Plum Spooky

FOUR

FORTY MINUTES AND twelve red lights later, I rolled to a stop in front of the bail bonds office.

“You look confused,” Lula said when I pushed through the front door. “You got that what-the-heck-just-happened look to your face.”

“Remember Diesel? He‘s back.”

“I wouldn‘t be lookin‘ confused at that,” Lula said. “I‘d be lookin‘ hello, hotstuff.”

“He‘s not normal,” I said to Lula.

“Don‘t I know it. He was at the head of the line when God was handing out the good stuff. I bet he got a great big power tool, too.”

I had enough problems without dwelling on Diesel‘s power tool. I was fifty dollars short on my rent, my mother expected me for dinner, and I had a monkey.

“I‘m at a dead end with Martin Munch,” I said. “I thought I‘d go after one of the new guys.”

“I guess I could help you with that,” Lula said. “So long as I don‘t have to chase some fool all the hell over the place. I‘m wearing my Via Spigas today, and I don‘t do that shit in my Via Spigas. So I‘m voting we go clap the cuffs on the idiot with the shot-up foot.”

“Works for me,” I said. I was wearing sneakers, but I didn‘t want to chase some fool all the hell over the place, either.

“Where‘s the monkey?” Lula asked. “You still got the monkey?”

“The monkey went with Diesel.”

“That monkey‘s a lucky duck,” Lula said. “I wouldn‘t mind going with Diesel.”

I pulled the case file out of my bag. “Denny Guzzi lives in an apartment on Laurel Street.”

“That‘s not such a good neighborhood,” Lula said. “That‘s off Stark. Probably Guzzi was robbing stores trying to get himself a better way of life.”

“Probably he was robbing stores so he could buy dope,” Connie said.

“See, now that‘s uncharitable,” Lula said. “You‘re judging him without knowing the circumstances. He could have had a reason. He could have a sick mama who needed medicine.”

Connie didn‘t look convinced. “Would you rob a store at gunpoint if your mother needed medicine?” she asked Lula.

“I didn‘t need to,” Lula said. “I had skills. I had a honest profession.”

“You were a hooker.”

“Exactly,” Lula said, taking her purse out of a bottom file drawer and poking around in it, looking for her car keys. “I‘ll drive on account of you probably still got monkey cooties in your car.”

Lula drives a red Firebird with a pimped-out sound system. She had her radio tuned to rap, and by the time we reached Guzzi‘s house on Laurel, I was afraid my fillings had been rattled loose from the bass vibration. Lula parked, we got out of the car, and we stood looking at the building. It was originally yellow brick, but at the present moment, it was solid graffiti.

“This here‘s a good example of urban art,” Lula said. “Denny Guzzi‘s probably a sensitive guy to live in this building.”

I cut my eyes to her. “It‘s graffiti. A bunch of loser gang members marked their territory on this building.”

“Yeah, but they did a good job of expressing themselves. I got a better point of view than you because I‘ve been taking a course at the community college on positive thinking. I‘m a glass-is-half-full person now, and your sorry ass is still in half-empty country. I‘m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, and all you got is the doubt.”

I opened the front door and stepped into the dimly lit foyer. “Your glass wasn‘t half full when you saw I had a monkey.”

“He took me by surprise. And anyway, monkeys don‘t count.”

A row of mailboxes lined one wall. Twelve mailboxes in all. No names on any of the mailboxes. No elevator. This was a three-story walk-up. Four apartments to a floor. The building wasn‘t large. Probably, the apartments were all studios with kitchenettes. Denny Guzzi lived in 3B.

Lula and I hiked up two flights of stairs, and I listened at the door to 3B. The door was wood, without a security peephole. The veneer was cracked and stained. The area around the doorknob was grimy. I could hear a tele vision droning inside the apartment. Lula stood to one side, and I stood to the other. I reached out and knocked on the door.

“What?” someone yelled from inside the apartment.

The voice was male. Probably Guzzi.

“It‘s Lula, honey,” Lula called out. “I got somethin‘ for you, sugah. Open the door.”

“Go fuck yourself,” came back at her.

“He must be a man of high moral fiber,” Lula whispered to me.

I did an eye roll and knocked again. No answer.

“Hunh,” Lula said to me. “I guess you‘re gonna have to kick the door down.”

Kicking down doors wasn‘t a skill I had ever actually mastered. The men in my life could put the heel of their boot to a lock and destroy it. The best I could do was scuff up the finish.

“Bond enforcement,” I yelled. “Open the door.”

Over the background noise of the tele vision, there was the unmistakable sound of a shotgun ratchet. Lula and I jumped back, and the jerk in the apartment blasted a two-foot hole in his door.

Lula and I looked through the hole at Denny Guzzi, holding a shotgun, sitting in a chair with his foot propped on a couple cases of beer.

“What the dev il was that?” Lula said to Guzzi. “Are you friggin‘ nuts? You don‘t go around shooting at people like that. And after I was real nice to you, giving you an invitation and all. How the hell is that to treat a woman?”

