Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(10)

“I’m not looking for butterflies,” I told her. “I’m looking for Jimmy Poletti.”

“Poletti confetti,” she said. “Poletti confetti.” She spied Briggs standing behind me and leaned forward for a closer look. “Nice doggy,” she said, patting him on the head.

Briggs growled at her, and she jumped back into the apartment and slammed the door shut.

There were four doors at the next level. Two of them were open, and the apartments were trashed. Soiled, lumpy mattresses on the floor. Garbage everywhere. Used drug paraphernalia. A bunch of giant roaches lying sneakers up. Probably overdosed. It looked like someone had had a bonfire in one of the units.

“They weren’t cooking hotdogs and marshmallows here,” Briggs said.

I knocked on one of the closed doors, and a moment later a shotgun blast blew the top half of the door apart.

“Holy crap,” Briggs said, diving to the floor.

The door opened and a totally tattooed guy looked out. Hard to tell his age. Somewhere in his twenties, maybe. I was flattened against the wall with my heart beating hard in my throat.

“Did Jiggy send you?” he asked.

I shook my head no.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fucking Jiggy.”

I inched my way toward the stairs. “I might have knocked on the wrong door.”

Briggs got to his feet and straightened his wig. “You could have killed us, *,” he said to the tattooed guy.

“I would have been doing you a favor,” the guy said. “That’s the worst wig I ever saw.”

“I’m in disguise,” Briggs said. “Do you know Jimmy Poletti?”

“What’s he look like?”

“He looks like a fat middle-aged car salesman and slum owner,” Briggs said.

The guy shook his head. “Don’t think I know him.”

“Who lives in the apartment next to you?” I asked.

“About forty Guatemalans,” the guy said. “They make noise all night long. They’re almost as bad as the damn dogs.”

“You got a dog problem?” Briggs asked.

“Feral Chihuahuas. There’s a whole pack of them. They’ll eat you alive.”

I trudged up the stairs with Briggs several steps behind me. Four more units here, but three of them were charred, gutted, and closed off with boards hammered across their doorways. The fourth unit’s door was ajar. I stepped in and looked around. One room plus bath. A fridge like you might find in a dorm. Fridge door open. Not plugged in. A double mattress that had been ripped to shreds. A single sneaker about a size 12 and mostly chewed. This was the room with the window painted black.

“Looks like the Chihuahuas were here,” Briggs said.

We took the stairs to the street, and we gasped when we saw the Explorer. It was up on cinderblocks, missing all four wheels and some of its innards. No one was around. Just the picked-clean car sitting at the curb all by itself.

Lula was inside, slumped behind the wheel, head back, eyes closed, mouth open. I didn’t see any blood. She wasn’t moving. I wrenched the driver’s side door open, and Lula snorted and opened her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Yep. It’s like a ghost town here. Nothing going on.” She looked straight ahead, out the windshield, and saw that the hood was up. “What’s with that?” she asked.

“Someone stripped the car while you were asleep,” Briggs said. “Boy, are you stupid.”

Lula got out and stared at what was left of the Explorer. “That’s just rude. I rest my eyes for a minute, and Mr. Sneaky Thief comes along. These people have no respect. They took our wheels. What’s with that? Anyone could see I was in the car and needed those wheels to get home. How am I supposed to get home without wheels?”

Briggs stood on tiptoes and looked under the hood. “They took more than wheels.”

I called Connie and asked her to come rescue us.

“Can’t,” Connie said. “Vinnie isn’t here, and I can’t leave the office.”

I couldn’t ask Joe. He was working. I didn’t want to ask my father. My mother would have a cow if she knew I was on Stark Street. That left Ranger. He was also working, but he had a lot of flexibility. And if he couldn’t personally rescue me, he could send one of his men.

“Babe,” he said when I called him.

“Someone took my wheels.”

“Your car is on the fourth block of Stark Street.”

Ranger has the annoying but sometimes life-saving habit of hacking into my cellphone and placing tracking devices on my car. So Ranger knows where I am 24/7.

“Yes, and I’m with my car, but my wheels are apparently someplace else.”

There was a moment of silence, and I knew he was smiling. Ranger finds me amusing.

“I’m with Lula and Randy Briggs,” I said. “And I could use a ride to my parents’ house so I can get Big Blue.”

“I’m in the middle of something, but I can send Hal. He’s in the neighborhood.”

“Is Gardi back in Miami?”

“He’s got a nine o’clock flight tonight.”





FIVE


BIG BLUE IS a 1953 powder blue and white Buick Roadmaster that’s been retrofitted with seat belts and power brakes. It gets three miles to the gallon, and it does nothing for my self-esteem, as I aspire to be a slick Porsche person. My budget sees me more as a broken-down-junker-car person. My Great Uncle Sandor bequeathed the Buick to my Grandma Mazur, and it now lives in my parents’ garage in anticipation of automotive emergencies. Unfortunately, I have these on a regular basis.