He put his hands on her shoulders. Big hands. Strong. “I get that.”
“It’s your fault, you know.” She gave up hugging herself and hugged him instead. “You should’ve picked somebody better.”
“Well, when I find her”—he kissed her mouth—“you’ll get the old heave-ho.”
“I don’t mind the heave. Not so sure I like the ho.”
He pulled her closer. “Suddenly I’m not as sleepy as I was.”
“Yeah, but I’m still just as busy.” She gently pulled away. “Sorry, Officer.”
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“Oh, yuck. You’re really gonna be a pain in the ass about this, aren’t you?”
“Count on it,” Brad said as she went out the door.
17
Bonnie disarmed the security system at her duplex and went straight to the bedroom. In the closet she pried up a loose floorboard, exposing the floor trap where she kept her goodies. For tonight’s action she needed an untraceable, disposable gun, but not the little .22 she’d taken from her Jeep. She wanted something with more of an intimidation factor. There was plenty of stuff to choose from.
In the oversized gym bag under the floor she currently stored handguns in the .25, 9mm, and 45mm calibers, along with a sawed-off shotgun, a two-shot derringer loaded with expandable dumdum bullets, and a rifle that had been illegally modified to fire on full automatic. In other words, a machine gun. There was also a variety of silencers and magazines, a combat knife, a switchblade or two, and a couple of stun guns.
Pretty much all of it was illegal, and New Jersey was serious about its weapons laws. She could get at least ten years for any of the firearms, and five years for any of the other items. It was almost like they didn’t want a girl to have any fun.
She selected the Ruger 45mm as most suitable for tonight’s little adventure. Like all the guns in the gym bag, it had been purchased from Mama Blessing, which made it untraceable. She chose a silencer to go with it, but left it unattached for now. She wouldn’t need the silencer for Clarissa. But it might come in handy later.
Now she faced the problem of what to do with her arsenal. Brad had said Maguire was trying to score a search warrant. Suddenly she wasn’t so comfortable having a mass of incriminating evidence in her house, even if it was artfully concealed. Luckily, there was another option, and his name was Felix Ramirez. She found his name in Sammy’s list of contacts.
“Yo, Felix. You know that favor you owe me? I’m cashing it in ahead of schedule. Can you meet me at my address in, say, twenty? Thanks.”
She spent the time hauling the gym bag up into the light and adding some items from her purse. One was the .22 and silencer, and another was the .45 formerly taped to the kneehole of her desk, which she’d grabbed from her office on her way home.
Also zipped into the bag was the three grand in cash Gura had paid her. Thirty bills, each bearing a picture of a bewhiskered guy named McKinley. Bonnie had only the vaguest idea who he was. A president from the nineteenth century, she guessed. Or the eighteenth? Seventeenth? History wasn’t her strong suit.
At four o’clock the familiar Grand Caravan pulled up outside her front door. She lugged the gym bag out of the house and shoved it into the minivan’s backseat, then joined Felix up front.
“Where to, bandida?” he asked.
“Your place.”
He lifted an eyebrow but didn’t argue.
Felix lived in an apartment above a paranormal bookstore in McKendree Park—one of the better neighborhoods, where gay shopkeepers and the people who used to be called yuppies were moving in and raising property values. She’d never been inside his place before today.
Without a word, she toted the gym bag up a long flight of stairs and waited while he unlocked his door. His home was surprisingly clean for a bachelor pad, and decorated in excellent taste, with none of the tacked-up centerfolds favored by Alonzo Duchenne.
“You got a closet you don’t use too much?” she asked.
“Not really. Very little storage space here. If you need a place to stow that bag, I think under the kitchen sink would work.”
She removed cans of Ajax and Comet and spray bottles of Formula 409, then pushed the duffel up against the back wall. When she replaced the cleaning supplies, the dark bag was hardly visible at a glance.
“It shouldn’t be here long,” she said.
