High Five (10 page)

“I'll give you one hundred dollars if you let me drive.” Fahed said.

“No.”

“A thousand.”

“No.”

“Five thousand.”

I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “No.”

“You were tempted,” he said, smiling, looking satisfied.

Ugh.

An hour and a half later we managed to reach the New Brunswick interchange.

“I need something to drink,” Fahed said. “There's nothing to drink in this car. I'm used to having a stretch with a bar. I want you to find a place to get me a soda.”

I wasn't sure if this was limo protocol, but I figured what the hell, it was his nickel. I picked up Route 1 and looked for fast food. Not much of a challenge. The first thing that came up was a McDonald's. It was dinnertime and the drive-through lane looked like the Jersey Turnpike, so I junked the drive-through and parked the car.

“I want a Coke,” he said, sitting tight, clearly not interested in standing in line with the rest of New Jersey.

Don't freak out, I told myself. He's used to being waited on. “Anything else?”

“French fries.”

Fine. I grabbed my bag and crossed the lot. I swung though the door and chose a line. Two people in front of me. I studied the menu over the counter. One person left in front of me. I hiked my bag higher on my shoulder and looked out the window. I didn't see my car. There was a small twinge of alarm just below my heart. I scanned the lot. No car. I left the line and pushed through the door into the cool air. The car was gone.

Shit!

My first fear was that he'd been kidnapped. I'd been hired as a chauffeur and bodyguard for the sheik, and the sheik's been kidnapped. The fear was short-lived. No one would want this rotten kid. Face it, Stephanie, that little snot took the car.

I had two choices. I could call the police. Or I could call Ranger.

I tried Ranger first. “Bad news,” I said. “I sort of lost the sheik.”

“Where did you lose him?”

“North Brunswick. He sent me into a McDonald's for a soda, and next thing I knew, he was gone.”

“Where are you now?”

“I'm still at the McDonald's.” Where else would I be?

“Don't move. I'll get back to you.”

The connection was severed. “When?” I asked the dead phone. “When?”

Ten minutes later the phone rang.

“No problem,” Ranger said. “Found the sheik.”

“How'd you find him?”

“I called the car phone.”

“Was he kidnapped?”

“Impatient. Said he got tired of waiting for you.”

“That little jerk-off!”

Several people stopped in their tracks and stared.

I lowered my voice and turned, facing the phone. “Sorry, I got carried away,” I said to Ranger.

“Understandable, Babe.”

“He's got my jacket.”

“Bones will get it when he gets the car. You need a ride home?”

“I can call Lula.”

“Y
OU SHOULD HAVE
taken me with you,” Lula said. “This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't hauled your skinny ass off on your own.”

“It seemed like such an easy job. Pick up a kid and drive him somewhere.”

“Look at this,” Lula said, “we're passing by the mall. I bet some shopping would cheer you right up.”

“I
do
need shoes.”

“See,” Lula said, “there's a reason for everything. God meant for you to shop tonight.”

We entered the mall through Macy's and blasted into the shoe department first thing.

“Hold on here!” Lula said. “Look at these shoes!” She'd pulled a pair of black satin shoes off the display. They had pointy toes and four-inch heels and a slim ankle strap. “These are hot shoes,” Lula said.

I had to agree. The shoes were hot. I got my size from the salesperson and tried the shoes on.

“Those shoes are
you,”
Lula said. “You gotta get those shoes. We'll take these shoes,” Lula said to the salesclerk. “Wrap 'em up.

Ten minutes later, Lula was pulling dresses off the rack.
“Yow!”
Lula said. “Hold the phone. Here it is.”

The dress she was holding was barely there. It was a shimmery black scrap of miracle fiber with a low-cut neck and a short skirt.

“This is a genuine hard-on dress,” Lula said.

I suspected she was right. I looked at the price tag and sucked in some air. “I can't afford this!”

“You gotta at least try it on,” Lula said. “Maybe it won't fit so good, and then you'll feel better about not being able to buy it.”

It seemed like sound reasoning, so I dragged myself off to the dressing room. I did a fast computation of money left on my credit card and winced. If I caught Randy Briggs and I ate all my meals for the next month at my mother's house and I did my own nails for the wedding, I could
almost
afford the dress.

