22 Tricky Twenty-Two (8 page)

“We’ll have a party
now.
”

He still had my shirt in his fist, and when he said
now
he jerked me off my feet and slammed me against the wall.

I yanked the stun gun out of my pocket, pressed the go button, and rammed the prongs against his neck.

His eyes lost focus for a split second but there was no further reaction.

“I don’t like that,” he said. “That’s not a nice thing to do to a man who invites you to a party.”

I kicked out at him, and he backhanded me across the face.

The front door opened, and Lula stuck her head in. “Everything going okay in here?”

“No!” I said. “Shoot him. Shoot him!”

Lula reached into her purse and pulled out the dildo.

“What the hell?” Blatzo said.

Lula threw the dildo at him, it bounced off his forehead, and he bent to pick it up.

“Run!” I said to Lula.

We bolted out of the house and across the street, and jumped into the Buick. My hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t turn the key in the ignition.

“He’s coming! He’s coming!” Lula yelled.

I got the engine to crank over, I slammed the gas pedal to the floor, and we motored off, leaving Blatzo standing in the middle of the road. I had a white-knuckle grip on the wheel, and my heart was skipping beats.

“I thought I was going to be cat food,” I said to Lula. “I hit him with the stun gun and he barely blinked.”

“I left my dildo there,” Lula said.

“No kidding. What was the deal with the dildo anyway? I told you to shoot him, not make love to him.”

“Mostly you don’t make love to a man with a dildo,” Lula said. “Maybe if you’re another man. I don’t know too much about that side of it.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him?”

“I meant to, but the dildo was on top, and I pulled it out by mistake. I guess it was just easy to wrap my hand around in a panic. You know how you go for something familiar.”

I looked down and saw that my shirt had splotches of blood on it.

“You got a cut on the corner of your mouth,” Lula said.

“I kicked him, and he smacked me.”

“I told you I had a feeling. I had a premonition of disaster.”

“It wouldn’t have been such a disaster if you’d pulled your gun out of your purse instead of your dildo.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen him up close. He’s not an attractive man,” Lula said. “And I think he’d been drinking.”

I DROVE OUT
of Blatzo’s neighborhood and stopped at the bonds office to clean up.

“Whoops,” Connie said. “What happened to you?”

“I found Ernest Blatzo.”

“And?”

“He hit me. Lula threw the dildo at him. We ran for our lives. Next time I’ll take Ranger.”

“I got video,” Lula said to Connie. “You gotta see this. Stephanie stepped on a snake.”

I went to the powder room and stared at myself in the mirror. My lip was puffy but not terrible. The cut wasn’t serious. Painful, but not needing stitches. A bruise was forming on the right side of my face. I washed the blood away and put a Band-Aid over the cut. Not much I could do with the shirt.

“I called the pizza in,” Connie said when I came out of the powder room. “Do you want me to cancel?”

I shook my head no. “I’m fine.” I looked over at Lula. “Let’s roll.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lula asked. “You got a eye twitch.”

“What kind of a person has no reaction to a stun gun?” I asked.

“He might be on drugs,” Lula said.

“You think?”

“Probably be best if I drive the Buick this time,” Lula said. “You look like you got road rage coming on.”

“I need a donut. I’ll be fine if I just get a donut or four or five.”

“Ordinarily I’d think that was a fine idea,” Lula said, “but you might not want all that sugar what with the pimple and the eye twitch.”

“I want a donut and I want it now!”
I yelled at Lula.

I looked over at Connie. “I’m out of control, right?”

“Yeah,” Connie said. “Pretty much. Maybe you want to dial it back.”

“I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

“You know what I do when I got stress?” Lula said. “I go shoe shopping.”

“I knit,” Connie said.

“Get out!” Lula said. “I never knew you knit stuff.”

“I don’t knit
stuff,
” Connie said. “I just knit.”

Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “You know what I do?”

“We all know what you do,” Lula said. “And we don’t want to hear about it.”

Vinnie pulled his head back into his office and slammed and locked the door.

“How about instead of a donut we bogart one of those pizzas,” Lula said. “That’ll fix you right up.”

I followed Lula out of the office and buckled myself into the Buick. “I want a donut,” I said. And a tear leaked out of my eye.

“Yeah, I could see that,” Lula said. “Don’t you worry, I’ll get you some donuts. And then we’ll wash them donuts down with pizza.”

