Sizzling Sixteen

ELEVEN

LULA AND I stood in the living room, looking at Grandma’s foot.

“It looks broke all right,” Lula said to Grandma. “That’s one heck of an ugly foot you got there, but I like the polish you got on your toes. What’s the name of that?”

“Red Hot Rapture. Lucky I just painted them yesterday. Imagine breaking your foot when your toes weren’t done up.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “I’d hate that. Does it hurt?”

“It used to, but I took a couple snorts of Jack Daniels, and I’m pretty happy.”

“We need to get her to the car,” I said to Lula.

“Okay,” Lula said. “Do you want to carry her or drag her?”

“Can you hop?” I asked Grandma.

“I could before the Jack Daniels, but now I’m not so sure.”

Lula got on one side of Grandma, and I got on the other, and we scooped Grandma up and got her out the door, down the sidewalk, and to the Jeep. I was afraid to alley-oop her, so I dragged her up onto the passenger seat.

“It’s a shame we gotta go to the hospital,” Grandma said. “I feel like having some fun. I wouldn’t mind seeing some naked men.”

“How much Jack did you have?” Lula asked.

“I don’t need Jack to want to see naked men,” Grandma said. “You get to be my age, and there’s not a whole lot of opportunity. I signed up for one of those porn movies on TV once, and it was all girls. You only got to see the men from the back. What good is that?”

“I hear you,” Lula said.

Saint Francis Hospital is about three minutes from my parents’ house. I pulled into the emergency room drive-through, off-loaded Grandma into a wheelchair with Lula in charge, and hustled to the parking garage.

By the time I got back to the emergency room, Grandma had been wheeled off somewhere to be evaluated, and Lula was busy reading magazines.

“This is an excellent emergency room,” Lula said. “They got a good selection of magazines. And people tell me they know what they’re doing here when it comes to shootings and knifings, on account of they get so much practice.”

An hour later, they wheeled Grandma back to the waiting room with a big black boot thing on her foot.

“It’s broke, all right,” she said. “I got to see the X-ray.”

“What have you got on your foot?” Lula wanted to know.

“The bone was just cracked a little, so they wrapped my foot up in this boot thing instead of putting it in a cast. I can walk on it and everything.”

Grandma got out of the wheelchair and took the boot for a test-drive.

Step, stomp, step, stomp, step, stomp.

The boot came to mid calf, was foam-padded and held secure with thick Velcro straps. The bottom of the boot was two inches of hard molded plastic. When Grandma walked, she was tipped to one side, since one leg was two inches longer now than the other.

“I feel gimpy in this boot,” Grandma said. “And my butt cheeks don’t match up. One feels higher than the other. I can’t squeeze to keep the breezers in.”

“We’ll keep the windows open on the way home,” Lula said.

Grandma looked down at the boot. “It’s pretty nifty, though. I can’t wait to show this to your mother. I bet this could get us one of those handicap parking signs. And I got some pills for when the Jack Daniels wears off.”

I brought the Jeep around to the drive-through, boosted Grandma up into it, and drove her home. I’d called ahead, and my mother was waiting at curbside.

“Here she is,” I said, lowering Grandma down to my mother. “Almost as good as new.”

“For the love of Pete,” my mother said.

“I was doing a lunge, and I broke my foot,” Grandma told her. “But it’s only a little bit broke.”

“I have to go,” I said to my mother. “I have to get back to the office.”

“Can you walk?” my mother asked my grandmother.

“Of course I can walk,” Grandma said. “Look at this.”

Step, stomp, step, stomp, step, stomp.

“Whoops,” Grandma said. And she face-planted on the grass.

Lula and I jumped out of the Jeep and rushed over.

“It’s the dang boot,” Grandma said. “It’s got me all lopsided.”

CONNIE WAS AT her desk when we walked into the bonds office.

“We would have been here sooner,” Lula said, “but we had to go on a mission of mercy. Grandma Mazur broke her foot dancing to an exercise video, and we had to get her fixed up.”

“Is she okay?” Connie asked.

I took my usual seat in front of the desk. “Yes. They put her in an orthopedic boot and sent her home.”

“And we got more news,” Lula said. “We got good news, and we got bad news, and it’s all the same news. We found Vinnie.”

Connie’s eyebrows rose a couple inches. “Are you serious?”

