Four to Score

2

I TOOK MY PLACE at the table, next to Eddie Kuntz. "You were trying to get in touch with me?"

"Yeah. I lost your card. I put it down somewhere and couldn't find it. So I looked you up in the phone book . . . only I got your parents. Good thing, too. Granny told me you're hard up for a man, and it turns out I'm between women right now, and I don't mind older chicks. So I guess this is your lucky day."

The chick made a valiant effort not to stab her fork into Eddie Kuntz's eyeball. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I got a call from Maxine. She said she had a message for me and it was coming by airmail tomorrow. I said tomorrow was Sunday, and there was no airmail on Sunday, so why doesn't she just tell me the message. Then she called me some names." He gave me a face like Maxine had hurt his feelings for no good reason. "Real abusive," he said.

"Was that it?"

"That was it. Except she said she was going to make me squirm. And then she hung up."

* * * * *

BY THE TIME we got to the banana cream pie I was feeling antsy. Nowicki had called Kuntz, so Nowicki was alive, and that was good. Unfortunately, she was sending him airmail. Airmail meant distance. And distance was bad. Even more bothersome was the fact that Eddie Kuntz's napkin was moving on his lap without benefit of hands. My first inclination was to shout "Snake!" and shoot, but probably that wouldn't hold up in court. Besides, as much as I disliked Eddie Kuntz, I could sort of identify with a man who got a stiffie over banana cream pie.

I scarfed down a piece of pie and cracked my knuckles. I glanced at my watch. "Gee, look at the time!"

My mother gave me her resigned mother look. The one that said, So go . . . at least I got you to stay through desert and now I know you had one good meal this week. And why can't you be more like your sister, Valerie, who's married and has two kids and knows how to cook a chicken.

"Sorry, I have to run," I said, pushing back from the table.

Kuntz paused with his fork midway to his mouth. "What? We leaving?"

I retrieved my shoulder bag from the kitchen. "I'm leaving."

"He's leaving too," my father said, head bent over his pie.

"Well, this was nice," Grandma said. "This didn't go so bad."

* * * * *

KUNTZ DANCED behind me when I opened my car door. Up on the balls of his feet. Lots of energy. Tony Testosterone. "How about we go somewhere for a drink?"

"Can't. I've got work to do. I need to finish up a lead."

"Is this about Maxine? I could go with you."

I slid behind the wheel and cranked the engine over. "Not a good idea. But I'll give you a call if anything turns up."

Look out world. Bounty hunter in action.

The diner was less than half filled when I arrived. Most of the people were lingering over coffee. In another hour a younger crowd would straggle in for desert or fries after the movies let out.

The shift had changed, and I didn't recognize the woman working the register. I introduced myself and asked for Margie.

"Sorry," the woman said. "Margie didn't come in today. Called in sick. Said she might not be here tomorrow, either."

I retreated to my car and rummaged through my bag, searching for the list of family and friends I'd gotten from Kuntz. I ran down the list in the fading light. There was one Margie. No last name, no phone, and for address Kuntz had written "yellow house on Barnet Street." He'd also added that Margie drove a red Isuzu.

The sun was a thin scarlet smudge on the horizon when I got to Barnet, but I was able to spot the yellow bungalow and red car. A woman with a heavily bandaged hand stepped out of the yellow house to fetch her cat just as I crept to a stop at the curb. She grabbed the gray cat when she saw me and disappeared behind her door. Even from the curb I could hear the bolt being thrown.

At least she was home. My secret fear had been that she'd disappeared and was sharing rent with Maxine in Cancun.

I hitched my bag onto my shoulder, plastered a friendly smile on my face, marched up the short cement walk and knocked on her door.

The door opened with the security chain in place. "Yes?"

I passed my card through to her. "Stephanie Plum. I'd like to talk to you about Maxine Nowicki."

"Sorry," she said. "I have nothing to say about Maxine. And I'm not feeling good."

I peeked through the crack in the door and saw she held her bandaged hand to her chest. "What happened?"

She looked at me slack faced and dead eyed, obviously medicated. "It was an accident. A kitchen accident."

"It looks pretty bad."

She blinked. "I lost a finger. Well, I didn't actually lose it. It was on the kitchen counter. I took it to the hospital and got it sewed back on."

