07 Seven Up (24 page)

“Maybe Ronald forgot to tell us something,” Lula said.

I had a weird feeling in my chest. “He could have called.”

“My second thought is maybe you shouldn't have told him you have the heart.”

Shit.

Lula and I jumped on the bike, but by now the car was only a block away and gaining.

“Hang on,” I yelled. And we shot forward. I accelerated to the corner and took it wide. I wasn't that good on the bike yet to take chances.

“Yow,” Lula shouted in my ear, “they're right on your ass.”

My peripheral vision caught the car coming up on my side. We were on a two-lane street with two blocks to go to Broad. These side streets were empty, but Broad would be busy at this time of day. If I could get to Broad I could lose them. The car eased past me, put some space between us, and then angled across the road, blocking my progress. The Lincoln's doors opened, all four men jumped out, and I slid to a stop. I felt Lula's arm rest on my shoulder and from the corner of my eye I got a glimpse of her Glock.

Everything came to a standstill.

Finally one of the men stepped forward. “Ronnie said I should give you his card in case you need to get in touch with him. It has his cell phone number on it.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the card from him. “That was smart of Ronald to think of that.”

“Yeah. He's a smart guy.”

Then they all piled into the car and drove away.

Lula reset the safety on the gun. “I think I messed my pants,” she said.

RANGER WAS IN the office when we got back.

“Seven o'clock tonight,” I said to Ranger. “At the Silver Dollar Diner. Morelli knows about it, but he's promised no police action.”

Ranger watched me. “Do you need me there, too?”

“Wouldn't hurt.”

He got to his feet. “Wear the wire. Turn it on at six-thirty.”

“How about me?” Lula asked. “Am I invited?”

“You're riding shotgun,” I said. “I need someone to carry the cooler.”

THE SILVER DOLLAR Diner is in Hamilton Township, just a short distance from the Burg, and an even shorter distance from my apartment. It's open twenty-four hours a day and has a menu that would take twelve hours to recite. You can get breakfast anytime and a nice greasy grilled cheese at two in the morning. It's surrounded by all of the ugliness that makes Jersey so great. Convenience stores, branch banks, warehouse grocery stores, video stores, strip malls, and dry cleaners. And neon signs and traffic lights as far as the eye can see.

Lula and I got there at six-thirty with the frozen heart clunking around in the Igloo cooler and my wire feeling uncomfortable and itchy under my plaid flannel shirt. We sat in a booth and ordered cheeseburgers and fries and looked out the window at the traffic streaming past.

I tested the wire and got the confirmation phone call back from Ranger. He was out there . . . somewhere. He was watching the diner. And he was invisible. Joe was there, too. Probably they'd communicated with each other. I've watched them work jobs together in the past. There were rules that men like Joe and Ranger used to dictate their roles. Rules I'd never understand. Rules that allowed two alpha males to coexist for the common good.

The diner was still crowded with second-shift eaters. The first-shift eaters were the seniors who came for the early-bird special. By seven it would start to thin. This wasn't Manhattan, where people ate fashionably late at eight or nine. Trenton worked hard and much of it was asleep by ten.

My cell phone rang at seven and my heart did a little tap dance when I heard DeChooch's voice.

“Do you have the heart with you?” he asked.

“Yes. It's right here beside me in the cooler. How's Grandma? I want to talk to her.”

There was some scuffling and mumbling and Grandma came on the line.

“Howdy,” Grandma said.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm hunky-dory.”

She sounded too happy. “Have you been drinking?”

“Eddie and me might have had a couple cocktails before dinner, but don't worry . . . I'm sharp as a tack.”

Lula was sitting across the table from me and she was smiling and shaking her head. I knew Ranger would be doing the same.

Eddie came back on the line. “Are you ready for the instructions?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how to get to Nottingham Way?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Take Nottingham to Mulberry Street and turn right onto Cherry.”

“Wait a minute. Ronald, your nephew, lives on Cherry.”

“Yeah. You're taking the heart to Ronald. He's gonna see it gets back to Richmond.”

Damn. I was going to get Grandma back, but I wasn't going to get Eddie DeChooch. I'd been hoping Ranger or Joe would snag him at the drop site.

“And what about Grandma?”

