Three To Get Deadly

CHAPTER 5

“Open the door,” Morelli said. “I know you’re in there. I can hear you breathing.”

I figured that was a big fat lie because I’d stopped breathing with the first rap of his knuckles.

Morelli knocked on the door again. “Come on, Stephanie,” he said. “Your car’s in the lot. I know you’re home.”

Mr. Wolesky, across the hall, opened his door. “What, you never heard of people in the shower? People sleeping? People going for a walk? I’m trying to watch some TV here. You keep making noise I’m gonna call the cops.”

Morelli gave Mr. Wolesky a look that sent Mr. Wolesky scurrying back into his apartment. SLAM, click, click.

Morelli moved out of sight, and I waited with my eye glued to the peephole. I heard the elevator doors open and close, and then everything was quiet. Reprieve. Morelli was leaving.

I didn’t know what Morelli wanted, and it seemed prudent not to find out—just in case it involved arresting me. I ran to my bedroom window, looked through the slit between the curtains and peeked down at the parking lot. I watched Morelli leave the building and get into an unmarked car.

I continued to watch, but nothing happened. He wasn’t leaving. It looked like he was talking on his car phone. A few minutes went by, and my phone rang. Gosh, I thought, I wonder who that could be? On the odd chance it might be Morelli I let the machine pick it up. No message was left. I looked down into the lot. Morelli wasn’t on his phone anymore. He was just sitting there, staking out the building.

I took a fast shower, dressed in clean clothes, fed Rex and went back to the window to check on Morelli. Still there. Rats.

I dialed Ranger’s number.

“Yo,” Ranger answered.

“It’s Stephanie.”

“I have something that belongs to you.”

“That’s a relief,” I said, “but that’s not my most pressing problem. I’ve got Joe Morelli sitting out in my parking lot.”

“He coming or going?”

“There’s a small chance he might want to arrest me.”

“Not a good way to start the day, babe.”

“I think I can get out the front door without being seen. Can you meet me at Bessie’s in half an hour?”

“Be there,” Ranger said.

I disconnected, called the office and asked for Lula.

“Your nickel,” Lula said.

“It’s Stephanie,” I told her. “I need a ride.”

“Oh boy. Is this more bounty hunter shit?”

“Yeah,” I said. “This is bounty hunter shit. I want you to pick me up at my front door in ten minutes. I don’t want you to park in the lot. I want you to cruise by the front of the building until you see me standing on the curb.”

I blasted my hair with the dryer and did another take-a-look at Morelli. No change. He had to be freezing. Fifteen minutes more, and he’d be back in the building. I zipped myself into my jacket, grabbed my big shoulder bag and took the stairs to the first floor. I quickly crossed the small lobby and exited the front door.

There was no sign of Lula, so I huddled with my back to the building, crunched down inside my coat. Hard to believe Morelli would be here to arrest me, but stranger things have been known to happen. Innocent people were accused of crimes every day. More likely Morelli wanted to do another question session. I couldn’t get excited about that either.

I heard Lula before I saw her. To be more specific, I felt the vibrations in the soles of my feet and against my rib cage. The Firebird slid to a stop in front of me, Lula’s head bobbing in time to the music, lips moving to the beat. Boombaba boombaba.

I jumped in next to her and motioned to take off. The Firebird sprang to life and rocketed into the stream of traffic.

“Where we going?” Lula shouted.

I adjusted the volume. “Bessie’s. I’m meeting Ranger.”

“Your Buick on the blink too?”

“The Buick is fine. It’s my life that’s on the blink. Did you hear about the homicide at Uncle Mo’s last night?”

“You mean that you aced Ronald Anders? Sure I heard. Everybody heard.”

“I didn’t ace him! I was knocked out. Someone killed him while I was unconscious.”

“Sure. That’s what’s going around, but I figured…you know, dead or alive, right?”

“Wrong!”

“All right, all right. No cause to go PMS. How come you need a ride to Bessie’s?”

“Joe Morelli is camped out in my parking lot, waiting to talk to me, and I don’t want to be talked to.”