“No problema.”
“I notice you haven’t asked what’s in it.”
“No. I have not.”
She nodded. She wasn’t worried about Felix. Yeah, there was a lot of expensive gear in that bag, not to mention three grand in cash. But it wasn’t going anywhere. She was good at reading people, and she knew Felix wasn’t going to mess with her. Besides, Felix had at least an inkling of what she did on the side, and he was smart enough not to piss her off.
He drove her back to her house, covering the silence with some golden oldies on the car radio. Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra. This guy was just full of surprises.
“This squares us,” she said when they pulled up to her door.
“Fair enough.”
“You don’t talk a lot, do you?”
“No.”
“That’s good, Felix. That’s a real good quality to have.” She got out of the cab. “See ya.”
He tipped her a wave and drove off. She figured she was safe as far as the search warrant was concerned. It was one less thing to worry about.
Back inside, she thought about taking another shower, took a whiff of her pits, and decided she didn’t need one. She changed into a dark ensemble, wet work clothes that would blend with the night. A blouse without any funny sayings, and a pair of jeans. New hat, too—a knit beret, navy blue to match her outfit. There was never a wrong time to be stylish.
After that, she reviewed her plans. And waited. She hated waiting. The worst things in life always involved waiting. If there was a hell, it must consist of an eternity on line at the DMV, or maybe at a doctor’s office full of coughing rug rats.
Eventually she decided she was too restless to hang around. And the stuff Brad had said to her had put her in the mood to pay someone a visit.
Before leaving, she looked inside her purse to reassure herself that the Ruger was there. And one other item—Gil Krauss’s wristwatch. She expected to have a use for that watch, if things went as planned.
Locking up, she saw Mrs. Biggs outside her half of the duplex, rearranging the plastic flowers in her window box. Mrs. Biggs was approximately a million years old, and her wardrobe consisted entirely of ladybug-themed apparel. Tonight’s little number, as Bonnie could see in the slanting light of late afternoon, was a ladybug sweater.
“Hello, Bonnie. Going to a party?”
“A private party,” Bonnie said with a smile.
“Well, you’re only young once.”
Sometimes not even that often, Bonnie thought. She said good-bye to Mrs. Biggs, and her neighbor wished her a fun Saturday night.
Unlikely. There were a lot of possible adjectives for the evening ahead, but fun wasn’t on the list.
18
Pilgrim Grove had begun life as a Methodist camp meeting ground sometime back around the Civil War. “God’s Thousand Acres,” they called it—a thousand acres of scrub pine along a wind-blasted beach. The pines had been cleared away and tents had gone up, along with an auditorium where preachers waxed eloquent on the theme of an angry God.
The auditorium was still there, and so were some of the tents, upgraded over the generations into semipermanent cottages. But these days the auditorium was used mainly as an entertainment venue—Lionel Richie had jammed there last month—and the rows of Victorian gingerbread hotels dating from the turn of the century had been repurposed as apartment buildings and rest homes.
One of the rest homes was Green Arbor, where Bonnie presently sat on the glassed-in porch, rocking slowly in a wicker chair, side by side with Frank Kershaw.
She’d bro
ught a Jersey Mike’s sub for them to share. They ate it on paper napkins unfolded on their laps, and washed it down with peach Snapple. Bonnie had given up soda after deciding it had the same basic properties as battery acid. It was no great sacrifice, except for the loss of her favorite cocktail, Jack ’n’ Coke.
“So,” Frank said, leaning back in his own rocker, “how are things?”
“Shitty.”
She never had to sugarcoat it for Frank. She gave him a quick recap of the accumulating catastrophes in her life. On the darkening sidewalk a bearded guy in oversized camos was checking every parking meter for loose change while arguing vigorously with himself.
“You should get out of it,” Frank said when Bonnie was through.
“Hey, I’m working on it. It’s tricky.”
