Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3)

by Michael Prescott

  In custody, she might talk, might implicate him. But he wasn’t worried. The damage could be contained. The appropriate people could be bribed or coerced into forgetting what they’d heard.

  Then there was the stolen car. An older Honda Civic belonging to a live-in housekeeper had been taken from a curbside parking space in the neighborhood south of his estate. If it was found, Streinikov would be told; one of the cops he owned had assured him of that. With any luck, Parker would be picked up by the police on the spot. If not, there was a good chance she would still be in the vicinity of the automobile, and his men could track her down.

  His phone rang again. This time it was Denisov, one of the men who’d been pulled out of bed, calling to say that Gregor’s body had been found in the woods.

  “Return it to the house,” Streinikov said with a shrug. “Store it in the garage with Gura for now.”

  Gura’s remains would be shipped to Ukraine for a decent burial. A mere foot soldier like Gregor did not merit such treatment. His corpse would go into a landfill.

  Where had he been in his ruminations? Oh, yes—the third leg of his strategy. Ivanov, his IT man.

  Streinikov was not an aficionado of computer technology. He took no joy in pecking at a keyboard. He would rather dig in the dirt with his hands, potting his exotic plants, or cruise the coastal waterways with the salt breeze on his face.

  Still, computers had their virtues. They offered new ways of tackling old problems. Keeping tabs on one’s rivals, for instance, or putting out word on the street.

  Ivanov took care of all that from his perch in Donetsk. His job was to monitor the bewildering efflorescence of websites known as social media. He was not interested in videos of kittens or the latest exploits of the Kardashian clan. He followed the activities of the gangs.

  The major crews and sets all had their own Facebook sites, Twitter feeds, and Instagram accounts. They posted selfies and bragged about their exploits, even uploaded photos of drugs they’d stolen or weapons they’d acquired. Often they incriminated themselves; the posts led the authorities straight to them and could be used as evidence in court. Nevertheless, they kept on doing it. Young savages, they had the narcissistic need to strut and preen. Streinikov had been nothing like them in his youth. But times changed. The world grew sloppier and more decadent.

  The stupidity of these foolish children could be used to his advantage. His first phone call had been to Donetsk; he had told Ivanov to post a bounty on Bonnie Parker on all the relevant Internet streams. Ten thousand dollars for information on her present whereabouts. It required only a phone call; a number was provided.

  The number—untraceable, of course—belonged to Ivanov, who would screen the calls, weeding out the bad tips. Nothing in the posts could be linked to Streinikov himself, nor could the American authorities touch his man on foreign soil, even if they could locate him—not easily done, given the sophisticated ways in which he cloaked himself online. The police would become aware of the posts in due time, but that was not a problem. On the contrary, it was all to the good. It would provide them with a further incentive to find Parker before her enemies did.

  Vasnev made a throat-clearing sound. Streinikov glanced at him irritably. “Yes?”

  “Again, sir, I must respectfully insist on taking you to the hospital.”

  “Not until the present situation has been handled.”

  “An abdominal penetration is potentially serious. If your intestinal tract has been perforated, you’re at risk of peritonitis, septic poisoning. It can be fatal.”

  “Pray it does not prove to be.”

  “I’m administering antibiotics to fight infection. But if there’s significant leakage into the abdominal cavity, only surgery can help.”

  “I am not enamored of surgery. My sole experience in going under the knife proved most unpleasant.”

  “This situation is entirely different.”

  “It is entirely the same. A polished blade, an incision, part of me permanently excised.”

  Vasnev drew himself up, mustering whatever courage he possessed. “It may prove necessary, no matter how you feel about it.”

  “I am a realist, Doctor. I understand the eventualities. But I say again that I will not go to the hospital until I’ve resolved the matter at hand.” He tapped his bandaged waist. “This debt must be paid.”

  “If you won’t follow my advice, I can’t be responsible for your well-being.”