“I guess I could understand that. He got one fine ass, but he’s a cop all the same.”

Bessie’s was a coffee and doughnut shop around the corner from the Social Security offices. It was a scruffy little place with dusty floors and dirty windows, and it was always packed with the chronically unemployed and with worker drones from Social Security. It was the perfect place to get a cheap cup of terrible coffee and to fade away into the huddled masses.

Lula dropped me at the curb, cranked the noise level back to deafening and rumbled off. I elbowed my way to the back of the shop where Ranger was waiting. He had the last stool at the counter with his back to the wall. I never asked how he consistently managed to procure such a position. Sometimes it’s best not to know these things.

I took the stool next to him, raising an eyebrow at the coffee and cruller on the counter. “Thought you weren’t into internal pollution,” I said. Lately Ranger’d been on a health food thing.

“Props,” Ranger told me. “Didn’t want to look out of place.”

I didn’t want to burst his fantasy bubble, but the only time Ranger wouldn’t look out of place would be standing in a lineup between Rambo and Batman.

“I have a problem,” I said to Ranger. “I think I’m in over my head.”

“Babe, you’ve been in over your head since the first day I met you.”

I ordered coffee and waited for my cup to arrive. “It’s different this time. I might be a suspect in a homicide investigation. The guy on Mo’s floor was Ronald Anders. One of Vinnie’s skips.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I went to Uncle Mo’s to look around.”

“Hold it,” Ranger said. “You break into the store?”

“Well, sort of. I had a key. But I guess technically it was an illegal entry.”

“That’s cool.”

“Anyway, I was in the store, and I saw someone pass by the front window, so I went to the back door to leave. Before I could get out I heard footsteps, and then someone trying the lock. I hid in the bathroom. The back door opened and closed. The cellar door opened and closed. And then the door to the bathroom opened, and I was eyeball to eyeball with some big, pissed-off, Rasta-type guy who threw me against the wall and knocked me out. When I came around the guy was dead. What does this mean?”

“It means after you got knocked out someone else arrived and shot Ronald Anders,” Ranger said.

“Who? Who would do that?”

We looked at each other, knowing we were both considering the same possibility. Mo.

“Nah,” I said. “Impossible.”

Ranger shrugged.

“That’s a ridiculous idea,” I told Ranger. “Mo isn’t the sort of man who goes around shooting people.”

“Who else could have shot Anders?”

“Anyone.”

“That narrows it down.” Ranger slid a five onto the counter and stood. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“My gun?”

He transferred my .38 from his pocket to my shoulder bag. “Not going to do you much good if you don’t put bullets in it.”

“One more thing,” I said. “Could you give me a ride to the office?”

Connie came out of her chair when I blew through the door. “Are you okay? Lula said you actually got knocked out last night.”

“Yes, I’m okay. Yes, I got knocked out. No, I didn’t kill Ronald Anders.”

Vinnie popped out of his office. “Christ, look who’s here,” he said. “The bounty hunter from hell. I suppose you want your recovery money for whacking Anders.”

“I didn’t whack Anders!” I shouted.

“Yeah, right,” Vinnie said. “Whatever. Just next time try not to shoot your FTA in the back. It doesn’t look good.”

I gave Vinnie a hand gesture, but he was already back in his office with the door closed.

“Details,” Connie said, leaning forward, eyes wide. “I want to know everything.”

Truth is, there wasn’t much to tell, but I went through the routine one more time.

When I was done Lula gave a disgusted sigh. “That’s a pretty lame story,” she said. “Cops gonna be after you like flies on a bad bean pie.”

“Let me get this straight,” Connie said. “You never saw the killer. You didn’t smell him or hear him. In fact, you haven’t got a teeny-tiny clue who he could be.”

“I know the killer came from outside,” I said. “And I think Ronald Anders knew the killer. I think Anders let the killer into the store and then turned his back on him.”

“A partner?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe it was Old Penis Nose,” Lula said. “Maybe Ronald Anders ran a tab and couldn’t pay for his Snickers bars, so our man popped him.”

