Devil's Food

by Anthony Bruno

  “Mob?” Marvelli asked.

  Tom Junior shook his head. “Worse. Biker.”

  “Who?”

  Tom Junior looked back at the doorway and chewed on his thumbnail for a while before he leaned forward and whispered, “Torpedo Joe Pickett.”

  Loretta’s bouncing knee stopped dead. She looked at Marvelli. Joe Pickett? Wasn’t that the monster he’d brought in that morning? She looked at Marvelli, wanting answers, but he kept his eyes on Tom Junior, not letting on that he recognized the name.

  “You probably never heard of Torpedo Joe,” Tom Junior said, “but a lot of bikers know who he is. He don’t ride with no gang or nothing. Strictly solo. But if you got something nasty needs doing and you can’t do it yourself, just call Torpedo Joe. The man is good.”

  Loretta felt a little queasy. Back at the Jump Squad office, she’d thought Joe was just your run-of-the-mill creep, but a vision of him coming at her with that chair up over his head freeze-framed in her mind. Her hands were clenched tight under the table.

  “So what’s the deal with this Torpedo Joe?” Marvelli asked. “Did he do her yet?”

  Tom Junior’s chin crumpled. “I hope not.” He swallowed hard. “I don’t think he did. He ain’t had enough time yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was about a week ago that Ricky told me she had the contract out on Martha Lee. Said she’d lined up Joe Pickett to do the job. See, Ricky is just trying to piss me off, knowing how I feel about Martha Lee. The little bitch is hurtful like that. She told me Torpedo Joe was coming out from Ohio to pick up the down payment, then he was gonna head south to do the job.”

  “What’s Ricky got against Martha Lee?”

  Tom Junior rubbed his forehead. “Well. . . Do I have to tell you?”

  “You want us to find Martha Lee before this Torpedo Joe does?” Marvelli said.

  “All right, okay. Martha Lee was holding thirty grand that belonged to us—the gang, I mean. She took off with it when she got out of prison.”

  “You saying that Ricky was dealing drugs with you and your buddies?” Marvelli asked. “And Martha took off with the gang’s money?”

  Tom Junior didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. “Look, I been worried sick about Martha Lee. Just do me a favor, will ya? Go down there and get her before Torpedo Joe finds her. That’s the only reason I’m telling you all this. I don’t want her to die. That kid . . . my kid deserves at least one parent who gives a shit. I’ve had my problems with Martha Lee, but I don’t hate her. Not like that I don’t.”

  There was a lump in Loretta’s throat. As much as she hated to admit it, Tom Junior’s devotion to his wife was genuinely moving. Particularly because she was such a scrawny little thing. Must be hard to love something that unsubstantial.

  “Can you be any more specific about where Martha Lee is?” Marvelli asked.

  “Well, she’s supposed to be working for some outfit called WeightAway. The guy who runs it is supposed to be famous or something, but I never heard of him.”

  Loretta’s jaw clenched. She’d sure as hell heard of him. His name was Roger Laplante, the founder and chairman of the WeightAway weight-loss scam. “Diet control plus positive motivation to help you lose weight and keep from gaining it back once you’ve lost it.” The biggest crock of smooth-talking, pseudosci-entific horseshit she’d ever heard. Picking people’s pockets for a living was more honest than this WeightAway racket. Twenty-eight hundred dollars! That’s what Loretta had lost thanks to goddamn WeightAway. Twenty-eight hundred bucks and she didn’t lose a single pound!

  Loretta saw red just thinking about it. WeightAway was just like all the other bullcrap diets on the market—lo-cal milk shakes that tasted like chalk, overpriced frozen meals that tasted worse than the boxes they came in, and imitation chocolate desserts that didn’t even come close—but what made WeightAway different was that it had its own spa, Rancho Bonita, where results were guaranteed or your money back.

  What a load!

  Twenty-eight hundred bucks! Gone! Good-bye! Poof!

