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Carol Zabo was standing on the outermost guardrail on the bridge spanning the Delaware
between Trenton, New Jersey and Morrisville, Pennsylvania. She was holding a
regulation size yellow fire brick in the palm of her right hand, with about four feet of
clothesline stretched between the brick and her ankle. On the side of the
bridge in big letters was the slogan "Trenton Makes and the World
Takes." And Carol was apparently tired of the world taking whatever it was
she was making, because she was getting ready to jump into the Delaware and let the brick
do its work.
I was standing about ten feet from Carol, trying to talk her off the
guardrail. Cars were rolling past us, some slowing up to gawk, and some cutting
in and out of the gawkers, giving Carol the finger because she was disturbing the flow.
"Listen Carol," I said, "it's eight-thirty in the morning, and it's
starting to snow. I'm freezing my ass off. Make up your mind about
jumping, because I have to tinkle, and I need a cup of coffee."
Truth is, I didn't for a minute think she'd jump. For one thing, she was
wearing a four-hundred-dollar jacket from Wilson Leather. You just don't jump
off a bridge in a four-hundred-dollar jacket. It isn't done. The
jacket would get ruined. Carol was from the Chambersburg section of Trenton,
just like me, and in the Burg you gave the jacket to your sister, then you jumped off the
bridge.
"Hey, you listen, Stephanie Plum," Carol said, teeth
chattering. "Nobody sent you an engraved invitation to this party."
I'd gone to high school with Carol. She'd been a cheerleader, and I'd been a
baton twirler. Now she was married to Lubie Zabo and wanted to kill
herself. If I was married to Lubie I'd want to kill myself too, but that wasn't
Carol's reason for standing on the guardrail, holding a brick on a rope. Carol
had shoplifted some crotchless bikinis from the Fredericks of Hollywood store at the
mall. It wasn't that Carol couldn't afford the panties, it was that she wanted
them to spice up her love life and was too embarrassed to take them to the
register. In her haste to make a getaway, she'd rear-ended Brian Simon's
plainclothes cop car and had left the scene. Brian had been in the car at the
time, and had chased her down and thrown her into the pokey.
My cousin Vinnie, president and sole proprietor of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, had written
Carol's get-out-of-jail ticket. If Carol didn't show up for her court date,
Vinnie would forfeit the walking money unless he could retrieve Carol's body in a timely
manner.
This is where I come in. I'm a bond enforcement agent, which is a fancy term
for bounty hunter, and I retrieve bodies for Vinnie. Preferably live and
unharmed. Vinnie had spotted Carol on his way in to work this morning and had
dispatched me to rescue her --- or, if rescue wasn't possible to eyeball the
precise spot she splashed down. Vinnie was worried if Carol jumped into the
river, and the divers and cops with grappling hooks couldn't find her water-logged corpse,
Vinnie might be out his bond money.
"This is really a bad way to do it," I said to Carol. "You're
going to look awful when they find you. Think about it --your hair's gonna be a
wreck."
She rolled her eyes up as if she could see on the top of her head. "Shit,
I never thought of that," she said. "I just had it highlighted,
too. I got it foiled."
The snow was coming down in big wet blobs. I was wearing hiking boots with
thick vibram soles, but the cold was seeping through to my feet all the
same. Carol was more dressy in funky ankle boots, a little black dress, and the
excellent jacket. Somehow the brick seemed too casual for the rest of the
outfit. And the dress reminded me of a dress I had hanging in my own
closet. I'd only worn the dress for a matter of minutes before it had been
dropped to the floor and kicked aside ... the opening statement in an exhaustive night
with the man of my dreams. Well, one of the men, anyway. Funny how
people see clothes differently. I wore the dress, hoping to get a man into my
bed. And Carol chose it to jump off a bridge. Now in my
opinion, jumping off a bridge in a dress is a bad decision. If I was
going to jump off a bridge I'd wear slacks. Carol was going to look like an
idiot with her skirt up around her ears and her pantyhose hanging out. "So
what does Lubie think of the highlights?" I asked.
"Lubie likes the highlights," Carol said. "Only he wants me to
grow it longer. He says long hair is the style now."
Personally, I wouldn't put a lot of stock in the fashion sense of a man who got his
nickname by bragging about his sexual expertise with a greasegun. But hey,
that's just me. "So tell me again why you're up here on the
guardrail."
"Because I'd rather die than go to jail."
"I told you, you're not going to jail. And if you do, it won't be for very
long."
"A day is too long! An hour is too long! They make you take off
all your clothes, and then they make you bend over so they can look for smuggled
weapons. And you have to go to the bathroom in front of
everyone. There's no, you know, privacy. I saw a special on
television."
