Janet Evanovich: Sizzling Sixteen

And what if I don’t come through, and they kill Vinnie? How could I live with that? I thought.

I speed-dialed Ranger’s cell phone.

Ranger picked up and there was a moment of silence as if he was sensing me at the other end, taking my body temperature and heart rate long distance. “Babe,” he finally said.

“Do you know the slum apartment building Bobby Sunflower owns on Stark?”

“Yes. It’s on the same block as his funeral home.”

“That’s the one. I’m going in to look for someone. If you don’t hear from me in a half hour, maybe you could send someone to check.”

“Is this a smart thing to do?”

“Probably not.”

“As long as you know,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

“I got two doughnuts left,” Lula said, “and I’m eating them before I go in just in case I don’t come out.”

I angled out of the Firebird. “Take them with you. If I don’t go in now, I’ll chicken out.”

The front door was ajar, leading to a small, dark foyer spray-painted with a bunch of gang symbols. Stairs going up to the left. A bank of mailboxes to the right. No names on the mailboxes. Most were open and empty. Some didn’t have doors at all. The message was clear. If you lived here, you didn’t get mail.

Two doors led off the foyer. Lula and I listened at the doors. Nothing. I tried one of the doors. Locked. The second door opened to cellar stairs.

Lula poked her head in the doorway. “There’s stairs going down, but I can’t see nothing. It’s blacker’n night down there. Don’t smell too good, either.”

“I hear scritching sounds,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah, I hear it, too. Kinda squeaky.”

And then a tsunami of rats swept up the stairs and over our feet.

“Rats!” Lula yelled. “Rats!”

I was frozen to the spot, too horrified to move. Lula was dancing, arms in the air, shrieking. The rats were wall to wall, scrambling around in a pack, filling the foyer.

“Kill ’em. Kick ’em,” Lula said. “Help! Police! Call 911.”

I snatched the bakery bag out of her hand and pitched a doughnut out the front door. The rats ran after the doughnut, and I slammed the door shut behind them.

Lula collapsed against the wall. “Do I look like I’m having a heart attack? Did I get bit? Do I have fleas?” She took the bag back from me and looked inside. “At least you didn’t throw the jelly doughnut. I was saving that one for last.”

I closed the cellar door and took to the stairs. There were three doors on the second floor. Two were nailed shut with crisscrossed boards. No sound from inside. The third was open, and the one-room apartment was empty of people and furniture but filled with garbage.

“I’m going home and taking a shower when we’re done here,” Lula said. “I feel like I got cooties.”

The third floor had three doors, and all were closed. “We need a plan,” I said to Lula.

“You mean like I be the Girl Scout cookie girl?”

“Yeah.”

“What if Vinnie’s in there and he’s with some of Sunflower’s stooges? We shoot them, right?”

“Only if we have to.”

Lula took her Glock out of her bag and stuffed it into her pants, snug to her backbone. She looked at me. “Don’t you want to get your gun ready to go?”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“What have you got?”

“Hairspray.”

“Is it firm hold? I might need some when we’re done here, depending on what we do for lunch.”

I crept down a couple stairs and pressed myself against the wall, hairspray at the ready should Lula need backup. Lula knocked on the first door, the door opened, and a fat, sloppy, bleary-eyed guy answered. He was maybe fifty years old, needed a shave, needed a shower, needed less alcohol.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I’m sellin’ Girl Scout cookies,” Lula said, looking past the fat guy into his room.

“Aren’t you sorta old to be a Girl Scout?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m doing this for my niece,” Lula said. “She got a intestinal disturbance and couldn’t make her quota, so I’m helping out.”

“What’s in the bakery bag?”

“That’s none of your business, either. Are you gonna buy cookies, or what?”

The guy snatched Lula’s doughnut bag, slammed the door closed, and locked it.

“Hey!” Lula said. “You give me back my bag.” She put her ear to the door. “I hear the bag rustling! He better not be fingering my doughnut.” Lula pounded on the door. “Give me my doughnut back or else.”

“Too late,” he said through the door. “I ate it.”

“Oh yeah, well, eat this,” Lula said. And she hauled her Glock out and drilled a bunch of rounds into the door.

“Holy crap!” I yelled, rushing at Lula. “Stop shooting. You can’t just shoot up someone’s door over a doughnut. You could kill the guy.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “I’m outta bullets.” She scrounged around in her purse. “I know a got a extra clip in here somewhere.”

The door banged open and the fat guy looked out at us and ratcheted the slide back on a sawed-off shotgun. He took aim, and I blasted him with hairspray.

“Yow!” he hollered, rubbing at his eyes. “Shit, that stings.”

Lula and I flew down the stairs. We took one flight, rounded the corner for the second flight, and crashed into two of Ranger’s men on their way up. We hit them with enough force to knock them off balance, and we all went ass-over-teakettles, rolling in a pack to the foyer floor.

“Jeez,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect anyone to be on the stairs.”

I knew one of the guys. His name was Hal. He was a real sweetie, and he was built like a stegosaurus.

“Ranger sent us to check on you,” Hal said. “We just got here, and we heard shots.”

“Some moron ate my jelly doughnut,” Lula said. “So I shot him.”

Hal cut his eyes to the third floor. “How bad is he? Do you want us to, you know, get rid of anything?”

“Like a body?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Hal said.

“Thanks, but not necessary,” I told him. “Lula shot through the door, and the moron came after us with a sawed-off.”

“Gotcha,” Hal said. “I’ll pass it on to Ranger.”

Hal and his partner got into their shiny black SUV, and Lula and I got into the Firebird, and we all drove off.

“It’s too bad we didn’t get to check out all the apartments,” Lula said, “on account of I had a real feeling about that place. I could see Vinnie getting hid there.”

I thought the apartment building was too obvious. I didn’t know Bobby Sunflower personally, but from everything I’d heard, he didn’t sound like a dope. If Bobby Sunflower was behind this, probably Vinnie wasn’t on one of Sunflower’s properties. People like Sunflower had their fingers in lots of pies, and that’s where I thought Vinnie was being kept… in one of Sunflower’s pies.

“Now what?” Lula wanted to know.

“Drop me at Rangeman.”

RANGEMAN IS HOUSED in a discreet seven-story building on a quiet side street in Trenton proper. If you didn’t look closely, you wouldn’t notice the small brass plaque by the side of the door that simply states RANGEMAN. No other sign identifies the business. Ranger’s private lair occupies the top floor. Two more floors are dedicated to employee apartments, and the remainder of the building runs the security operation. Rangeman services private residences and commercial properties for clients who need a high level of protection. Plus, Rangeman does the occasional odd job of guarding bodies, finding bodies, and possibly eliminating bodies.

Ranger was my mentor when I first went to work for my cousin Vinnie. I suppose he’s still my mentor, but now he’s also my friend, my protector, from time to time he’s been my employer, and on one spectacularly memorable occasion, he was my lover. I have an electronic key to the underground garage and to Ranger’s private apartment. It also gives me access to the building, but today I let the guy at the first-floor reception desk buzz me in. I took the elevator to the control room and walked past the cubbies and consoles, waving to men I knew.