Top Secret Twenty-One (6 page)

“Those are the eyes of a wild demon Chihuahua,” Briggs said.

IT WAS A
little after nine
A.M.
when I got to the office with Briggs in tow.

“You look like crap,” Lula said to me. “You either had a really good night or a really bad night.”

“I had a
horrible
night. Randy and I checked out Buster Poletti’s apartment and found Bernie Scootch stretched out on the floor with a bunch of holes drilled into him. That’s two dead men in one day! I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing the bodies. And then when I finally fell asleep I had nightmares.”

“Sounds like the only one having a worse night was Ranger,” Connie said.

I helped myself to coffee. “What’s with Ranger?”

Connie’s eyebrows went up. “You didn’t hear? His building is sealed off. I don’t know all the details, but they had to evacuate.
Gardi and one of the Rangeman guys are in the hospital. It’s all a big secret. No one’s saying anything.”

“I bet it’s anthrax,” Briggs said. “It’s always anthrax when they seal off a building.”

I tapped Ranger’s number into my phone.

“What happened at Rangeman last night?” I asked him.

“There was an incident with Gardi.”

“Was it anthrax?”

“No. It wasn’t anthrax. I’ll catch you later.” And he disconnected.

“It wasn’t anthrax,” I told everyone.

“He’s supposed to be a real hotshot in bed,” Lula said, “but he sure don’t waste any time explaining things.”

I made an effort not to smile too wide. “He has his moments.”

Lula fanned herself with her copy of
Star
magazine, and Connie did an eye roll.

“Jeez,” Briggs said. “Does anybody know I’m standing here? This is an embarrassing conversation. And just to set the record straight, there are some ladies who think
I’m
hot.”

“That’s a disturbing announcement,” Lula said. “I don’t want to meet those ladies.”

I stepped outside and called Morelli.

“What happened at Rangeman last night?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been briefed on it, but it must be serious because the building is sealed and the feds are in charge. And Gardi is in St. Francis in isolation with a security guard in front of his door.”

“Ranger said it wasn’t anthrax.”

“Ranger should know.”

“Anything new on the two murders? Did Buster ever turn up?”

“Buster came home at ten o’clock. He said he’d been in Atlantic City all day. One of those package deals with a bus trip included. He went with his girlfriend. It checked out.”

“How did Jimmy get into his apartment?”

“Jimmy had a key. Buster gave it to him years ago when he first bought the building. He said they were using the apartment like a storeroom, but I’m guessing it was used to house the girls they imported.”

“Did you find the murder weapon?”

“No. Not yet.”

I’ve seen enough violent death to know that Bernie hadn’t been dead long and that he’d been killed in the bedroom. So it bothered me that the police couldn’t find the gun and that Poletti didn’t have it on him when he rushed out of the apartment. Of course he might have killed Bernie earlier, left the apartment, and then returned without the gun for some reason. Still, it felt off.

“Have you talked to the remaining poker players?”

“Kreider questioned Silvio Pepper. He said Pepper was nervous. We can’t find Ron Siglowski. Kreider interviewed his neighbors and got nothing. Ditto his relatives.”

“I get that Pepper is nervous. I’d be nervous too. Poletti is cleaning house. Most likely Siglowski is already dead, and just hasn’t turned up yet. That leaves Pepper and Briggs.”

“Is Briggs still hiding out in your apartment?”

“Yes. And it’s not fun.”

“Maybe we should tie him to a parking meter downtown and see if Poletti takes the bait.”

“Tempting, but I can’t see Poletti being that stupid.”

“I have to run,” Morelli said. “Let me know if you come up with something better than the parking meter.”

I went back inside and asked Connie to run checks on Silvio Pepper and Ron Siglowski. Five minutes later I had more information than I needed on both men. I had photos, ages, street addresses, second-grade spelling scores, sock sizes, cheese preferences, and colonoscopy reports.

“First up is Silvio Pepper,” I said to Lula. “Do you want to ride shotgun?”

“Is short stuff going?”

I looked at Connie.

“Yeah,” Connie said, “he’s going.”

“I guess I’ll go anyway,” Lula said. “If someone takes a potshot at him, I don’t want to miss it.”

