One for the Money (8 page)

“Then what happened?”

“It was real confusing. There were so many people in the hall.”

“Was Carmen there?”

“I didn't see her. There were just so many people. Everybody wanting to know what happened, you know? People trying to help the dead man, but it was no use. He was dead.”

“Supposedly there were two men in Carmen 's apartment. Did you see the second man?”

“I guess so. There was a man I didn't know. Never saw before. Skinny, dark hair, dark skin, about thirty, funny face. Like it'd been hit with a frying pan. Real flat nose. That's why I noticed him.”

“What happened to him?”

She shrugged. “Don't know. I guess he just left. Like Carmen.”

“Maybe I should talk to John Kuzack.”

“He's in 4B. He should be home. He's between jobs right now.”

I thanked her and walked up two more flights of stairs, wondering what sort of person would be willing and able to disarm Morelli. I knocked at 4B and waited. I knocked again, loud enough to bruise my knuckles. The door was thrown open and my “what kind of person” question was answered. John Kuzack was 6' 4" tall, weighed about two hundred and forty pounds, had his graying hair pulled into a ponytail, and had a rattler tattooed onto his forehead. He was holding a TV Guide in one hand and a can of beer in the other. The sweet aroma of pot drifted out of his hazy apartment. Vietnam vet, I thought. Airborne.

“John Kuzack?”

He squinted down at me. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm trying to get a lead on Joe Morelli. I was hoping you could tell me something about Carmen Sanchez.”

“You a cop?”

“I work for Vincent Plum. He posted the bond on Morelli.”

“I didn't know Carmen Sanchez real good,” he said. “I'd seen her around. Said hello to her a couple times. She seemed nice enough. I was coming up the stairs when I heard the gunshot.”

“Mrs. Santiago, on the second floor, said you subdued the gunman.”

“Yeah. I didn't know he was a cop. All I knew was he'd shot someone, and he was still armed. There were a lot of people coming into the hall, and he was telling them all to stay away. I figured it wasn't a good situation, so I hit him with a six-pack. Knocked him out cold.”

A six-pack? I almost laughed out loud. The police report had stated that Morelli had been hit with a blunt instrument. It hadn't said anything about a six-pack.

“That was very brave.”

He grinned. “Hell, bravery didn't have anything to do with it. I was shitfaced.”

“Do you know what happened to Carmen?”

“Nope. Guess she disappeared in the scuffle.”

“And you haven't seen her since?”

“Nope.”

“How about the missing male witness? Mrs. Santiago said there was a man with a flattened nose . . .”

“I remember seeing him, but that's about it.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Probably.”

“Do you think there's anyone else in the building who might know more about the missing man?”

“Edleman was the only other person who got a good look at the guy.”

“Is Edleman a tenant here?”

“Edleman was a tenant here. He got hit by a car last week. Right in front of the building. Hit and run.”

My stomach gave a nervous flutter. “You don't suppose Edleman's s death ties in to the Kulesza murder, do you?”

“No way of knowing.”

I thanked Kuzack for his time and took the stairs slowly, enjoying the buzz from his secondary smoke.

It was close to noon, and the day was heating up. I'd gone with a suit and heels this morning, trying to look respectable and trust inspiring. I'd left the windows rolled down when I'd parked in front of Carmen's building, half hoping someone would steal my car. No one had, so I slouched behind the wheel and finished off the Fig Newtons I'd filched from my mom's pantry. I hadn't found out a whole lot from Carmen's neighbors, but at least I hadn't been attacked or fallen down a flight of stairs.

Morelli's apartment was next on my list.

Stephanie Plum 1 - One for the Money

5

I'D CALLED RANGER AND ASKED FOR HELP, since I was too chicken to do breaking and entering on my own. When I pulled into the lot, Ranger was waiting. He was all in black. Sleeveless black T-shirt and black fatigue-type pants. He was leaning against a gleaming black Mercedes that had enough antennae on it to get to Mars. I parked several spaces away so my exhaust wouldn't tarnish his finish.

“Your car?” I asked. As if anyone else could possibly belong to this car.

“Life's been good to me.” His eyes slid to my Nova. “Nice paint job,” he said. “You been on Stark Street?”

“Yes, and they stole my radio.”

“Heh, heh, heh. Good of you to make a contribution to the less fortunate.”

“I'm willing to contribute the entire car, but no one wants it.”

“Just 'cause the dudes be crazy don't mean they be stupid.” He nodded toward Morelli's apartment. “Doesn't seem like anyone's home, so we'll have to do the unguided tour.”

“Is this illegal?”