“Damn skippy,” Lula said when I tottered out of the dressing room in the black shoes and black dress. “Holy shit.”

I checked myself out in the mirror. It was definitely a “damn skippy, holy shit” outfit. And if I could lose five pounds in the next two days, the dress would fit.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll take it.”

“We need some french fries to celebrate with,” Lula said after I bought the dress. “My treat.”

“I can't have french fries. Another ounce and I won't get into the dress.”

“French fries are a vegetable,” Lula said. “They don't count when it comes to fat. And besides, we'll have to walk all the way down the mall to get to the food court, so we'll get exercise. In fact, probably we'll be so weak from all that walking by the time we get there we'll have to have a piece of crispy fried chicken along with the french fries.”

It was dark when we left the mall. I had the button open on my skirt to accommodate the fried chicken and french fries, and I was having a panic attack over my new clothes.

“Look at this,” Lula said, sidling up to her Firebird. “Somebody left us a note. It better not be that someone put a ding in my car. I hate when that happens.”

I looked over her shoulder to read the note.

“I saw you in the mall,” the note said. “You shouldn't tempt men by wearing dresses like that.”

“Guess this is for you,” Lula said. “On account of I wasn't wearing no dress.”

I did a quick scan of the lot. “Unlock the car and let's get out of here,” I said to Lula.

“It's just some pervert note,” Lula said.

“Yeah, but it was written by someone who knew where our car was parked.”

“Could have been someone who saw us when we first got here. Some little runt waiting for his wife to come out of Macy's.”

“Or it could have been written by someone who tailed me out of Trenton.” And I didn't think that someone was Bunchy. I'd been alert for Bunchy's car. And besides, I was pretty sure Bunchy would watch Mabel, like I asked.

Lula and I looked at each other and shared the same thought . . . Ramirez. We quickly jumped into the Firebird and locked the doors.

“Probably it wasn't him,” Lula said. “You would have seen him, don't you think?”

M
Y NEIGHBORHOOD IS
quiet after dark. All the seniors are tucked away in their apartments by then, settled in for the night, watching reruns of
Seinfeld
and
Cop Bloopers.

Lula dropped me off at the back door to my building at a little after nine, and true to form, not a creature was stirring. We looked for headlights and listened for footfalls and car engines and came up empty.

“I'll wait until you get in the building,” Lula said.

“I'll be fine.”

“Sure. I know that.”

I took the stairs, hoping they'd help out with the chicken and fries. When I'm scared, it's always a toss-up between the elevator and the stairs. I feel more in control on the stairs, but the stairwell feels isolating, and I know when the fire doors are closed, sound doesn't carry. I had a sense of relief when I reached my floor and there was no Ramirez.

I let myself into my apartment and called hello to Rex. I dropped my shopping bags on the kitchen counter, kicked my shoes off, and stripped out of the pantyhose. I did a fast room-by-room check, and no large men turned up there, either. Whew. I returned to the kitchen to listen to my phone messages and shrieked when someone knocked at my door. I squinted out the peephole with my hand over my heart.

Ranger.

“You never knock,” I said, opening the door.

“I always knock. You never answer.” He handed me my jacket. “The little sheik said you weren't any fun.”

“Scratch chauffeuring off the list.”

Ranger studied me for a moment. “Do you want me to shoot him?”

“No!” But it was a tempting idea.

He glanced down at the shoes and pantyhose on the floor. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No. I just got home. Lula and I went shopping.”

“Recreational therapy?”

“Yeah, but I also needed a new dress.” I held the dress up for him to see. “Lula sort of talked me into this. What do you think?”

Ranger's eyes darkened and his mouth tightened into a small smile. My face got warm and the dress slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.

Ranger picked the dress up and handed it to me.

“Okay,” I said, blowing a strand of hair off my forehead. “Guess I know what you think of the dress.”

“If you knew, you wouldn't be standing here,” Ranger said. “If you knew, you'd have yourself barricaded in the bedroom with your gun in your hand.”

Gulp.

Ranger's attention strayed to the note on the counter. “Someone else shares my opinion of the dress.”