“As soon as I get a call from Ronald I'll turn your grandmother loose.”

I slid my cell phone back into my jacket pocket and told Lula and Ranger the plan.

“He's pretty cagey for an old guy,” Lula said. “That's not a bad plan.”

I'd already paid for the food, so I dropped a tip on the table and Lula and I left. The black and green around my eyes had faded to yellow and the yellow was hidden behind dark glasses. Lula hadn't worn her leathers. She was dressed in boots and jeans and a T-shirt that had a lot of cows on it and advertised Ben & Jerry's ice cream. We were just two normal women out for a couple burgers at the diner. Even the cooler seemed innocuous. No reason to suspect it contained a heart to ransom my grandmother.

And these other people, scarfing down fries and cole slaw, ordering rice pudding for dessert. What were their secrets? Who was to say they weren't spies and thugs and jewel thieves? I looked around. For that matter, who was to say they were human?

I took my time getting to Cherry Street. I was worried about Grandma and nervous about giving Ronald a pig heart. So I drove very carefully. Crashing the bike would put a real crimp in my rescue effort. Anyway, it was a nice night to be on a Harley. No bugs and no rain. I could feel Lula behind me, holding tight to the cooler.

The porch light was on at Ronald's house. Guess he was waiting for me. Hope he had room in his freezer for an organ. I left Lula on the bike with her Glock in her hand, and I walked the cooler to the front door and rang the bell.

Ronald opened the door and looked out at me and then at Lula. “Do you two sleep together, too?”

“No,” I said. “I sleep with Joe Morelli.”

Ronald looked a little grim at that since Morelli is a vice cop and Ronald is a vice purveyor.

“Before I hand this over to you I want you to call and have Grandma released,” I said.

“Sure. Come on in.”

“I'll stay here. And I want to hear Grandma tell me she's okay.”

Ronald shrugged. “Whatever. Let me see the heart.”

I slid the top back and Ronald looked inside.

“Jesus,” he said, “it's frozen.”

I looked in the cooler, too. What I saw was a blechy-looking lump of maroon ice wrapped in plastic.

“Yeah,” I said, “it was starting to look a little funky. You can't keep a heart around forever, you know. So I froze it.”

“You saw it when it wasn't frozen, though, right? And it looked okay?”

“I'm not exactly an expert on this stuff.”

Ronald disappeared and returned with a portable phone. “Here,” he said, handing the phone over to me. “Here's your granny.”

“I'm at Quaker Bridge with Eddie,” Grandma said. “I saw a jacket I like at Macy's, but I have to wait for my Social Security check.”

Eddie got on the line. “I'm going to leave her at the pizza place here. You can pick her up anytime.”

I repeated it for Ranger. “Okay, let me get this straight. You're going to leave Grandma at the pizza place at Quaker Bridge Mall.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “what are you, wearing a wire?”

“Who, me?”

I gave the phone back to Ronald and handed him the cooler. “If I were you I'd put the heart in the freezer for now and then maybe pack it in dry ice for the trip to Richmond.”

He nodded. “I'll do that. Wouldn't want to give Louie D a heart full of maggots.”

“Out of morbid curiosity,” I said, “was it your idea for me to bring the heart here?”

“You said don't let anything go wrong.”

When I got back to the bike I hauled my cell phone out and called Ranger.

“I'm on my way,” Ranger said. “I'm about ten minutes from Quaker Bridge. I'll call when I have her.”

I nodded my head and disconnected, unable to speak. There are times when life is just fucking overwhelming.

LULA LIVES IN a tiny apartment in a part of the ghetto that's pretty nice as far as ghettos go. I took Brunswick Avenue, wound around some, crossed over the train tracks, and found Lula's neighborhood. Streets were narrow and houses were small. Probably originally built for immigrants imported to work in the porcelain factories and steel mills. Lula lived in the middle of the block on the second floor of one of these houses.

My phone rang just as I cut the engine.

“I've got your grandmother with me, babe,” Ranger said. “I'm taking her home. Do you want any pizza?”

“Pepperoni, extra cheese.”

“That extra cheese will kill you,” Ranger said and disconnected.

Lula got off the bike and looked at me. “You gonna be all right?”

“Yep. I'm fine.”

She leaned forward and hugged me. “You're a good person.”

