Fearless Fourteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich

  “Did you let anyone into the house yesterday?” I asked Zook.

  “The pizza delivery guy.”

  “He didn’t go into the cellar and stay there, did he?”

  “No. He left in his pizza car.”

  I sat at the little kitchen table with Zook and ate a bowl of cereal and drank my coffee. I had a bad feeling about the guy in the cellar. And I didn’t know what to do about Zook. He was pushing his cereal around in his bowl, letting it get sogged up with milk. He was frowning and chewing on his lip.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s something. What is it?”

  “It’s my stupid mother, sitting in that stupid jail.”

  “You’re worried about her,” I said.

  “It’s all her own stupid fault. She robbed a stupid liquor store. I mean, it wasn’t even a bank. A bank, I could see. That could be lots of money. My uncle robbed a bank and they never found the money, and now he’s out and he’s gonna be on easy street. But my dumb mother robbed a liquor store, and all she took was a bottle of gin! And now my stupid relatives won’t even bail her out.”

  “Connie’s working on it. Hopefully, we’ll find a way to get your mom out today. In the meantime, Morelli will look in on her and make sure she’s okay.”

  “I don’t ever want to grow up. Growing up sucks. People do stupid things.”

  “Growing up isn’t so bad,” I told him. “What do you want to do when you get out of school?”

  He kept his eyes glued to his bloated cereal. “You’ll think it’s dopey.”

  “And?”

  “I want to be an engineer and design roller coasters.”

  I was dumbstruck. “Wow. That’s fantastic.”

  “Yeah, except I’ll never get into college because my grades suck, and we have no money.”

  “So fix your grades and go to a state school. That’s what I did. You could even try for a scholarship.”

  Morelli called on my cell phone.

  “Tell Zook, or whoever the hell he is today, that his mom says hello. She isn’t happy, but she’s managing.”

  “Thanks. I’ll pass it on. Any information on last night?”

  “You mean the break-in? No. No other disturbances in the neighborhood.”

  FOUR

  CONNIE WAS AT her desk when I walked into the office. I dumped my shoulder bag on the couch and cut my eyes to Vinnie’s inner sanctum. The door was closed.

  “He’s not here,” Connie said. “He’s at a bail bonds conference in Shreveport.”

  “What’s happening with Loretta Rizzi?”

  “Not a damn thing. It’s pathetic,” Connie said. “No one wants to take a chance on her.”

  “You could bond her out on her own recognizance.”

  “Vinnie would kill me.”

  “He wouldn’t have to know.”

  “Vinnie knows everything. He has this office bugged.”

  “I thought you debugged it.”

  “He keeps hiding new ones.”

  “I have to get Loretta out. Morelli and I aren’t ready for parenthood. If I was going to target one of her relatives, who would be my top choice?”

  “Her brother. He’s got a stash somewhere. He stole nine million dollars, and it was never recovered.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “He’s staying at his mother’s house on Conway Street.”

  “I know the house.”

  “You might want to take Lula. Word is he’s unstable.”

  “Where is Lula?”

  “Late. Like always.”

  I caught a flash of red in my peripheral vision and Lula swept through the front door. Her hair was still fire-engine red, and her sweater, skirt, and shoes matched her hair.

  “Speak of the devil,” Connie said.

  “I ain’t no devil,” Lula said. “I’m respectable, mostly. I’m an engaged woman. I got a ring and everything. I told you I had a feeling.”

  She held her hand out, and we looked at her ring.

  “Wow, that’s a big diamond,” Connie said. “Is it real?”

  “Sure it’s real,” Lula said. “I got it in the diamond district on Eighth and Remington.”

  “That’s the projects,” Connie said.

  “Yeah. Scootch Brown runs that corner. He said this was a real good ring. He gave me a good price on it.”

  “So it was okay with Tank that you bought the ring?”

  “Tank got a real important job,” Lula said. “He don’t necessarily have time to go shopping for shit like this.”

  “Does he know he’s engaged?”