Okay, so now I understood a little bit better. I'd kill myself before I'd do
any of those things, too.
"Maybe you won't have to go to jail," I said. "I know Brian
Simon. I could talk to him. Maybe I could get him to drop the
charges."
Carol's face brightened. "Really. Would you do that for
me?"
"Sure. I can't guarantee anything, but I can give it a shot."
"And if he won't drop the charges, I'll still have a chance to kill myself."
"Exactly."
* * *
I packed Carol and the brick off in her car, and then I drove over to the 7-Eleven for
coffee and a box of glazed chocolate doughnuts. I figured I deserved the
doughnuts, since I'd done such a good job of saving Carol's life.
I took the doughnuts and coffee to Vinnie's storefront office on Hamilton
Avenue. I didn't want to run the risk of eating all the doughnuts
myself. And I was hoping Vinnie would have more work for me. As a
bond enforcement agent I only get paid if I bring somebody in. And at the
moment I was clean out of wayward bondees.
"Damn skippy," Lula said from behind the file cabinets. "Here
come doughnuts walking through the door."
At five feet five inches weighing in at a little over two hundred pounds, Lula is
something of a doughnut expert. She was in monochromatic mode this week, with
hair, skin, and lipgloss all the color of cocoa. The skin color is permanent,
but the hair changes weekly.
Lula does filing for Vinnie, and she helps me out when I need backup. Since I'm
not the world's best bounty hunter, and Lula isn't the world's best backup, it's more
often than not like the amateur-hour version of The Best of Cops Bloopers.
"Are those chocolate doughnuts?" Lula asked. "Connie and me were
just thinking we needed some chocolate doughnuts, weren't we, Connie?"
Connie Rosolli is Vinnie's office manager. She was at her desk, in the middle
of the room, examining her mustache in a mirror. "I'm thinking of having
more electrolysis," she said. "What do you think?"
"I think it's a good thing," Lula told her, helping herself to a
doughnut. "Because you're starting to look like Groucho Marx, again."
I sipped my coffee and fingered through some files Connie had on her
desk. "Anything new come in?"
The door to Vinnie's inner office slammed open, and Vinnie stuck his head
out. "Fuckin' A, we got something new ... and it's all yours."
Lula screwed her mouth up to the side. And Connie did a nose wrinkle.
I had a bad feeling in my stomach. Usually I had to beg for jobs and here
Vinnie was, having saved something for me. "What's going on?" I
asked.
"It's Ranger," Connie said. "He's in the wind. Won't
respond to his pager."
"The schmuck didn't show up for his court date yesterday," Vinnie
said. "He's FTA."
FTA is bounty-hunter-speak for "failure to appear". Usually I'm happy
to hear someone has failed to appear, because it means I get to earn money by coaxing them
back into the system. In this case, there was no money to be had, because if
Ranger didn't want to be found, he wasn't going to be found. End of discussion.
Ranger is a bounty hunter, like me. Only Ranger is good. He's close
to my age, give or take a few years, he's Cuban-American, and I'm pretty sure he only
kills bad guys. Two weeks ago some idiot rookie cop arrested Ranger on carrying
concealed without a license. Every other cop in Trenton knows Ranger and knows
he carries concealed and they're perfectly happy to have it that way. But no
one told the new guy. So Ranger was busted and scheduled to go before the judge
yesterday for a slap on the wrist. In the meantime, Vinnie sprung Ranger with a
nice chunk of money, and now Vinnie was feeling lonely, high off the ground, out there on
a limb all by himself. First Carol. Now Ranger. Not a
good way to start a Tuesday.
"There's something wrong with this picture," I said. It made my heart
feel leaden in my chest, because there were people out there who wouldn't mind seeing
Ranger disappear forever. And his disappearance would make a very large hole in
my life.
"It's not like Ranger to ignore his court date, or to ignore his page."
Lula and Connie exchanged glances.
"You know that big fire they had downtown on Sunday?" Connie
said. "Turns out the building is owned by Alexander Ramos."
Alexander Ramos deals guns, regulating the flow of black market arms from his summer
compound on the Jersey shore and his winter fortress in Athens. Two of his
three adult sons live in the United States, one in Santa Barbara, the other in Hunterdon
County. The third son lives in Rio. None of this is privileged
information. The Ramos family has made the cover of Newsweek, four
times. People have speculated for years that Ranger has ties to Ramos, but the
exact nature of those ties has always been unknown. Ranger is a master of
keeping things unknown.
"And?" I asked.
