Stella, Get Your Gun

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “What if the police come back?” Nina asked.

  “Don’t answer the door.”

  “What if it’s someone we know?”

  “Nina,” I said impatiently, “do not answer the door! I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Just stay put, okay?”

  They all nodded, but I knew that where Nina and Aunt Lucy were concerned, anything could happen. My only hope was Spike. Maybe she could keep the other two in line.

  “Can we order pizza later?” Nina asked.

  She was just a walking minefield of objections and exceptions to the rule.

  “Nina, no!”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever! I was just trying to think about meals and all. You don’t need to bite my head off. Geez!”

  I left the three of them knowing there would be a backlash of comments, sidebars and criticisms wafting after me, but having faith that they would somehow manage until I returned. After all, it was a simple assignment to just stay put in the secure room of the basement until I returned with Jake and settled everybody’s hash.

  If only life were really that easy.

  I trudged up the steps and found Pete waiting at the kitchen table. When he saw me, his face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning and I felt suddenly worse.

  “Okay,” I said, opening the freezer door, “let’s get started.” I pulled out one of Mrs. Cozzone’s illegal casserole dishes, tore back the foil and handed Pete the frozen contents, a .40-caliber SIG-Sauer semiautomatic pistol and two magazines.

  “You people keep your guns in the freezer up north?” He was clearly amazed at the strange characteristics of Yankees.

  “Well, you good ole boys keep your guns under your pillows,” I answered. “What makes this any stranger?”

  “Yeah, but that’s on account of I can always reach my gun if someone comes into the bedroom.”

  I smirked. “Well, up north, we stop ’em before they ever reach the bedroom. Surely you’ve heard the expression to ‘ice’ someone?” Pete nodded, uncertain. “Well, where do you think it came from?”

  “So everybody up here does this?”

  I shook my head. “Not everyone,” I said. “Just the ones with good hearing.”

  Pete was trying to push the magazine of frozen bullets into his gun and having trouble. I reached over his shoulder, grabbed the weapon and cartridge from his hands, and quickly slapped the gun together.

  When Pete looked offended I said, “I’m used to the cold. I was born up here. Now let’s go.”

  I walked over to the back-porch door and looked over my shoulder at the kitchen clock. “Is it clear?” I asked.

  The long hand toggled back and forth. Pete’s mouth dropped open.

  “The alley, too?” I asked.

  The long hand wiggled again.

  “Okay, we’re gone,” I said, and started out onto the back porch.

  Pete remained rooted to the spot, staring up at the clock. I turned, tugged his arm and said, “Come on!”

  “Was that clock talking to you?”

  I frowned. “A clock? What’s wrong with you? Clocks don’t talk!”

  I pulled him away from the door. “Let’s go. I’ll give you more details when we’re on the road.”

  Once we hit the street, Pete leaned back in his seat and sighed heavily. “What’s going on here?”

  I rounded the corner onto the street that rimmed Kerr Park, looked for cops and saw nothing.

  “Long story short,” I said. “My uncle got murdered because someone wanted something he had.”

  “So it was a robbery?”

  “No, they didn’t get what they came for, so now they’re after my aunt.”

  Pete shifted in his seat, his attention suddenly focused out the window.

  “You got one at two o’clock,” he murmured. “Six-two, white male, bottle-brush hair…”

  “Shit!”

  I pulled the car over and watched my hostage loping across the lawn in front of the Kerr Park duck pond.

  “That’s him!” I cried, and the two of us took off running, just like the old days.

  Flattop was the worse for my having worn him out earlier, but when he saw us he gave it his best.

  “Get the car,” Pete called over his shoulder. “Cut him off!”

  I raced back to Aunt Lucy’s Buick and jumped the curb. The sky-blue Buick sailed across the frozen grass, bearing down on our quarry. He was running hard with Pete on his heels. I circled close, bringing the car to a halt ten feet in front of him. When he cut right to avoid me, I opened the driver’s side door, right into his body.

  “Oofff!”

