Sticky Fingers (2 page)

I kicked him out onto the main boulevard, which ran through at least three universities.

To Marvin, I said, “I delivered Carmine’s message, but I kind of left Gino in the middle of Forbes Avenue. Without his pants.”

Marvin shrugged. “Gino paid off his debt. Carmine’s happy about that. He wouldn’t care about the no-pants thing.”

“Don’t be so sure. Gino’s daughter’s getting married this weekend.”

“So?”

“So Carmine’s invited to the wedding. Gino’s liable to want some payback.”

“Maybe he should learn not to gamble.”

Marvin clearly didn’t understand the implications of liquored-up Italian relatives crammed into a restaurant ballroom with booze, bridesmaids, and brass knuckles in the pockets of their rented tuxes.

Marvin leaned forward across the table. “Forget about that. Carmine needs another favor.”

In the last few months, my business in architectural salvage had hit a dry patch, and I’d finally done a couple of little jobs for my uncle. Nothing too strenuous. In fact, it was a kind of work that appealed to me. I discovered I didn’t mind threatening the occasional gambler with a tire iron. And it turned out I was good at recovering cash Carmine figured was long gone. He shared a percentage with me, and we were both happy.

Sort of.

I was a little worried my daughter might learn about my new career path.

But a family’s gotta eat.

“What is it this time?” I asked. “Am I supposed to shake down another retiree who owes bingo money?”

“No. Something bigger.” Marvin glanced around the deli. “Somebody contacted Carmine for a service.”

I grinned. “Tell me the truth, Marv. When you were a kid, did you dress up like James Bond on Halloween? Carry a martini glass around the neighborhood, asking for Snickers bars?”

“Why?”

“Because if anybody’s watching you right now, they’re going to think you’re soliciting a hit.”

“You can make jokes,” he said. “But I hear your kid is going to college next year. You have the tuition saved up?”

Okay, so far I had managed to buy everything my daughter required, including the latest silly-looking shoes and a lot of electronic equipment that every teenager needed to survive. But somebody had finally showed me what it costs to send a child to college these days, and I’d nearly fallen off my chair.

I said, “What’s the job?”

“A kidnapping,” Marvin said.

I laughed. “Your mom finally wants rid of you?”

Marvin’s face remained stiff. “Keep your voice down. Somebody wants a woman snatched and held for ransom.”

“A woman?”

“Yeah, kidnapped.”

I blinked. “Marv, are you wearing a wire?”

He shook his head firmly. “Not me.”

I sat back against the vinyl seat. “Either you’ve decided to save your skin by turning state’s evidence against Carmine, or you’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not kidding around, Roxy.”

I put my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Marvin, you’re talking felony here, with big time attached. It’s a lot different from hassling people about their gambling debts.”

“I know that.”

“And you’d be an accessory, sweet pea. Did you skip that day in law school?”

“I didn’t skip any days of law school.”

“Besides, what idiot thinks Carmine can mastermind a kidnapping? He’s eighty years old now, and he wasn’t too swift to begin with. He was the one who left his craps-game winnings on the bar on St. Patrick’s Day, remember?”

Without answering, Marvin pulled a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his suit. He slid it across the table to me like he was handing off a mission impossible.

I unfolded the paper and looked down at a page made up entirely of letters cut from magazines and newspapers.

Marvin said, “That’s a photocopy of a photocopy. The sender must have kept the original. There were no fingerprints either.”

“You checked?” I said. “Tell me you still have a chemistry set your parents got you for your bar mitzvah.”

“It was a birthday present. It has a perfectly good fingerprint kit,” he said. “And I know how to use it.”

“Yeah, you probably practiced on all your friends on the debate team.”

I read the letter.

Mr. Abruzzo,

I need you to kidnap someone on Tuesday. I will pay you ten thousand dollars. For the details, call my telephone number at five o’clock today.

At the bottom of the page was a local phone number.

I looked up to find Marvin gnawing on one fingernail. I said, “Did Carmine call the number?”

“No, I did. It was a recorded message, with all the information we needed to complete the request. The voice was distorted by a computer, very high-tech. Two hours later, I called back, but the number had been disconnected. I received a small down payment via PayPal online.”

