Janet Evanovich - Takedown Twenty

I was head-to-toe cement, but I managed to get to my feet. Moe was still down, holding his leg, with Grandma training the gun on him. Her hand was shaking, but her eyes were narrowed and steady.

“I’m feeling mean as a snake,” she said to Moe. “And I’d love to have an excuse to shoot you, so go ahead and make a move.”

Lula looked in through the window. “Holy horse pucky,” she said. “What the heck?”

Red lights were flashing in the alley. Men’s voices. The rumble of a big truck. Blue strobes flashing with the red lights.

“What’s going on out there?” Grandma asked.

“I saw Moe and Shorty standing there with the cement truck and I got worried, so I called everyone. We got police and a fire truck and EMTs and Ranger and half of Rangeman here.”

There was scraping at the door and the door opened, oozing cement onto the dirt floor. Morelli was the first one I saw. He grabbed me and pulled me out of the room. Cement was dropping off me in globs, but the cement on my legs was beginning to harden. He half dragged, half carried me up the stairs and out into the alley. A uniform followed with Grandma.

Morelli yelled for water, and an instant later Grandma and I were getting hosed down. Grandma went to the hospital to get checked out, but I refused. I shucked my clothes behind the fire truck and wrapped myself in a blanket. When I came out from behind the truck I saw that Moe had been hosed down and cuffed, and his leg was bandaged. Shorty was strapped to a backboard.

“What happened to Shorty?” I asked Lula.

“He got trampled,” Lula said. “I guess the lights from the police cars scared Kevin out of his hidey-hole, and he came barreling down the alley and ran right over Shorty.”

“Sunny is dead,” I told Morelli. “Heart attack.” I gave him the short version of the night and asked him to retrieve my messenger bag. I would have gotten it for myself, but I didn’t think my legs could get me up the stairs. I felt like I was still encased in cement.

Morelli gave me a kiss on the forehead and handed me over to Ranger to take home.

“I need to stay and do my cop thing,” Morelli said, “but I’ll stop around when I’m done.”

It was past midnight when Morelli let himself into my apartment.

“You did it, Sherlock,” he said. “You solved the Dumpster murders.”

I was on the couch, watching television, waiting for him. “It was an accident. Dumb luck.”

“Better to be lucky than smart,” Morelli said, slouching onto the couch next to me, handing me the messenger bag I’d left in Sunny’s bachelor pad. “Shiller already questioned Moe and Shorty, and they blabbed everything. Turns out there were old ladies getting left in Dumpsters for the last ten years, over a three-state area. It was how Sunny got his kicks.”

“Sick.”

“Yeah. Big-time. There’s a name for it. ‘Granny grabbers.’ They’re like chubby chasers, but they like to do old ladies. Sunny added his own twist to it by killing them after.”

“What was the connection? Was it Bingo? Was it the Senior Center?”

“There was no connection. They were all random encounters. Sunny was out and about, going to wakes, shopping in bakeries and grocery stores, meeting women in the casinos in Atlantic City. He was Mr. Charm, and after a couple phone calls there was a date.”

“And a death.”

“Yeah, and a death,” Morelli said. “And a sunflower. We should have picked up on it. We should have made the Sunny and sunflower connection. Are you hungry?”

“Starved.”

He went to the kitchen and came back with a bag of food and a six-pack. He gave me a beer, and he pulled Philly cheesesteaks out of the bag.

“Somehow Moe mysteriously got shot just before we arrived. I don’t suppose you have any ideas on this?”

“Nope.”

That was a fib. I only knew of one gun that made that much noise, and I suspect it was in Lula’s purse. She was lucky she didn’t have a broken nose.

“I’ve got more news for you,” Morelli said. “Sunny was renovating the brownstone, hoping to turn it into an exclusive restaurant that served big game and endangered species. For an extra charge you could even kill the animal yourself. I don’t exactly know how he was going to pull that one off. Take everyone out in the alley and give them an assault rifle, I guess. Anyway, the giraffe got delivered early and managed to escape. Eventually they gave up trying to catch it, since the restaurant wasn’t done anyway.”

“Why didn’t anyone report the giraffe to the police or the Humane Society?”

“Sunny controlled those blocks. The giraffe cost him lots of money. He didn’t want someone snatching it out from under him. Some of the people on those blocks hoped they’d get a job at the restaurant. They didn’t want to jeopardize it.”

“So what’s going to happen to the giraffe now?”

“There’s going to be a giraffe roundup tomorrow at noon. Some people are coming in from one of the wildlife agencies. If they can get the giraffe unharmed, there’s a zoo in Naples, Florida, that’ll take it.” Morelli tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “I’m beat. This was a long day. I’m so tired I don’t even care about the bag from the drugstore.”

“That’s a first,” I said. “I’ve never known you to be that tired.”

Morelli grinned. “I could probably force myself to rise to the occasion if you were desperate for me.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

LULA AND I stood behind a barricade at Fifteenth and Freeman that had been set up to keep people from encroaching on the giraffe roundup area. A bunch of residents of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth blocks were standing there with us. They’d been feeding and cleaning up after Kevin while he’d clip-clopped down the back alleys, evading capture by Sunny’s henchmen.

“I’m happy Kevin’s gonna get a good home in Florida,” Lula said. “I might even visit him at the zoo. I talked to some of the giraffe wranglers, and they said they wouldn’t have any problems catching Kevin. It turns out he was born in Philadelphia, and he’s used to people, unless they chase him in a car and try to shoot him with a dart gun.”

“Did they know how Sunny got Kevin?”

“He stole him. Hijacked his truck. The zoo in Philadelphia had too many man giraffes, so they were already sending Kevin to that zoo in Florida. Kevin escaped when Sunny’s idiots tried to get him out of his truck.”

We could hear activity in the alley. It sounded like it was a block away. The wranglers had been working since early this morning, fencing off streets, shrinking the capture area. The goal was to get Kevin into his truck without sedation. One of the wranglers was tweeting and transmitting pictures, so we were all on our smartphones. A cheer went up from the alley, and a moment later the picture came through of Kevin in his truck.

“This here’s a happy ending,” Lula said. “It worked out for everyone. Kevin’s going to a good home. Old ladies don’t have to worry about getting choked and thrown into a Dumpster no more. It even worked out for Sunny on account of he died doing his favorite thing.”

I looked at Lula. She’d gotten dressed up for Kevin’s capture. She was wearing a tasteful beige suit and matching pumps. And she had a Brahmin handbag on her arm. It was a pretty bag with the classic Brahmin leather pattern and the little Brahmin gold tag.

“That’s a real Brahmin, isn’t it?” I asked her.

“You bet your ass,” Lula said. “I bought this suit to go with it. I didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about my character when I carry this bag. This here’s a elegant bag, and I don’t want to distract from it by someone trying to get a look up my hoo-ha ’cause my skirt might have rode up.”