  “Of course he knows,” Lula said. “It was real romantic, too. He came over, and we always get right to it, if you know what I mean. So anyway, we got that out of the way, and then Tank fell asleep and I put the ring on. And then when Tank woke up, I told him how happy I was, and how he was such a sweetie. And then I celebrated by making him feel real good, and after that he fell asleep again.”

  “Congratulations,” I said to Lula. “When’s the wedding?”

  “I haven’t decided that. June might be nice.”

  “That’s next month.”

  “Yeah,” Lula said. “You think it’s too far away? I don’t like long engagements.”

  “You can’t go wrong with June,” Connie said. “Everyone wants to get married in June.”

  “That’s what I figure,” Lula said. “I always wanted to be a June bride, but I don’t want one of them schmaltzy weddings with the big white gown and all. I just want to get married real quiet.” She looked at me. “What about you? Did you have a big schmaltzy wedding?”

  “Yeah. And then I had an even bigger divorce.”

  “I remember the divorce,” Connie said. “It was spectacular. It was a real accomplishment, since you’d only been married about fifteen minutes.” She handed a file over to me. “This guy just came in. Failed to appear for his court appearance. Not a big bond, but it shouldn’t be hard to find him. He lives with his brother in a row house on Vine Street.”

  “What’s the charge?”

  “Indecent exposure.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Lula said. “I might have to help you with that one.”

  I read through the bond document. “He’s eighty-one.”

  “Now that I think about it,” Lula said, “I got a lot to do. I might not have time to round up some eighty-one-year-old naked guy.”

  “I’m sure he’s not always naked,” I said to Lula. “He probably just forgot to close the barn door.”

  “Okay, I’ll go with you, but I don’t want to get involved with no eighty-year-old doodles, you see what I’m saying?”

  “Before I forget, Mary Ann Falattio is having a purse party tonight,” Connie said. “Are you interested?”

  Mary Ann Falattio’s husband, Danny, hijacked trucks for the Trenton Mob, and from time to time, Mary Ann supplemented her household budget by tapping into the merchandise stored in her garage. “What’s she got?” I asked Connie.

  “She said Danny got a load of Louis Vuitton last night. Picked them up at Port Newark.”

  “I’m in,” Lula said. “I could use a new bag. She just get bags or did she get shoes, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Connie said. “It was a message on my machine.”

  I shoved the new file into my pocket. “I’m working tonight. Brenda’s having dinner with the mayor. If she passes out early enough, I’ll stop by.”

  There was still rush-hour traffic clogging Hamilton when Lula and I left the bonds office. The sky was as blue as it gets in Jersey, and the air was warm enough that I could unzip my sweatshirt.

  Lula walked half a block to my parked car and stopped short, eyes bugged, mouth open. “Holy cow.”

  Zook was written over the entire car in black and scarlet and gold, surrounded by swirling flames edged in metallic green.

  “He did it when I took a shower this morning. He said it would wash off,” I told Lula. />
  “Too bad. It’s a real improvement on this hunk of junk car.”

  “It’s supposed to protect me from the griefer.”

  “You can never have too much protection,” Lula said.

  We buckled in and I drove the short distance to Conway Street.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” I told Lula. “I need to talk to Dominic Rizzi.”

  “Holler if you need help. I hear he’s a nut case.”

  Alma Rizzi’s small front yard was bare of landscaping, with the exception of a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin and the weather-beaten gray clapboard house behind it were stoic. They’d seen it all. Good times and bad.

  I knocked on the front door and Dom answered. He was about five-feet-nine, with a barrel chest and a head like a melon. He was a couple years older than Loretta, and a lot of pounds heavier. He looked like Friar Tuck with road rage.

  “Stephanie Plum,” he said. “You got a lot of nerve coming here. First you put my kid sister in jail, and then you kidnap my nephew. If I wasn’t on probation, I’d shoot you.”

  “I didn’t kidnap Mario. Loretta made me promise to take him. And if you’d bail her out, he could go back home instead of living with Morelli and me.”