Holy cow, I was a mess. I stepped on a snake, got hit in the face, ruined my shirt, and lost a boyfriend. I could deal with it all but the boyfriend. It added up to too much. Morelli had sucker punched me. I hadn’t seen it coming. I was trying to take it in stride, but truth is it was increasingly painful.

Lula drove to Tasty Pastry and parked at the curb.

“You go in and get whatever the hell you want,” Lula said. “This here’s emergency donuts.”

I returned ten minutes later with two boxes. “I got two of everything,” I said. “And four Boston Kremes. And I put in a job application.”

“A what?”

“They’re looking for a baker.”

“You can’t bake. You can’t boil an egg.”

“I could learn.”

“Are they willing to teach you?”

“They didn’t say. I thought I’d buy some books and watch the cooking channel.”

“You got a good job. Why do you want to be a baker?”

I ate half a Boston Kreme. “I don’t know. It just came over me. I used to work at Tasty Pastry when I was in high school. I was a counter girl.”

Lula ate a maple glazed while she drove. “Did you ever work at baking?”

“No, but I watched
Ratatouille
about a dozen times.”

“That was a cartoon about rats.”

“It was inspiring.”

Lula turned off Hamilton and headed north toward K Street.

“We need a plan for catching Billy Bacon,” Lula said. “We’re not gonna be able to bribe him with lunch when he’s got all that pizza on his doorstep.”

“I thought we’d walk in when he’s eating, and you can distract him while I cuff him.”

“I guess that’s a okay plan. And if that don’t work you can stun gun him, but you don’t want to use pepper spray around the pizza.”

I ate a second Boston Kreme.

“You feeling better?” Lula asked.

I nodded. “I just had a moment back there.”

We parked across the street from Billy Bacon’s apartment and waited for the pizza delivery. A little car with a Domino’s sign on it pulled to the curb in front of Billy’s building and a young guy got out with four pizza boxes. He looked over at us and gave us a thumbs-up.

He disappeared into the building and reappeared five minutes later.

Lula leaned out the driver’s side window toward him. “How many people in the apartment?”

“One,” he said. “An older woman in a nightgown.”

He got into his Domino’s car and drove off.

Twenty minutes later we still didn’t see any sign of Billy Bacon.

“He should have showed up by now,” I said to Lula. “I can’t imagine him going out of the neighborhood. This is the only entrance to the apartment building, right?”

“I never checked. I thought you checked.”

Crap.

Lula and I left Big Blue and crossed the street to the building. We climbed the three flights of stairs and listened at Billy’s apartment door.

“I can hear him,” Lula whispered. “He’s talking to his momma, and he’s eating my pizza.”

I knocked on the door and the talking stopped.

I knocked again and Eula told us to go away.

“You’re gonna have to kick the door in,” Lula said to me.

Kicking doors in is not a skill I’ve mastered. Ranger and Morelli are experts. Me, not at all.

“Not going to happen,” I said to Lula.

“I could shoot the lock off,” Lula said.

“No!”

“How about if we both run at it together and put our shoulder to it?”

I hammered on the door. “Open up. Bond enforcement.”

The door got yanked open and Billy Bacon rushed out and knocked Lula and me over like we were bowling pins. He ran past us and thundered down the stairs with a pizza box under his arm. Lula and I scrambled to our feet and took off after him.

I chased him out of the building and caught up with him a half block away. I grabbed the back of his shirt and hung on, but I couldn’t stop him.

“Incoming,” Lula yelled. “Outta my way.”

I released Billy Bacon, jumped to the side, and Lula threw herself at him, knocking him to the ground. He went down face-first with Lula on top of him. He was still holding the pizza box.

I snapped the cuffs on him, and Lula rolled off.

“I skinned my knee,” Billy Bacon said, sitting up. “Look at what you did. You tore a hole in my pants.”

“Is this here a whole pizza?” Lula asked him.

“Yeah. Ma and me didn’t get to it.”

Lula opened the box and looked inside. “I might need a piece.”

“I won it in a contest,” Billy said. “It was a major award.”

We hoisted Billy Bacon up to his feet and trundled him across the street to the Buick. We buckled him into the backseat, gave him the rest of the donuts, and Lula and I each took a piece of pizza.

“You’re going to get me out of jail again, aren’t you?” Billy asked us.

“As soon as we can,” I told him. “I’ll call Connie and tell her you want to be bonded out.”

“I can’t eat these here donuts with my hands behind my back,” Billy said.