“That’s disgusting,” Connie said. “That’s not even funny.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “You got a better idea?”

“Yeah,” Connie said, “my idea is that you better get to work instead of saying dumb things about Uncle Mo.”

“I’d like to get to work,” I said, “but I don’t know what to do. I’m at a total dead end. I’m a failure as a bounty hunter.”

“You’re not a failure,” Connie said. “You got an apprehension this week. You got Ronald Anders.”

“He was dead!”

“Hey, that’s the way it goes sometimes.” Connie pulled a stack of manila folders from her bottom drawer. “It’s just that you’re stalled on Mo. You should keep working other cases.” She slid a folder from the top of the stack and flipped it open. “Here’s a good one. Leroy Watkins. Came in yesterday, and I haven’t given it out yet. You could have it if you want.”

“He isn’t cute, is he?” I asked Connie. “My image is at an all-time low. I’m not taking on any more cases where the FTA is Mr. Popularity.”

“I know Leroy,” Lula said. “Everybody call him Snake on account of his dick is…”

I squinched my eyes closed. “Don’t tell me.” I looked over at Connie. “What’d Leroy do to get himself arrested?”

“Tried to sell some dope to a narc.”

“He ever resist arrest?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” Connie said. “There’s nothing on his charge sheet about shooting cops.”

I took the file from Connie. If Leroy Watkins was certifiably ugly I might take a crack at it. I flipped to the photo. Yow! He was ugly, all right.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see if I can find him.” I glanced over at Connie. “There isn’t anything else I should know, is there? Like, was he armed when arrested?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Connie said. “A forty-five, a twenty-two and a seven-inch blade.”

My voice pitched to incredulity. “Two guns and a knife? Forget it! What do I look like, a suicide waiting to happen?”

We were all quiet for a minute while we considered my chances of success.

“I could go with you,” Lula said. “We could be discreet.”

Discreet? Lula?

“You think he’s dangerous?” Connie asked Lula.

“He ain’t no Boy Scout. Don’t know if he’d want to shoot us, though. Probably he’s just FTA so he could stay on the street and make maximum profit before getting locked down. I know his woman, Shirlene. We could go talk to her.”

Talk to his woman. That sounded reasonable. I thought I might be able to handle that. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll give it a try.”

Shirlene lived in a third-floor walk-up at the southern end of Stark Street. The cement stoop was littered with globules of rock salt that had eaten their way through yesterday’s ice, leaving a doily of frozen gray slush. The front door to the building was weathered and stood ajar. The small inside hall was steeped in frigid damp.

“Feels like a meat locker in here,” I said.

Lula snorted. “That’s what it is, all right…a meat locker. Plain and simple. That’s the trouble with Stark Street. It’s all one big meat locker.”

We were both panting by the time we got to the third floor.

“I’ve got to get in better shape,” I said to Lula. “I’ve got to join a gym or something.”

“I’m in plenty good shape,” Lula said. “It’s the altitude that gets me. If it wasn’t for the altitude I wouldn’t be breathing hard at all.” She stared at Shirlene’s door. “What are we gonna do if Snake’s at home? I figure I should ask, being that you don’t like violence except when you’re out cold.”

“Snake at home? Are you telling me Snake lives here?”

Lula blinked her big duck-egg eyes at me. “You mean you didn’t understand that?”

“I thought we were visiting his woman’s place.”

“Well, yeah,” Lula said, “but that happen to be Snake’s place too.”

“Oh boy.”

“Don’t worry,” Lula said. “That Snake gives us any trouble I’ll bust a cap up his ass.” She knocked on the door. “I don’t take no hard time from no Snake.”

No one answered, so Lula knocked louder.

“HEY!” she yelled at the door.

We stood for a moment, listening in utter silence, and then from inside the apartment, inches from the closed door, came the unmistakable ratchet of a pump shotgun.

Lula and I locked eyes for a fraction of a second and shared a simultaneous thought, OH SHIT! We spun on our heels, hurled ourselves down the first flight of stairs and skidded across the second-floor landing.