  Slowly Streinikov swiveled his head to appraise the other man. “On the contrary,” he said in a tone so empty of emotion it might almost have been friendly. “My well-being and yours are inextricably interconnected. Should I die, your own life expectancy will be, I assure you, exceedingly short.”

  Vasnev pursed his lips, and a visible shiver skipped across his thin shoulders. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  Streinikov was saved from further conversation by his phone. He thought it might be Ilya again, or his police informant updating him on the stolen car, but instead it was Ivanov in Donetsk.

  “I’ve received several calls,” Ivanov said, speaking Russian, “but they were all bullshit. Until now. This one could be for real. The man is hyped up, overexcited, but he claims to know Parker personally. Says he has a personal interest in seeing her receive justice. And he reports having just seen her in a location only fifteen miles from your property. Shall I put him through?”

  “Da.”

  “He is an obezyana, I think,” Ivanov said, using a racial slur. Before switching over, he added, “His name is Alonzo.”

  31

  Alonzo Duchenne had been pissed off about his encounter with the blonde bitch all day. It didn’t help that she’d broken his fucking nose, something confirmed by a trip to the ER. The result was a wide stripe of bandage across the middle of his face, not to mention two nostrils clogged with dried blood. Every so often he would sneeze out a big wad of bloody snot. Sneezing hurt. His whole face hurt. Even a couple of pills from his stash of painkillers hadn’t helped much.

  That was bad enough, but what really lit his fuse was that she’d robbed him in his own home. She had come after him.

  Alonzo had caught this show on TV once about how shape-shifting lizard aliens were living among us in human form. They were everywhere, occupying the highest political offices and seated on the thrones of corporate power. He didn’t really believe in the lizard people. But he didn’t exactly disbelieve in them, either. He was, like, an agnostic on the subject. As long as the lizards left him alone, he was all live-and-let-live.

  But that was the thing, see? This girl hadn’t left him alone. She’d poked her pretty little nose into his business, and busted up his not-so-pretty nose in the process.

  So he’d started asking around, being cool about it, just making some phone calls and talking about Blondie. He said an acquaintance had met up with her and needed to know more. Kept himself out of it. Playing it low-key, you know.

  Around noon he’d hit pay dirt. Friend of his, Eddie Lemans—probably wasn’t his real name, but whatever—knew exactly who he was talking about. Bitch called Bonnie Parker, a PI in Brighton Cove, with kind of a shadowy rep, like she was into some shit that wasn’t strictly legal. Could be a hitter, even. She was mouthy and a hard-ass, and she matched the description right down to her baby blue eyes.

  Eddie knew this stuff—Eddie knew just about everything that was going down around here—because he tended bar at Alcatraz, an establishment that could be described as either a watering hole or a shit hole with equal accuracy. He kept his ears open, and his customers liked to talk.

  So yeah, he knew about Parker. Why’d Alonzo want to know?

  Alonzo didn’t say. He got off the phone and took a ride to Brighton Cove, where he found Bonnie Parker’s office, right there on a bullshit little Main Street straight out of Disneyland. He had no intention of confronting her. Truth was, he’d been kind of shaken up by the casual way she’d put him on the floor. It wasn’t supposed to go like that.
He was the one who was supposed to do the beating, not the one who got the beatdown. And from a damn beavertail, too.

  Anyway, he was prudent enough to think twice about tangling with her again, especially if she was a professional popper. He just wanted to check out the area. It was pure luck that he ran into Jerry Waco coming out of a high-class shoe store called Oxfords, right down the street from Parker’s building.

  Waco—probably not his real name either—showed off the pricey dogs on his oversized feet. Alonzo steered the conversation around to Bonnie Parker. And that was when Waco came through for him. He’d dropped by the store earlier today to check out the merchandise, but, being a careful shopper, he hadn’t made his purchase until he’d researched the shoes online. A disquisition about the perils of buying expensive footwear without doing the necessary prep work followed.

  Alonzo guided him back on point. Right, Parker. She was here, chatting up a cabbie right outside the store.

  A cabbie. That piece of information stirred certain dark speculations in Alonzo’s mind.

