Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum 25)

“Yuh,” Vinnie said without blinking. “Yuh, yuh.”

I called Morelli. “I need you to come to the bonds office,” I said. “Now.”

There was a beat of silence. “Can you be more specific?”

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Are you naked?”

“No, but you’re in the ballpark.”

“I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

“What’s that mark on Vinnie’s forehead?” Lula asked.

I leaned in and looked at the mark. “It’s a number,” I said. “It looks like it’s been tattooed on. Vinnie is number thirty-seven.”

“I saw that in a movie,” Lula said. “The aliens tattooed numbers on people they abducted, so they could keep track of them after they sucked their brains out. The aliens were breeding the humans like cattle. Every morning they would collect the sperm from the brainless males and then they would use a turkey baster to impregnate the females. It was a product of the adult film industry, but it had some thoughtful content.”

Hal was looking up at the ceiling and down at his shoes, trying not to stare at naked Vinnie.

“Maybe Vinnie wants a donut,” Lula said to Connie. “You have any left?”

Connie took the donut box out of the trash. “There’s one left,” she said. “It’s a little stale but it looks okay.”

Lula offered it to Vinnie. “Would Vinnie like a donut?”

“Yuh,” Vinnie said. He snatched the donut from Lula and shoved it into his mouth. There was a lot of chewing and drooling, and through it all he kept swaying. A chunk of donut fell out of his mouth, onto the floor. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Good Vinnie,” Lula said. “Good boy.” She turned to me. “Someone should take him outside to tinkle.”

“He’s not a dog!” I said.

“They did that in the film,” Lula said. “The brainless males were like dogs. They went outside to tinkle and poop. They did the sperm collection inside. It was pretty interesting. They had a lot of different ways to go about getting the sperm. Do you want to know what they did?”

“No,” Connie said. “Not without a glass of wine.”

Hal made a sound like he was swallowing his tongue.

“Maybe some other time,” I told Lula.

Morelli knocked once and came inside. He looked at me, and then he looked at Vinnie.

“Holy crap,” Morelli said.

“Connie found him in the parking lot,” I said. “He’s got the other shoe on.”

“Yeah, I noticed that right away,” Morelli said. “That and the fact that he’s naked and has a number tattooed on his forehead.”

“I got a theory about that,” Lula said.

“What’s the theory about the dilated eyes and the drooling?” Morelli asked.

“He seems to be a little drugged,” I said. “Maybe we should have him checked out.”

“Can he talk?”

“Yuh,” Vinnie said.