Smokin' Seventeen Read online

  “Ziggy?” I yelled. “It’s Stephanie Plum. I need to talk to you.”

  I heard a gasp and some cussing and someone moving. I stepped into the living room and saw Ziggy standing to one side of the couch, poised to run, looking unsure where to go. Lula was still hammering on the door.

  I went to the front door and pointed a finger at Ziggy. “Stay. Don’t move from that spot.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You need to go with me to reschedule your court date.”

  “I told you to come back at night. Or maybe I could chance it on a real cloudy day,” he added, as an afterthought.

  I went to the front door, slipped the deadbolt back, and before I could open the door, Lula gave it a shove and knocked me on my butt.

  “Oops,” Lula said, looking down at me. “I thought you were the vampire.”

  Ziggy sprang into action and streaked past us, heading for the stairs to the second floor.

  “Grab him,” I yelled to Lula. “He might be going for his teeth.”

  Lula did a flying lunge and caught Ziggy’s legs. They both went to the ground and rolled around with Lula holding tight and Ziggy squirming to get away.

  “Zap him!” Lula said. “Cuff him! Do something. This is like trying to hold on to a snake. He’s all wriggly.”

  I had my stun gun in hand, but I couldn’t get a clear shot. If I tagged Lula by mistake I’d be the one wrestling with Ziggy all by myself.

  “What’s he doing?” Lula shrieked. “Is he suckin’ on my neck? I feel someone suckin’ on my neck. Get him off me.”

  I pressed the stun gun prongs against Ziggy’s flailing arm and hit the go button. Ziggy squeaked and went inert.

  Lula hauled herself up off the floor and put her hand to her neck. “Do I got holes? Am I bleeding? Do I look like I’m turning into a vampire?”

  “No, no, and no,” I told her. “He doesn’t have his teeth in. He was just gumming you.”

  “That’s disgustin’,” Lula said. “I been gummed by a old vampire. I feel gross. My neck’s all wet. What’s on my neck?”

  I squinted over at Lula. “Looks like a hickey.”

  “Are you shitting me? This worthless bag of bones gave me a hickey?” Lula pulled a mirror out of her purse and checked her neck out. “I’m not happy,” Lula said. “First off I don’t know if I got vampire cooties from this. And second, how am I gonna explain a hickey to my date tonight?”

  I cuffed Ziggy and stood back. He was still on the floor, not moving.

  “We need to get him out to the car,” I said to Lula.

  “His eyes are sort of open, but he don’t look like he’s seeing a lot,” Lula said. “Give him a kick and see if he feels it.”

  I bent over Ziggy. “Hey!” I said. “Are you okay? Can you get up?”

  Ziggy’s hand twitched a little, and his mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “I haven’t got all day here,” Lula said. “I need to Google vampire bites, and then I need to get some makeup for my neck.” She grabbed Ziggy’s foot. “Get his other foot, and we’ll drag him out.”

  We dragged Ziggy across the room, and I opened the front door. The second the sunlight hit him, Ziggy started shrieking. It was a high-pitched, keening eeeeeeh of the glass-breaking variety.

  “Holy shit, holy crap, holy moley!” Lula said, dropping Ziggy’s foot, jumping away. “What the hell’s wrong with him?”

  I kicked the door closed, and Ziggy stopped screaming.

  “I almost got diarrhea,” Lula said. “That was horrible. I never heard anyone make a sound like that.”

  Ziggy’s eyes were narrowed and his breath hissed from between clenched gums. “No sun,” he said.

  “Okay, now I’m freakin’,” Lula said. “I don’t know what to do. On the one hand I’m thinkin’ we need to drag him into the sun and burn him up, and the world has one less vampire. But then on the other hand I don’t want to see him get all oozing and gnarly like in a horror movie. I hate them horror movies where people get crispy.”

  “So what’s the deal?” I asked Ziggy. “Are you a vampire?”

  Ziggy shrugged his shoulders. “I might be,” he said.

  “How about we wrap him in a quilt,” Lula said. “That way we won’t cook him.”

  “Is that going to work for you?” I asked Ziggy.

