11 Eleven On Top (12 page)

“Somebody blew up Mama Macaroni,” my mother said. “That doesn't bother me. She had it coming. Wha'c bothers me is that it was supposed to be you. It was your car.”

“I'm being careful. And it's not certain that it was a bomb. It could have been an accident. You know how it is with my cars. They catch on fire, and they explode.”

My mother made a strangled sound in her throat, and her eyes sort of glazed over. “That's true,” she said. “Hideously true.”

“Marilyn Rugach said Stiva's got most of Mama Macaroni at the funeral parlor,” Grandma said. “Marilyn works there part-time doing bookkeeping. I talked to Marilyn this morning, and she said they brought the deceased to the home in a zippered bag. She said there was still some parts missing, but she wouldn't say if they found the mole. Do you think there's any chance that they'll have an open casket at the viewing? Stiva's pretty good at patching people up, and I sure would like to see what he'd do with that mole.”

Ill My mother made the sign of the cross, a hysterical giggle gurgled out of her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“You should give up on the ironing and have a snort,” Grandma said to my mother.

“I don't need a snort,” my mother said. “I need some sanity in my life.”

“You got a lot of sanity,” Grandma said. “You got a real stable lifestyle. You got this house and you got a husband... sort of. And you got daughters and granddaughters. And you got the Church.”

“I have a daughter who blows things up. Cars, trucks, funeral parlors, people.”

“That only happens once in a while,” I said. “I do lots of other things besides that.”

My mother and grandmother looked at me. I had their full attention. They wanted to know what other things I did besides blowing up cars and trucks and funeral parlors and people.

I searched my mind and came up with nothing. I did a mental replay of yesterday. What did I do? I blew up a car and an old lady. Not personally but I was somewhere in the mix. What else? I made love to Morelli. A lot. My mother wouldn't want to hear about that. I got fired. I shot a guy in the foot. She wouldn't want to hear that either.

“I can play the cello,” I said. I don't know where it came from. It just flew out of my mouth.

My mother and grandmother stood frozen in openmouthed shock.

“Don't that beat all,” Grandma finally said. “Who would have thought you could play the cello?”

“I had no idea,” my mother said. “You never mentioned it before. Why didn't you tell us?”

“I was... shy. It's one of those personal hobbies. Personal cello playing.”

“I bet you're real good,” Grandma said.

My mother and grandmother looked at me expectantly. They wanted me to be good.

“Yep,” I said. “I'm pretty good.”

Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, I said to myself. What are you doing? You are such a goofus. You don't even know what a cello looks like. Sure I do, I answered. It's a big violin, right?

“How long have you been taking lessons?” Grandma wanted to know.

“A while.” I looked at my watch. “Gee, I'd like to stay, but I have things to do. I was hoping I could borrow Uncle Sandor's Buick.”

Grandma took a set of keys out of a kitchen drawer. “Big Blue will be happy to see you,” she said. “He doesn't get driven around too much.”

Big Blue corners like a refrigerator on wheels. It has power brakes but no power steering. It guzzles gas. It's impossible to park. And it's powder blue.

It has a shiny white top, powder blue body, silver-rimmed portholes, fat whitewall tires, and big gleaming chrome bumpers.

“I guess you need a big car like Blue so you can carry that cello around with you,” Grandma said.

“It's a perfect fit for the backseat,” I told her.

I took the keys and waved myself out of the house. I walked to the garage, opened the door, and there it was... Big Blue. I could feel the vibes coming off the car. The air hummed around me. Men loved Big Blue. It was a muscle car. It rode on a sweaty mix of high-octane gas and testosterone. Step on the gas and hear me roar, the car whispered. Not the growl of a Porsche. Not the vroooom of a Ferrari. This car was a bull walrus. This car had cajones that hung to its hubcaps.

Personally, I prefer cajones that sit a little higher, but hey, that's just me. I climbed aboard, rammed the key in, and cranked Blue over. The car came to life and vibrated under me. I took a deep breath, told myself I'd own a Lexus someday, and slowly backed out of the garage.

Grandma trotted over to the car with a brown grocery bag. “Your mother wants you to drop this off at Valerie's house. Valerie forgot to take it last night.”