I had an instant vision of her finger lying on the kitchen counter. Little black dots danced in front of my eyes, and I felt sweat pop out on my upper lip. "I'm sorry!"

"It was an accident," she said. "An accident."

"Which finger was it?"

"The middle finger."

"Oh man, that's my favorite finger."

"Listen," she said. "I gotta go."

"Wait! Just one minute more. I really need to know about Maxine."

"There's nothing to know. She's gone. There's nothing more I can tell you."

* * * * *

I SAT in my car and took a deep breath. From now on, I was going to be more careful in the kitchen. No more fishing around the garbage disposal looking for bottle caps. No more flamboyant whacking away at salad greens.

It was too late to hit any more people on the list, so I headed home. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, and the air getting sucked through the sunroof was pleasant. I cruised across town, parked behind my apartment building and swung through the rear entrance.

Rex stopped running on his wheel when I walked into the living room. He looked at me, whiskers twitching.

"Don't ask," I said. "You don't want to know." Rex was squeamish about things like chopped-off fingers.

My mother had given me some chicken and some pie to take home. I broke off a chunk of the pie and gave it to Rex. He shoved the crust into his cheek pouch, and his shiny black eyes almost popped out of his head.

Probably I'd looked like that earlier today when Morelli had asked for a doughnut.

* * * * *

I ALWAYS KNOW it's Sunday because I wake up feeling apologetic. That's one of the cool things about being a Catholic . . . it's a multifaceted experience. If you lose the faith, chances are you'll keep the guilt, so it isn't as if you've been skunked altogether. I rolled my head and looked at the digital readout on my clock. Eight. Still time to make late mass. I really should go. My eyes grew heavy at the thought.

Next time I opened my eyes it was eleven. Gosh. Too late to go to church. I heaved myself out of bed and padded to the bathroom, telling myself it was okay because God was willing to forgive little things like skimpy church attendance. Over the years I'd evolved my religion and constructed the Benevolent God. The Benevolent God also didn't care about such trifles as cussing and fibbing. The Benevolent God looked into a person's heart and knew if she'd been naughty or nice in the grand scheme of things. In my world, God and Santa Claus did not micromanage lives. Of course, that meant you couldn't count on them to help you lose weight, either.

I stepped out of the shower and shook my head by way of styling my hair. I dressed in my usual uniform of spandex shorts and halter-style sports bra and topped it off with a Rangers hockey jersey. I took another look at my hair and decided it needed some help, so I did the gel, blow-dry, hair spray routine. When I was done I was several inches taller. I stood in front of the mirror and did the Wonder Woman thing, feet spread, fists on hips. "Eat dirt, scumbag," I said to the mirror. Then I did the Scarlett thing, hand to my heart, coy smile. "Rhett, you handsome devil, how you do go on."

Neither of those felt exactly right for the day, so I took myself into the kitchen to see if I could find my identity in the refrigerator. I was plowing through a Sara Lee frozen cheesecake when the phone rang.

"Hey," Eddie Kuntz said.

"Hey," I answered.

"I got the letter from Maxine. I thought you might want to take a look."

* * * * *

I CRUISED over to Muffet Street and found Eddie Kuntz standing on his minuscule front lawn, hands dangling loose at his sides, staring at his front window. The window was smash city. Big hole square in the middle. Lots of fracture lines.

I slammed the door when I got out of the car, but Kuntz didn't turn at the sound, nor at my approach. We stood there for a moment, side by side, studying the window disaster.

"Nice job," I said.

He nodded. "Square in the middle. Maxine was on the softball team in high school."

"She do this last night?"

Another nod. "I was going to bed. I turned the light off and CRASH . . . a brick came sailing through my front window."

"Airmail," I said.

"Yeah, goddamn airmail. My aunt is apeshit. She's my landlady. Her and Uncle Leo live in the other half of this piece of crap. The only reason she isn't out here wringing her hands is on account of she's at church."

"I didn't realize you were renting."

"What, you think I'd pick out these paint colors? Do I look like one of those poofie guys?"

Hell no. Poofie guys don't think a rip in an undershirt represents a fashion statement.

He handed me a piece of white paper. "This was tied around the brick."

