Fortune and Glory Read online

  “Just in time for lunch,” she said when I walked up to the house. “It’s Monday so that means leftover roast chicken. Your mother made it into chicken salad. And we have little rolls from the bakery.”

  Food is important in the Burg. It’s the glue that holds everything together. News travels through the bakery and the deli. Bread is blessed at the church. Charities are funded at bake sales. Families still sit at the table for dinner whether they like it or not. Adult children are bribed into visiting their parents with the promise of pineapple upside-down cake, lasagna, fried chicken and biscuits, Virginia baked ham. Cultural appropriation is a good thing here. Polish housewives share recipes with their Italian neighbors. Kielbasa, macaroni and red sauce, Cozido a Portuguesa, enchiladas, burgers, goulash, pot roast, pirogi, pad thai. We eat it all. The American melting pot is alive and healthy in Burg kitchens. Even death prompts an outpouring of food. Liquor flows at the after-burial reception and the buffet table holds a disturbing number of noodle casseroles.

  My father was in his chair in front of the television in the living room. He’s retired from the post office and drives a cab part-time, mostly taking a few regulars to and from the train station. He had a sandwich and a soda on a tray table, and he was tuned in to QVC. Grandma and I tiptoed around him and joined my mother in the kitchen.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” my mother said to me. “Your grandmother is talking crazy again about going off on a treasure hunt. You have to speak to her. She won’t listen to me.”

  At some point in time, my mother and grandmother reversed roles. My mother is now the voice of maturity and reason and my grandmother is the rebellious family member who is happy to throw caution to the wind and dye her hair flame red.

  “They aren’t crazy ideas,” Grandma said. “And that treasure is my legitimate inheritance. My honey, Jimmy, left it to me. He was Keeper of the La-Z-Boys’ Keys, and he left the two keys to me.”

  “He didn’t leave the keys to you,” my mother said. “He put them under his chair cushion, he died, one of his mob buddies stupidly gave you the chair, and by dumb luck we found the keys. And now I’m left with that horrible chair in my living room.”

  The chair was Jimmy’s ancient Mole Hole La-Z-Boy recliner. My father loved it.

  “Anyway, Stephanie promised she would help me find my treasure,” Grandma said.

  “Whatever the keys unlock belongs to the six men named on the keys. Not just to Jimmy,” my mother said. “He was only one of the six La-Z-Boys.”

  The two keys appeared to be identical and weren’t normal house keys. They were five inches long with a slim barrel handle. Double-sided teeth were cut into one end of the handle and a one-inch square was at the other end. The names of the six La-Z-Boy owners were engraved in the square. We’d checked with Google and determined that the keys most likely opened a safe.

  “I get his share of the treasure,” Grandma said. “It doesn’t matter we were only married for forty-five minutes before he had the heart attack. His will said I got just about everything. And on top of that there’s only three of the people named on the keys that are still alive, and two of them are going to jail for murder as soon as Stephanie can find them. The third is Benny the Skootch, and he’s not in good shape.”

  This was all true. Three of the La-Z-Boy owners had died, and their chairs remained unoccupied in the back room. Two of the remaining mob guys, Lou Salgusta and Charlie Shine, were wanted for the murder Grandma and I witnessed. Charlie Shine was also in violation of a bail bond Vinnie had written on him over a year ago.

  I hung my messenger bag on the back of a kitchen chair. I got a plate and a knife and fork and took my place at the small square table. Grandma sat next to me and my mom sat across from me.

  “I think the treasure is here in Jersey,” Grandma said, taking a roll. “I can’t see them putting it far away. I did some checking, and it’s not like any of the six men were world travelers. What we have to do now is find the safe that goes with the keys.”

  “That sort of safe usually has a combination lock that works in conjunction with the keys,” I said. “And we don’t know the combination.”

  “Yes, but you got Ranger,” Grandma said. “And Ranger knows how to open everything.”

  Ranger is the other man in my life. His given name is Carlos Manoso but he goes by Ranger. He’s former special forces, former bounty hunter, and on a few memorable occasions I’ve slept in his bed. He currently owns Rangeman, a high-end, under-the-radar security firm. And Grandma is right. Nothing stops Ranger when he wants entry.

