerie and ladies’ handbags.”

Sometimes Mrs. Bestler played elevator operator to break up the boredom.

“I’m going to the second floor,” I told her.

“Ah,” she said. “Good choice. Better dresses and designer shoes.”

I stepped out of the elevator, shuffled down the hall, unlocked my door and almost fell into my apartment. I was dead-dog tired. I did a cursory walk through my apartment, checking windows and doors to make sure they were secure, checking closets and shadows.

I dropped my clothes in a heap on the floor, plastered a Band-Aid on my burn and stepped into the shower. Out, damn spot. When I was pink and clean I crawled into bed and pretended I was at Disney World. Stephanie Plum, master of denial. Why deal with the trauma of almost being tortured when I could put it off indefinitely? Someday when the memory was fuzzy at the edges I’d dredge it up and give it attention. Stephanie Plum’s rule of thumb for mental health—always procrastinate the unpleasant. After all, I could get run over by a truck tomorrow and never have to come to terms with the attack at all.

I was awakened by the phone at five-thirty.

“Yo,” Ranger said. “You still want to run?”

“Yes. I’ll meet you downstairs at six.” Damned if I was going to let a couple loser men get the better of me. Muscle tone wouldn’t help a lot when it came to pepper spray, but it’d give me an edge on attitude. Mentally alert, physically fit would be my new motto.

I pulled on long johns and sweats and laced up my running shoes. I gave Rex fresh water and filled his little ceramic food dish with hamster nuggets and raisins. I did fifteen minutes of stretching and went downstairs.

Ranger was jogging in place when I got to the parking lot. I saw his eyes flick to my hair.

“Don’t say it,” I warned him. “Don’t say a single word.”

Ranger held his hands up in a backing-off gesture. “None of my business.”

The corners of his mouth twitched.

I stuffed my hands on my hips. “You’re laughing at me!”

“You look like Ronald McDonald.”

“It’s not that bad!”

“You want me to take care of your hair-dresser?”

“No! It wasn’t his fault.”

We ran the usual course in silence. We added an extra block on the way home, keeping the pace steady. Easy for Ranger. Hard for me. I bent at the waist to catch my breath when we pulled up at my building’s back door. I was happy with the run. Even happier to have it behind me.

A car roared down the street and wheeled into the parking lot. Ranger stepped in front of me, gun drawn. The car slid to a stop, and Lula stuck her head out.

“I saw him!” she yelled. “I saw him! I saw him!”

“Who?”

“Old Penis Nose! I saw Old Penis Nose! I could of got him, but you’re always telling me how I’m not supposed to do nothing, how I’m not authorized. So I tried to call you, but you weren’t home. So I drove over here. Where the hell you been at six in the morning?”

“Who’s Old Penis Nose?” Ranger wanted to know.

“Mo,” I said. “Lula thinks his nose looks like a penis.”

Ranger smiled. “Where’d you see him?”

“I saw him on Sixth Street right across from my house. I don’t usually get up so
early, but I had some intestinal problems. Think it was the burrito I had for supper. So anyway I’m in the bathroom, and I look out the window and I see Mo walking into the building across the street.”

“You sure it was Mo?” I asked.

“I got a pretty good look,” Lula said. “They got a front light they leave on over there. Must own stock in the electric company.”

Ranger beeped the security system off on his Bronco. “Let’s move.”

“Me too!” Lula yelled, backing into a parking space, cutting her engine. “Hold on for me.”

We all piled into Ranger’s Bronco, and Ranger took off for Sixth Street.

“I bet Old Penis Nose is gonna pop someone,” Lula said. “I bet he’s got someone all lined up.”

I told Lula about the four bodies in Mo’s basement.

“When a man’s got a nose looks like a penis he’s likely to do anything,” Lula said. “It’s the sort of thing makes serial killers out of otherwise normal people.”

I thought chances were pretty good that Mo was involved in the killing of the men in his cellar. I didn’t think his nose had anything to do with it. I thought about Cameron
Brown and Leroy Watkins and Ronald Anders. All dead drug dealers. And then I wondered if the men buried in Mo’s basement would turn out to be dealers, too. “Maybe Mo’s a vigilante,” I said. More to hear it said out loud than anything else. And I was thinking that maybe he wasn’t alone in his vigilantism. Maybe there was a whole pack of them, running around in ski masks and coveralls, threatening and killing whoever they deemed to be a danger to society.

Lula repeated the word. “Vigilante.”

“Someone who takes the law into his own hands,” I said.