“I’m not talking about this particular situation, kiddo. I mean you should get out of this life.”
She fished a stray piece of gabagoul out of the sub’s oily wrapping. “It’s not a bad life.”
“Yes, it is. You’re always looking over your shoulder. Can’t trust anybody. Can’t confide in your closest friend—not even the guy you’re sleeping with. Am I wrong?”
“No. You’re not wrong.”
She reached reflexively for a cigarette before remembering that there was no smoking at Green Arbor.
She couldn’t argue with Frank. He knew her too well. He’d first met her in her wild child days, when she was living on the street. Back then, she was like a feral animal, a stray who’d tasted blood. She might have stayed that way, stealing food from convenience stores, bumming smokes off strangers at bus stops, friendless, mistrustful, angry, afraid.
But all that changed on a rainy night in April when she was sixteen. She was huddled in an alley behind a hardware store when the back door opened. It was Frank’s store, and he was putting out the garbage. He found her there, and for some inexplicable reason he took her in. At first she thought he wanted a quickie, and though she didn’t normally do that kind of thing, she was just desperate enough to say yes. But he didn’t have any funny business in mind. He gave her a room in the back of his hardware store and let her stay there rent free, no strings attached.
At first it was only temporary. A few days of decent food and a roof over her head, and then he would kick her loose. Just till the weather cleared up, he said.
He was a widower, sole proprietor of the hardware store, and he ran a credit clinic on the side. For $1500 he could supply anybody with a new identity—driver’s license, Social Security number, passports, employment records, other stuff. He was discreet and smart, and he never got caught. And he knew how it was for a runaway living outside the law.
Even so, she’d never doubted that he meant to put her back on the street. But one day, over lunch, she opened up a little. She told him her story. Not every detail, only the gist—how her folks had been murdered in a cheap motel in Pennsylvania, and how she’d gone on the run and finally tracked the killers to a farmhouse in Buckington, Ohio, where she’d taken her revenge. At the age of fourteen she’d killed three men, and it hadn’t even been that hard.
She didn’t expect her little tale of woe to matter much. Somehow it did. There was no outward change in Frank’s demeanor. He didn’t get all warm and fuzzy. He wasn’t that sort of guy. But he stopped talking about sending her packing. Basically he adopted her, though not in any official way.
She lived with Frank for more than a year before moving on. Even after she left, she stayed in touch, returning to visit when she could. When she set herself up as a PI, it was Frank who put up the money for her surety bond. She didn’t ask him. He just did it.
Truth was, without Frank to forge her papers and pay her way, she never could have gotten her business off the ground. Hell, without him, she might still be on the street—probably hooking by now, or pulling smash-and-grab jobs. Or she’d be in jail, or dead; the two alternatives were roughly equivalent in her mind. Frank had saved her from that fate.
And all because her story must have touched him. Which was weird, because he’d always struck her as the kind of hard-bitten bastard who could never be touched by anything. But you never knew about people.
After she moved to Jersey, she tried to maintain contact. She made calls, sent postcards. Two years ago she phoned his store, and some woman said Frank had retired, selling her the business. The woman wouldn’t say where Frank had gone.
So he’d moved and hadn’t even let her know. Bonnie’s feelings were a little hurt about that. But he’d always been standoffish around her, while at the same time doing his best to look out for her. Anyway, she wouldn’t let him disappear from her life that easily.
She drove to Philly and paid the woman a hundred bucks for Frank’s new address, which turned out to be Green Arbor. She never told Frank any of this. She just showed up one day with a potted plant as a gift and started chatting, as if was only natural that she would know where to find him. Since then she’d visited irregularly. She never called ahead. He was always there.
He wasn’t a father figure or anything. But he was the only one she could talk to without disguising any part of who she was. And though she’d never spelled it out for him, he had to have a pretty good idea of what she did for a living. He wasn’t shocked. He’d been around.
