I locked the Nova, hung my big black bag over my shoulder, and set out. I’d put the fiasco with Mrs. Morelli behind me, and felt pretty damn slick in my suit and heels, toting my bounty hunter hardware. Embarrassing as it was to admit, I was beginning to enjoy the role, thinking there was nothing like packing a pair of cuffs to put some spring into a woman’s step.
The gym sat in the middle of its block, over A & K Auto Body. The bay doors to the auto body were open, and catcalls and kissy sounds drifted out to me when I crossed the cement apron. My New Jersey heritage weighed heavy, demanding I respond with a few demeaning comments of my own, but discretion being the better part of valor, I kept my mouth shut and hurried on by.
Across the street, a shadowy figure pulled back from a filthy third-floor window, the movement catching my attention. Someone had been watching me. Not surprising. I’d roared down the street not once, but twice. My muffler had fallen off first thing this morning, and my engine noise had rumbled off the Stark Street brick storefronts. This wasn’t what you’d call an undercover operation.
The door to the gym opened onto a small foyer with steps leading up. The stairwell walls were institutional green, covered with spray-painted graffiti and twenty years’ worth of hand smudges. The smell was bad, ripe with urine steaming on the lower steps, bonding with the musty aroma of stale male sweat and body odor. Upstairs, the warehouse-style second floor was no better.
A handful of men were working the free weights. The ring was empty. No one was at the bags. I figured everybody must be out jumping rope or stealing cars. It was the last flip thought I entertained. Activity faltered when I entered, and if I’d been uncomfortable on the street, it hardly counted at all to what I felt here. I’d expected a champion to be surrounded by an aura of professionalism. I hadn’t anticipated the atmosphere to be charged with hostility and suspicion. I was clearly a street-ignorant white woman invading a black man’s gym, and if the silent rebuke had been any more forceful I’d have been hurled backward, down the stairs like a victim of a poltergeist.
I took a wide stance (more to keep myself from falling over in fright than to impress the boys) and hitched up my shoulder bag. “I’m looking for Benito Ramirez.”
A hulking mountain of muscle rose from a workout bench. “I’m Ramirez.”
He was over 6‘ tall. His voice was silky, his lips curved into a dreamy smile. The overall effect was eerie, the voice and the smile at odds to the stealthy, calculating eyes.
I crossed the room and extended my hand. “Stephanie Plum.”
“Benito Ramirez.”
His grasp was too gentle, too lingering. More of a caress than a handshake and unpleasantly sensual. I stared into his hooded, close-set eyes and wondered about prizefighters. Until this moment, I’d assumed boxing was a sport of skill and aggression, directed toward winning the match, not necessarily toward maiming the opponent. Ramirez looked like he’d enjoy the kill. There was something about the density of his eyes, black holes where everything gets sucked in and nothing comes out, that suggested a hiding place for evil. And the smile, a little goofy, a little sick in its sweetness, hinting of insanity. I wondered if this was a contrived image, designed to spook opponents before the bell. Contrived or not, it was creepy as hell.
I made an attempt to free my hand, and his grip tightened.
“So, Stephanie Plum,” he said in his velvet voice. “What can I do for you?”
As a buyer for E.E. Martin, I’d dealt with my share of slime. I’d learned how to assert myself and still be pleasant and professional. My face and voice told Ramirez I was friendly. My words were more to the point. “You can release my hand, so I can give you my card,” I said.
His smile stayed fixed in place, more amiable and inquisitive now than crazy. I gave him my card and watched him read it.
“Fugitive apprehension agent,” he said, obviously amused. “That’s a big title for a little girl.”
I’d never thought of myself as little until I’d stood along-side Ramirez. I’m 5‘ 7“ and rawboned from the Mazur’s good Hungarian peasant stock. Perfectly constructed for laboring in the paprika fields, pulling plows, and dropping babies out like bird’s eggs. I ran and periodically starved to keep the fat off, but I still weighed in at 130. Not heavy, but not dainty, either. ”I’m looking for Joe Morelli. Have you seen him?“
Ramirez shook his head. “I don’t know Joe Morelli. I only know he shot Ziggy.” He looked around at the rest of the men. “Any of you seen that guy Morelli?”
No one responded.
“I’ve been told there was a witness to the shooting and that the witness has disappeared,” I said. “Do you have any idea who that witness might be?”
Again, no response.
I pushed on. “How about Carmen Sanchez? Do you know Carmen? Did Ziggy ever speak of her?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Ramirez said.
We were standing close to the big old-fashioned windows in the front of the room, and for no reason other than instinct, I shifted my attention to the building across the street. Again, the shadowy figure in the same third-floor window. A man, I thought. I couldn’t tell if he was black or white. Not that it mattered.
Ramirez stroked my jacket sleeve. “Would you like a Coke? We got a Coke machine here. I could buy you a soda.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I have a busy morning, and I really should be moving along. If you spot Morelli, I’d appreciate a call.”
“Most girls think it’s a treat for the champ to buy them a soda.”
Not this girl, I thought. This girl thought the champ was possibly missing a few marbles. And this girl didn’t like the climate of the gym.
“I’d really love to stay and have a soda,” I said, “but I have an early lunch date.” With a box of Fig Newtons.
“It’s not good to go rushing around. You should stay and relax a little. Your date won’t mind.”