"And when they could finally go through the building yesterday they found Ramos'
youngest son, Homer, barbecued in a third floor office. Besides being toasted, he also had
a large bullet hole in his head."
"And?"
"And Ranger's wanted for questioning. The police were here just a few
minutes ago, looking for him."
"Why do they want Ranger?"
Connie did a palms-up.
"Anyway, he's skipped," Vinnie said, "and you're gonna bring him in."
My voice involuntarily rose an octave. "What, are you crazy? I'm not going
after Ranger!"
"That's the beauty of it," Vinnie said. "You don't have to go after
him. He'll come to you. He's got a thing for you."
"No! No way. Forget it. I'm not going after
Ranger!" I told Vinnie.
"Fine," Vinnie said, "you don't want the job, I'll put Joyce on it."
Joyce Barnhardt is my archenemy. Ordinarily, I'd eat dirt before I'd give
anything up to Joyce. In this case, Joyce could take it. Let her
spend her time spinning her wheels, looking for the invisible man.
"So what else have you got?" I asked Connie.
"Two minors and a real stinker." She passed three folders over to
me. "Since Ranger isn't available I'm going to have to give the stinker to
you."
I flipped the top file open. Morris Munson. Arrested for vehicular
manslaughter. "Could be worse," I said. "Could be a
homicidal rapist."
"You didn't read down far enough," Connie said. "After this guy
ran over the victim, who just happened to be his ex-wife, he beat her with a tire iron,
raped her, and tried to set her on fire. He was charged with vehicular
manslaughter because according to the M.E. she was already dead when he took the tire iron
to her. He had her soaked in gasoline and was trying to get his Bic to work
when a blue-and-white happened to drive by."
Little black dots danced in front of my eyes. I sat down hard on the
fake-leather couch and put my head between my legs.
"You okay?" Lula asked.
"Probably it's just low blood sugar," I said. Probably it's my job.
"It could be worse," Connie said. "It says here he wasn't
armed. Just bring your gun along, and I'm sure you'll be fine."
"I can't believe they let him out on bail!"
"Go figure," Connie said. "Guess they didn't have any more room
at the inn."
I looked up at Vinnie who was still standing in the doorway to his private
office. "You wrote bail on this maniac?"
"Hey, I'm not a judge. I'm a businessman. He didn't have any
priors," Vinnie said. "And he has a good job working at the button
factory. Homeowner."
"And now he's gone."
"Didn't show up for his court date," Connie said. "I called the
button factory, and they said last they saw him was Wednesday."
"Have they heard from him at all? Did he call in sick?"
"No. Nothing. I called his home number and got his
machine."
I glanced at the other two files. Lenny Dale, missing in action, charged with
domestic violence. And Walter Moon Man Dunphy, wanted for drunk and disorderly
and urinating in a public place.
I tucked the three folders into my shoulder bag and stood. "Page me if you
hear anything on Ranger."
"Last chance," Vinnie said. "I swear I'll give his file to
Joyce."
I took a doughnut from the box, gave the box over to Lula, and left. It was
March and the snowstorm was having a hard time working itself up into anything
serious. There was some slush on the street, and a layer of ice had accumulated
on my windshield and my passenger-side windows. There was a large blurry object
behind the window. I squinted through the ice. The blurry object was
Joe Morelli.
Most women would have an orgasm on the spot to find Morelli sitting in their
car. He had that effect. I'd known Morelli for most of my life, and
I almost never had an on-the-spot orgasm, anymore. I needed at least four
minutes.
He was wearing boots and jeans and a black fleece jacket. The tails of a red
plaid flannel shirt hung under the jacket. Under the flannel shirt he wore a
black T-shirt and a .40 caliber Glock. His eyes were the color of aged whiskey
and his body was a testament to good Italian genes and hard work at the gym. He
had a reputation for living fast, and the reputation was well deserved but
dated. Morelli focused his energy on his job now.
I slid behind the wheel, turned the key in the ignition and cranked up the
defroster. I was driving a six-year-old blue Honda Civic that was perfectly
good transportation but didn't enhance my fantasy life. Hard to be Xena,
Warrior Princess in a six-year-old Civic.
"So," I said to Morelli, "what's up?"
"You going after Ranger?"
"Nope. Not me. No siree. No way."
He raised his eyebrows.
"I'm not magic," I said. Sending me after Ranger would be like
sending the chicken out to hunt down the fox.
Morelli was slouched against the door. "I need to talk to him."
"Are you investigating the fire?"
"No. This is something else."
"Something else that's related to the fire? Like the hole in Homer Ramos' head?"