  Dom went goggle-eyed. “Mario is living with Joe Morelli? That bastard has my nephew?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In his house?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dom was just about vibrating in front of me, hands fisted, neck cords bulging, spit foaming at the corners of his mouth, face purple.

  “Sonovabitch. Sonovabitch. I’m gonna kill that snake Morelli. I swear to God, I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna cut off his head. That’s what you do to a snake.”

  Yikes. “Yeah, but not when you’re on probation, right?”

  “Fuck probation. He deserves to die. First he got my kid sister pregnant. And then he took Rose’s house. And now he’s got Mario.”

  “Whoa, wait up a minute. What do you mean he got Loretta pregnant?”

  “It’s obvious,” Dom said. “Take a look at the kid. Recognize anyone?”

  “Loretta and Joe are vaguely related. It’s not shocking that there’d be a family resemblance.”

  “It’s more than a family resemblance. Besides, I caught them in the act. They were doing it in my old man’s garage. Nine months later, Mario popped out of the oven. That piece of shit Morelli. I should have killed him then.”

  I was stunned. I’d seen the resemblance, but this had never crossed my mind. Morelli had been pretty wild in high school and his early twenties. He hadn’t been my favorite person, and I was willing to believe a lot of bad things about him. This went beyond what I would have expected. Hard to believe he’d have a romantic relationship with Loretta and then walk away from her and the baby.

  “I know Morelli had a Casanova reputation in high school, but this is out of character,” I said to Dom. “Family and friends were always important to Morelli.”

  “He ruined my kid sister’s life. She was smart. She always got the good grades. She could have been something, but she had to quit high school. And now she’s in jail. This is his fault. He stole her future, just like he stole mine. You tell the sonovabitch to live in fear. You tell him to watch his back, because I’m gonna chop the head off the snake. And you tell him to stay far away from my nephew,” Rizzi said, eyes narrowed.

  “If you’d post the security for the bond on Loretta . . .”

  “I’m living in my mother’s house. Does that say something? Like maybe I haven’t got a cent? No job. No money. No goddamn house.”

  “I thought you might have some cash laying around.”

  “What are you, fucking deaf? I have nothing.”

  “Okay then. Good talking to you. Let me know if you find some money. Just give me a ringy dingy.”

  I turned and practically ran back to the car. He was friggin’ scary. And I couldn’t believe I told him to give me a ringy dingy! Where did that come from?

  Lula was eyebrows up when I slid behind the wheel. “Well, how’d that go?” she asked.

  “Could have been better.”

  “He gonna bond Loretta out?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sounded to me like he was yelling about something.”

  “Yep.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Nope.” What on earth was I supposed to say? He saw Morelli boinking Loretta and getting her pregnant? I could barely think it, much less repeat it.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “I was gonna make you my maid of honor, but I might have to rethink that if you’re gonna go all secret on me.”

  “I thought you were going to have a quiet wedding.”

  “Yeah, but you gotta have a maid of honor. It’s a rule.”

  Vine Street ran off Broad and was at the edge of the Burg. I cruised along, checking off the numbers of the row houses.

  “What’s this guy’s name?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Andy Gimp.”

  “That’s a terrible name. That’s a strike against you right from the start.”

  “He’s eighty-one. I imagine he’s used to it.” I pulled to the curb and parked. “Showtime.”

  “I hope not,” Lula said. “I finally got me some good stuff. I don’t want to ruin my mental image. I don’t want some old wrinkled wanger burned into my cornea when what I want to remember is Tank and the big boys.”

  I took a business card and a small can of pepper spray out of my purse and rammed them into my jeans pocket. “Big boys?”

  “Yeah, you know . . . the fuzzy lumpkins, the storm troopers, the beef balls.”

  I covered my ears with my hands. “I get it!” I stepped onto the small cement front porch and rang the bell. A little old man with wispy gray hair and skin like a Shar-Pei answered.

