Janet Evanovich - Sizzling Sixteen

“He’s the right height. Brown hair. Slim weasel body,” the other guy said. “Hit him.”

I saw the guy’s arm extend with the stun gun, and I ran for Mooner. I reached the door just as Mooner collapsed, and I got tagged, too.

BY THE TIME my brain unscrambled, I was tied hands and feet and had duct tape across my mouth. I was rolling around on the floor of a van, bumping into Mooner, who was also bound and taped. It was a panel van with solid sides and two doors in the rear with small windows. The driver and his partner were up front. I didn’t want to go there. I could mostly see sky through the windows. A streetlight flashed by. A tree. No way of knowing where we were going. The driver and his partner weren’t talking.

The van turned from a smooth road to a bumpy road, hooked a corner, and the road was smooth again. It came to a stop, and the rear doors opened. Mo and Eugene looked in at Mooner and me.

“What the hell’s this?” Mo asked.

The driver came around. “What do you mean? It’s Vincent Plum and some girl. She got in the way, so we took her, too. She looks like fun.”

“That’s not Vincent Plum, you moron.”

“How do you know? Have you ever seen Vincent Plum?”

“I saw him when he stuck his head out of his office. We followed him and the girl from the bonds office to the apartment. That’s how we knew where to find them. We would have snatched him then, but Larry was whining and bleeding all over the place.”

Eugene joined the group and looked in at Mooner and me. “What the fuck’s this?”

“Exactly,” Mo said.

“We took the wrong guy,” the driver said.

“No shit,” Eugene said.

“How was I to know? He’s the right height. He’s got brown hair. He’s sort of weasely.”

“Gregor is going to be pissed,” Eugene said. “We already called and told him we had Vinnie. He’s coming out to personally cut off his nuts.”

“Call him and tell him we made a mistake,” the driver said.

“What are you, crazy?” Eugene said. “Remember what happened to Ziggy when he brought Gregor the wrong Dairy Queen Blizzard?”

“Yeah,” the driver said. “Gregor hit him in the head with a hammer, and now Ziggy falls over when he takes a leak.”

“I got an idea,” Eugene said. “Why don’t we douse the van with gasoline, set it on fire, and shove it off a cliff? Then we tell Gregor there was a faulty gas pedal, and the van went out of control and crashed, and we all got out just in time, except we couldn’t rescue Vincent.”

“That might work,” Mo said.

“Wait a minute,” the driver said. “We don’t have to get all that elaborate. Has Gregor ever seen Vincent Plum?”

“Not that I know,” Eugene said.

“Then what’s the problem?” the driver said. “We tell him this is Vincent Plum. That way, Gregor gets to cut someone’s nuts off, and he won’t be disappointed that he made the trip out here.”

“Yeah, but this guy will tell Gregor he’s not Plum,” Mo said.

The driver shrugged. “We’ll leave the tape on his mouth.”

“Gregor won’t like that,” Eugene said. “He likes when people scream and beg.”

“So we wait until Gregor starts working on him,” the driver said, “and then we take the tape off when this guy’s in the screaming stage.”

Everyone thought about that for a beat.

“It could work,” Mo said.

Eugene agreed.

“Okay, so we have a plan,” Eugene said. “Let’s haul these two into the house. We’ll put them in the tower room. When Gregor gets here, we’ll take this guy to the kitchen, because it has a tile floor for easy cleanup. And then we’ll save the girl for ourselves for later.”

“Mmmrmph,” Mooner said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eugene said to Mooner. “It only hurts in the beginning, and then you faint.”

I was dragged out of the van, and Mo put me over his shoulder like a bag of sand. This was the first chance I had to see the house and its surroundings. There was a large lawn surrounding the house. Beyond the lawn, there were dense trees. Long, paved driveway leading to the house. The house itself could hardly be called a house. It was a fortress. It was ominous gray stone and huge. It defied description. It had a tower with turrets, like a medieval castle. If I had to imagine a house for a Bulgarian maniacal mobster, this would be it.

WE WERE CARRIED inside and up to the tower room. The bindings were cut away from our ankles but left on our wrists. The tape was ripped off our mouths.

“Gregor won’t be here for a while,” Eugene said, “so make yourself comfortable.” And he closed and locked the door.

“I like my nuts,” Mooner said. “I don’t want them cut off. I’d be, like, nutless then.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get rescued.”

“Do you think?”

“Sure.” Truth is, I didn’t have a lot of faith in a rescue. Time was too short. Ranger was good, but this would require a miracle. I looked around the tower room. Not a lot going on. Stone floor. Circular stone walls ringed by long, narrow windows without panes. Thick wood door that didn’t give when I kicked it.

I went to a window and looked out. The house was on a hill surrounded by woods. I could see the Delaware River in the distance. I was pretty sure I was in Pennsylvania. I paced the room for an hour, burning off nervous energy. Mooner was quiet, sitting on the floor, chanting softly.

“Ohmm mooon,” he said, eyes closed. “Ohmm mooon.”

Another hour went by, and I saw a car turn into the driveway. It was a big black Lincoln Town Car. It rolled to a stop in front of the house, and the driver got out. Large man, dark wiry hair streaked with gray. Couldn’t see much of his face from where I stood in the tower. I suspected it was Gregor Bluttovich. Mooner was still convening with his inner self. I didn’t want to disturb him. I think he’d made peace with the fact he was going to lose his nuts, and I don’t think it occurred to him that death would follow.

After a couple minutes, there were loud voices on the stairs, accompanied by heavy footsteps. The tower door banged open, jolting Mooner out of his contemplative state, filling me with renewed fear. Eugene and Mo rushed in, and the man who’d arrived in the Lincoln labored up the stairs behind them.

“We would have brought them down,” Eugene said to the man.

“Shut up, you idiot,” the man said. “I’m not an invalid. I’m a Bulgarian bull.”

The Bulgarian bull lunged into the room, and I thought he looked like a bull having a stroke. His face was purple, and he was sweating and breathing heavy. He was close to six feet tall and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. His eyes were dilated black and glittered in his feverish face. His jowls shook when he talked. He had small, square, yellow teeth behind fleshy protruding lips. He was dressed in bagged-out dark dress slacks and a white dress shirt, open at the neck, showing a mat of graying chest hair.

“So,” he said, looking down at Mooner with his mean little pig eyes. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

“Dude,” Mooner said.

The Bulgarian bull leaned over and got so close to Mooner their noses were touching. “Do you know who I am?” he yelled at Mooner. “I’m Gregor Bluttovich. I’m the man you cheated.” And before Mooner could say anything, Bluttovich hit him open-handed on the side of the head and knocked Mooner over.

“That isn’t Vinnie,” I said.

Eugene and Mo sucked in air and froze.

Bluttovich turned on me. “Who’s this?”

“She was with him,” Eugene said. “We thought you’d like her.”

“They’re lying,” I said. “They took the wrong man, and they were going to keep me for themselves.”