Hot Six (3 page)

Hot Six

Page: 11

"I'm not dragging some poor dead man off to the municipal building!"

"What's the big deal? You think he's in a rush to get embalmed? Tell yourself you're doing something nice for himyou know, like a last ride. "

Ugh. I disconnected. Should have kept the whole box of doughnuts for myself. This was shaping up to be an eight-doughnut day. I looked at the little green diode blinking on my cell phone. Come on, Ranger, I thought. Call me.

I left the lobby and took to the road. Moon Man Dunphy was next on my list. The Mooner lives in the Burg, a couple blocks from my parents' house. He shares a row house with two other guys who are just as crazy as Moon Man. Last I heard, he was working nights, restocking at the Shop & Bag. And at this time of the day I suspect he's at home eating Cap'n Crunch, watching reruns of Star Trek.

I turned onto Hamilton, passed the office, left-turned into the Burg at St. Francis Hospital and wound my way around to the row houses on Grant. The Burg is a residential chunk of Trenton with one side bordering on Chambersburg Street and the other side stretching to Italy. Tastykakes and olive loaf are staples in the Burg. "Sign language" refers to a stiff middle finger jabbed skyward. Houses are modest. Cars are large. Windows are clean.

I parked in the middle of the block and checked my fact sheet to make sure I had the right number. There were twenty-three attached houses all in a row. Each house sat flush to the sidewalk. Each house was two stories tall. Moon lived in number 45 Grant.

He opened the door wide and looked out at me. He was just under six feet tall, with light brown shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He was slim and loose-jointed, wearing a black Metallica T-shirt and jeans with holes in the knees. He had a jar of peanut butter in one hand and a spoon in the other. Lunchtime. He stared out at me, looking confused, then the light went on, and he rapped himself on the head with the spoon, leaving a glob of peanut butter stuck in his hair. "Shit, dude! I forgot my court date!"

It was hard not to like Moon, and I found myself smiling in spite of my day. "Yeah, we need to get you bonded out again and rescheduled. " And I'd pick him up and chauffeur him to court next time. Stephanie Plum, mother hen.

"How does the Moon do that?"

"You come with me to the station, and I'll walk you through it. "

"That sucks seriously, dude. I'm in the middle of a Rocky and Bullwinkle retrospective. Can we do this some other time? Hey, I knowwhy don't you stay for lunch, and we can watch ol' Rocky together?"

I looked at the spoon in his hand. Probably he only had one. "I appreciate the invitation, " I said, "but I promised my mom I'd have lunch with her. " What is known in life as a little white lie.

"Wow, that's real nice. Having lunch with your mom. Far out. "

"So how about if I go have lunch now, and then I come back for you in about an hour?"

"That'd be great. The Moon would really appreciate that, dude. "

Mooching lunch from my mom wasn't a bad idea, now that I thought about it. Besides getting lunch, I'd get whatever gossip was floating around the Burg about the fire.

I left Moon to his retrospective and had my fingers wrapped around the door handle of my car when a black Lincoln pulled alongside me.

The passenger-side window rolled down and a man looked out. "You Stephanie Plum?"

"Yes. "

Hot Six

Page: 12

Yeah, right. I'm going to get into the Mafia staff car with two strange men, one of whom is a Pakistani with a . 38 tucked into his Sans-A-Belt pants, partially hidden by the soft roll of his belly, and the other is a guy who looks like Hulk Hogan with a buzz cut. "My mother told me never to ride with strangers. "

"We aren't so strange, " Hulk said. "We're just your average couple of guys. Isn't that right, Habib?"

"That is just so, " Habib said, inclining his head in my direction and smiling, showing a gold tooth. "We are most average in every way. "

"What do you want?" I asked.

The guy in the passenger seat gave a big sigh. "You're not gonna get in the car, are you?"

"No. "

"Okay, here's the deal. We're looking for a friend of yours. Only maybe he's not a friend anymore. Maybe you're looking for him, too. "

"Uh-huh. "

"So we thought we could work together. You know, be a team. "

"I don't think so. "

"Well, then, we're just gonna have to follow you around. We thought we should tell you so you don't get, you know, alarmed when you see us tailing you. "

"Who are you?"

"That's Habib over there behind the wheel. And I'm Mitchell. "

"No. I mean, who are you? Who do you work for?" I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but I thought it was worth asking anyway.

