Sizzling Sixteen

TWELVE

RANGER TOOK CONNIE and Lula to the office and waited while they got into their cars and drove away. The Rangeman SUV was still behind us, idling at the curb. Ranger called back and had Vinnie transferred up to the Jeep.

“Do I need to know why he’s in his underwear?” Ranger asked me.

“That’s how he was captured.”

Vinnie climbed into the back, chain dangling from his handcuff, and Ranger took a universal handcuff key out of his pocket and handed it to Vinnie.

“I assume the first shot I heard was aimed at that chain,” Ranger said to me.

“I didn’t have a handcuff key.”

“You’re a bounty hunter,” Ranger said. “You always carry handcuffs.”

“I forgot, but I remembered my gun. And I whacked someone in the head with your Maglite.”

Ranger smiled at me. “Babe.”

“I guess I need to go home,” Vinnie said.

“That’s not a good idea,” I told him. “Lucille isn’t happy with you.”

“She’ll get over it,” Vinnie said. “She always does.”

Ranger was waiting for my instructions.

“Take him home,” I said to Ranger.

Vinnie lived in a large yellow-and-white colonial in Pennington. It looked like a house a normal person would own, but it belonged to Vinnie. Go figure. Lucille made sure the lawn was mowed and the flowerbeds were mulched. White shears hung in the windows. It was close to eleven o’clock and lights were off in the house. The sky was overcast, and there was no moon. Some light filtered onto Lucille’s lawn from a streetlight half a block away. It was enough light to see there was debris scattered across the yard.

Ranger pulled into the driveway, and Vinnie jumped out.

“What the heck?” Vinnie said, kicking through the debris. “This is my shirt. And socks.” He walked to the door and rang the bell. He rang a second time. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, Lucille!”

A light flashed on in an upstairs window, the window opened, and Lucille stuck her head out. “Vinnie?”

“Yeah. I’ve been rescued. Let me in. I don’t have my key.”

“Your key won’t do you any good, you jerk. I had the locks changed. Get your perverted butt off my lawn.”

“This is my lawn, too,” Vinnie said.

“The hell it is. My father bought this house for us, and it’s in my name.”

“It’s common property, sweetie pie,” Vinnie said. “And you’ll have to kill me to get my half.”

“No problem,” Lucille said.

She disappeared from the window, and Vinnie started collecting his clothes. “I can’t believe she did this,” he said. “Look at this silk shirt laying here in the mulch. And my hand-painted tie.”

Lucille reappeared in the window with a shotgun, and she blasted one off at Vinnie. “You’re trespassing,” she said.

“What are you gonna do, shoot me and call the police?” Vinnie yelled at her.

“No. I called my father. He’s on his way over.”

“Her father’s dumped so many bodies in the landfill he has his own parking place,” Ranger said.

Lucille squeezed off another shot, and Vinnie scrambled to the Jeep with his arms full of clothes.

Ranger put the Jeep in gear and backed out of the driveway. “Your call,” he said to me.

“Take him to the office.”

THE BLACK SUV was parked in front of the bonds office. There was a big gash in the hood and the roof was smashed in over the cargo area. A second car was parked behind it.

“Probably, we don’t want to stop here,” I said to Ranger.

“Give me a gun. I’ll take care of those assholes,” Vinnie said.

“You’ve caused enough trouble,” I told him. “You’re not getting a gun. And for crying out loud, put some clothes on. I’m going to have to disinfect the seat back there.”

Ranger cut off Hamilton, into the Burg, and stopped at a cross street.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to take him home with you,” I said to Ranger.

Ranger glanced at Vinnie in the rear view mirror. “We could negotiate. The price would be high.”

“Would I have to dress up like a geisha and rub your feet?”

Ranger cut his eyes to me. “It wasn’t what I had in mind, but it would be a place to start.”

“Cripes,” Vinnie said. “You two want to get a room?”

“Tell me again why you rescued him,” Ranger said.

I slid the Maglite back under the driver’s seat. “Grandma Plum and Aunt Mim.”

“Maybe he can stay with them,” Ranger said.

“Unfortunately, that’s not an option,” I said. “He can stay with me tonight.”

I GAVE VINNIE a quilt and a pillow. “You can spend one night here,” I said. “One night. Tomorrow, you have to find a different place to live.”

Vinnie dropped the quilt and pillow onto the couch. “I can’t believe Lucille kicked me out.”

“You were caught with a hooker!”

“I was doing Lucille a favor. She’s a good woman, but she’s picky about a lot of stuff. Don’t do this, and don’t do that. And what about me? I got needs. Okay, so I’m a pervert, but perverts got rights, too. There are places where I’d be considered normal. Borneo, maybe. Atlantic City.”

Good grief. I was going to have to set off a roach bomb in my apartment after he left.

“Anyway, the big problem isn’t Lucille,” Vinnie said. “The big problem is Bobby Sunflower. You whacked one of his guys in the head, and you snatched me out from under him. He’s not gonna like it.”

“Would he have killed you if I hadn’t gotten you out of there?”

“For sure. I was a dead man.”

“All because you made some bad bets.”

Vinnie remoted the television on, flipped through about twenty channels, and gave it up. “Sunflower’s in trouble. He needs money, and he needs respect. He’s in the middle of a war, and he can’t show weakness.”

“What war? Who’s he fighting?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should go into therapy at one of those sex addiction places. Do you think that would get me off the hook?”

“Maybe with Lucille. I don’t think Harry’ll buy it.”

My arm was scraped and the knee was torn out of my jeans from the fall. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t crashed into the SUV. I limped out of the living room, closed the door on Vinnie, started to undress, and noticed I’d missed a call from Morelli on my cell phone.

“Hey,” Morelli said when I called him back.

