Sizzling Sixteen

by Janet Evanovich

  Okay, here’s the thing. I actually hated the toilet paper in the Turnpike restrooms, so I understood the protest. Problem was, the only thing worse than the wax paper toilet paper was no toilet paper at all.

  An older woman bustled in. “I’m his mother. What’s this?” she said, taking in the handcuffs.

  “It’s about the toilet paper,” someone said.

  “Oh, for goodness sakes,” Mrs. Pickeral said. “It was toilet paper. And it wasn’t even any good.”

  “Besides, it’s his life’s work,” a woman said. “He’s a crusader. He’s like Robin Hood.”

  “Yeah,” everyone murmured. “Robin Hood.”

  “He still has to keep his court date,” I told them.

  “There’s no court tonight,” Mrs. Pickeral said. “And I need him to give me a ride home. I’ll make sure he goes tomorrow morning.”

  I heard this a lot. No one ever showed up in the morning.

  “Look at him,” Mrs. Pickeral said. “Does he look like a criminal?”

  My nose was running and my eyes were feeling puffy from the flowers. And I was caring less and less about Lenny Pickeral and his stupid toilet paper crime spree.

  “Fine,” I said, unlocking the cuffs. “I’m letting him go, but I’m holding all of you responsible. If Lenny doesn’t show up at court tomorrow morning to get rebonded, you’ll all be accessories to a crime.”

  That was a crock of doodie, but I felt like I had to say something. And it was at that instant that God rewarded me for showing compassion and letting Lenny walk. Or maybe it was the bottle that was back in my bag that brought me luck. I turned from Lenny, and from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a head sticking up above the mourning masses. It was Butch Goodey. Lenny’s capture fee would have bought me a meatball sub. Goodey’s capture fee would pay my rent and then some.

  Goodey was up by the casket, paying condolences to the family. I hugged the wall, coming at him from the rear. I had no clue how to take him down. I didn’t have a stun gun or pepper spray. I wasn’t about to shoot him. Even if I could get the cuffs on him, I didn’t think I could stop him from fleeing. I stood to one side and waited for him to move from the casket area.

  “Yo,” I said, stepping in front of him. “How’s it going?”

  His expression was blank for a moment while he connected the dots, and then recognition slammed into him.

  “You again!” he said, wheeling around, looking for an exit, fixing on the door to the lobby.

  “Wait!” I said, grabbing the back of his jacket. “We need to talk. We can deal.”

  “I’m not going to jail,” he said. And he took off for the door. I still had my fingers wrapped into his jacket, and I held tight, trying to slow him down with my weight, not having any luck with it. He was knocking people over, pushing them aside, muscling his way to the lobby.

  Grandma was just inside the open double doors, standing beside the cookie station. “Hey!” she said to Butch. “What the heck’s going on with you and my granddaughter?”

  “Get outta my way,” Butch said.

  “That’s no way to talk to a old lady,” Grandma said, and she whacked Butch in the shins with her crutch.

  “Ow!” Butch said, stopping just long enough for me to bash him in the gonads with my purse. Butch sucked air, went down to his knees, and doubled over.

  I rushed at him with FlexiCuffs and bound his ankles. Twice.

  “Boy,” Grandma said. “You pack a wallop with that purse. What have you got in it?”

  “Uncle Pip’s lucky bottle.”

  Now I had Butch rolling around on the floor of the funeral parlor. I sort of had him captured, but I had no way to get him into my car. I couldn’t drag him, and he couldn’t walk with his ankles bound. If I cuffed his hands and released the shackles on his ankles, he’d run away.

  “I need help getting him to my car,” I said to the crowd of people clustered around us.

  Everyone shuffled their feet. No one volunteered.

  “For goodness sakes,” I said. “This man is a felon.”

  The funeral director, Milton Shreebush, rushed over. “Holy cats,” he said, looking down at Butch.

  “He’s FTA,” Grandma said. “My granddaughter just made a bond enforcement maneuver.”

  “I see that,” Milton said. “But he can’t stay on the floor like this.”

