Explosive Eighteen

THREE

LULA DROPPED ME at my car, and I took a fast assessment of the surroundings. Work was continuing on the new office. The bus wasn’t in flames. DeAngelo’s Mercedes was gone, and Vinnie’s Caddy was still parked. All good things.

I thought about checking in with Connie, but decided against it. I hadn’t made any captures, and a conversation with Vinnie might include a lot of unpleasant nagging about catching Joyce Barnhardt. I’d get her eventually, but I wasn’t up to it right now, so I jumped into my RAV and took off for my parents’ house.

An hour later, I was in my apartment building, lugging my basket of clean clothes, plus my hamster cage, down the hall. I unlocked my door, pushed it open with a hip, and staggered into the kitchen, arms full. I set the laundry basket on the floor, and the hamster cage on my kitchen counter.

“Here you are, back home,” I said to Rex. “Did you have fun with Grandmom?”

Rex was out of his soup can, looking like he wanted a treat, so I got the box of crackers from the cupboard and shared one with him.

Someone rapped on my front door, and I opened the door a crack, leaving the security chain attached. Two men dressed in bureaucrat-level gray suits peeked in at me. Their dress shirts were long past crisp. Their striped ties were loosened at the neck. Their hair was receding. They looked to be late forties. One was around five foot ten. The other was in the five-foot-seven range. I suspected they liked their double bacon cheeseburgers.

“FBI,” the big guy said, flashing me an ID, then returning it to his pocket. “Can we come in?”

“No,” I told him.

“But we’re the FBI.”

“Maybe,” I said to the big guy. “Maybe not. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Lance Lancer.” He gestured at his partner. “This is agent Sly Slasher.”

“Lance Lancer and Sly Slasher? Are you kidding me? Those can’t be real names.”

“It’s right here on our badges,” Lancer said. “We’re looking for an envelope you might have inadvertently picked up.”

“What kind of envelope?”

“A large yellow envelope. It contained a photograph of a man we’re looking for in conjunction with a murder.”

“Wouldn’t that be a job for the local police?”

“It was an international murder. And there was a kidnapping involved. Do you have the envelope?”

“No.” And that was the truth. I suspected they were looking for the envelope I’d thrown away at my parents’ house.

“I think you’re fibbing,” Lancer said. “We have it on good authority you were given the envelope.”

“If I find it, I’ll give it to the FBI,” I said.

I closed and locked my door, and put my eye to the peephole. Lancer and Slasher were standing, hands on hips, looking mildly pissed, not sure what to do next.

I went to the kitchen and dialed Morelli’s cell phone. “Where are you?” I asked him.

“I’m home. I just got in.”

“I need to check on two guys who claim they’re FBI. Lance Lancer and Sly Slasher.”

“I’ll be a laughingstock if I plug those names into the system. This is a joke, right?”

“Those are the names they gave. They had badges and everything.”

“How fast do you need this?”

“How fast can you get it?”

Morelli grunted and hung up.

I imagined Morelli staring down at his shoe, shaking his head, wishing he hadn’t answered his phone.

I dialed my parents’ house, and my mother answered.

“I need you to do something for me,” I said. “I need the photo and the envelope I threw away when I was in the kitchen this morning. I tossed it in the trash.”

“Your grandmother emptied the trash right after you left. Today was garbage pickup. I can look out back, but I think it’s gone.”

So it appeared I was out of the FBI evidence supply business.

Fine by me. I had better, more important things to do, like taking a nap. I kicked my shoes off and flopped onto my bed. I’d barely closed my eyes and the doorbell bonged. I heaved myself out of bed, padded to my door, and looked out the peephole. Two more men in cheap gray suits.

I cracked the door, leaving the security chain in place, and looked out. “Now what?” I said.

The guy standing closest to the door badged me. “FBI. We’d like to talk to you.”

“Names?”

“Bill Berger, and my partner, Chuck Gooley.”

