“I got excited.”
“You weren’t excited. You were berserk!”
14
WE WERE IN a neighborhood of large old houses. Some of them had been renovated. And some were waiting for renovation. Some had been turned into apartment buildings. Most of the houses were on good-size lots and sat back from the road. The rabbit and his partner had disappeared around the side of one of the apartment houses. Vinnie and I prowled around the house, standing still from time to time, listening, hoping the rabbit would give himself away. We checked between cars parked in the driveway, and we looked behind shrubs.
“I don’t see them,” Vinnie said. “I think they’re gone. Either they slipped past us and doubled back to their car, or else they’re holed up in this house.”
We both looked at the house.
“Do you want to search the house?” Vinnie asked.
It was a big Victorian. I’d been in houses like this before, and they were filled with closets and hallways and closed doors. Good houses for hiding. Bad houses for searching. Especially for a chickenshit like me. Now that I was out in the air, sanity was returning. And the longer I was out walking around, the less I wanted to find the rabbit.
“I think I’ll pass on the house.”
“Good call,” Vinnie said. “Easy to get your head blown off in a house like this. Of course, that wouldn’t figure into the equation for you, because you’re so freaking nuts. You’ve gotta stop watching those old Al Capone movies.”
“You should talk. What about the time you shot up Pinwheel Soba’s house? You just about destroyed it.”
Vinnie’s face creased into a smile. “I got lost in the moment.”
We walked back to the car with guns still drawn, staying alert to sounds and movement. Half a block from the convenience store, we saw smoke billowing from the other side of the brick building. The smoke was black and acrid, smelling like burning rubber. The sort of smoke you get when a car catches fire.
Sirens were wailing in the distance, and I had another one of those parakeet-flying-away feelings. Dread in the pit of my stomach. It was followed by a rush of calm that signaled the arrival of denial. It couldn’t possibly be happening. Not another car. Not
We turned the corner and, sure enough, Ranger’s car was burning. Okay, that’s it, I told God. All deals are
“Holy crap,” Vinnie said. “That’s your car. That’s the second CR-V you’ve burned up this week. This might set a new record for you.”
The clerk was standing outside, watching the spectacle. “I saw the whole thing,” he said.
“It was a big rabbit. He rushed into the store and got a can of barbecue starter fuel. And then he poured it in the black car and lit a match to it. Then he drove away in the green SUV.”
I holstered my gun, and I sat on the cement apron in front of the store. Bad enough the car was totaled, my bag had been in it. My credit cards, my driver’s license, my lip gloss, my defense spray, and my new cell phone were all gone. And I’d left the keys in the ignition. And the keypad to my security system was hooked onto the key ring. Vinnie sat next to me. “I always have a good time when I go out with you,” Vinnie said.
“We should do this more often.”
“Do you have your cell phone on you?”
Morelli was the first number I dialed, but Morelli wasn’t home. I hung my head. Ranger was next on the list.
“Yo,” Ranger said when he answered.
“Small problem.”
“No kidding. Your car just went off the screen.”
“It sort of burned up.”
