Finger Lickin' Fifteen

by Unknown

  Diaz nodded and resumed staring at his collection of monitors. I walked around his desk and looked over his shoulder. He was watching multiple locations in the building. No activity at any of them.

  “I thought for sure one of these would be tuned to the Cartoon Network,” I said.

  No response.

  “What’s this computer?” I asked, referring to the code computer. “Why isn’t there anything on the screen?”

  “I don’t need it right now.”

  “What happens if you have to go to the bathroom?”

  “One of the other men will cover. There’s always an extra man in the control room.”

  I stood there for a while, watching Diaz ignore me.

  “This is a little boring,” I finally said to him.

  “I like it,” Diaz said. “It’s quiet. It lets me think.”

  “What do you think about?”

  “Nothing.”

  I found that easy to believe. I returned to my cubicle and my cell phone buzzed.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” Lula said. “Your granny needed a ride to a viewing at the funeral parlor tonight, so after the fire department hosed the tree down, I took her over here to pay respects to some old coot. Anyways, we were just about to leave and who do you think walked in? Junior Turley, your exhibitionist FTA. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was your granny who spotted him. And she said she almost missed him, bein’ he had all his clothes on. She said usually he’s in her backyard waving his winkie at her when she’s at the kitchen window. And she said she wouldn’t mind seeing his winkie up close to make a positive identification, but I thought we should wait until you got here.”

  “Good call. I’m about fifteen minutes away.”

  I grabbed my purse and took the stairs, deciding they were faster than the elevator. I wanted to capture Turley, but even more I didn’t want Grandma trying to make a citizen’s arrest based on identification of Turley’s winkie. I rolled out of the garage and called Ranger.

  “Lula has one of my skips cornered,” I told him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

  SEVEN

  THE FUNERAL PARLOR is part renovated Victorian and part brick bunker. I found on-street parking and jogged to the front porch. Hours were almost over, but there were still a lot of mourners milling around. A group of men stood to one side on the wraparound porch. They were smoking and laughing, smelling faintly of whiskey. The funeral parlor had several viewing rooms. Two were presently occupied. Knowing Grandma, she probably visited both. Viewings were at the core of Grandma’s social scene. On a slow week, Grandma would go to the viewing of a perfect stranger if nothing better popped up.

  I found Grandma and Lula to the back of Slumber Room #3.

  “He’s up there at the casket,” Lula said. “He looks like he knows the stiff’s ol’ lady.”

  “They’re relations,” Grandma said. “Nothin’ anyone would want to admit to. That whole family is odd. I went to school with Mary Jane Dugan, the wife of the deceased. She was Mary Jane Turley then. Up until fourth grade, she quacked like a duck. Never said a blessed word in school. Just quacked. And then one day she fell off the top of the sliding board in the park and hit her head and she started talking. Never quacked again. Not to this day. Junior’s father, Harry, was Mary Jane’s brother. He electrocuted himself trying to pry a broken plug out of a wall socket with a screwdriver. I remember when it happened. He blew out one of them transformer things, and four houses on that block didn’t have electric for two days. I didn’t see Harry after the accident, but Lorraine Shatz said she heard they had to put him in the meat locker to get him to stop smokin’.”

  “Stay here,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to make my way up to the casket. You grab Junior if he bolts and tries to leave by this door.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Lula said. “Nobody’s gonna get past me. I’m on the job. He come this way, and I’ll shoot him.”

  “No! No shooting. Just grab him and sit on him.”

  “I guess I could do that, but shooting seems like the right thing to do.”

  “Shooting is the wrong thing to do. He’s an exhibitionist, not a murderer. He’s probably not even armed.”

  Grandma helped herself to a cookie set out on a tray by the door. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw him naked.”

  I eased my way along the wall, inching past knots of people who were more interested in socializing than in grieving. Not that this was a bad thing. Death in the Burg was like pot roast at six o’clock. An unavoidable and perfectly normal part of the fabric of life. You got born, you ate pot roast, and you died.