"We'd rather not divulge our employer's name, " Mitchell said. "It don't matter to you anyway. What you want to remember is that you don't cut us out of anything, because then we'd be annoyed. "

"Yes, and it is not good when we become annoyed, " Habib said, wagging his finger. "We are not to be taken lightly. Is that not so?" he asked, looking to Mitchell for approval. "In fact, if you annoy us we will spread your entrails across an entire parking space of my cousin Muhammad's 7-Eleven parking lot. "

"What are you, nuts?" Mitchell said. "We don't do no entrails shit. And if we did, it wouldn't be in front of the 7-Eleven. I go there for my Sunday paper. "

"Oh, " Habib said. "Well, then, we could do something of a sexual nature. We could perform amusing acts of sexual perversion on her . . . Many, many times. If she lived in my country she would forever be shamed in the community. She would be an outcast. Of course, since she is a decadent and immoral American she will undoubtedly be accepting of the perverse acts we will inflict upon her. And it is most possible that because we will be inflicting the perversions upon her, she will enjoy them immensely. But waitwe could also maim her to make the experience unpleasant in her eyes. "

"Hey, I don't mind about the maiming, but watch it with the sexy stuff, " Mitchell said to Habib. "I'm a family man. My wife catches wind of anything like that, and I'm toast. "

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"We want your pal Ranger, and we know you're looking for him, " Mitchell said.

"I'm not looking for Ranger. Vinnie's giving him to Joyce Barnhardt. "

"I don't know Joyce Barnhardt from the Easter Bunny, " Mitchell said. "I know you. And I'm telling you, you're looking for Ranger. And when you find him, you're gonna tell us. And if you don't take this to be a serious . . . Responsibility, you'll be real sorry. "

"Re-spons-i-bility, " Habib said. "I like that. Nicely put. I teenk I will remember that. "

"Think, " Mitchell said. "It's pronounced 'think. ' "

"Teenk. "

"Think!"

"That is what I said. Teenk. "

"The raghead just came over, " Mitchell said to me. "He used to work for our employer in another capacity in Pakistan, but he came over with the last load of goods, and we can't get rid of him. He don't know much yet. "

"I am not a raghead, " Habib shouted. "Do you see a rag on this head? I am in America now, and I do not wear these things. And it is not a nice way that you say this. "

"Raghead, " Mitchell said.

Habib narrowed his eyes. "Filthy American dog. "

"Blubber-belly. "

"Son of a camel-walla. "

"Go fuck yourself, " Mitchell said.

"And may your testicles fall off, " Habib responded.

Probably I didn't have to worry about these guysthey'd kill each other before the day was over. "I have to go now, " I said. "I'm going to my parents' house for lunch. "

"You must not be doing so good, " Mitchell said, "you gotta mooch lunch from your parents. We could help with that, you know. You get us what we want, and we could be real generous. "

"Even if I wanted to find Ranger, which I don't, I couldn't. Ranger is smoke. "

Hot Six

Page: 14

I opened the door of the Honda and slid behind the wheel. "Tell Alexander Ramos he needs to get someone else to find Ranger. "

Mitchell looked like he might hack up a hairball. "We don't work for that little turd. Pardon my French. "

This had me sitting up straighter in my seat. "Then who do you work for?"

"I told you before. We can't divulge that information. "

Jeez.

MY GRANDMOTHER WAS standing in the doorway when I drove up. She lived with my parents now that my grandfather was buying his lotto tickets directly from God. She had steel-gray hair cut short and permed. She ate like a horse and had skin like a soup chicken. Her elbows were sharp as razor wire. She was dressed in white tennis shoes and a magenta polyester warm-up suit, and she was sliding her uppers around in her mouth, which meant she had something on her mind.

"Isn't this nice? We were just setting lunch, " she said. "Your mother got some chicken salad and little rolls from Giovicchini's Market. "

I cut my eyes to the living room. My dad's chair was empty.

"He's out with the cab, " Grandma said. "Whitey Blocher called and said they needed somebody to fill in. "

My father is retired from the post office, but he drives a cab part-time, more to get out of the house than to pick up spare change. And driving a cab is often synonymous with playing pinochle at the Elks lodge.

I hung my jacket in the hall closet and took my place at the kitchen table. My parents' house is a narrow duplex. The living room windows look out at the street, the dining room window overlooks the driveway separating their house from the house next door, and the kitchen window and back door open to the yard, which was tidy but bleak at this time of the year.

My grandmother sat across from me. "I'm thinking about changing my hair color, " she said. "Rose Kotman dyed her hair red, and she looks pretty good. And now she's got a new boyfriend. " She helped herself to a roll and sliced it with the big knife. "I wouldn't mind having a boyfriend. "

"Rose Kotman is thirty-five, " my mother said.

"Well, I'm almost thirty-five, " Grandma said. "Everyone's always saying how I don't look my age. "

That was true. She looked about ninety. I loved her a lot, but gravity hadn't been kind.

