Hard Eight

  “We're in the middle of something right now,” I said to Soder. “Maybe you could come back later.”

  He muscled his way past me and stalked into the kitchen. “You!” he shouted at Lula. “I'm going to kill you.”

  “Not in front of the k-i-d,” Lula said. “You don't want to use that kind of violent talk. It stirs up all kinds of latent shit when they get to be teenagers.”

  “I'm not stupid,” Amanda said. “I can spell. And I'm telling my mother you said shit.”

  “Everybody says shit,” Lula said. She looked to me. “Doesn't everybody say shit? What's wrong with shit?”

  The grilled cheese looked perfect in the fry pan, so I lifted it out with a spatula, slid it onto a plate, and gave it to Oliver. The dog stopped running in circles, snatched the sandwich off the plate, and ate it. And Oliver went back to howling.

  “Oliver has to eat at the table,” Amanda said.

  “There's a lot of stuff to remember in this house,” Lula said.

  “I want to talk to Dotty,” Soder said.

  “Dotty isn't here,” I yelled over Oliver's screaming. “Talk to me.”

  “In your dreams,” Soder said. “And for crissake, somebody get this kid to shut up.”

  “The dog ate his sandwich,” Lula said. “And it's all your fault on account of you distracted us.”

  “So do your Aunt Jemima thing and make him another sandwich,” Soder said.

  Lula's eyes bugged out of her head. “Aunt Jemima? Excuse me? Did you say Aunt Jemima?” She leaned forward so her nose was inches from Soder's, hands on hips, one hand still holding tight to the fry pan. “Listen to me, you punk-ass loser, you don't want to call me no Aunt Jemima or I'm gonna give you Aunt Jemima in the face with this fry pan. Only thing stopping me is I don't want to k-i-l-l you in front of the b-r-a-t-s.”

  I saw Lula's point, but being working-class white I had a totally different perspective on Aunt Jemima. Aunt Jemima conjured nothing but good memories of steaming pancakes dripping with syrup. I loved Aunt Jemima.

  “Knock, knock,” Jeanne Ellen said at the open door. “Can anyone come to this party?”

  Jeanne Ellen was back to being dressed in the black leather outfit.

  “Wow,” Amanda said, “are you Catwoman?”

  “Michelle Pfeiffer was Catwoman,” Jeanne Ellen said. She looked down at Oliver. He was on his back again, kicking and screaming. “Stop,” Jeanne Ellen said to Oliver.

  Oliver blinked twice and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  Jeanne Ellen smiled at me. “Baby-sitting?”

  “Yep.”

  “Nice.”

  “Your client is being intrusive,” I said.

  “My apologies,” Jeanne Ellen said. “We're leaving now.”

  Amanda, Oliver, Lula, and I all stood like statues until the front door closed behind Jeanne Ellen and Soder. Then Oliver went back to his screaming.

  Lula tried the stop thing but Oliver only screamed louder. So we made him another grilled cheese.

  Oliver was finishing his sandwich when Dotty returned.

  “How'd it go?” Dotty asked.

  Amanda looked at her mother. Then she took a long look at Lula and me. “Fine,” Amanda said. “I'm going to watch television now.”

  “Steven Soder stopped by,” I said.

  Dotty's face went ashen. “He was here? Soder came here?”

  “He said he wanted to talk to you.”

  Color flamed on her cheekbones. She put a hand to Oliver. A mother's protective gesture. She smoothed the baby-fine hair back from Oliver's forehead. “I hope Oliver wasn't too much trouble.”

  “Oliver was terrific,” I said. “It took us a while to figure out he wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, but after that he was terrific.”

  “Sometimes being a single mom gets a little overwhelming,” Dotty said. “The responsibility of it. And the alone part. It's okay when everything's going normal, but sometimes you wish there was another adult in the house.”

  “You're afraid of Soder,” I said.

  “He's a terrible person.”

  “You should tell me what's going on. I could help.” At least I hoped I could help.

  “I need to think,” Dotty said. “I appreciate your offer, but I need to think.”

  “I'll stop around tomorrow morning to make sure you're okay,” I said. “Maybe we can straighten this out tomorrow.”

  LULA AND I were halfway to Trenton before either of us spoke.

  “Life just gets weirder and weirder,” Lula finally said.

  That pretty much summed it up as far as I was concerned. I suppose I'd made progress. I'd spoken to Evelyn. I knew she was safe for now. And I knew she wasn't all that far away. Dotty had been gone less than an hour.

  Soder was bothersome, but I could understand his actions. He was a jerk, but he was also a distraught dad. Most likely Dotty was negotiating some sort of truce between Soder and Evelyn.