“Gee, a computer-savvy crook. That’s unusual. What’s supposed to happen to the woman once she’s kidnapped?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you kidnap somebody, you don’t exactly sit around playing Parcheesi and eating Doritos together.”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.” I refolded the letter and skimmed it back across the table. “There’s a cop behind this, Marvin. It’s a sting. Somebody’s trying to put Carmine in jail once and for all.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. The details were very specific—where and when the snatch could happen, everything. Except for the Parcheesi and Doritos part. Are you interested?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “I stay away from felonies. And besides, I don’t pick on women.”

He took the letter and tucked it back into his pocket. “The guy who normally does this stuff for Carmine turned me down because—well, he’s had two knee replacements.”

“Carmine’s whole crew have pacemakers and live on Metamucil.”

He smiled unpleasantly. “So that leaves you, Roxy.”

Sure, I liked the idea of causing a little trouble. But I had a daughter to think about, and Nooch, too. So I shook my head. “Forget it.”

“You sure?”

I fixed him with a look. “Read my lips, Marvin. I don’t hurt women. Not for anybody.”

He stopped smiling.

Curiosity got the best of me, though. I said, “Tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“Who’s the woman? The mark? The one who’s supposed to be kidnapped?”

“Name of Clarice Crabtree.” Marvin picked up his corned beef. “She works at the museum.”

I stopped worrying and burst out laughing. “Marvin, you’ve been scammed! I went to high school with Clarice! She got straight A’s and never said a word to anyone unless it was to brag about how great she was. Hell, if somebody wants her kidnapped, it’s probably just to shut her up.”

3

Back in the truck, my dog Rooney woke up with a slobbery snort and gobbled the remaining half of Nooch’s sandwich, wrapping and all.

“I wasn’t finished with that!” Nooch cried as his snack disappeared.

“Take it easy,” I said as Rooney licked his chops. “You ate lunch an hour ago. You didn’t need another whole sandwich, for God’s sake.”

“I can’t help it if I get hungry,” Nooch said. “And you said you’d quit cussing. It’s bad for business.”

Most of the guys in my business cussed a hell of a lot more than I did. But Nooch had almost the same brain as a barnacle, so disagreeing with him could turn into a long afternoon. It would be easier to clean up my language.

Nooch Santonucci had been my wingman since back in our high school days, when kids taunted him for being a retard, and I busted their heads for it. The partnership lasted because he was the size of a triceratops and could do my heavy lifting without protest. And in daylight, I preferred his kind of company—a man who did what he was told. To tell the truth, I liked that kind of man at night, too.

“What did Marvin want?” Nooch asked when we were buckled up with Rooney panting between us on the front seat.

“He wanted to buy me lunch.” The less Nooch knew about Marvin’s proposal, the better.

“I been reading this book,” Nooch said, “that says being evasive is an early warning sign.”

“Who says I’m being evasive? And since when do you know what that means? Wait a minute. You’re reading a book?” I shoved Rooney out of the way and stared at Nooch. “A real book? What’s it called?”

“
Wonderful You.
Father Mike gave it to me. He said it would help me realize my potential as a human being. The book says the power of positive thoughts will dissolve all the world’s problems. A golden stream of positive energy, that’s all we need to become magnets for wealth and health.”

“Magnets for–?”

“Wealth and health. It’s a great book. Here, Father Mike gave me a notebook to write down the important stuff.” Nooch fished a battered ring-bound notepad out of his pocket and thumbed it open. A few pages bore carefully penciled block letters. “See? Positive thoughts, that’s important. I’m supposed to close my eyes and visualize what I want. Trouble is, when I close my eyes, I keep falling asleep.”

“You’re actually writing stuff down?”

“Yeah, Father Mike says it’ll help me remember.”

I started the truck. “So what’s being evasive an early warning sign of?”

“I forget, but it’s bad. So is cussing, which degrades your respect for—for something, but I forget that part, too.” He tried paging through his notes to find the right answer. “Anyway, you’re supposed to surround yourself with stuff that reflects positive energy, which I figure is sandwiches and pizza, because everybody loves sandwiches and pizza. But cussing isn’t positive.”