  I made myself a chicken salad sandwich and took some potato chips from the bag on the table. “Do you have any ideas about where this safe might be located besides New Jersey?” I asked Grandma.

  “Not exactly,” Grandma said, “but I got a lot of feelers out. And I’m doing what you said about not telling anyone I found the keys. I’m just making it sound like I’m curious.”

  “This is stupid,” my mother said to Grandma. “You’re going to get kidnapped again. Salgusta and Shine are going to burn our house down. You need to get rid of the keys. If you don’t want to give them to Salgusta or Shine, you should give them to Benny. Maybe he’ll give you some of the treasure.”

  “No way,” Grandma said, “but I’ll hand some of the treasure over to Benny when I find it, being that he’s the one who was nice enough to give me Jimmy’s old chair. I was thinking Stephanie should talk to him and maybe he’ll spill the beans about the safe. He’s on a lot of meds. He might not know he’s giving up the secret.”

  I had to give credit to Grandma. She was a master schemer. And she could be right about Benny. He was in his golden years that weren’t entirely golden. He had heart issues and weight issues. It took two wise guys to get him out of his La-Z-Boy. He was on prescribed meds and I suspected recreational meds, not to mention he liked a good cigar and never passed up a glass of whiskey. The names on the keys were all geriatric or dead hit men who were mostly okay guys when they weren’t whacking someone. This was true about Benny.

  “I hear Benny is at home all depressed,” Grandma said. “He used to meet up with all his cronies at the Mole Hole, but now they’re either dead or hiding out. He’d probably be happy to have a visitor. I could even go with you. I’m real clever at worming information out of people.”

  My mother did an eye roll and made the sign of the cross.

  “I’ll stop in after lunch,” I said to Grandma. “I’ll go alone this time. If I can’t get anything out of him, we’ll bring you in next time.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Grandma said. “I have stuff to do anyway. I have follow-up phone calls to make. Jean Mulanowski said her nephew is a pit boss at one of the casinos in Atlantic City, and he told her that Jimmy was a regular. Her nephew is checking to see if Jimmy gave a local address. We’re thinking he might have kept a second apartment there.”

  Originally, I thought I’d be pretty good at finding a treasure. After all, my real job is finding people and dragging them back to jail. People, treasure, what’s the difference other than the payoff? Finding skips has me living paycheck to paycheck, if I’m lucky. My thinking is, the treasure has to be worth a lot more. Unfortunately, it’s also turning out to be more difficult to find.

  When I go after people, I already have a file full of clues assembled by the bond agency. Home addresses, work addresses, names of relatives, a picture. In the case of the treasure, I have to go find the clues before I can put it all together and actually go on the hunt. Then there’s the danger factor. Most of my skips are dangerous, but not usually at the same level as Shine and Salgusta. Grandma and I were lucky to survive our last encounter with them, and I was pretty certain the only thing keeping Grandma and me alive and untortured up to this point is that Shine and Salgusta can’t figure out how to snatch us. They used to have a bunch of wise guys working for them in the past, but not lately. And if they confided their plans to the wrong person, it would spread like wildfire through the
Burg. It would be told to the second cousin of a first niece of a friend’s brother who goes to church with his butcher’s son, who happens to be a cop. This could result in not only jail time but also no treasure for Shine and Salgusta. So, I’m thinking they’re being careful right now, but it’s only a matter of time before they come after us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I stopped at the bakery and got a box of freshly filled cannoli. If there’s one thing a cardiac patient craves its full-fat ricotta cheese in deep-fried pastry. Steak and fried onion rings would be a second. I drove to Benny’s house and parked at the curb. A purple Kia was in the driveway. Benny’s wife, Carla, had late-stage Parkinson’s, and I thought the Kia probably belonged to Carla’s caregiver.

  I rang the bell, a young woman answered, and I told her I’d come to talk to Benny.

  “Who’s there?” Benny yelled from another room.

  “Stephanie Plum,” I yelled back.