  I came up behind Turley and snapped a cuff on his right wrist. “Bond enforcement,” I whispered in his ear. “Come with me, and we don’t have to make a big scene. We’ll just quietly walk to the door.”

  Turley looked at me, and looked at the cuff on his wrist. “What?”

  “You missed your court date. You need to reschedule.”

  “I’m not going to court. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You flashed Mrs. Zajak.”

  “It’s my thing. Everybody knows I’m the flasher. I’ve been flashing for years.”

  “No kidding. This is the third time I’ve captured you for failing to appear. You should get a new hobby.”

  “It’s not a hobby,” Turley said. “It’s a calling.”

  “Okay, it’s a calling. You still have to reschedule your court date.”

  “You always say that, and then when I get to the courthouse with you, I get locked up in jail. You’re a big fibber. Does your mother know you tell fibs?”

  “Does your mother know you flash old ladies?”

  Turley’s attention switched to the door where Lula and Grandma were standing. “What are the police doing here?” he asked.

  I turned to look, and he jumped away.

  “Hah! Fooled you,” he said. And he scuttled around to the other side of the casket.

  I lunged and missed, bumping into Mary Jane Dugan. “Sorry about your loss,” I said, shoving her aside.

  “What’s going on?” she wanted to know. “Stephanie Plum, is that you?”

  Turley took off for the double doors at the front of the room, and I ran after him. He knocked some lady on her ass, and I tripped over her.

  “Sorry,” I said, scrambling to my feet in time to see Grandma do a flying tackle at Turley.

  Turley wriggled away from Grandma and escaped into the ladies’ room. Two women ran shrieking out, and Grandma, Lula, and I barged in.

  Turley was trapped against the wall between the tampon dispenser and the sanitary hand dryer.

  “You’ll never take me alive,” he said.

  “Do you have a gun?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Are you booby-trapped?”

  “No.”

  “Then how are you going to die?”

  “I don’t know,” Turley said. “I just always wanted to say that.”

  “Could we hurry this up?” Lula said. “I’m missing my Wednesday night television shows.”

  “I’ll make a deal,” Turley said. “I’ll go with you if I can flash everyone on my way out of the ladies’ room.”

  “No way,” I told him.

  “Eeuw,” Lula said. “Ick.”

  Grandma slid her dentures around a little, thinking. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” she said.

  Turley unzipped his pants and reached inside.

  “Hold it right there,” Lula said. “I got a stun gun here, and you pull anything out of your pants, I’ll zap you.”

  Next thing there was a zzzzt from the stun gun and Junior Turley was on the floor with his tool hanging out.

  “Whoa, Nellie,” Lula said, staring down at Junior.

  “Yep,” Grandma said. “He’s got a big one. All them Turleys is hung like horses. Not that I know firsthand, except for Junior. And maybe Junior’s Uncle Runt. I saw him take a leak outside th
e Polish National Hall one time, and it was like he had hold of a fire hose. I tell you, for a little guy, he had a real good-size wanger.”

  “We need to get that thing back in his pants before we drag him out of here,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” Grandma said.

  “I think you done enough,” Lula said. “You’re the one encouraged him to take it out in the first place.”

  They looked over at me.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “Not me. No way, Jose. I’m not touching it.”

  “Maybe we could drag him out facedown,” Lula said. “Then no one would see. All’s we have to do is flip him over.”

  That seemed like an okay plan, so we rolled him over, and I finished cuffing him. Then Lula took a foot, and I took a foot, Grandma got the door, and we hauled him out of the ladies’ room.

  All conversation stopped when we dragged Junior through the lobby. It was like everyone inhaled at precisely the same time and the air all got sucked out of the room. Halfway across the oriental carpet, Junior’s eyes popped open, his body went rigid, and he let out a shriek.