  She’d gone to Rancho Bonita while she was on leave after the Brenda Hemingway incident, when she had decided that she was going to revamp her life and change everything, soup to nuts. But she didn’t lose an ounce down there, nothing, nada, and the bastards refused to give her money back. “Unwillingness to comply with spa guidelines and extreme bad attitude” were the reasons they cited. Extreme bad attitude?! All things considered, she’d been pretty goddamn cordial. It’s kind of hard to be Tipper Gore when a bunch of fanatic body Nazis are making you run around in the hot sun all day, doing stupid aerobics, and then all they feed you is roots and berries in nonfat yogurt. Try being Miss Congeniality on that routine.

  When she stopped seeing double, Loretta suddenly realized that both Marvelli and Tom Junior were staring at her.

  “Something wrong, lady?” Tom asked.

  “You were mumbling to yourself” Marvelli said.

  “So.” Loretta looked away. Her face was flushed.

  “You looked pretty mad about something, lady,” Tom Junior said.

  She gave them both dirty looks. “Never mind about me. What about your wife, Spooner? What’s she doing for Weight-Away down in Florida?”

  Tom Junior shrugged. “I dunno.”

  “Take a guess.”

  Tom Junior looked down at the floor. “She ain’t waiting tables, that’s for sure. If I know her, she’s probably doing what she does best. Pulling some kind of money scam.”

  Loretta caught Marvelli’s eye. She had to talk to him in private. WeightAway was a huge company with franchises all over the country and a line of products sold in supermarkets from sea to shining sea. If everyone in America on that diet had put up even a fraction of what she had, Roger Laplante was sitting on a shit-load of money. Someone like Martha Lee Spooner could have a field day with that much cash. The opportunities for financial hanky-panky were almost unlimited for someone with her expertise. Loretta had to tell Marvelli about this. Law enforcement in Florida had to be notified, so they could pick up Martha Lee right away. Those sons of bitches had to be stopped before any more innocent fat people were rooked.

  But then something occurred to her. If they called the locals in Florida, they wouldn’t be able to bring back Martha Lee, and Julius Monroe wouldn’t let her have the job. She couldn’t let that happen. They had to go down and pick up Martha Lee themselves. And if they went down there and broke up whatever little scam Martha Lee had going with WeightAway, it just might give Loretta a leg up in her master plan. Two POs from Jersey just doing their jobs make a major fraud case against the biggest player in the American bullshit diet industry. Christ, they’d be heroes. They’d get their fifteen minutes of fame, be all over the news, and with some luck she just might get a few decent job offers, nine-to-five jobs that paid well enough for her to start going to law school at night right away. That would be great.

  Her gaze shifted to the wedding ring on Marvelli’s hand, and all of a sudden a wicked idea slid into her brain.

  There were some nice secluded beaches down near Bonita Springs. Despite the greaseball haircut, there was something very attractive about Marvelli, the way he handled people, the way he’d subdued Torpedo Joe Pickett that morning as if it were nothing. God, how she wished she could’ve handled Brenda Hemingway that way. Loretta hadn’t been with a man since she’d moved out on Gary the computer scientist whose idea of sex was more virtual than reality, and that had to have been . . . Oh, my God! Was it almost three years now? If she weren’t so horny, she’d be depressed.

  But she wasn’t looking for a hot and heavy affair with Marvelli, not Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster rolling around in the surf in From Here to Eternity. No. It would just be nice to be with a man for a change—a man without a record. If they grabbed Martha Lee Spooner as soon as they got down there and parked her in a local jail, maybe there’d be some time for an afternoon at the beach. Nothing serious or anything. Just a little R and R
in the sun.

  Unless of course something developed. . . .

  She looked down at Martha Lee Spooner’s mug shots, and a naughty grin crossed her face. Martha Lee, she thought, your skinny little ass is mine.

  Loretta stood up, went over to the heavy metal door, and started pounding on it. “Guard! We’re through in here.”

  Marvelli bunched his fingertips and shook them at her, giving her one of his Italian gestures. “Whoa! What’re you talking about, we’re through? Sit down.”

  “We’ve got more than we need, Marvelli. Trust me.”

  A tall, craggy-faced guard unlocked the door and poked his head in. “You through with the prisoner?”

