Hard Eight
Authors: Janet Evanovich
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Humour
HARD
EIGHT
Also by Janet Evanovich
One for the Money
Two for the Dough
Three to Get Deadly
Four to Score
High Five
Hot Six
Seven Up
EIGHT
_____
Janet Evanovich
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
HARD EIGHT
. Copyright © 2002 by Evanovich, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
ISBN 0-312-26585-9
First Edition: June 2002
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Here’s to the great teams of the world:
Betty and Veronica, Stephanie and Lula, Ralph and Alice,
and me and Jennifer Enderlin, my St. Martin’s editor.
Thanks Jen . . . you’re the greatest.
Thanks to Ree Mancini
for suggesting the title for this book.
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time rolling on the ground with men who think a stiffy represents personal growth. The rolling around has nothing to do with my sex life. The rolling around is what happens when a bust goes crapola and there’s a last ditch effort to hog-tie a big, dumb bad guy possessing a congenitally defective frontal lobe.
My name is Stephanie Plum, and I’m in the fugitive apprehension business . . . bond enforcement, to be exact, working for my cousin Vincent Plum. It wouldn’t be such a bad job except the direct result of bond enforcement is usually incarceration—and fugitives tend to not like this. Go figure. To encourage fugitive cooperation on the way back to the pokey I usually persuade the guys I capture to wear handcuffs and leg shackles. This works pretty good most of the time. And, if done right, cuts back on the rolling around on the ground stuff.
Unfortunately, today wasn’t most of the time. Martin Paulson, weighing in at 297 pounds and standing five feet, eight inches tall, was arrested for credit card fraud and
for being a genuinely obnoxious person. He failed to show for his court appearance last week, and this put Martin on my Most Wanted List. Since Martin is not too bright, he hadn’t been too hard to find. Martin had, in fact, been at home engaged in what he does best . . . stealing merchandise off the Internet. I’d managed to get Martin into cuffs and leg shackles and into my car. I’d even managed to drive Martin to the police station on North Clinton Avenue. Unfortunately, when I attempted to get Martin
out
of my car he tipped over and was now rolling around on his belly, trussed up like a Christmas goose, unable to right himself.
We were in the parking lot adjacent to the municipal building. The back door leading to the docket lieutenant was less than fifty feet away. I could call for help, but I’d be the brunt of cop humor for days. I could unlock the cuffs or ankle shackles, but I didn’t trust Paulson. He was royally pissed off, red-faced and swearing, making obscene threats and horrifying animal sounds.
I was standing there, watching Paulson struggle, wondering what the hell I was going to do, because anything short of a forklift wasn’t going to get Paulson up off the pavement. And just then, Joe Juniak pulled into the lot. Juniak is a former police chief and is now mayor of Trenton. He’s a bunch of years older than me and about a foot taller. Juniak’s second cousin, Ziggy, is married to my cousin-in-law Gloria Jean. So we’re sort of family . . . in a remote way.
The driver’s side window slid down, and Juniak grinned at me, cutting his eyes to Paulson. “Is he yours?”
“Yep.”
“He’s illegally parked. His ass is over the white line.”
I toed Paulson, causing him to start rocking again. “He’s stuck.”
Juniak got out of his car and hauled Paulson up by his armpits. “You don’t mind if I embellish this story when I spread it all over town, do you?”
“I do mind! Remember, I voted for you,” I said. “And we’re almost related.”
“Not gonna help you, cutie. Cops live for stuff like this.”
“You’re not a cop anymore.”
“Once a cop, always a cop.”
Paulson and I watched Juniak get back into his car and drive away.
“I can’t walk in these things,” Paulson said, looking down at the shackles. “I’m gonna fall over again. I haven’t got a good sense of balance.”
“Have you ever heard the bounty hunter slogan, Bring ’em back—dead or alive?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Actually, bringing someone back dead is a big no-no, but this seemed like a good time to make an empty threat. It was late afternoon. It was spring. And I wanted to get on with my life. Spending another hour coaxing Paulson to walk across the parking lot wasn’t high on my list of favored things to do.
I wanted to be on a beach somewhere with the sun blistering my skin until I looked like a fried pork rind. Okay, truth is at this time of year that might have to be Cancún, and Cancún didn’t figure into my budget. Still, the point was, I didn’t want to be
here
in this stupid parking lot with Paulson.
“You probably don’t even have a gun,” Paulson said.
“Hey, give me a break. I haven’t got all day for this. I have other things to do.”
“Like what?”
“None of your business.”
“Hah! You haven’t got anything better to do.”
I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and black Caterpillar boots, and I had a real urge to kick him in the back of his leg with my size-seven CAT.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I promised my parents I’d be home for dinner at six.”
Paulson burst out laughing. “That’s pathetic. That’s fucking pathetic.” The laughter turned into a coughing fit. Paulson leaned forward, wobbled side to side, and fell over. I reached for him, but it was too late. He was back on his belly, doing his beached whale imitation.
My parents live in a narrow duplex in a chunk of Trenton called the Burg. If the Burg was a food, it would be pasta—penne rigate, ziti, fettuccine, spaghetti, and elbow macaroni, swimming in marinara, cheese sauce, or mayo. Good, dependable, all-occasion food that puts a smile on your face and fat on your butt. The Burg is a solid neighborhood where people buy houses and live in them until death kicks them out. Backyards are used to run a clothesline, store the garbage can, and give the dog a place to poop. No fancy backyard decks and gazebos for Burgers. Burgers sit on their small front porches and cement stoops. The better to see the world go by.
