Hard Eight (29 page)

“You were right about the bad feeling,” I said, looking into the bag. “There are a pair of pants in here that could only belong to Paulson. Plus a couple shirts. Oh crap,
there’s a box all wrapped up in happy birthday kid’s wrapping paper.”

“My suggestion is you throw that bag in the Dumpster, and you go wash your hands,” Lula said.

“I can’t do that. The guy just broke his leg. And there’s a kid’s birthday present in here.”

“No big deal,” Lula said. “He can go onto the Internet and steal some more stuff and get another present.”

“This is my fault,” I said. “I took Paulson’s bag. I need to get it back to him.”

There are several hospitals in the Trenton area. If Paulson was taken to St. Francis, I could walk up the street and give him his bag before he was discharged. And there was a good chance Paulson was at St. Francis because it was the closest hospital to his home.

I called the switchboard and had them check with ER. I was told Paulson was indeed in ER, and they expected him to be there a while longer.

I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Paulson, but it was a nice spring day, and it felt good to be outside. I decided I’d walk to the hospital, and then I’d walk to my parents’ and mooch dinner and say hello to Rex. I had my new bag over my shoulder, and I was feeling confident because my gun was in my bag. Plus new lip gloss. Am I a professional, or what?

I swung along Hamilton for a couple blocks and then cut off just before the hospital’s main entrance and took the side street to the emergency entrance. I found the nurse in charge and asked her to give the bag to Paulson.

So now I was off the hook, the bag was no longer my responsibility. I’d gone the extra mile to get it back to
Paulson, and I left the hospital feeling all elated with my own goodness.

My parents lived behind the hospital, in the heart of the Burg. I walked past the parking garage and paused at the intersection. It was midafternoon, and there were few cars on the roads. Schools were still in session. Restaurants were empty.

A lone car rolled down the street and paused at the stop sign. A car was parked at the curb to my left. I heard a foot scrape against gravel. I turned my head at the sound. And the rabbit popped up from behind the parked car. He was fully suited this time.

“
Boo!
” he said.

I gave an involuntary shriek. He’d caught me by surprise. I shoved my hand into my bag in search of my gun, but a second person was suddenly in front of me, grabbing at my shoulder strap. It was the guy in the Clinton mask. If I could have gotten to my gun, I would gladly have shot them. And if it had been a single man, I might have been able to get to my gun. As it was, I was overpowered.

I went down kicking and screaming and clawing with both men on top of me. The streets were deserted, but I was making a lot of noise and there were houses nearby. If I yelled loud enough and long enough I knew I’d be heard. The car in the intersection wheeled around and rolled to a stop inches away from us.

The rabbit opened the back door and tried to drag me into the car. I was spread-eagle in the car door opening, hanging on with my fingernails, screaming my head off. The Clinton mask guy tried to grab my legs, and when he came in close I kicked out and caught him under the chin
with my CAT. The guy staggered backward and keeled over.
Crash!
Flat on his back on the sidewalk.

The driver was out of the car now. He was wearing a Richard Nixon mask, and I was pretty sure I recognized the build. I was pretty sure it was Darrow. I wriggled away from the rabbit. Hard to hold onto things when you’re wearing a rabbit suit with rabbit paws. I tripped on the curb and went down on one knee. I scrambled up and took off, running for all I was worth. The rabbit ran after me.

There was a car in the intersection, and I streaked past it yelling. My voice felt hoarse, and I was probably croaking more than yelling. The knee was torn out of my jeans, my arm was scratched and bleeding, and my hair was in my face, wild and tangled from rolling on the ground with the rabbit. I barely glanced at the car, noting only that it was silver. I could hear the rabbit behind me. My lungs were burning, and I knew I couldn’t outrun him. I was too scared to think ahead. I was blindly running down the street.

I heard the screech of wheels and a car motor getting gunned. Darrow, I thought. Coming to get me. I turned to look, and I saw it wasn’t Darrow behind me. It was the silver car that had been in the intersection. It was a Buick LeSabre. And my mother was at the wheel. She ran flat-out into the rabbit. The rabbit did a flip off the car in an explosion of fake fur and landed in a crumpled heap at the side of the road. The Darrow-driven car slid to a stop beside the rabbit. Darrow and the other rubber mask guy got out, scooped the rabbit up, dumped him into the backseat, and took off.