Morelli grinned. "You ask a lot of questions."
"Yeah, but I'm not getting any answers. Why isn't Ranger
answering his page? What's his involvement here?"
"He had a late-night meeting with Ramos. They were caught on a lobby
security camera. The building is locked up at night, but Ramos had a
key. He arrived first, waited ten minutes for Ranger, then opened the door for
him. The two of them crossed the lobby and took the elevator to the third
floor. Thirty-five minutes later Ranger left alone. And ten minutes
that, the fire alarm went off. Forty-eight hours worth of tape has been run,
and according to the tape no one else was in the building with Ranger and Ramos."
"Ten minutes is a long time. Give him three more to ride the elevator or
take the stairs. Why didn't the alarm go off sooner, if Ranger started the
fire?"
"No smoke detector in the office where Ramos was found. The door was
closed, and the smoke detector was in the hall."
"Ranger isn't stupid. He wouldn't let himself get caught on videotape if
he was going to kill someone."
"It was a hidden camera." Morelli eyed my
doughnut. "You going to eat that?"
I broke the doughnut in half and gave him a piece. I popped the other into my
mouth. "Was an accelerant used?"
"Small amount of lighter fluid."
"You think Ranger did it?"
"Hard to say with Ranger."
"Connie said Ramos was shot."
"Nine millimeter."
"So you think Ranger is hiding from the police?"
"Allen Barnes is the primary on the homicide investigation. Everything
he's got so far leads to Ranger. If he brought Ranger in for questioning, he
could probably hold him for a while based on priors, like the carrying
charge. No matter how you look at it, sitting in a cell isn't in Ranger's best
interest right now. And if Barnes has Ranger nailed as his number one suspect,
there's a good chance Alexander Ramos has reached the same conclusion. If Ramos
thought Ranger blew Homer away, Ramos wouldn't wait for justice to be served by the
court."
The doughnut was sitting in a big lump in my throat. "Or maybe Ramos has
already gotten to Ranger."
"That's a possibility, too."
Shit. Ranger is a mercenary with a strong code of ethics that doesn't
necessarily always correspond to current popular thinking. He came on board as
my mentor when I first started working for Vinnie, and the relationship has evolved to
include friendship, which is limited by Ranger's lone-wolf lifestyle and my desire for
survival. And, truth is, there's been a growing sexual attraction between us,
which scares the hell out of me. So my feelings for Ranger were complicated to
begin with, and now I added a sense of doom to the list of unwanted
emotions. Morelli's pager beeped. He looked at the read-out and
sighed. "I have to go. If you run across Ranger, pass my
message on to him. We really need to talk."
"It'll cost you."
"Dinner?'
"Fried chicken," I said. "Extra greasy."
I watched him angle out of the car and cross the street. I enjoyed the view
until he was out of sight, and then I turned my attention back to the files. I
knew Moon Man Dunphy. I'd gone to school with him. No problem there. I just had to go pry
him away from his television set.
Lenny Dale lived in an apartment complex on Grand Avenue and had listed his age as
eighty-two. Big groan on this one. There is no good way to apprehend an
eighty-two-year-old man. No matter how you cut it, you look and feel like a creep.
Morris Munson's file was left to read, but I didn't want to go there. Best to
procrastinate and hope Ranger came forward.
I decided to go after Dale first. He was only about a quarter mile from Vinnie's office. I
needed to make a U-turn on Hamilton, but the car was having none of it. The car was
heading for center city and the burned-out building.
Okay, so I'm nosy. I wanted to see the crime scene. And I guess I wanted to have a psychic
moment. I wanted to stand in front of the building and have a Ranger revelation.
I crossed the railroad tracks and inched my way along in the morning traffic. The building
was at the corner of Adams and Third. It was redbrick and four stories high, probably
about fifty years old. I parked on the opposite side of the street, got out of my car, and
stared at the fire-blackened windows, some of which were boarded over. Yellow crime-scene
tape stretched the width of the building, held in place by sawhorses strategically
positioned on the sidewalk to prevent snoops like me from getting too close. Not that I'd
let a detail like crime-scene tape stop me from taking a peek.
I crossed the street and ducked under the tape. I tried the double glass door, but found
it locked. Inside, the lobby seemed relatively unscathed. Lots of grimy water and
smoke-smudged walls, but no visible fire damage.
I turned and looked at the surrounding buildings. Office buildings, stores, a deli-style
restaurant on the corner.
Hey Ranger, are you out there?
Nothing. No psychic moment.
I ran back to the car, locked myself in, and hauled out my cell phone. I dialed Ranger's
number and waited through two rings before his answering machine picked up. My message was
brief: "Are you okay?"
