Sizzling Sixteen (Stephanie Plum 16)

“I haven’t got a driver’s license,” Vinnie said. “I haven’t got a car.”

I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. “I’ll take you. Where are we going?”

“He’s downtown in the Meagan Building.”

THE MEAGAN BUILDING was a black glass and steel high-rise built several years before the commercial real estate market crashed. The Wellington Company was on the fifth floor. We stepped out of the elevator into a carpeted hall. Pale gray carpet, cream walls with cherry chair rails and cherrywood doors. Classy. Wellington

occupied the entire floor. It was getting to be late in the day and the Wellington front desk was unmanned. Roger Drager was waiting for us in the small reception area.

Drager was in his forties, nicely dressed, had severely receding brown hair, was around 5’10”, and his body was going soft. His hand was clammy when we shook. He led us through a room with cubicles and banks of file cabinets. There were private offices with windows on the perimeter of the room. Doors were open, and most offices were empty. Desks and chairs. Same with the cubicles. Just a few guys slouched back playing computer solitaire. Not much work going on. No phones ringing.

“Where is everyone?” I asked Drager.

“Flex hours,” he said. “Most everyone prefers to come in early and leave early.”

We followed him down a long hall to his corner office. Large ornate desk and credenza on one side of the office. Seating area with a small couch and two chairs and a coffee table on the other. He directed us to the seating area. So far, he hadn’t seemed to notice Vinnie was a Hobbit.

“Let me get right to the point,” Drager said to Vinnie. “I know you’ve been stealing from Wellington. I want full disclosure, and I want the money you’ve embezzled. I want the names on all the bad bonds you’ve written.”

“Yessir,” Vinnie said. “I’ll cooperate totally. I don’t know where I’ll get the money, but I’ll pay it back somehow. Are you calling the police in?”

“Not if you repay the money.” Drager stood and looked at his watch. “I have another meeting. You can let yourselves out?”

“Absolutely,” Vinnie said. “No problem.”

Drager walked partially down the hall with us, said good-bye, and entered another office. Vinnie and I continued on toward the room with the cubicles. The building was eerily quiet, with the exception of a room to the right. I could hear machinery working on the other side of the closed door. I opened the door and looked in. There was a large paper shredder working. A bored-looking kid stood beside the shredder. Black garbage bags presumably filled with paper were stacked against a wall.

“What?” the kid said.

“Sorry,” I said to him. “Looking for the ladies room.”

“By the elevator.”

I thanked him and closed the door. I didn’t say anything to Vinnie until we got into the car and were out of the parking lot.

“So what do you think?” I asked Vinnie.

“He was nervous,” Vinnie said. “Scared.”

Vinnie might be a creepy human being, but he was an excellent judge of people. That’s one of the reasons Vinnie was a good bail bondsman. Vinnie knew when people were lying, scared, doped-up, dumb, or crazy. When Vinnie wasn’t intentionally scamming, he didn’t write a lot of bad bonds. Vinnie knew who was going to run and who was going to show up for court.

“Do you have any idea why Drager was nervous?”

“I’m guessing someone’s putting pressure on him.”

“His next meeting?”

Vinnie shrugged. “All I know is Drager didn’t want to shut me down or send me to jail. He just wanted the money.”

“You know what else I thought was weird. The office. There weren’t any people working there. He said they left early, but I didn’t see any clutter on the desks in the empty cubicles and offices. Nothing in their wastebaskets. The only machine working was the paper shredder. What kind of an office has that many empty desks and a giant paper shredder?”

“A fake office,” Vinnie said. “Cripes, I don’t want to say what I’m thinking.”

“That you and Bobby Sunflower have been scamming an even bigger scammer?”

“Yeah.”

“Drager?”