The letter was handwritten and addressed to Kuntz. The message was simple. It told him he'd been a jerk, and if he wanted his property back, he was going to have to go on a treasure hunt. It said his first clue was "in the big one." And then a bunch of mixed-up letters followed.

"What does this mean?" I asked him.

"If I knew I wouldn't be calling you, would I? I'd be out on a goddamn treasure hunt." He threw his hands into the air. "She's wacko. I should have known she was wacko from the beginning. She had a thing about spies. Was always watching those stupid Bond movies. I'd be banging her from behind, and she'd be watching James Bond on the television. Can you believe it?"

Oh yeah.

"You snoop around, right?" he said. "You know all about being a spy? You know about cracking codes?"

"I don't know anything about being a spy," I told him. "And I don't know what this says."

In fact, not only didn't I know anything about being a spy, I didn't even know much about being a bounty hunter. I was just bumbling along, trying to pay my rent, praying I'd win the lottery.

"So now what?" Kuntz asked.

I reread the note. "What is this property she's talking about?"

He gave me a minute-long, blank look. "Love letters," he finally said. "I wrote her some love letters, and I want them back. I don't want them floating around now that we're broken up. There's some embarrassing things in them."

Eddie Kuntz didn't seem like the type to write love letters, but what do I know? He did seem like the type to trash an apartment. "Did you go to her apartment looking for the letters?"

"Yeah, but the apartment was all locked up."

"You didn't break in? You didn't have a key?"

"Break in? You mean like bash down the door?"

"I walked through Maxine's apartment yesterday. Someone has torn it apart."

Again, the blank look. "I don't know anything about it."

"I think someone was looking for something. Could Maxine have been keeping drugs?"

He shrugged. "Who knows with Maxine. Like I said, she's screwy. "

It was nice to know Maxine was in the area, but aside from that I couldn't get too excited about a note I couldn't read. And I definitely didn't want to hear more about Kuntz's sex life.

He draped an arm around my shoulders and leaned close. "I'm gonna level with you, sweetie-pie. I want to get those letters back. It might even be worth something to me. You know what I mean? Just because you're working for this bail bonds guy doesn't mean you can't work for me, too, right? I'd pay good money. All you have to do is let me talk to Maxie before you turn her over to the cops."

"Some people might consider that to be double-dipping."

"A thousand dollars," Kuntz said. "That's my final offer. Take it or leave it."

I stuck out my hand. "Deal."

Okay, so I can be bought. At least I don't come cheap. And besides, it was for a good cause. I didn't especially like Eddie Kuntz, but I could understand about embarrassing love letters since I'd written a few myself. They'd gone to my slimy ex-husband, and I'd consider a thousand dollars well spent if I could get them back.

"I'll need the letter," I said to him.

He handed it over and gave me a punch in the shoulder. "Go for it."

* * * * *

THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds. Fortunately, I lived in a building filled with seniors who sat around all day doing crosswords. And this was sort of like a crossword, right?

My first choice was Mr. Kleinschmidt in 315.

"Ho," Mr. Kleinschmidt said when he answered the door. "It's the fearless bounty hunter. Catch any criminals today?"

"Not yet, but I'm working on it." I handed him the airmail message. "Can you unscramble this?"

Mr. Kleinschmidt shook his head. "I do crosswords. This is a jumble. You have to go ask Lorraine Klausner on the first floor. Lorraine does jumbles."

"Everyone's a specialist today."

"If Mickey Mouse could fly he'd be Donald Duck."

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I thanked Mr. Kleinschmidt and I tramped two flights down and had my finger poised to ring Lorraine's bell when her door opened.

"Sol Kleinschmidt just called and told me all about the jumbled-up message," Lorraine said. "Come in. I have cookies set out."

I took a chair across from Lorraine at her kitchen table and watched her work her way through the puzzle.

"This isn't exactly a jumble," she said, concentrating on the note. "I don't know how to do this. I only do jumbles." She tapped her finger on the table. "I do know someone who might be able to help you, but . . ."

"But?"

"My nephew, Salvatore, has a knack for this sort of thing. Ever since he was little he's been able to solve all kinds of puzzles. One of those freak gifts."

I looked at her expectantly.

"It's just that he can be odd sometimes. I think he's going through one of those conformity things."

I hoped he didn't have a tongue stud. I had to struggle not to make guttural animal sounds when I talked to people wearing tongue studs. "Where does he live?"

