20 Takedown Twenty (14 page)

“I am,” Randy said. “And proud of it. Except now I’m also the store owner.”

“No kidding? I guess you must have done okay as a butcher to be able to buy the store.”

My mother passed the shells to my father. “You see, Stephanie,” she said, “you can make good money as a butcher.”

“I’m willing to pay top dollar to get the right person,” Randy said.

“What’s going on?” my father asked. “Is Stephanie taking a job as a butcher? Will we get a discount?”

“We already got a tenderloin from Randy,” my mother said.

“Yeah, and it was a big one too,” Grandma said.

My father shoveled shells onto his plate and passed the casserole dish to me. “I like tenderloin,” he said, looking down the table for the red sauce.

My mother jumped on the red sauce and passed it with the antipasto to my father.

“There’s a ricotta cheese filling in the shells,” my mother said to Randy. “But there’s good capicola and roast beef from your store with the antipasto.”

“Glad to hear it,” Randy said. “There should be meat with every meal. Without meat there’s no meal, am I right?”

“I like this boy,” my father said. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

“How do you feel about bacon?” Grandma asked.

“Bacon makes everything better,” Randy said. “Personally, I don’t like my bacon too crispy. I like to see some pink in the meat and some nice white fat glistening up at me.”

“Stephanie won a slow cooker at Bingo,” Grandma said. “She’s thinking about taking up cooking.”

“If you stop by the meat counter I’ll fix you up with just the right thing,” Randy said to me. “Some nice beef cubes, or maybe some chicken thighs. And if you want to try it out we could put a butcher’s apron on you and get you over to the carving station and let you butcher your own chicken.”

“Would she get to use one of them big cleavers?” Grandma asked.

“Sure,” Randy said. “She can use whatever she wants. If she comes to work for me she’ll even have access to the meat grinders and the power saw for when we get the whole side of beef in. I got a power saw that makes slicing through a steer’s thighbone child’s play. And she can make blood sausage and chopped liver.”

“It sounds like a real exciting job,” Grandma said.

“I can’t wait to get to work every day,” Randy said. “It’s always something new. One day you get sheep brains, and then the next day it’s cow tongue.” He turned to me. “Have you ever had tongue? It’s a real delicacy. I like it when it’s sliced thin, but I know some people stew it up.”

I had half a shell in my mouth, and I didn’t think I was going to be able to swallow it. I’d had a decent amount of tongue over the years, but I hadn’t sliced or stewed any of it. I took a sip of wine and hoped the shell would slide down and not come back up.

“I’m not actually interested in the butcher job,” I said to Randy. “I’m not good with meat and poultry.”

He nodded. “It takes a special person. It’s a calling.”

“She’s a darn good bounty hunter, though,” Grandma said.
“And she’s investigating about the murdered women who got thrown into Dumpsters.”

Randy forked in some shells. “I knew all those women. They shopped at my deli.”

“I would have thought they’d shop locally. Rose Walchek lived by the button factory on the other side of town. And Melvina lived in Hamilton Township.”

“They all belonged to the Senior Discount Club,” Randy said. “They got special deals at a handful of stores.”

“What were the other stores?”

“The liquor store at the Woodley Mall. The gas station on the corner of Hamilton and Bryant. Morton’s Bakery. There were some other stores, too, but I can’t remember them all.”

“How come I don’t know about this?” Grandma said. “I’m a senior.”

Randy spooned red sauce over his shells. “It’s part of the wellness program at the Senior Center. You have to be signed up for the wellness program.”

“I don’t go to the Senior Center much,” Grandma said. “I get depressed looking at all those old people.”

Isn’t it strange how life works? Here I was thinking I was paying a steep price for shells and chocolate cake, and then out of nowhere this nugget of information got dropped into my lap. All the women belonged to the Senior Discount Club. I knew there was a chance it’d be another dead end, but it
felt
meaningful. It was as if God had sent me Randy Berger. I smiled at him, and he broke out in a sweat.

We worked our way through the shells and moved on to
dessert. I was debating the wisdom of a second piece of cake when the doorbell rang, and Grandma jumped up and ran to the door.

“There he is,” she said. “There’s my honeypot.”