  He asked if by any chance it was a pocket-sized Mexican in a white Grand Caravan marked Beach Cab. Waco didn’t recall what the dude looked like, but he did remember the vehicle, and it was the very one.

  Like they said in the movies: bingo.

  Alonzo had it all figured out now. The cabbie was the little wetback midget he’d stiffed last night. Fucking beaner lawn jockey had complained to Supergirl, and she’d decided to make things right. All that stuff she’d told him about a client from a few weeks ago, inferior product, being ripped off—that was all smoke. His product wasn’t inferior. He gave good value for the money.

  Well, he might not be quite ready to face off against Parker again, but he sure as shit could take on some five-foot-nothing taco bender who wanted to make trouble.

  It took him the rest of the day to identify the cabbie as Felix Ramirez and to trace him to an address in McKendree Park—unlisted because the guy was probably a fucking illegal living under the radar. His investigation might have proceeded at a more rapid pace had he not been taking additional pain pills to relieve the ache in his nose. The meds made him woozy and slow, and he fell asleep more than once. Taking naps during the day like some old geezer really wasn’t his style, and he was getting pissed off about that, along with everything else.

  But he perked up when he got a lead on Ramirez, courtesy of a mechanic who did repair work for Beach Cab. The grease monkey knew Ramirez, and while he didn’t know the douchebag’s home address, he did know a skank who’d been dating him. Which surprised Alonzo, because he had figured that scrawny little garden gnome couldn’t score a woman, any woman, even if she was a prize hog.

  He tracked down the girl, broke into her place—lucky for her, she wasn’t home—and found the name Felix in her datebook, along with a phone number. An online reverse directory matched a street address to the number. Alonzo went there shortly after nightfall. It was a building in McKendree Park—apartments above a bookstore. He rang the buzzer for the unit labeled F. Ramirez. No answer. Shorty was probably out picking up fares. But he would be back.

  Alonzo spent a long time staking out the building. He thought about Parker. He thought about the lizard people. He thought about who would come out on top in a throwdown between Hellboy and the Thing. His money was on the Thing. That Ben Grimm was a badass.

  As the hours passed, he felt the tug of sleep yet again. There was only one way to stay alert, and that was to sneeze open his clogged nostrils and put some white powder up there. Ordinarily he would not partake of his own supply, but desperate times, desperate measures—you know the score.

  By the time a white Grand Caravan pulled up outside the building, Alonzo was feeling no drowsiness and no pain. He fully intended to ambush Ramirez right there on the street, but the little greaseball Smurf was too quick for him. He bounded up the front steps and inside before Alonzo could even get out of his car.

  In a hurry. Had to take a piss, maybe.

  Since the cab would have to be returned to the company for the night, Alonzo knew his quarry would be back. In short order, he was. But it was funny, the way he acted. He was carrying a gym bag, moving furtively, almost skulking. He looked scared and self-conscious, like there was something in the bag that could get him in some seriously deep shit.

  Alonzo lost interest—temporarily at least—in taking revenge. He wanted to see what the hell Ramirez was up to. There might be money in it, enough money to repay him for the two hundred bucks he’d lost.

  After that, things got weird. The guy headed north on the parkway, with no fare, staying cautiously within the speed limit. Eventually he switched to the turnpike and crossed into Bergen County. Alonzo had used Beach Cab often enough to know that it was strictly a local operation. There was no legitimate reason for Mini-Me to drive a hundred miles out of Millstone County. Whatever he was after, the gym bag surely had something to do with it.

  As he was passing the turnoff to Route 3, Alonzo got a call from Eddie Lemans. “Looks like you were ahead of your time,” Eddie told him.

  Alonzo asked him what that was supposed to mean.

  “Only that you were so interested in Bonnie Parker. Now everybody’s interested.”

  “What do you mean, everybody?”

  “I mean, there’s a price on her blonde head. Which I think is a dye job, by the way.”

  Alonzo didn’t give a crap about her hair. “What price?”