  The air rushed out of Flattop’s lungs and he stumbled backward. He staggered, recovered and was starting to run again when Pete tackled him. Flattop struggled, but Pete was on his back, cuffing the sides of his head and quickly subduing him.

  I bent down, turned his head to face me and smiled. “I’m back,” I sang.

  Flattop dropped his head to the ground and groaned softly.

  “This isn’t happening,” he muttered.

  “I know, buddy,” Pete said. “She has that effect on me, too.”

  “Put him in the car. Let’s go to the pump house. We won’t need to worry about anyone hearing us there.”

  Pete nodded, hoisting Flattop up by the waistband of his pants and plopping him down unceremoniously onto the back seat. I slid behind the wheel and started driving. When I reached Third Lake I realized the pump house had been torn down. I turned left and started out into the farm country surrounding town. No pump house, no problem. I knew a lovely and long-deserted stable that would fit the bill just fine.

  “Where are you taking me?” Flattop asked. “This is police brutality! I demand a lawyer. I know my rights!”

  I looked over at Pete. Without a word he turned and slapped the shit out of Flattop.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” I said, “but I wouldn’t advise it. We’re not cops.”

  I checked the rearview mirror. Flattop’s mouth was bleeding and he looked frightened. I thought about Uncle Benny and how terrified he must have been when the killer shoved nitroglycerine down his throat. Slapping Flattop didn’t seem so bad when I looked at it from my uncle’s point of view.

  “You guys are spooks, huh?”

  Pete and I didn’t answer him. Government agents were way scarier than cops. Flattop could believe whatever he wanted. I pulled the Buick into a field and stopped.

  “Get him out,” I said. “And bring the extra gun.”

  Pete nodded and opened the glove compartment. Flattop panicked.

  “Don’t do that!” he cried. “Let’s talk about this. We can work something out.”

  I looked at Pete. He shrugged as if he didn’t care which way the deal went. I turned to Flattop and said, “Where’s Jake?”

  “I don’t know anybody named Jake.”

  I shook my head sadly. “Take him out.”

  Pete slammed Aunt Lucy’s empty glove compartment with a loud snap, made a show of stuffing an imaginary extra gun inside his jacket pocket and opened the passenger door.

  Flattop almost wept when Pete opened his door. “I don’t know any Jake, really I don’t!”

  He was appealing to Pete, who smiled back sadly at him. “I’d go ahead and tell her what she wants to know,” he said. “She’s going to find out anyway—she always does—and believe me, it’s not gonna be pretty.”

  “Who do you work for?” I asked.

  The man’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit. I swear to God, I don’t know her name. Honest!”

  I looked over at Pete and shook my head. “Slam him!”

  Pete picked Flattop up and was about to bounce him off the ground when I said, “Last chance. What does she look like?”

  Flattop opened up like a zipper. “She’s blond. Not too tall, maybe five-three, maybe midthirties.”

  Donna? That wasn’t going to help me find Jake. Donna was dead.

  “When’s the last time you saw her or talked
to her?”

  “Two days ago.”

  The day before she got blown to smithereens. Then Ron showed up the following day in Aunt Lucy’s lab and died trying to continue their plan.

  “How’d you get hooked up with her?”

  Flattop looked down at the ground. “She got a friend of mine out of a jam one time. When she needed a couple of guys to help her out with something, he called me. I needed the money so I said sure.”

  Flattop read the displeasure on my face and quickly added. “It’s hard getting a job when you got a record.”

  I ignored the plea for sympathy. “How’d you communicate with her?”

  Flattop looked worried. “She gave my buddy a cell phone. She called when she had something to tell us or wanted us to do something.”

  Damn, another dead end.

  “What were you doing at my aunt’s house?” I asked.

  For a moment Flattop was silent. He stood by the side of Aunt Lucy’s car, sucking in air. The sun had popped up over the horizon, illuminating a fine sheen of sweat that glistened on his forehead.

  “We were supposed to get your aunt to tell us where your uncle’s project was. If she didn’t, we were to bring her back with us.”

