Джанет Иванович - Fortune and Glory

“I imagine you and forty other cops will be at the funeral tomorrow,” I said.

“You got that right. We’re hoping Shine will be dumb enough to show. And Benny still has a few enemies. Most of them have cataracts, but Benny is a big, slow-moving target.”

“He has his wise guys with him.”

“Dumb and Dumber,” Morelli said.

“Shine has some of his own.”

“They aren’t as dumb. Two of them are seasoned soldiers.”

He still had his arm around me, and I was having conflicting feelings. The contact felt warm and comforting and delicious, but at the same time there was the knowledge that it wasn’t especially healthy.

“I should be getting back to Grandma,” I said.

“About dinner?”

“I was under the impression that you had other dinner partners.”

Morelli looked at me for a long moment. “Do you really want to have a dinner partner discussion right now?”

I looked over his shoulder and saw Ranger watching from a distance. “No,” I said. “You make a good point. I’d like a rain check on the dinner. I have a lot going on.”

What went unsaid was that we had a conflict of interest on several fronts… romantic, professional, and personal.

I stopped at the cookie table, filled a to-go cardboard coffee cup with cookies, and made my way back to the front row. I gave the cup of cookies to Benny, and he looked like he was going to burst into tears.

“You’re an angel,” he said, shoving the cookies into his mouth. “God bless you.”

“You missed Gabriela,” Lula said when I sat down. “She was wearing a black Akris two-piece with Mikimoto pearls on her ears. She gave Benny her condolences and kissed him on his cheek.”

“How’d the kiss go over?” I asked.

“Not nearly as well as your cookies.”

I turned toward the back of the room and caught a glimpse of Morelli looking cozy with Gabriela. They were standing too close together for my comfort. Not touching. Not exchanging spit. Just too close. She was too pretty. Too slick. Too at ease.

“My life is such a mess,” I said to Lula.

“Maybe,” she said, “but your hair looks good.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I was counting down the minutes to the end of the viewing. Benny was still accepting condolences, but the end of the line was in sight. Lula left at eight thirty. Grandma and Connie and her mom were hanging with me until we all got kicked out at nine o’clock.

I had my head down, checking my text messages, and Grandma nudged me.

“It’s them!” she said. “It’s the men who shot at us. They’re standing in line behind Ruth Kuleski.”

Ruth moved up to the casket and Charlie Shine’s goons held back. Waiting their turn. Appropriately solemn. No eye contact made with me or Grandma. Ruth moved on and Ed Gruman and Chick Rizer stepped up to Benny and told him they were sorry for his loss, and Mr. Shine regrets not being able to attend but sends his sincere condolences.

“Communicate to him my appreciation of his sympathies,” Benny said.

The men moved on and Benny looked at me and mouthed fuck him .

When the last person in line passed by Benny and headed for the lobby, the four of us went forward and paid our respects to Carla. Benny leaned in when I walked past.

“Partners,” Benny said.

“Partners,” I replied.

Benny had a moral flexibility that I didn’t share, and being partners with him, even at a limited capacity, made my stomach knot. I was appalled at his chosen profession, and if I thought too hard about the details of his skills, I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.

“That was a real successful viewing for Carla,” Grandma said as we inched our way to the door. “She had a good showing of people.”

“They ran out of Italian cookies,” Connie’s mother said. “They should buy more from the bakery and not so many of those cookies that come in a bag.”

We reached the lobby and I saw Ranger watching from across the room. He nodded at me and I nodded back. Obviously, no one snagged Shine tonight. I moved out of the building with the mass of humanity, onto the porch and down the stairs. I searched the area for Potts but didn’t see him.

“We have to walk around the block to Lena’s house,” Grandma said. “Good thing it’s a nice night for a walk.”

“We can give you a ride,” Connie said. “I’m parked across the street in Mo Bernardi’s driveway.”

A text message buzzed on my phone and I checked the screen. It was a picture of Potts with his eyes as big as saucers and a gag in his mouth. He was in a fetal position, hands cuffed behind his back. It looked to me like he was in the trunk of a car. The message attached was that we might want to trade some information and items of interest for Potts’s safe return. It was suggested that they would start chopping off minor body parts in twelve hours if I didn’t cooperate.

“Bad news?” Connie asked me.

This wasn’t anything I wanted to share with Grandma. And I for sure didn’t want it getting back to my mom.

“Not bad,” I said. “Just unexpected. Ranger would like to talk to me about something. Can you take Grandma home for me?”

“Sure,” Connie said. “No problem.”

I texted Ranger and told him to meet me in front of the funeral home. Grandma, Connie, and Connie’s mom crossed the street, and minutes later, Ranger pulled to the curb in his Porsche 911.

“Drive around the corner so you can park for a moment,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

He made a right turn into the Burg and parked in the middle of the block. I accessed the text message and passed my phone to him.

“George Potts,” he said.

“Yes. He has allergies so he couldn’t come inside, but Lula said he was outside in case I needed protection.”

“And he got snatched.”

“Yes. I imagine Gruman and Rizer ran into him when they left the viewing. He would have been an easy mark.”

“And you would prefer that they don’t use a bolt cutter on his fingers and toes.”

“Yes.”

Ranger called his control room, requested two backup cars, and gave them the address of the house in Ewing. He called his second in command, Tank, and told him to take a couple of men to the Mole Hole.

“Since we’re going to Ewing, I’m guessing you think Potts has been taken there,” I said.

“It’s a place to start looking,” Ranger said.

Even under these circumstances, or maybe especially under these circumstances, riding next to Ranger in his Porsche, in the dark, is a provocative, sensual experience. The 911 is a sexy, powerful, perfectly engineered machine. The same is true for Ranger. When you put the two of them together there’s a good potential for orgasm… or, at the very least, teeth-gnashing desire. It was hard to judge my current level of desire because it was mingled with an adrenaline surge over concern for Potts and the fear that we were about to be involved in a shootout.

The Rangeman cars were already in place when we reached the house in Ewing. They were parked one house down, across the street. Ranger parked behind them, removed a gun from the glove compartment, and handed it to me.

Lights were on in the house, but the shades were drawn. The faint flicker of a television could be seen through the front room shade. The blue pickup and the Escalade were in the driveway.

The four men in the Rangeman cars met us on the sidewalk. They were in Rangeman black uniforms, wearing full utility belts, sidearms strapped to their legs.

“There are at least four men and possibly one hostage in the house,” Ranger told them. “I’ll take point. We don’t want to use excessive force. I want Baker, Sanchez, and Stephanie behind me and Rodriguez and Jake at the back door. My team will go in at nine fifty-five. Rodriguez and Jake will enter one minute later.”