Silvio Pepper lived in a small two-story house on the northern edge of the Burg. He was sixty-three years old, married, and the owner of a long-haul trucking company with offices on Broad Street.

I took Hamilton Avenue to Broad Street and turned left. Pepper Trucking was a relatively small operation several blocks down Broad. The single-story redbrick building had a small parking lot attached to it. Not big enough for an eighteen-wheeler, so the trucks were obviously kept
elsewhere. I parked in the lot and told Lula and Briggs to wait in the car.

“Why do I have to wait in the car?” Lula asked. “Waiting in the car is boring.”

“I don’t want to drag everyone in there with me,” I said. “Two people are partners. Three people make a parade.”

“So why can’t we leave Briggs here? We can crack a window for him.”

“Jeez,” Briggs said. “What do I look like, a golden retriever?”

“I want Poletti, and Briggs is my bait. I don’t want to come back and find Briggs gunned down or missing and Poletti long gone.”

“I guess I could see that,” Lula said, “but how do you expect me to pull off this Briggs rescue?”

“I guess you could shoot Poletti in a nonvital area.”

“Like his knee?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’m cool with that,” Lula said.

I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, crossed the lot, and pushed my way through the front door of Pepper Trucking. The woman at the front desk was in her forties and looked overworked, overfed, and underpaid.

“I’d like to talk to Silvio,” I told her.

Looking like she could care less, she punched a button on her multiline phone.

“There’s a woman here to see you,” she said. She rolled her eyes and looked over at me. “Who are you?”

“Stephanie Plum.”

“Stephanie Plum,” she repeated into the phone. She hung up and looked down the hall. “Second door on the right.”

Silvio looked like his photo but more wrinkled.

“You’re the bounty hunter, right?” he said. “I know you from around. I guess you’re looking for Jimmy.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, but I know where he should be. He should be in the nuthouse. He was always this smart guy. Businessman. Good poker player. Okay, maybe he had a weakness for the ladies, but who doesn’t? And so he made some bad business decisions, but hey, that’s no reason to go off the deep end and kill people.”

“So you think he’s the one who killed Bernie and Tommy?”

“Who else would kill them?”

I shrugged.

“I think it’s Jimmy,” Silvio said. “I think he’s afraid he’ll get ratted out. We were all pretty close. Not that we were involved, but we knew stuff.”

“What about Buster? Was he in business with Jimmy?”

“I don’t know exactly. Jimmy would send him on trips, and we figured it was business, but it could have been just to get cars.”

“I guess you’re worried.”

“Damn right I’m worried. Two of my best friends are dead. It’s terrible. How does stuff like this happen?”

“Maybe you should disappear for a while, like Ron.”

“Ron’s retired. He can go wherever he wants. I got a company to run. I’ve got people depending on me.”

“I don’t suppose you know where Ron is?”

He shook his head. “He just took off. No goodbye or anything. I hate to say it out loud, but he could be dead somewhere. He could have been the first one Jimmy took out.”

I gave him my card. “Let me know if you hear anything.”

He took the card and stared at it, blank-faced. “Sure.”

I went back to the Buick and got behind the wheel.

“Well?” Lula asked. “How’d it go?”

“As expected,” I said. “He knows nothing. He wasn’t involved. He thinks Jimmy’s gone postal.”

“Do you think all that’s true?” Lula asked.

“I don’t think
any
of it is true,” I said.

“I think the part about Jimmy going postal is true,” Briggs said.

I called Connie and asked her to do some snooping on Pepper Trucking. Was Silvio Pepper the sole owner? Where were the trucks kept when they were in town? What did the trucks haul?

I disconnected, then scanned Ron Siglowski’s background report. He was seventy years old and widowed. No children. He’d sold his insurance business five years ago and moved into a golf course community in Cranbury. His credit check didn’t turn up any recent airline tickets. No new withdrawals from his bank account. No new action on his credit cards. So either he was being smart and not leaving a trail, or else he was dead. I had no gut feeling either way.

The next stop was Pepper’s house. I knew a lot of people in the Burg, but I didn’t know Miriam Pepper. I left Lula and
Briggs in the car and went to the door. Miriam answered the bell in a fuzzy pink bathrobe. She was in her sixties. She had short brown hair streaked with gray. She was chubby and rosy-cheeked. And the drink in her hand looked like Coke but smelled like hundred proof.