  “Where?”

  “Red Top Inn on I-95 in Chester. Room 212. But we weren’t gonna hurt her or nothing.”

  No, that would’ve been Donna’s job, I thought.

  I walked up to Flattop and stood inches from his face. “I’m going to put you somewhere safe, someplace where nobody can find you. That way if I find out you’re lying I can come back and take my time killing you. Now, you sure you don’t want to change anything you’ve told us?”

  Flattop shook his head violently. “That’s all I know, honest!”

  “Okay.”

  I turned to Pete. “There’s an abandoned stable at the bottom of this pasture. We can cuff him inside one of the stalls.”

  Pete nodded and headed off with Flattop in tow. I walked back to the Buick and sat behind the wheel thinking. Nothing seemed to make sense. Why would Ron break into Aunt Lucy’s lab hours before Donna’s hirelings arrived to do the same thing? Had she not told him? Had they been working separately? And what was Tony Manello’s role in all this? Did he even know his daughter was dead?

  Pete trotted back up the pasture a few minutes later and joined me.

  “Snug as a bug in a rug,” he said. “What now, go pop the chick in the hotel?”

  I shook my head. “She’s dead. Her partner is, too.”

  Pete’s eyebrows rose. “Damn, bad break. Got any other leads?”

  I thought about it as I pulled the Buick out onto the road and started heading back toward town.

  “Well, I got a couple of mobsters to talk to. One was the girl’s father.”

  Pete whistled softly. “Does he know his kid’s dead? Those guys don’t like it when you mess with their family members. I’d hate to see what happens when he finds out.”

  Tell me about it. I gripped the steering wheel and imagined Tony Manello, grief stricken and enraged. Interviewing him would be suicidal.

  “Well, I shot a guy last night that might’ve been looking to do a deal with Donna or her father, but he’s in the hospital. If I showed up there the cops would crawl all over me.”

  I could feel Pete staring at me, probably wondering what happened to nice, gullible Stella.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Maybe we should just go check out that hotel room and see if by some off chance she left something behind.”

  Pete exhaled slowly. “I think that would be an excellent idea. A nice, empty hotel room beats tangling with the Mafia any day.”

  We drove in silence for almost five minutes, during which time I felt Pete squirming, full of unasked questions that had to be gnawing away at his ego. My new demeanor was killing him. Gone was the by-the-book good girl. In her place was an avenging angel on steroids.

  Finally Pete gave in to his curiosity.

  “Hey, Stella, does this Jake guy know you killed somebody last night?”

  I smiled.

  “Yeah, Pete,” I said. “He likes me when I’m homicidal.”

  From the far side of the car I heard a soft groan, then a whispered “Damn!”

  Chapter 17

  The Red Top Inn rented rooms by the day, week, month or, apparently, by the hour. In the two hours since we’d arrived and set up surveillance, I’d seen a woman in a pink sequined dress personally escort three different gentlemen to and from three separate rooms. I’d seen four big rigs pull into the oversize lot in back and discharge tired drivers. I’d watched as six cars of varying ages and conditions drove up carrying passengers who seemed destined to view their futures as long past might-have-been’s.

  No, the Red Top Inn was not a happy place and not at all the sort of place for families and innocents. The Red Top Inn was for losers and those looking to make an illegal buck or two in the shortest amount of time possible.

  “I say we give it ten more minutes and then we go in,” I said. “It’s pretty obvious to me the room’s just as empty as it should be. Donna and Ron are both dead. Why wait?”

  Pete, always the cautious cop, gave in. “All right. I just thought maybe we’d get lucky. Besides, with the characters you’ve been talking about, we couldn’t be too careful.”

  I nodded and kept my eyes glued to the upstairs floor and room 212 in particular.

  “Stella,” Pete said, “who is this Jake guy you’re looking for? I mean, what’s he to you? You interested in him or something?”