“Suddenly I’m having a close encounter with my own personal Doctor Phil,” I said. “Put your notebook away before Rooney eats it.”

Nooch placidly obeyed. “You should read the book, Rox. You’re always reading books. But this one is all about having a positive outlook on life.”

“I’m plenty positive.”

My cell phone rang before he could argue the point, and I pulled it from the pocket of my jeans. Without checking the ID, which is always a mistake, I answered.

“You bitch,” Gino Martinelli said in my ear. “I’m coming after you.”

Last I’d seen, little Gino had been hopping up and down barefoot and buck naked like some kind of furious Italian leprechaun.

“You’re a pest, Gino,” I said. “And not a very positive person, if I might say so.”

“You’re not as tough as you think you are,” he snarled, and added some curses.

I switched ears so Nooch wouldn’t hear Gino’s nonpositive language. Gino once boxed flyweight—at least, that’s what he bragged down at the Sons of Italy–but mostly he was just another old guy blowing a lot of hot air. I said, “Don’t threaten me, Gino. You know I hate being terrified.”

He said, “Just watch your rearview mirror, bitch, because I’m coming.”

“Put extra glue on your toupee,” I advised. “Your wife will be mad if you lose it. Does she know about your latest girlfriend yet? The one you pulled out of kindergarten class?”

He cussed some more and hung up.

Nooch said, “Gino doesn’t like talk about his toupee.”

“Then he should get a new one. It looks like he’s wearing a weasel up there.”

“You’re just making him madder. You should be positive. Be a magnet for wonderfulness.”

“There’s nothing wonderful about Gino.” I pulled into traffic. “I thought his wife would be keeping him busy with wedding stuff this week.”

“My nonna says I need a suit for the wedding.”

“Okay, we’ll go shopping. I can probably afford something from the thrift store.” There was no use spending real money on a suit that Nooch would wear once. “But right now, we’ve got work to do. It’s okay to work, right? Is it positive enough for you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Nooch said. “I like working. Work is positive.”

An old bank was being torn down in the Garfield neighborhood. Nooch and I put on our hard hats and went inside.

“Roxy!” Speeder Reed spun his wheelchair in the middle of the bank’s dusty floor and rolled over to me. “Glad you could make it.”

“Hey, Speeder. What do you have for me?”

“The marble counters and the iron bars. Can you believe a bank in this neighborhood wasn’t using bulletproof glass?”

“Maybe that explains why they closed this branch.”

Speeder’s dad had been in the salvage business for years, and his son accidentally got caught in the collapse of an old church. Since losing the use of his legs at the age of thirteen, Speeder had showed a lot of determination to stay in the family trade. His arms and shoulders were huge from spinning the wheelchair around, and he fearlessly drove a specially equipped van into the most dangerous parts of the city. He could always be found scooting through demo sites, covered in dust and giving orders.

“Take whatever else you can carry out of here,” Speeder said. “We’re gonna drop this building in the morning.”

“Thanks.”

Half the success in the salvage business is the dumb luck of finding stuff of value after everybody else has given up. It takes the sensitive nose of a beagle and the instincts of a treasure hunter with a little Gypsy fortune-teller thrown in. I sifted through the bank’s cash drawers but didn’t see any old bills stuck in any cracks. But I did find treasure under a broken desk.

“What’re those?” Nooch leaned over my shoulder.

I gathered up a handful of narrow plastic tubes. “Dye packs,” I said, handling them carefully. “Banks used to put these in the bags they handed over to robbers. Once the thief touched the money, the dye pack blew up and made him obvious to the police.”

“Cool!” Nooch grabbed one out of my hand, and it immediately burst.

“Watch out!” I waved my hand in front of my face to dispel the orange cloud.

When I opened my eyes, a huge orange blotch had stained the front of Nooch’s brown sweatshirt. With his yellow hard hat, he looked like the Great Pumpkin.

“Oh, man.” He stared down at himself. “Orange is the color of the Cincinnati Bengals. How am I going to explain this?”

Wearing the colors of an archenemy team was treason to a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

“I don’t think there’s any need to explain,” I said. “One look pretty much tells the story.”

“Is it a positive story?” Nooch asked. “If I’m supposed to be on a path of fulfillment, I think it should be a positive story.”