  “Then help me drag him to my car,” I told him.

  Milton reached for Butch, and Butch growled and grabbed him. Milton slapped at Butch, and they rolled around, locked together.

  “Help!” Milton yelled. “Get the police. Somebody do something!”

  I stepped in and hit Butch in the head with my purse. Butch shook his head, stunned, and Milton scrambled away.

  “That didn’t work so good,” Grandma said.

  Butch was crabbing around, waving his arms, trying to grab people, and everyone was keeping their distance. I figured my choices were hit him with the bottle and knock him out, call the police, call Rangeman, or let him go. I decided to go with Rangeman.

  It took Rangeman five minutes to respond to my call for help. Two big guys wearing Rangeman black uniforms and full utility belts calmly walked up to Butch and looked at him. Butch was still on the floor, sweating and snarling and spitting and making threatening grabbing motions.

  One of the men gave Butch a bunch of volts with a stun gun. The Rangeman guy didn’t move fast enough, and Butch grabbed the gun and threw it across the room.

  “Hunh,” the Rangeman guy said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Been there, done that.”

  “Are you sure he’s human?”

  “Maybe you could hook a chain to the FlexiCuffs on his ankles and drag him behind your car,” I said.

  “We tried that once, and Ranger didn’t like it,” the guy said. “You do something twice that Ranger doesn’t like, and you’re out of a job and damaged.”

  “We need to clear the area,” the other guy said. “Get rid of the audience.”

  Most of the gawkers had gotten bored and moved on, and I was able to persuade the few remaining to think about refreshments. I was guiding them to the cookie table, and I heard a sound like a baseball bat hitting a sack of sand. Thwack! I turned and saw that Butch was sleeping.

  “Is he okay?” I asked them.

  “Yeah,” the Rangeman guy said. “He’ll be fine. He just had to calm down. Would you like us to deliver him to the police station for you?”

  “Yes. That would be great,” I said.

  They cuffed Butch’s massive hands behind his back and dragged him away.

  “They seem like nice young men,” Grandma said.

  I TOOK GRANDMA home and called Ranger.

  “Have you got a minute?” I asked him.

  “As many as you need.”

  I drove to the center of the city, turned onto Ranger’s street, and parked in the Rangeman garage. I took the elevator to the seventh floor and pressed the intercom button next to Ranger’s door. I could have just gone in. I had a key, but I thought that might send the wrong message.

  Ranger opened his door and looked me over. “Pretty.”

  “Thank you. I was at a viewing.”

  “I heard.”

  He was still dressed from work. Black T-shirt, black cargo pants, black running shoes. Five o’clock shadow. His apartment was always cool and pristine. Subdued lighting in the hall. Fresh flowers on the narrow hall table. All the work of his housekeeper. I followed him to the kitchen, and he poured me a glass of red wine. His kitchen was small but state-of-the-art. Stainless steel and black granite.

  “What are the minutes about?” he asked. “Is this visit personal or business?”

  “Business.” I sipped the wine. “Nice,” I said.

  Morelli would have offered me a beer. Ranger always offered me wine I couldn’t afford to buy. Ranger knew the value of temptation and bribery.

  Ranger leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m guess
ing this is about Vinnie.”

  “We managed to raise the money to buy back his debt, and we were all at the office and the president of Wellington called and said he wanted to talk to Vinnie.”

  “This was today?”

  “Yes. This afternoon. So Vinnie and I went to Wellington. The offices are in the Meagan Building. And the offices were empty. The president, Roger Drager, was there, and a couple guys in suits playing online solitaire, and a kid working a giant paper shredder. Drager said the company was on flex hours, but the cubicles and offices didn’t look used to me. No clutter, nothing in wastebaskets. And Drager was nervous. His hands were sweaty.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Money. He knew about the phony bonds, and he wanted his money back.”

  “He didn’t shut Vinnie down? Didn’t go to the police?”

  “No. Vinnie said the setup looked fishy. Like it was a shell company. He was worried he was scamming someone who was an even bigger scammer.”

