04 Four to Score (4 page)

He draped an arm around my shoulders and leaned close. “I'm gonna level with you, sweetie-pie. I want to get those letters back. It might even be worth something to me. You know what I mean? Just because you're working for this bail bonds guy doesn't mean you can't work for me, too, right? I'd pay good money. All you have to do is let me talk to Maxie before you turn her over to the cops.”

“Some people might consider that to be double-dipping.”

“A thousand dollars,” Kuntz said. “That's my final offer. Take it or leave it.”

I stuck out my hand. “Deal.”

Okay, so I can be bought. At least I don't come cheap. And besides, it was for a good cause. I didn't especially like Eddie Kuntz, but I could understand about embarrassing love letters since I'd written a few myself. They'd gone to my slimy ex-husband, and I'd consider a thousand dollars well spent if I could get them back.

“I'll need the letter,” I said to him.

He handed it over and gave me a punch in the shoulder. “Go for it.”

*    *    *    *    *

THE NOTE said the first clue was “in the big one.” I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds. Fortunately, I lived in a building filled with seniors who sat around all day doing crosswords. And this was sort of like a crossword, right?

My first choice was Mr. Kleinschmidt in 315.

“Ho,” Mr. Kleinschmidt said when he answered the door. “It's the fearless bounty hunter. Catch any criminals today?”

“Not yet, but I'm working on it.” I handed him the airmail message. “Can you unscramble this?”

Mr. Kleinschmidt shook his head. “I do crosswords. This is a jumble. You have to go ask Lorraine Klausner on the first floor. Lorraine does jumbles.”

“Everyone's a specialist today.”

“If Mickey Mouse could fly he'd be Donald Duck.”

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I thanked Mr. Kleinschmidt and I tramped two flights down and had my finger poised to ring Lorraine's bell when her door opened.

“Sol Kleinschmidt just called and told me all about the jumbled-up message,” Lorraine said. “Come in. I have cookies set out.”

I took a chair across from Lorraine at her kitchen table and watched her work her way through the puzzle.

“This isn't exactly a jumble,” she said, concentrating on the note. “I don't know how to do this. I only do jumbles.” She tapped her finger on the table. “I do know someone who might be able to help you, but . . .”

“But?”

“My nephew, Salvatore, has a knack for this sort of thing. Ever since he was little he's been able to solve all kinds of puzzles. One of those freak gifts.”

I looked at her expectantly.

“It's just that he can be odd sometimes. I think he's going through one of those conformity things.”

I hoped he didn't have a tongue stud. I had to struggle not to make guttural animal sounds when I talked to people wearing tongue studs. “Where does he live?”

She wrote an address on the back of the note. “He's a musician, and he mostly works nights, so he should be home now, but maybe it would be best if I call first.”

*    *    *    *    *

SALVATORE SWEET lived in a high-rise condo overlooking the river. The building was sandblasted cement and black glass. The landscaping was minimal but well maintained. The lobby was newly painted and carpeted in tones of mauve and gray. Hardly a nonconformist's paradise. And not low-rent, either.

I took the elevator to the ninth floor and rang Sweet's doorbell. A moment later the door opened and I found myself face-to-face with either a very ugly woman or a very gay guy.

“You must be Stephanie.”

I nodded my head.

“I'm Sally Sweet. Aunt Lorraine called and said you had a problem.”

He was dressed in tight black leather pants held together at the sides with leather lacing that left a strip of pale white flesh from ankle to waist, and a black leather vest that molded around coneshaped, eat-your-heart-out-Madonna breasts. He was close to seven feet tall in his black platform pumps. He had a large hook nose, red roses tattooed on his biceps and—thank you, Lord—he didn't have a tongue stud. He was wearing a blond Farrah Fawcett wig, fake eyelashes and glossy maroon lipstick. His nails had been painted to match his lips.

“Maybe this isn't a good time . . .” I said.

“As good as any.”

I had no idea what to say or where to look. The truth is, he was fascinating. Sort of like staring at a car crash.

He looked down at himself. “You're probably wondering about the outfit.”

“It's very nice.”

“Yeah, I had the vest made special. I'm lead guitar for the Lovelies. And let me tell you, it's fucking impossible to keep a good manicure through the weekend as a lead guitarist. If I'd known how things would turn out for me, I'd have taken up the fucking drums.”

