Between the Plums

by Janet Evanovich

  “You’ve been gambling for four hours and you’ve only won twelve dollars!”

  “It took me a while to get my rhythm, but I’m hot now,” Grandma said.

  “Are you sure the money doesn’t belong to the little man in the green pants?”

  “I asked him how much was in the bag, and he didn’t know. He’s a common thief. He must have seen me find it, and now he wants to steal it.”

  “He followed us out of the Burg this morning,” Briggs said. “Least, I think it was him. It was some little guy in a white Toyota.”

  I looked around. “Is he here?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” Briggs said. “I lost him when I got into traffic after I turned off the parkway.”

  “I’m gonna go get some dessert,” Grandma said. “And then I’m hitting the slots again.”

  “I’m skipping dessert and taking my money to the craps table,” Lula said.

  “Me, too,” Connie said. “Only I’m playing blackjack.”

  Briggs handed the money out and sat tight, using the duffel bag like a booster chair.

  2

  My phone rang, and I saw my home number appear in the readout.

  “It’s feeling lonely here,” Diesel said. “I’m not getting vibes on you or my target. Where are you?”

  “Atlantic City. Grandma’s here. She found some money, and she’s having an adventure.”

  “Found?”

  “Remember the bag I was searching for in her room? She has it here with her, and it’s filled with money. She said she was walking home from the bakery yesterday, and she found it sitting on the curb.”

  “Green duffel bag with a yellow stripe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh man, what are the chances,” Diesel said. “How much money?”

  “Around a million.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a little guy with curly gray hair and green pants lurking somewhere?”

  “A little guy in green pants attacked Grandma yesterday. And it’s possible he followed her out of the Burg this morning.”

  “His name is Snuggy O’Connor. He’s the guy I’m tracking, and the money in that bag is stolen. If you see him, grab him for me, but don’t take your eyes off him or he’ll evaporate into thin air.”

  “Really?”

  “No. People don’t just evaporate. Boy, you’ll believe anything.”

  “You sort of evaporate. One minute, you’re standing behind me, and then you’re gone.”

  “Yeah, but that’s me. And it’s not easy.”

  Diesel disconnected, and I went back to my lunch. Macaroni and cheese, potato salad, turkey with gravy, macaroni and cheese, a dinner roll, three-bean salad, and more macaroni and cheese. I like macaroni and cheese.

  A half hour later, Grandma was back at her video poker machine, and Briggs and I were standing guard. I was hoping Diesel would have a plan when he arrived, because I had no idea what to do with Grandma. It’s not like I could put her in handcuffs and drag her home.

  I caught a flash of fire-engine red in my peripheral vision and realized it was Lula’s hair making its way across the casino floor.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” Lula said, coming up to me. “I was rolling crap at the craps table . . .”

  “Easy come, easy go,” Briggs said. “So much for the lucky money theory.”

  “Yeah, but turns out it was lucky. The guy standing next to me was some big-ass photographer on a photo shoot for some lingerie company, and he said they were looking for experienced plus-size models. He gave me his card, and he said I should just show up tomorrow first thing in the morning. I almost peed my pants right there. This here’s my opportunity. I always wanted to be a supermodel. And a supermodel’s just one step away from being a celebrity.”

  “Just what the world needs,” Briggs said. “One more big fat celebrity.”

  Lula narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you just say I was fat? Is that what I just heard? Because my ears better be wrong, or I’ll grind you into midget dust.”

  “Little person,” Briggs said. “I’m a little person.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “If it was me, I’d rather be a midget. It’s got a good sound to it. ‘Little person’ sounds like you should be in kindergarten.”

  Briggs was hands on hips, leaning forward. “How’d you like a punch in the nose?”

  Lula looked down at him. “How’d you like my thumb in your eye?”

  “I didn’t know you had experience modeling lingerie,” Grandma said to Lula.

  “Not modeling, exactly. I got more general experience. When I was a ’ho, I was famous for accessorizing with lingerie. Everybody knew if you wanted a ’ho in nice undies, you go to Lula’s corner. And another thing, I’m always reading them fashion magazines. I know how to stand. And I got a beautiful smile.”