She wrote an address on the back of the note. "He's a musician, and he mostly works nights, so he should be home now, but maybe it would be best if I call first."

* * * * *

SALVATORE SWEET lived in a high-rise condo overlooking the river. The building was sandblasted cement and black glass. The landscaping was minimal but well maintained. The lobby was newly painted and carpeted in tones of mauve and gray. Hardly a nonconformist's paradise. And not low-rent, either.

I took the elevator to the ninth floor and rang Sweet's doorbell. A moment later the door opened and I found myself face-to-face with either a very ugly woman or a very gay guy.

"You must be Stephanie."

I nodded my head.

"I'm Sally Sweet. Aunt Lorraine called and said you had a problem."

He was dressed in tight black leather pants held together at the sides with leather lacing that left a strip of pale white flesh from ankle to waist, and a black leather vest that molded around coneshaped, eat-your-heart-out-Madonna breasts. He was close to seven feet tall in his black platform pumps. He had a large hook nose, red roses tattooed on his biceps and—thank you, Lord—he didn't have a tongue stud. He was wearing a blond Farrah Fawcett wig, fake eyelashes and glossy maroon lipstick. His nails had been painted to match his lips.

"Maybe this isn't a good time . . ." I said.

"As good as any."

I had no idea what to say or where to look. The truth is, he was fascinating. Sort of like staring at a car crash.

He looked down at himself. "You're probably wondering about the outfit."

"It's very nice."

"Yeah, I had the vest made special. I'm lead guitar for the Lovelies. And let me tell you, it's fucking impossible to keep a good manicure through the weekend as a lead guitarist. If I'd known how things would turn out for me, I'd have taken up the fucking drums."

"Looks like you're doing okay."

"Success is my middle name. Two years ago I was straight as an arrow, playing for Howling Dogs. You ever hear of Howling Dogs?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Nobody fucking heard of Howling Dogs. I was fucking living in a fucking packing crate in the alley behind Romanos Pizza. I've been punk, funk, grunge and R&B. I've been with the Funky Butts, the Pitts, Beggar Boys, and Howling Dogs. I was with Howling Dogs the longest. It was a fucking depressing experience. I couldn't stand fucking singing all those fucking songs about fucking hearts fucking breaking and fucking goldfish fucking going to heaven. And then I had to fucking look like some western dude. I mean, how can you have any self-respect when you have to go on stage in a cowboy hat?"

I was pretty good at cussing, but I didn't think I could keep up with Sally. On my best day, I couldn't squeeze all those "f" words into a sentence. "Boy, you can really curse," I said.

"You can't be a fucking musician without fucking cursing."

I knew that was true, because sometimes I watched rockumentaries on MTV. My eyes strayed to his hair. "But now you're wearing a Farrah Fawcett wig. Isn't that kind of like a cowboy hat?"

"Yeah, only this is a fucking statement. This is fucking politically correct. See, this is the ultimate sensitive man. This is taking my female shit out of the closet. And like I'm saying, here it is, you know?"

"Un huh."

"And besides, I'm making a shitload of money. I caught the wave on this one. This is the year of the drag queen. We're like a freaking fucking invasion." He took the note from my hand and studied it. "Not only am I booked solid for every weekend for two years . . . I get money stuffed in my goddamn pants. I got money I don't know what to do with."

"So I guess you feel lucky to be gay."

"Well, just between you and me, I'm not actually gay."

"You're a cross-dresser."

"Yeah. Something like that. I mean, I wouldn't mind being sort of gay. Like, I guess I could dance with a guy, but I'm not doing any of that butt stuff."

I nodded. I felt like that about men, too.

He got a pen from a hall table and made some marks on the note. "Lorraine said you're a bounty hunter."

"I almost never shoot anybody," I said.

"If I was a bounty hunter I'd fucking shoot lots of people." He finished scribbling on the paper and gave it back to me.

"You're probably gonna find this hard to believe, but I was sort of weird when I was a kid."

"No!"

"Yeah. I was like . . . out there. So I used to spend a lot of time talking to Spock. And Spock and me, we'd send messages to each other in code."

"You mean Spock from Star Trek?"