“Hell no. We got the law, babe. Bounty hunters can do anything. We don't even need a search warrant.” He buckled a black nylon webbed gun belt around his waist and shoved his 9 mm Glock into it. He clipped cuffs onto the gun belt and shrugged into the same loose black jacket he'd worn when I'd met him at the coffee shop. “I don't expect Morelli to be in there,” he said, “but you never know. You always want to be prepared.”

I supposed I should be taking similar precautions, but I couldn't see myself with a gun butt sticking out of my skirt waistband. It'd be an empty gesture anyway, since Morelli knew I didn't have the guts to shoot him.

Ranger and I crossed the lot and walked through the breezeway to Morelli's apartment. Ranger knocked on the door and waited a moment. “Anybody home?” he hollered. No one answered.

“Now what?” I asked. “You going to kick the door in?”

“No way. You could break your foot doing that macho shit.”

“You're going to pick the lock, right? Use a credit card?”

Ranger shook his head. “You've been watching too much television.” He took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. “Got a key from the super while I was waiting for you.”

Morelli's apartment consisted of living room, dining alcove, galley kitchen, bath, and bedroom. It was relatively clean and sparsely furnished. Small square oak table, four ladder-back chairs, comfortable overstuffed couch, coffee table, and one club chair. He had an expensive stereo system in the living room and a small TV in the bedroom.

Ranger and I searched through the kitchen, looking for an address book, riffling through bills carelessly heaped in front of the toaster oven.

It was easy to imagine Morelli at home in his apartment, tossing his keys onto the kitchen counter, kicking off his shoes, reading his mail. A wave of remorse washed over me when I realized Morelli would most likely never again be free to enjoy any of those simple rituals. He'd killed a man and in the process had effectively ended his own life as well. It was such a hideous waste. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have gotten himself into this godawful mess? How do these things happen to people?

“Nothing here,” Ranger said. He punched the playback button on Morelli's answering machine. “Hi hotstuff,” a female voice cooed. “This is Carlene. Give me a call back.” Beep.

“Joseph Anthony Morelli, it's your mother. Are you there? Hello? Hello?” Beep.

Ranger turned the machine over and copied the security code and special message code. “You take these numbers and you can access his messages from an outside phone. Maybe something'll turn up.”

We moved on to the bedroom, going through his drawers, leafing through books and magazines, studying the few photographs on his dresser. The photographs were family. Nothing useful. No pictures of Carmen. For the most part his drawers had been emptied. He'd taken all his socks and underwear. Too bad. I'd been sort of looking forward to seeing his underwear.

We ended up back in the kitchen.

“This place is clean,” Ranger said. “You're not going to find anything to help you here. And I doubt he'll return. Looks to me like he took everything he needed.” He lifted a set of keys from a small hook on the kitchen wall and dropped them into my hand. “Hang on to these. No sense bothering the super if you want to get in again.”

We locked Morelli's apartment and slid the super's master key through a slot in his door. Ranger eased his body into the Mercedes, put on a pair of mirrored shades, powered back his sun roof, punched up a tape with a heavy bass, and rolled out of the parking lot like Batman.

I gave a resigned sigh and looked at my Nova. It was dripping oil onto the pavement. Two parking slots away Morelli's new red and gold Jeep Cherokee sat gleaming in the sunshine. I could feel the weight of his keys dangling from my finger. A house key and two car keys. I decided it wouldn't do any harm to take a closer look, so I opened the door to the Cherokee and peered inside. The car still smelled new. The instrument panel was dust-free, the rugs were freshly vacuumed and unstained, the red upholstery was smooth and perfect. The car had five on the floor, four-wheel drive, and enough horses to make a man proud. It was equipped with air-conditioning, an Alpine radio and tape deck, a two-way police radio, a cellular phone, and a CB scanner. It was a terrific car. And it belonged to Morelli. It didn't seem fair that a scofflaw like him should have such a great car and I should have such a piece of shit.

Probably as long as I had the car open, I should start it up for him, I thought. It wasn't good for a car to sit around and not get driven. Everybody knows that. I took a deep breath and cautiously maneuvered myself behind the wheel. I adjusted the seat and the rearview mirror. I put my hands to the wheel and tested the feel of it. I could catch Morelli if I had a car like this, I told myself. I was smart. I was tenacious. All I needed was a car. I wondered if I should drive it. Maybe simply running it wasn't enough. Maybe the car needed to go around the block. Better yet, maybe I should drive it for a day or two to really work the kinks out.

Okay, who was I trying to kid? I was contemplating stealing Morelli's car. Not steal, I reasoned. Commandeer. After all, I was a bounty hunter, and probably I could commandeer a car if an emergency situation arose. I glanced over at the Nova. Looked like an emergency to me.