  Lula smiled for us.

  Grandma squinted at Lula. “Look at that. You got a gold tooth in the front. It’s all sparkly under the lights. I never noticed before.”

  “I got it last week,” Lula said. “It’s got a diamond chip in it. That’s what makes it sparkle.”

  “So if the modeling doesn’t work out, you could be a pirate,” Briggs said.

  “It’s for when I sing with Sally Sweet and his band,” Lula said. “We changed our focus to rap. Sally’s breakin’ new ground. He’s like the premier drag rapper.”

  Sally Sweet drives a school bus in Trenton during the day and does bar gigs on weekends. He looks like Howard Stern, and he dresses like Madonna. I had a mental picture of Sally rapping in drag, and it wasn’t pretty.

  “How are you doing at the video poker?” Lula asked Grandma.

  “I’m not doing so good,” Grandma said. “Maybe I just got to get warmed up.”

  “That’s the way it works,” Lula said. “First you got bad luck, and then you got the good luck.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. It was my mother.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m at Daffy’s in Atlantic City.”

  “Did you find your grandmother?”

  “Yes. She’s playing the slots.”

  “Do not leave her side. And do not put her on the bus to come home. God knows where she could end up.”

  “Right,” I said to my mother. “No bus.”

  “Call me when you get on the road so I know when to expect you and your grandmother.”

  “Sure.”

  I disconnected and looked at Grandma hunched on her seat, back to punching the PLAY button, and wondered if it was a felony if you kidnapped your own grandmother. I suspected it would be the only way I’d get her to go home.

  “I’m going shopping,” Lula said. “I gotta look good tomorrow morning for my supermodel debut. And I know this is plus-size lingerie, but maybe I should go to the gym and try to lose ten or fifteen pounds. I bet I could do it if I put my mind to it.”

  I looked past Lula and locked eyes with the little man in the green pants. He was openly staring, watching us from the other side of the casino floor. I crooked my finger at him in a come here gesture, and he sidestepped behind a row of slots and disappeared. I took off across the room, but couldn’t find him.

  Lula was gone when I got back. Briggs was asleep on top of the duffel bag. And Grandma was staring at the poker machine.

  “I’m not feeling so good,” Grandma said. “My button finger is all swollen, and I’m sort of dizzy. I can’t take the lights flashing at me anymore.”

  “We should go home.”

  “I can’t go home. I gotta stay here and wait for my luck to get good. I got myself one of them high roller rooms this morning. I’m gonna take a nap.”

  I toed Briggs, and he jumped off the bag, eyes wide open, ready to be the wolverine.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Grandma wants to go to her room.”

  Ten minutes later, I had Grandma locked in her room with the money and Briggs standing guard outside her door.

  “I’m going to
check on Connie,” I told Briggs. “Call me on my cell when Grandma gets up.”

  I walked down the hall, took the elevator to the casino floor, and found Connie still at the blackjack table. She had fifteen dollars in chips in front of her.

  “This is not lucky money,” Connie said. “I haven’t won once . . . and I broke a nail.”

  The guy sitting next to her looked like he bludgeoned people for a living. Not that this would bother Connie, since half her family looked like this . . . and some for good reason.

  “It was real ugly when she broke the nail,” the guy said. “She used words I haven’t heard since I was in the army.” He leaned close to Connie. “If you want to get lucky, I could help you out.”

  “I don’t need to get lucky that bad,” Connie said.

  “Just offering. No need to get mean,” he said.

  I wandered the casino looking for the little man in the green pants. I patrolled the gambling floor, browsed through a couple shops, checked out the bar and the café. No little man in green pants. Truth is, I was relieved. I mean, what the heck would I do with him if I found him? I had no legal right to apprehend him. And it seemed to me Grandma had sort of stolen his money. What would I say if he demanded it back?