"Yeah, that's the dude. Boy, Spock and I were tight. We did this code thing every day for years. Only our codes were hard. This code is too easy. This code is just a bunch of run-together letters with some extra shit thrown in. 'Red and green and blue. At Cluck in a Bucket the clue waits for you.' "

"I know Cluck in a Bucket," I said. "It's just down from the bonds office."

The trash containers in the Cluck in a Bucket parking lot are colored red, green and blue. The green and the blue are for recycling paper and aluminum. The big red one is for garbage. I'd bet my apprehension fee the next clue was in the garbage.

A second man came to the door. He was neatly dressed in Dockers and a perfectly pressed button-down shirt. He was shorter than Sweet. Maybe 5'9". He was slender and totally hairless, like a bald Chihuahua, with soft brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses, and a mouth that seemed too wide, too sensuous for his small pinched face and little button nose.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"This is Stephanie Plum," Sally said. "The one Lorraine called about."

The man extended his hand. "Gregory Stern. Everyone calls me Sugar."

"Sugar and I are roommates," Sally said. "We're in the band together."

"I'm the band tart," Sugar said. "And sometimes I sing."

"I always wanted to sing with a band," I said. "Only, I can't sing."

"I bet you could," Sugar said. "I bet you'd be wonderful."

"You'd better go get dressed," Sally said to Sugar. "You're going to be late again."

"We have a gig this afternoon," Sugar explained. "Wedding reception."

Yeeesh.

* * * * *

CLUCK IN A BUCKET is on Hamilton. It's housed in a cement cube with windows on three sides. And it's best known not for its outstanding food but for the giant rotating chicken impaled on a thirty-foot flagpole anchored in the parking lot.

I cruised into the lot and stopped short of the red Dumpster. The temperature had to be a hundred in the shade with a hundred percent humidity. My sunroof was open, and when I parked the car I felt the weight of the heat settling around me. Maybe when I found Nowicki I'd have my air-conditioning fixed, or maybe I'd spend a few days at the beach . . . or maybe I'd pay my rent and avoid eviction.

I walked to the Dumpster, thinking about ordering lunch. Two pieces of chicken plus a biscuit and slaw and an extra large soda sounded about right.

I peeked over the edge of the Dumpster, gave an involuntary gasp and staggered back a few feet. Most of the garbage was in bags, but some of the bags had split and had spewed out guts like bloated roadkill. The stench of vegetable rot and gangrenous chicken boiled over the Dumpster and had me reassessing my lunch plans. It also had me reassessing my job. There was no way I was scrounging in this mess for the stupid clue.

I returned to my car and called Eddie Kuntz on my cell phone. "I've deciphered the note," I told him. "I'm at Cluck in a Bucket, and there's another clue here. I think you'd better come see for yourself."

Half an hour later, Kuntz pulled into the lot. I was sitting in my car, slurping down my third giant-sized Diet Coke, and I was sweating like a pig. Kuntz looked nice and cool in his new sport utility vehicle and factory-installed air. He'd changed his clothes from the sweat-stained boxers he'd worn this morning to a black fishnet undershirt, black spandex shorts that didn't do much to hide Mr. Lumpy, two gold chains around his neck, and brand-new Air Jordans that looked to be about a size 42.

"All dressed up," I said to him.

"Gotta maintain the image. Don't like to disappoint the chicks."

I handed him the decoded note. "The next clue is in the red Dumpster."

He walked to the Dumpster, stuck his head over the edge and recoiled.

"Pretty ripe," I said. "Maybe you want to put on some old clothes before you go in there."

"What, are you nuts? I'm not wading through that shit."

"It's your note."

"Yeah, but I've hired you," Eddie said.

"You didn't hire me to go Dumpster surfing."

"I hired you to find her. That's all I want. I just want you to find her."

He had two pagers clipped onto his spandex shorts. One of them beeped and displayed a message. He read the message and sighed. "Chicks," he said. "They never stop."

Right. It was probably from his mother.

He went to his car and made a couple of calls on his car phone. He finished the calls and came back to me. "Okay," he said, "it's all taken care of. All you have to do is stay here and wait for Carlos. I'd stay, but I got other things to do."

I watched him leave, then I turned and squinted beyond the lot. "Hey Maxine," I yelled. "You out there?" If it had been me I'd have wanted to see Kuntz slopping around in the garbage. "Listen," I said, "it was a good idea, but it didn't work out. How about you let me buy you a couple pieces of chicken?"