I disconnected and sat there for a few minutes, feeling creepy and hollow-stomached. I
didn't want Ranger to be dead. And I didn't want him to have killed Homer Ramos. Not that
I cared a fig about Ramos, but whoever killed him would pay, one way or another.
Finally I put the car in gear and drove away. A half-hour later I was standing
in front of Lenny Dale's door, and apparently the Dale's were at it again because there
was a lot of shouting going on inside the apartment. I shifted foot to foot in the
third-floor hall, waiting for a lull in the racket. When it came, I knocked. This led to
another shouting match over who was going to get the door.
I knocked again. The door was flung open, and an old man stuck his head out at me.
"Yeah?"
"Lenny Dale?"
"You're looking at him, sis."
He was mostly nose. The rest of his face had shrunk away from that eagle's beak, his bald
dome was dotted with liver spots, and his ears were oversized on his mummified head. The
woman behind him was gray-haired and doughy, with tree-trunk legs stuffed into Garfield
the Cat bedroom slippers.
"What's she want?" the woman yelled. "What's she want?"
"If you'd shut up I'd find out!" he yelled back. "Yammer, yammer, yammer.
That's all you do."
"I'll give you yammer, yammer," she said. And she smacked him on top of his
shiny skull.
Dale wheeled around and clocked her square on the side of her head.
"Hey!" I said. "Stop that!"
"I'll give you one, too," Dale said, jumping at me, fist raised.
I put my hand out to ward him off, and he stood statue still for a moment, frozen in the
raised-fist position. His mouth opened, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he
fell over stiff as a board and crashed to the floor.
I knelt beside him. "Mr. Dale?"
His wife toed him with Garfield. "Hunh," she said. "Guess he had another
one of them heart attacks."
I put my hand to his neck and couldn't find a pulse.
"Oh jeez," I said.
"Is he dead?"
"Well, I'm no expert ... "
"He looks dead to me."
"Call 911 and I'll try CPR." Actually I didn't know CPR, but I'd seen it done on
television, and I was willing to give it a shot.
"Honey," Mrs. Dale said, "you bring that man back to life and I'll hit you
with the meat mallet until your head looks like a veal patty." She bent
over her husband. "Anyway, look at him. He's dead as a doorknob. A body couldn't get
any deader."
I was afraid she was right. Mr. Dale didn't look good.
An elderly woman came to the open door. "What's happening? Lenny have another one of
them heart attacks?" She turned and yelled down the hall. "Roger,
call 911. Lenny had another heart attack."
Within seconds the room was filled with neighbors, commenting on Lenny's condition and
asking questions. How did it happen? And was it fast? And did Mrs. Dale want a turkey
noodle casserole for the wake?
Sure, Mrs. Dale said, a casserole would be nice. And she wondered if Tootie Greenberg
could make one of those poppyseed cakes like she did for Moses Schultz.
The EMS unit arrived, looked at Lenny, and agreed with the general consensus. Lenny Dale
was as dead as a doorknob.
I quietly slipped out of the apartment and did a fast shuffle to the elevator. It wasn't
even noon and already my day seemed too long and cluttered with dead people. I called
Vinnie when I reached the lobby.
"Listen," I said, "I found Dale, but he's dead."
"How long's he been like that?"
"About twenty minutes."
"Were there any witnesses?"
"His wife."
"Shit," Vinnie said, "it was self-defense, right?"
"I didn't kill him!"
"Are you sure?"
"Well, it was a heart attack, and I guess I might have contributed a little ...
"
"Where is he now?"
"He's in his apartment. The EMS guys are there but there's nothing they can do. He's
definitely dead."
"Christ, couldn't you have given him a heart attack after you got him to the police
station? This is gonna be a big pain in the ass. You wouldn't believe the paperwork on
this kind of thing. I tell you what, see if you can get the EMS boys to drive Dale over to
the courthouse."
I felt my mouth drop open.
"Yeah, this'll work," Vinnie said. "Just get one of the guys at the desk to
come out and take a look. Then he can give you a body receipt ... "
"I'm not dragging some poor dead man off to the municipal building!"
"What's the big deal? You think he's in a rush to get embalmed? Tell yourself you're
doing something nice for him --you know, like a last ride."
Ugh. I disconnected. Should have kept the whole box of doughnuts for myself. This was
shaping up to be an eight-doughnut day. I looked at the little green diode blinking on my
cell phone. Come on, Ranger, I thought.
Excerpted from HOT SIX (c) Copyright 2000 by Janet Evanovich. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved.
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