Valerie was renting a small house at the edge of the Burg, about a half mile away. Until yesterday, she was sharing the house with Albert Kloughn. And since she was back to calling him her oogie woogams, I suppose he was about to return.

I wound through a maze of streets, brought Big Blue to the curb in front of Val's house, and stared at the car parked in front of me. It was Lula's red Firebird. Two possibilities. One was that Valerie had skipped out on a bond. The other was that she'd taken my smart-mouth advice and called Lula for diet tips. I rolled out of the Buick and got on with the brown-bag delivery.

Val opened the door before I reached the porch. “Grandma called and said you were on your way.”

“Looks like Lula's here. Are you FTA?”

“No. I'm F-A-T. So I called Lula like you suggested. And she came right over.”

“I take other people's dieting seriously,” Lula said to Valerie. “I'm gonna have you skinny in no time. This might even turn out to be a second career for me. Of course, now that I'm a bounty hunter I've got a lot of demands on my time. I've got a real nasty case that I'm working on. I should be out tracking this guy down right now, only I figured I could take a break from it and help you out.”

“What kind of case is it?” Val asked.

“He's wanted for AR and PT,” Lula said. “That's bounty hunter shorthand for armed robbery and public tinkling. He held up a liquor store and then took a leak in the domestic table wines section. I bet Stephanie here is gonna be so happy I'm helping you that she's gonna ride along and help out with the apprehension.”

“Not likely,” I said. “I have to be at work at three.”

“Yeah, but at the rate you're going, you'll be fired by five,” Lula said. “I just hope you last through dinnertime because I was planning on coming in for a bucket of extra crispy.”

“Is that on my diet?” Val asked.

“Hell no,” Lula said. “Ain't nothing on your diet. You want to lose weight, you gotta starve. You gotta eat a bunch of plain-ass carrots and shit.”

“What about that no-carb diet? I hear you can eat bacon and steak and lobster.”

"You didn't tell me what kind of diet you wanted to do. I just figured you wanted the starvation diet on account of it's the easiest and the most economical.

You don't have to weigh anything. And you don't have to cook anything. You just don't eat anything." Lula motored off to the kitchen.

“Let's check out your cupboards and see if you got good food or bad food.” Lula poked around. “Uh oh, this don't look like skinny food. You got chips in here. Boy, I sure would like some of these chips. I'm not gonna eat them, though, 'cause I got willpower.”

“Me, too,” Valerie said. “I'm not going to eat them either.”

“I bet you eat them when we leave,” Lula said.

Valerie bit into her lower lip. Of course she'd eat them. She was human, wasn't she? And this was Jersey. And the Burg, for crissake. We ate chips in the Burg. We ate everything.

“Maybe I should take those chips,” Lula said. “It would be okay if I ate the chips later being that I'm currently not in my weight-losing mode. I'm currently in my weight-gaining mode.”

Valerie pulled all the bags of chips out of the cupboard and dumped them into a big black plastic garbage bag. She threw boxes of cookies and bags of candy into the bag. She added the junk-sugar-loaded cereals, the toaster waffles, the salted nuts. She handed the bag over to Lula. “And I'm only going to eat one pork chop tonight. And I'm not going to smother it in gravy.”

“Good for you,” Lula said. “You're gonna be skinny in no time with an attitude like that.”

Valerie turned to me. “Grandma was all excited when she called. She said they just found out you've been playing the cello all these years.”

Lula's eyes bugged out. "Are you shitting me? I didn't know you played a musical instrument. And the cello!

That's real fancy-pants. That's fuckin' classy. How come you never said anything?"

Small tendrils of panic curled through my stomach. This was getting out of control. “It's no big thing,” I said. "I'm not very good. And I hardly ever play.

In fact, I can't remember the last time I celloed."

“I don't ever remember seeing a cello in your apartment,” Valerie said.

“I keep it in the closet,” I told her. I was such a good fibber! It had been my one real usable talent as a bounty hunter. I made a show of checking my watch. “Boy, look at the time. I have to go.”

“Me, too,” Lula said. “I gotta go get that stupid AR.” She wrapped her arms around the bag of junk food and lugged it out to her car. “It would be like old times if you rode with me on this one,” Lula said to me. “It wouldn't take us long to round up Mr. Pisser, and then we could eat all this shit.”