  “Yeah, take him back up.” She turned to Tom Junior. “Thanks for your cooperation, Tom. You can go now.”

  “Loretta!” Marvelli said.

  “Chill, Marvelli.”

  The guard motioned for Tom Junior to get out of his seat. “Let’s go, Tom.”

  But Tom Junior didn’t move. “Lady,” he said to Loretta, “will you find my wife before—” He glanced up at the guard. “Will you go down there and find her? Promise me that. Please.” His beady caveman eyes were heartbreaking.

  Loretta couldn’t help feeling for him, the poor shmuck. “We’ll do our best, Tom. I promise.”

  “Loretta!” Marvelli snapped. “What the hell’re you talking about? We’re not going down to Florida.”

  She waved Marvelli off. “Don’t listen to him, Tom. We’ll find her. Don’t worry. She’ll be all right.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  The guard took Tom Junior by the arm and led him out of the room.

  After he was gone, Marvelli exploded. “Hey, Kovacs! What’re we, friggin’ marriage counselors now? Is that what you think?”

  “Trust me, Marvelli. I know what I’m doing.”

  “No, you don’t. You think we’re going to Florida. Well, let me clue you in on something: we’re not.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Then you’re going by yourself.”

  Loretta’s heart sank. “Marvelli, listen to me—”

  “I don’t even want to discuss it, Loretta. I am not going to Florida. Period!”

  “Come on, Marvelli.”

  He closed his eyes and stuck his fingers in his ears.

  “Marvelli!”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Marvelli!”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Marvelli!”

  6

  Torpedo Joe Pickett wasn’t happy. He was riding down a country road, passing cow farm after cow farm, smelling nothing but cow shit and cow farts. His head itched, he hated this Jap bike he’d stolen, and he was horny as hell. And it was all that guy Marvelli’s fault.

  He veered the blood red Kawasaki Katana to the left, staying with the main road, passing a cluster of mobile homes, hoping this was still Thornberry Road. There weren’t many signs out this way. The Kawasaki was a piece of shit as far as he was concerned—one of those stupid Jap speed bikes the young punks liked, the ones you had to lean forward on with your face on the handlebars. He didn’t like it at all. A decent bike should be comfortable. You lean back on it, like an easy chair. Joe would’ve preferred to have stolen a Harley, of course, but he didn’t have time to be picky. He had to get moving.

  The road was shady for a mile or so, woods on both sides; then it opened up again with farmland stretching for acres. Corn and cows. They must eat a lot of corn chowder around here, he thought.

  He crested a rise in the road, and suddenly he spotted a wreck of a house with a screened-in porch up ahead on the right. That could be it, he thought. He downshifted the Kawasaki as he got closer, squinting to see the number on the dented mailbox at the end of the front walk. #1570. Yup, that’s it, he thought, and pulled the bike into the dirt driveway, going all the way in and parking the stupid thing in the backyard so it couldn’t be seen from the street.

  Country cops like to be heroes, he thought to himself as he cut the engine, ’cause they’re so bored. He didn’t want to give them an excuse.

  He got off the bike and stretched. That bent-over position was for the birds, he thought. Lying on your dick with the motor revving underneath you—no wonder he was so horny.

  He pulled off the dark-tinted Darth Vader helmet he’d stolen with the bike and wandered over to the Chevy up on blocks in the driveway. He grinned when he saw the she-devil with the big hooters painted on the door. Miss Behavior. Topedo Joe smiled. Little Ricky Macrae, Tom Spooner’s half sister. She sure was sweet the last time he saw her.

  But then he got a look at himself in the Chevy’s driver’s side window, and he frowned. He wasn’t too keen on the new do. Just looking at himself made his head itch. He was completely bald now, shaved clean, face and head. He’d done it himself in the bathroom of a Burger King on a highway somewhere outside of Newark. Used a whole pack of disposable razors and half a can of Gilette Foamy. The only thing he left was the soul patch right under his bottom lip. Those hairs were long enough to braid, so that’s just what he did. It was holding together with a paper clip he’d found on the floor of the bathroom. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not, though. He’d have to live with it for a few days.