BOOM! A gun blast blew a two-foot hole in Shirlene’s front door, and plaster chunked out of the opposite wall.

“Out of my way!” Lula yelled. “Feet don’t fail me!”

I had a head start on the next set of stairs, but Lula missed the first step, slid three steps on her ass and knocked me over like I was a bowling pin. The two of us rolled the rest of the way to the bottom, screaming and swearing until we landed in a heap on the foyer floor.

We scrambled to our feet and almost ripped the front door off its hinges trying to get out. We ran the two and a half blocks to Lula’s Firebird, and Lula burned rubber from the curb. Neither of us said anything until we were parked in front of Vinnie’s office.

“It wasn’t that I was scared,” Lula said. “It’s just I didn’t want to get blood on this here new sweatsuit. You know how hard it is to get blood out of this stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said, still breathing hard. “Blood is a bitch.”

“Okay, so maybe I was a little scared,” Lula said. “I mean, hell, that motherfucker would of shot us dead! Shit. What was he thinking of? What’s the matter with him?”

“I’ve got to get a new job,” I said to Lula. “I don’t like getting shot at.”

“I tell you, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m starting to get pissed off. Who the hell does that jerk think he is, anyway? I’ve got a mind to call him up and tell him what I think.”

I handed Lula the file folder. “Be my guest. The phone number’s on the first page. And while you’re at it, tell him he’d better get his butt over here, because next time someone raps on his door it’ll be Ranger.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “Ranger’d root that little pecker out. Ranger’d stomp on his miserable ass.”

“Boy, I really hate being shot at,” I said. “I really hate it!”

Lula wrenched her door open. “I’m not taking this shit. I’m not standing still for this kind of treatment.”

“Me either,” I said, getting caught up in the moment. “That creep needs to be locked up.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “And we’re just the ones to do it!”

I wasn’t sure about that last part, but I let it slide, and Lula and I marched into the office like storm troopers invading Poland.

Connie looked up from her paperwork. “Uh-oh, what’s going on?”

“We’ve just been shot at,” Lula said, lower lip protruding a good two inches. “Can you believe it? I mean, I’ve been caught in drive-bys. I’m used to that shit. This shit was different. This shit was directed at me personally. I didn’t like this shit one bit. This shit was offensive, you know what I’m saying?”

Connie raised her eyebrows. “Leroy Watkins?”

“Shot at us through a closed door,” I said.

Connie nodded her head. “And?”

“And we ran away,” I said. “Lula was worried about bloodstains on her new warm-up suit.”

Lula had the file in one hand and Connie’s phone in the other. “That Leroy Watkins isn’t getting away with this. I’m gonna call up his ass and tell him what I think. I’m gonna tell him I’m not taking this shit.”

Lula punched in some numbers and stood hand on hip.

“I want to talk to Leroy,” she said into the phone.

Someone responded at the other end, and Lula leaned forward. “What do you mean I can’t talk to him? He just almost dropped a cap in me, and now he’s not available to talk to me? I’ll available his ass.”

The phone was returned to Connie after five more minutes of discussion.

“Snake says he didn’t know it was us,” Lula said. “He said he’d go down to court with us if we come back.”

“Who’d he think he was shooting at?” I asked Lula.

“He said he didn’t know who he was shooting at. He said it just pays to be careful these days.”

“He destroyed his door!”

“Guess a man in Snake’s business got to worry.”

I grabbed my bag and hung it on my shoulder. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

“The filing is starting to get out of hand,” Connie said to Lula. “This won’t take you all day, will it?”

“Hell no,” Lula said. “We’ll be back before lunch.”

I pulled on gloves but thought twice about a hat. You wear a hat in the morning and you look like a fool for the rest of the day. Not that I looked all that wonderful this morning. It was more that I didn’t want to compound the problem. Especially since Morelli was sitting in my parking lot. Just in case the unthinkable happened, and I got arrested…I didn’t want to have hat hair for my mug shot.

We rumbled off to Stark Street, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My thoughts ran mostly to warm beaches and half-naked men serving me long, cool drinks. From the stony expression on Lula’s face I suspected her thoughts ran a lot darker.

