Hot Six (Stephanie Plum 6)

“Nothing you want to know about.”

“Tell her anyway. This is a good one,” Lula said.

“Last night Vinnie bonded out a guy named Douglas Kruper. Kruper sold a car to the fifteen-year-old daughter of one of our illustrious state senators. On the way home from buying the car the kid got picked up for running a light and driving without a license, and the car turned out to be stolen. Now this is the good part. The car is described as a Rollswagen. You happen to know anyone named Douglas Kruper?”

“Also known as the Dealer,” I said. “I went to school with him.”

“Well, he isn't gonna be doin' any dealing for a while.”

“How'd he take to getting arrested?” I asked Vinnie.

“Cried like a baby,” Vinnie said. “It was disgusting. He was a disgrace to criminals everywhere.”

Just for the heck of it I went to the file cabinet and looked to see if we had anything on Cynthia Lotte. I wasn't too surprised when she didn't show up.

“I have an errand to run downtown,” I said. “Is it okay if I leave Bob here? I should be back in about an hour.”

“As long as he doesn't come into my private office,” Vinnie said.

“Yeah, you wouldn't be talkin' like that if Bob was a female goat,” Lula said.

Vinnie slammed his door shut and threw the dead bolt.

I told Bob I'd be back in time for lunch and hustled out to the car. At the nearest ATM I withdrew fifty dollars from my checking; then I drove over to Grant Street. Dougie had two cases of Dolce Vita perfume that had seemed like too much of a luxury when I returned the wind machine but might be marked down now that he had legal problems. Not that I was one to take advantage of someone else's misfortune . . . but, hell, we're talking about Dolce Vita here.

There were three cars parked in front of Dougie's house when I got there. I recognized one as belonging to my friend Eddie Gazzara. Eddie and I grew up together. He's a cop now, and he's married to my cousin Shirley the Whiner. There was a PBA shield on the second car, and the third car was a fifteen-year-old Cadillac that still had its original paint and not a speck of rust anywhere. I didn't want to consider the implications, but it looked a lot like Louise Greeber's car. What was one of Grandma's friends doing here?

Inside, the tiny row house was cluttered with people and merchandise. Dougie shuffled from person to person, looking dazed.

“Everything has to go,” he said to me. “I'm shutting down.”

The Mooner was there, too. “Hey, it's not fair, dude,” he said. “This individual had a business going on. He's entitled to run a business, right? I mean, where are his rights? Okay, so he sold a stolen car to a kid. Hey, we all make mistakes. Am I right, here?”

“You do the crime, you pay the time,” Gazzara said, holding a stack of Levi's. “How much do you want for these, Dougie?”

I pulled Gazzara aside. “I need to talk to you about Ranger.”

“Allen Barnes is looking for him big time,” Gazzara said.

“Does Barnes have anything on Ranger besides the videotape?”

“I don't know. I'm not in the loop. There's not a lot leaking out on this one. No one wants to make any mistakes with Ranger.”

“Is Barnes looking at other suspects?”

“Not that I know of. But then, like I said, I'm not in the loop.”

A squad car double-parked on the street and two uniforms came in. “I hear there's a fire sale going on,” one of the uniforms said. “Are there any toasters left?”

I picked two bottles of perfume out of the case and gave Dougie a ten. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don't know. I feel real defeated,” Dougie said. “Nothing ever works out for me. Some guys just don't have any luck.”

“You gotta keep your chin up, dude,” Mooner said.

“Something else will come along. You gotta be like me. You gotta go with the flow.”

“I'm going to jail!” Dougie said. “They're gonna send me to jail!”