“Long time no see.” She slid her glasses down her nose.
“Holy crap.” Belle began to slide out of the booth.
It was Susan Young Scarpelli or whoever she was today.
Chapter Sixteen
“I wouldn’t go anywhere.” She lifted the matching jacket that covered the gun in her hand. And the ominous silencer on the end of it.
“You wouldn’t dare shoot that in here. Besides, you’d ruin that cutesy-wootsy matching jacket.” Belle’s eyes cut to the empty counter. I had seen the clerk walk off with a plate of doughnuts for her own jean-tightening break.
“We’re in a hospital. If I shoot you, you have a chance of survival. But I’m a good shot. Dead before you hit the floor. And, personally, I like the matching-jacket concept.”
“Just what is it you want from us?” I tried to stall for time. Someone had to come into the coffee shop sooner or later. Sooner would be better although no one would mind seeing that jacket filled with holes.
“I need to clean up a few loose ends. You two are, like, a loose end. Who’s going to take me seriously if I can’t close the books on a two-bit taxi driver and a whore?”
“You should be in Mexico.” Belle settled back on the bench.
“Don’t push me. I need to be ruthless if I’m going to take over my father’s organization. And I am going to take it. What I don’t need is you two in my way. You were just a means to an end. And I need that disc back. Your boyfriend will hand it over when I offer to swap you for it.”
“Since you shot Lester, I think the police might be more of a problem than we are.” I crossed my arms and leaned back, too.
“Lester’s dead? Well, I sure as hell didn’t shoot him.” Susan’s face paled.
I looked at her for a few seconds. Some emotion flashed in her eyes. Pain? Anger, maybe. Or insanity. What kind of relationship had she had with Lester? And could she really not know what had happened to him? Maybe it was Daddy, cleaning house again. I doubted there was any evidence either way. If her expression was grief, it passed quickly.
“Shit,” Susan muttered. “This is gonna be harder than I thought. The old geezer may have some balls left after all.”
“Maybe Daddy is a wee bit pissed off.” I bit into a cream doughnut. “Did you trash my apartment?” I didn’t see Susan as a long-range planner and now she was becoming unpredictable. Her world had shrunk to include herself and herself. Anyone who didn’t believe her reality was dismissed or eliminated. Belle and I fell into the latter category.
“Goddamn right I trashed it. We wanted that disc. It had good information I can’t remember. And you idiots gave it to the police. I need it back.”
“I think I’m being dissed.” Belle looked at me. “Do you think I’m being dissed?”
“Hey, I’m not the idiot here,” I said. “I’m not taking on your father, the crime boss in the area, trivial as that area is. I keep my head down and my nose clean. And is that the royal we?”
“Yeah,” said Belle. “And I keep my head down. So maybe some self-examination type of stuff is in order for you, Susan.”
“Oh, bugger off.” Susan sounded stressed. “The police have zero on me. I didn’t do Lester.”
“Hey,” said Belle. “What about you keeping me prisoner against my will? That’s gotta be illegal somehow.”
“Maybe I was held prisoner in my own house. Maybe those other two thugs were my father’s. Yeah, that could play. Okay, I could go a different direction here. I could just get Daddy locked up. That would work for me. But I still need to do something about you two. You’re a blot on my reputation and I need to swap you in for that disc.”
I didn’t think I’d ever been called a blot on someone’s reputation. “You’re on your own there. I don’t think we can help you. The police don’t deal with blackmail well.”
“They will if little pieces of you start showing up in the right places, one finger from each of you should get some action,” said Susan, showing the gun again. “You don’t want me to start shooting off rounds in a hospital. I might hit someone besides you. So get your asses moving. We are so out of here.”
“Can I ask you one more question?” I wanted to keep her where someone might notice us and provide a distraction.
“Jesus, you are a curious bitch. What now? The shoes?”
“Well, that, too.” I paused. “Why did you shoot your husband in the butt, in the courthouse, in broad daylight?”