  “That’s not good,” Ranger said.

  “It gets worse. We got back to the office and three goons came in and tried to snatch Vinnie at gunpoint. One of them shot Lula, but it just knicked her, and then Connie shot one of them in the knee and they left.”

  Ranger smiled. “Connie’s probably been shooting men in the knee since she was twelve.”

  “So what do you think about Wellington?”

  “I think I wouldn’t want to work for them.”

  “Should I go to Morelli?”

  “Only if you want second best,” Ranger said.

  “I’m talking about police action.”

  Ranger took my wine from me, tasted it, and set it on the counter. “Let’s look in on Wellington.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  I followed him through his living room into his bedroom.

  “The building will be empty,” Ranger said, moving into his dressing room. “The cleaning crew should be gone by now.”

  “What about the alarm?”

  “Rangeman installed the security system in the Meagan Building.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  RANGER’S BEDROOM WAS masculine luxury. Dark woods, ivory walls, tans and browns, king-size bed with expensive Italian linens. There was a large bath en suite and a walk-in dressing room as big as my bedroom. He opened a drawer in the built-in dresser, removed a utility belt, and buckled it on. He selected a gun from another drawer. Handcuffs, stun gun, defense spray. He handed me a penlight and took one for himself. He shrugged into a windbreaker with the Rangeman logo clearly visible. He selected a second Rangeman jacket and handed it to me. “Swap your sweater out for this. If someone sees us, I can say we’re doing a security check.”

  We rode the elevator to the garage, where Ranger chose a fleet SUV. The Meagan Building was only blocks away. Easy to find on-street parking at this time of the night. We parked directly in front of the door. Ranger used his fob to enter the building and to diffuse the alarm. No need for the penlight. The lobby was dimly lit, as were the halls and elevator.

  “Fifth floor,” I told Ranger.

  We entered the elevator, he pushed the button, and he looked over at me. “You’re very calm,” he said.

  “It’s easy to be calm when I’m with you. I feel protected.”

  “I try,” Ranger said. “You don’t always cooperate.”

  The doors opened, and we walked the hall to Wellington’s door. Ranger fobbed it open, we stepped inside and closed the door behind us. The interior room was pitch-black. No path lighting. The outside offices showed ambient light but not enough to guide me. Ranger clicked his penlight on.

  “Let’s try to use just the one light,” he said. “Hang on to me if you can’t see.”

  I curled my hand into the back of his cargo pants just above his gun belt. “I’m good to go.”

  He was still for a beat. “You could have held on to my jacket,” he said.

  “Would you rather I do that?”

  “No. Not even a little.”

  He flicked the light over the cubicles and into the offices. He stopped and opened a file cabinet. Empty.

  “You were right,” he said. “None of this is being used. Where’s Drager’s office?”

  “There’s a hall at the end of this room. His office is at the end of the hall.”

  Ranger flicked the light at the shredder room door. “What’s in here?”

  “Paper shredder.”

  “And this one?”

  “It’s an office. Drager said he had a meeting. He went into this office, and we let ourselves out.”

  Ranger opened the door and flashed the light around. It was a boardroom. Large oval table. Chairs pulled up to the table. Unoccupied at the moment.

  We continued down the hall to Drager’s office. The door was ajar, and Ranger stopped before entering. He knew what he was going to find inside. I did, too. We could smell it. Decomposing body. It doesn’t take long after death. The body evacuates. Blood pools. The smell is unmistakable.

  “Wait here,” Ranger said.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “I can deal.”

  Drager was on the floor by his desk. Probably fell out of his chair. Bullet to the back of his head. Execution-style. Like Kulik and Dunne. Ranger pulled on disposable gloves and methodically went through the file cabinets.

  “I’m not finding anything here,” he said. “This office has been stripped.” He moved to the credenza. “Uh-oh,” he said when he opened the top drawer.

  “What uh-oh? I hate uh-oh.”

  “Leave the room.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Explosives,” Ranger said. “On a timer and a trip wire. If I’d opened the drawer another half inch, your hamster would be an orphan.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Seven minutes.”