  He’d gotten that shitty Jap bike at the Burger King, too. He was just coming out of the bathroom when he spotted this doo-fus college kid sitting on the Kawasaki at the drive-up window. The kid got himself a jumbo Coke, then pulled over at the end of the driveway and took off his Darth Vadar helmet to drink it. The little twerp didn’t know what hit him. Joe took him from behind and threw him down on the pavement. The little doofus was still seeing stars when Joe put on his helmet and pulled out onto the highway. It felt weird wearing that helmet over his fresh-shaved scalp, though. His head kept squeaking against the foam-rubber padding.

  Joe ran his hand over the top of his head and studied his reflection in the glass. He wasn’t sure if he liked the Kojak look either. It made him look like a mean mother, but it was the wrong kind of mother. He was a biker, plain and simple, a man of the road, not some Nazi-loving skinhead freak.

  “Hey! What the hell you want here?”

  Joe turned around and saw Ricky Macrae standing at the back door of the house, scowling at him like he was worse than dirt. She didn’t recognize him.

  But truth be told, he probably wouldn’t have recognized her either if he wasn’t looking at her right here at her own house. She’d put on a few more pounds since the last time he’d seen her. Changed her hair, too. But she didn’t look bad, he thought as he took a gander at those melons she was carrying out front. He always did kind of go for big girls, and Ricky sure looked juicy and sweet to him. Corn-fed, he thought with a grin.

  “What the hell’re you smiling at, asshole?”

  She always did have a smart mouth, he thought. It was cuter when she was a kid.

  Then he noticed what she had in her hand. A little old derringer aimed right at his chest.

  “Honey pie, in all honesty I don’t believe that peashooter of yours can carry that far. Why don’t you come a little closer?”

  “Why don’t you just shut your mouth and get the hell outta here?”

  He stared at her for a second, waiting to see if she’d recognize him.

  “You waiting for me to shoot you or what?”

  He crossed his arms and shook his head. “You don’t know who I am, do you, Ricky?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care, asshole.” She cocked the hammer on her little derringer.

  Torpedo Joe just laughed and thrust out his arms, flipping his palms up to show the twin torpedoes tattooed to the insides of his forearms, each one stretching from the wrist to the crease of the elbow. One was blue, the other red.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. She pointed at his shaved head with her little gun. “What the hell did you do to yourself, Joe? You look like a dick.”

  “I’m in-cog-nee-to,” he said, lau
ghing at the word. It sounded funny coming out of his mouth.

  She uncocked the derringer and stuck it between her boobs. It looked like a tight fit, and Joe worried that the poor little thing might go off by accident in there. “So is this, like, a disguise or something?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that. Probably won’t hurt when I get down to Florida either. Martha Lee won’t be expecting a clean-cut guy like me coming after her.”

  Ricky’s pouty lips drooped.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, already getting mad. “You send someone else to do the job?”

  “Shit no. Why would I do that when I already hired you?”

  “Then what’s the problem? You want her dead, I’ll make her dead. That was the deal, right?”

  “Was the deal. Ain’t worth bothering with now.” She stuck a Marlboro between her lips and flicked her lighter. “Sorry if you went to any trouble.”

  His eyes crossed, he was so mad. He felt as if his head were going to burst open. “You’re damn straight I went to some trouble. I didn’t come all the way back to Jersey for my health, goddammit. I’m wanted in this state, for chrissake. I got picked up yesterday, but I broke out. Now they must be really looking for me. We had a deal, Ricky. I came east for my down payment, and if you changed your mind, well, that’s too goddamn bad. The deal was fifteen grand for doing Martha Lee, half up front. So you still owe me.”

  She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth, staring at him dead-eyed as if he’d done something wrong. “I didn’t change my mind. But by the time you get down there, there won’t be no Martha Lee to do.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Couple of parole officers from the state came by this morning. They’re looking for her. Gonna throw her ass back in jail.”

  “You’re lying.” He saw right through this one. She was just saying this to get out of paying him.

  “I am not lying. You ask my mother if you don’t believe me.”

  “And they just happened to come by this morning. What a friggin’ coincidence that is.”