Janet Evanovich - Motor Mouth

The cab pulled into the lot and dropped Ray off. Rosa idled on the street, and I ran through the courtyard attached to Monty’s so I could spy on Ray when he stepped onto the marina footpath.

I slipped into place, to the side of the building, just as Ray emerged from the lot and stood, staring at the empty space on the dock. He made a hand gesture that shouted where the fuck did the boat go ? And he was back on his phone. Angry. Punching numbers in. Talking to someone. He had his hand on his hip, head down, trying not to go entirely gonzo with the person on the other end. He picked his head up and looked around. Not in my direction. Too pissed off to see anything anyway. He paced up and down the walkway, talking. He disconnected and punched in another number. The conversation was much calmer this time, but I could see the rage simmering below the surface. Not talking to an underling, I thought. Maybe talking to Miranda. At least that was my hope, because now that we were committed to a plan, I wanted to get on with it.

It was early afternoon. Not a cloud in the sky. Slight breeze coming in off the ocean, ruffling the water and rustling in the palms. Cool enough to wear jeans but warm enough to wear a short-sleeved shirt. In other words, the weather was perfect. And Florida would have been paradise if only I wasn’t wanted for questioning in multiple murders and if only Hooker wasn’t being held hostage, and if only Beans didn’t have a billion-dollar circuit board working its way through his intestines.

Ray looked at his watch and nodded. He looked in the direction of the parking lot. He did another nod, then he put the phone away. Someone was coming to pick him up, I thought. Be interesting to see if it was Rodriguez or Lucca.

Thirty minutes later, I was back in the Camry with Rosa and Suzanne and Beans. Ray was waiting at the lot entrance. The black BMW rolled past us and stopped curbside. Ray got in, and the car pulled off into traffic. Simon was driving. Rosa kept them in sight, and she swept past them when the BMW stopped in front of the Pearl. She made an illegal U-turn and parked half a block away, facing the hotel. The BMW flashers went on, and Simon got out and went into the lobby. Five minutes later, Felicia called and said her nephew reported the BMW. Ten minutes later, Simon came out with the luggage, got behind the wheel, and took off.

“They checked out,” Rosa said. “I guess they didn’t think a fancy-ass hotel was a good place to rough up a hostage.”

I knew Rosa was just using the phrase as an expression, but the thought of Hooker getting roughed up made my stomach sick.

The BMW went north on Collins, turned onto Seventeenth Street, and took the Venetian Causeway. We were two cars back, watching carefully. The BMW turned into a residential neighborhood on Di Lido Island, wound its way to the northernmost point, and pulled into a gated driveway.

“Nice house,” Rosa said, looking through the wrought-iron gate to the house beyond. “I bet they got Dobermans.”

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Suzanne said. “We’re going to have to scale a six-foot fence to get into this place. And we don’t have any idea how many people are in the house.”

We were parked down the street, debating our options, when my phone rang.

“This is Anthony Miranda,” he said. “I know the location of the circuit board, and I see no reason to wait any longer for it. You have one hour to give me either the circuit board or the dog.”

Ray was a big blabbermouth. “And if I don’t make the one-hour delivery?”

“I start to cut your friend’s fingers off his hand.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s business,” Miranda said. “Nothing personal. There’s a small parking lot adjacent to a convenience store on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Alton Road. My representative will be there to collect my property. One hour.”

“I expect to collect my property as well. I’m not handing anything over until Hooker’s released.”

“Hooker will be released when I take possession of the circuit board.”

“And Gobbles?”

“And Gobbles.”

I disconnected and looked at the ladies. “I have an hour to get the circuit board to Miranda. If I don’t get the circuit board to him, he’s going to start cutting Hooker’s fingers off.”

“Hard for him to drive without fingers,” Rosa said.

“I have an idea,” Suzanne said. “If we could get Beans to poop out the circuit board, we could disable it. Remove the battery and ruin the circuitry. Then we could give it to Miranda, and we will have fulfilled his demands without giving him the technology. Not our fault if the circuit board got damaged, right? I mean, it’s been through a lot.”

We all looked at Beans. He was panting and drooling. He lifted his ass off the seat a little and farted. We all jumped out of the car and fanned the air.

“Do you think that smelled like prunes?” Rosa wanted to know. “I think I might have caught a hint of prune.”

We got back into the car and Rosa drove off De Lido and took the causeway to Belle Island Park. She pulled up to a grassy area, and I got out with Beans and started walking him around.

“Do you have to poop?” I asked him. “Does Beansy have to poopie?”

He took a seven-minute tinkle, and he did a lot of drooling, but he didn’t poop.

“It’s not time yet,” I told everyone. “He’s not ready.”

Suzanne checked her watch. “He has forty-five minutes.”

Rosa drove to Suzanne’s condo, and Suzanne ran in to get Felicia out of the bathroom. When they came out, they had more prunes.

“I borrowed them from my neighbor,” Suzanne said. “She actually eats them. Can you imagine?”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I said. “He’s already had a lot of prunes.”

“Yes, but look how big he is,” Felicia said. “He could take a lot of prunes. Maybe not the whole box this time. Maybe only half a box.”

I fed Beans a couple prunes, and he started to whine and claw at the door.

“He’s ready!” Felicia said. “Get him out. Get the bags.”

“He needs grass,” I told them. “He only goes on grass.”

“Ocean Drive!” Suzanne shouted.

Rosa had the car in gear. “I’ve got it covered. Hang on. We’re only a couple blocks away.”

She rocketed down Collins, hung a left onto Ocean, and slid to a stop at the curb. We all got out and ran with Beans to the grassy stretch of park between the road and beach. Beans reached the grass and abruptly stopped and hunched. I had a plastic bag wrapped around my hand. I was set to catch. Felicia had Beans by the leash. Suzanne and Rosa had spare bags.

“I knew the prunes would work,” Felicia said.

Beans put his head down, squinched his eyes closed, and a box and a half of prunes and God knows what else exploded from his back end in a gelatinous spray that shot out over a ten-foot radius.

We all jumped back bug-eyed.

“Maybe too many prunes,” Rosa said.

Beans picked his head up and smiled. He was done. He felt fine. He pranced around a little at the end of his leash.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s not panic. He’s obviously empty. So the circuit board has to be here somewhere. Everybody look.”

“It’s too small,” Suzanne said. “It would have been hard to find in…you know, a pile. It’s going to be impossible to find in this grass.”

“Maybe they’ll only cut a couple fingers off,” Rosa said. “As long as he’s got his thumb, he could be okay.”

“We have twenty-five minutes,” Felicia said.

“We’ll have to fake it,” I told them. “Everyone look for dog poop. Lots of people walk their dogs here and not everyone cleans up. We’ll fill a bag with whatever poop we can find. Then we’ll give the bag to Miranda, and we’ll tell him we didn’t have time to look for the circuit board. And the more poop the better, so it takes a long time for Miranda to go through it. We need time to make a getaway with Hooker.”