  “Yow!” Junior yelled, flopping around like a fish out of water, wrangling himself over onto his back. He had a huge erection and a bad case of rug burn.

  “I gotta tell you, I’m impressed,” Lula said, checking out Junior’s stiffy. “And I don’t impress easy.”

  “It’s a pip,” Grandma said.

  It was a pip and a half. I was going to have nightmares.

  By now, the funeral director was hovering over Junior, hands clasped to his chest, face red enough to be in stroke range. “Do something,” he pleaded. “Call the police. Call the paramedics. Get him out of here!”

  “No problemo,” I said. “Sorry about the disturbance.”

  Lula and I pulled Junior to his feet and muscled him to the door. We got him outside, onto the porch, and he kicked Lula.

  “Hey,” Lula said, bending over. “That hurts.”

  He gave Lula a shove, she grabbed me by my sweatshirt, and Lula and I went head-over-teakettle down the wide front stairs.

  “Adios,” Junior yelled. And he ran away into the night.

  I was flat on my back on the sidewalk. My jeans had a tear in the knee, my arm was scraped and bleeding, and I was worried my ass was broken. I went to hands and knees and slowly dragged myself up to a semivertical position.

  Lula crawled to her feet after me. “I’m surprised he could run with that monster boner,” she said. “I swear, if it was two inches longer, it’d be draggin’ on the ground.”

  I DROPPED GRANDMA off at my parents’ house, drove to my building, parked, and limped to my apartment. I flipped the light on, locked the door behind me, and said hello to Rex. Rex was working up a sweat running on his wheel, beady black eyes blazing bright. I dropped a couple raisins into his cage and my phone rang.

  “Myra Baronowski’s daughter has a good job in the bank,” my mother said. “And Margaret Beedle’s daughter is an accountant. She works in an office like a normal human being. Why do I have a daughter who drags aroused men through funeral parlors? I had fourteen phone calls before your grandmother even got home.”

  The Burg has a news pipeline that makes CNN look like chump change.

  “I think it must have happened when he got rug burn,” I told my mother. “He didn’t have an erection when I cuffed him in the ladies’ room.”

  “I’m going to have to move to Arizona. I read about this place, Lake Havasu. No one would know me there.”

  I disconnected, and Morelli called me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I heard you dragged a naked guy through the funeral parlor, and then shots were fired, and you fell down the stairs.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My mother. Loretta Manetti called her.”

  “He wasn’t naked, and no shots were fired. He kicked Lula, and Lula took me down the stairs with her.”

  “Just checking,” Morelli said. And he hung up.

  I dropped my clothes on the bathroom floor and washed the blood away in the shower. I pulled on my old flannel pajamas and went to bed. Tomorrow would be a better day, I thought. I’d get a good night’s sleep in my nice soft jammies and wake up to sunshine.

  MY PHONE RANG at 5:20 A.M. I reached for it in the dark and brought it to my ear.

  “Who died?” I asked.

  “No one died,” Ranger said. “I’m coming into your apartment, and I didn’t want you to freak.”

  I heard my front door open and close, and moments later, Ranger was in my bedroom. He flipped the light on and looked down at me.

  “I’d like to crawl in next to you, but there was another break-in tonight. This time it was a commercial account. I want you to take a look at it with me.”

  “Now? Can’t it wait?”

  Ranger grabbed jeans from my closet and tossed them at me. The jeans were followed by a sweatshirt and socks. “I want to go through the building before people arrive for work.”

  “It’s the middle of the night!”

  “Not nearly,” Ranger said. He looked at his watch. “You have thirty seconds to get dressed, or you’re going in your pajamas.”

  “Honestly,” I said, rolling out of bed, scooping my clothes up into my arms. “You are such a jerk.”

  “Twenty seconds.”

  I stomped off into the bathroom and slammed the door closed. I got dressed and was about to brush my hair when the door opened and Ranger pulled me out of the bathroom.