“I have to go home and take a shower and get dressed for work. And I have to feed Rex. And I don't want to do bond enforcement anymore.”

“Okay,” Lula said. “I guess I could understand all that.”

Lula roared off in her Firebird. And I slowly accelerated in the Buick. The Buick was like a freight train. Takes a while to get a full head of steam, but once it gets going it'll plow through anything.

I stopped at Giovichinni's Meat Market on the way home. I idled in front of the store and looked through the large front window. Bonnie Sue Giovichinni was working the register. I dialed Bonnie Sue and asked her if there were any Macaronis in the store.

“Nope,” Bonnie Sue said. “The coast is clear.”

I scurried around, gathering the bare essentials. A loaf of bread, some sliced provolone, a half pound of sliced ham, a small tub of chocolate ice cream, a quart of skim milk, and a handful of fresh green beans for Rex. I added a couple Tastykakes to my basket and lined up behind Mrs. Krepler at the checkout.

“I just talked to Ruby Beck,” Mrs. Krepler said. “Ruby tells me you've left the bonds office so you can play cello with a symphony orchestra. How exciting!”

I was speechless.

“And have you heard if they found the mole yet?” Mrs. Krepler asked.

I paid for my groceries and hurried out of the store. The cello-playing thing was going through the Burg like wildfire. You'd think with something as good as Mama Macaroni getting blown to bits there wouldn't be time to care about my cello playing. I swear, I can't catch a break here.

I drove home and docked the boat in a spot close to the back door. I figured the closer to the door, the less chance of a bomb getting planted. I wasn't sure the theory held water, but it made me feel better. I took the stairs and opened the door to my apartment cautiously. I stuck my head in and listened.

Just the sound of Rex running on his wheel in his cage in the kitchen. I locked and bolted the door behind me and retrieved my gun from the cookie jar.

The gun wasn't loaded because I'd forgotten to buy bullets, but I crept through the apartment, looking in closets and under the bed with the gun drawn anyway. I couldn't shoot anyone, but at least I looked like I could kick ass.

I took a shower and got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I didn't spend a lot of time on my hair since I'd be wearing the dorky Cluck hat. I lined my eyes and slathered on mascara to make up for the hair. I gave Rex a couple beans, and I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. I glanced at my gun while I ate my sandwich. The gun was loaded. I went to the cookie jar and looked inside. There was a Rangeman business card in the bottom of the jar. A single word was handwritten on the card, babe!

I had a momentary hot flash and briefly considered checking out my underwear drawer for more business cards. “He's trying to protect me,” I said to Rex.

“He does that a lot.”

I got the tub of ice cream from the freezer and took it to the dining room table, along with a pad. I sat at the table and ate the ice cream and made notes for myself. I had four guys who were all about the same age. They all had a small business at one time or another. Two bought new cars. They all disappeared on the same day at about the same time. None of their cars were ever retrieved. That was all I knew.

My hunch about Anthony and Spiro didn't really amount to much. Probably I was trying to make a connection where none existed. One thing was certain. Someone was stalking me, trying to scare me. And now it looked like that person was trying to kill me. Not a happy thought.

I'd eaten about a third of the tub of ice cream. I put the lid on the tub and walked it back to the freezer. I put all the food away and wiped down the countertop. I wasn't much of a housekeeper, but I didn't want to be killed and have my mother discover my kitchen was a mess.

I LEFT MY apartment at two-thirty and gingerly circled the Buick, looking for signs of tampering. I looked in the window. I crouched down and looked under the car. Finally I put the key in the lock, squinched my eyes closed, and opened the door. No explosion. I slid behind the wheel, took a deep breath, and turned the engine over. No explosion. I thought this was good news and bad news. If it had exploded I'd be dead, and that would be bad. On the other hand, I wouldn't have to wear the awful Cluck hat, and that would be very good.

Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of Milton Mann, receiving instructions.

“We're going to start you off at the register,” he said. “It's all computerized so it's super simple. You just punch in the order and the computer sends the order to the crew in the back and tells you how much to charge the customer. You have to be real friendly and polite. And when you give the customer their change you say, 'Thank you for visiting Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Have a clucky day.' And always remember to wear your hat. It's our special trademark.”