Hot Six

  “Nothing you want to know about.”

  “Tell her anyway. This is a good one,” Lula said.

  “Last night Vinnie bonded out a guy named Douglas Kruper. Kruper sold a car to the fifteen-year-old daughter of one of our illustrious state senators. On the way home from buying the car the kid got picked up for running a light and driving without a license, and the car turned out to be stolen. Now this is the good part. The car is described as a Rollswagen. You happen to know anyone named Douglas Kruper?”

  “Also known as the Dealer,” I said. “I went to school with him.”

  “Well, he isn't gonna be doin' any dealing for a while.”

  “How'd he take to getting arrested?” I asked Vinnie.

  “Cried like a baby,” Vinnie said. “It was disgusting. He was a disgrace to criminals everywhere.”

  Just for the heck of it I went to the file cabinet and looked to see if we had anything on Cynthia Lotte. I wasn't too surprised when she didn't show up.

  “I have an errand to run downtown,” I said. “Is it okay if I leave Bob here? I should be back in about an hour.”

  “As long as he doesn't come into my private office,” Vinnie said.

  “Yeah, you wouldn't be talkin' like that if Bob was a female goat,” Lula said.

  Vinnie slammed his door shut and threw the dead bolt.

  I told Bob I'd be back in time for lunch and hustled out to the car. At the nearest ATM I withdrew fifty dollars from my checking; then I drove over to Grant Street. Dougie had two cases of Dolce Vita perfume that had seemed like too much of a luxury when I returned the wind machine but might be marked down now that he had legal problems. Not that I was one to take advantage of someone else's misfortune . . . but, hell, we're talking about Dolce Vita here.

  There were three cars parked in front of Dougie's house when I got there. I recognized one as belonging to my friend Eddie Gazzara. Eddie and I grew up together. He's a cop now, and he's married to my cousin Shirley the Whiner. There was a PBA shield on the second car, and the third car was a fifteen-year-old Cadillac that still had its original paint and not a speck of rust anywhere. I didn't want to consider the implications, but it looked a lot like Louise Greeber's car. What was one of Grandma's friends doing here?

  Inside, the tiny row house was cluttered with people and merchandise. Dougie shuffled from person to person, looking dazed.

  “Everything has to go,” he said to me. “I'm shutting down.”

  The Mooner was there, too. “Hey, it's not fair, dude,” he said. “This individual had a business going on. He's entitled to run a business, right? I mean, where are his rights? Okay, so he sold a stolen car to a kid. Hey, we all make mistakes. Am I right, here?”

  “You do the crime, you pay the time,” Gazzara said, holding a stack of Levi's. “How much do you want for these, Dougie?”

  I pulled Gazzara aside. “I need to talk to you about Ranger.”

  “Allen Barnes is looking for him big time,” Gazzara said.

  “Does Barnes have anything on Ranger besides the videotape?”

  “I don't know. I'm not in the loop. There's not a lot leaking out on this one. No one wants to make any mistakes with Ranger.”

  “Is Barnes looking at other suspects?”

  “Not that I know of. But then, like I said, I'm not in the loop.”

  A squad car double-parked on the street and two uniforms came in. “I hear there's a fire sale going on,” one of the uniforms said. “Are there any toasters left?”

  I picked two bottles of perfume out of the case and gave Dougie a ten. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don't know. I feel real defeated,” Dougie said. “Nothing ever works out for me. Some guys just don't have any luck.”

  “You gotta keep your chin up, dude,” Mooner said.

  “Something else will come along. You gotta be like me. You gotta go with the flow.”

  “I'm going to jail!” Dougie said. “They're gonna send me to jail!”

  “You see what I'm saying?” Mooner said. “Something else always comes along. You go to jail, you don't have to worry about anything. No rent to pay. No food bill to sweat. Free dental plan. And that's worth something, dude. You don't want to stick your nose up at free dental.”

  We all looked at Mooner for a minute, debating the wisdom of a response.

  I walked through the house and peeked out back, but I didn't see Grandma or Louise Greeber. I said good-bye to Gazzara and threaded my way through the crowd to the door.

  “Real nice of you to support the Dougster,” Moon said as I was leaving. “Damn mellow of you, duder.”

  “I just wanted some Dolce Vita,” I said.

  The Cadillac was no longer parked on the street. The carpet car idled at the corner. I sat in the Buick and gave myself a splash of perfume to compensate for the chin zit and the crappy, holey jeans. I decided I needed more than perfume, so I swiped on some extra mascara and teased up my hair. Better to look like a slut with a zit than a dork with a zit.

  I drove downtown to my ex-husband's office in the Shuman Building. Richard Orr, attorney-at-law and womanizing asshole. He was a junior partner in a multiname law firm—Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz, Zeller and Asshole. I took the elevator to the second floor and looked for the door with his gold-lettered name. I wasn't a frequent visitor here. It hadn't been a friendly divorce, and Dickie and I don't exchange Christmas cards. Once in a while our professional paths cross.