Gordon Krutch was wheezing from the effort of walking into the dining room. He was wearing a collared three-button knit shirt that stretched tight across his big belly and was showing signs of sweat seeping through the material in the chest area. He had a roll of fat hanging over his belt, and his tan slacks had a lot of crotch wrinkles. The wrinkles came down almost to his knees because he had legs like a Hobbit. Gordon Krutch was 5’ 4” on a good day.

“Howdy do,” he said, smiling wide. “Looks like you’re just finishing up. Sorry, I’m a little early. I like to be punctual. It comes from being a public servant for forty-five years.”

“Gordon worked for the DMV,” Grandma said. “He made sure everyone’s form was filled out right, and he gave the eye test.”

“You’d be surprised at how many people try to cheat on the eye test,” Gordon said.

“I got perfect eyesight,” Grandma said. “Except I gotta wear my glasses for the movies.”

“Do you belong to the Senior Discount Club?” I asked Gordon.

“I sure do. It’s a wonderful thing. All the best stores participate.” He looked at Randy. “In fact, I shop at this young man’s deli.”

“Strip steak and my special meatloaf mix,” Randy said.

“That’s me,” Gordon said. “Every week like clockwork.”

“Did you know the women who were killed?” I asked him. “They were members of the Discount Club too.”

“They sure were. I knew all of them. Lovely ladies. Just a terrible shame.”

“We’re going to the movies,” Grandma said. “We’re going to see that film where everybody gets eaten by bugs.”

My father looked over at Gordon. “I’ll give you fifty bucks if you take her to Vegas and marry her.”

“Your son-in-law is a great kidder,” Gordon said to Grandma.

“He isn’t kidding,” Grandma said. “You could probably get him up to a couple hundred.”

Okay, so Gordon Krutch is short, fifty pounds overweight, and can’t breathe without an inhaler. And I can’t see him, gasping and wheezing, choking the life out of even the frailest old lady. And I’m pretty sure Grandma could beat the snot out of him. Still, he made me uncomfortable. He knew all the women, and he was icky.

“Call me on my cellphone when you get home,” I said to Grandma. “I want to hear about the movie.”

I HELPED MY mother straighten the kitchen, retrieved my jeans and T-shirt, swapped out my Taurus for the Buick, and went home. Usually I go home with a bag of leftovers, but Randy’d eaten them. The shells, the cake, the antipasto… all gone. He said anytime I wanted to butcher some meat I should give him a call. I told him he’d be the first person I’d think of if I got the urge.

I drove around the parking lot, and didn’t see any menacing cars. I parked, hustled inside, and locked myself in my apartment. It was almost nine. Too early to roust Sunny out of Rita’s bed, but not too early to call Ranger.

“Hey, sexy guy,” I said to him. “Guess who?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Maybe a little.”

“I can get to your apartment in five minutes.”

“No, no, no. That’s not why I’m calling. I thought we could snag Sunny tonight. Maybe around ten o’clock.”

“Will you still be awake?”

“I’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he hung up.

I did some television surfing but couldn’t find anything wonderful, so I parked Rex in the slow cooker and cleaned out his cage. I was waiting in the lobby at ten o’clock. A new black Porsche Cayenne glided to a stop in front of the lobby door and blinked its lights. I was pretty sure it was Ranger, but not entirely, so I called him on his cell.

“Is this you?” I asked.

The lights blinked again.

I disconnected and got into the SUV. “A girl can’t be too careful,” I said, buckling up.

Ranger glanced over at me for a beat and moved the Porsche out of the lot. I suspected the glance was the Ranger equivalent of an eye roll.

Ten minutes later we were in front of Rita’s house. Lights were on in the front room. Drapes were drawn. No car in the driveway. Ranger and I got out and walked to the house. We looked in the dining room window and the kitchen window. We saw Rita but no Sunny. The light went out in the living room, Rita walked through the house, and the light went on in the back bedroom. We had a clear view of the room for a moment before she drew the drapes. No Sunny.

“Call him,” Ranger said. “Let’s see if we hear a phone ringing somewhere in the house.”

We didn’t hear any ringing, but Sunny picked up.

“Hey, handsome,” I said. “Do you need a date?”

“Yeah. Do you need to die?”

I disconnected.

“He knew it was me,” I said to Ranger.

