Hard Eight (Stephanie Plum 8)

“The Wizard hasn't been answering his page,” Connie said. “Tell him to call me.”

The Wizard is Ranger. He's the Wizard because he's magic. He mysteriously passes through locked doors. He seems to read minds. He's able to refuse dessert. And he can give me a hot flash with the touch of a fingertip. I had mixed feelings about calling him. We were currently in a strange place, filled with double entendre and unresolved sexual tension. But we were also partners, of sorts, and he had contacts I'd never have. The Annie search would go much faster if I brought Ranger in.

I got into my car and dialed Ranger on my cell phone. I left a message on his machine and read through Bender's file. Didn't sound like much new had happened since I last saw Andy Bender. He was still unemployed. He was still beating on his wife. And he still lived in the projects on the other side of town. It wasn't going to be hard to find Bender. The hard part was going to be wrestling him into the CR-V.

Hey, I thought, no sense being negative right from the start. Look on the bright side, right? Be a cup-is-half-full person. Maybe Mr. Bender will be sorry he missed his court date. Maybe he'll be happy to see me. Maybe he won't have any gas in his chain saw.

I put the car in gear and headed across town. It was a pleasant afternoon, and the projects looked habitable. There was a hopefulness to the dirt front yards that suggested perhaps this year some grass might grow. Perhaps the junkers at the curb would stop leaking oil. Perhaps a Lotto ticket would pay out big. But then again, perhaps not.

I parked in front of Bender's unit and watched for a while. For lack of a better word, this part of the complex would be described as garden apartments. Bender lived on the ground floor. He had a battered wife and, thankfully, no kids.

An open-air bazaar, of sorts, was operating a short distance away. The bazaar consisted of two cars, an old Caddy and a new Oldsmobile. The owners had parked the cars at the curb and were selling handbags, T-shirts, DVDs, and God knows what else from their trunks. A few people milled around the cars.

I rooted around in my bag and found a purse-size cylinder of pepper spray. I shook it to make sure it was active and stuffed it into my pants pocket for easy access. I took a pair of cuffs out of the glove compartment and slipped them into the back of my jeans, under the waistband. Okay, now I was all dressed up like a bounty hunter. I walked to Bender's door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

The door opened and Bender looked out at me. “What?”

“Andy Bender?”

He leaned forward and squinted. “Do I know you?”

Get right to it, I thought, reaching behind my back for the cuffs. Mo

ve fast and catch him by surprise. “Stephanie Plum,” I said, whipping the cuffs out, clapping one on his left wrist. “Bond enforcement. We need to go to the station and reschedule your court date.” I put my hand to his shoulder and spun him around, so I could cuff his right wrist.

“Hey, hold on here,” he said, jerking away. “What the hell is this? I'm not going nowhere.”

He took a swing at me, lost his balance, and listed sideways, knocking into an end table. A lamp and an ashtray crashed to the floor. Bender looked at them, dumbfounded. “You broke my lamp,” he said. His face got red and his eyes narrowed. “I don't like that you broke my lamp.”

“I didn't break your lamp!”

“I said you broke it. You hard of hearing?” He picked the lamp up from the floor and threw it at me. I sidestepped, and the lamp sailed past me and hit the wall.

I rammed my hand into my pocket, but Bender tackled me before I could grab hold of the spray. He was a couple inches taller than me, thin and wiry. He wasn't especially strong, but he was mean as a snake. And he was motivated by hate and beer. We scrabbled around on the floor for a while, kicking and scratching. He was trying to do damage, and I was trying to get clear, and neither of us was having much luck.

The room was a mess of clutter with stacks of newspapers, dirty dishes, and empty beer cans. We were bumping into tables and chairs, dumping the dishes and cans on the floor, then rolling over it all. A floor lamp went down, followed by a pizza box.

I managed to slither from his grasp and get to my feet. He lunged after me and came up with a ten-inch chef's knife. I suppose it had been buried in the garbage heap in his living room. I yelped and bolted. No time for the pepper spray.

He was surprisingly fast, considering he was shit-faced drunk. I ran flat-out, up the street. And he ran close at my heels. I skidded to a stop when I got to the boosted goods market, putting the Cadillac between me and Bender while I caught my breath.

One of the vendors approached me. “I got some nice T-shirts,” he said. “Exactly like what you'd see at the Gap. Got them in all sizes.”

“Not interested,” I said.

“Selling them for a good price.”

Bender and I were doing a dance around the car. He'd move, then I'd move, then he'd move, then I'd move. Meanwhile, I was trying to get the pepper spray out of my pocket. Trouble was, my pants were tight, the spray was shoved to the bottom of my pocket, and my hands were sweating and shaking.

There was a guy sitting on the Oldsmobile's hood. “Andy,” he called, “why're you going after this girl with a knife?”

“She ruined my lunch. I was just sitting down to eat my pizza, and she came and ruined it all.”

“I can see that,” the guy on the Oldsmobile said. “She got pizza all over her. Looks like she rolled in it.”

There was a second guy sitting on the Olds. “Kinky,” he said.

“How about one of you guys giving me a hand here,” I said. “Get him to drop the knife. Call the police. Do something!”