“They’ve got him in a back apartment in Sunflower’s building on Stark Street,” I said. “Lula heard him through the door. They’ve got a guy in there with him, and there’s a guy at the entrance downstairs. There aren’t any bars on the back windows, and there’s a rusted fire escape, but you’d die trying to get Vinnie out that way.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Connie asked me.

“No. None. And I don’t think the stink bomb will work. They’ll haul Vinnie out of the building under armed guard, and they won’t let go of him.”

“We need a diversion,” Lula said. “We need to get the guard out of the apartment. Then someone can go in and drag Vinnie’s worthless ass out of there.”

“A diversion’s a good idea,” I said, “but how are we going to get Vinnie down the stairs and out the door past the door guard?”

“We could disguise him,” Lula said. “Put him in a wig and a dress or something.”

I looked at Connie. “Do you think that’ll fly?”

“Maybe if we have a diversion at the front door, too,” Connie said.

“I can divert the guy at the front door,” Lula said. “He likes me.”

“I’ll be the second diverter,” Connie said. “That leaves Stephanie to get Vinnie out.”

“How are you going to divert him enough for me to get Vinnie down the stairs? I don’t think a wig’s going to do it. And suppose you divert him out of the apartment, but he locks the door behind him? What then?”

“See, that’s the problem with you,” Lula said. “You’re bein’ a glass-is-half-empty person. One of my outstanding qualities is my positive personality. You’ve just gotta take precautions, like you need to bring a gun with bullets in it.”

I PULLED TO the curb in front of the bonds office at precisely nine o’clock. Connie was already there, and Lula slid to a stop behind me. I was dressed in black. I had a loaded gun pressed against my backbone, stuck into the back of my jeans. I had pepper spray in my pocket. I had my cell phone clipped to my jeans waistband, set to dial Rangeman. I had a stun gun also clipped to my jeans waistband. And I had premonitions of disaster. I had no confidence in the mission. Truth is, we sucked at this stuff. We were like the Three Stooges at Camp Commando. The only reason I was attempting it was because I knew Chet would spot me on Stark Street and send out a back up Rangeman car.

We assembled in front of the office to review the plan. Connie was wearing wedge heels, a short, tight skirt, and a sweater that showed about a quarter mile of cleavage. Ditto Lula, substitute thigh-high hooker boots for the wedge heels.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said. “Our best shot at this is to get the back door open.” I looked over at Lula. “If you can open the door for Connie and me, we can slip upstairs easier. And then we can bring Vinnie out that way.”

“You can count on me,” Lula said. “What about cars?”

“We’ll take the Jeep,” I told her. “I’ll drop you off on Stark Street, and then I’ll park in the alley behind the building. After we escape with Vinnie, I’ll swing around and pick you up.”

“Okeydokey,” Lula said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

We all piled into the Jeep, and by the time we got to Stark Street, my stomach was sick and I had a grapefruit-size lump of panic sitting in the middle of my throat. Lula got out at the corner and walked half a block to the apartment building. There was still a guard out front, but it was a different guy. I circled around and parked in the alley as planned.

“This is going to work, right?” I said to Connie. “We won’t get caught, or killed, or anything?”

“Do you have the bottle with you?”

“It’s in my purse.”

“So that should help,” Connie said.

Oh jeez, it was going to come down to the bottle.

Connie got out of the Jeep and adjusted her girls. “Vinnie better appreciate this effort. It’s not like I haven’t got better things to do than to save his ass,” she said.

I reached under my seat and grabbed the two-pound Maglite that was standard equipment on all Rangeman vehicles. It was also the weapon of choice for head-bashing.

There wasn’t a lot of light in the alley. There were streetlights in place, but the bulbs had been shot out. We walked to the back of the building and looked up. Shades were drawn on the fourth-floor windows. The black SUV was parked nose-in to the building. I tried the back door. Locked. We both took a step back and waited in the shadows for Lula to unlock the door.

I heard footsteps, the doorknob turned, and Lula looked out at us. “The coast is clear,” she said. “The door dummy went down the street to get something to smoke.”

“Show time,” Connie said. And she motored through the door, down the short hall, and wasted no time going up the stairs.

I followed close behind, thinking I’d done equally dangerous and stupid things as a bounty hunter, but this was right up there with primo bone-head operations. We reached the fourth floor and looked around. Three doors-4A, 4B, and nothing on the third door. I listened at the unnumbered door. Silence. I carefully tried the knob. Unlocked. Utility closet.

