Explosive Eighteen

FIVE

I AWOKE DISORIENTED. The room was dark. An alarm was going off. I was next to a warm body. Morelli. He reached across me and shut the alarm off. The alarm had been coming from his cell phone.

“What the heck?” I said. “What time is it?”

“It’s five o’clock. Gotta go. Early briefing. And I need to go home and feed Bob before I leave for work.”

“When did you get here?”

“Around midnight. You were asleep.”

“So you just crawled under the covers? I thought we were having issues.”

He slipped out of bed. “I was tired. This was easy.”

“Easy?” I was up on an elbow. “Excuse me? Easy?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have to talk to you.” He kicked around in the dark, picking clothes off the floor. “These boxers are mine, right?”

“Who else would they belong to?”

“Could be anyone’s,” Morelli said.

I rolled my eyes and switched the bedside light on. “Does this help?”

He tugged his jeans on. “Thanks.”

Now that the room was partially lit, I could see the Band-Aid across Morelli’s nose, and his black eye. The fight in Hawaii had been violent but short, terrifying to witness and infuriating to remember. Ranger had needed seven stitches to close the cut under his eye, and he’d cracked a bone in his hand rearranging Morelli’s face.

“How’s your nose?” I asked Morelli.

“Better. The swelling’s down.”

“That fight was horrible!”

“I’ve been in worse.”

I knew this to be true. Morelli’d had some wild years.

I sat up and hugged the quilt to my chest. “I was afraid you were going to kill each other.”

“I was trying,” Morelli said, sitting in my chair, pulling on socks. “Remember, you’re talking to Berger this morning. And don’t mess with him. He can make trouble for you if he wants.” He came to the bedside and gave me a fast kiss. “I’ll try to get away earlier tonight.”

“I might have plans with Lula.”

He took his gun off the nightstand and clipped it to his belt. “Don’t mess with me, either. I’m running with a short fuse these days.”

Jeez Louise.

I thrashed around in bed for a couple hours, trying to get back to sleep and having no luck. I finally rolled out of bed around eight and out of the apartment around nine. My plan was to stop in at the bonds bus before heading off to the FBI.

Traffic was slow on Hamilton, and I saw the reason for the gridlock when I was half a block from the bus. The bus was no more. A couple orange traffic cones marked the area of destruction. Beyond the cones lay the smoldering, blackened cadaver of twisted metal and stinking charred upholstery that used to be the bonds bus. I parked across the street, behind Vinnie’s Cadillac, Lula’s Firebird, and Connie’s Hyundai. DeAngelo’s Mercedes was noticeably missing. Vinnie, Lula, and Connie were on the sidewalk, eyes glazed, aimlessly staring at the mess.

“I’m thinkin’ lightning,” Lula said. “This here looks like a natural disaster. I’m thinkin’ the lightning came in through the fan in the crapper and snaked around inside until it found the microwave, and then BANG.”

“There was no lightning last night,” Connie said. “It hasn’t rained in days.”

“Well then, my next theory is terrorist,” Lula said. “A suicide bomber.”

“Why would a suicide bomber blow up the bonds bus?” Connie asked.

“They don’t need a reason,” Lula said. “They just be walking around with bombs stuck up their butt, and when they feel like pushin’ the button-KABOOM-there’s terrorist guts everywhere. Maybe one of them walked by the bus and smelled doughnuts, so he went in, ate a doughnut, and blew himself up.”

I was pretty sure it wasn’t a terrorist who destroyed the bus. I was pretty sure it was DeAngelo, and I knew Connie was thinking the same thing. Neither of us was saying anything because we didn’t want to set Vinnie off on a screaming rampage. Although it seemed unlikely, as he was currently one shade from comatose.

“Terrorist,” Vinnie said. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Lucille must have fed him a Valium smoothie this morning,” I said to Connie.

Connie looked over at Vinnie. “He’s been here since three this morning. He’s as fried as the bus.”

“Can we still operate?” I asked her.

“Yes. We lost the bus but not much else. I’ve been working off my laptop, and it travels with me. We lost a lot of files in the fire that took out the original office, but we didn’t lose anything with this fire. It’s all electronic now.”

I glanced at Lula. She was dressed in black. Black faux lizard-skin cowboy boots, black jeans that looked like they were painted on her, black tank top with an acre of boob squishing out. Pink hair.

My curiosity was raised. “What’s with the black?” I wanted to know. “You never wear all black.”

“I told you yesterday, I’m gettin’ serious. I’m not takin’ this job lightly no more. I’m channeling my inner Ranger, and I’m wearing black like him. I figure he’s on to something with the black deal.”

“He wears black so he doesn’t have to match socks in the morning.”

“See, that’s what I’m sayin’. It’s about being efficient. Get the job done. Wham. That’s gonna be my new motto. Wham. Now that I’m in black, I’m thinking I could catch Joyce Barnhardt. No problemo.”

“It might not be that easy,” I said. “There’s a rumor going around that Barnhardt’s been compacted.”

“Darn,” Lula said. “That would take all the fun out of capturing her.”

“I heard the same rumor,” Connie said.

“Too bad,” Lula said. “I was ready to be all over Barnhardt. I was ready to wham her.”

“I need to talk to a couple guys downtown this morning,” I said to Lula. “It shouldn’t take long. I’ll pick you up when I’m done, and we’ll go to the junkyard.”

“Being that we don’t have a bonds bus no more, I’ll be at the coffee shop,” Lula said. “I’m thinking about having one of them cinnamon rolls. What would Ranger eat?”

“He’d have half a bagel with a small amount of cream cheese and some smoked salmon.”

Lula shook her head. “That man don’t know much about eating.”