“Shit, what an asshole he was.” Susan’s ego was getting the better of her. She wanted to share. I was a good listener. “He was stepping out on me. I had to show him I could get to him anywhere, any time. I married him because he was working for my father. Who knew he was such an idiot? And such a dud in the sack?”
“Yeah,” Belle said, “messing around on the boss’s daughter? Dumbsville.”
“Who cares about the boss? That was me he was fooling around on and my father-the-boss didn’t give a shit. No way was that going to happen. He needed a lesson, big time. I’ll get to Daddy dearest later.” Susan grinned. It was scary.
“So, then you shot him dead? Seems like marriage counseling would have been easier.” Where the hell was the waitress?
“I didn’t shoot him dead. He stole a few millions of Daddy’s money and was getting ready to skip town with the cash. That’s a no-no in our family.”
“Guess he didn’t know the rules,” said Belle. “Can I ask about Horace? I mean, he wasn’t my favorite person, but he seemed pretty loyal to the family. Why’d you shoot him?”
Susan looked exasperated. She sighed and moved the gun to a more visible position.
“You keep asking why I shot people. I hardly ever shoot anyone. I certainly didn’t waste ammunition on Horace. Lester and someone were over there looking for the disc. We didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. Of course, you idiots took care of that. Horace was an accident. He came flying through the window and Lester freaked and shot him. I personally would have tortured him and found the disc. But dumb Lester overreacted.”
I would have hidden under the table before I would have shot anyone.
“But enough with the questions. Time to go.” Susan waved her coat-covered arm toward the entrance.
“And just where are you taking us? Huh? You think you can just walk out of here with two respected members of the community and make them disappear?” said Belle.
“Who? A ho and a taxi driver? Like the community is really going to miss you. I can’t even figure out why Willie gives a shit about you. Just hire new drivers. They must be a dime a dozen. But he cares, so here we are. And then there’s that numb-nuts cop. I take off enough fingers and I’ll get stupid Willie to cooperate and get the disc back.”
Voicing my thoughts that a taxi driver or a prostitute was worth twice as much as a lawyer or a mob boss to any sane community seemed counterproductive under the circumstances. The conversation was getting weird, and Susan’s motives resembled scrambled eggs, mixed up and well cooked. But she kept talking and, by the time she shut up we had a pretty good idea of where we all stood. She wanted to take over her daddy’s business. To do that, she had decided to prove she could increase the moving of certain product up the interstate. To do that, she’d tried to recruit the Cool Rides Taxi Company. To do that, she had to put some pressure on Willie. We were her pressure. She also needed to know who in her father’s organization would back her and who would stick with him. Horace had that information on the disc we had given to the police. No wonder she wanted to shoot us.
As I was trying to find good reasons for Susan not to shoot us, two ambulances roared up to the ER entrance, sirens blaring, brakes screeching. Susan looked at us and fired a round into the floor. The hospital staff was focused on incoming. No one even looked our way. Too much noise to sort out a gunshot with a silencer from the rest of the chaos.
“Come on, up and at ’em.” Susan stood and stepped away from the booth. We all trooped out of the coffee shop and started toward th
e entrance to the building.
Just as we reached the automatic door, I heard a high-pitched wail and the pounding of many feet.
“Nooo shoots.” Mini-Spike tore out the door, flying on spinning 2-year-old legs.
And hit Susan in the back of her knees with all the torque his chubby little body could muster. Susan flipped over backward. Her gun went skittering across the floor. Mini-Spike scrambled up and over her, stomping on her stomach, and headed for the door in a blur. Susan started to get up.
And big Spike tripped over her, kicking her in the ribs. He mumbled an apology, regained his footing and ran after his son. A nurse followed him and stepped on Susan’s hand.
An orderly followed the nurse and connected with a foot.
When the parade had finally passed, Susan struggled to her feet. Belle was on her stomach in the vicinity where the gun had dropped. I suspected it might be under her spreading bosom.
“You,” Susan hissed. “You I will deal with. One way or another, I’ll finish this.” And she staggered out the door.
My cell phone rang.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Hi, Jon.”