Bill Berger was slim, average height, and in his early fifties. Salt-and-pepper hair cut short. Bloodshot brown eyes. Probably, his contacts were killing him. Chuck was my age. Not fat but a chunky body. An inch or two shorter than Berger. His suit pants had a lot of crotch wrinkles, and he was wearing ratty running shoes.

“And you’d like to talk to me about what?” I said.

“Can we come in?”

“No.”

Berger went hands to hips, exposing the gun clipped to his belt. Hard to tell if it was an unconscious gesture or if he was trying to intimidate me. Either way, I wasn’t opening my door any wider.

“We have reason to believe you are in possession of a photograph that’s part of a crime investigation.”

My phone rang, and I excused myself to answer it.

“You’ve been home less than twenty-four hours, and you’re already in some kind of a mess,” Morelli said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Sure, but I’ve got guests right now. More FBI.”

“Are they in your apartment?”

“No. They’re in the hall.”

“That’s where you want them to stay. As far as I can tell, the first two guys aren’t with the Bureau. There are no Lance Lancers or Sly Slashers on active duty. Big surprise. So who have you got in your hall now?” Morelli asked.

“Bill Berger and Chuck Gooley.”

Silence for a beat. “Berger’s in his early fifties, black hair going gray, and Gooley looks like he’s had the same suit on for two weeks, right?”

“Yeah. Should I let them in?”

“No. Gooley eats out of Dumpsters and fucks feral cats. Let me talk to Berger.”

I passed my cell phone out to Berger. Two minutes later, Berger gave it back to me.

“Do you know where the Bureau’s located downtown?” Berger asked me.

“Yep.”

“I’ll meet you there tomorrow at ten o’clock. Bring the photo.”

“I don’t have the photo,” I told him.

“Then bring your lawyer.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You need to practice your people skills.”

Berger pressed his lips tight together. “I hear that a lot. Mostly from my ex-wife.”

I closed my door and got back to Morelli. “I guess Berger is FBI?”

“More or less. I need to talk to you.”

“I figured. I hoped to see you tonight.”

“I might be late.”

“How late?” I asked him.

“Hard to say. Someone just took sixteen rounds to the head in the projects.”

“Sixteen bullets to the head? That seems excessive.”

“Murray saw him, and he said he looked like Swiss cheese. Murray said the guy had brains leaking out all over the place.”

“Too much information.”

“It’s my life,” Morelli said. And he disconnected.

I went back to bed, but I kept thinking about brains leaking out from bullet holes. Morelli was the only one I knew who had a worse job than I did. Okay, maybe the guy at the mortuary who drains out body fluids was also in the running. Anyway, against all odds, Morelli liked being in law enforcement. He’d been a wild kid and the product of an abusive father. And now Morelli was a good cop, a responsible home owner, and an excellent pet parent to his dog, Bob. I’d always thought he had superior boyfriend, maybe even husband, potential, but his job was a constant, frequently grim, intrusion, and I couldn’t see that changing anytime soon. Plus, now there was the Hawaiian thing.

The other guy in my life, Ranger, realistically had no boyfriend or husband potential whatsoever, but he was an addictive guilty pleasure. He had a body like Batman, a dark and mysterious past, a dark and mysterious present, and an animal magnetism that sucked me in the instant I approached his force field. He wore only black. He drove only black cars. And when he made love, his brown eyes dilated totally black.

I rolled all this around in my mind… Morelli, Ranger, the brains leaking out. Then I thought about the FBI guys, both fake and real, and the guy in the photo. And none of this was conducive to napping. Not to mention, I’m not on salary. If I don’t capture skips, I don’t make money. If I don’t make money, I can’t make my rent. If I don’t make my rent, I’ll be living in my car. And my car isn’t all that terrific.

I returned to the kitchen and went back over my files. I thought I had my best shot with the purse snatcher. True, they were usually runners, but the guy looked fat in his photo, and I might be able to run down a fat guy if he wasn’t in top shape. His name was Lewis Bugkowski, aka Big Buggy. Twenty-three years old. He’d robbed an eighty-three-year-old woman who was sitting on a park bench. Forty-five minutes later, Buggy was arrested when he tried to buy six buckets of fried chicken with the woman’s credit card and the counter clerk didn’t think Buggy looked like a Betty Bloomberg. So besides being fat, Buggy was probably not real smart.

