Janet Evanovich - Motor Mouth

The same immaculately turned-out guy was at the desk, and his eyes got wide when we all barreled in.

“Oh dear,” he said. “Maybe too much of a good thing.”

“Anthony is expecting us,” I told him.

“He didn’t say anything…”

Rosa was wearing a V-neck red sweater that showed a lot of boob squished so tight together a man would suffocate if he got his nose caught in her cleavage. “We’ve been invited for brunch,” Rosa said.

“He didn’t order any brunch,” the desk clerk said.

“Honey pie,” Rosa said, “we are brunch.”

“But they aren’t here. They all went out about a half hour ago. Something about our coffee not being up to their standards, and they were looking for a Starbucks.”

So maybe Rodriguez and Lucca told them about Hooker, and the Zurich chip buyers ran into him by accident. How crappy is that?

“Anthony said we should go upstairs and get ready,” I told the clerk. “He said you’d let us in his room.”

“Oh, no. I can’t do that. I couldn’t possibly.”

“Okay, then we’ll get ready here,” Rosa said. And she stripped off her sweater.

“Eek!” the desk clerk said. “No, no, no. You can’t do that in the lobby.”

“Here goes me, too,” Felicia said, unbuttoning her lavender-flowered shirt.

The desk clerk clapped his hands over his eyes. “I can’t look. I’m not looking.”

“Unless you want to see Felicia’s granny panties hit the floor, you’d better give me the key,” I said.

He shoved a card at me. “Take it. Take it and go ! Get out of my lobby. Room 315.”

Felicia, Rosa, and I flounced off to the elevator and rode to the third floor. I let us into the room, and we went through everything.

“This guy has no imagination,” Felicia said. “Look at his boxers. They’re all the same color. No pictures or anything.”

I turned on his laptop. Nothing on its desktop. Nothing interesting in his hard drive. I went into his mail program. Wiped clean. Nothing on his calendar.

“There isn’t anything here,” I said. “He must export everything onto a memory stick.” I looked around for a memory stick but came up empty.

“There’s a little safe in the closet,” Rosa said. “Probably he got the good stuff in there because it’s locked. Nothing in his jacket pockets.”

Felicia’s cell phone rang. “It’s my niece,” Felicia said, handing the phone to me. “Hooker is there with three men, and he wants to talk to you.”

“Hey,” I said to Hooker. “How’s it going?”

“It could be better. I’m here with three gentlemen who are interested in the computer chip. Turns out it’s not behind the picture of Jesus anymore.”

“I had Felicia take it. I thought I might need it to ransom you.”

“Oh man, that’s a relief. So you have the chip with you?”

I looked over at Felicia. “You have that little chip from the back of the Jesus picture, right?”

“Yes and no,” Felicia said. “I got it, and then when I was looking for the guns, I put the chip on the table, and Beans ate it.”

“What?”

“How was I to know? I left the room for three seconds and when I come back, Mr. Sneaky Dog had his tongue on the table and the chip was gone.”

I was speechless.

“It could be worse,” Felicia said. “At least we know where it is. You just have to wait for him to poopie.”

“Hello,” Hooker said. “Are you still there?”

“The chip is temporarily unavailable,” I told him. “Let me talk to Miranda.”

There was some fumbling and Miranda came on the phone.

“Listen,” I said, “there’s a small problem here, and the chip is temporarily unavailable, but we know exactly where it is, and we’re going to get it to you as soon as possible. Now here’s the thing, if one hair is out of place on Sam Hooker’s head you’ll never see the chip.”

“Now here’s my thing. Get me the chip or you’re going to have a dead boyfriend.”

“Technically, he isn’t my boyfriend.”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Miranda said. He gave me his cell phone number and disconnected.

“We have twenty-four hours to swap the chip for Hooker,” I said to Rosa and Felicia.

“Maybe we feed doggie some prunes and it make things go faster,” Felicia said. “Works for me.”

“Maybe we wait for the bad guys to return and we kick their ass,” Rosa said.

I thought they both sounded like okay ideas. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “One of you can do surveillance on the hotel, and the other can come with me to buy prunes.”

“I don’t want to do surveillance,” Rosa said. “It’s just sitting and waiting.”

“I don’t want to do it either,” Felicia said. “I want to be where the action is. I’ll call my nephew Carl. He can do surveillance. He’s between jobs. He’d be happy to have something to do.”

“Carl,” Rosa said. “I know him. Wasn’t he busted for possession?”

“Yeah, but he’s clean now. He lives in a group home a couple blocks from here, and he’s probably sitting around watching television. He used to bag at a supermarket, but they switched to plastic bags, and he couldn’t get the hang of it.”

Ten minutes later, we were out of the hotel and across the street with Carl. He was a chunky five seven, with dark skin, shoulder-length black hair, too big jeans, and a shiny gold tooth in the front of his mouth. We sat him on a curbside bench and gave him descriptions of the men and cars, including Hooker. He had a cell phone, a quart bottle of soda, mirrored sunglasses, and a ball cap…everything he needed for a day of Miami surveillance.

“Carl don’t look too bright,” Rosa said when we got back to the Camry.

“He’s fried his brain a little with the drugs, but he’ll be fine,” Felicia said. “He’s very conscientious. He found Jesus.”

“He looks like he found Him in a pool hall,” Rosa said.

“There’s a convenience store attached to the marina,” I told Rosa. “We might be able to buy prunes there, and we can check the parking lot for the black BMW.”

Beans was sitting beside me on the backseat, breathing hot dog breath down Felicia’s neck.

“Someone give doggie a mint,” Felicia said. “He needs a mint real bad. Next time no breakfast burritos for him.”

“We’ll get mints when we get the prunes,” I told her.

“I brought him with because we have to watch him all the time so we don’t miss the big event ,” Felicia said.

I didn’t want to think about the big event . I couldn’t imagine how I was going to find the teeny-tiny chip in the midst of the big event . I was going to need a contamination suit and gas mask.

Rosa went all the way on Collins, rolled past Joe’s Stone Crabs, and cut into the parking lot next to Monty’s. She crept up and down the aisles, so we could check out the cars, but we didn’t see the BMW.

“I still want to take a look at the boat,” I said. “And I’d like to let Beans stretch his legs.”

Felicia turned and looked Beans in the face. “Do you have to poopie?” she asked him.

“It’s too soon,” Rosa said, nosing the Camry into a slot and cutting the engine. “He hasn’t had any prunes yet. And anyway, it doesn’t just go in and out bing, bang, boom . It’s not like it’s sex!”

“It does if you eat enough prunes,” Felicia said. “And you should stop having sex with bing, bang, boom men. That’s married sex. If I was divorced like you, I’d set the egg timer on me first . No bing and bang without a boom.”

“It’s a crap shoot out there,” Rosa said. “You roll the dice and sometimes you get a bing and a bang and sometimes you get a boom. That’s why God gave women shower massage.”