  What I couldn't understand was Jeanne Ellen. The fact that Jeanne Ellen was still doing surveillance bothered me. The surveillance seemed pointless now that Dotty knew about Jeanne Ellen. So why was Jeanne Ellen sitting across from Dotty's house when we left? It was possible that Jeanne Ellen was exerting pressure in the form of harassment. Make Dotty's life unpleasant and try to get her to cave. There was another possibility that felt pretty far out but had to be considered. Protection. Jeanne Ellen was sitting out there like the Queen's Guard. Maybe Jeanne Ellen was guarding the link to Evelyn and Annie. This led to a bunch of questions I couldn't answer. Such as, who was Jeanne Ellen guarding Dotty from? Abruzzi?

  “You gonna show up at nine?” Lula asked when I pulled to a stop in front of the bonds office.

  “I guess so. How about you?”

  “Wouldn't miss it for anything.”

  I stopped at the store on the way home and picked up a few groceries. By the time I reached my apartment it was dinnertime and the building was filled with cooking smells. Minestrone soup simmering behind Mrs. Karwatt's door. Burritos from the other end of the hall.

  I approached my door with my key in my hand, and I froze. If Abruzzi could get into my locked car, he could get into my locked apartment. I needed to be careful. I put the key in the lock. I turned the key. I opened the door. I stood in the hall with the door open for a moment, taking in the feel of my apartment. Listening to the silence. Reassured by my heartbeat and the fact that a pack of wild dogs didn't rush out to devour me.

  I crossed the threshold, left my front door wide open, and walked through the rooms, carefully opening drawers and closet doors. No surprises, thank God. Still, my stomach felt icky. I was having a hard time pushing Abruzzi's threat out of my head.

  “Knock, knock,” a voice called from the open doorway.

  Kloughn.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” he said, “so I thought I'd say hello. I have some Chinese food with me, too. I got it for myself, but I got too much. I thought you might want some. But you don't have to eat it if you don't want to. But then if you want to eat it, that would be great. I didn't know if you liked Chinese food. Or if you liked to eat alone. Or . . .”

  I grabbed Kloughn and pulled him into my apartment.

  “WHAT'S THIS?” VINNIE said when I showed up with Kloughn.

  “Albert Kloughn,” I told him, “attorney at law.”

  “And?”

  “He brought me supper, so I invited him along.”

  “He looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy. What'd he bring you to eat, dinner rolls?”

  “Chinese,” Kloughn said. “It was one of those last-minute things that I just felt like eating Chinese.”

  “I'm not crazy about taking a lawyer along on a bust,” Vinnie said.

  “I won't sue you, I swear to God,” Kloughn said. “And look, I have a flashlight and defense spray and everything. I'm thinking about getting a gun, but I can't decide if I want a six shooter or a semiautomatic. I'm sort of leaning to the semiautomatic.”

  “Go with the sem
iautomatic,” Lula said. “It holds more bullets. You can never have too many bullets.”

  “I want a vest,” I said to Vinnie. “Last time I did a takedown with you, you shot everything to smithereens.”

  “That was an unusual circumstance,” Vinnie said.

  Yeah, right.

  I got Kloughn and myself suited up in Kevlar, and we all packed off in Vinnie's Cadillac.

  A half hour later we were parked around the corner from Bender. “Now you're going to see how a professional operates,” Vinnie said. “I have a plan, and I expect everyone to do their part, so listen up.”

  “Oh boy,” Lula said. “A plan.”

  “Stephanie and I will take the front door,” Vinnie said. “Lula and the clown will take the back door. We all enter at the same time and subdue the rat bastard.”

  “That's some plan,” Lula said. “I would never have thought of that one.”

  “K-l-o-u-g-h-n,” Albert said.

  “All you have to do is listen for me to yell 'bond enforcement,' ” Vinnie said. “Then we crash down the doors and rush in with everyone yelling 'freeze . . . bond enforcement.'”

  “I'm not doing that,” I said. “I'll feel like an idiot. They only do that on television.”

  “I like it,” Lula said. “I always wanted to crash down a door and yell stuff.”

  “I could be wrong,” Kloughn said, “but crashing down doors might be illegal.”

  Vinnie buckled himself into a nylon webbed gun belt. “It's only illegal if it's the wrong house.”

  Lula took a Glock out of her purse and shoved it into the waistband of her spandex miniskirt. “I'm ready,” she said. “Too bad we don't have a TV crew with us. This yellow skirt would show up real good.”

  “I'm ready, too,” Kloughn said. “I've got a flashlight in case the lights go off.”

  I didn't want to alarm him, but that's not why bounty hunters carry two-pound Mag lights.

  “Has anyone checked to make sure Bender is home?” I asked. “Anyone talk to his wife?”

  “We'll listen under the window,” Vinnie said. “It looks like someone's watching television in there.”

  We all tiptoed across the lawn and pressed ourselves against the building and listened under the window.

  “Sounds like a movie,” Kloughn said. “Sounds like a dirty movie.”

  “Then Bender's gotta be here,” Vinnie said. “His wife isn't going to be sitting around all by herself, watching a porno flick.”

  Lula and Kloughn went around to the back door, and Vinnie and I went to the front door. Vinnie drew his gun and rapped on the door, which had been patched with a big piece of plywood.