I took a donut out of the box and crammed it into his mouth.

It was almost two o’clock when Lula and I got back to the office. I gave Connie the body receipt certifying that Billy Bacon Brown was in police custody, and Lula gave Connie the last two pieces of pizza.

“Are we going to spring Billy Bacon?” Lula asked.

“If the court sets bail,” Connie said. “And if he can come up with something as security. Vinnie was already downtown, so he said he’d look in on him.”

“He’s not such a bad person,” Lula said. “He’s just not smart.”

“Gotta go,” I said. “Things to do.”

“Like what?” Lula asked.

“Things,” I told her. “Email, laundry, thinking.”

“I’d help you out with all that,” Lula said, “but I gotta finish reading my
Star
magazine. I gotta see what’s happening with the Bieber.”

I left the office and chugged off in my Buick. I parked in my apartment building lot, took the stairs to the second floor, and stopped in front of my door. There was an FTD flower arrangement sitting there. I carted the flowers inside and read the card.

Happy Birthday. Sorry I couldn’t be here to celebrate it with you. Kenny.

First, it wasn’t my birthday. Second, I didn’t know anyone named Kenny who would be sending me flowers. Third, it was definitely my address on the card. Four, no return address for Kenny.

I could see getting weird mail at the office. I gave out business cards to all sorts of people. At one point Vinnie had my picture on a billboard. And there was the occasional newspaper story about me burning down a mortuary or creating chaos at a bingo game. It bothered me that someone sent flowers to my apartment, though, because I was careful about giving out my home address. Although, now that I thought about it, my apartment had been firebombed a couple times, so clearly it wasn’t impossible to find me. At least it was flowers this time and not a dildo.

I left the flowers on the kitchen counter and said hello to Rex. He was in his soup can and didn’t acknowledge me. Probably he’d had a tough night running on his wheel and was still exhausted. I knew how he felt. I didn’t have a lot of gas left in my tank, either.

I went to my computer and googled pastry schools. I’d fibbed to Lula about the email and laundry. I’d really wanted to come home and look into baking. I mean, how hard can it be? You follow a recipe, right? Chances of stepping on a snake and getting hit in the face were small in a bakery. The pay couldn’t possibly be any worse than what I’m making now. And I would wear a cool white pastry chef coat.

I searched around and found there were a couple programs at local junior colleges, and a bunch of online courses. Or I could go the do-it-yourself route and download some cake recipes. Sort of do a test-drive to see if I liked
baking
cakes as much as I liked
eating
cakes.

I found a recipe for chocolate layer cake that looked straightforward. I’d never made a cake on my own, but I’d watched my mom and Grandma Mazur make tons of cakes. I printed out the recipe and made a list of ingredients, including two cake pans.

I had plenty of time until Ranger was due to pick me up so I trekked out to the supermarket and got everything I needed to make a cake, plus a six-pack of beer, a bag of chips, and lunch meat for sandwiches.

“This is exciting,” I said to Rex, when I got back to my kitchen and lined my ingredients up on the counter. “This could be my dream job. This could be my life’s work. It’s possible that I was always meant to be a pastry chef and just never realized it before now.”

Rex was nosing through the litter on the bottom of his cage, looking for hidden food treasures. I dropped a single Frito corn chip into his cage and he was beside himself with happiness. This is why hamsters are better than boyfriends. It doesn’t take a lot to make a hamster happy.

I WAS WAITING
outside when Ranger drove up. I was wearing a black skirt, a stretchy red top, a white linen jacket, and black flats. The bruise on my cheek was green, black, and blue. I went with extra mascara to balance out the cheek color, and I substituted first-aid ointment for lip gloss.

“Babe,” Ranger said when I slipped into the Porsche.

It was more question than greeting.

“Ernest Blatzo didn’t feel like going back to jail,” I said.

“And?”

“And so, he didn’t go.”

“Would you like help?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll do it tomorrow morning,” Ranger said. “I don’t want to walk through his snake-infested yard at night.”

No kidding.

We parked in the lot and waited at the side entrance of the funeral home for Monica to arrive.

“Do you think she’s in any danger?” I asked Ranger.

“Without a motive for the two killings, it’s hard to say who’s in danger.”

The front doors hadn’t yet opened for mourners, but the parking lot was nearly full, and a large crowd was gathered on the porch, spilling down the stairs and onto the sidewalk in front of the building.