I thought about taking my gun, but decided against it. It made my bag too heavy and gave me a neck cramp. Truth is, I never use the gun anyway. I took pepper spray and hair spray instead. I had my phone clipped to the waistband on my jeans and handcuffs in my back pocket. I was ready to roll.

Buggy lived with his parents just slightly beyond Burg limits. This is always a bummer situation, because I hate snagging people in front of their parents or their kids. I could get him at his workplace, but he hadn’t listed any. I drove to Broad, hooked a left, and cruised by the Bugkowski house, a small Cape Cod. Clean. Tiny front yard, neatly maintained. One-car garage. No cars parked at the curb in front of the house.

I dialed Buggy’s phone, and he picked up after two rings.

“Lewis Bugkowski?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“Are you the home owner?”

“Nah, that’s my dad.”

“Is he at home?”

“No.”

“Your mother?”

“They’re both working. What do you want?”

“I’m conducting a survey on trash removal.”

Click.

Great. I’d found out everything I needed to know. Buggy was in the house alone. I parked one house down from the Bugkowskis, walked to their front door, and rang the bell.

A huge guy answered. He was easily 6′5″ and three hundred pounds. He was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that could have provided shelter for a Vietnamese family of eight.

“Yuh?” he asked.

“Lewis Bugkowski?”

He looked at me. “Is this about trash? You sound like that girl on the phone.”

“Bond enforcement,” I told him.

I whipped out my cuffs and attempted to clap one on his wrist. No good. The cuff wouldn’t close. His wrist was too big. The guy was a mountain.

I sent him a flirtatious smile. “I don’t suppose you’d want to come downtown with me to reschedule your court date?”

His eyes locked on to my messenger bag. “Is that what you use for a purse?”

Uh-oh.

“No,” I told him. “I use this for documents. Boring stuff. Let me show you.”

He grabbed the strap and ripped the bag off my shoulder before I could locate my pepper spray.

“Hey,” I said. “Give it back!”

He looked down at me. “Go away or I’ll hit you.”

“I can’t go away. The keys to my car are in the bag.”

His eyes lit up. “I could use a car. I’m hungry, and there’s no food in the house.”

I lunged for my bag, and he batted me away.

“I’ll drive you to Cluck-in-a-Bucket,” I said.

He closed his front door and stepped off the porch. “Don’t need you. I got a car now.”

I ran after him and latched on to the back of his T-shirt. “Help!” I yelled. “Police!”

He shoved me away, crammed himself behind the wheel, and the car groaned under the weight. He rolled the engine over and took off.

“That’s grand theft auto, mister!” I shouted after him. “You’re in big trouble!”

I watched Buggy disappear around a corner. I procrastinated a minute, then gave in and called Ranger.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m at Rangeman.”

Rangeman was the security company he partially owned. It was housed in a nondescript building in the center of Trenton, and it was filled with high-tech equipment and large, heavily muscled men in black Rangeman uniforms. Ranger kept a private apartment on the seventh floor.

“Some big dopey guy just stole my car,” I said to Ranger. “And he has my bag. And he’s FTA.”

“No problem. We have your car on the screen.”

Ranger has this habit of installing tracking devices on my cars when I’m not looking. In the beginning, I found the invasion of privacy to be intolerable, but I’ve gotten used to it over the years, and there are times when it’s come in handy… like now.

“I’ll send someone out to get your car,” Ranger said. “What do you want us to do with the big dopey guy?”

“How about if you cuff him, cram him into the backseat, and drive him to the bonds bus. I’ll take it from there.”

“And you?”

“I’m good. Lula’s on her way to pick me up.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

Okay, so I fibbed to Ranger about Lula. Truth is, I wasn’t ready to face him. Especially since he sounded a tiny bit exasperated. I looked down at my naked ring finger, grimaced, and called Lula.