14 Fearless Fourteen (5 page)

She held her hand out, and we looked at her ring.

“Wow, that's a big diamond,” Connie said. “Is it
real?”

“Sure it's real,” Lula said. “I got it in the diamond district
on Eighth and Remington.”

“That's the projects,” Connie said.

“Yeah. Scootch Brown runs that corner. He said this was a real
good ring. He gave me a good price on it.”

“So it was okay with Tank that you bought the
ring?”

“Tank got a real important job,” Lula said. “He don't
necessarily have time to go shopping for shit like
this.”

“Does he know he's engaged?”

“Of course he knows,” Lula said. “It was real romantic, too. He
came over, and we always get right to it, if you know what I mean.
So anyway, we got that out of the way, and then Tank fell asleep
and I put the ring on. And then when Tank woke up, I told him how
happy I was, and how he was such a sweetie. And then I celebrated
by making him feel real good, and after that he fell asleep
again.”

“Congratulations,” I said to Lula. “When's the
wedding?”

“I haven't decided that. June might be nice.”

“That's next month.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “You think it's too far away? I don't like
long engagements.”

“You can't go wrong with June,” Connie said. “Everyone wants to
get married in June.”

“That's what I figure,” Lula said. “I always wanted to be a June
bride, but I don't want one of them schmaltzy weddings with the big
white gown and all. I just want to get married real quiet.” She
looked at me. “What about you? Did you have a big schmaltzy
wedding?”

“Yeah. And then I had an even bigger divorce.”

“I remember the divorce,” Connie said. “It was spectacular. It
was a real accomplishment, since you'd only been married about
fifteen minutes.” She handed a file over to me. “This guy just came
in. Failed to appear for his court appearance. Not a big bond, but
it shouldn't be hard to find him. He lives with his brother in a
row house on Vine Street.”

“What's the charge?”

“Indecent exposure.”

“That sounds like fun,” Lula said. “I might have to help you
with that one.”

I read through the bond document. “He's
eighty-one.”

“Now that I think about it,” Lula said, “I got a lot to do. I
might not have time to round up some eighty-one-year-old naked
guy.”

“I'm sure he's not always naked,” I said to Lula. “He probably
just forgot to close the barn door.”

“Okay, I'll go with you, but I don't want to get involved with
no eighty-year-old doodles, you see what I'm
saying?”

“Before I forget, Mary Ann Falattio is having a purse party
tonight,” Connie said. “Are you interested?”

Mary Ann Falattio's husband, Danny, hijacked trucks for the
Trenton Mob, and from time to time, Mary Ann supplemented her
household budget by tapping into the merchandise stored in her
garage. “What's she got?” I asked Connie.

“She said Danny got a load of Louis Vuitton last night. Picked
them up at Port Newark.”

“I'm in,” Lula said. “I could use a new bag. She just get bags
or did she get shoes, too?”

“I don't know,” Connie said. “It was a message on my
machine.”

I shoved the new file into my pocket. “I'm working tonight.
Brenda's having dinner with the mayor. If she passes out early
enough, I'll stop by.”

There was still rush-hour traffic clogging Hamilton when Lula
and I left the bonds office. The sky was as blue as it gets in
Jersey, and the air was warm enough that I could unzip my
sweatshirt.

Lula walked half a block to my parked car and stopped short,
eyes bugged, mouth open. “Holy cow.”

Zook was written over the entire car in black and scarlet and
gold, surrounded by swirling flames edged in metallic
green.

“He did it when I took a shower this morning. He said it would
wash off,” I told Lula.

“Too bad. It's a real improvement on this hunk of junk
car.”

“It's supposed to protect me from the griefer.”

“You can never have too much protection,” Lula
said.

We buckled in and I drove the short distance to Conway
Street.

“I'll just be a minute,” I told Lula. “I need to talk to Dominic
Rizzi.”

“Holler if you need help. I hear he's a nut
case.”

Alma Rizzi's small front yard was bare of landscaping, with the
exception of a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin and
the weather-beaten gray clapboard house behind it were stoic.
They'd seen it all. Good times and bad.

I knocked on the front door and Dom answered. He was about
five-feet-nine, with a barrel chest and a head like a melon. He was
a couple years older than Loretta, and a lot of pounds heavier. He
looked like Friar Tuck with road rage.