I stepped into the closet and pulled the door almost entirely closed. I heard Connie rap on a door. Heard the door open. Muffled words. Connie was handing the guy a line about her girlfriend passed out on the second floor.

“And she’s naked,” Connie said. “And we’ve both had too many cosmos, and I think we’re in the wrong building.”

I heard the apartment door click closed and then footsteps on the stairs. I slipped out and went to 4B. The door was unlocked. I stepped inside and scanned the room. It was an efficiency with a small kitchenette on one side. Grease-stained pizza boxes on the counter. A card table and a folding chair. An ashtray overflowing with cigarettes. No couch. No television. No wonder Connie had an easy time with the guy who answered her knock. He had to be going nuts in here. I heard something rustle in the other room, and I was hoping it was Vinnie, because the last time I heard something rustle like that it turned out to be an alligator.

I poked my head in and spotted Vinnie handcuffed to a thick chain that stretched into the bathroom.

“Holy shit,” Vinnie said. “What the fuck?”

Vinnie was wearing pointy-toed, shiny black shoes, black socks, and black bikini briefs. Vinnie fully dressed wasn’t all that good. Vinnie in black socks and briefs was a nightmare.

“Where are your clothes?” I asked him.

“I haven’t got any. This is what I was wearing when they snatched me.”

There was a moment where I actually debating leaving him there.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Vinnie said. “And Grandma Plum and Aunt Mim would be very upset if you left me here and they killed me.”

“Okay,” I said, “but how am I supposed to rescue you when you’re chained to the toilet?”

“You don’t have a universal key? What kind of bounty hunter are you?”

“I didn’t think I was going to be uncuffing anyone.”

“You never know when you’ll come across someone,” Vinnie said. “You should always have cuffs on you. This is why I’m losing money.”

“You’re on thin ice here,” I said to Vinnie.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. It was nice of you to try to rescue me. You should get out before Snake comes back.”

“Snake?”

“So sue me, that’s his name. And he moves like a snake. He’s creepy.”

“I’m not leaving without you,” I said. “Pull the chain tight.”

I took my gun out, aimed it at the chain at short range, and pulled the trigger. The chain jumped and a link broke off. I rammed the gun back into my jeans, we ran to the other room, and just as we reached the door, Snake stepped over the threshold, gun drawn. His eyes flicked to Vinnie, and in that instant I whacked him in the head with the Maglite. He went to the floor on hands and knees, and I heard more men thundering up the stairs. I booted Snake out of the room, into the hall, slammed the door shut, and threw the bolt.

“Change in plans,” I said to Vinnie. “Out the window.”

Vinnie ran to the window, threw it open, and looked out. “Are you insane? We’re four floors up.”

“Fire escape,” I said.

“It’s rusted. It’s junk!”

The door rattled, and a body slammed into it, but the bolt held.

“Go!” I said to Vinnie, shoving him out the window. “Go!”

The metal creaked under our weight, and chunks of metal flaked off when we ran down the stairs. No time to think about it.

“This is falling apart underneath me!” Vinnie yelled.

“Keep going!” I yelled back. “Don’t stop.”

We were on the third floor. I grabbed a railing for support, and the railing gave way. The fire escape groaned and separated from the building.

“Holy crap,” Vinnie said. “Holy Mary, mother of God!”

The entire metal structure was disintegrating and collapsing into itself. We weren’t exactly plummeting to the ground but rather sliding toward it. And then the last bolt let go as we passed the second floor, and we were in a free fall. The framework crashed onto the black SUV, and Vinnie and I went flying off into space.

One of the men leaned out the fourth floor window and fired off a shot. Two more shots were fired from the alley not far from me. I was on my back, on the ground, all air knocked out of me. I was lifted to my feet and yanked toward the Jeep. It was Ranger. He had his hand clamped around my wrist, and he was running with me, half dragging me. We reached the Jeep, he hauled me up into the passenger seat, jumped in next to me, and spun the wheels taking off.

“Vinnie!” I said.

“Tank has him.”

“I need to get Connie and Lula. They’re on Stark Street.”

Ranger turned the corner and cruised by the building. Connie and Lula were on the sidewalk looking like they were trying to stay calm, not having any luck at it. The door guard was gone. Probably on the fourth floor. Connie and Lula scrambled into the back of the Jeep, and Ranger moved off with a Rangeman SUV on his tail.

“So I guess that went well,” Lula said.

Ranger slid a look at me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. I was having a hard time finding words.