A black Rangeman SUV stopped in front of us and Monica Linken got out. The short skirt on her skin-tight fuchsia dress rode up high on her thigh, and her boobs almost jiggled out of the low scoop neck. She tugged her skirt down and leaned toward Ranger and me.

“I’m not wearing any underwear,” she said.

“You’re in good company,” I told her. “Neither is Ranger.”

This got a smile out of Ranger.

We took our places at the head of the casket, and Monica hauled out her electronic cigarette and powered up. The funeral home director asked her if she’d like a few moments alone with her husband, and Monica said she’d already had too many, thank you.

The double doors to slumber room number one opened, and people poured in. Grandma Mazur was at the front of the crush. She half ran the length of the room and was third in line to see the deceased. She would have been second but Myra Campbell elbowed her out of the way at the last minute.

“So sorry for your loss,” Grandma said to Monica. “My condolences.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Monica said.

Grandma leaned into the casket for a close look.

“What are you gonna do, kiss him?” Monica asked.

“I was trying to see where they cut him up when they took his brain out,” Grandma said.

Monica sucked in some fake smoke. “You’d have to unzip his pants for that one.”

Forty-five minutes later Monica was fidgeting and looking around.

“I need a drink,” Monica said.

“Water, coffee, tea?” I asked her.

“Vodka straight up. How long is this creep show going to last?”

“The viewings usually go to nine or ten o’clock,” I said.

“They don’t expect me to stay the whole time, do they?”

“It’s customary.”

“I don’t even know any of these people. Like that scary old lady in the first row. Who the hell is she?”

“That’s my grandmother.”

“Oh yeah, now I remember.”

Grandma looked at me and winked and patted her purse.

At 8:15 
P.M.
Monica announced that she was leaving. “Tell the undertaker guy to keep this thing going as long as he wants,” Monica said. “I’m going to slip out. It’s not like I’m essential here. This is Doug’s party, right?”

Morelli was standing at the back of the room a couple feet from the door. Our eyes met and I shrugged. The shrug said I had nothing. I hadn’t been able to talk to Monica.

I saw him take out his cellphone, and a moment later a text message buzzed on my phone.

How did you get the bruise and cut lip?
Morelli texted.

Ernest Blatzo,
I texted back.
I’m fine.

Even from this distance I could see a muscle clench in Morelli’s jaw. I expected it went hand in hand with acid reflux.

“Where are you going?” I asked Monica.

“I’m gonna find a bar that’s got lots of vodka.”

“I could go with you.”

“Really?”

“Sure. I like vodka. And you might need security.”

Not to mention I needed to snitch for Morelli.

“Babe,” Ranger said to me. “You working for a bonus?”

“I live to serve.”

“I’ll remind you of that when we drop her off and I take you home.”

Whoa. I got a rush that went from the pit of my stomach straight to my doodah. Best to ignore it, I told myself. Serving Ranger would come to no good. He was an amazing lover and friend but his journey was ultimately solitary. He had things in his past that were shaping his future. I didn’t know what they were but I knew they couldn’t be ignored.

We called the funeral director over and explained that Monica needed to leave.

“Is she sick?” he asked.

“Yes,” we said. “The emotional strain was just too much.”

He nodded. “This happens,” he said. “Unfortunately the deceased has no one else here. Who will greet the remaining people waiting to pay their condolences? Who will give last comfort to the deceased?”

“Grandma,” I said.

The funeral director looked alarmed. “Grandma? Surely you don’t mean Edna Mazur?”

“Yep,” I said. “Edna was very close to the family.”

“Oh dear,” he said. “She’s a nice lady, but I don’t think—”

I waved Grandma over to the casket.

“What’s up?” Grandma said.

“The widow needs to leave, and we thought since you were so close to the deceased you might be able to fill in.”

“Stand at the head of the casket?”

“Yes.”

“Hot damn. I’ll do a real good job.” She looked into the casket. “What was this guy’s name again?”

“Doug.”

“Don’t worry about a thing. Me and Doug are going to get along just fine.”

The funeral director bit into his lower lip, made the sign of the cross, and stepped back a couple paces.

Monica, Ranger, and I quietly slipped out the side door, and the Rangeman SUV pulled up.

“I don’t want to go in this,” Monica said. “I want the hot sports car.”

Ranger handed me the keys to his 911 Turbo. “Have fun.”

We buckled into the Porsche, and I turned the engine over.

“Anyplace special?” I asked her.