Lula pulled up to the curb in front of Shirlene’s apartment building and heaved herself out of the car. We stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the third-floor windows.

“He said he wasn’t going to shoot at us, right?” I asked, just to be sure.

“That’s what he said.”

“You believe him?”

Lula shrugged.

Ranger would go in with gun drawn, but that wasn’t my style. I felt stupid with a gun in my hand. After all, what purpose did it serve? Was I going to shoot Leroy Watkins if he refused to get in the car with me? I don’t think so.

I grimaced at Lula. She grimaced back. We entered the building and slowly climbed the stairs, listening for the shotgun ratchet.

When we got to the third floor, Shirlene was in the dingy hall, staring at her ruined door. Shirlene was medium height, lean and sinewy. Her age would be somewhere between twenty and fifty. She was wearing pink terry cloth bedroom slippers, faded pink warm-up pants that were a size too small and a matching sweatshirt that was dotted with various-hued food stains, none of which looked recent. Her hair was short and chopped. Her mouth turned down at the corners. Her eyes were expressionless. She held a piece of cardboard box in one hand and a hammer in the other.

“Not gonna be able to hammer anything into that cheapskate door,” Lula told her. “You need mollies. Only thing gonna hold that cardboard in place is mollies.”

“Haven’t got any mollies,” Shirlene said.

“Where’s Leroy?” Lula asked. “He isn’t gonna shoot at us again, is he?”

“Leroy’s gone,” Shirlene said.

“Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“Gone is gone,” Shirlene said.

“Where’d he go?”

“Don’t know,” Shirlene said.

“When will he be back?”

“Don’t know that either.”

Lula stuffed her fists onto her hips. “Well, what do you know?”

“I know I gotta get this door fixed,” Shirlene said. “And you’re standing here taking up my time.”

Lula walked into the front room. “You don’t mind if I look around, do you?”

Shirlene didn’t say anything. We both knew nothing short of that twelve-gauge pump was going to stop Lula from looking around.

Lula disappeared into the back room for a moment. “You’re right,” she said to Shirlene. “He’s gone. He take any clothes with him? He look like he gonna be gone a long time?”

“He took his gym bag, and you know what he got in there.”

I looked over at Lula, eyebrows raised in silent question.

Lula made her hand into a gun shape and aimed it at me.

“Oh,” I said.

“My time is valuable,” Lula said to Shirlene. “What’s the matter with that man, doggin’ me like this? He think I haven’t got anything better to do than to hike up those stairs?”

I gave Shirlene my card, and Lula and I trudged down the stairs with Lula grumbling the whole way.

“Walk up the stairs, walk down the stairs. Walk up the stairs, walk down the stairs,” she said. “Leroy better hope I never catch up with him.”

Now that I was back on the street I wasn’t all that sad not to have made an apprehension. An apprehension would have meant a trip to the police station. And the police station was the last place I wanted to visit right now.

“I guess we could try some bars,” I said with no enthusiasm.

“Snake’s not gonna be in a bar at this time of day,” Lula said. “Snake’s more likely to be hanging around a schoolyard, checking up on his sales force.”

That gave me some incentive. “Okay. Let’s drive by some schools.”

An hour later we were out of schools and still hadn’t found Snake.

“Any other ideas?” I asked Lula.

“Who’s listed on his bail ticket?”

“Shirlene.”

“No one else? No mama?”

“Nope. Just Shirlene.”

“I don’t know,” Lula said. “Usually a man like Snake is out on the street. Even in weather like this he could be on the street.” She slowly drove down Stark. “Not nobody out here today. Don’t even see anybody we can ask on.”

We drove by Jackie’s corner, and it was empty too.

“Maybe she’s with a client,” I said.

Lula shook her head. “Nuh-uh, she isn’t with no client. She’s in that snooty parking lot, waiting for her man. Bet my life on it.”

