Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

Lois Fratelli had lived in the Burg. I knew the house. It was small and tidy. Single family. She’d had several credit cards. No litigation. She’d worked as office manager for the family plumbing business for thirty-two years. Nothing recent. She was survived by about a hundred and forty Fratellis, all of them living in the Burg.

Rose Walchek had a similar profile. Widowed. Lived in a small row house on Stanton Street. Worked at the button factory for fifteen years. Nothing recent. No children.

Bitsy Muddle had lived in a small retirement complex behind the strip mall containing the supermarket and liquor store. She’d worked as a bank teller for twenty-seven years, she’d operated a boxing machine at a sanitary products plant for eleven years, and she’d been a cashier at WalMart for five years. She’d never married.

I found none of this information inspiring. Truth is, I wasn’t exactly an ace detective. I mostly found people through dumb luck and perseverance. Catching them was an even sketchier experience.

I looked out my living room window at the parking lot and didn’t see any thugs lurking in shadows, or sitting behind the wheel of their big black cars, so I shoved the printouts into my messenger bag and headed out.

Lula was sitting at Connie’s desk when I walked in. Connie was missing in action.

“Vinnie’s at his Perverts Anonymous meeting,” Lula said, “so Connie had to go downtown to write bond on some idiot.”

“Do we know the idiot?”

Lula shook her head. “It’s a new idiot.”

“Did anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

“You mean like Sunny coming here and turning himself in?”

“Did he do that?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I hate to say it out loud, but I’m spooked over Sunny. I kept waking up last night, thinking I was falling. Getting pitched off a bridge is freaking scary. An

d it wasn’t any fun being locked in the trunk of the car, either.”

“I hear you. Personally, I think those guys have been watching too much violence on television. They been seeing too many reruns of The Sopranos. Their behavior is disturbing. I’m even thinking twice about going over to check on Kevin. I haven’t given him any lettuce today. ’Course I’m not sure he was the one eating the lettuce anyways. It might have just been the homeless fool. I mean, who eats lettuce like that? He didn’t have no Thousand Island dressing or nothing.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe I should talk to Joe’s mother about Uncle Sunny.”

“What? Are you nuts? She doesn’t like you to begin with. And she’s probably got Bella there. She’ll send her out after you like a junkyard dog.”

“Sunny kills people. How can they not understand that?”

“They probably think he only kills bad people. Like people who don’t pay their protection money.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Yeah, but that’s your standards. You should live in my neighborhood. People get killed if they’re wearing the wrong deodorant. Only thing good I can say is people in my ’hood don’t drop people off a bridge. You know you’re gonna get knifed or shot in my neighborhood.”

“That must make you rest a lot easier.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about my hair looking like crap when I meet my maker.”

I dropped the body receipt for Mary Treetrunk on Connie’s desk. “Make sure Connie sees this. I’m going to do a drive-around and check out the dead women’s neighborhoods. And then I’m going to my parents’ house for dinner.”

“No Bingo tonight?”

“I’m taking a night off from Bingo.”

I was taking a night off from Bingo because I was going to get Ranger to help me snag Uncle Sunny.

THIRTEEN

BY THE TIME I got to my parents’ house I had a raging headache from riding around in my mufflerless car.