Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(79)

Kate set a large coffee with cream and a small white bakery bag on her desk and booted up her computer.

Cosmo popped up and looked over the cubicle wall at her. “It’s Friday, so you must have a cheese Danish in that bag.”

“I don’t get a cheese Danish every Friday.”

“Yes, you do. Onion bagel on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And a cheese Danish on Friday. Am I right, or am I right?”

“You’re right. Don’t you have work to do? Don’t you have any pending files?”

“I was involved in the Ramos Green investigation, but Green died yesterday. He accidentally walked into a bullet. You live by the sword, and you die by the sword. What goes around comes around. Am I right, or am I right?”

Kate blew out a sigh. She tried hard to be a team player. And she wanted to like Cosmo. She really did. But jeez Louise, he was annoying. “You’re right.”

“So what about you?” Cosmo asked. “Are you making any progress with Fox? Are you closing in on him? Are you ready to pounce? You’re going to pounce on him and nail him, right? BAM!”

Kate looked at Cosmo and wondered if he’d shut up if she punched him really hard in the face. Probably not. She would feel good, but it would be wasted effort. And then she’d feel guilty, and she’d have to buy him a bagel or something.

“So what are your plans for the weekend?” he asked.

Kate opened her coffee and took the cheese Danish out of its bag. “Nothing special.”

“How did I know that? You’re going to work, right? Not me. All work and no play makes Cosmo an unhappy boy. I have a smokin’ date with a sizzling chick. Runner-up for Miss Lompoc. If they gave extra points for the biggest gazongas she would have won, if you know what I mean.”

“Gee, I’d like to chat some more but I have stuff to do,” Kate said.

“I bet you’re wondering how a little guy like me can always get these hot dates.”

“Actually, no.”

“It’s the size of my gun. Right off the bat, I show them my gun.”

“I tried that once,” Kate said, “but the guy I was talking to went to the men’s room and didn’t come back.”

Three cups of coffee and a long morning of dead ends later, Kate stumbled onto a lead. “Holy Love Boat! Set a course for adventure!” she sang out. She did a happy dance while she waited for the article to print, ripped it out of the machine, and ran down the hall to her boss, Agent in Charge Carl Jessup.

Jessup had positioned his desk so that he faced the window and had his back to the door, a furniture arrangement he’d been told was horrible feng shui and was probably responsible for his chronic constipation, mild gingivitis, and the unusually high number of birds that flew into the bulletproof glass. But he didn’t care. He liked to watch the traffic inching to and from the San Fernando Valley on the 405 freeway. He said it helped him think.

“I found Nick,” Kate declared, waving the paper.

Jessup swiveled in his seat to look at her. He was in his fifties and had a face like a photograph that someone had crumpled up and tried to smooth out again.

“Congratulations. Where is he?”

“Chicago.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I like long stories, particularly ones that end with big arrests.”

“Four months ago Jerry Bodie, a guy who made his fortune selling timeshares to people who couldn’t afford them, hired a high-end moving company to transport his classic car collection from Miami to his new home in Las Vegas. The cars never got there. The transport company was a fraud. It caught my attention because Bodie is just the kind of person Nick likes to swindle.”

“Rich?”

“And crooked, ruthless, and greedy. The man Bodie hired to move his cars was Tod Stiles. That’s the name of a character from the old TV series Route 66.”

“I loved that show. I don’t remember the names of the heroes, but I’ll never forget their car, a ’61 Corvette. I wanted one just like it. Hell, I still do.”

Kate tried out a mental image of Jessup in a ’61 Corvette and came up short. She could better see him in a ’54 Buick that was dragging a muffler and belching black exhaust.

“Yeah, well, anyway, I sent Bodie a photo of Nick and got a positive ID,” she told Jessup. “Nick was Stiles. He probably had the cars sold before Bodie gave him the keys.”

“How does a swindle that happened four months ago in Miami put Fox in Chicago today?”

“I checked out the passenger lists of every flight, train, boat, and bus out of Miami that left within twenty-four hours of Bodie giving Nick his cars. I ran those lists against the index of characters in The Complete Directory of Episodic Television Shows. It’s Fox’s MO. He picks his aliases from old TV series.”

“I knew that,” Jessup said.

“Anyway I got one hit. Lewis Erskine flew to Chicago.”

Jessup nodded. “Erskine was the hero of The FBI. Used to drive a new Ford around D.C. landmarks at the end of each episode.”

“Are cars the only thing you watch TV shows for?”

“I like cars,” Jessup said. “What else do you have?”

“Erskine never left Chicago. Mickey Mouse, Archie Bunker, Darrin Stephens never left. No television character left Chicago in that time frame.”