“Better be careful,” DeAngelo said. “Your house could blow up next.”
Vinnie’s lip curled back. “Are you threatening me?”
“I don’t threaten,” DeAngelo said. “I’m more a doer.”
“Don’t look to me like you do much of anything but flap your lips,” Lula said. “If you were a
DeAngelo looked at Vinnie. “Who’s the fat chick?”
Everyone sucked in air.
“Excuse me?” Lula said, leaning forward, hands on hips, eyes set in her
“I like it,” DeAngelo said to Lula. “You want to spank me?”
“No, I don’t want to spank you,” Lula said. “That’s disgusting. I don’t know you good enough to want to spank you.”
DeAngelo winked at her and went to pick up his coffee.
“He’s giving me the runs,” Lula said.
I pushed back from the table. “I have to talk to the FBI this morning.”
“Then what?” Lula asked. “Who’s up for today?”
“Big Buggy and my RAV4 for starters. I’ll call when I’m done downtown.”
TEN
BERGER, THE FBI ARTIST, and Chuck Gooley were waiting for me in a conference room on the sixth floor. We started with face shapes, and from there we went to specifics like eyes and mouth and nose. By the time we were done, I was thoroughly confused and had no idea if the drawing even remotely resembled the guy in the photo.
“So is this the guy?” Berger asked me, pointing to the composite sketch.
“Sure,” I said. “Maybe. So about the maniac in my kitchen who wanted to kill me…”
“What did he look like?”
“Middle Eastern complexion. Lots of unruly curly black hair. Crazy eyes. Six foot. Slim. Early forties. An accent I couldn’t place. Tattoo of a rose on his knife hand.”
“I’ll feed it into the system and let you know if we get a match.”
I left the sixth floor, exited the building, and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk because Lancer and Slasher were standing by the Buick, half a block away. Okay, here were my options. I could call Berger, but I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish. Berger’d made it clear my safety wasn’t his priority. I didn’t want to drag Morelli away from his murders. If I asked Ranger for help, he’d have me under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Ranger tended to be overprotective.
I decided none of those options were going to work for me, so I transferred my stun gun from my bag to the pocket on my sweatshirt and approached Lancer and Slasher.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s new?”
Lancer was leaning against the Buick’s passenger-side door. “Looks like you’re cozy with the FBI.”
“They’re interested in the photograph.”
“No shit,” Lancer said. “Did you give it to them?”
“I told them the same thing I told you. I don’t have it.”
“Yeah, but you saw it, right?”
“Wrong.”
“You’re lying,” Lancer said. “I can tell.”
“There’s another guy after the photograph,” I said. “Tall, curly black hair, looks Middle Eastern, rose tattoo on his hand.”
Lancer and Slasher looked at each other and grimaced.
“Raz,” Lancer said.
“Who’s Raz?” I asked.
“No one knows his real name,” Lancer said. “Raz is short for Razzle Dazzle. That’s what he goes by. You don’t want to deal with him. He has no scruples.”
“I don’t get it,” I said to Lancer. “Why is everyone so interested in this photograph?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care,” Lancer said. “We were hired to get it.”
“Who hired you?”
“That’s none of your business. If you don’t have the photograph, I bet you know where it is. And I bet we could get you to tell us. We got ways of making girls talk.”
Slasher smiled. “Yeah, we got good ways.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “but there’s still nothing I can tell you about the photograph. And as much as I’d love to stay and chat, I’m afraid I have to go now.”
“And I’m afraid we can’t let you,” Slasher said.
He reached out to grab me, I gave him a shot with my stun gun, and he crumpled to his knees.
“Hey,” Lancer said to me. “Those things are illegal. You’re not allowed to do that.”
I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. No cars screeched to a stop. No concerned pedestrian rushed at me. Good deal. I relieved Lancer and Slasher of their wallets, scrambled into the Buick, and took off.
By the time I got to the coffee shop, my breathing had returned to normal and my heart had stopped skipping around in my chest. Lula was alone at the table in the window with four untouched cups of coffee in front of her, working at a crossword puzzle.
“What’s with the coffee?” I asked her.
“I feel like I gotta buy something once in a while since I’m sitting here, but the only thing I’m drinking is Pepto-Bismol. Connie and Vinnie went to sign the rental agreement for the temporary office. And then after that, they were going across the street to bond out a guy who set all the birds loose in the pet store at the mall. He was singing that
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No, but a couple canaries lost some feathers in the overhead fan.”
I put the two wallets on the table and went through the first. The guy’s name was actually Mortimer Lancelot. Go figure that. It was almost as bad as Lance Lancer. I moved on to the second wallet. Sylvester Larder. Both guys had Long Branch, New Jersey, addresses. I took down the information on the two driver’s licenses and called Berger.
“I have names for you,” I said. “The two fake FBI guys are Mortimer Lancelot and Sylvester Larder. They have Long Branch addresses. The guy in my kitchen apparently is known as Razzle Dazzle. Any of these names mean anything to you?”
“Razzle Dazzle is a complete whack job. If you find him in your kitchen again, you might want to shoot him. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”
And Berger hung up.
I slouched in my chair, and sipped one of Lula’s coffees.
“Looks to me like you caught some bad juju in Hawaii,” Lula said. “I mean, you gotta look at the facts. You got naked skin where a ring used to be, and you don’t want to talk about it, so I’m reaching the conclusion that your love life is in the crapper. And if that isn’t bad enough, you’re in the middle of some crazy whodunit shit that you didn’t even go looking for. Not to mention we haven’t caught any bad guys since you been back. You might want to