“Looks like you're doing okay.”

“Success is my middle name. Two years ago I was straight as an arrow, playing for Howling Dogs. You ever hear of Howling Dogs?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Nobody fucking heard of Howling Dogs. I was fucking living in a fucking packing crate in the alley behind Romanos Pizza. I've been punk, funk, grunge and R&B. I've been with the Funky Butts, the Pitts, Beggar Boys, and Howling Dogs. I was with Howling Dogs the longest. It was a fucking depressing experience. I couldn't stand fucking singing all those fucking songs about fucking hearts fucking breaking and fucking goldfish fucking going to heaven. And then I had to fucking look like some western dude. I mean, how can you have any self-respect when you have to go on stage in a cowboy hat?”

I was pretty good at cussing, but I didn't think I could keep up with Sally. On my best day, I couldn't squeeze all those “f” words into a sentence. “Boy, you can really curse,” I said.

“You can't be a fucking musician without fucking cursing.”

I knew that was true, because sometimes I watched rockumentaries on MTV. My eyes strayed to his hair. “But now you're wearing a Farrah Fawcett wig. Isn't that kind of like a cowboy hat?”

“Yeah, only this is a fucking statement. This is fucking politically correct. See, this is the ultimate sensitive man. This is taking my female shit out of the closet. And like I'm saying, here it is, you know?”

“Un huh.”

“And besides, I'm making a shitload of money. I caught the wave on this one. This is the year of the drag queen. We're like a freaking fucking invasion.” He took the note from my hand and studied it. “Not only am I booked solid for every weekend for two years . . . I get money stuffed in my goddamn pants. I got money I don't know what to do with.”

“So I guess you feel lucky to be gay.”

“Well, just between you and me, I'm not actually gay.”

“You're a cross-dresser.”

“Yeah. Something like that. I mean, I wouldn't mind being sort of gay. Like, I guess I could dance with a guy, but I'm not doing any of that butt stuff.”

I nodded. I felt like that about men, too.

He got a pen from a hall table and made some marks on the note. “Lorraine said you're a bounty hunter.”

“I almost never shoot anybody,” I said.

“If I was a bounty hunter I'd fucking shoot lots of people.” He finished scribbling on the paper and gave it back to me.

“You're probably gonna find this hard to believe, but I was sort of weird when I was a kid.”

“No!”

“Yeah. I was like . . . out there. So I used to spend a lot of time talking to Spock. And Spock and me, we'd send messages to each other in code.”

“You mean Spock from Star Trek?”

“Yeah, that's the dude. Boy, Spock and I were tight. We did this code thing every day for years. Only our codes were hard. This code is too easy. This code is just a bunch of run-together letters with some extra shit thrown in. 'Red and green and blue. At Cluck in a Bucket the clue waits for you.' ”

“I know Cluck in a Bucket,” I said. “It's just down from the bonds office.”

The trash containers in the Cluck in a Bucket parking lot are colored red, green and blue. The green and the blue are for recycling paper and aluminum. The big red one is for garbage. I'd bet my apprehension fee the next clue was in the garbage.

A second man came to the door. He was neatly dressed in Dockers and a perfectly pressed button-down shirt. He was shorter than Sweet. Maybe 5'9". He was slender and totally hairless, like a bald Chihuahua, with soft brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses, and a mouth that seemed too wide, too sensuous for his small pinched face and little button nose.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“This is Stephanie Plum,” Sally said. “The one Lorraine called about.”

The man extended his hand. “Gregory Stern. Everyone calls me Sugar.”

“Sugar and I are roommates,” Sally said. “We're in the band together.”

“I'm the band tart,” Sugar said. “And sometimes I sing.”

“I always wanted to sing with a band,” I said. “Only, I can't sing.”

“I bet you could,” Sugar said. “I bet you'd be wonderful.”

“You'd better go get dressed,” Sally said to Sugar. “You're going to be late again.”

“We have a gig this afternoon,” Sugar explained. “Wedding reception.”

Yeeesh.

*    *    *    *    *

CLUCK IN A BUCKET is on Hamilton. It's housed in a cement cube with windows on three sides. And it's best known not for its outstanding food but for the giant rotating chicken impaled on a thirty-foot flagpole anchored in the parking lot.