  “Andy Gimp?” I asked.

  “Nope. I’m Bernie. Andy’s my older brother,” the man said. “Come on in. Andy’s watching television.”

  “I got a bad feeling about this,” Lula said. “If this is the younger brother, what the heck does the older one look like?”

  “Hey, Andy,” Bernie called out. “You got company. You got a couple hot ones.”

  I followed Bernie into the living room and immediately spotted Andy. He was slouched into a broken-down overstuffed chair facing the television. He was wearing a white dress shirt buttoned to the neck and black socks and black shoes, and that was it. No pants. He looked like a bag of bones with skin cancer. He was milk-white skin and red splotches everywhere. And I mean everywhere. There was a lot of nose and a lot of ears, and gonads hanging low between his knobby knees.

  “Come on in,” he said, gesturing with big boney hands. “What can I do you for?”

  “I knew it,” Lula said. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. This here’s gonna haunt me forever. This is what I got to look forward to after a hundred years of marriage. This here’s what happens to outdoor plumbing when a man gets old. I don’t know if I can go through with the wedding.”

  “Age don’t got nothing to do with it,” Bernie said. “He’s always looked like that.”

  “You’re not wearing any pants,” I said to Andy Gimp.

  “Don’t like them. Never wear them.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, “but you didn’t show up for your court appearance.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “I had it marked on my calendar,” Andy said. “Bernie, where’s the calendar?”

  “Lost it,” Bernie said.

  “They say I didn’t show up for my court appearance.”

  Bernie shrugged. “So what? They’ll give you another one.”

  Andy was on his feet, looking for the calendar. He walked body bent, arms akimbo, feet planted wide for balance, his nuts practically dragging on the floor.

  “I know it’s here somewhere,” he said, shuffling through magazines on the coffee table, rifling through a pile of newspapers on the floor.

  “I’m
feelin’ faint,” Lula said. “If he bends over one more time, I’m gonna pass out. I can’t stop lookin’. It’s a train wreck. It’s like the end of the universe. You know, when you get sucked into that thing. What do you call it?”

  “Black hole?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. It’s like staring into the black hole.”

  Andy was distracted by the calendar hunt, so I gave my business card to Bernie and introduced myself.

  “Lula and I need to take Andy to the courthouse so he can reinstate his bail bond,” I told Bernie. “Can you get him to put some pants on?”

  “He don’t own none,” Bernie said. “And I’m not loaning him any of mine. You don’t know where he’s been sitting.”

  “Hell, I’ll buy him some pants if he’ll stop bending over,” Lula said.

  “Won’t do no good,” Bernie said. “He won’t wear them. He made up his mind.”

  Since I’ve had this job, I’ve hauled in a naked, greased-up fat guy, a half-naked homie, and a naked old pervert, and I’ve worked with a little naked guy who thought he was a leprechaun. A geriatric nudist wasn’t going to slow me down.

  “Get a jacket,” I said to Andy. “We’re going downtown.”

  “I’m not wearing pants,” he said.

  “Not my problem.”

  I walked him out of the house and settled him onto a newspaper on my backseat.

  “The desk sergeant is gonna love this,” Lula said.

  AN HOUR LATER, Andy was in line at the courthouse, waiting to see the judge, and Lula and I were back on Hamilton Avenue, coming up to Tasty Pastry.

  “Pull over!” Lula said. “I want to go into the bakery. I gotta look at wedding cakes, and I wouldn’t mind getting an éclair to settle my stomach. I think I got wedding jitters.”

  I thought that was a great idea. I didn’t have wedding jitters, but I had guy-in-basement jitters, and Loretta jitters, and Joe Morelli fatherhood jitters. I might need three éclairs.

  I parked the Sentra, and Lula and I marched into the bakery. Betty Kuharchek was behind the counter, setting out a cookie display. Betty is an apple dumpling woman who has worked at Tasty Pastry forever. If you pass her on the street, there’s the lingering scent of powdered sugar icing.