Guzzi ratcheted and aimed, and Lula and I dove away from the door. Boom! Guzzi took out a good-sized chunk of wallboard on the other side of the hall. I looked over at Lula, and she was on her ass, holding the spike heel to her shoe.

“Sonovabitch,” Lula said, eyes narrowed, face scrunched up. “That worthless piece of pig shit made me break the heel on my Via Spiga. That‘s it for me. That‘s the end of my charitable ways. He‘s going down. He‘s gonna die.” Lula got to her feet, pulled a nickel-plated Glock out of her purse, and fired off about ten rounds at the door.

“Jeez,” I yelled at Lula. “You can‘t just shoot at the guy like that.”

“Sure I can,” Lula said. “I got lots more ammo in my purse.”

“If you kill him, there‘s a mountain of paperwork.”

Lula stopped shooting. “I hate paperwork.”

BAM! Guzzi fired through the door again, and Lula and I took off down the stairs. We got to the second landing, and Lula stumbled on her broken shoe. She knocked into me, and we both went head over teakettles down the last flight of stairs. We sprawled spread-ea gle on our backs on the filthy foyer floor and sucked air.

“Been here, done this,” I said. More than once.

“I need to go to Macy‘s,” Lula said. “They‘re having a shoe sale. I got a big date to night, and now I need replacement hot shoes.”

I got to my feet and limped out onto the sidewalk, where two scrawny guys in baggy pants and wall-to-wall tattoos were standing by Lula‘s Firebird, trying to jimmy the door.

“Get away from my baby,” Lula shouted. And she opened fire on the two guys.

“Stop shooting,” I said.

“You can‘t kill them, either.”

“You got a lot of rules,” Lula said to me. “To hear you talk, I can‘t kill anybody.”

The two guys peeked out from behind the Firebird.

“Crazy bitch,” the one said. “We were just gonna steal your car. It‘s not like it‘s a big deal. You park a car here, it gets stolen. Everyone knows that.”

“I just broke my Via Spigas, and I‘m in no mood,” Lula said. “I‘m giving you two seconds to get invisible, and then I‘m putting a cap in your ass.”

The two guys grabbed hold of their pants and walked away, swaying as they walked on feet encased in unlaced basketball shoes that seemed way too big for their stick bodies.

“Between the pants and the shoes, it‘s a wonder they can walk at all,” Lula said.

This coming from a woman in four-inch heels and a dress that fit her like a condom.

Lula checked her car over to make sure it wasn‘t scratched, and we got in and motored back to the bonds office.

“So what‘s this big date?” I asked her.

“Me and Tank are gonna talk about the wedding. You know, we didn‘t have enough time to do the June wedding, what with Tank needing a special-made tuxedo and all, so now I‘m thinking a Christmas wedding would be okay.”

“Does Tank want a Christmas wedding?”

“Hard to tell. He don‘t say. He starts to sweat soon as I talk about it. I swear, sometimes I wonder if I want to spend eternity with a man who sweats like that. He‘s gonna sweat all over my wedding gown. I‘m gonna have to treat it with one of them water-repellent chemicals before I wear it. I‘m gonna have to wear a raincoat when we dance.”

“Tank dances?”

“He don‘t now, but I signed him up for lessons.”

“No wonder he‘s sweating.”

Lula pulled to the curb in front of the office. “Tell Connie I got a shopping emergency, and I‘ll see her tomorrow.”

I waved Lula off and went in to see Connie.

“Anything on the police bands about the body in the car on Crocker?” I asked her.

“Not much. I heard the call go in. At first, I thought it was just another body in a car, but then I caught a conversation from one of the EMS guys. He said the victim‘s neck was broken, and he had two handprints burned into his neck.”

Crap. Diesel was right.

“Has the dead guy been identified?”

“I haven‘t heard anything.”

I told Connie about Guzzi and Lula‘s shopping emergency. I took a couple candies from the jar on Connie‘s desk and speed-dialed Morelli‘s number on my cell phone.

“Yeah?” Morelli said.

When Morelli left my apartment at five-thirty this morning, he was in jeans and an oversize blue-and-white striped shirt from the Gap. His black hair was still damp from the shower, a month overdue for a cut, curling around his ears and down the nape of his neck. The memory was warm and sexy down low in my stomach, resurrected by the sound of his voice.

“I want to know the latest on the guy in the trunk,” I said to Morelli.

“I‘ll get back to you.”

I was halfway through Connie‘s candy jar when Morelli called back.

“We have a tentative ID on the guy in the trunk. His name is Eugene Scanlon, and he was Munch‘s immediate boss. Scanlon ran the project at the lab. Something to do with ions and magnets.”

“Who owned the car?”

“It was Scanlon‘s car.”

“Any suspects?”

“Only Munch at this point. Personally, I can‘t see Munch breaking Scanlon‘s neck. Munch is a lightweight, and his background shows no martial arts training. I know he smashed a coffee mug into Scanlon‘s face, but I think if he wanted to kill Scanlon, he would have shot him.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, but you don‘t want to know.”