Maxine didn't come forward, so I sat in my car and waited for Carlos. After about twenty minutes a flatbed truck pulled into the lot and unloaded a backhoe. The flatbed driver fired up the backhoe, rolled it to the Dumpster and put the bucket under the bin's bottom edge. The Dumpster tipped in slow motion and then crashed to the pavement and lay there like a big dead dinosaur. Garbage bags hit the ground and burst, and a glass jar clinked onto the blacktop, rolled between the bags and came to rest a few feet from where I was standing. Someone had used a Magic Marker to write "clue" on the outside of the jar.

The backhoe driver looked over at me. "You Stephanie?"

I was staring, transfixed, at the Dumpster and the mess in front of me, and my heart was beating with a sickening thud. "Unh huh."

"You want me to spread this garbage around some more?"

"No!"

People were standing in the doorways and staring through the windows of Cluck in a Bucket. Two high school kids dressed in yellow-and-red Cluck uniforms ran across the lot to the backhoe.

"What are you doing? What are you doing?" one of the kids yelled.

"Hey, don't get your undies in a bunch," the driver said to the kid. "Life's too short." He motored the backhoe onto the flatbed, got behind the wheel, gave us a military salute and drove off. We all stood there, momentarily speechless.

The kid turned to me. "Do you know him?"

"Nope," I said. "Never saw him before in my life."

* * * * *

I WAS less than a mile from my apartment, so I grabbed the jar, jumped into my car and headed for home. All the way, I kept looking over my shoulder, half expecting to be tracked down like a dog by the garbage police.

I unlocked my door and called to Rex. "Another one of those days."

Rex was asleep in his soup can and made no response, so I went into the kitchen and made myself a peanut butter and olive sandwich. I cracked open a beer and studied the new encrypted message while I ate. I looked for run-together words and extra letters, but it was all a big glob of nothing to me. Finally I gave up and called Sally. His phone rang three times and his machine kicked in. "Sally and Sugar aren't home, but they'd just loooooove to talk to you, so leave a message."

I left my name and number and went back to staring at the note. By three o'clock my eyes felt fried and there was no word from Sally, so I decided to go door-to-door to the seniors again. Mr. Kleinschmidt told me it wasn't a crossword. Lorraine told me it wasn't a jumble. Mr. Markowitz told me he was watching TV and didn't have time for such nonsense.

The light was blinking on my phone machine when I returned to my kitchen.

The first message was from Eddie Kuntz. "So where is she?" That was it. That was the whole message.

"What a moolack," I said to the answering machine.

The second message was from Ranger. "Call me."

Ranger is a man of few words. He's Cuban-American, former Special Forces, he makes a much better friend than an enemy, and he's Vinnie's numero uno bounty hunter. I dialed Ranger's number and waited to hear breathing. Sometimes that was all you got.

"Yo," Ranger said.

"Yo yourself."

"I need you to help me take down a skip."

This meant Ranger either needed a good laugh or else he needed a white female to use as a decoy. If Ranger needed serious muscle he wouldn't call me. Ranger knew people who would take on the Terminator for a pack of Camels and the promise of a fun time.

"I need to get an FTA out of a building, and I haven't got what it takes," Ranger said.

"And just exactly what is it that you're lacking?"

"Smooth white skin barely hidden behind a short skirt and tight sweater. Two days ago Sammy the Gimp bought the farm. He's laid out at Leoni's, and my man, Kenny Martin, is in there paying his respects."

"So why don't you just wait until he comes out?"

"He's in there with his mother and his sister and his Uncle Vito. My guess is they'll leave together, and I don't want to wade through the whole Grizolli family to get at this guy."

No kidding. The landfill was littered with the remains of people who tried to wade through Vito Grizolli.

"Actually, I had plans for tonight," I said. "They include living a little longer."

"I just want you to get my man out the back door. I'll take it from there."

I heard the disconnect, but I shouted into the phone anyway. "What are you freaking nuts?"

* * * * *

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I was dressed in four-inch FMPs (short for "fuck-me pumps," because when you walked around in them you looked like Whorehouse Wonder Bitch). I shimmied into a low-cut black knit dress that was bought with the intent of losing five pounds, gunked up my eyes with a lot of black mascara and beefed up my cleavage by stuffing Nerf balls into my bra.