I rolled in just as my mother was pulling the roast chicken out of the oven. My father was already in his seat at the head of the table. He stared straight ahead, eyes
glazed, thoughts in limbo, knife and fork in hand. My sister, Valerie, who had recently moved back home after leaving her husband, was at work whipping potatoes in the kitchen. When we were kids Valerie was the perfect daughter. And I was the daughter who stepped in dog poo, sat on gum, and constantly fell off the garage roof in an attempt to fly. As a last ditch effort to preserve her marriage, Valerie had traded in her Italian-Hungarian genes and turned herself into Meg Ryan. The marriage failed, but the blonde Meg-shag persists.
Valerie’s kids were at the table with my dad. The nine-year-old, Angie, was sitting primly with her hands folded, resigned to enduring the meal, an almost perfect clone of Valerie at that age. The seven-year-old, Mary Alice, the kid from hell, had two sticks poked into her brown hair.
“What’s with the sticks?” I asked.
“They not sticks. They’re antlers. I’m a reindeer.”
This was a surprise because usually she’s a horse.
“How was your day?” Grandma asked me, setting a bowl of green beans on the table. “Did you shoot anybody? Did you capture any bad guys?”
Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents shortly after Grandpa Mazur took his fat clogged arteries to the all-you-can-eat buffet in the sky. Grandma’s in her midseventies and doesn’t look a day over ninety. Her body is aging, but her mind seems to be going in the opposite direction. She was wearing white tennis shoes and a lavender polyester warm-up suit. Her steel gray hair was cut short and permed to within an inch of its life. Her nails were painted lavender to match the suit.
“I didn’t shoot anybody today,” I said, “but I brought in a guy wanted for credit card fraud.”
There was a knock at the front door, and Mabel Markowitz stuck her head in and called, “Yoohoo.”
My parents live in a two-family duplex. They own the south half, and Mabel Markowitz owns the north half, the house divided by a common wall and years of disagreement over house paint. Out of necessity, Mabel’s made thrift a religious experience, getting by on Social Security and government-surplus peanut butter. Her husband, Izzy, was a good man but drank himself into an early grave. Mabel’s only daughter died of uterine cancer a year ago. The son-in-law died a month later in a car crash.
All forward progress stopped at the table, and everyone looked to the front door, because in all the years Mabel had lived next door, she’d never once
yoohooed
while we were eating.
“I hate to disturb your meal,” Mabel said. “I just wanted to ask Stephanie if she’d have a minute to stop over, later. I have a question about this bond business. It’s for a friend.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be over after dinner.” I imagined it would be a short conversation since everything I knew about bond could be said in two sentences.
Mabel left and Grandma leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I bet that’s a lot of hooey about wanting advice for a friend. I bet Mabels been busted.”
Everyone simultaneously rolled their eyes at Grandma.
“Okay then,” she said. “Maybe she wants a job. Maybe she wants to be a bounty hunter. You know how she’s always squeaking by.”
My father shoveled food into his mouth, keeping his head down. He reached for the potatoes and spooned seconds onto his plate. “Christ,” he mumbled.
“If there’s anyone in that family who would need a bail bond, it would be Mabel’s ex-grandson-in-law,” my mother said. “He’s mixed up with some bad people these days. Evelyn was smart to divorce him.”
“Yeah, and that divorce was real nasty,” Grandma said to me. “Almost as nasty as yours.”
“I set a high standard.”
“You were a pip,” Grandma said.
My mother did another eye roll. “It was a disgrace.”
Mabel Markowitz lives in a museum. She married in 1943 and still has her first table lamp, her first pot, her first chrome-and-Formica kitchen table. Her living room was newly wallpapered in 1957. The flowers have faded but the paste has held. The carpet is dark Oriental. The upholstered pieces sag slightly in the middle, imprinted with asses that have since moved on . . . either to God or Hamilton Township.
Certainly the furniture doesn’t bear the imprint of Mabel’s ass as Mabel is a walking skeleton who never sits. Mabel bakes and cleans and paces while she talks on the phone. Her eyes are bright, and she laughs easily, slapping her thigh, wiping her hands on her apron. Her hair is thin and gray, cut short and curled. Her face is powdered first thing in the morning to a chalky white. Her lipstick is pink and applied hourly, feathering out into the deep crevices that line her mouth.
“Stephanie,” she said, “how nice to see you. Come in. I have a coffee cake.”
Mrs. Markowitz
always
has a coffee cake. That’s the
way it is in the Burg. Windows are clean, cars are big, and there’s always a coffee cake.
I took a seat at the kitchen table. “The truth is, I don’t know very much about bond. My cousin Vinnie is the bond expert.”
“It’s not so much about bond,” Mabel said. “It’s more about finding someone. And I fibbed about it being for a friend. I was embarrassed. I just don’t know how to even begin telling you this.”
Mabel’s eyes filled with tears. She cut a piece of coffee cake and shoved it into her mouth. Angry. Mabel wasn’t the sort of woman to comfortably fall victim to emotion. She washed the coffee cake down with coffee that was strong enough to dissolve a spoon if you let it sit in the cup too long.
Never
accept coffee from Mrs. Markowitz.