Janet Evanovich - Smokin Seventeen

I was tempted to take it. I could use the money.

“What is Queen Elizabeth!” Mooner yelled at the television.

“Christ,” Vinnie said. “Is he watching Jeopardy again? Lock him in the can with Donkey Kong. I got work to do.”

“Do you know anything about cockfights?” I asked Vinnie.

“Like what do you want to know?”

“I want to know if there are any around?”

“Is the pope Catholic?”

“Do you know where they’re held?”

“No. They’re not my thing. I like the ponies. I imagine the cockfights move around. They’re illegal. What’s your interest? Not a lot of women into cockfighting. As your cousin I would advise you not to go alone. Even if you’re armed you don’t want to go alone. I hear it’s a rough crowd.”

There was a rap on the door, and Morelli stuck his head in. “Good morning,” he said. “I need to talk to Stephanie.”

I stepped out, and we walked away from the bus.

“It looks like we found the last poker player,” Morelli said.

“Sam Grip?”

“Probably. The body wasn’t in good shape. It was stuffed into the trunk of his car, and a ballpark guess is he was killed in the same time frame as Lou Dugan and Bobby Lucarelli. The car was found early this morning. It was parked in a scrubby section of woods in the Pine Barrens, and it attracted attention because there were about forty buzzards sitting on it and another hundred circling overhead. Apparently they’d been circling for days and someone finally investigated.”

“Ick. Was Sam addressed to me?”

“No. No note. They’re sending a helicopter out to do a flyover. I’m guessing they’ll find the rest of the cars in the same area.”

“Why did the killer hide the cars? Why didn’t he just leave them with the bodies?”

Morelli shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Sounds like standard operating procedure for the mob. They bury people in the Pine Barrens all the time. I bet Nick Alpha’s prints are all over the car.”

“I don’t know if you can categorize Nick Alpha as mob,” Morelli said. “Most of the Trenton mob guys are in their nineties.”

“Work with me here,” I said. “I need to pin something on Alpha.”

Morelli dragged me up against him and kissed me. “Try to stay out of trouble,” he said. “I have to go.”

I watched him walk to his car, and I thought I felt a small stirring of feeling down in the dead zone . Maybe it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe it had just been resting.

I opened the door to the bus and called to Connie. “I’m taking off,” I said. “I want to check out the addresses.”

“Take someone with you,” she said. “Two of those addresses were on upper Stark.”

“I don’t have anyone. I’ll be fine.”

“Take Mooner. Please.”

I looked in at her. “You just want to get rid of him.”

“I can’t take it anymore. If he yells one more answer I’m going to rip his lungs out.”

I gave up a sigh. “I’ll take him with me.”

“This is like a new role for me,” Mooner said, buckling himself into the Shelby. “Who would think we’d be partners. It’s like fucking awesome. I’m like psyched.”

“We’re just going to ride down Stark and look at some real estate.” I gave him the card with the addresses. “When we get to Stark you can read the numbers off to me.”

“I could read them better if I had a burger.”

I hit the drive-thru at Cluckin-a-Bucket, and we got chicken burgers and fries.

“This is an excellent job,” Mooner said, eating his last fry. “This is almost as good as distributing pharmaceuticals.”

The only property in Alpha’s name was the dry cleaner, and I didn’t think that had good cockfighting potential. The second address was a slum rooming house. A three-floor walk-up on the edge of no-man’s-land. The last two were warehouses at the blighted end of Stark. One was designated as Gimple’s Moving and Storage, and the other looked unused. They were on the same block but opposite sides of the street.

I turned at the corner and took the service alley behind Gimple’s. There were two roll-up garage doors, one loading dock, and a back door. I didn’t know much about cockfighting, but I thought this looked like a possibility. I idled behind Gimple’s and called Connie.

“Is Gimple’s Moving and Storage real?” I asked her.

“It’s a legitimate business with a phone number, but it’s probably fronting for something, and I don’t know what that is.”

I drove to the other side of Stark and cruised past the warehouse that looked empty. Broken windows on the second floor in the rear. Brick exterior covered with graffiti. Four rusted, dented roll-up garage doors. One keyed exterior door.

“What do you think?” I asked Mooner.

“About what?”

“Business opportunities in these two buildings.”

“I like this one.”

“Why?”

“I could like park my bus here, dude. There’s room. No garbage cans or crapola.”

He was right. The parking area was garbage free. Not normal for Stark Street. Stark Street was like the city dump. Beer cans, whiskey bottles, food wrappers, broken televisions, fire gutted mattresses, used and reused drug paraphernalia all collected here in gutters, doorways, against sides of buildings, and in alleys. A patch of debris-free rutted blacktop meant someone was working to keep the area clear.

“Try the back door,” I said to Mooner.

Mooner ambled over and opened the door. “It’s empty, man. Totally.”

I motioned for him to get back into the car. I drove past the other warehouse one last time and left the neighborhood.

“That was bold,” Mooner said. “What’s our next adventure?”

I didn’t have any more adventures, but I knew Connie would be disappointed if I brought him back too soon.

“I think we should go to Holy Cow for ice cream,” I said.

“Cool.”

I picked Holy Cow because it was in Hamilton Township, and it would use up almost an hour. I got a single dip of Jersey mud, and Mooner couldn’t make up his mind. He stood in front of the display case, eyes glazed, lips moving as he silently read the choices.

Morelli called me, and I stepped outside to talk.

“They found three of the other cars,” Morelli said. “They’re going in on foot tomorrow to look for the fourth.”

“Were there more bodies? Did they find anything inside the cars?”

“I’m told the cars were empty.”

“Did you know Nick Alpha is running cockfights?”

“I heard about the cockfights. I didn’t know Alpha was involved.” There was a beat of silence. “You aren’t getting involved in this, are you?”

“No. Of course not. Cockfighting is disgusting.”

“Next time I fall in love it’s going to be with someone who isn’t an expert at fibbing.”

“You’re in love with me?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I did, but it’s nice to hear.”

“Scares the hell out of me,” Morelli said. And he hung up.

I finished my ice cream and went inside. Mooner was still standing transfixed in front of the counter.

“Give him a scoop of chocolate, a scoop of strawberry, a scoop of coffee, and a scoop of butter pecan,” I said to the girl.

“Fuckin’ A,” Mooner said, smiling wide, and rocked back on his heels.

• • •

Lula was in the bus when we got back.

“I had a abscess,” she said. “That’s why I thought my tooth was growing. The dentist says it’s common to feel like that.”

“So you’re not turning into a vampire,” Connie said.

“Well, I might be, but I don’t have fangs. And I’m feeling much better now that I had the root canal. ’Course, I’m packed full of drugs, so that could have something to do with it.” Lula looked around. “This is nice. It don’t have personality like before, but it don’t feel like the sun died either.”