  “I guess. Just don’t leave any holes where the sun can get to me. Wrap me up real good. And would you mind going upstairs and getting me my teeth?”

  “Hell no,” Lula said. “We’re not getting you no teeth. You already gave me a hickey. That’s as far as I’m goin’ with this whole creepy vampire thing.”

  We wrapped Ziggy in the quilt from his bed, carried him to my car, and loaded him into the backseat. Ten minutes from the police station he started to thrash around in his quilt.

  “What’s going on back there?” I asked Ziggy.

  “I’m restless,” Ziggy said. “I got restless leg syndrome. And I’m hungry. I need some blood.”

  “Pull over,” Lula said to me. “I’m gettin’ out.”

  “For the love of Pete, he’s in a quilt, he’s toothless, and he’s handcuffed!” I said to Lula. “And besides, he’s not a vampire.”

  “How do you know he’s not a vampire?”

  “I don’t believe in vampires.”

  “Yeah, me either, but how can you be sure? And anyways, he freaks me out no matter what the heck he is.”

  SIX

  BY THE TIME we dropped Ziggy off at the police station and made a makeup run for hickey cover-up, it was almost noon.

  “Where are we going for lunch?” Lula wanted to know.

  “I thought I’d stop at Giovichinni’s.”

  Giovichinni’s Deli was on Hamilton, not far from the bonds office. It was a family enterprise, and it was second only to the funeral home for feeding the Burg gossip mill. It carried a full line of deli meats and cheeses, homemade coleslaw, potato salad, macaroni salad, and baked beans. It also had Italian specialty items, and it served as the local grocery with all the usual staples found in a convenience store.

  “I love Giovichinni’s,” Lula said. “I could get a roast beef sandwich with beans and potato salad. And they got the best pickles, too.”

  Five minutes later Lula and I were at the deli counter ordering sandwiches from Gina Giovichinni.

  Gina was the youngest of the three Giovichinni girls. She’s been married to Stanley Lorenzo for ten years, but everyone still calls her Gina Giovichinni.

  “I heard they found Lou Dugan,” Gina said to me. “Were you there when they dug him up?”

  “No, but I got there soon after.”

  “Me, too,” Lula said. “His hand was reachin’ up outta the grave. It was like he’d been buried alive.”

  Gina gasped. “Omigod. Is that true? Was he buried alive? Supposedly he was involved in some big deal that went bad.”

  “Must have gone real bad,” Lula said. “They planted him under the garbage cans.”

  “What kind of deal?” I asked Gina.

  “I don’t know. One of the girls who danced at the club was here getting an antipasto platter last week, and she said Lou was real nervous just before he disappeared, talking about losing a bunch of money, making travel plans.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  • • •

  Lula and I took our sandwiches back to my car, and I drove the short distance to the bonds office. Mooner’s bus was still parked at the end of the block, the medical examiner’s truck was still on the scene, a bunch of men huddled on the sidewalk, and a state crime scene van was parked on the sidewalk just beyond the men. The yellow crime scene tape blocked off the entire construction site, and two men wearing CSI jackets were working at the excavation area.

  “Life sure is strange,” Lula said. “One day everything is going along normal as can be, and then next thing you know your place of business is firebombed and Mr. Titty gets buried there.”
She thought about it for a couple beats. “I suppose for us that is normal.”

  A disturbing thought, and not far from the truth. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe it’s time to stop stun-gunning men who think they’re vampires, get married, and settle down.

  “I could learn to cook,” I said.

  “Sure you could,” Lula said. “You could cook the crap out of shit. What are you talkin’ about?”

  “It was just a thought that popped into my head.”

  “It should pop back out ’cause now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve seen you cook and it wasn’t pretty.”

  I parked behind Connie’s car, and Lula and I hauled our food into the RV. Connie was behind her computer at the dinette table, and Mooner was lounging on the couch, playing Donkey Kong on his Gameboy. It didn’t take a lot to entertain Mooner.

  “Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Connie. “I didn’t see his car.”

  “He went down to the station to re-bond Ziggy.”

  “Wow, that was fast.”