My mother was stopped a few feet from me. I limped to the car, she popped the lock, and I got in.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” my mother said. “You were being chased by Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and a rabbit.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good thing you came along when you did.”

“I ran over the rabbit,” she wailed. “I probably killed him.”

“He was a bad rabbit. He deserved to die.”

“He looked like the Easter bunny. I killed the Easter bunny,” she sobbed.

I pulled a tissue out of my mother’s purse and handed it to her. Then I looked through the purse more thoroughly. “You have any Valium in here? Any Klonapin or Ativan?”

My mother blew her nose and put the car in gear. “Do you have any idea what it’s like for a mother to drive down the street and see her daughter being chased by a rabbit? I don’t know why you can’t have a normal job. Like your sister.”

I rolled my eyes. My sister again. Saint Valerie.

“And she’s dating a nice man,” my mother said. “I think he has honorable intentions. And he’s a lawyer. He’ll make a good living someday.” My mother drove back to the intersection, so I could retrieve my shoulder bag. “And what about you,” she wanted to know. “Who are you dating?”

“Don’t ask,” I said. I wasn’t dating anyone. I was fornicating with Batman.

“I’m not sure what I should do next,” my mother said. “Do you think I should report this to the police? What
would I say to them? I mean, how would it sound? I was on my way to Giovichinni’s for lunch meat when I saw a rabbit chasing my daughter down the street, so I ran over him, but now he’s gone.”

“Remember when I was a kid, and we were all going to the movies, and Daddy hit the dog on Roebling? We got out and looked for the dog, but we couldn’t find him. He just ran off somewhere.”

“I felt terrible about that.”

“Yeah, but we went to the movies anyway. Maybe we should just go get the lunch meat.”

“It
was
a
rabbit
,” my mother said. “And he had no business being in the road.”

“Exactly.”

We drove to Giovichinni’s in silence and parked in front of the store. We both got out and looked at the front of the Buick. There was some rabbit fur stuck to the grille, but aside from that the LeSabre looked okay.

While my mother was talking to the butcher, I stole off and called Morelli on the outside pay phone. “This is a little awkward,” I said, “but my mother just ran over the rabbit.”

“Ran over?”

“As in
roadkill
. We’re not sure what to do about it.”

“Where are you?”

“Giovichinni’s, buying lunch meat.”

“And the rabbit?”

“Gone. He was with two other guys. They scooped him up off the road and drove away with him.”

There was a long silence on the phone. “I’m fucking speechless,” Morelli finally said.

An hour later, I heard Morelli’s truck pull up in front
of my parents’ house. He was in jeans and boots and a cotton crew with the sleeves pushed up. The crew was loose enough to hide the gun that was always at his waist.

I’d showered and fixed my hair, but I didn’t have fresh clothes to change into, so I was still in the torn, bloodstained jeans and dirt-smudged T-shirt. I had a ragged cut on my knee, a large scrape on my arm, and another on my cheek. I met Morelli on the porch and closed the door behind me. I didn’t want Grandma Mazur joining us.

Morelli gave me the long, slow lookover. “I could kiss that cut on your knee and make it all better.”

A skill acquired from years of playing doctor.

We sat side by side on the step, and I told him about the rabbit at the bakery and the attempted abduction at the intersection. “And I’m almost sure Darrow was driving,” I said.

“Do you want me to have him brought in?”

“No. I couldn’t positively ID him.”

Morelli’s face broke into a smile. “Your mother really ran the rabbit over?”

“She saw him chasing me. And she ran him over. Threw him about ten feet into the air.”

“She likes you.”

I nodded yes. And my eyes filled.

A car drove by. Two men.

“That could be them,” I said. “Two of Abruzzi’s guys. I try to be vigilant, but the cars are always different. And I only know Abruzzi and Darrow. The others have always had their faces covered. I have no good way of knowing when I’m being stalked. And it’s worse at night when all I can see are lights coming and going.”

