Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum 3)

He stopped talking and stared aimlessly at the buttons. I waited awhile but Larry just keep quietly looking at the buttons. And it occurred to me that maybe Larry wasn't just weird. Maybe Larry wasn't very smart.

“This is important to me,” I finally said. “I need to find Mo. I thought maybe you had some idea where he might be. I thought you might still be in touch.”

“Do you really think he killed all those people?”

“I'm not sure. I think he must have been involved.”

“I think so too,” Larry said. “And I have a theory. I don't have it all put together. But maybe you can make something of it.” He forgot about the buttons and leaned forward on the counter. "One time I was paired up with a guy named Desmond, and we got to talking. Sort of one pro to another, if you know what I mean. And Desmond told me how Mo found him.

“See, it's important that Mo can always be finding young guys, because that's what Mo likes.”

By the time Larry finished telling me his theory I was just about dancing with excitement. I had a totally off-the-wall connection between Mo and the drug dealers. And I had renewed interest in the second-house idea. Mo had driven Larry to a house in the woods when he'd wanted Larry to do his thing.

There was no guarantee that Mo was still using the same house, but it was a place to start looking. Unfortunately, Larry had always gone to the house during evening hours, and even on a good day, Larry's memory wasn't top of the line. What he remembered was going south and then turning into a rural area.

I thanked Larry for his help and promised to come back with dry cleaning. I hopped into the truck and started it up. I wanted to talk to Vinnie, but Vinnie wouldn't be in the office this early. That was okay. I'd visit the weak link in Mo's chain while I waited for Vinnie.

I parked on the street, across from Lula's apartment. All the row houses looked alike on this block, but Gail's was easy to find. It was the one with the light on over the front stoop.

I went straight to the second floor and knocked on Gail's door. She answered after the second series of knocks. Sleepy-eyed again. A doper.

“Yuh?” she said.

I introduced myself and asked if I could come in.

“Sure,” she said. Like who would care.

She sat on the edge of her bed. Hands folded in her lap, fingers occasionally escaping to pick at her skirt. The room was sparsely furnished. Clothes lay in heaps on the floor. A small wood table held a cache of groceries. A box of cereal, half a loaf of bread, peanut butter, a six-pack of Pepsi with two cans missing. A straight-backed chair had been pulled up to the table.

I took the chair for myself and edged it closer to Gail, so we could be friendly. “I need to talk to you about Harp.”

Gail grabbed a whole handful of skirt. “I don't know nothin'.”

“I'm not a cop. This isn't going to get you into trouble. This is just something I've got to know.”

“I already told you.”

It wouldn't take much to wear Gail down. Life had already worn her down about as far as she could go. And if that wasn't enough, she'd obviously gotten up early to do some pharmacological experimentation.

“What was the deal with Mo and Elliot? They did business together, didn't they?”

“Yuh. But I didn't have nothin' to do with it. I wouldn't be a party.”

It was almost noon when I got to the office.

Lula was shaking a chicken leg at Connie. “I'm telling you, you don't know nothing about fried chicken. You Italians don't have the right genes. You Italians only know about stuff with tomato paste on it.”

“You know what you are?” Connie said, pawing through the chicken bucket, settling on a breast. “You're a racist bigot.”

Lula chewed off some of the leg meat. “I got a right to be. I'm a minority.”

“What? You think Italians aren't minorities?”

“Not anymore. Italians were last year's minorities. Time to move over, baby.”

I helped myself to a napkin and a mystery part. “Is Vinnie in?”

“Hey Vinnie,” Connie yelled. “Are you in? Stephanie's here.”