  “Yeah, Ziggy made his one phone call, and court’s in session, so Vinnie should be able to get Ziggy released right away.”

  The deal with a bail bond is that the court sets a dollar amount on freedom. For instance, if a guy is arrested and charged with a crime he then goes to court and the judge tells him either he can stay in jail or else he can pay a certain amount of money and go home until trial. He only gets the money back if he shows up for trial. We come in when the guy doesn’t have enough money to give to the court. We give the money to the court on his behalf, and charge the guy a percentage for the service. Good for us and bad for him. Even if he’s innocent he’s out our fee. If he skips out on his trial, I find him and drag him back into the system so we don’t lose our money to the court.

  “How’s Ziggy gonna get home?” Lula wanted to know. “He got that whole vampire thing going with the sunlight and all.”

  “I don’t know,” Connie said. “Not my problem.”

  I ate my ham and cheese sandwich and washed it down with a diet soda. Lula plowed through a Reuben, a tub of potato salad, and a tub of baked beans.

  “How do I look?” Lula asked. “Do I look like I’m getting to be a vampire? Because I don’t feel so good.”

  “You don’t feel good because you just ate a bucket of fried chicken, half a coffee cake, and a Reuben with over half a pound of meat on it. Anyone else would have to get their stomach pumped.”

  “I’m an emotional eater,” Lula said. “I had to settle my stomach on account of I had a upsetting morning.” Lula leaned forward and stared at me. “What’s on your forehead? Boy, that’s a mother of a pimple.”

  I felt my forehead. She was right. There was a big bump on it.

  “It wasn’t there when I got up this morning,” I said. “Are you sure it’s a pimple? It’s not a boil, is it?”

  Lula squinted. “Looks to me like a pimple, but what do I know.”

  Connie studied it. “I’d say it’s a pimple that has the potential to approach boil quality.”

  I pulled my compact out of my purse and looked at the pimple. Eek! I dabbed some powder on it.

  “You’re gonna need more than powder to cover that,” Lula said. “It’s like that volcano that exploded. Krakatoa.”

  I smeared concealer on Krakatoa, and I thought about Grandma Mazur and the dream about the road apples.

  “That’s better,” Lula said. “Now it just looks like a tumor.”

  Lovely.

  “As far as tumors go, it’s not a real big tumor,” Lula said. “It’s one of them starter tumors.”

  “Forget the tumor!” I told her.

  “It’s hard to forget when you gotta stare at it,” Lula said. “Now that I know it’s there I can’t see anything else. It’s like Rudolph with the red nose.”

  I looked at Connie. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s a big pimple.”

  “It’s just a big pimple,” I said to Lula.

  Lula thought for a beat. “Maybe it would help if you had bangs to cover it up.”

  “But I don’t have bangs,” I said. “I’ve never had bangs.”

  “Yeah, but you could,” Lula said.

  I dropped the concealer into my bag and pulled out Merlin Brown’s file. Vinnie had written bond for Brown two years ago without a problem. The charge had been shoplifting, and Brown had done some minor time for it. Hard to know what the issue was now that he’d been brought in for armed robbery. Either Brown simply forgot his court date, or else he wasn’t excited about the idea of doing more time. I tapped his number into my cell phone and waited. A man picked up on the third ring, and I hung up.

  “He’s home,” I said to Lula. “Let’s roll.”

  SEVEN

  MERLIN BROWN LIVED in a low-rent apartment complex that made my cheapskate apartment building look good. The buildings were red brick, three stories tall, and utterly without adornment unless you counted the spray-painted graffiti. No balconies, no fancy front doors, seventies aluminum windows, no landscaping. They sat perched on hard-packed dirt in no-man’s-land between the junkyard and the gutted lead pipe factory on upper Stark Street.

  A discarded refrigerator and sad-sack couch had been left by the dumpster at the end of the parking lot. Four men sat on the couch, chugging from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. The guy on the end weighed somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred pounds and the whole couch sloped in his direction.

  “Maybe I should be more careful what I eat,” Lula said. “I don’t mind being a big woman, but I don’t want to get to be a huge woman. I don’t want no couch slopin’ in my direction.”