  “He’s watching television in the den,” the woman said. “Just walk straight back.”

  The den was a small room that had been tacked onto the living room. Benny was wedged into a club chair positioned in front of a large flat-screen TV. A leather recliner was next to him. A tiger-striped cat was curled up in the recliner.

  Benny smiled when he saw me, his eyes instantly focusing on the white bakery box.

  “Cannoli,” I said.

  “You’re gonna kill me,” he said. “Are they fresh filled?”

  “Of course.”

  “Hand them over,” he said. “You want one?”

  “No. I just had lunch at my mother’s house.” I looked at the cat. “I’m guessing the cat is in your chair.”

  Benny took a cannoli out of the box. “Yeah, he’s an old guy. I don’t like to disturb him when he’s sleeping.”

  “I heard you weren’t going to the Mole Hole anymore.”

  “None of the guys are there,” he said. “It’s not the same. And I hear it smells like dead rat roast.”

  This tells me that Benny is getting some real-time reporting from someone at the Mole Hole.

  “I followed Lou Salgusta into the tunnel and he tried to cremate me,” I said. “I managed to get away. The rats weren’t so lucky.”

  Benny finished off the first cannoli and took a second. “Trust me, if Lou really wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. He was probably just playing around.”

  “So, you know about the tunnel?”

  “We all knew about the tunnel. It’s been there for years. I used it a bunch of times. We had plans to make improvements but never got around to it.”

  “Is that where Jimmy hid the treasure?”

  “In the tunnel? No. There’s nothing down there but dirt.”

  “I don’t get why the keys are so important. If you know where the treasure is kept, why don’t you just get it some other way. A locksmith or something.”

  “I knew there was a catch to the cannoli,” Benny said. “You want to know about the treasure, right?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “The freaking thing is boobytrapped. You try to get at the treasure without using both keys, and it’ll look like Hiroshima. Stupid idea.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Where’d you get these? Italian bakery? I can always tell. Best cannoli in Jersey. It’s the ricotta they use.”

  “Hiroshima is big.”

  “No shit. Excuse my French. Nobody ever thought the keys would get lost. Jimmy was Keeper of the Keys, and he was supposed to always have the keys with him.” Benny ate half of another cannoli. “The keys weren’t on or in Jimmy, so that means your granny has them. It’s the only explanation. She was with him when he checked out. We looked everywhere. We x-rayed his corpse, he should rest in peace.”

  “This treasure must be worth a lot of money.”

  He finished the third cannoli. “Let’s just say I could retire real nice on it.”

  “And you know where it is?”

  “Not exactly. I got a clue. All six of us got a clue.”

  “Why such an elaborate scheme to protect the treasure?”

  Benny shrugged. “We can’t be trusted. We’re all killers. We got no sense of remorse. I mean, it’s not like any of us would kill for no reason. We got to have a good reason. Like it would have to be a job or something.”

  “Or a treasure.”

  There were three cannoli left in the box.

  “I’m going to eat just one more,” Benny said. “And yeah, like a treasure. It was put away as a kind of retirement fund. Mostly because it was too hot to fence when we got it. I’d tell you what my clue says but it wouldn’t do you no good since you don’t have the keys, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Besides, that would be too much information for just a box of cannoli. More information would have to be moving into the sexual favors area.”

  “Eeuuw,” I said. “Get real.”

  Benny scooped a glob of cannoli filling off his shirt. “I just said that for old times’ sake. I wanted to see how it would feel.”

  “So? How did it feel?”

  “Not as good as I remember. I was something in my day. You won’t tell my wife, will you?”

  “No. I won’t tell her. You should share the last cannoli with her.”

  “Maybe,” Benny said.

  “One last question. And I think I already know the answer. Obviously, someone knows the location of the treasure.”

  “The guy who stashed it away,” Benny said.

  “The Keeper of the Keys?”

  “Bingo. You got it. Jimmy. He was the guy we all trusted. He hid the treasure a bunch of years ago and gave us our clues. He even gave himself a clue. He got the last clue. I’m thinking it probably was the combination for the lock. You gotta stick the keys in and then you need the combination.”

