Going rogue, p.19
Going Rogue, page 19
I watched her scuttle away and disappear inside her house.
“Do you think I have to worry about my teeth?” Walburg asked.
“Eventually,” I said.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider not taking me back to jail?”
“You bombed my car and the bail bonds office.”
“Yes, but I didn’t bomb your apartment.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Why are you doing this?”
“It’s what I do.”
“Yes, but you’re going to jail for a long time for it. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“I won’t go to jail,” he said. “The government wants me. I’m a genius. They’ll get me off, just like always. At the very worst they’ll put an ankle bracelet on me and set me up in a lab in the desert. I have friends in high places. I’ve done favors for them. They won’t want those favors to come to an end. And the military needs my expertise.”
“Do you like the desert?”
“I like to make bombs. I don’t care where I make them. If I don’t want to stay in the desert after a while, I’ll cut a deal.”
I cut across town, parked in the municipal building lot, and got Walburg out of the Whatever.
The Rangeman SUV parked alongside me.
“Do you need help getting him in?” the driver asked.
“No, but thanks. This shouldn’t take long.”
Almost an hour later I returned to my car.
“Sorry,” I said to the Rangemen, “I had to give a statement about the two bombings.” I looked in the SUV. “Where’s Lula?”
“She got tired of waiting and called someone to pick her up.”
* * *
I drove past what used to be the office on my way home. The collapsed building was ringed with crime scene tape, and a CSI truck was parked at the curb. Three men were poking around in the rubble and Connie was standing on the sidewalk, watching the men. I parked across the street and walked over to Connie.
“What’s happening?”
“Two of the CSI guys are looking for evidence, and someone from the fire marshal is trying to determine if it’s safe for me to access the file cabinets.”
“The CSI guys don’t need to find a lot of evidence,” I said. “I brought Walburg in, and he confessed to both explosions. I hope Vinnie isn’t going to bond him out again. My apartment is probably next on Walburg’s fun list.”
“I haven’t heard from Vinnie,” Connie said. Her eyes shifted to the street. “Holy mother!”
It was Lula behind the wheel of an ancient, rusted-out yellow school bus. She beeped the horn at us and parked behind the CSI truck. She opened the door and stepped out.
“I got us a mobile office,” she said. “It’s got a bathroom and everything. What do you think?”
I had no words.
“Um,” Connie said.
“I was sitting in the parking lot with the Rangeman guys, waiting for Stephanie, and I remembered seeing this when we went to get Stephanie a car. So, I called Andy and he came and picked me up and made me a real deal. Actually, he gave it to me because no one wanted it. It’s perfectly okay as long as you don’t drive it too far on account of it gets three miles to a gallon.”
“Ingenious,” I said to Lula.
“No shit,” Lula said. “You gotta go in and see it. Somebody decked it all out to make it a mobile home. They took the seats out and put in a couch and a TV and a teeny kitchen. And the refrigerator has a freezer. It’s got a bedroom in the back, only there’s no bed so we could put a desk there.”
Connie and I went in and looked around. It was sort of horrible but not entirely.
“It needs some cleaning up,” Lula said. “It’s been sitting in the junkyard.”
I opened a cupboard over the kitchen counter and found a dead mouse.
“At least it’s dead,” I said.
Connie picked it up in a tissue and threw it out the door. “If we park this in the back lot, we can hook it up to electric,” she said.
“I can do my decorating magic,” Lula said. “I might take it up professionally. I could specialize in old-school buses and crap-ass offices. I could have business cards made up.”
Connie’s phone rang and she looked at the number. “It’s the office number,” she said. “Unknown caller.” She put it on speakerphone.
“I guess you aren’t leaving messages in the window anymore,” the caller said.
Connie handed the phone to me.
“Lightning strike,” I said.
“Where’s our money?”
“No clue,” I said.
“Yeah, I almost believe you. Guess who I’ve got?”
“Who?”
There was some fumbling noise on the phone and the sound of someone growling.