  Cynthia Lotte was sitting at the front desk, looking like an Ann Taylor advertisement in her simple gray suit and white shirt. She looked up in alarm when I pushed through the door, obviously recognizing me from my last visit, when Dickie and I had a small disagreement.

  “He isn't in his office,” she said.

  There is a God. “When do you expect him in?”

  “Hard to say. He's in court today.”

  She didn't have a ring on her finger. And she didn't seem grief-stricken. In fact, she seemed downright happy, aside from the fact that Dickie's crazy ex-wife was in her office.

  I faked some goggle-eyed interest in the reception area. “This is pretty nice. It must be great to work here.”

  “Usually.”

  I took this to mean “almost always, except for now.” “I guess this is a good place to work if you're single. Probably you have a chance to meet lots of men.”

  “Is this going somewhere?”

  “Well, I was just thinking about Homer Ramos. You know, wondering if you met him at the office here.”

  There was a dead silence for several seconds, and I could swear I heard her heart beating. She didn't say anything. And I didn't say anything. I couldn't tell what was going on inside her head, but I was doing some interior knuckle-cracking. The question about Homer Ramos had actually come out a little more abrupt than I'd planned, and I was feeling sort of uncomfortable. I'm usually only mentally rude to people.

  Cynthia Lotte gathered herself together and looked me straight in the eye. Her manner was demure and her voice was solicitous. “I don't mean to change the subject, or anything,” she said, “but have you tried concealer on that zit?”

  I sucked in some air. “Uh, no. I didn't think—”

  “You should be careful, because when they get that big and all red and filled with pus they can leave scars.”

  My fingers flew to my chin before I could stop them. God, she was right. The zit felt huge. It was growing. Damn! My emergency reaction mode kicked in, and the message it sent to my brain was Flee! Hide!

  “I should be moving along, anyway,” I said, backing away. “Tell Dickie I didn't want anything special. I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd say hello.”

  I let myself out, took the stairs, and rushed through the lobby and out the door. I crammed myself into the Buick and yanked at the rearview mirror so I could see my zit.

  Gross!

  I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. Bad enough I had the zit from hell, but Cynthia Lotte had out-ruded me.
I'd found out nothing for Ranger. The only thing I knew about Lotte was that she looked good in gray and had pushed my button. One mention of my pimple, and I was out the door.

  I looked back at the Shuman Building and wondered if Ramos had done business with Dickie's firm. And what sort of business? It would have made sense for Lotte to have met Ramos that way. Of course, she could also have met him on the street. The Ramos office building was only a block away.

  I put the Buick into gear and slowly cruised past the Ramos building. The crime scene tape had been removed, and I could see workmen in the lobby. The service road that ran past the rear door was clogged with repair trucks.

  I doubled back through town, stopping at the Radio Shack on Third.

  “I need some kind of an alarm,” I told the kid at the register. “Nothing fancy. Just something that tells me when my front door gets opened. And stop staring at my chin!”

  “I wasn't staring at your chin. Honest! I didn't even notice that big zit.”

  A half-hour later I was on my way to the office to get Bob. Sitting in a little bag, on the seat beside me, was a small motion detector gizmo for my front door. I told myself it was necessary for general security, but truth is, I knew it had one purpose: to alert me whenever Ranger broke in to my apartment. And why did I feel the need for the gizmo? Did it have anything to do with fear? No. Although there were times when Ranger could be scary. Did it have to do with distrust? Nope. I trusted Ranger. The fact is, I got the gizmo because just once I wanted to have the advantage. It was driving me nuts that Ranger could get into my apartment without even waking me.

  I stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket and got a barrel of chicken nuggets for lunch. I figured that was best for Bob. No bones to hork up.

  Everyone's eyes got bright when I walked through the door with my barrel of nuggets.

  “Bob and me were just thinking about chicken,” Lula said. “You must have read our minds.”

  I took the lid off the barrel, set the lid on the floor, and dumped a bunch of nuggets onto it for Bob. I took a nugget for myself and handed the rest off to Lula and Connie. Then I called my cousin Bunny at the credit bureau.

  “What have you got on Cynthia Lotte?” I asked Bunny.

  A minute later she was back with the answer. “Not much here,” she said. “A recent car loan. Pays her bills on time. No derogatory information. Lives in Ewing.” The phone went silent for a couple beats. “What are you looking for?”

  “I don't know. She works for Dickie.”

  “Oh.” As if that explained it all.

  I got Lotte's address and phone and said adios to Bunny.

  The next person I called was Morelli. None of his numbers picked up so I left a message on his pager.

  “That's funny,” Lula said. “Didn't you put those nuggets on the bucket lid? I can't find that bucket lid anywhere.”

  We all looked at Bob. He had a small piece of cardboard stuck to his lip.