Lula cruised the block around my apartment building while I checked for Morelli. I didn’t see his car, or anything that resembled a cop or a copmobile, so I had Lula drop me at the front door. I entered the lobby cautiously, not completely convinced of Morelli’s departure. I did a fast survey and crossed to the stairs. So far, so good. I crept up the stairs, cracked the door at the second floor, peeked out to an empty hallway and sighed in relief. No Morelli.

I couldn’t avoid Morelli forever, but I figured if I avoided him long enough he’d find other leads, and eventually I’d be off the hook.

I unlocked my door and was met with the sound of Rex running on his wheel. I bolted the door behind myself, hung my bag and jacket on one of the four coat hooks I’d installed in my tiny foyer and took a left into the kitchen.

The light was blinking on my answering machine. Four messages.

The first was from Morelli. “Call me.”

I knew it was Morelli because my nipples contracted at the sound of his voice. His tone held a hint of annoyance. No surprise there.

The second message was just as cryptic. “Leave Mo alone. Or else.” A man’s voice, muffled. Unrecognizable. Great. Just what I needed. Anonymous threatening messages.

The third was from the Nissan service center telling me I had new points and plugs. The timing had been reset. And my car was ready to be picked up.

The fourth was from my mother. “Stephanie! Are you there? Are you all right? What’s this I hear about a shooting? Hello? Hello?”

Good news travels fast in the burg. Bad news travels even faster. And if there’s scandal attached, life as we know it comes to a halt until every detail of the tawdry event has been retold, examined, exclaimed over and enhanced.

If I allowed myself to consider what was being said about me at this very moment I’d probably fall over in a faint.

I dialed my parents’ number and got a busy signal. I briefly considered whether this absolved me from the obligatory explanatory phone call and decided it didn’t.

I made myself a tuna fish, potato chip and pickle sandwich and ate it at the kitchen counter.

I tried calling my mother again. Still busy.

I put Rex in the bathtub while I cleaned his cage. Then I cleaned the tub. Then I cleaned the rest of the bathroom. I ran the vacuum. I damp-mopped the kitchen floor. I scoured some of the crud off the top of the stove. Just in case I was arrested, I didn’t want my mother coming into my apartment and finding it dirty.

At three o’clock I gave up with the cleaning and tried another call to my mother. No luck.

I called Sue Ann to get the scoop on myself and to set the record straight. You could always get Sue Ann. Sue Ann had call waiting.

“You ever hear anything about Uncle Mo being…odd?” I asked Sue Ann.

“Odd?”

“Romantically.”

“You know something!” Sue Ann shouted into the phone. “What is it? What is it? What’s the dirt on Uncle Mo? He’s having an affair, right?”

“I don’t know. I was just wondering. Probably you should forget I said anything.”

I disconnected and tried my mother again. Her line was still busy. It was close to four o’clock, and the light was fading. I went to the window and peered down at the parking lot. No sign of Morelli.

“So what do you think?” I asked Rex. “Should I keep trying the phone or should I just take a ride over?”

Rex telepathically suggested that communicating with my mother in person would have the added advantage of being able to scrounge dinner.

I thought this was pretty clever considering Rex had a brain the size of a dried pea.

I grabbed my shoulder bag and my jacket and squinted into the security peephole on my front door. No one in view. I cracked the door and looked out at the hall. Clear. I took the stairs, crossed the small lobby and exited through the rear door to the lot.

The seniors always snapped up all the good slots close to the back entrance, so my Buick was parked at the outer edge, next to the Dumpster.

I could hear a steady drone of cars on St. James, and streetlights had just blinked on. I had almost reached the Buick when a black Jeep Cherokee suddenly wheeled into the lot and rolled to a stop.

The tinted driver’s side window slid down and a man wearing a ski mask looked out at me, leveled a .45 and squeezed off two rounds that zinged into the blacktop about six inches from my foot. I stood rooted to the spot, paralyzed by fear and astonishment.

“This is a warning,” the man said. “Stop looking for Mo. Next time these bullets will be in your brain.” He discharged three rounds into the heavy iron side of the Dumpster. I dove for cover. A fourth round whistled overhead.

The window rolled up, and the car sped out of the lot.