Janet Evanovich - Motor Mouth

Ten minutes later, I pulled around the end of the strip mall and caught Hooker in my headlights. The hauler was at idle. The headlights and running lights were off. Hooker was lounging against the hauler.

I parked and ran over with a small screwdriver I’d bought at the convenience store. I ripped the packaging apart and gave Hooker the screwdriver.

“This was the best I could do. The garage was closed.”

Hooker rammed the screwdriver between the bay door and the outside rim of the truck and leaned into it. The metal bent and the lock gave. We searched the bay. No remote.

“Try forcing the side door,” I said to Hooker. “We can’t get to the ceiling hatch or the back door because the aisle will be filled with the tool carts, but I can get to the lounge and maybe find a key for the other locker. Or maybe they left the remote in the lounge.”

Hooker popped the side door, and I jumped inside and flipped on a light. I rapped on the ceiling and yelled up to Gobbles, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Gobbles yelled back, his voice muffled by the sheet-metal slab under him. “What’s going on?”

“We can’t find the remote to open the back door.”

I searched all the drawers and cabinets. No remote. No key. No helpful crowbars lying around. No power equipment that would slice through metal.

Hooker appeared in the doorway. “I broke the screwdriver trying to get the second bay open. Did you find anything in here?”

“No.”

Hooker looked at his watch. “The drivers are probably out of the diner by now, calling the police.”

“They won’t call the police,” Gobbles yelled down. “There’s something in here that’s worth a billion dollars, and they don’t want anyone to find it.”

Hooker looked up at the ceiling. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I wish,” Gobbles said. “I heard them talking outside the hauler. They were taking this truck to Mexico. You’ve got to get me out. They’ll kill me if they find me in here.”

“We need a little more time and a lot bigger screwdriver,” Hooker said.

“Okay, let’s not panic. We need time and tools and a better place to hide this thing,” I said. “Who do we know?”

“Has to be someone we trust,” Hooker said. “Someone close. Someone with a garage or an airplane hangar or an empty warehouse. It would be good to get under cover for a couple minutes in case we have to cut Gobbles out.”

“Felicia Ibarra,” I said. “We can use that abandoned warehouse behind her fruit stand.”

Felicia Ibarra was a chunky little Cuban immigrant lady who was in her early sixties. She was surprisingly wealthy, owning an entire block of real estate in Little Havana that was just short of prime. And she was frighteningly kick-ass, having once shot a guy on my behalf.

Hooker locked eyes with me for a beat. “Our motives might be good, but no matter how you spin it, this is grand-theft auto, big-time. If I get caught on the road in this rig, my career will be over.”

“If you get caught, you’ll be dead,” Gobbles yelled down.

Hooker was hands on hips. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

“Let me drive,” I said to Hooker. “I could do grand-theft auto better than you. You’d just have to promise to come visit me once in a while.”

“Yeah, right. I could almost live with that. See if you can disable the GPS. I’m going to try to rip some of this shrink-wrap off the outside so we’re not so recognizable.”

I was able to squeeze my arm in far enough to reach a roll of aluminum foil sitting on the kitchenette counter. I ripped a couple chunks off the roll, swung out of the hauler, and climbed onto the back of the cab. The antenna had been placed in the usual location, between the exhaust pipes. I wrapped the antenna in aluminum foil and jumped off. Turns out it’s pretty easy to screw up a GPS system.

Ten minutes later we’d done enough slash and peel that we were able to get rolling.

I followed Hooker back out to the highway and trailed behind him. The truck was for the most part white now and didn’t attract a lot of attention. We took 95 South to Flagler and went straight into Little Havana. We passed the Ibarras’ fruit stand, turned left at the next street, and rolled to a stop in front of the warehouse.

I’d called Felicia, and she said the warehouse was ours to use, and she’d leave one of the garage doors open. Hooker lined himself up in front of the open door, pulled the truck into the dark warehouse, and I scooted in around him. I got out of the SUV, ran back to the warehouse door, and pushed the button to close it. When the door shut, I hit the button for the lights and overhead fluorescents flickered on.

Felicia and her husband had bought blocks of real estate around their fruit stand at a time when real estate was cheap. Some of the properties were now leased to other businesses, and some of the properties lay fallow. This warehouse was one of the fallow properties, used occasionally for the storage of seasonal fruit. It was cinder-block construction, with three garage bays and enough room to hold six eighteen-wheelers or a kajillion oranges. The ceiling was high enough to accommodate the hauler. The lighting was adequate. The ambience left something to be desired, but then, we weren’t here for ambience.

Hooker cut the engine, swung down from behind the wheel, and jogged over to some empty fruit crates stacked against the rear wall. A couple crowbars and a mallet lay on the floor by the fruit crates. He grabbed a crowbar and in seconds had the remaining storage-locker door open. The remote plus a bunch of power cords were in the locker. I plugged the truck into a 220-volt outlet so we didn’t have to run on generator. And then I plugged the cord with the remote into its receptacle. I pushed the control button, and like magic the entire back panel of the truck slid to horizontal and became a ramp. I used the remote to raise the ramp to the second deck, and Gobbles inched his way around the primary car and crawled onto the ramp. He lay there spread-eagled, hand to his heart.

“I thought I was going to fucking die,” he said. “Swear to God.”

I powered us down, and when we reached the cement floor, Hooker grabbed Gobbles and dragged him up to his feet.

“We need to talk,” Hooker said. “I want to know what’s going on.”

Gobbles shook his head. “You don’t want to know. It isn’t good.”

“I just hijacked a hauler because of you. Talk to me.”

Gobbles blew out a sigh. “I’m in a mess. A couple weeks ago this guy come to me and said he represented a company that was working on this new traction-control technology that they needed to test. He said it was a big secret, and they needed someone who could keep his mouth shut. They were going to pay in cash, and I needed cash real bad. I’ve got two kids I love, and a wife who wants to suck every last cent out of me, and wicked-bad lawyer bills. They said all I had to do was push a button on a remote when the car was going into a corner. Last week it was your car, and this week it was Shrin’s. You got loose last week and tore up a fender, but this week…I almost killed him. I swear, I never thought it would cause a crash like that.”

I cut my eyes to Hooker and saw his face flush, and I was pretty sure he had some steam coming off the top of his head. “You aren’t going to hit him, are you?” I asked Hooker.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“We don’t actually have time for that.”

“Just one good shot,” Hooker said.

“I didn’t have it figured out,” Gobbles said. “I thought it would give us an advantage. Everybody wants traction control on their car, right? I thought it was a fluke that Hooker spun out on it. When it made Shrin’s car go loose today, I knew there was something else going on. As soon as I pushed the button, both cars spun out.”