“Lotus.”

Lotus was known for being a big hook-up spot. I’d never been inside, but now that I didn’t have a boyfriend it seemed like something to investigate. The alternative was to allow my mother to fix me up with the butcher. I would prefer not to have this happen.

Lotus was on a side street in the center of the city. I took Hamilton to Broad and turned off Broad onto Merchant. I pulled into the small lot attached to Lotus and saw the Rangeman SUV cruise down Merchant and make a U-turn. Ranger was in protective mode.

“So tell me about your late husband’s friends,” I said to Monica. “I’m curious. Are you suspicious of any of them? Did he hang out with any gun enthusiasts?”

Monica freshened up her blood-red lipstick without benefit of mirror. This was something I’d never been able to accomplish.

“His friends were all boring. Nobody was interesting enough to have a gun. They talked about real estate and stocks and bonds, and rehashed college. Harry and Doug were fraternity brothers at Kiltman. They belonged to Zeta. Maybe Doug’s girlfriends had guns. I didn’t know any of his girlfriends.”

“He had girlfriends?”

“Yeah, thank God. Otherwise
I
would have had to fuck him. He thought I didn’t know he was bringing women into the house when I was away. Hell, if I’d had their address I’d have sent them all fruit baskets.”

Cripes, this was disturbing. These people were all horrible.

“How about businesses he might have visited? Anything gun-related?” I asked her.

Monica got out of the Porsche and tugged her dress down. When she tugged it down her boobs popped out.

“Honestly,” she said, pushing her boobs back into the dress. “Do I look like someone who would give a flying leap about his business?”

“Yes. The business brought money into the house.”

“There were no gun-related businesses that I knew about. What’s with the questioning?”

“Just curious.”

“Yeah, right. I almost believe that. Are we going to stand out here all night, or what? I need a drink.”

She wasn’t the only one who needed a drink. This day wasn’t going down as my all-time best. And on top of everything else that went wrong, I’d just flunked interrogation.

“Let’s do it,” I said. “Lead the way.”

The exterior of Lotus was typical of the many bars in Trenton and almost identical to the two other bars on Merchant Street. Redbrick exterior, oak door, small neon sign over the door spelling out “Lotus,” blacked-out windows. The interior looked like a bordello. Red walls, red upholstered banquettes, high-gloss black bar running the length of the room, high-gloss black trim on the banquettes, a bunch of high-top tables and chairs, fake candles on the tables. Flat-screens behind the bar tuned to sports stations. Lighting was dim to nonexistent. The banquettes and high tops were all in use. People were standing two deep at the bar.

“Hey, you,” Monica yelled at one of the bartenders. “My husband just died and I need a vodka.”

I held my fingers up indicating we needed
two
vodkas.

Two seats opened up after ten minutes and Monica elbowed her way in. We ordered sliders from the bar menu and two more vodkas.

“This is supposed to be the big hook-up place,” Monica said to me. “All I see are old losers. It’s like they bused these people in from Happy Meadows Rest Home. My asshole husband looks better than most of these men and my husband is
dead.
”

I had to admit I was surprised at the age of the crowd. Never having participated in the hook-up scene I’d always imagined a little more glamour.

“Can we have a serious discussion for just a moment?” I asked Monica. “Do you have reason to believe your life is in danger?”

“You mean other than my husband and his partner getting murdered?”

“Just because they were murdered doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a target.”

“Yeah, but how do I know?”

She had a point.

“I can’t even disappear,” Monica said. “I’m a person of interest. I have to stay in town. How crap-ass is that?”

She wolfed down two sliders and ordered another round of vodkas. I was still working on my second vodka.

“Cripes,” she said, looking at my vodka glass. “I’m drinking with a freaking amateur. Man up, for crying out loud.”

“I’m not that good at drinking,” I said.

Monica knocked back the third vodka. “Practice, practice, practice.”

Monica slid off her barstool a little after eleven o’clock. “I’m done,” she said. “Take me home.”

I’d managed to choke down three drinks and my world was out of focus. I was hoping Ranger was waiting in the lot because otherwise it was going to be an Uber night.

Monica and I marched arm in arm out of the bar and my wish came true. Ranger appeared at my side, and a Rangeman SUV drove up. Monica was trundled into the SUV, the door was closed, and the car disappeared into the night.

“I’m trashed,” I said to Ranger. “Take me home and put me to bed.”

“Babe.”