  “Shit!”

  I turned and tripped over Drager’s briefcase.

  “Take it,” Ranger said, grabbing my hand, yanking me forward into the hall.

  We ran flat out down the hall and through the room with the cubicles. We burst out the door and ran to the elevator. Ranger had it on hold. It was still at our floor. We jumped into the elevator, and Ranger hit the button for the ground floor.

  “How much time do we have?” I asked him.

  “Four minutes,” he said. “Plenty of time.”

  We exited the elevator into the lobby, crossed the lobby, and left the building. Ranger reset the alarm with the fob, and we got into the SUV.

  “Two minutes,” Ranger said, pulling away from the curb.

  The fifth-floor windows blew out when we reached the corner. Ranger hooked a U-turn and parked so we could watch the building. There was a second explosion, the alarm was wailing away, and fire spilled out the open windows.

  Ranger called his control room. “Tell all responders to the Meagan Building alarm to secure the exterior of the building. Under no circumstances are they to go inside until the fire marshall declares the building safe.”

  Two Rangeman SUVs arrived and parked half a block from the burning building. A police car was simultaneously on the scene. Ranger made another U-turn and drove back to Rangeman. He parked in the garage and looked over at me.

  “You can really haul ass in those heels,” he said. “The memory will give me sleepless nights for a long time.”

  That got a smile out of me. “Sorry to interfere with your sleep.”

  “There’s a solution to the problem,” Ranger said, getting out of the car. “You can finish your wine upstairs, and we can discuss it.” He opened the passenger-side door, took the briefcase from me, and grinned. “Babe, you have panic written all over your face.”

  “You’re a dilemma.”

  He ushered me into the elevator. “Good to know.”

  We rode in silence to Ranger’s floor, he opened his door, and I went to the kitchen and retrieved my wine.

  “I would have liked more time at Wellington,” Ranger said.

 
He dropped his jacket and gun belt onto the kitchen counter, poured a glass of wine for himself, and refreshed mine.

  “They were shredding bags of papers when I was there with Vinnie. Probably, there wasn’t anything left to see.”

  Ranger took his wine into the dining room and dumped the contents of Drager’s briefcase onto the table.

  “Bank statements,” Ranger said. “And a list of businesses owned by the firm.” He leafed through the bank statements. “Looks like a pattern of outgoing wire transfers to a New Jersey LLC called GBZakhar, and someone has checked them off on the latest statement.”

  He took the statement to the combination office and den attached to his bedroom and typed Zakhar into his computer.

  “GBZakhar doesn’t have a Web site,” he said. “Let’s go to the Jersey state business gateway site.”

  Ranger worked his way through the site and finally came to a guide for requesting public record information. He gave a credit card number, and information on GBZakhar was displayed on the screen.

  “This is interesting,” Ranger said. “Do you recognize the name of the registered agent?”

  “Walter Dunne. One of the Wellington lawyers found executed behind the diner.”

  “GBZakhar gives a Newark P.O. box as its address. And they list four company officers. Herpes Zoster, Mickey Mouskovitch, Rainbow Trout, and Gregor Bluttovich. I expect the first three names are fake. That leaves Gregor Bluttovich,” Ranger said.

  “Blutto! Gritch said he heard Sunflower talk about Blutto. Gritch didn’t know if it was a first name, last name, or nickname.”

  I was leaning over the back of Ranger’s chair, reading off the computer screen, trying hard not to kiss his neck. It would be absolutely the wrong thing to do, but it was so tempting. He always smelled great, like his Bulgari Green shower gel. How it stayed with him all day was a mystery. His black T-shirt spanned his biceps. He wore a watch as his only jewelry. His back looked athletic under his shirt. I thought it would look even better without the shirt. All I had to do was touch my lips to his neck, and the shirt would be gone.

  “Babe,” Ranger said, “if you don’t back up a couple inches, we’re going to be finding out about Bluttovich in the morning.”

  I didn’t move. I was contemplating.