“Hey, yourself.”

“Just checking to see if you’re home. Shots were fired at Sunflower’s apartment building tonight.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Good point,” Morelli said. “We also got a report of shots being fired from Vinnie’s house. Lucille said she was shooting at a rat.”

“That neighborhood’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

“Should I be worried?” Morelli asked me.

“Hard to say.”

Morelli disconnected, and I limped into the bathroom, where I stood in the shower until all the rust was washed out of my hair. When I was done, I looked at the shampoo bottle. Empty. My refrigerator was also empty. I needed money. I needed to make another capture.

VINNIE WAS BACK to wearing only his underwear. He was in my kitchen, unshaven, his hair spiked up from sleep, his eyes half open.

“Where’s the coffee?” he asked. “Where’s the orange juice?”

“I don’t have any,” I told him. “I need to go shopping.”

“I need coffee. Lucille always had my coffee ready.”

“There’s no Lucille,” I told him. “Get used to it. And after today, there’s no me. You can’t stay here.”

“Where will I go?”

“Stay with one of your friends.”

“I don’t have friends,” Vinnie said. “I have hookers and bookies. And my bookie wants to shoot me.”

“Do you have money?”

Vinnie flapped his arms. “Do I look like I have money? My wallet was left behind with my pants. Maybe we should go back and check out the lawn in front of my house to see if Lucille tossed out cash and credit cards along with my clothes.”

“What about the office? Don’t you keep petty cash? Doesn’t Connie have a corporate credit card?”

“We might have a small cash flow problem,” Vinnie said.

“How small?”

“We might be a million in the red, give or take a couple bucks.”

“What?”

“It’s complicated,” Vinnie said. “Bookeeping issues. We have too many outstanding skips.”

“I have a stack of skips in my bag that I’m working on, but I don’t think they add up to a million. And what about the bankers who underwrite you?”

“They aren’t answering their phones.”

Oh boy.

“You’ve got three minutes to get dressed,” I said to Vinnie. “I’m taking you to my parents’ house. When they get fed up with you, I’ll think of something else. At least you can get coffee there before my mother kicks you out.”

I debated calling ahead but decided against it. If I dumped him on my mother’s doorstep and drove away real fast, she’d have to take him in, at least for a while. If I called, she could say no.

Twenty minutes later, I idled in front of my parents’ house while Vinnie walked to the front door. On the rare possibility that no one was home, I didn’t want to just drive off. He didn’t have a cell phone to call me to come back. I saw the front door open and I laid rubber.

I drove by the office twice before I parked. I didn’t see the bashed-in SUV, and I didn’t see any angry-looking guys hanging out with guns drawn, so I figured things were quiet this morning. Connie was at her desk. Lula hadn’t arrived.

“You didn’t bring Vinnie with you, did you?” Connie asked. “I already had a visit from Bobby Sunflower this morning.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee. “He gets up early.”

“I guess he was motivated. He wants his money or he wants Vinnie. He said if he didn’t get either of those things by Friday he was going to eliminate the office.”

“Eliminate it?”

“Like from the face of the earth.”

“Could be worse,” I said. “According to Vinnie, this office is about a million in the red.”

Connie froze for a beat. “Vinnie said that?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”

“I don’t do the books. Vinnie has an accountant for that.”

“Maybe we should talk to the accountant.”

“The accountant’s dead. He got run over by a truck last week. Twice.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” Connie said. “It’s really not good.”

“Does Sunflower know we were the ones to spring Vinnie?”

“Yeah, but I think it’s too embarrassing to let go public. And I think he’d rather have the money than to see us shot full of holes.”

I drank some coffee and took a doughnut from the box on Connie’s desk. “So we need to raise money.”

“It’s up to a million two.”

“Chopper is a pretty high-bond. The toilet paper guy isn’t worth much, but he might be easy to capture.”

“Butch Goodey is worth something,” Connie said. “I thought he skipped to Mexico.”

“I heard he got back last week, and he’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

Butch Goodey is 6′6″ tall and weighs about three hundred pounds. He’s wanted for exposing himself to thirteen women over a period of two days. He said they were lucky to get to see Mr. Magic, and he blamed it on a sex-enhancement drug that gave him a thirty-two-hour erection. The judge who set Goodey’s bond asked for the name of the drug, wrote it on a piece of paper, and slipped the paper into his pocket.

“I’ll put Goodey at the head of the list,” I said.

Lula swung into the office. “At the head of what list?”

“The catch ’em list,” I told her. “We need to make money today.”

“So we’re going after Butch Goodey? I thought he was in Mexico.”

“He’s back. He’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

“I hate that place,” Lula said. “It gives me the creeps. You drive by with your windows open, and you can hear cows mooing. You’re only supposed to hear stuff like that on a farm. I mean, what the heck’s the world coming to when you can hear cows mooing in Trenton? And who the heck would work at a meatpacking plant anyway?”

“Butch Goodey,” I said.

The meatpacking plant was down by the river, south of town, on the edge of a residential area that was blue-collar or no-collar. It took up half a block, with some of that space devoted to holding pens, where the cattle went in, and some to loading docks, where the hamburger meat came out.

At nine-thirty in the morning, the plant was in full swing. It was going to be a glorious, sunny, warm day and the area around the plant smelled faintly of cow.

“You know what this makes me think about?” Lula said, jumping down from the Jeep, standing in the parking lot. “It makes me think I could use a new leather handbag. If we get done early today, we should go to the mall.”

I didn’t think we were going to get done early. I expected this was going to be a very long day. It was Thursday, and there was no way we could get all of the money by bringing in a few skips. If we didn’t come up with over a million dollars by tomorrow, Grandma Plum and Aunt Mim were going to be wearing black.