“Hunh. I guess I know what it means. You’re telling me Mo is like Zorro and Robin Hood. Only Old Penis Nose don’t just slash a big Z in a man’s shirt. Old Penis Nose scatters brains halfway across a room in his pursuit of justice.” She paused for a moment, thinking it through. “Probably Zorro blew a few heads apart, too. They don’t tell you everything in a movie, you know. Probably after Zorro ruined your shirt he cut off your balls. Or maybe he made a Z on your stomach and all your guts fell out. I heard you could cut open a person’s stomach, and his guts could all be hanging out onto the floor and he could live for hours like that.”

I was riding shotgun beside Ranger. I slid my eyes in his direction, but he was in his zone, doing eighty between cross streets. Foot to the brake, jerk to a stop, giving the ABS a good test, look both ways. Foot to the floor on the accelerator.

“So what do you think?” Lula asked. “You think Zorro got off on shit like that? Making people look at their guts hanging out?”

My lips parted, but no words came out.

Ranger turned onto Main and then onto Sixth. This was a neighborhood of board and shingle row houses with stoops for porches and sidewalk for front yard. The houses were narrow and dark—sullen patchworks of brown and black and maroon. Originally built for immigrant factory workers, the houses were now predominantly occupied by struggling minorities. Most houses had been converted to rooming houses and apartments.

“Who lives in the house across from you?” Ranger asked Lula.

“A bunch of people,” Lula said. “Mostly they come and go. Vanessa Long lives on the first floor, and you never know which of her kids is needing to stay there. Almost always her daughter, Tootie, and Tootie’s three kids. Harold sometimes lives there. Old Mrs. Clay
ton lives on the other side of the hall. There are three rooms on the second floor. Not sure who’s in those rooms. They let out weekly. Used to be Earl Bean lived in one, but I haven’t seen him lately.”

Ranger parked two houses down. “The third floor?”

“Nothing but an attic up there. Crazy Jim Katts lives in it. My guess is Mo was going to see someone on the second floor. It isn’t like it’s a crack house or anything over there, but when you rent weekly you never know what you get. You probably want to talk to Vanessa. She collects the rent. She knows everything goes on. Her apartment’s on the left side when you walk in the door.”

Ranger scanned the street. “Mo come in a car?”

“You mean the car he stole from you? Nope. I looked, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any strange cars. Only cars I see were ones that belong.”

“You stay here,” Ranger said to Lula. He gave an almost imperceptible nod in my direction. “You come with me.”

He was wearing black sweatpants and a black hooded sweatshirt. So far as I could tell he’d never broken a sweat during the run. I, on the other hand, started sweating at
the quarter-mile mark. My clothes were soaked through, my hair was stuck to my face in ringlets and my legs felt rubbery. I angled out of the car and did a little jig on the sidewalk, trying to keep warm.

“We’ll talk to Vanessa,” Ranger said. “And we’ll look around. You have anything on you?”

I shook my head, no.

“No gun?”

“No gun. Everything’s in my pocketbook, and I left my pocketbook at my parents’ house.”

Ranger looked grim. “Is the gun loaded?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Your granny’ll be doing target practice, shooting the eyes out of the potatoes.”

I tagged after him and made a mental note to get my gun as soon as possible.

The front door to the building was unlocked. The overhead light still on. Inside, the small foyer was dark. Two doors led to the first-floor apartments. Ranger knocked on the left-hand door.

I looked at my watch. Seven forty-five. “It’s early,” I said.

“It’s Sunday,” Ranger said. “She’ll be getting ready for church. Women need time for their hair.”

The door opened the width of the security chain and two inches of face peered out at us.

“Yes?”

“Vanessa?” Ranger asked.

“That’s me,” she said. “What do you want? If you’re looking to rent we’re full up.”

Ranger badged her. “Bond enforcement,” he said. His voice was soft and polite. Respectful. “I’m looking for a man named Moses Bedemier. He was seen entering this house earlier this morning.”

“I don’t know anybody named Moses Bedemier.”

“White man,” Ranger said. “In his sixties. Balding. Wearing a gray overcoat. Probably came here looking to buy drugs.”

The door closed and the chain snapped off. “I didn’t see no jive junkie coming in here, and if I did I’d kick him out on his bony white ass. I’ve got kids in this house. I don’t put up with that kind coming around. I don’t put up with drugs in this house.”

“Would you mind if we check the upstairs apartments?” Ranger asked.

“Mind? Hell, I’d insist on it,” Vanessa said, disappearing into her living room, returning with a set of keys.