“The handprints on his neck? Connie heard about it over the radio.”

“The ME has no idea how the burn was inflicted. He thinks it‘s probably torture.”

“Speaking of torture, we‘re supposed to go to my parents‘ house for dinner to night.”

“I have to beg off. My brother Anthony got kicked out of the house again, and he‘s moved in with me for a couple days. He‘s all bummed, so I said I‘d go bowling with him.”

“You‘re kidding!”

“Last time he got kicked out of the house, he went on a six-day drinking binge and got arrested for attempting to bribe a female traffic cop, Shaneeka Brown. Anthony said he was just trying to get a ride home. Shaneeka said the barn door was open and the horse was out to pasture, looking to get ridden.”

With the exception of Joe, the Morelli men were a sad lot of drunken bar-brawlers who cheated and lied and gambled away every cent they made. They were also drop-dead gorgeous and charming and managed to marry women who stuck with them.

“Anyway, I promised my mom I‘d keep a lid on Anthony until his wife decides to take him back,” Morelli said.

“Why did she kick him out?”

“I think it had something to do with the horse.”

“Maybe you need to take him to a vet.”

“I‘ll add that to the short list of fun shit to do. Gotta go.”

“The dead guy‘s name is Eugene Scanlon,” I said to Connie. “Munch‘s supervisor. The one he took out with the coffee mug. Let‘s run a profile on him. Maybe it‘ll lead me to Munch.”

Connie punched Scanlon into her computer, and twenty minutes later, I had seven pages of information.

“I can go deeper,” Connie said, “but it‘ll take a day or two.”

“This is a start,” I told her. “Thanks.”

I drove back to my apartment and blew out a sigh at the sight of Diesel‘s bike still in my lot. It wasn‘t that I didn‘t like Diesel. It was that he always created large problems. And honestly, I had no idea who he was or if he was crazy. He made Ranger look normal by comparison. And Ranger wasn‘t nearly normal.

I skipped the elevator and trudged up the stairs in penance for eating doughnuts. I paused for a moment outside my door and listened. The tele vision was on inside. This generated a second sigh on my part. I plugged my key into the door and walked in on Diesel and Carl sitting side by side on the couch watching a war movie. Men were dying all over the screen, arms and legs exploded off bodies, blood and guts everywhere.

“That‘s disgusting,” I said to Diesel. “What on earth are you watching? I don‘t get the allure of war movies.”

“It‘s a guy thing,” Diesel said.

“Apparently, it‘s also a monkey thing.”

Diesel remoted the tele vision off. “Yeah. Guys and monkeys have a lot in common.”

“You were right about the branded handprint. The victim‘s name is Eugene Scanlon, and he was Munch‘s boss. He was found in his own car.” I handed Diesel the seven pages Connie had printed out for me. “Here‘s some background on Scanlon.”

Diesel read through the pages and returned them to me. “Fifty-six years old. Single. Living alone. No arrest history. Some credit problems. Originally from Baltimore. Graduated from BU and got his doctorate at Stanford. Nothing in there about his research.”

“Connie‘s still digging.”

“I‘d like to look at his apartment, but for the next couple hours it‘ll be crawling with police. We‘ll go in to night.”

“You will go in to night.”

“We will go in to night.”

“You can‘t make me.”

“Of course I can.”

“You don‘t scare me. I know you‘d never hurt me.”

“True, but I have ways.”

“Magic?”

“Muscle,” Diesel said.

“You‘d physically force me to go with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It‘s more fun when you‘re along. And you make it diffi-cult for Wulf to zero in on me.”

“Let me guess. This is about cosmic dust, right? Our dust mingles together, and Wulf gets confused.”

Carl gave me the finger.

“Carl‘s tired of hearing about cosmic dust,” Diesel said. “It‘s getting old.”

“Then maybe you want to explain the whole zeroing-in phenomenon to me.”

“It‘s not a big deal. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and get a creepy feeling that you‘re not alone? Or maybe you‘re looking for a guy, and you get this feeling that he‘s in the coat closet, so you open the door, and there he is. It‘s like that… but Wulf and I operate at a higher level.”

“Why do I make it difficult for Wulf?”

“When I‘m with you, some of my chemistry changes, and it becomes more difficult to trace my sensory imprint. At least, that‘s the theory. I‘m told it has to do with sexual attraction and expanding blood vessels. There‘s more, but the expanding blood vessels is the good part.”

I‘d never actually seen Diesel‘s blood vessels in all their expanded glory. I had a feeling it was a spectacular sight. And just the thought of it scared the bejeezus out of me.

“As long as they don‘t expand too much,” I said to Diesel.

“Your loss,” Diesel said.

“Anyway, I can‘t go with you to night because I promised my mom I‘d be over for dinner.”

“Sounds good. We‘ll eat dinner with your parents, and then we‘ll check out Scanlon‘s apartment.”

History was repeating itself. As always with Diesel, I was going down as the big loser in the power struggle.