  “Ten g’s for anyone who can find her.”

  “That’s all, just find her? Not, like, take her out?”

  “Just find her. And call it in.”

  “There’s a number?”

  Eddie said yeah, there was a number. “But I ain’t giving it up ’less you cut me in for a slice, big man.”

  Alonzo didn’t actually know where Parker was. But Ramirez might. And sooner or later, him and Ramirez were gonna have a conversation.

  After some haggling, they agreed that Eddie would take twenty percent, which worked out to two grand. In exchange for this deal, rendered as an oral agreement but understood to be binding between them in the state of New Jersey, Eddie gave up the phone number. Alonzo memorized it.

  He thought something could come of it; he really did. To remain alert, he took another hit of coke as he exited the turnpike.

  He followed the cab down a smaller highway and into the parking lot of a dirtbag motel. As he watched from a distance, Ramirez toted the gym bag to room 23 and rapped on the door.

  Alonzo was very interested to see who would open that door, and he wasn’t disappointed. Even across a long stretch of macadam, he could identify the woman who’d head-butted him and sent him to the ER with a nose that wouldn’t stop squirting blood.

  “Parker,” he breathed.

  In that moment he forgot all about Felix Ramirez. The cabbie wasn’t worth ten grand to anybody, and Bonnie Parker was.

  He waited until Ramirez had left, just to be sure Parker didn’t go with him. When she shut the door, he picked up his phone and called the tip line.

  As the phone rang at the other end, he inhaled another dusting of coke. What the fuck, man, he had to stay sharp.

  32

  Ilya was in the passenger seat of the Escalade, sweeping past Secaucus on I-95, when his phone rang. It was the boss.

  “Where are you?” Streinikov asked.

  “Twenty minutes out.” The words came with some difficulty. His throat was still sore from the two punches the bitch had delivered. He’d been lucky, though. A knuckle strike could have cracked his larynx, asphyxiating him.

  “You need to make a detour. We have a sighting. She’s in room twenty-three of the Magic Carpet Motor Inn on US-Forty-Six in Ridgefield.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No, but the information is plausible, and our informant claims to know her personally. There may be a way to confirm it before going in. She stole a red Honda Civic, older model.” He recited the plate number. “Look for it in the motel
parking lot.”

  “I’m on it,” Ilya said.

  “Remember—you’re to bring me her head.”

  “Understood.”

  Actually he did not understand. Streinikov’s fetish about the head was distinctly troubling. Ordinarily he was above such grisly melodrama.

  But Parker had wounded him. And Ilya was enough of a student of psychology to guess that the thrust of the shears into his side could have brought back memories of another blade, another kind of surgery.

  He started to program the Magic Carpet Motor Inn into the vehicle’s GPS. “We may have got her,” he told his crew. “This could be over very soon.”

  * * *

  Bonnie finished reviewing the contents of the gym bag, leaving the money in the duffel and most of her arsenal scattered on the floor. Christmas had come early this year, and it had taken her a while to choose the very best presents under the tree.

  She’d pretty much decided on the sawed-off shotgun—always your best bet when general mayhem was the aim—and the rifle she’d modified to fire on full automatic. The Ruger .45 from her purse was another keeper. No need for a silencer; she was planning to make a lot of noise. The two-shot derringer would serve as an ankle gun, and the combat knife could be strapped to her arm.

  The gym bag itself was too unwieldy to carry into battle; she’d have to come up with some other way of toting her gear.

  At the moment the item that interested her most was the throwaway phone she’d stashed with the rest of her stuff. It couldn’t be traced to her, which meant she could use it now—if she wanted to.

  She wasn’t sure she did. She needed to stay focused, and a conversation with her boyfriend wasn’t the best way to do that.

  On the other hand, there was a fair chance—okay, a real good chance—that this would be her last opportunity to talk to him, ever.

  She didn’t want to jinx herself, but the odds weren’t exactly in her favor, even with all the goodies St. Nick, in the form of Felix Ramirez, had brought.