“Honey, if I didn’t fear for your life right now, I would strangle you. Where are you?”
“I’m at the hospital.”
“What? What happened and what’s the damage?”
“I’m fine. I was just delivering a fare.”
Just then our fares came back in. Spike had his arms wrapped around a kicking, screaming, red-faced Mini-Spike. “He found out he had to get a shot. I guess he understands more of what we were saying than I thought. Hope your friend is okay.” He slung the child over his shoulder, sack-style, and disappeared back into the ER.
I could hear Jon yelling at the other end of the phone.
“Are we having a fight? Because if we are, I need some comfort food. I have some doughnuts here, but I’m not sure it’s enough. I think I need chocolate. And, by the way, Susan Scarpelli stopped by the hospital to say hi.”
I could hear Jon sighing on the other end of the phone. “Do you need any help?”
“Not unless you want to corral a 2-year-old who just learned the word shot.”
“Shot what? A 2-year-old shot someone?” His voice was rising again, by an octave or two.
“Shot, as in what the doctor gives you. We’re headed back to Cool Rides as soon as Spike finishes getting Mini-Spike inspected.”
“We need to talk. I need to know what Susan was doing at the hospital. We have a warrant out for her as a witness and person of interest.”
“Yeah, we need to share information. And accommodations and stuff like that.”
“Stuff?”
“I have another fare in 15 minutes. Gotta go.” I flipped the phone closed.
“Is hot buns about to come roaring in with his bubble light screaming?”
“The bubble light doesn’t scream. That’s the siren.” I slid down the wall until I was sitting next to Belle.
“I know that. I was speaking metaphorically.”
“No, he’s not. I don’t think.” And it was true. Right now, I couldn’t think. I needed to get back to Cool Rides. Safe ground for me.
Belle stood up. She had Susan’s gun in her hand. “Let’s go.” She tucked it in her oversized bag and offered me a hand up. “Here come Spike and Mini. We got another fare to pick up. Time’s a-wasting.”
We dropped Spike and Mini downtown. Mini had apparently made his peace with his father, or he had just worn himself out. His hair was pretty flat. I wondered how long it would take Spike to redo the do on his son.
After we dropped the Spikes, Belle pulled out the next fare slip.
“Well, look at this. I know this woman. She’s in the business.”
“As in your ex business?”
“Yeah, she’s a ho. Her client base is mainly in Springfield, but last I knew, she was building up a pretty good local constituency. You know that ‘buy local’ ad campaign? She could be the poster girl for that.”
“I’m not sure that’s what they had in mind. Where are we picking her up?”
“Swing this chariot around to Crescent Street. She’s meeting someone at The Street Café.”
“Whoa, swank. Business must be pretty good.”
“Sweetie pie, that business is always good. But it can wear you out fast. I just outgrew it.”
“Or maybe found out how scary it can be.”
“Yeah, that too. Hey, you got any kind of self-defense in that undersize suitcase you carry?”
“Like?”
“Like gun, stun gun, pepper spray, big dildo?”
“Big what? How would a big dildo defend me?”
“Girl, use your imagination. How’d you get Bozo’s attention when we were locked up at Susan’s condo?”
“I grabbed his balls.” Or something equally squishy.
“Exactly. Think how much more effective a big old dildo would have been. And then you could have whacked him over the head with it. And it still would have been perfectly good for later use.”
File that one away for future defense. I didn’t even own a dildo. Or a gun or a stun gun. I did have some pepper spray. “So, what have you got in your bag?” I asked Belle.
“What haven’t I got? I got Susan’s gun, which we never told the lieutenant about, right? And I got a bottle of hair spray.” Belle dug around in her purse. “And I got some pepper spray and a pair of brass knuckles. And a big ol’ dildo.”
“You have a dildo in there? No, you’re kidding.”
“Take a gander.” And Belle pulled out the biggest penis I have ever seen not attached to a stud bull. It was encased in a clear plastic box lined with blue silk. I almost drove off the road.
“Stop distracting me. The original must have belonged to a horse.”