  “Dang,” Lula said. “He makes me look like an amateur.”

  “So, do you notice anything unusual about me?” I asked.

  “Only that you got a big zit on your chin. Must be that time of the month, huh?”

  “It's stress!” I stuck my head in my shoulder bag and looked for concealer. Flashlight, hairbrush, lipstick, Juicy Fruit gum, stun gun, tissues, hand lotion, pepper spray. No concealer.

  “I've got a Band-Aid,” Connie said. “You could try to cover it with a Band-Aid.”

  I stuck the Band-Aid over the pimple.

  “That's better,” Lula said. “Now it looks like you cut yourself shaving.”

  Great.

  “Before I forget,” Connie said, “a call came in about Ranger while you were on the phone with the credit bureau. There's a warrant written for his arrest in connection with the Ramos murder.”

  “How does the warrant read?” I asked.

  “Wanted for questioning.”

  “That's how it started with O.J.,” Lula said. “They just wanted him for questioning. And look how that turned out.”

  I wanted to check on Hannibal's town house, but I didn't want to drag Mitchell and Habib over with me.

  “I need a diversion,” I said to Lula. “I need to get rid of those guys in the carpet car.”

  “Do you mean you want to get rid of them? Or do you mean you don't want them following you?”

  “I don't want them following me.”

  “Well, that's easy.” She took a .45 out of her desk drawer. “I'll just shoot out a couple tires.”

  “No! No shooting!”

  “You always got all these rules,” Lula said.

  Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “How about the burning bag thing?”

  We swiveled our heads in his direction.

  “Usually you do it as a gag on somebody's front porch,” Vinnie said. “You put some dog shit in a bag. Then you put the bag on the sucker's front porch and ring the bell. Then you set the bag on fire and run like hell. When the mark opens the door he sees the bag burning and stomps on it to put it out.”

  “And?”

  “And then he gets dog shit all over his shoe,” Vinnie said. “If you did it to these guys and they got dog shit all over their shoes they'd be distracted, and you could drive away.”

  “Only we haven't got a front porch,” Lula said.

  “Use your imagination!” Vinnie said. “You put it just behind the car. Then you sneak away and someone from the office here yells out at them that something's burning under their car.”

  “I kinda like the sound of that,” Lula said. “Only thing is, we need some dog poop.”

  We all turned our attention to Bob.

  Connie took a brown paper lunch bag from her bottom drawer. “I've got a bag and you can use the empty chicken bucket as a pooper-scooper.”

  I snapped the leash on Bob, and Lula and Bob and I went out the back door and walked around some. Bob tinkled about forty times, but he didn't have any contributions for the bag.

  “He don't look motivated,” Lula said. “Maybe we should take him over to the park.”

  The park was only two blocks away, so we walked Bob to the park and stood around waiting for him to answer nature's call. Only nature wasn't calling Bob's name.

  “You ever notice how when you don't want dog poop it just seems to be everywhere?” Lula said. “And now when we want some . . .” Her eyes opened wide. “Hold the phone. Dog at twelve o'clock. And it's a big one.”

  Sure enough, someone else was walking their dog in the park. The dog was big and black. The old woman at the other end of the leash was small and white. She was wearing low-heeled shoes and a bulky brown tweed coat, and she had her gray hair stuffed into a knit hat. She was holding a plastic bag and a paper towel in her hand. The bag was empty.

  “I don't mean to blaspheme or anything,” Lula said. “But God sent us this dog.”

  The dog suddenly stopped walking and hunched over, and Lula and Bob and I took off across the grass. I had Bob on the leash, and Lula was waving the chicken bucket and paper bag, and we were running full tilt when the woman looked up and saw us. The color drained from her face, and she staggered backward.

  “I'm old,” she said. “I haven't got any money. Go away. Don't hurt me.”

  “We don't want your money,” Lula said. “We want your poop.”

  The woman choked up on the dog's leash. “You can't have the poop. I have to take the poop home. It's the law.”

  “The law don't say you gotta take it home,” Lula said. “It's just somebody gotta do it. And we're volunteering.”

  The big black dog stopped what he was doing and gave Bob an inquisitive sniff. Bob sniffed back, and then he looked at the old woman's crotch.

  “Don't even think about it,” I said to Bob.

  “I don't know if that's right,” the woman said. “I never heard of that. I think I'm supposed to take the poop home.”

  “Okay,” Lula said, “we'll pay you for the poop.” Lula looked over at me. “Gi
ve her a couple bucks for her poop.”

  I searched my pockets. “I don't have any money on me. I didn't bring my purse.”

  “I won't take any less than five dollars,” the woman said.

  “Turns out we don't have any money on us,” Lula said.

  “Then it's my poop,” the woman said.

  “The heck it is,” Lula said, muscling the old woman out of the way and scooping the poop up in the chicken bucket. “We need this poop.”