“Vinnie?” I asked.
“Twenty-four hours and we start peeling his skin off.”
The phone went dead.
“Omigod,” I said. “They snatched Vinnie.”
“We should get a bottle of wine and some chips to celebrate our new office,” Lula said.
“But they have Vinnie,” I said.
“And?” Lula asked.
“He said they were going to torture him.”
“Vinnie loves that shit,” Lula said. “He pays Madam Zaretsky good money to whip him and do God knows what else.”
“That’s true,” Connie said. “If they pull off his fingernails, he’ll get an erection.”
“Anyway, what can we do?” Lula asked. “These idiots want money we don’t have.”
The office number rang again, and Connie put it on speakerphone.
“I forgot to tell you the best part,” he said. “After twenty-four hours, when we roast this weasel on a spit like a hot dog, we’re coming after you, sweetie pie.”
“Which sweetie pie would that be?” I asked him.
“You know which sweetie pie,” he said. And he hung up.
“Okay, that’s disturbing,” I said.
“Yeah, it would give us more incentive to do something if we knew what to do,” Lula said.
Morelli appeared in the doorway. “Knock, knock,” he said. “Is this the new office?”
“Yep,” I said.
“It’s leaking something.”
“It’s motor oil,” Lula said. “It’s okay, I got a case of it. It came with the bus.”
Morelli crooked his finger at me. “Can I see you outside?”
We walked a short distance from the bus and away from the CSI people.
“We found Vinnie’s car,” he said. “They just pulled it out of the river. Vinnie wasn’t in it.”
“That’s because the kidnappers have Vinnie,” I said. “We got the phone call a couple minutes ago.”
“Why did they take Vinnie?”
“I guess they thought we cared if he lived or died or got tortured.”
“That’s a tough one.”
“Yeah, on the surface it doesn’t seem like he’s worth saving.”
“But below the surface?”
“Ditto.”
“It’s a dilemma,” Morelli said.
“On the plus side, I delivered the bomber today.”
“I heard. Nice.” He looked over at the bus. “That has to be at least twenty years old. It’s a dumpster fire on wheels.”
“It has a refrigerator with a freezer, and it had a dead mouse, but Connie got rid of it.”
“Good to know. Where do you go from here?”
“Do you mean about the office?”
“I mean about the kidnapping and the death and torture threats.”
“I don’t know. I guess I have to wait for them to make a move. We’re at a stalemate. I can’t give them what they want, and they refuse to believe that I don’t have it.”
“Is Ranger making any progress?”
“Nothing significant. Anything on your end?”
“We aren’t officially involved,” Morelli said.
The CSI guys went to their truck, and the fire marshal walked over to us.
“The site seems to be stable,” he said. “The explosion didn’t scatter the structure, and it was single-story frame construction so there isn’t a lot of the debris that you would see in higher-rise buildings. This basically just collapsed in on itself. There was no fire and all utilities have been disconnected. I see no reason why you can’t sort through this. Just be careful where you walk.”
“We need to salvage what we can from the storeroom,” I said to Morelli. “Connie said all the records are in the cloud, so things could be worse.”
“At least Vinnie isn’t available to bond out Walburg again.”
For a moment I’d forgotten about Vinnie. No matter what was said in the bus, the thought of Vinnie being held hostage wasn’t a good one. He was pimple pus, but he was our pimple pus.
“I need to get back to work,” Morelli said. “There’s preseason hockey tonight if you want to come over and share a pizza.”
“Sounds good. I’ll bring the pizza.”
“Game is at eight o’clock.”
I watched Morelli drive away, and I went into the bus to tell Connie and Lula that we had permission to sort through the office remains.
“I can’t go climbing over all that junk in my Louboutins,” Lula said. “I’m going to the hardware store to get boots.”
“I’m okay in my sneakers,” I said.
“I’ve got running shoes in my tote,” Connie said, “so I’m okay too, but as long as you’re going out you can get some big plastic bins.”