"There's this man at the seniors club I've got my eye on, " Grandma said. "He's a real looker. I bet if I was a redhead he'd give me a tumble. "

My mother opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and reached for the chicken salad.

I didn't especially want to think about the details of Grandma tumbling, so I jumped right in and got to the business at hand. "Did you hear about the fire downtown?"

Grandma slathered extra mayo on her roll. "You mean that building on the corner of Adams and Third? I saw Esther Moyer at the bakery this morning, and she said her son Bucky drove the hook and ladder to that fire. She said Bucky told her it was a pip of a fire. "

Hot Six

Page: 15

"Esther said when they went through the building yesterday they found a body on the third floor. "

"Did Esther know who it was?"

"Homer Ramos. Esther said he was burned to a crisp. And he'd been shot. Had a big hole in his head. I looked to see if he was being laid out at Stiva's, but there wasn't anything in the paper today. Boy, wouldn't that be something? Guess Stiva couldn't do much with that. He could fill up the bullet hole with mortician's putty like he did for Moogey Bues, but he'd have his work cut out for him with the burned-to-a-crisp part. Course, if you wanted to look on the bright side, I guess the Ramos family could save some money on the funeral being that Homer was already cremated. Probably all they had to do was shovel him into a jar. Except I guess the head was left since they knew it had a hole in it. So probably they couldn't get the head in the jar. Less of course they smashed it with the shovel. I bet you give it a couple good whacks and it'd crumble up pretty good. "

My mother clapped her napkin to her mouth.

"You okay?" Grandma asked my mother. "You having another one of them hot flashes?" Grandma leaned in my direction and whispered, "It's the change. "

"It's not the change, " my mother said.

"Do they know who shot Ramos?" I asked Grandma.

"Esther didn't say anything about that. "

By one o'clock I was full of chicken salad and my mother's rice pudding. I trotted out of the house to the Civic and spotted Mitchell and Habib half a block down the street. Mitchell gave me a friendly wave when I looked his way. I got into the car without returning the wave and drove back to Moon Man.

I knocked on the door and Moon looked out at me, just as confused as he had been before. "Oh, yeah, " he finally said. And then he did a stoner laugh, giggling and chuffing.

"Empty your pockets, " I told him.

He turned his pants pockets inside out, and a bong dropped onto the front stoop. I picked it up and threw it into the house.

"Anything else?" I asked. "Any acid? Any weed?"

"No, dude. How about you?"

I shook my head. His brain probably looked like those clumps of dead coral you buy in the pet store to put in aquariums.

He squinted past me to the Civic. "Is that your car?"

"Yes. "

He closed his eyes and put his hands out. "No energy, " he said. "I don't feel any energy. This car is all wrong for you. " He opened his eyes and ambled across the sidewalk, pulling up his sagging pants. "What's your sign?"

"Libra. "

Hot Six

Page: 16

"True, " I said, "but this is all I could afford. Get in. "

"I have a friend who could get you a suitable car. He's like . . . A car dealer. "

"I'll keep it in mind. "

Mooner folded himself into the front seat and hauled out his sunglasses. "Better, dude, " he said from behind the shades. "Much better. "

THE TRENTON COP shop shares a building with the court. It's a blocky redbrick, no-frills structure that gets the job donea product of the slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am school of municipal architecture.

I parked in the lot and shepherded Moon inside. Technically, I couldn't bond him out myself, since I'm an enforcement agent and not a bonding agent. So I got the paperwork started and called Vinnie to come down and complete the process.

"Vinnie's on his way, " I told Moon, settling him onto the bench by the docket lieutenant. "I have some other business in the building, so I'm going to leave you here alone for a couple minutes. "

"Hey, that's cool, dude. Don't worry about me. The Mooner will be fine. "

"Don't move from this spot!"

"No problemo. "

I went upstairs to Violent Crimes and found Brian Simon at his desk. He'd only been promoted out of uniform a couple months earlier and still didn't have the hang of dressing himself. He was wearing a yellow-and-tan-plaid sports coat, navy suit slacks with brown penny loafers and red socks, and a tie wide enough to be a lobster bib.

"Don't they have some kind of dress code here?" I asked. "You keep dressing like this and we're going to make you go live in Connecticut. "

"Maybe you should come over tomorrow morning and help me pick out my clothes. "

"Jeez, " I said. "Touchy. Maybe this isn't a good time. "

"Good as any, " he said. "What's on your mind?"

"Carol Zabo. "

"That woman's a nut! She smashed right into me. And then she left the scene. "

"She was nervous. "

"You aren't going to lay one of those PMS excuses on me, are you?"