“Stephanie Plum,” he said. “You got a lot of nerve coming here.
First you put my kid sister in jail, and then you kidnap my nephew.
If I wasn't on probation, I'd shoot you.”

“I didn't kidnap Mario. Loretta made me promise to take him. And
if you'd bail her out, he could go back home instead of living with
Morelli and me.”

Dom went goggle-eyed. “Mario is living with Joe Morelli? That
bastard has my nephew?”

“Yeah.”

“In his house?”

“Yeah.”

Dom was just about vibrating in front of me, hands fisted, neck
cords bulging, spit foaming at the corners of his mouth, face
purple.

“Sonovabitch. Sonovabitch. I'm gonna kill that snake Morelli. I
swear to God, I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna cut off his head.
That's what you do to a snake.”

Yikes. “Yeah, but not when you're on probation,
right?”

“Fuck probation. He deserves to die. First he got my kid sister
pregnant. And then he took Rose's house. And now he's got
Mario.”

“Whoa, wait up a minute. What do you mean he got Loretta
pregnant?”

“It's obvious,” Dom said. “Take a look at the kid. Recognize
anyone?”

“Loretta and Joe are vaguely related. It's not shocking that
there'd be a family resemblance.”

“It's more than a family resemblance. Besides, I caught them in
the act. They were doing it in my old man's garage. Nine months
later, Mario popped out of the oven. That piece of shit Morelli. I
should have killed him then.”

I was stunned. I'd seen the resemblance, but this had never
crossed my mind.

Morelli had been pretty wild in high school and his early
twenties.

He hadn't been my favorite person, and I was willing to believe
a lot of bad things about him. This went beyond what I would have
expected. Hard to believe he'd have a romantic relationship with
Loretta and then walk away from her and the baby.

“I know Morelli had a Casanova reputation in high school, but
this is out of character,” I said to Dom. “Family and friends were
always important to Morelli.”

“He ruined my kid sister's life. She was smart. She always got
the good grades. She could have been something, but she had to quit
high school. And now she's in jail. This is his fault. He stole her
future, just like he stole mine. You tell the sonovabitch to live
in fear. You tell him to watch his back, because I'm gonna chop the
head off the snake. And you tell him to stay far away from my
nephew,” Rizzi said, eyes narrowed.

“If you'd post the security for the bond on Loretta...” “I'm
living in my mother's house. Does that say something? Like maybe I
haven't got a cent? No job. No money. No goddamn
house.”

“I thought you might have some cash laying around.” “What are
you, fucking deaf? I have nothing.” “Okay then. Good talking to
you. Let me know if you find some money. Just give me a ringy
dingy.”

I turned and practically ran back to the car. He was frig-gin'
scary. And I couldn't believe I told him to give me a ringy dingy!
Where did that come from?

Lula was eyebrows up when I slid behind the wheel. “Well, how'd
that go?” she asked.

“Could have been better.”

“He gonna bond Loretta out?”

“Nope.”

“Sounded to me like he was yelling about
something.”

“Yep.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Nope.” What on earth was I supposed to say? He saw Morelli
boinking Loretta and getting her pregnant? I could barely think it,
much less repeat it.

“Hunh,” Lula said. “I was gonna make you my maid of honor, but I
might have to rethink that if you're gonna go all secret on
me.”

“I thought you were going to have a quiet
wedding.”

“Yeah, but you gotta have a maid of honor. It's a
rule.”

Vine Street ran off Broad and was at the edge of the Burg. I
cruised along, checking off the numbers of the row
houses.

“What's this guy's name?” Lula wanted to know.

“Andy Gimp.”

“That's a terrible name. That's a strike against you right from
the start.”

“He's eighty-one. I imagine he's used to it.” I pulled to the
curb and parked.

“Showtime.”

“I hope not,” Lula said. “I finally got me some good stuff. I
don't want to ruin my mental image. I don't want some old wrinkled
wanger burned into my cornea when what I want to remember is Tank
and the big boys.”

I took a business card and a small can of pepper spray out of my
purse and rammed them into my jeans pocket. “Big
boys?”

“Yeah, you know... the fuzzy lumpkins, the storm troopers, the
beef balls.”