“And air freshener,” I said. “Something to get rid of the dead-mouse smell.”
Connie changed her shoes and we stood on the sidewalk and looked at the mess in front of us.
“Vinnie had a safe in his office,” Connie said. “We want to make sure it’s secure. I don’t know what he had in his desk drawers, and I don’t want to know. I want the gun from my desk. Beyond that everything would be easier to reach from the alley.”
“I’ll walk around to the back and start looking for the file cabinets. You can start looking for your gun,” I said.
The Rangeman SUV was parked behind my Whatever. The two men got out of the SUV and walked over to us. I recognized one of them. Raul. The other man was new. His name tag said he was Bek.
“Are you looking for something?” Raul asked.
“We need to salvage what we can from this wreck,” I said.
“We can help.”
“That would be amazing,” I said. “Bek can go with Connie. She’s working in the front of the office, and you can come with me. I’m going to walk around to the back so it’s easier to get to the items we took in as security.”
By five o’clock we had everything from the file cabinets in bins, plus we had assorted larger items that we found in the rubble. The gun safe was located and cleaned out. The guns were all packed off to Rangeman for storage. Connie had her desk gun, and we were waiting for the safe company to finish hauling Vinnie’s safe through the debris to their truck. This would also go to Rangeman.
I was standing by the bus with Connie and Lula, watching the Rangeman guys stuff the bins in our cars.
“It’s a good thing we had Raul and Bek helping us,” Lula said. “We couldn’t have done this without them.”
“We would have been done a half hour ago if your skirt wasn’t so short,” Connie said. “Every time you bent over Raul’s eyes almost fell out of his head.”
“I didn’t know you could see something,” Lula said.
“Everybody could see everything,” Connie said.
“Not everything,” Lula said. “I’m wearing undies. I’m covered up as much as when I’m on the beach.”
I’d seen Lula on the beach, and it was something not easily forgotten.
An hour later, the safe was trucked away, and we put the crime scene tape back in place. The bus was parked at the curb for the night, and we felt comfortable that there wasn’t a lot left to steal. We formed a caravan with our cars, drove to Connie’s house, and unloaded everything into her garage.
We thanked Raul and Bek and they went back to their SUV.
“Good thing we’re done,” Lula said. “I couldn’t pick up one more thing or carry any more bins anywhere. I feel like my back is broken. We should have let Bella make that stupid bomber poop himself again.”
“Opportunities missed,” I said.
“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said.
Connie’s mother was standing watch at the edge of the garage. “I heard that,” she said. “We don’t allow that kind of language in this house.”
“Sorry,” Lula said. “I wasn’t thinking it might be offensive. It seemed like an appropriate comment for what we were saying about the poop spell.”
“We don’t say that P-word either,” Mrs. Rosolli said.
“You mean ‘poop’?” Lula asked. “What do you call it?”
“We call it plops,” she said.
Lula and I looked at Connie.
Connie rolled her eyes and gave up a sigh. “Plops and pleeps,” she said.
“That’s just wrong,” Lula said. “I can see where it’s coming from, but I don’t want to admit to making a plop. Maybe men make plops. My experience is they don’t care what they do.”
I had my hand clapped over my mouth. I was trying not to laugh out loud, but squeaking sounds were escaping from between my fingers.
“For God’s sake, just go ahead and laugh before you pleep yourself,” Connie said.
Mrs. Rosolli made the sign of the cross and asked forgiveness for her daughter. “We don’t take God’s name in vain,” she said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I drove back to my apartment, said hello to Sir Lancelot, thanked him for guarding my life, and told him he could go home to his bride. I liked that these guys wanted to pitch in and help, but I worried about their abilities if they came up against armed kidnappers. I didn’t want them hurt.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I don’t mind staying,” Lancelot said.
“I’m friends with the man who owns Rangeman Security, and he has men watching out for me too. Tell Benji and Carpenter that I appreciate your help, but I think I’m safe now.”