“You must be Stephanie Plum,” she said. “Silvio called and said you might be stopping by. He said I shouldn’t talk to you because goodness knows what I might say.”

It was eleven o’clock and the woman was in her bathrobe, getting cozy with Jim Beam. How lucky was this?

“You seem like an intelligent woman,” I said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t say anything inappropriate.”

“Thank you. I’m very discreet.”

“And that’s a lovely pink bathrobe.”

“Pink is my favorite color. It’s a happy color.”

“That’s so true. And I can see that you’re a happy person.”

“Especially when I have a little nip of something.” She leaned forward and whispered at me. “Actually, I’m an alcoholic. Would you like a Manhattan? I make an excellent Manhattan.”

“Thanks, but no. It’s early for me.”

“I like to get a head start on the day.”

“I wanted to ask you about Jimmy Poletti.”

Miriam knocked back some Manhattan. “He’s a pig.”

“In what way?”

“He’s a man. Isn’t that enough?”

“I was hoping you could be more specific.”

“Well, there’s his wife.”

“Yes?”

“She’s thin.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve met her.”

“How am I supposed to compete with that?”

“I’m sure Silvio loves you just the way you are.”

“Who?”

“Silvio. Your husband.”

She did a major eye roll. “
Him!
All he thinks about is that trucking company. I’ve had it up to here with that trucking company.”

“What sort of stuff does he haul?”

“He has a contract with a plant in Mexico that makes salsa and a plant in Newark that makes the containers. He carts the containers to Mexico and comes back with them full of salsa.”

Okay, now I’m getting somewhere. Another Mexican tie-in.

“Does he ever haul anything other than salsa?” I asked.

“I only know about the salsa. I’ve got a garage filled with five-gallon cans of the stuff. What the heck am I supposed to do with it all? I mean, do they pay him in salsa?”

“Did he ever haul anything for Jimmy?”

She stared into her whiskey glass. “It’s empty,” she said. “I hate when that happens.”

“About Jimmy.”

“Boy, I could use a cigarette,” she said. “Do you have any cigarettes on you?”

“No. Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

“Xanax?”

“No.”

“Cupcakes?”

Standing just inside the front door, I saw a car pull into the driveway. Silvio.

I gave Miriam my card. “Call me if you want to talk.”

“Sure,” she said, “but you have to bring cupcakes.”

I passed Silvio on the sidewalk.

“Your wife is lovely,” I said. “You’re a lucky man.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Lucky me.”

“THIS ISN’T WORKING
for me,” Lula said when I got back to the Buick. “I don’t want to be locked in the car with short stuff anymore.”

“Hey, what about me?” Briggs said. “You aren’t exactly my dream date.”

“You’d be lucky if I’m your dream date,” Lula said. “You never had a dream as good as me.”

“You’re not a dream,” Briggs said. “You’re a nightmare.”

“Oh yeah? How’d you like me to nightmare you a broken nose?”

“There’s not going to be any broken noses,” I said. “Jeez Louise, can we have some civility here?”

“We need a fun activity,” Lula said. “I think we should ride by Rangeman and see what’s going on. Maybe there’s guys in
hazmat suits. Or maybe they got the building covered by one of them big yellow tents they use when you got termites.”

I headed out of the Burg and took Broad Street to downtown Trenton. Rangeman was located on a quiet side street, in a seven-story building that had secure underground parking. Ranger’s private apartment was on the top floor. Other floors were used for temporary housing of employees and detainees, a command center, offices, a gym, and an apartment for the building manager. A small plaque by the front door announced the name of the business. Windows were impact glass. All floors with the exception of the seventh were under constant surveillance.

I turned right off Broad and was stopped from making another turn by orange cones and yellow crime scene tape. The entire Rangeman block was cordoned off. An eighteen-wheeler crime scene lab was parked in front of the building, plus a bunch of cop cars, an EMT truck, a fire truck, and a hazmat unit truck.

A uniformed cop from the sheriff’s office was manning the barricade.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“There’s a contaminant in one of the buildings here,” he said. “No one’s allowed on the street until the building checks out.”