She was as wide as Lula, dressed in a red and yellow flowered cotton housecoat with
her hair up in rollers. She had a grown daughter and grandchildren, but she didn’t look much over thirty. Maybe thirty-five. She knocked on the first door with a vengeance.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

The door opened and a slim young man squinted out at us. “Yuh?”

“You got anybody in here?” Vanessa asked, poking her head around the doorjamb, seeing for herself. “You doing business in here that you shouldn’t be doing?”

“No, ma’am. Not me.” He shook his head vigorously.

“Hmmm,” Vanessa said and moved on to door number two.

Again KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

The door was jerked open by a fat man wearing briefs and an undershirt. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he yelled. “What’s a man got to do to get some sleep around here?” He saw Vanessa and took a step back. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Didn’t know it was you.”

“I’m looking for some nasty white guy,” Vanessa said, arms crossed, chin tucked in outraged authority. “You got one in here?”

“Nobody here but me.”

We all stood staring at door number three.

Ranger motioned Vanessa to stand to one side, rapped on the door and waited for a response. After a moment he knocked again.

“Got a lady in here,” Vanessa said. “Moved in just last week. Name’s Gail.” She leaned past Ranger. “Gail? It’s Vanessa from downstairs, honey. You open the door.”

The bolt slid back and a young woman peeked out at us. She was painfully thin, with sleepy eyes and an open sore at the corner of her mouth.

“You have visitors this morning?” Vanessa asked.

The woman hesitated for a couple beats. Probably wondering what she should say. What new trouble was at her doorstep?

Vanessa looked beyond Gail. “There isn’t anybody else in there now, is there?”

Gail gave her head a vehement shake. “Unh-uh. And I didn’t invite nobody up here either. He just come of his own accord. Honest. It was some crazy white guy looking for my old man.”

Vanessa raised a disapproving eyebrow. “I was led to understand you were living alone.”

“My old man split on me. I got out of rehab, and he took off. He said he was worrying about things that been happening.” She made a gun with her thumb and forefinger. “Now he’s gone. Vanished. Poof.”

Ranger was hanging loose behind Vanessa. “Name?” he asked Gail.

Gail looked from Vanessa to Ranger to me. More indecision.

“WELL?” Vanessa demanded, loud enough to make Gail jump six inches.

“Elliot Harp,” Gail said, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “Everybody call him Harpoon. But I’m not his woman no more. I swear to it.” She licked at the sore on her lip. “Is there more?” she asked.

“No,” Ranger told her. “Sorry we had to bother you so early in the morning.”

Gail nodded once and closed the door very quietly. Click. She was gone.

Ranger thanked Vanessa. Told her how he appreciated her help. Anytime, Vanessa said. And if he ever needed a room, or for that matter, if he ever needed anything at all…
anything,
he should remember about her. Ranger assured Vanessa she was unforgettable, and we left on that note.

“Boy,” I said when we were out on the street. “Mr. Charm.”

“In sweats, too,” he said. “You should see me work my magic in leather.”

“Where is he?” Lula wanted to know when we were all settled in Ranger’s Bronco. “Where’s Old Penis Nose?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “He came here looking for Elliot Harp, but Elliot wasn’t at home.”

“Elliot Harp’s bad news,” Lula said. “Mean. Middle management. Must have at least ten kids running for him.”

“About that badge you flash,” I said to Ranger.

He pulled away from the curb, flicked me a sideways glance. “You want one?”

“Might come in handy.”

Ranger shot Lula a look in the rearview mirror. “You know where Elliot lives?”

“So far as I know he lives on Stark. Has a woman there. Junkie ho.”

“Gail?”

“Yep. Gail.”

“We just talked to Gail. She said Harp split. Says she doesn’t know where he is.”

“That could be,” Lula said. “Lot of that going around.”

“If Mo really wants to find Elliot, where will he look next?” I asked.

Ranger turned at Gainsborough and headed back toward the burg. “He’ll go to the street. He’ll look for Elliot on the corner. Elliot’s running scared, but he still needs to do business.”

“Elliot won’t be on the street now,” Lula said. “Maybe around eleven. The corners are always busy after church. After church is time to pick up a ho and get high.”

I returned to my apartment for breakfast and a change of clothes. Lula went shopping for something to settle her stomach. And Ranger went home to the Batcave to eat tofu and tree bark. The plan was to rendezvous again at eleven.

The phone was ringing when I walked in the door, and my message light was blinking. Four new messages.

“Where have you been so early in the morning?” my mother wanted to know
when I snatched up the phone. “I called an hour ago and nobody was home.”

“I went out to run.”

“Have you seen the paper?”