I smiled back at her and blinked hard and wiped my nose on my sleeve. Lula was a good person, too.

“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “Are you crying?”

“No. I think I inhaled a bug a couple blocks ago.”

It took me ten more minutes to get to my parents' house. I parked one house down and cut my lights. No way was I going in ahead of Grandma. My mother was probably berserk by now. Better to explain Grandma was kidnapped after Grandma was there in the flesh.

I sat on the curb and used the down time to call Morelli. I got him on his cell phone.

“Grandma's safe,” I told him. “She's with Ranger. He picked her up at the mall and he's bringing her home.”

“I heard. I was behind you at Ronald's. I stayed there until I got the word from Ranger that he had your grandmother. I'm on my way home now.”

Morelli asked me to spend the night at his house, but I declined. I had things to do. I got Grandma back, but Mooner and Dougie were still out there.

After a while headlights flashed at the end of the street and Ranger's gleaming black Mercedes eased to a stop in front of my parents' house. Ranger helped Grandma out and smiled at me. “Your grandmother ate your pizza. Guess you work up an appetite being a hostage.”

“Are you coming in with me?”

“You'd have to kill me first.”

“I need to talk to you. This won't take long. Will you wait for me?”

Our eyes held and the silence stretched between us.

I mentally licked my lips and fanned myself. Yep. He'd wait.

I turned to go into the house and he pulled me back. His hands slid under my shirt and my breath caught.

“The wire,” he said, removing the tape, his fingertips warm against my skin, skimming the swell of breast not covered by my bra.

Grandma was already through the door when I caught up with her.

“Boy, I can't wait to go to the beauty parlor tomorrow and tell everyone about this one.”

My father looked up from his paper, and my mother gave an involuntary shudder.

“Who's laid out?” Grandma asked my father. “I haven't seen a paper in a couple days. Did I miss anything?”

My mother narrowed her eyes. “Where were you?”

“Danged if I know,” Grandma said. “I had a bag over my head when I went in and out.”

“She was kidnapped,” I told my mother.

“What do you mean . . . kidnapped?”

“I happened to have something that Eddie DeChooch wanted, and so he kidnapped Grandma and held her for ransom.”

“Thank God,” my mother said. “I thought she was shacked up with a man.”

My father went back to reading his paper. Just another day in the life of the Plum family.

“Did you learn anything from Choochy?” I asked Grandma. “Do you have any idea where Mooner and Dougie have gone?”

“Eddie doesn't know anything about them. He'd like to find them, too. He says Dougie's the one who started it all. He says Dougie stole his heart. I could never figure out what that heart business was about, though.”

“And you don't have any idea where you were kept?”

“He had a bag over my head when we went in and out. At first I didn't realize I was kidnapped. I thought it was some kinky sex thing. What I know is we did some driving around and then we went into a garage. I know because I heard the garage door open and close. And then we went into the downstairs part of a house. It was like the garage opened into the cellar except the cellar was fixed up. There was a television room and two bedrooms and a little kitchen down there. And another room with the furnace and the washer and dryer. And I couldn't see out because there were only those little basement windows and they were closed up with shutters on the outside.” Grandma yawned. “Well, I'm going to bed. I'm pooped and I've got a big day tomorrow. I've got to make the most of this kidnapping. I've got a lot of people to tell.”

“Just don't say anything about the heart,” I told Grandma. “The heart is a secret.”

“Fine by me since I don't know what to say about it, anyway.”

“Are you going to press charges?”

Grandma looked surprised. “Against Choochy? Heck no. What would people think?”

Ranger was leaning against his car, waiting for me. He was dressed in black. Black dress slacks, expensive-looking black loafers, black T-shirt, black cashmere jacket. I knew the jacket wasn't for warmth. The jacket covered the gun. Not that it made any difference. The jacket was handsome.

“Ronald is probably going to take the heart to Richmond tomorrow,” I said to Ranger. “And I'm worried they'll discover it doesn't belong to Louie D.”

“And?”

“And I'm afraid they might want to send a message by doing something terrible to Mooner or Dougie.”

“And?”

“And I think Mooner and Dougie are in Richmond. I think Louie D's wife and sister are secretly working together. And I think they have Mooner and Dougie.”