Ranger was parked on Roebling, half a block from the funeral home. He didn't turn when I pulled to the curb, but I saw his eyes on me in the rearview mirror.

He was smiling when I slid in beside him. "Nice dress you're almost wearing. You ever think about changing professions?"

"Constantly. I'm thinking about it now."

Ranger handed me a photo. "Kenny Martin. Age twenty-two. Minor league loser. Charged with armed robbery." He glanced at the black leather bag I had draped on my shoulder. "You carrying?"

"Yes."

"Is it loaded?"

I stuck my hand in the bag and rooted around. "I'm not sure, but I think I've got a few bullets in here somewhere . . ."

"Cuffs?"

"I definitely have cuffs."

"Defense spray?"

"Yep. Got defense spray."

"Go get 'em, tiger."

I sashayed across the street and up the steps to Leoni's. A small knot of old Italian men stood smoking on the front porch. Conversation stopped when I approached, and the group parted to let me pass. There were more people in the vestibule. None of them was Kenny Martin. I went to room one, where Sammy the Gimp was on display, resting nicely in an ornate mahogany casket. There were lots of flowers and lots of old Italian women. No one seemed to be too upset about Sammy's demise. No heavily sedated widow. No wailing mother. No Kenny.

I said good-bye to Sammy and tottered down the hall in my heels. There was a small foyer at the end of the hall. The foyer opened to the back door, and Kenny Martin was standing in front of the door, sneaking a smoke. Beyond the door was a covered driveway, and somewhere beyond the driveway was Ranger.

I leaned against the wall across from Kenny and smiled. "Hi."

His eyes fixed onto my Nerf balls. "Are you here to see Sammy?"

I shook my head no. "Mrs. Kowalski in room two."

"You don't look all broke up."

I shrugged.

"If you was all broke up I could comfort you. I got lots of ways to comfort a woman."

I raised an eyebrow. "Hmm?"

He was 5'10" and a solid 190 pounds. He was dressed in a dark blue suit and white shirt with the top button popped open.

"What's your pleasure, dollie?" he asked.

I looked him up and down and smiled as if I liked what I saw. "What's your name?"

"Kenny. Kenny 'the Man' Martin."

Kenny the Man. Unh! Mental head slap. I extended my hand. "Stephanie."

In lieu of a handshake he laced his fingers into mine and stepped closer. "Pretty name."

"I was going outside for some fresh air. Want to join me?"

"Yeah, sure. Nothing in here but dead people. Even the people who are alive are dead, you know what I mean?"

A little girl ran down the hall to us. "Kenny, Mama says we have to go now."

"Tell her I'll be there in a minute."

"She said I'm supposed to bring you now!"

Kenny did palms-up. A gesture of the futility of arguing. Everyone knows you never win against an Italian mother. "Maybe I could call you sometime?" Kenny said to me. "Maybe we could get together later."

Never underestimate the power of a Nerf ball. "Sure. Why don't we go outside, and I'll write down my number. I really need some air."

"Now!" the kid yelled.

Kenny made a lunge at the kid, and she whirled and ran back to Mama, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

"I gotta go," Kenny said.

"One second. I'll give you my business card." I had my head in my bag, scrounging for my defense spray. If I couldn't get him to walk through the door, I'd give him a shot of spray and drag him out.

I heard more footsteps on the carpet and looked up to find a woman striding toward us. She was slim and pretty with short blond hair. She was wearing a gray suit and heels, and her expression turned serious when she saw me with Kenny.

"Now I see the problem," she said to Kenny. "Your mother sent me to fetch you, but it looks like you've got a complication here."

"No complication," Kenny said. "Just tell her to keep her shirt on."

"Oh yeah," the woman said. "I'm going to tell your mother to keep her shirt on. That's like a death wish." She looked to me, and then she looked to Kenny, and then she smiled. "You don't know, do you?" she asked Kenny.

I was still searching for the spray. Hair brush, flashlight, travel pack of tampons. Damn it, where was the spray?

"Know what?" Kenny said. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't you ever read the paper? This is Stephanie Plum. She blew up the funeral home last year. She's a bounty hunter."

"You're shitting me!"

Oh boy.