  I found a machine that I liked, took a seat, and slid a dollar into the money-sucker slot. Forty-five seconds later, my dollar was history and the machine went silent. I felt no compulsion to insert a second dollar. I love the casinos, but gambling isn’t my passion. I like the neon and the noise and the optimism. I love that people come here with unrealistic hope. The energy is palpable. Okay, so sometimes it’s fueled by greed and sloth and addiction. And sometimes the energy dissipates into despair. The way I see it, it’s a little like driving the turnpike through Newark. The turnpike will get you to your destination faster, but there’s always the possibility that you’ll crash and die. It’s the Jersey way, right? Take a chance. Act like a moron.

  I felt all the little hairs stand up at the back of my neck and suspected Diesel had invaded my air space. I swiveled in my seat and found him standing behind me.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “I lost.”

  “I can fix that.”

  He fed a dollar into the machine and bells dinged and bonged, lights flashed, and the machine paid out four hundred and twenty dollars.

  I rolled my eyes at him, and he grinned down at me.

  “This is nothing,” he said. “You should see me shoot craps.”

  “I saw your little man in the green pants.”

  “Here?”

  “Yep. I ran after him, but he disappeared.”

  “What was he doing?” Diesel asked.

  “Watching Grandma.”

  Two older women in velour running suits paused on their way through the slots to appreciate Diesel. They looked him up and down and smiled.

  “Ladies,” Diesel said, returning their smiles.

  One of the women winked at him, and they moved on.

  Diesel mashed the PAYOUT button and the machine printed a chit for the money. He tucked the chit into my sweatshirt pocket and pulled me off the stool. “Let’s go on a Snuggy hunt.”

  “Why is he called Snuggy?”

  “He gets into snug places . . . like bank vaults. Where’s Grandma?”

  “Taking a nap in her room. Briggs is in front of her door standing guard.”

  Diesel was holding my hand, walking us through the casino, and I could feel heat radiating up my arm. When the heat hit my shoulder and started to head south, I was going to disengage.

  Daffy barked two o’clock and laser beams shot out of his eyes and danced across the casino ceiling. The old folks were lethargic after stuffing themselves at the lunch buffet and barely noticed. The dog barked “Yankee Doodle,” and casino-wide, people self-medicated for acid reflux and irritable bowel. The day was already winding down. The senior buses would begin loading at four, and by five, the casino would be a graveyard. At six, the night-timers would start arriving. They’d drink more and spend more and wear tighter clothes. The men would have more hair and the women would have bigger boobs. Or at least the boobs would sit higher.

  “How do you expect to catch Snuggy?” I asked Diesel.

  “I thought I’d drag you around the casino for an hour or two hoping to run into him. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll use Grandma as bait.”

  We meandered through the rows of slot machines and patrolled the gaming tables . . . roulette, craps, blackjack. We checked out the bar and the café and the shops. We left the hotel and stood on the Boardwalk. A low cloud cover had moved in and the wind had picked up. The ocean was gray and foamy in front of us. Some rollers and choppy waves. No one on the beach. There was some Boardwalk foot traffic, but heads were down and sweatshirts were zipped.

  Diesel looked like he belonged here. Sin City behind him and the wild, untamable sea in front of him. I had a hunch I looked like I belonged in Macy’s shoe department.

  “Now what?” I said to him.

  “Call Briggs and see if Grandma’s up and ready to play.”

  “She’s sleeping,” Briggs said, answering on the second ring. “I can hear her snoring. Probably half the hotel can hear her snoring. She sounds like she’s trying to suck her face into her nose. It’s giving me a headache. And I hafta go to the can. I need a break here.”

  Diesel and I went back into the hotel and rode the elevator to Grandma’s floor. Randy Briggs took off, and Diesel and I sat on the carpeted floor with our backs to the wall.

  “Tell me about Snuggy,” I said to Diesel.