“Yeah, it can make a strong man feel mighty inadequate. That’s a pretty good self-defense right there.”
I slowed the cab and turned onto Crescent, a street lined with charming Victorians. Belle’s friend walked with a stride that was graceful, commanding and feminine all at the same time. She was elegantly dressed in a silk suit that would have been at home on any CEO. The wardrobe was different from Belle’s. It was obvious who was in charge in her client relationships. Could I take lessons? I really wanted to learn how to be in charge. If I would ever have a chance at running the Cool Rides Taxi Company, I would have to master that special skill. Also, if I ever wanted to survive a relationship with Jon.
“Honey, this is Charlotte. She graduated from Smith and decided to put her degree to work. There’s nothing like good networking.”
“Hey, Belle. I heard you hadn’t been in circulation for a while. Sorry about Horace, I guess.”
“Yeah, no one deserves to die early. But he came pretty damn close to earning what he got. I got tired of the life. I’m giving cab driving a whirl.”
“Whatever floats,” Charlotte replied. She had a deep cultured voice. I could see her giving public-speaking lessons.
“Why do you figure she works as a prostitute?” I asked Belle after we dropped Charlotte off.
“Why not? Good as far as a job goes. Pays well. Flexible hours. I didn’t mind it. I just got bored. And what with Horace eliminated from the management position, it seemed like a good time to let it go. Besides, in Charlotte’s case, she had a lot to prove. Like that she likes being called ‘she,’ but ‘she’ isn’t. And letting her off here reminds me it’s lunchtime. I need more than doughnuts to sustain me.”
“What do you mean, ‘she’ isn’t? She isn’t what?”
“She isn’t a she. She has balls and a penis.”
“No! She went to Smith College. She’s a prostitute, for God’s sake.”
“God didn’t have anything to do with it, and Smith doesn’t require a DNA test. They just assume. And she’s a damn fine ho with a specialized technique. Does some dominatrix stuff and lots of mouth-to-crotch resuscitation.”
I thought about Charlotte
and men and how many of her clients knew. Then I let it go. Belle was right. I needed fuel, too. “Okay, food.”
“I hear a burger calling my name. And fries. And maybe a hot fudge sundae.” Belle grinned. “Packard’s?”
Packard’s is a local bar that serves the ultimate hamburger. It’s stuffed with jalapeño peppers which are stuffed with pepper jack cheese. Then it’s dipped in a beer batter and deep-fried. It ain’t rabbit food.
I called into Cool Rides to see if Mona had any pickups for us. She had an airport at 2 o’clock, so now was a good time for lunch.
At 1:30 we rolled into Cool Rides, stomachs sated and arteries clogged. The next two hours were an uneventful ride to the airport. Unless you count our fare being stopped and searched by the feds. But he had already paid and tipped, so it doesn’t count in my book. His book is probably different.
We got back to Cool Rides around 3:30. Mona gave us six more short hauls. By 5:30, Andrew had reported in. I was glad he was a night person. The ten o’clock train from New Haven was usually at least an hour late. To maintain our reputation for being on time and reliable, the driver went to Springfield at the scheduled time and sat for an hour. That meant getting home around midnight. Too late to start work at 9 the next morning. Andrew was somehow able to turn off his excessive energy and sleep while he waited. I needed to be in my own bed or, possibly, someone else’s bed. But I needed a bed.
Belle and I headed back to Jon’s house so Belle could cook. She wouldn’t discuss details, but dinner was going to be made.
“I’m going to go next door and ask Lucille if she wants some dinner,” I said. What I really meant was Belle hadn’t made any dessert and I knew Lucille would have the sugar part of any meal covered. She handed me a full plate and we popped back to Jon’s side.
Jon arrived at 6:30 to the smell of lemon chicken, herbed rice, and broccoli with hollandaise sauce. I’d set the table, which told me I was bordering on domestic. I wondered if Jon noticed and how he felt about having live-in help. He was comfortable enough to sit down and devour the food.
Small Town Taxi (Honey Walker Adventures Book 1) Page 17
