Explosive Eighteen (Stephanie Plum 18)

“I don’t get it,” I said to Lancer. “Why is everyone so interested in this photograph?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” Lancer said. “We were hired to get it.”

“Who hired you?”

“That’s none of your business. If you don’t have the photograph, I bet you know where it is. And I bet we could get you to tell us. We got ways of making girls talk.”

Slasher smiled. “Yeah, we got good ways.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “but there’s still nothing I can tell you about the photograph. And as much as I’d love to stay and chat, I’m afraid I have to go now.”

“And I’m afraid we can’t let you,” Slasher said.

He reached out to grab me, I gave him a shot with my stun gun, and he crumpled to his knees.

“Hey,” Lancer said to me. “Those things are illegal. You’re not allowed to do that.”

Zzzzt. I zapped Lancer, and he went down, too.

I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. No cars screeched to a stop. No concerned pedestrian rushed at me. Good deal. I relieved Lancer and Slasher of their wallets, scrambled into the Buick, and took off.

• • •

By the time I got to the coffee shop, my breathing had returned to normal and my heart had stopped skipping around in my chest. Lula was alone at the table in the window with four untouched cups of coffee in front of her, working at a crossword puzzle.

“What’s with the coffee?” I asked her.

“I feel like I gotta buy something once in a while since I’m sitting here, but the only thing I’m drinking is Pepto-Bismol. Connie and Vinnie went to sign the rental agreement for the temporary office. And then after that, they were going across the street to bond out a guy who set all the birds loose in the pet store at the mall. He was singing that Born Free song and waving a double-barrel shotgun around, scaring the living daylights out of everyone.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, but a couple canaries lost some feathers in the overhead fan.”

I put the two wallets on the table and went through the first. The guy’s name was actually Mortimer Lancelot. Go figure that. It was almost as bad as Lance Lancer. I moved on to the second wallet. Sylvester Larder. Both guys had Long Branch, New Jersey, addresses. I took down the information on the two driver’s licenses and called Berger.

“I have names for you,” I said. “The two fake FBI guys are Mortimer Lancelot and Sylvester Larder. They have Long Branch addresses. The guy in my kitchen apparently is known as Razzle Dazzle. Any of these names mean anything to you?”

“Razzle Dazzle is a complete whack job. If you find him in your kitchen again, you might want to shoot him. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

And Berger hung up.

I slouched in my chair, and sipped one of Lula’s coffees.

“Looks to me like you caught some bad juju in Hawaii,” Lula said. “I mean, you gotta look at the facts. You got naked skin where a ring used to be, and you don’t want to talk about it, so I’m reaching the conclusion that your love life is in the crapper. And if that isn’t bad enough, you’re in the middle of some crazy whodunit shit that you didn’t even go looking for. Not to mention we haven’t caught any bad guys since you been back. You might want to do something about your juju.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I didn’t have anything in mind. I’m just sayin’.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what constituted juju, but I had the general picture, and Lula had a point. Lately, my luck sucked. It had been excellent when I arrived in Hawaii, and somewhere mid-vacation it turned bad.

A flash of black caught my eye, and I looked out the big plate-glass window in time to see the Lincoln stop and double-park in front of the coffee shop. Lancer and Slasher lunged out of the car, stormed into the coffee shop, and stood over me, glaring.

“You stole our wallets,” Lancer said.

I took the wallets off the table and handed them to Lancer. “Identity check.”

“You better not have put anything on my credit card,” Slasher said.