“Do you have an alternate address for this guy?”

“I have several.”

Ranger drove to Sunny’s apartment building at the corner of Fifteenth and Morgan. We parked across the street, stood on the sidewalk, and looked up into Sunny’s windows. All dark.

“Either he’s asleep or he’s not home,” I said.

Ranger stepped off the curb. “Let’s find out.”

“Finding out” with Ranger is a whole different deal than finding out with Lula. Lula and I are Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. Ranger is Batman. I tagged after him into the building and up the stairs to 2B. He knocked twice, bumped the lock, and opened the door with his gun drawn. He paused for a moment, taking the measure of the room, listening for sounds of clothes rustling or a man sleeping. He quietly closed the apartment door behind him and flicked the beam from his Maglite around the room. I followed after him as he moved into the short hallway and the bedroom and looked in the closet and the bathroom. We moved on to the kitchen. He flipped the flashlight off and we exited the apartment, left the building, and returned to the Cayenne.

“He’s not spending much time there, if any,” Ranger said. “No food in the refrigerator, hardly any clothes in his closet, no razor in the bathroom.”

“He owns the entire block plus scattered properties in the area, but this was the address he listed as his residence. He rents out a three-story brownstone on Freeman next to the Chestnut Social Club. He uses the third floor as a counting room. It’s got a big safe in it. I know he spends time there, but I can’t see him making it home.”

Ranger looked down the street. “Let’s take a walk.”

We ambled along, looking in windows and doorways, listening to sounds of television and conversation that escaped from the buildings. We turned the corner, walked half a block, and entered the alley. It was dark and narrow, a place where trashcans and recycling bins were kept. Some of the houses had parking spaces, and some had outdoor backstairs. Windows overlooking the alley were small, and the lights behind them were dim.

I stopped and pointed to a redbrick building. “This is the back of the Chestnut Social Club. I broke my finger falling down these stairs.” Lights were shining from every window. “The light you see is from an interior rear stairwell.”

“Stay here in the shadows,” Ranger said. “I’ll look inside.”

“There might be an alarm,” I told him, as I moved under the outside stairs and pressed myself against the brick wall. Ranger bumped the lock on the back door, slipped inside, and the door clicked closed. No alarm rang out.

After what seemed like hours, Ranger reappeared and motioned me away from the building. “Sunny isn’t in there,” he said. “Do you have any other possibilities?”

“I have
too many
possibilities. There are all these row houses, plus he’s related to half the Burg.”

“Your call,” Ranger said. “Where do we go from here?”

“How about a beer and onion rings?”

“I like it.”

He was very close. I saw his eyes focus on my mouth, and I knew he was going to kiss me. I leaned into him, and his attention went from my mouth to something at the end of the block.

“I just saw a giraffe,” Ranger said. “He was walking down Freeman.”

“That’s Kevin.”

Ranger grinned. “You know him?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

There was shouting from the front side of the building, and car doors slamming. An engine caught and tires chirped. Kevin skittered around the corner at full gallop, charged past us, and disappeared into the darkness. A black SUV with tinted windows rounded the corner, obviously chasing Kevin. It blew past us, screeching to a stop at the cross street.

“They’ve lost him,” I said.

“Hard to believe you could lose a giraffe.”

“Kevin is wily. And the guys in the SUV might not be exceptionally smart.”

The SUV moved into the intersection and made a U-turn.

“Smart enough to come back to run over us,” Ranger said.

He grabbed my hand, tugging me through the back door and into the social club’s back stairwell. We ran flat-out through the club, past four old men playing cards. One of the men was Joe’s Uncle Chooch.

“Hey, Stephanie,” Uncle Chooch said. “Long time no see.”

I looked over at him and stumbled, crashing into a rickety table holding a cappuccino machine. The machine fell off the table, and coffee and cups went flying in all directions.

Ranger grabbed me and shoved me out the front door. We sprinted to the Porsche, jumped in, and Ranger drove off. I turned in my seat in time to see several men standing in front of the social club with guns drawn. Hard to identify them in the dark, but I imagined they were the usual players. Maybe Uncle Chooch.

“So that went pretty smooth,” I said to Ranger.

He glanced over at me. “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll have to kill you.”