  I took a sip of cold coffee and looked over at my ex-boyfriend. A week ago, I would’ve said I still loved him, not in a permanent, all-encompassing way, but in a good-enough-for-now way. My relationship with Pete was like six-week hair color, great when you first try it, but after a few weeks you find the color’s dulled and the glow has vanished. I wondered how I’d ever conned myself into believing he loved me.

  “Pete, I’m only in this to protect my family. I have a few questions for Jake, but it’s Aunt Lucy who really wanted me to find him. He’s like a son to her. Besides, I think maybe if I find Jake, I’ll find whoever’s behind all this.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that Jake might be the one behind it?” he asked.

  I frowned and stared out the windshield at the dingy hotel in front of us. “Maybe,” I answered. “That’s a possibility, but I like his wife and her family more for it. I think Jake’s ex and her father hooked this plan up. I’m not stupid enough to rule out any possibilities,” I conceded. “But Jake doesn’t seem like the type. He doesn’t have the connections to sell Aunt Lucy’s formula to the kinds of people who might buy it. Donna and her father do. He’s Mob connected.”

  An electric thrill of tension ran up my spine. As we watched, a blonde wearing a black suit and widow’s veil emerged from the back staircase and started walking quickly toward room 212.

  Pete followed my line of vision. “She’s a blonde,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, but the woman we’re looking for just got positively IDed as dead,” I answered.

  When she stopped in front of room 212 and fumbled with her keys, we stopped making assumptions based upon the evidence. We were out of the car and moving without exchanging a word. That’s the way it is with good cops; sometimes you just feel the plan and put it into play without ever having to say a word. As a man, Pete had a million faults, but as a cop, he had very few. I knew he’d cover my back and do a damn good job of it, that is, as long as no pretty women appeared to distract him.

  Pete trotted toward the staircase leading up to the second floor of the Red Top Inn. I slipped around to the back of the building, found the second set of stairs and began climbing up that way. Somewhere in between, with a little luck, we’d run into her.

  I felt the familiar surge of adrenaline begin to course through my bloodstream as I took the iron steps two at a time. My Glock rested securely in my waistband, a constant reassurance, a lifesaver i
n case of trouble.

  I reached the second floor, took a quick glance in either direction and started moving. Pete, already in place ahead of me, held one finger to his lips and motioned me forward.

  “She went inside,” he whispered. “I listened outside the door, but I don’t hear voices. I’m guessing she’s alone.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We don’t have enough time to wait forever. Jake could be in there. I don’t want her to kill him.”

  “You mean if she hasn’t already,” Pete clarified.

  “Yeah, if she hasn’t already,” I said, and felt the world grow darker at the possibility.

  “Chances are the guy’s alive. I mean she might be planning to use him like a bargaining chip with your aunt. He wouldn’t be worth shit dead. I say we hang back, give it five or ten minutes and see if she comes out again. It would be a lot cleaner if we could get her to come to us. We wouldn’t risk her killing Jake that way, if he’s even in there.”

  Pete had a point. “All right, but no more than ten minutes, then we go in no matter what.”

  I didn’t give Pete the option of arguing with me. I settled in by the ice machine, careful to keep an eye on any activity that might happen in the hallway, focusing on room 212.

  Pete felt his pockets for a cigarette, saw me scowl at him and gave up. After eight minutes, I had to move.

  “Come on,” I said brushing past him and starting down the hall. “Time’s up.”

  I slipped off toward room 212, edged the gun out of my pants and motioned Pete past me to the other side of the door. We stood there, listening, aware that we were standing in broad daylight with guns drawn, exposed to the curiosity of onlookers who might alert the real police.

  There was no sound coming from inside the room. I looked up at Pete. He gave me a short nod, and I reached out with my hand, rapped twice on the door and then drew back.

  No answer.

  Pete looked at me, eyebrow raised, head inclined toward the door. He wanted to move. I wanted to try one more thing first. I shook my head and smiled. I knocked again, this time louder.

  “Baby!” I called, pitching my voice higher and slurring it slightly. “Come on, baby, let me in!”