Janet Evanovich: Smokin Seventeen

We rode in silence after that, thinking our own thoughts about the Stark Street chickens. Lula drove through the center of the city, turned onto Hamilton, and parked behind my Shelby.

“What are you going to do with this SUV?” I asked her.

“I’m gonna give it to Ernie. Seems only fair he gets this car since someone stole his.”

“But this is a stolen car. We stole it!”

“And?”

There comes a point in conversation with Lula where it’s best to drop back and punt.

“Okay then,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Hope your tooth feels better.”

“Yep. Happy trails,” Lula said.

I drove home on autopilot, talking to myself, my mind alternating between numb mush and episodes of panic.

“I hate when people want to kill me,” I said out loud to myself. “It makes my stomach feel weird. And I worry about Rex. Who would take care of him if I got murdered? I don’t even have a will. And do you know why I haven’t got a will? It’s because I don’t have anything to leave anyone. How pathetic is that?”

I pulled into the lot to my apartment building and parked next to Mr. Molnar’s blue Accord. I was halfway to the building’s back door, worrying about a Dave Brewer appearance, when I heard someone behind me gun a car engine. Regina! I jumped to safety, and she roared past me, sideswiping a beater Dodge that belonged to Mrs. Gonzoles’s loser son. One more dent in the Dodge wasn’t going to get noticed. I sprinted to the building while Regina circled, and I made it inside before she reached me on the second pass.

I took a deep breath and told myself things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Regina would get tired of trying to run me over, Nick Alpha would get arrested, Dave would eventually move on, and one of these days my reproductive system would get back to normal. I took the stairs and thought about Ranger naked, but I wasn’t in a swoon by the time I reached the second floor, so clearly I had a way to go on the path to sexual recovery. At least Dave wasn’t lurking in the hall when I peeked out from the stairwell.

MY CELL PHONEwoke me up from a restless sleep.

“I’m at your door. I forgot my key.” Morelli said. “I’ve been knocking and ringing your doorbell. Where are you?”

“I’m here. Hang on.” I dragged myself out of bed and let Morelli in. “What time is it?” I asked him.

“It’s eight o’clock.” He set a bag and a container of coffee on my kitchen counter. “I brought you breakfast. I’m taking off for south Jersey. I want to see the crime scene before it gets dismantled. I’ll probably be gone for most of the day. I was hoping you could walk Bob around noon.”

“Sure.”

He gave me something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “You look like you had a rough night.”

“I had a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep. And when I did fall asleep I had awful dreams.”

“Let me take a guess. The dreams were about chickens.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Did Alpha get arrested?”

Morelli opened my coffee for me. “No. By the time the police got to the warehouse the evidence was scattered over a ten-mile radius.”

I looked in the bag and pulled out a container of orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. “Thanks for bringing me breakfast. This was really nice of you.”

“Yeah, I’m a nice guy.”

He hooked his finger into the neckline of my cotton knit pajama top, looked inside at my breasts, and gave a small sigh.

“So near and yet so far,” he said.

He kissed me and left.

I dropped a chunk of bagel into Rex’s cage, and I ate the rest. I drank the orange juice and took the coffee into my bedroom to drink while I dressed.

A half hour later I was at the bonds bus.

“Where’s Lula?” I asked Connie.

“She said she’d be in late. Something about her hair.”

“It looks like the cockfighting isn’t going to get Alpha off the street. I’m going to need another angle.”

“I’m sure he’s involved in a lot of bad stuff, but the only other thing I know for sure is the security racket.”

“Do you have store owners’ names?”

“The first three blocks of Stark Street are controlled by Alpha. If a store is open and operating they’re paying for protection. If it’s burned to the ground, they aren’t.”

“That’s pretty straightforward. Would I have any luck if I approached the people who had their store torched?”

“If you could find them … and they were alive and functioning beyond a vegetative state.”

“Jeez.”

Mooner was on the couch, doing the Jumble. “Uncle Black,” he said.

I turned toward him. “Who’s Uncle Black?”

“He owns a comic book store on the second block of Stark. Uncle Black’s Books. He had to raise his prices to cover his payments, but then like the payments got raised. It’s a vicious cycle, dude. Uncle Black’s an unhappy man.”

“I need to talk to Uncle Black,” I said.

“You gotta be comic book worthy, or Uncle Black won’t talk to you. He’s focused. He’s got like comic book laserness. He’s like the comic book guru. ”

“Wonderful. I’m the no-talent guru who’s going to get him off the hook to Nick Alpha. Let’s go.”

There wasn’t a lot of traffic on Stark at this time of the morning, and I was able to park in front of Uncle Black’s Books. I locked the Shelby, set the alarm, and followed Mooner into the store. Black’s Books was a small, dusty space, crammed with tables holding thousands of collectible comics in boards and plastic bags. The comics were in alphabetical order according to category. Lots of Spiderman, Superman, X-men. Not so many Betty and Veronica and Casper. Lots of comics I’d never seen.

“Whoa,” Mooner said, obviously gobstruck by a comic in a special display. “ ‘The Creeper versus the Human Firefly.’ Awesome, dude. Fucking awesome.”

“Maybe we should buy that one,” I said to him. “Would that break the ice with Uncle Black? How much is it?”

“Forty-five dollars.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s a comic book! I’ve bought cars for forty-five dollars.”

“But dude, it’s The Creeper.”

I looked around. “Is that Uncle Black behind the counter?”

“Affirmative.”

Uncle Black was white. Really white. As if he hadn’t been out from under the fluorescent lights in a long, long time. He was slim and maybe 5?5?. In his early forties. Mousey brown hair that needed a cutting. Dressed in vintage clothes from the fifties. I suspected the vintage look wasn’t intentional.

“Moonman,” he said. “Wassup?”

“I brought the dudette,” Mooner said. “She’s like cool. She’s Bus Girl.”

“She doesn’t look like Bus Girl. Bus Girl has big hooters and golden clothes. She needs to come back when she looks like Bus Girl, and maybe Uncle Black will talk to her.”

I gave Uncle Black my card. “I need to talk to you about the protection you’re paying.”

Uncle Black tore the card up and threw it into the air like confetti. “Uncle Black will not pay one more penny to protection. And Uncle Black will only talk to Bus Girl when she’s appropriately dressed.”

“Bus Girl is a digital creation of her sick cousin,” I said to Uncle Black.

Uncle Black’s eyes narrowed and his upper lip curled back. “Uncle Black hates digital. Digital is the work of the devil.” He bent below the counter and came up with a shotgun. “Get out of my store you spawn of Satan!”

Mooner and I scurried out of the store and ran halfway down the street before we remembered the Shelby sitting in front of Black’s Books.

I was at the corner, wondering if it was safe to sneak back and retrieve the car, and a black sedan slid to a stop and double-parked beside the Shelby. Two guys who looked like bad business got out of the car and walked into the comic book store. There was a shotgun blast, and the two guys ran out of the store. One of them stumbled and was scooped up and stuffed into the black sedan by the second guy. The second guy sighted what looked like a missile launcher on the roof of the Shelby and phooonf , he fired something off into Black’s.