“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.
I unlocked my door and called to Rex. “Another one of those days.”
Rex was asleep in his soup can and made no response, so I went into the kitchen and made myself a peanut butter and olive sandwich. I cracked open a be
er and studied the new encrypted message while I ate. I looked for run-together words and extra letters, but it was all a big glob of nothing to me. Finally I gave up and called Sally. His phone rang three times and his machine kicked in. “Sally and Sugar aren't home, but they'd just loooooove to talk to you, so leave a message.”
I left my name and number and went back to staring at the note. By three o'clock my eyes felt fried and there was no word from Sally, so I decided to go door-to-door to the seniors again. Mr. Kleinschmidt told me it wasn't a crossword. Lorraine told me it wasn't a jumble. Mr. Markowitz told me he was watching TV and didn't have time for such nonsense.
The light was blinking on my phone machine when I returned to my kitchen.
The first message was from Eddie Kuntz. “So where is she?” That was it. That was the whole message.
“What a moolack,” I said to the answering machine.
The second message was from Ranger. “Call me.”
Ranger is a man of few words. He's Cuban-American, former Special Forces, he makes a much better friend than an enemy, and he's Vinnie's numero uno bounty hunter. I dialed Ranger's number and waited to hear breathing. Sometimes that was all you got.
“Yo,” Ranger said.
“Yo yourself.”
“I need you to help me take down a skip.”
This meant Ranger either needed a good laugh or else he needed a white female to use as a decoy. If Ranger needed serious muscle he wouldn't call me. Ranger knew people who would take on the Terminator for a pack of Camels and the promise of a fun time.
“I need to get an FTA out of a building, and I haven't got what it takes,” Ranger said.
“And just exactly what is it that you're lacking?”
“Smooth white skin barely hidden behind a short skirt and tight sweater. Two days ago Sammy the Gimp bought the farm. He's laid out at Leoni's, and my man, Kenny Martin, is in there paying his respects.”
“So why don't you just wait until he comes out?”
“He's in there with his mother and his sister and his Uncle Vito. My guess is they'll leave together, and I don't want to wade through the whole Grizolli family to get at this guy.”
No kidding. The landfill was littered with the remains of people who tried to wade through Vito Grizolli.
“Actually, I had plans for tonight,” I said. “They include living a little longer.”
“I just want you to get my man out the back door. I'll take it from there.”
I heard the disconnect, but I shouted into the phone anyway. “What are you freaking nuts?”
* * * * *
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I was dressed in four-inch FMPs (short for “fuck-me pumps,” because when you walked around in them you looked like Whorehouse Wonder Bitch). I shimmied into a low-cut black knit dress that was bought with the intent of losing five pounds, gunked up my eyes with a lot of black mascara and beefed up my cleavage by stuffing Nerf balls into my bra.
Ranger was parked on Roebling, half a block from the funeral home. He didn't turn when I pulled to the curb, but I saw his eyes on me in the rearview mirror.
He was smiling when I slid in beside him. “Nice dress you're almost wearing. You ever think about changing professions?”
“Constantly. I'm thinking about it now.”
Ranger handed me a photo. “Kenny Martin. Age twenty-two. Minor league loser. Charged with armed robbery.” He glanced at the black leather bag I had draped on my shoulder. “You carrying?”
“Yes.”
“Is it loaded?”
I stuck my hand in the bag and rooted around. “I'm not sure, but I think I've got a few bullets in here somewhere . . .”
“Cuffs?”
“I definitely have cuffs.”
“Defense spray?”
“Yep. Got defense spray.”
“Go get 'em, tiger.”
I sashayed across the street and up the steps to Leoni's. A small knot of old Italian men stood smoking on the front porch. Conversation stopped when I approached, and the group parted to let me pass. There were more people in the vestibule. None of them was Kenny Martin. I went to room one, where Sammy the Gimp was on display, resting nicely in an ornate mahogany casket. There were lots of flowers and lots of old Italian women. No one seemed to be too upset about Sammy's demise. No heavily sedated widow. No wailing mother. No Kenny.
I said good-bye to Sammy and tottered down the hall in my heels. There was a small foyer at the end of the hall. The foyer opened to the back door, and Kenny Martin was standing in front of the door, sneaking a smoke. Beyond the door was a covered driveway, and somewhere beyond the driveway was Ranger.
I leaned against the wall across from Kenny and smiled. “Hi.”
His eyes fixed onto my Nerf balls. “Are you here to see Sammy?”
I shook my head no. “Mrs. Kowalski in room two.”
“You don't look all broke up.”
I shrugged.
“If you was all broke up I could comfort you. I got lots of ways to comfort a woman.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
He was 5'10" and a solid 190 pounds. He was dressed in a dark blue suit and white shirt with the top button popped open.
“What's your pleasure, dollie?” he asked.
I looked him up and down and smiled as if I liked what I saw. “What's your name?”
“Kenny. Kenny 'the Man' Martin.”
Kenny the Man. Unh! Mental head slap. I extended my hand. “Stephanie.”
In lieu of a handshake he laced his fingers into mine and stepped closer. “Pretty name.”
“I was going outside for some fresh air. Want to join me?”
“Yeah, sure. Nothing in here but dead people. Even the people who are alive are dead, you know what I mean?”
A little girl ran down the hall to us. “Kenny, Mama says we have to go now.”
“Tell her I'll be there in a minute.”
“She said I'm supposed to bring you now!”
Kenny did palms-up. A gesture of the futility of arguing. Everyone knows you never win against an Italian mother. “Maybe I could call you sometime?” Kenny said to me. “Maybe we could get together later.”
Never underestimate the power of a Nerf ball. “Sure. Why don't we go outside, and I'll write down my number. I really need some air.”
“Now!” the kid yelled.
Kenny made a lunge at the kid, and she whirled and ran back to Mama, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
“I gotta go,” Kenny said.
“One second. I'll give you my business card.” I had my head in my bag, scrounging for my defense spray. If I couldn't get him to walk through the door, I'd give him a shot of spray and drag him out.
I heard more footsteps on the carpet and looked up to find a woman striding toward us. She was slim and pretty with short blond hair. She was wearing a gray suit and heels, and her expression turned serious when she saw me with Kenny.
“Now I see the problem,” she said to Kenny. “Your mother sent me to fetch you, but it looks like you've got a complication here.”
“No complication,” Kenny said. “Just tell her to keep her shirt on.”
“Oh yeah,” the woman said. “I'm going to tell your mother to keep her shirt on. That's like a death wish.” She looked to me, and then she looked to Kenny, and then she smiled. “You don't know, do you?” she asked Kenny.
I was still searching for the spray. Hair brush, flashlight, travel pack of tampons. Damn it, where was the spray?
“Know what?” Kenny said. “What are you talking about?”
“Don't you ever read the paper? This is Stephanie Plum. She blew up the funeral home last year. She's a bounty hunter.”
“You're shitting me!”
Oh boy.
Stephanie Plum 4 - Four To Score
Stephanie Plum 4 - Four To Score
Stephanie Plum 4 - Four To Score
3
KENNY GAVE ME a shot to the shoul
der that knocked me back a couple of feet. “Is that true, what Terry said? Are you a bounty hunter?”
“Hey!” I said. “Keep your hands off me.”
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