  Here’s the thing I’ve noticed about Lula. I’ve seen her when she’s on a healthy eating plan, holding her calories down, I’ve seen her on ridiculous fad diets, and I’ve seen her when she eats everything in sight. And so far as I can tell, her weight never changes.

  “He’s in Building B,” I told Lula. “Third floor. Apartment three-oh-seven.”

  “Who we gonna be? Pizza delivery? Census taker? Local ho?”

  “I thought I’d just ring his bell and see what happens.”

  “He might be happy to see you. Going to jail might be a treat after living here.”

  We entered a small lobby with a bank of mailboxes on one side and an elevator on the other. There was a sign next to the elevator that said it was out of service. The sign looked like it had been up there for a long time. Lula pushed the elevator button anyway, and we waited a couple minutes. Eventually we heard groaning and creaking and the elevator doors opened. We looked into the dark interior of the elevator and decided to take the stairs.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Lula said when we got to the third floor. “So far I haven’t seen any rats or blood splatter. No alligators, either. Mostly from what I can tell the problem is this place don’t have amenities, aside from the recreational area by the dumpster.”

  We walked halfway down the hall and stood outside unit 307, listening at the door. A television was droning inside the apartment.

  “Probably he’s got a gun,” Lula said, “being that he’s wanted for armed robbery. I guess if I’m turning into a vampire I don’t have to worry so much about getting shot, so maybe I should be the one to go through the door first.”

  “Okay. You can go first.”

  “But then suppose I’m not turning into a vampire? There might not have been any vampire venom transferred since I just got a hickey.”

  “No problem. I’ve got it.”

  I knocked on the door, and Lula stood to one side. The door opened, and Merlin looked out at us.

  “What?” Merlin said.

  Merlin Brown was 6?2? and built like a linebacker for Dallas. His skin was a shade past Lula’s, he had a lightning bolt carved into his forehead, two gold teeth in the front of his mouth, and he’d answered the door buck-naked. His Mr. Happy was hanging at half-mast and was about the size of a wanger on a champion stud Clydesdale.

  Lula looked Merlin up a
nd down. “Mother of God!”

  “B-b-bond engorgement,” I said. I blew out some air and corrected myself. “Bond enforcement.”

  “I’m busy,” Brown said.

  That was pretty much stating the obvious.

  “You got a lady friend here?” Lula asked him.

  “Nope.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Nope.”

  “You always walk around like this?”

  “Pretty much. I got laid off a couple months ago and I haven’t got a lot to do. I rob a store once in a while but that’s about it. So I pass the time doing … you know.”

  “Well this here’s your lucky day,” Lula said. “We got a activity for you. All you gotta do is put some clothes on and come with us.”

  “I go with you and I’m gonna end up in jail. I already been in jail and I didn’t like it. Anyways, I got a better idea,” Brown said. “How about you take your clothes off and we stay here. In fact, how about if I help you. How about if I start off helpin’ myself to Miss Skinny Ass Bounty Hunter here.”

  I took a step back and talked out of the side of my mouth to Lula. “Do you have your g-u-n with you?”

  “Yeah,” Lula said. “You think it’s time to use it?”

  “I know what you spelled,” Brown said. “You spelled gun. Like you’d shoot me, right? First off, you’re girls. And second you can’t shoot an unarmed man. I could do whatever I want and you can’t shoot me.”

  Lula pulled her 9mm Glock out of her purse, aimed it at Brown’s foot, and fired off a shot. It missed by about six inches, so she made a course correction and squeezed off another round. The second round was also off the mark. No surprise since Lula was the world’s worst shot. Lula couldn’t hit the side of a barn if she was standing three feet away from it.

  “You fat chicks can never shoot worth anything,” Brown said. “It’s been one of my observations.”

  “Excuse me?” Lula said, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring. “Fat chick? Did you just call me a fat chick? I better have heard wrong because I don’t like being called a fat chick.”

  And then Lula got lucky, or unlucky depending on your point of view, and she shot Brown’s pinky toe off.