“No.”

“They found bodies in Mo’s basement! Four bodies. Can you imagine?”

“I have to go,” I said. “I have to get a paper. I’ll call back later.”

“You left your pocketbook here.”

“I know. Don’t let Grandma play with my gun.”

“Your grandmother is out to church. Says she needs more of a social life. Says she’s going to find herself a man.”

I disconnected and played back my messages. My mother, Mary Lou, Connie, Sue Ann Grebek. They were all reporting on the newspaper article. I called next door to Mrs. Karwatt and asked if she had a paper. Yes, she did, she said. And did I hear about the bodies in Mo’s basement.

Three minutes later I was back in my kitchen with Mrs. Karwatt’s paper, and my phone was ringing again. Lula this time.

“Did you see it?” she shouted. “Old Penis Nose made the paper! Said how he was picked up for carrying and then disappeared,
and how he was under suspicion. Newspaper said a source told them the bodies in Mo’s cellar could be drug related. Hah!” she said. “You bet your ass.”

I read the article, started coffee brewing, took a shower and unplugged my phone after three more calls. This was the biggest thing to hit the burg since Tony the Vig was found dead in his attic, hanging from a cross-beam with his pants down and his hand wrapped around a record-breaking hard-on. Hell, maybe Mo was even bigger than Tony V’s wanger.

And the best part of all of this was that I was finally the good guy. No more bullshit about how Uncle Mo would never do anything wrong. The man had a maggot farm in his cellar.

“Looking good,” I said to Rex.

I laced up my boots, wrapped a scarf around my neck and went with the black leather jacket. I hopped into the Buick and drove over to my parents’ house. Grandma Mazur was taking her coat off in the foyer when I arrived.

“Did you hear about the bodies?” she asked.

“Morelli and I made the discovery,” I said.

Grandma’s eyes opened wide. “No kid
ding! Were you there when they dug them up? Are you going to be on TV?”

I retrieved my pocketbook from the hall closet and did a fast check of the contents. “I don’t think I’ll be on TV.”

“Boy,” Grandma said, “I sure would have liked to have been there.”

“How was church?” I asked.

“Boring,” she said. “A big waste of time. We got a bunch of duds in that congregation. Nobody hot to trot. I’m gonna try the bingo hall tonight. I hear they got some live lookers coming to bingo.”

Ranger was already parked when I swung into the municipal lot on Woodley. He was dressed in army fatigues and a khaki flight jacket.

“What’s up?” I said by way of greeting.

“I got word on one of my FTAs. Earl Forster. Robbed a liquor store and shot the clerk in the foot. Jumped on a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bond. Just got a phone call saying Forster’s stopped by to see his girlfriend in New Brunswick. I have a man in place, but I need to be there for the takedown. Can you handle the search for Harp by yourself?”

“No problem. Lula knows what he looks like. She knows his corners.”

“Don’t get close to him,” Ranger said. “Only use him to get to Mo. If Mo and Harp go off together, let Mo put Harp away before you go in. We think Mo might be killing drug dealers. We
know
Harp will kill anybody…even female bounty hunters.”

Cheery thought for the day.

“If it looks like you can do a takedown, but you need extra help, get me on the cell phone or the pager,” Ranger said.

“Be careful,” I said to the back of his car as he drove away. No point saying it to his face.

Lula barreled into the lot ten minutes later. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I got this intestinal problem, you know.” She looked around. “Where’s Ranger?”

“Had business elsewhere. We’re on our own.”

If I was doing a serious stakeout with another person, I’d use two cars or have one person on foot with a second car in backup. I suspected this would be more of a ride around and look for a man who didn’t show up. And since I had no idea what Harp looked like, I elected to ride with Lula.

It was another gray day with a light rain
beginning to fall. Temperatures were in the forties, so nothing was freezing. Lula motored the Firebird out of the lot and headed for Stark Street. We kept our eyes open for the Batmobile, Elliot Harp and bad guys in general. We worked our way down Stark, hit the end of the business district, turned and retraced our route. Lula wove her way through the projects, cruised center city and crossed over to King. When she reached Ferris she drove by Mo’s. The store was padlocked and sealed with crime scene tape. We did this circuit two more times. It was raining. Not many people out on the street.

“I’m starving to death,” Lula said. “I need a burger. I need fries.”

I could see the glow of a fast-food drive-through shining red and yellow through the misting rain. I could feel the force field sucking us forward to the speaker box.

“I want a triple-decker burger,” Lula yelled at the box. “I want bacon and cheese and special sauce. I want a large fries, and I want lots of them little ketchup packets. And I want a large chocolate milkshake.” She turned to me. “You want something?”