I covered my ears with my hands. “I get it!” I stepped onto the
small cement front porch and rang the bell. A little old man with
wispy gray hair and skin like a Shar-Pei answered.

“Andy Gimp?” I asked.

“Nope. I'm Bernie. Andy's my older brother,” the man said. “Come
on in. Andy's watching television.”

“I got a bad feeling about this,” Lula said. “If this is the
younger brother, what the heck does the older one look
like?”

“Hey, Andy,” Bernie called out. “You got company. You got a
couple hot ones.”

I followed Bernie into the living room and immediately spotted
Andy. He was slouched into a broken-down overstuffed chair facing
the television. He was wearing a white dress shirt buttoned to the
neck and black socks and black shoes, and that was it. No pants. He
looked like a bag of bones with skin cancer. He was milk-white skin
and red splotches everywhere. And I mean everywhere. There was a
lot of nose and a lot of ears, and gonads hanging low between his
knobby knees.

“Come on in,” he said, gesturing with big boney hands. “What can
I do you for?”

“I knew it,” Lula said. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. This
here's gonna haunt me forever. This is what I got to look forward
to after a hundred years of marriage. This here's what happens to
outdoor plumbing when a man gets old. I don't know if I can go
through with the wedding.”

“Age don't got nothing to do with it,” Bernie said. “He's always
looked like that.”

“You're not wearing any pants,” I said to Andy
Gimp.

“Don't like them. Never wear them.”

“Fine by me,” I said, “but you didn't show up for your court
appearance.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“I had it marked on my calendar,” Andy said. “Bernie, where's
the calendar?”

“Lost it,” Bernie said.

“They say I didn't show up for my court
appearance.”

Bernie shrugged. “So what? They'll give you another
one.”

Andy was on his feet, looking for the calendar. He walked body
bent, arms akimbo, feet planted wide for balance, his nuts
practically dragging on the floor.

“I know it's here somewhere,” he said, shuffling through
magazines on the coffee table, rifling through a pile of newspapers
on the floor.

“I'm feelin' faint,” Lula said. “If he bends over one more time,
I'm gonna pass out. I can't stop lookin'. It's a train wreck. It's
like the end of the universe. You know, when you get sucked into
that thing. What do you call it?”

“Black hole?”

“Yeah, that's it. It's like staring into the black
hole.”

Andy was distracted by the calendar hunt, so I gave my business
card to Bemie and introduced myself.

“Lula and I need to take Andy to the courthouse so he can
reinstate his bail bond,” I told Bemie. “Can you get him to put
some pants on?”

“He don't own none,” Bernie said. “And I'm not loaning him any
of mine. You don't know where he's been sitting.”

“Hell, I'll buy him some pants if he'll stop bending over,” Lula
said.

“Won't do no good,” Bernie said. “He won't wear them. He made up
his mind.”

Since I've had this job, I've hauled in a naked, greased-up fat
guy, a half-naked homie, and a naked old pervert, and I've worked
with a little naked guy who thought he was a leprechaun. A
geriatric nudist wasn't going to slow me down.

“Get a jacket,” I said to Andy. “We're going
downtown.”

“I'm not wearing pants,” he said.

“Not my problem.”

I walked him out of the house and settled him onto a newspaper
on my backseat.

“The desk sergeant is gonna love this,” Lula
said.

An hour later, Andy was in line at the courthouse, waiting to
see the judge, and Lula and I were back on Hamilton Avenue, coming
up to Tasty Pastry.

“Pull over!” Lula said. “I want to go into the bakery. I gotta
look at wedding cakes, and I wouldn't mind getting an eclair to
settle my stomach. I think I got wedding jitters.”

I thought that was a great idea. I didn't have wedding jitters,
but I had guy-in-basement jitters, and Loretta jitters, and Joe
Morelli fatherhood jitters. I might need three
eclairs.

I parked the Sentra, and Lula and I marched into the bakery.
Betty Kuharchek was behind the counter, setting out a cookie
display. Betty is an apple dumpling woman who has worked at Tasty
Pastry forever. If you pass her on the street, there's the
lingering scent of powdered sugar icing.

“I'm gonna be a June bride and I need to consider some wedding
cakes,” Lula said to Betty. “I like the one in the window with the
three tiers and the big white roses with the green leaves, but
before I get down to business, I need an eclair.”