“It’s no way to live,” Frank was saying. “It does things to you. Gets you all twisted up inside. It can change you in bad ways. I’ve seen it happen. A guy breaks the rules—pushes it a little further—then a little more—and before long he’s doing things he never thought himself capable of. He’s crossed the line, and he never even noticed.”
Crossed the line, Bonnie thought. Like she’d come close to doing at the library. Like what she still might have to do, if Joy went wobbly on her.
“Okay,” she said.
“After that, there’s no way out. You end up alone, and then you end up dead.”
“We all end up dead.”
“Some sooner than others.” He tore off a bite of the sub like a mastiff working a bone. “You’re young. You’re smart. You can get out, start over. Live a different kind of life. No more of this horseplay.”
Horseplay—he was probably the only person who’d call it that. “I know what you’re saying. But I think I can make it work.”
“You can’t.”
“I already am. I’m not alone. I’ve got a guy. A really good guy. I’m in a better place than I used to be.”
“Does he know the truth about you?”
“Nope. And he never has to find out. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“So you think you can have it all?” Frank shook his head. “Won’t happen.”
“Well, aren’t you a gloomy Gus.”
“Just being realistic, kiddo. The path you’re on is a lonely one. Take my word for it.”
She wondered just how much he was revealing of himself. She knew nothing about his past, or what had brought him to Philly as a small business owner and part-time scratch man. She’d never had nerve enough to ask.
They sat for a while without speaking. Evening was coming on. Gulls wheeled against the last traces of the sunset. Only a handful of other people were on the porch, none within earshot. Two gray-haired women were playing cards. A man in a wheelchair sat alone, sipping lemonade through a straw.
A civilized atmosphere. If you ignored the cars lining the curb and the pulse of an electronic beat from across the street, it could be a hundred years ago. A simpler time, or so everybody said. Bonnie was skeptical. Life always seemed simple when you’d didn’t have to actually live it.
In her purse, Sammy started singing his favorite Beatles tune. She knew who it was.
“I need to take this,” she told Frank as she got up. She moved to a far corner of the porch and answered.
Gura didn’t waste time with greetings. “Here are your instructions. I have made arrangements to use a boat at the Miramar marina, a boat that cannot be connected with me. It is the property of someone who owes me,
shall I say, a favor. The boat is where it will happen.”
She kept her voice low. “And where the hell are you?”
“On my way to Jersey City, where I will visit a bar frequented by members of the law enforcement community. Our friends in blue will provide me with an unbreakable alibi.”
“It’ll be hard for you to explain why you’re up there when you booked a room for your girlfriend here in town.” Even as she said it, she realized the obvious. “Shit. You started the fight with her on purpose. You wanted people to see you arguing with her.”
“Ah, you catch on, poppet. A little slow, but at last you see the light.”
He’d needed a pretext for leaving town. His story would be that he and Clarissa had a falling out, and he left her at the hotel.
“The girl does not know I have gone,” Gura went on, sounding much too pleased with himself. “In thirty minutes I will call her and invite her to a friend’s boat, which I have borrowed for a romantic dinner so that we can make up. You see?”
“What if she’s still pissed and won’t go?”
“She will go. She needs to maintain our relationship. We have already established that it is not an affair of the heart.”
“Fair enough.” She looked for flaws in the plan. “If there are security cameras at the marina—”
“There are none.”
“The parking lot can be pretty deserted in the off-season. When Clarissa doesn’t see your car, she could bail.”
“My car is there. I am using a car belonging to the same individual who is lending me his boat.”
“Jeez, you really got the goods on this guy, huh?” Reluctantly she conceded that he’d thought this thing through. “What boat exactly are we talking about?”
“It is a flybridge cruiser called the Dragon’s Mouth.”
“Not sure I love the sound of that.”
“I did not choose the name,” Gura said imperturbably. “The vessel is moored at the pier identified as C North. You will need a passcode to open the security door to the dock.”
Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3) Page 11