“I’ll have the same.”

“Double that order,” Lula shouted. “And don’t forget about the ketchup.”

We took the bags of food and parked on Stark Street where we could watch the action. Trouble was, there wasn’t much action to watch.

“You ever wonder about him?” Lula asked.

“Who?”

“Ranger.”

“What’s to wonder?”

“I bet you don’t know anything about him,” Lula said. “Nobody knows anything about him. I bet you don’t even know where he lives.”

“I know his address.”

“Hah! That vacant lot.”

I sipped at my milkshake, and Lula finished up her fries.

“I think we should do some detecting on Ranger,” Lula said. “I think someday we should follow his ass.”

“Hmm,” I said, not feeling especially qualified to follow Ranger’s ass.

“In fact, I might follow it tomorrow morning. You run with him every day?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Well if you run with him tomorrow, you call me. I could use some exercise.”

After an hour of sitting, I was ready to move on. “This isn’t working,” I said to Lula. “Just for fun, let’s drive over to Montgomery.”

Lula drove the length of Stark, looped through the projects one last time and cut across town. We drove back and forth on Montgomery and parked two doors down from Sal’s Café.

“Bet they’ve got doughnuts in there,” Lula said.

“What about your intestinal problem? Maybe you want to wait and see how it goes with the burger and fries.”

“I suppose you’re right, but I sure would like to have some doughnuts.”

I had to admit, doughnuts seemed like a pretty good idea on a drizzly day.

“Course there’s some advantage to having an intestinal disturbance,” Lula said. “Those doughnuts probably wouldn’t stay with me long enough to find a home on my ass.”

“Better take advantage of the opportunity.”

Lula had her purse in her hand. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

I stayed in the car and watched through the window as Lula picked out a dozen doughnuts.

She handed the doughnuts and the coffees off to me and settled behind the wheel. I chose a Bavarian cream and took a chomp. Lula did the same. She took a second doughnut.

“Have you seen Jackie?” I asked Lula. “Is she still with the program?”

“She’s going to the clinic. Problem is, you can make a person do the program, but you can’t make them take it serious. Jackie don’t believe in herself enough to take the program serious.”

“Maybe that will change.”

“I sure hope so. I’m lucky because I was born with a positive personality. Even when things aren’t looking too good, I don’t let myself get beaten down. I just start pushing and shoving. Pretty soon I’m so loud and full of bullshit I just forget about being scared. Jackie wasn’t born with such a positive personality. Jackie’s more a negative person. She pulls all inside herself.”

“Not always,” I said. “She was pretty extroverted when it came to drilling holes in Cameron Brown.”

Lula gazed into the doughnut box, thinking ahead to doughnut number three. “Yeah. She had a good time on that one. I know it wasn’t right what she did to the dead, but I
gotta admit, I sort of liked seeing her make old Cameron jump around. She’s gotta learn to take charge more like that.

“See, Jackie and me, we’ve both been beat on a lot. That’s the way it is when you haven’t got a daddy, and your mama’s a crackhead. There’s always lots of uncles coming and going and getting high. And when they get high they beat on you.

“Trouble now is that Jackie’s still letting people beat on her. She doesn’t know she can make it stop. I try to tell her. I tell her to look at me. Nobody’s gonna beat on me ever again. I’ve got self-respect. I’m gonna do something with my life. I might even go to college someday.”

“You could do it. Lots of people return to school.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said.

I drank my coffee and looked out the rain-streaked window. Cars drove by in abstract motion. Blurry images and smeary flashes of bright red taillights.

A car pulled out of the underground parking garage across the street. It was a tan sedan with something long and black strapped to the roof. I cracked my window for a better look. Rug, I thought. All rolled up and covered with a plastic tarp.

The driver reached a hand out, checking to see if his cargo was secure. The door opened, and the driver stepped out to make an adjustment.

Suddenly I was at the edge of my seat. “Look at that car with the rug on top!” I hollered, grabbing Lula by the jacket sleeve to get her attention.

“The car at the parking garage?” She put the wipers on and leaned forward to see better. “Holy cow! It’s him! It’s Old Penis Nose!”

Lula jumped out of the car and took off across the street after Mo. She had a half-eaten Boston creme in her hand, and she was getting pelted with rain and she was yelling, “Stop! Stop in the name of the law!”

Mo’s mouth dropped open. A mixture of disbelief and horror registered on his face. He snapped his mouth shut, jumped into his car and took off, burning rubber.