  “Open up,” Vinnie shouted. “Bond enforcement!” He took a step back and was ready to give the door a kick with his boot when we heard Lula break into the house from the rear, yelling at the top of her lungs.

  Before we had a chance to react, the front door burst open and a naked guy rushed out at us, almost knocking me off the stoop. Inside the house there was pandemonium. Men were scrambling to leave, some of them naked, some of them dressed, all of them waving guns, shouting, “Outta my way, muthafucka!”

  Lula was in the middle of it. “Hey,” she was yelling, “this here's a bond enforcement operation! Everybody stop running!”

  Vinnie and I had worked our way into the middle of the room, but we couldn't find Bender. Too many men in too small a space, all trying to get out of the house. No one cared that Vinnie had his gun drawn. I'm not sure anyone noticed in the mayhem.

  Vinnie got off a round and a chunk of ceiling fell down. After that, it was quiet because no one was left in the room but Vinnie, Lula, Kloughn, and me.

  “What happened?” Lula asked. “What just happened here?”

  “I didn't see Bender,” Vinnie said. “Is this the right house?”

  “Vinnie?” A female voice called from the bedroom. “Vinnie, is that you?”

  Vinnie's eyes opened wide. “Candy?”

  A naked woman somewhere in age between twenty and fifty bounced out of the bedroom. She had gigantic breasts and her pubic hair cut into the shape of a thunderbolt.

  She held her arms out to Vinnie. “Long time no see,” she said. “What's up?”

  A second woman straggled from the bedroom. “Is it really Vinnie?” she asked. “What's he doing here?”

  I eased into the bedroom behind the women and looked for Bender. The bedroom was set with lights and a discarded camera. They hadn't been watching a porno . . . they'd been making one.

  “Bender isn't in the bedroom or bathroom,” I said to Vinnie. “And that's the whole house.”

  “You looking for Andy?” Candy asked. “He split earlier. He said he had work to do. That's why we borrowed his place. Nice and private. At least until you showed up.”

  “We thought we was getting busted,” the other woman said. “We thought you was the cops.”

  Kloughn gave each of the women his card. “Albert Kloughn, attorney at law,” he said. “If you ever need a lawyer.”

  AN HOUR LATER, I pulled into my lot with Kloughn yammering away alongside me. I had Godsmack plugged into my CD player, but I couldn't get the volume loud enough to totally drown out Kloughn.

  “Boy, that was something,” Kloughn said. “I've never seen a movie star up close before. And especially naked ones. I didn't look too much, did I? I mean, you couldn't help looking, right? Even you looked, right?”

  Right. But I didn't get down on my knees to examine the pubic hair thunderbolt.

  I parked and walked Kloughn to his car, making sure he got safely out of the lot. I turned to go into the building and let out a yelp when I bumped into Ranger.

  He was standing close, and he was smiling. “Big date?”

  “It's been a strange day.”

  “How strange?”

  I told him about Vinnie and the porno movie.

  Ranger tipped his head back and laughed out loud. Not something I see very often.

  “Is this a social visit?” I asked.

  “As social as I get. I'm on my way home from a job.”

  “Home to the Bat Cave.” No one knew where Ranger lived. The address on his driver's license was a vacant lot.

  “Yeah. The Bat Cave,” Ranger said.

  “I'd like to see the Bat Cave sometime.”

  Our eyes held.

  “Maybe someday,” he said. “Looks like you could use some bodywork on your car.”

  I told him about the spiders and about Abruzzi suggesting to me that at some point in time he'd rip my heart out.

  “Let me get this straight,” Ranger said. “You were driving along after being attacked by a flock of geese, and a spider jumped at you and caused you to smash into a parked car.”

  “Stop smiling,” I said. “It isn't funny. I hate spiders.”

  He slung an arm around my shoulders. “I know you do, babe. And you're worried Abruzzi will make good on his threat.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have too many dangerous men in your life.”

  I looked at him sideways. “Do you have any suggestions on how I can cut the list down?”

  “You could kill Abruzzi.” I raised my eyebrows. “No one would mind,” Ranger said. “He's not a popular guy.”

  “And the other dangerous men in my life?”

  “Not life threatening. You might get your heart broken, but you won't get it ripped out of your body.”

  Oh boy. That's supposed to make me feel relaxed?

  “Aside from your suggestion of killing Abruzzi, I don't know how to get him to stop,” I said to Ranger. “Soder might want his daughter back, but Abruzzi is after something else. And whatever it is that Abruzzi is after, he thinks I'm after it, too.” I looked up at my window. I wasn't real crazy about entering my apartment alone. The heart-ripping-out thing still had me feeling spooked. And every now and then I felt nonexistent spiders crawling on me. “So,” I said, “as long as you're here, I don't suppose you'd want to come up and have a gla
ss of wine?”

  “Are you inviting me for more than wine?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Let me take a guess. You want me to make sure your apartment is secure.”