“The note was left on the windshield of Lula's Firebird. We found it when we came out of the mall.”

“You know who wrote it?”

“I have a couple ideas.”

“You want to share them with me?”

“Could just be some guy who saw me at the mall.”

“Or?”

“Or it could be Ramirez.”

“You have reason to think it's Ramirez?”

“Touching it makes my skin crawl.”

 

 

“W
ORD ON THE
street is that Ramirez got religion,” Ranger said, relaxed against my kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest.

“So maybe he doesn't want to rape and mutilate me. Maybe he just wants to save me.”

“Either way, you should carry a gun.”

When Ranger left I listened to the single message on my phone machine. “Stephanie? This is your mother. Remember you promised to take your grandmother to the funeral parlor tomorrow night. And you can come early and have something to eat with us. I'm going to have a nice leg of lamb.”

The lamb sounded good, but I would have preferred the message to have been about Fred. Like, guess what, the funniest thing just happened . . . Fred showed up.

There was another knock on the door, and I looked out the peephole at Bunchy.

“I know you're lookin' out at me,” he said. “And I know you're thinking you should go get your gun and your pepper spray and your electronic torture device, so just go get them all because I'm getting tired of standing here.”

I opened the door a bit, leaving the security chain in place.

“Give me a break,” Bunchy said.

“What do you want?”

“How come the Rambo guy gets in and I don't?”

“I work with him.”

“You work with me, too. I just did a surveillance shift for you.”

“Anything happen?”

“I'm not telling you until you let me in.”

“I don't need to know that bad.”

“Yes, you do. You're nosy.”

He was right. I was nosy. I slid the chain off and opened the door.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Nothing happened. The grass grew an eighth of an inch.” He got a beer out of the refrigerator. “You know, your aunt is a real boozer. You should get her into AA or something.” He noticed the dress on the counter. “Wowy kazowy,” he said. “This your dress?”

“I got it to wear to a wedding.”

“You need a date? I don't look so bad when I get cleaned up.”

“I have a date. I've been sort of seeing this guy—”

“Yeah? What guy?”

“His name's Morelli. Joe Morelli.”

“Oh, man, I know him. I can't believe you're going with Morelli. The guy is a loser. Excuse me for saying so, but he porks everyone he meets. You shouldn't have anything to do with him. You could do better.”

“How do you know Morelli?”

“We have a professional relationship, being that he's a cop and I'm a bookie.”

“I asked him about you, and he said he never heard of you.”

Bunchy tipped his head back and laughed. It was the first time I'd ever heard him laugh, and it wasn't bad.

“He might know me by one of my other names,” Bunchy said. “Or maybe he just doesn't want to come clean because he knows I might spill the beans about him.”

“What would these other names be?”

“They're secret names,” he said. “If I told you, then they wouldn't be secret anymore.”

“Out!” I said, pointing stiff-armed to the door.

M
ORELLI CALLED AT
nine the next morning. “Just wanted to remind you the wedding is tomorrow,” he said. “I'll pick you up at four. And don't forget you have to come in to make a report on the Sloane Street shooting.”

“Sure.”

“You get any leads on Fred?”

“No. Nothing worth mentioning. Good thing I don't do this for a living.”

“Good thing,” Morelli said, sounding like he was smiling.

I hung up, and I called my friend Larry at RGC.

“Guess what, Larry?” I said. “I found the check. It was on my uncle's desk. Payment for three months' worth of garbage pickup. And the check has been canceled and everything.”

“Fine,” Larry said. “Bring the check in, and I'll credit the account.”

“How late are you open?”

“Five.”

“I'll be there before you close.”

I shoveled my gear into my shoulder bag, locked my apartment behind me, and took the stairs to the lobby. I exited the building and crossed the lot to my car. I had the key in hand, ready to unlock my door, when I felt the presence of someone behind me. I turned and found myself toe-to-toe with Benito Ramirez.

“Hello, Stephanie,” he said. “Nice to see you again. The champ missed you while he was away. He thought about you a lot.”

The champ. Better known as Benito Ramirez, who was too crazy to talk about himself in the first person.

“What do you want?”

He smiled his sick smile. “You know what the champ wants.”