  Diesel had one knee bent and one long leg stretched out in front of him. “Snuggy gives me a cramp in my ass. This is the second time I’ve had to chase him down. The first time, I found him in a goat tent halfway up Everest. And I am not an Everest kind of guy. Everest is cold. And when you get tired of looking at rock, you can look at more rock.” Diesel closed his eyes. “I’m more a tropical breezes and palm trees swaying man.”

  “What about Trenton? Do you like Trenton?”

  “Does it have palm trees?”

  “No.”

  “There’s your answer,” Diesel said.

  “Are you after Snuggy because he stole the money?”

  “No. I was after him before that. He stole a horse and was recognized leaving the scene. I was asked to put him on ice until the mess could get cleaned up. Problem is, Snuggy’s like smoke. Hard to hang on to.”

  “And he doesn’t want to be put on ice?”

  “He claims it’ll interfere with his life’s work.”

  “Which is?”

  “Apparently, it’s stealing shit,” Diesel said.

  “Not many people steal horses these days.”

  “Guess he likes horses. He used to be a jockey. He’d win the race by some odd stroke of fate and then fall off the horse after it crossed the finish line. That’s his M.O. He’s unbelievably lucky, but he bungles everything. Yesterday, he stole close to a million dollars from Lou Delvina, got caught on Delvina’s security tape, and managed to leave the money sitting on the curb for your grandmother to find.”

  Lou Delvina was a local mobster and a very scary guy. Diesel and I had a run-in with him not too long ago, and I wasn’t thrilled about the idea that I was indirectly involved with him again.

  “So your target is lucky, rides horses, likes green pants, and isn’t smart. Anything else?” I asked Diesel.

  “He talks to animals. Two-way conversations,” Diesel said.

  “Like the horse whisperer and the pet psychic on television.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Can you talk to animals?” I asked him.

  “Honey, I can barely talk to humans.”

  3

  The elevator door opened toward the end of the hallway, and Snuggy stepped out. His eyes locked onto Diesel and me sitting on the floor and widened. “You!” Snuggy said.

  Diesel got to his feet. “Surprise.”

  Snuggy turned and pun
ched the DOWN button and clawed at the closed elevator doors.

  “Cripes, that’s so pathetic,” Diesel said. “Stop clawing at the elevator and come over here.”

  “Faith and begorrah, I can’t. My sainted mother is dying. I need to go to her bedside.”

  Diesel cut his eyes to me. “Add fake Irish accent and pathological liar to the list.”

  “That cuts to the quick,” Snuggy said.

  “I have a file on you,” Diesel said. “Your birth name is Zigmond Kulakowski, you were born in Staten Island, and your mother died ten years ago.”

  “I feel Irish,” Snuggy said. “I’m pretty sure I’m a leprechaun.”

  Diesel was hands on hips, looking like he’d heard this before. “It doesn’t say leprechaun in your file. And here’s some bad news—a closet full of green pants doesn’t make you a leprechaun.”

  “I’m Unmentionably lucky.”

  “Yeah, and I’m Unmentionably randy, but that doesn’t make me a goat.”

  I stood and moved next to Diesel. “I want to know about the money my grandmother found. The money that belonged to Lou Delvina.”

  Snuggy slumped a little. “I needed cash, and I heard Delvina had a safe filled with numbers money. I mean, if you have to steal something, steal something that’s already dirty, right? I know Delvina works his operation out of a car wash on Hamilton and Beacon Street, so I went to the car wash just as it was getting ready to open for business. And here’s the lucky part. Everyone, including Delvina, was around back, looking at a broken water valve. The door to the office was wide open. I went in, saw the duffel bag sitting all by itself on the front desk, looked inside, saw the money, and walked out with it. I set the bag on the car roof while I looked for my keys, and then I forgot about it and drove away. I guess the bag slid off when I turned the corner. I came back and saw the old lady dragging it down the street. I tell you, some people have no scruples. I was perfectly nice, explaining to her how I lost the bag, and she told me to kiss off. And then she called me some rude names!”

  “She said you couldn’t identify the amount of money in the bag.”

  “I hadn’t counted it. I didn’t know how much there was. I’d only just stole it. Faith and begorrah.”