  “Time’s up,” Ranger said.

  “I didn’t even have time to fix my hair!”

  Ranger was dressed in a black Rangeman T-shirt, cargo pants, windbreaker, and ball cap. He took the ball cap off his head and put it on mine.

  “Problem solved,” he said, taking my hand, towing me out of my apartment.

  THE BUILDING THAT had gotten hit was just four blocks from my apartment. Police cars and Rangeman cars were angled into the curb, lights flashing, and lights were on inside the building. Ranger ushered me into the lobby and one of his men brought me a cup of coffee.

  “This building is owned by a local insurance company,” Ranger said. As you can see, the first floor is mostly lobby, with a front desk and satellite glass-fronted offices. Executive offices, a boardroom, a small employee kitchenette, and a storeroom are on the second floor. It’s not a high-security account. They have an alarm system. No cameras. For the most part, there’s nothing of value in this building. The computers are antiquated. There are no cash transactions. The only thing of value was a small collection of Fabergé eggs in the company president’s office. And that’s what was taken.”

  “Was the routine the same?”

  “The thief entered through a back door that had a numerical code lock. He deactivated the alarm, went directly to the second-floor office, took the eggs, reset the alarm, and left. The alarm was off for fifteen minutes.”

  “He had to be moving to get all that done in fifteen minutes.”

  “I had one of my men run through it. It’s possible.”

  “Was the president’s office locked?”

  “The office door was locked, but it wasn’t a complicated lock, and the thief was able to open it. He didn’t bother to close the door or relock it when he left.”

  “How much were the eggs worth?”

  “There were three eggs. One was especially valuable. Collectively, he probably lost a quarter of a million.”

  “Is this guy going to have a hard time fencing the eggs?”

  “I imagine they’ll go out of country.”

  I looked around. There was one uniform left in the building and one plainclothes guy from Trenton P.D. I didn’t know either of them. Ranger had four men on site. Two were at the front door, and two were at the elevator.

  “How was this discovered?” I asked Ranger. “Is there a night watchman or something?”

  “The company president likes to get an early start. He’s here at five every morning.”

  Morelli w
as awake at five. Ranger was awake at five. And now here was another moron at work at five. As far as I was concerned, five was the middle of the night.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked Ranger.

  “Look around.”

  I went to the back door and looked outside. From what I could see, there was an alley, a small blacktop parking lot with six designated spaces. No light. There should be a light. I stepped outside and looked up at the building. The light had been smashed. There were some glass shards on the ground under the light.

  I went back inside and looked for the alarm pad. On the wall to my right. Exactly where I would have put it. I walked to the stairs, imagining the thief doing this in the dark. Probably had a penlight and knew exactly where he was going. And he was in a hurry, so he would take the stairs rather than the elevator.

  I prowled through the second floor, peeking into offices, the kitchen, the storeroom. It all looked pretty normal. The president’s office was nice but not extravagant. Corner office with windows. Executive desk and fancy leather chair. Couple smaller chairs in front of the desk. Built-in bookcase behind the desk with an empty shelf. I guessed that was where the eggs used to be.

  I sat in the fancy leather chair and swiveled a little, checking out the pictures on the desk. Balding, overweight guy with a cheesy mustache, posing with a preppy dark-haired woman and two little boys. The corporate family photo display placed next to the corporate pen-and-pencil set that some decorator probably requisitioned and the guy never used. Matching leather blotter. And alongside the desk was the matching corporate wastebasket. A single Snickers wrapper was in the wastebasket.

  I called Ranger on my cell phone. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Downstairs with Gene Boran, the president of the company.”

  “How did the thief know about the eggs?”

  “The Trenton paper ran a feature on them two weeks ago.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Anything else?” Ranger asked.

  “It looks like the cleaning crew came through here last night.”

  “They left at eleven-thirty.”

  “There’s a Snickers wrapper in the wastebasket.”