“Cool. I’ll let them know and if anything changes you can call us.”
I went inside and ate a tablespoon of peanut butter and five olives out of the jar because I was too tired to make a sandwich. I tapped on Rex’s cage and said howdy. He stuck his head out of his soup can, gave me a once-over, and went back into his can.
I thought it would be nice if I could do that. I felt like crawling into a can and sleeping until my life improved. I shuffled into the bathroom and stood under the shower until the water turned cold. I halfway dried my hair, got dressed in my comfy jeans and a Rangers jersey, and called ahead to Pino’s for a pizza, extra-large with the works, extra cheese.
I was feeling better after the shower, and I was looking forward to the pizza. I couldn’t get overly excited about a preseason game, but I knew it would take my mind off Vinnie. I didn’t want to think about Vinnie because I had no way to help him. He was in a horrible place.
We’d called Vinnie’s father-in-law and the owner of the bail bonds business, Harry the Hammer, but Harry and Vinnie’s wife, Lucille, were in the process of leaving for Aruba with some of Harry’s business associates. I didn’t think I could go to Aruba if my husband was missing, but that’s just me. Okay, let’s be honest, I couldn’t go if my hamster, Rex, was missing.
I grabbed a sweatshirt and my messenger bag and went downstairs and got behind the wheel of my Whatever. Raul and Bek were parked nearby but I didn’t wave to them in case I was being stalked by the bad guys. No bad guys showed up, so I called Ranger.
“I know you’re trying to keep me safe,” I said, “but we need the kidnapper to make a move, and he’s not going to make a move as long as I have a big, black, shiny SUV following me. I’m totally wired with the necklace and whatever other illegal devices you’ve planted on me. I have your gun, loaded and handy. I’m going to Pino’s to pick up a pizza and then I’m going to Morelli’s to watch the Rangers game. I think you should retire the SUV escort. At least for the night.”
What I didn’t say was that it would feel creepy to have the Rangeman SUV sitting outside Morelli’s house while I was inside with Morelli, probably spending the night.
“You have a red button on your dash, next to the ignition. If there’s a problem, press the red button.”
I looked at the dash. Sure enough there was a red button next to the ignition.
“What does the red button do?” I asked him.
“Your lights flash, an alarm goes off, and a signal is sent directly to my control room.”
“Good to know,” I said.
The Rangeman SUV followed me out of the lot. I chugged off to Pino’s, and Rangeman peeled off in a different direction. I relaxed with a deep breath and enjoyed the luxury of being on my own. I guess if you’re royalty or a movie star you get used to having security 24/7. I was neither of those, and security felt okay at first but claustrophobic after a day.
Pino’s lot was packed at this time of night. At the bar there would be medical workers and cops coming off rotation, families would be in booths, and people like me would be getting takeout.
I knew almost everyone who worked at Pino’s. And I knew a lot of the people who ate there. I parked, went inside, and sat close to the kitchen at the end of the bar. Sonny Mancuso looked up from his workstation, waved at me, and pulled my ticket off his counter. I went to grade school and high school with him and now he was married to my friend Jeannie and working as a line cook. He gave me a sign that meant five minutes, and I gave him a thumbs-up.
I looked around the room. Connie’s car had been parked in Pino’s lot. Impossible to know if the kidnapper was passing through and found the lot convenient or if he lived in the neighborhood. There were a couple men in the room who fit the description. Stocky, middle-aged. One of them lived across the street from my parents. Probably he wasn’t the kidnapper, although I wasn’t willing to totally rule him out.
Another chunky, middle-aged guy walked in and sat at the far end of the bar. Wavy black hair cut short. Balding. Two-day beard. Gray hooded sweatshirt. He said something to the bartender, and the bartender got a large takeout bag from the kitchen. The sweatshirt guy dropped some money on the bar and got off his bar stool. He looked my way and stared for a moment too long. He smiled and nodded and walked out.