There was an added advantage to snitching Morelli's car. I was pretty sure he wouldn't like it. And if he was pissed off enough, maybe he'd do something stupid and come after it.

I turned the key in the ignition and tried to ignore the fact that my heart was beating double-time. The secret to being a successful bounty hunter is being able to seize the moment, I told myself. Flexibility. Adaptation. Creative thought. All necessary attributes. And it didn't hurt to have balls.

I did some slow breathing so I wouldn't hyperventilate and crash my first stolen car. I had one more item on my day's itinerary. I needed to visit the Step In Bar and Grill, Carmen's last known place of employment. The Step In was located on lower Stark Street, two blocks from the gym. I debated going home to change into something more casual, but in the end decided to stick with the suit. No matter what I wore, I wasn't going to blend in with the bar regulars.

I found a parking space half a block away. I locked the car, and I walked the short distance to the bar only to discover the bar was closed. The door was padlocked. The windows were boarded. No explanation was given. I wasn't all that disappointed. After the incident in the gym, I hadn't been looking forward to breaking into another bastion of Stark Street manhood. I scurried back to the Cherokee and drove up and down Stark Street on the long shot that I might see Morelli. By the fifth pass it was getting old and my gas was low, so I gave it up. I checked the glove compartment for credit cards but found none. Swell. No gas. No money. No plastic.

If I was going to keep after Morelli I was going to need living expenses. I couldn't keep existing hand to mouth. Vinnie was the obvious answer to my problem. Vinnie was going to have to advance me some cash. I stopped for a light and took a moment to study Morelli's phone. I powered it up and his number blinked on. How convenient. I figured I'd go whole hog. Why stop at stealing Morelli's car? Might as well run his phone bill up, too.

I called Vinnie's office, and Connie answered.

“Is Vinnie in?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “He'll be here all afternoon.”

“I'll be around in about ten minutes. I need to talk to him.”

“Did you catch Morelli?”

“No, but I've confiscated his car.”

“Has it got a sun roof?”

I rolled my eyes skyward. “No sun roof.”

“Bummer,” she said.

I hung up and turned down Southard, trying to decide on a reasonable advance. I needed enough money to get me through two weeks, and if I was going to use the car to catch Morelli I might want to invest in an alarm system. I couldn't watch the car around the clock, and I didn't want Morelli sneaking it out from under me while I slept, or took a pee, or went to the market.

I was pondering an appropriate figure when the phone rang, the soft “brrrrp” almost causing me to run up onto the curb. It was a weird sensation. Like getting caught eavesdropping, or lying, or sitting on the toilet and having the bathroom walls suddenly drop away. I had an irrational urge to pull off the road and run shrieking from the car.

I gingerly put the handset to my ear. “Hello?”

There was a pause and a woman's voice came on the line. “I want to talk to Joseph Morelli.”

Holy cow. It was Momma Morelli. As if I wasn't in deep enough do-do. “Joe isn't here right now.”

“Who's this?”

“I'm a friend of Joe's. He asked me to run his car once in a while for him.”

“That's a lie,” she said. “I know who I'm talking to. I'm talking to Stephanie Plum. I know your voice when I hear it. What are you doing in my Joseph's car?”

No one can show disdain like Momma Morelli. If it had been an ordinary mother on the phone I might have explained or apologized, but Morelli's mother scared the hell out of me.

“What?” I shouted. “I can't hear you. What? What?”

I slammed the receiver down and flipped the off switch on the phone. “Good going,” I said to myself. “Very adult. Very professional. Really quick thinking.”

I parked on Hamilton and power walked half a block to Vinnie's. I was pumping myself up for the confrontation, getting my adrenaline going, raising my energy level. I barreled through the door like Wonder Woman, gave Connie a thumbs up, and went straight to Vinnie's office. The door was open. Vinnie was behind his desk, hunched over a racing sheet.

“Hey,” I said. “How's it going?”

“Oh shit,” Vinnie said. “Now what?”

That's what I like about my family. We're so close, so warm, so polite to each other. “I want an advance on my fee. I have expenses associated with the job.”

“An advance? Are you kidding me? You're joking, right?”

“I'm not joking. I'm going to get $10,000 when I bring Morelli in. I want a $2,000 advance.”

“When hell freezes over. And don't think you can pull more of that blackmail crap on me. You blab to my wife, and I'll be as good as dead. See if you can squeeze a job out of a dead man, smartass.”

He had a point. “Okay, so blackmail won't work. How about greed? You give me the $2,000 now, and I won't take my full 10 percent.”

“What if you don't get Morelli? You ever think of that?”

Only every waking minute of my life. “I'll get Morelli.”