“We’re working overtime, trying to find Evelyn, canvassing
the neighborhoods for witnesses, but so far there hasn’t been a break. Abruzzi’s got himself well protected.”

“Do you need to talk to my mom about the rabbit thing?”

“Were there any witnesses?”

“Only the two guys in the car.”

“We don’t usually write up accidents involving rabbits. This
was
a
rabbit
, right?”

Morelli declined dinner. I couldn’t blame him. Valerie had Kloughn home with her, and the table was standing room only.

“Isn’t he the cute one,” Grandma whispered to me in the kitchen. “Just like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

After dinner I got my dad to drive me home.

“What do you think of this clown?” he asked on the way. “He seems to be sweet on Valerie. Do you think there’s any chance this could turn into something?”

“He didn’t get up and leave when Grandma asked him if he was a virgin. I thought that was a good sign.”

“Yeah, he hung in there. He must really be desperate if he’s willing to get involved with this family. Has anyone told him the horse kid belongs to Valerie?”

I figured there wasn’t a problem with Mary Alice. Kloughn probably had empathy for a kid who was different. What Kloughn might not understand was Valerie in the fluffy pink slippers. Probably we should make sure he never sees the slippers.

It was almost nine when my dad dropped me off. The parking lot was filled and lights were on in all the apartment windows. The seniors were settled in for the night,
victims of failing night vision and television addiction. By nine o’clock they were happy campers, having self-medicated with tumblers of booze and
Diagnosis Murder
. At 10:00 they’d pop a little white pill and hurl themselves into hours of sleep apnea.

I approached my front door and decided I’d been hasty in rejecting Ranger’s security system. It would be nice to know if someone was waiting for me inside. I had my gun shoved into the waistband of my jeans. And I had a plan outlined in my head. My plan was to open the door, take the gun in hand, flip all the lights on, and do another embarrassing imitation of a television cop.

The kitchen was easy to cover. Nothing there. The living room and dining room were next. Again, easy to take in. The bathroom was more tense. I had the shower curtain to contend with. I needed to remember not to close the shower curtain. I ripped the shower curtain open and let out a whoosh of air. No one dead in my tub.

At first glance, my bedroom was fine. Unfortunately, I knew from past experience that the bedroom was filled with hiding places for all sorts of nasty things, like snakes. I looked under the bed and in all my drawers. I opened my closet door and let out another whoosh of air. Nobody here. I’d gone through the entire apartment and not found anyone, dead or alive. I could lock myself in and feel perfectly safe.

I was leaving the bedroom when it hit me. A visual memory of something odd. Something out of place. I returned to my closet and opened the door. And there it was, hanging with the rest of my clothes, smashed between my suede jacket and a denim shirt. The rabbit suit.

I snapped on rubber gloves, removed the rabbit suit
from my closet, and deposited it in the elevator. I didn’t want another full-scale crime-scene investigation assault on my apartment. I used the pay phone in the lobby to put in an anonymous call to the police about the suit in the elevator. And then I returned to my apartment and slid
Ghostbusters
into the DVD player.

Halfway through
Ghostbusters
I got a call from Morelli. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the rabbit suit in your elevator, would you?”

“Who me?”

“Off the record, out of morbid curiosity, where did you find it?”

“It was hanging in my closet.”

“Christ.”

“Do you suppose this means the rabbit no longer needs the suit?” I asked.

I dialed Ranger first thing the next morning. “About that security system,” I said.

“Are you still having visitors?”

“I found a rabbit suit in my closet last night.”

“Anybody in it?”

“Nope. Just the suit.”

“I’ll send Hector.”

“Hector scares the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ranger said. “But he hasn’t killed anybody in over a year now. And he’s gay. You’re probably safe.”

The next call was from Morelli. “I just got into work, and I heard an interesting piece of information,” Morelli said to me. “Do you know Leo Klug?”

“No.”

“He’s a butcher at Sal Carto’s Meat Market. Your mother probably gets her kielbasa there. Leo is about my height but heavier. He has a scar running the length of his face. Black hair.”

“Okay. I know who you mean. I was in there a couple weeks ago, picking up some sausage, and he waited on me.”