“How about you tell me.”

“He wants to be your friend. He wants to help you find Jesus.”

“If you continue to stalk me, I'll get a restraining order.”

The smile stayed on his mouth, but his eyes were cold and hard. Steel orbs floating in empty space. “Can't restrain a man of God, Stephanie.”

“Move away from my car.”

“Where are you going?” Ramirez asked. “Why don't you go with the champ? The champ'll take you for a ride.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “He'll take you to see Jesus.”

I dug down in my shoulder bag and pulled out my gun. “Get away from me.”

Ramirez laughed softly and took a step backward. “When it's your time to see God, there'll be no escape.”

I unlocked the driver's side door, slid behind the wheel, and drove away with Ramirez still standing in the lot. I stopped for a light two blocks down Hamilton and realized there were tears on my cheeks. Shit. I swiped the tears away and yelled at myself. “You are
not
afraid of Benito Ramirez!”

That was a stupid, empty statement, of course. Ramirez was a monster. Anyone with a grain of sense would be afraid of him. And I was beyond afraid. I was terrified to tears.

B
Y THE TIME
I reached the office I was in pretty decent condition. My hands had stopped shaking, and my nose wasn't running. I still had some nausea, but I didn't think I'd throw up. It seemed like a weakness to be so frightened, and I wasn't crazy about the feeling. Especially since I'd chosen to work in a form of law enforcement. Hard to be effective when you're blubbering in fear. My one point of pride was that I hadn't shown my fear to Ramirez.

Connie stroked vermilion nail polish onto her thumbnail. “You calling the hospitals and the morgue about Fred?”

I placed the check facedown on the copier, closed the lid, and pushed the button. “Every morning."'

“What's next?” Lula wanted to know.

“I got a picture of Fred from Mabel. I thought I'd flash it around the strip mall and maybe go door-to-door on the streets behind Grand Union.” Hard to believe there wasn't someone out there who saw Fred leave the parking lot.

“Don't sound like a lot of fun to me,” Lula said.

I took the copy of the check and dropped it into my shoulder bag. Then I made a folder with Fred's name on it, dropped the original check into the folder, and filed it in the office file cabinet under Shutz. It would have been easier to put it in my desk . . . but I didn't have a desk.

“How about Randy Briggs?” Lula said. “Aren't we gonna visit him today?”

Short of burning the building down, I didn't know how to get Randy Briggs out of his apartment.

Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “I hear somebody say something about Briggs?”

“Not me. I didn't say nothing,” Lula said.

“You have one chickenshit case,” Vinnie said to me. “Why haven't you brought this guy in?”

“I'm working on it.”

“Yeah, and it's not her fault,” Lula said, “on account of he's wily.”

“You have until eight o'clock Monday morning,” Vinnie said. “Briggs' ass isn't in the slammer by Monday morning, I'm giving the case to somebody else.”

“Vinnie, you know a bookie named Bunchy?”

“No. And trust me, I know every bookie on the East Coast.” He pulled his head back into his office and slammed the door shut.

“Tear gas,” Lula said. “That's the way to get him. We just lob a can of tear gas through his dumb-ass window and then wait for him to come running out, gagging and choking. I know where we can get some, too. I bet we could get some from Ranger.”

“No! No tear gas,” I said.

“Well, what are you gonna do? You gonna let Vinnie give this to Joyce Barnhardt?”

Joyce Barnhardt! Shit. I'd eat dirt before I'd let Joyce Barnhardt bring in Randy Briggs. Joyce Barnhardt is a mutant human being and my arch enemy. Vinnie hired her on as a part-time bounty hunter a couple months ago in exchange for services I didn't want to think about. She'd tried to steal one of my cases back then, and I had no intention of letting that happen again.

I went to school with Joyce, and all through school she'd lied and snitched and was loosey-goosey with other girls' boyfriends. Not to mention, I'd been married for less than a year when I'd caught Joyce woman-superior on my dining room table with my sweating, cheating ex-husband.

“I'm going to reason with Briggs,” I said.

“Oh boy,” Lula said. “This is gonna be good. I gotta see this.”

“No. I'm going alone. I can do this by myself.”