  “And now he’s dead.”

  “Yeah. Dumb fuck. Who would have thought he’d go like that?”

  “When someone dies, what happens to his clue?”

  “The clues get put in the Mole Hole safe… if we can find them. It was like a ritual. We drank some whiskey. We talked about old times. We spit on the floor and put the clue in the Mole Hole safe.”

  “Why did you spit on the floor?”

  “Men do these things. Like I said, it was a ritual. Like retiring the dead SOB’s chair.” He looked at the two cannoli left in the box. “I might have to eat these.”

  “Three of the six treasure owners have died,” I said. “And I’m guessing you only have two clues in the safe. I’m guessing Jimmy’s clue is missing along with the keys.”

  “I’m not saying, but you could be right. Look, here’s the deal. The clues were more like a fun game. Truth is, if we wanted to find the treasure we could. We could just put all our clues together. And besides, some of the guys probably followed Jimmy and figured it out. I couldn’t be bothered. For that matter, we could have gotten the keys from Jimmy if we really wanted. All we had to do was kill him. None of us did any of this because the treasure was basically worthless hours after we got it. It was hotter than hot. The booby trap was set so the treasure would be destroyed if someone got stupid greedy before enough time had passed.”

  “Has enough time passed?” I asked.

  Benny shrugged. “Hard to say.”

  Leaving Benny with cannoli crumbs and powdered sugar on his shirt, I let myself out and drove to the office. As far as bail bonds offices go, this one’s okay, but it’s not going to get a spread in Architectural Digest. It’s basically a storefront. The front room has an ugly brown Naugahyde couch against one wall, and two uncomfortable plastic orange chairs are positioned in front of a large metal desk on the other side of the room. A bank of rarely used file cabinets line the back wall. There’s storage in the room behind the file cabinets, and a coffee station just inside the rear exit. My cousin Vinny hides out in a private office located behind the metal desk. Anyone wanting to beat the crap out of Vinnie has to get around the desk and through his locked door. Conni
e Rosolli, the office manager, sits behind the desk and keeps a loaded Glock nine in her bottom drawer. Vinnie is an excellent bail bondsman, but a slimeball in every other aspect of his life. Hence the security precautions.

  Connie looked up from her computer when I walked in. She’s a couple years older than me and a much better shot. She’d be a dead ringer for Dolly Parton if only Dolly had black hair and a mustache.

  “I have three Failure to Appear files for you,” Connie said to me. “One of them is a high bond. Vinnie is going to be all over you to bring him in.”

  If you get arrested and don’t want to sit in jail until the court decides your ultimate fate, you pay my cousin to put up a bond for your release. If you don’t show up for your court date and disappear off the face of the earth, Vinnie is out his bond money. If this happens too many times, not only is Vinnie in the red, but his father-in-law will amputate Vinnie’s penis.

  It’s my job to make sure the ifs never get to the penis removal point. I make my money by finding the failure-to-appear idiots for Vinnie and dragging them back to jail. Currently, I was in desperate need of money. Rent was due, and I was two days away from searching the bottom of my bag for spare change.

  Lula was on the couch. She’d changed her clothes and she’d added pink glitter to her eyelids for some afternoon glam.

  “I already went through the files,” she said. “We got a good one. George Potts. Remember him? He made national news a couple months ago when he got arrested for streaking down Hamilton Avenue and using the sidewalk in front of Tasty Pastry Bakery as a bathroom. He blamed it on bad weed and a gluten allergy.”

  I looked at the other two. Arnold Rugalowski, one of the fry cooks at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, was caught on camera putting fried roaches in his ex-wife’s bucket of Clucky Chicken. She was insisting it was attempted murder, and he said it was a hate crime. The third FTA was the high bond. Rodney Trotter had been giving silicone butt implants in the back of his fifteen-year-old VW bus. His slogan was we come to you and you get what you want. After numerous complaints and an almost death, he was arrested for practicing butt enhancement without a license. The court set a six-figure bond because it deemed Trotter a high risk for flight.