Джанет Иванович - Twisted Twenty-Six

“Holy shit pickles,” Grandma said.

I didn’t take the time to look for Shine or Salgusta. I drove the truck out of the parking lot, through the Concrete Plant complex, and onto the service road. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but after after what seemed like a lifetime of blind panic driving, I saw the turnoff to Route One. I headed for the ramp and took out a highway sign. I was so frazzled I didn’t know if I was going to or away from Trenton. I just knew I was on the highway.

“D-d-do you know where we’re going?” I asked Grandma.

“We’re heading for Trenton,” she said. “You’re doing good, but you might want to slow down a tad.”

I checked the speedometer and saw that I was doing eighty. Pretty good for a concrete truck, I thought. Cars were moving out of my way. Not wanting to compete with the huge yellow and red behemoth that was rocketing up their ass.

A cop car passed me, and then another. I had two in front of me and one on the side. I looked in my rearview mirror. Three more cop cars. All with their lights flashing. I took this as a good sign. Even if I got a speeding ticket, it was still good.

I stopped the truck in the middle of the road and a Rangeman SUV immediately slid up beside me. Ranger jumped out, ran up to the truck, and pulled me out. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close, and I realized I was crying.

“Babe,” he said. “Who knew you could drive a concrete truck?”

“Omigod,” I said, wiping tears away. “This was a nightmare. How did you find me?”

“Surveillance cameras, and then I followed the trail of metallic blue extensions.”

“I’ve got Grandma with me.”

“Tank is with her. Do we need to have an EMT check her out?”

“No. She’s okay. We were able to escape before the bad things started to happen.”

“Morelli is dealing with Stupe. I’m supposed to take you and Grandma home. You can give a statement when you’re up to it.”

“Do the police have Charlie Shine and Lou Salgusta in custody?”

“Not that I know. Stupe was on the floor, dead, when I got there with Morelli. The chopper spotted you in the concrete truck. Charlie Shine and Lou Salgusta weren’t on the scene.”

I leaned into Ranger. He was warm and comforting. I always felt safe when I was with him. “Has someone told my mom that Grandma is okay?”

“I’ll get a phone to Grandma. She can make the call.”

He whistled to Tank and told him to give his phone to Grandma.

“Where do you want to go?” Ranger asked. “Do you want to go home or to your parents’ house?”

“Home. I miss Rex.”

Ranger commandeered the Rangeman SUV and wove around the cop cars that were clustered around the concrete truck. At least three miles of congestion was behind the cop cars. I called Morelli and told him Shine and Salgusta were responsible for Stupe and for kidnapping Grandma and me. I was hoping they were stuck in the three miles of stopped traffic.

We didn’t talk on the ride home. I was too numb for conversation. Ranger maneuvered me out of the SUV, into my building, and into my apartment. I looked in at Rex and felt better. Everyone in my family was okay.

“Are you hungry?” Ranger said. “I can make you an omelet.”

I managed a smile at that. “I hate to pass it up, but I’m exhausted.”

He looked in my fridge and my freezer. “Ice cream?”

“Yes. Ice cream would be amazing.”

We sat side by side on the couch and ate ice cream.

“It’s a shame you don’t want to get married,” I said to Ranger. “You’re actually reasonably domesticated.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. “Are you going to propose?”

“Not at this moment, but I’m thinking about it.”

“Would you like me to stay here tonight?”

“It would be a waste. I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m going to go to bed and sleep for days.”

“I might not care.”

I punched him in the arm, and he got up and walked to the door.

“Call if you need me,” he said.

I fell asleep on the couch, and Morelli woke me up at six o’clock. He had Bob with him and a bag of food from Pino’s. Meatball sandwiches, fries, coleslaw, and ricotta cake. He clicked the news on, and we ate in front of the television.

“Did you catch Shine and Salgusta?” I asked.

“No. They’re in the wind, but it’s only a matter of time.”

“Ranger said he found me by following a trail of metallic blue extensions.”

“I called when I finally got home from work last night, but you didn’t answer. When I called this morning and you still didn’t answer I got worried, so I came here and found your door unlocked and the television on. I got in touch with Ranger, and he was able to access the security camera at the back of this building. He ran the video back and saw Stupe dragging a recycling bin out and wrangling it into a panel truck that belonged to the Concrete Plant. We went to the Concrete Plant and wandered around, finally finding the blue bin with your extensions all over it. The door to the storage building was open and Stupe was inside. We saw the cot and the food bags and all of Salgusta’s equipment. And I have to tell you my heart stopped for a full two minutes, and Ranger went pale. We were inside the building when one of Ranger’s men came to tell us about the garage door and empty bay. We must have missed you by seconds. The chopper was already in the air doing a traffic report. He spotted the concrete truck, we scrambled every patrol car in the area, and Ranger took off. One of the patrol cars said they clocked him at 110 miles per hour on Route One.”

“Stupe was trying to extort money from the La-Z-Boys. He killed Lucca and Julius Roman.”

“And then Shine and Salgusta killed Stupe.”

“Yep. And eventually they would have killed me, but they had to go to Home Depot, and I was able to get away.”

“They had all their torture tools out, and they decided to go to Home Depot?”

“Ran out of gas for the torch.”

“God’s will,” Morelli said.

“Yeah, better to be lucky than good.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

EARLY MONDAY MORNING I woke up happy to be alive and without a man’s initials burned into my hoo-ha. It was now three o’clock, and I was still feeling happy. I was wearing my new blue silk shirtwaist dress to the lawyer’s office. Grandma was wearing a magenta tracksuit. Her lipstick matched her tracksuit and her red hair was spiked up with Sumoclay. She looked even happier than I did. And I suspected her outfit was a stiff middle finger to intimidation of any kind.

Jimmy’s lawyer, Ziggy Weinberger, was in a midrise office building in center city. When Grandma and I arrived at one o’clock, the small conference room was already packed with people: Jimmy’s sisters, Barbara, Benny the Skootch’s two wiseguys in training, a man and woman I didn’t know, and empty chairs for Charlie Shine and Lou Salgusta.

When Grandma and I took our seats, Ziggy leaned forward in his chair at the head of the table. “I don’t think we need to wait for Charlie and Lou,” he said. “They’re probably in Argentina. So, let’s get started. Jimmy had a will drawn up several years ago. It addressed the possibility of another marriage, and in the event of that marriage, all of Jimmy’s assets would go to his wife.”

“That will is invalid due to senility,” Barbara said. “I fully intend to contest it.”

Angie jumped out of her chair and waved her bandaged hand at Grandma. “Whore woman!”

“Ladies,” Ziggy said. “A little decorum, please.”

Angie sat down, and Ziggy continued.

“Everyone should have a file folder,” he said. “There are documents in your folders that give an accounting of Jimmy’s assets at the time of death.”