“Tell you what. I’m done with the car. How about if I just leave it here, and you can call it in.”
“Fine. Great. But you gotta stop stealing cars on my watch. Steal them on the night shift. Steal them from Coral Gables or Miami Beach.”
I ran back to Judey, shooed Brian into the backseat, and buckled myself in.
“You are so good,” Judey said.
Fifteen minutes later, we were back in front of the abandoned bungalow. I was hunkered down, out of sight in the backseat. Judey was driving. The plan was that he’d park behind the silver Camry, run up to the house, tell them he was lost, and ask directions. If no one answered after he yelled and pounded and kicked, we were golden.
“If I don’t come back you have to promise to take Brian,” Judey said.
I looked up at Brian sitting on the backseat. If there was a God in heaven, Judey would come back.
“He’s very smart,” Judey said. “If you mix up the letters in his name it spells brain.”
I kept my head down and listened to Judey walk up to the house. He knocked. He yelled. And then quiet. I popped my head up. No Judey. I looked at Brian.
“Where is he?” I said to Brian.
Brian just sat there. He looked worried. Most likely not crazy about the prospect of maybe living with me.
Judey appeared at the back of the house, and I let out a whoosh of air. He’d circled the house, probably looking for an open window. He returned to the front and waved me over.
I got behind the wheel and pulled the rental into the driveway.
“I was able to look in through the back windows,” Judey said. “There’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that both goons are out for the count. The bad news is, it looks like they shared the pizza with Bill and Hooker.”
I got a tire iron out of the trunk.
Judey was looking over my shoulder. “What’s that thing in the trunk?”
“Bomb. Probably a warhead, to be more precise.”
“I wouldn’t expect any less,” Judey said. “You never disappoint.”
I hustled across the yard with the tire iron and wedged it between the jamb and the door, just below the doorknob. I put my weight behind it, the jamb splintered away, and the door popped open.
The inside of the bungalow was even more depressing than the outside. The air was stale, smelling of poor sanitation, mold, and cold pizza. The furniture was Dumpster pickings. The light was dim.
Salzar’s men were facedown on the floor, having fallen off their chairs at the rusted chrome and Formica kitchen table. The empty pizza box was open on the tabletop. Nothing left in the box but smudges of tomato sauce and a few scraps of cheese.
A short hallway opened off the living room, dining room, kitchen area. There were two bedrooms and a small bathroom at the end of the hallway. The bedroom doors were open. Bill and Hooker were handcuffed together in one of the bedrooms. They were sprawled on the bed, out like a light. A half-eaten piece of pizza was stuck to the threadbare yellow chenille bedspread, inches from Hooker’s open hand.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “Where’s Maria?”
We looked in the second bedroom and bathroom. No Maria.
&nb
sp; “She’s probably at a different location,” Judey said.
Neither of us entirely believed it, but it was a good thought for now. Worry about one thing at a time.
“How are we going to get these big boys out of here?” Judey asked. “They’re hooked together, and together they must weigh about three hundred and sixty pounds. And then we have to get them through the door.”
I ran to the kitchen and checked the goons’ pockets for a key. I did a fast scan of the house. No key. I looked back at the bedroom door. Not wide enough to drag them through side by side. “We’re going to have to make them into a sandwich and pull them through.”
We wrestled Bill and Hooker off the bed and onto the floor, trying to be careful with Bill’s gunshot wounds. We took the ratty chenille spread off the bed and worked it under Hooker. Then we put Bill facedown on top of Hooker.