“Sure,” Lula said. “I know that. Only it'd be more fun if I was there.”

“No! No, no, no.”

“Boy, you sure do got an attitude these days,” Lula said. “You were better when you were getting some, you know what I mean? I don't know why you gave Morelli the boot anyway. I don't usually like cops, but that man has one fine ass.”

I knew what she meant about my attitude. I was feeling damn cranky. I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. “I'll call if I need help.”

“Unh,” Lula said.

T
HINGS WERE QUIET
at Cloverleaf Apartments. No traffic in the lot. No traffic in the dingy foyer. I took the stairs and knocked on Briggs' door. No answer. I moved out of sight and dialed his number on my cell phone.

“Hello,” Briggs said.

“It's Stephanie.
Don't hang up!
I have to talk to you.”

“There's nothing to talk about. And I'm busy. I have work to do.”

“Look, I know this court thing is inconvenient for you. And I know it's unfair because you were unjustly charged. But it's something you have to do.”

“No.”

“Then do it for me.”

“Why should I do it for you?”

“I'm a nice person. And I'm just trying to do my job. And I need the money to pay for a pair of shoes I just bought. And even more, if I don't bring you in, Vinnie is going to give your case to Joyce Barnhardt. And I hate Joyce Barnhardt.”

“Why do you hate Joyce Barnhardt?”

“I caught her screwing my husband, who is now my exhusband, on my dining-room table. Can you imagine? My dining-room table.”

“Jeez,” Briggs said. “And she's a bounty hunter, too?”

“Well, she used to do makeovers at Macy's, but now she's working for Vinnie.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. So, how about it? Won't you let me bring you in? It won't be so bad. Honest.”

“Are you kidding? I'm not letting a loser like you bring me in. How would it look?”

Click. He hung up.

Loser? Excuse me? Loser? Okay, that does it. No more Ms. Nice Person. No more reasoning. This jerk is going down.
“Open this door!”
I yelled.
“Open this goddamn door!”

A woman popped her head out from the apartment across the hall. “If you don't stop this racket I'm going to call the police. We don't put up with this kind of goings-on here.”

I turned and looked at her.

“Oh, dear,” she said and slammed her door shut.

I gave Briggs' door a couple kicks with my foot and hammered on it with my fists. “Are you coming out?”

“Loser,” he said through the door. “You're just a stupid loser, and you can't make me do anything I don't want to do.”

I hauled my gun out of my shoulder bag and fired one off at the lock. The round glanced off the metal and lodged in the door frame. Christ. Briggs was right. I was a fucking loser. I didn't even know how to shoot off a lock.

I ran downstairs to the Buick and got a tire iron out of the trunk. I ran back upstairs and started whacking away at the door with the tire iron. I made a couple dents but that was about it. Bashing the door in with the tire iron was going to take a while. My forehead was beaded with sweat, and sweat stained the front of my T-shirt. A small crowd of people had collected at the far end of the hall.

“You gotta get the tire iron between the door and the jamb,” an old man at the end of the hall said. “You gotta wedge it in.”

“Shut up, Harry,” a woman said. “Anyone can see she's crazy. Don't encourage her.”

“Only trying to be helpful,” Harry said.

I followed his advice and wedged the iron between the door and the jamb and leaned into it. A chunk of wood splintered off the jamb and some metal stripping pulled away.

“See?” Harry said. “I told you.”

I gouged some more chunks from the doorjamb down by the lock. I was trying to get the tire iron back in when Briggs opened the door a crack and looked out at me.

“What are you, nuts? You can't just destroy someone's door.”

“Watch me,” I said. I shoved the tire iron at Briggs and put my weight behind it. The security chain popped off its mooring, and the door flew open.

“Stay away from me!” he hollered. “I'm armed.”

“What, are you kidding me? You're holding a fork.”

“Yes, but it's a meat fork. And it's sharp. I could poke your eye out with this fork.”

“Not on your best day, Shorty.”

“I hate you,” Briggs said. “You're ruining my life.”

I could hear sirens in the distance. Swell. Just what I needed . . . the police. Maybe we could call in the fire department, too. And the dogcatcher. And hell, how about a couple newspaper reporters.