Fortune and Glory (Stephanie Plum #27)(18)

“Has anyone seen Salgusta?” I asked Connie.

“My mom and my aunt Cookie think he’s hanging out in the tunnel,” Connie said. “They said there are a bunch of exits, and one of the exits is at the Hotel Margo.”

“I know that hotel,” Lula said. “It’s got good hourly rates. When I was in the customer happiness business I frequented that hotel. It gave a special discount if the customer was mob.”

“Anything else?” I asked Connie.

“No,” Connie said. “That’s all of it.”

“Good enough,” I said. “I’m going to take a look at the Margo.”

“I guess I’ll tag along,” Lula said. “It’ll be like one of them nostalgia trips.”





CHAPTER NINE


The Margo was in a sketchy neighborhood four blocks from the Mole Hole. It was three floors with six cubbyhole bedrooms on each of the top two floors and five bedrooms and a minuscule lobby on the ground floor. There was on-street parking in front of the Margo and a small parking lot behind it. A white Kia was parked on the street two doors down. I took a photo of the plate and sent it to Connie.

“This could be your lucky day,” Lula said. “Or maybe not.”

I parked across the street from the Kia and Lula and I walked over to the Margo. The small lobby was dimly lit. It contained two worn-out armchairs and a reception desk. There was no one at the desk.

“You gotta push the buzzer on the desk,” Lula said. “And then Andy comes out. He’s got an office in a broom closet behind the desk.”

Lula pushed the buzzer and a small old man shuffled out of the broom closet.

“Hey,” he said to Lula. “Long time, no see.”

“Been busy,” Lula said. “I want to show my protégé around. Any rooms occupied?”

“Seven, nine, and twelve,” Andy said. “The rest are open.”

“How about Charlie Shine?” Lula asked. “Is he in one of them? I saw his car outside.”

“Haven’t seen him,” Andy said, “but you know how it is. Healthier not to look too hard.”

Andy went back to his broom closet and I followed Lula down the hallway.

“They never lock the doors here,” Lula said. “Mostly because they lost the keys and they never got replaced.” She paused at door number one. “Do you want to check out all these rooms?”

“Might as well,” I said.

Lula opened the first door and a huge rat scurried across the room and hid under the bed.

“Maybe it’s not necessary to check every room,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lula said. “They’re all pretty much the same.”

“Just because Andy hasn’t seen Shine today doesn’t mean Shine isn’t here,” I said. “He could be using this to access the tunnel and go somewhere else.”

“I don’t like where this thinking is going,” Lula said. “I’m worried it’s leading to looking for the tunnel, and then it could lead to us going into the tunnel and possibly dying there. And you know how much I hate the thought of dying. And besides this, you don’t even know if that Kia belongs to Shine. It could belong to anybody.”

“I’m not going into the tunnel,” I said, “but I wouldn’t mind finding it. There’s a door at the end of this hallway that’s different from the others. I bet it goes to a mechanical room.”

I opened the door, flipped the light switch, and stared at steel stairs leading down to a poorly lit jumble of decrepit machinery and hoarded junk. Truth is, I don’t like mechanical rooms. They conjure up images of explosions and scalding hot steam escaping from ruptured corroded lead pipes wrapped in cancerous asbestos.

“You aren’t going down there, are you?” Lula asked.

“No,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? Are you shitting me? That’s sick. There’s no maybe going down in that hellhole.”

“It’s just a mechanical room,” I said. “And there might be a door to the tunnel down there.”

“No way. No how. You try to go down those steps, and I’ll shoot you with my new gun.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“It wouldn’t be a fatal shot,” Lula said. “Maybe I’d just pretend to shoot you. Like I could say Bang!”

“Okay, give it the nipple test.”

“Say what?”

“Stand on the first step and see what your nipples say. You’ve got nipple radar, right?”

“Damn right I got nipple radar.”

I made a sweeping gesture toward the stairs. “So, stand on the first step and give it the nipple test.”

“I guess I could do that, but you move back in case I gotta get out into the hall real fast. I don’t want to have to knock you over.”

Lula crept onto the first step and froze.

“Well?” I asked.

“Shush,” she said. “I need quiet to concentrate. I need to give them a minute to go sensory.”

I stared at my watch. “It’s been three minutes,” I said. “What’s the nipple verdict?”

“I got nothing.”