I cruised into the lot and stopped short of the red Dumpster. The temperature had to be a hundred in the shade with a hundred percent humidity. My sunroof was open, and when I parked the car I felt the weight of the heat settling around me. Maybe when I found Nowicki I'd have my air-conditioning fixed, or maybe I'd spend a few days at the beach . . . or maybe I'd pay my rent and avoid eviction.

I walked to the Dumpster, thinking about ordering lunch. Two pieces of chicken plus a biscuit and slaw and an extra large soda sounded about right.

I peeked over the edge of the Dumpster, gave an involuntary gasp and staggered back a few feet. Most of the garbage was in bags, but some of the bags had split and had spewed out guts like bloated roadkill. The stench of vegetable rot and gangrenous chicken boiled over the Dumpster and had me reassessing my lunch plans. It also had me reassessing my job. There was no way I was scrounging in this mess for the stupid clue.

I returned to my car and called Eddie Kuntz on my cell phone. “I've deciphered the note,” I told him. “I'm at Cluck in a Bucket, and there's another clue here. I think you'd better come see for yourself.”

Half an hour later, Kuntz pulled into the lot. I was sitting in my car, slurping down my third giant-sized Diet Coke, and I was sweating like a pig. Kuntz looked nice and cool in his new sport utility vehicle and factory-installed air. He'd changed his clothes from the sweat-stained boxers he'd worn this morning to a black fishnet undershirt, black spandex shorts that didn't do much to hide Mr. Lumpy, two gold chains around his neck, and brand-new Air Jordans that looked to be about a size 42.

“All dressed up,” I said to him.

“Gotta maintain the image. Don't like to disappoint the chicks.”

I handed him the decoded note. “The next clue is in the red Dumpster.”

He walked to the Dumpster, stuck his head over the edge and recoiled.

“Pretty ripe,” I said. “Maybe you want to put on some old clothes before you go in there.”

“What, are you nuts? I'm not wading through that shit.”

“It's your note.”

“Yeah, but I've hired you,” Eddie said.

“You didn't hire me to go Dumpster surfing.”

“I hired you to find her. That's all I want. I just want you to find her.”

He had two pagers clipped onto his spandex shorts. One of them beeped and displayed a message. He read the message and sighed. “Chicks,” he said. “They never stop.”

Right. It was probably from his mother.

He went to his car and made a couple of calls on his car phone. He finished the calls and came back to me. “Okay,” he said, “it's all taken care of. All you have to do is stay here and wait for Carlos. I'd stay, but I got other things to do.”

I watched him leave, then I turned and squinted beyond the lot. “Hey Maxine,” I yelled. “You out there?” If it had been me I'd have wanted to see Kuntz slopping around in the garbage. “Listen,” I said, “it was a good idea, but it didn't work out. How about you let me buy you a couple pieces of chicken?”

Maxine didn't come forward, so I sat in my car and waited for Carlos. After about twenty minutes a flatbed truck pulled into the lot and unloaded a backhoe. The flatbed driver fired up the backhoe, rolled it to the Dumpster and put the bucket under the bin's bottom edge. The Dumpster tipped in slow motion and then crashed to the pavement and lay there like a big dead dinosaur. Garbage bags hit the ground and burst, and a glass jar clinked onto the blacktop, rolled between the bags and came to rest a few feet from where I was standing. Someone had used a Magic Marker to write “clue” on the outside of the jar.

The backhoe driver looked over at me. “You Stephanie?”

I was staring, transfixed, at the Dumpster and the mess in front of me, and my heart was beating with a sickening thud. “Unh huh.”

“You want me to spread this garbage around some more?”

“No!”

People were standing in the doorways and staring through the windows of Cluck in a Bucket. Two high school kids dressed in yellow-and-red Cluck uniforms ran across the lot to the backhoe.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” one of the kids yelled.

“Hey, don't get your undies in a bunch,” the driver said to the kid. “Life's too short.” He motored the backhoe onto the flatbed, got behind the wheel, gave us a military salute and drove off. We all stood there, momentarily speechless.

The kid turned to me. “Do you know him?”

“Nope,” I said. “Never saw him before in my life.”

*    *    *    *    *

I WAS less than a mile from my apartment, so I grabbed the jar, jumped into my car and headed for home. All the way, I kept looking over my shoulder, half expecting to be tracked down like a dog by the garbage police.