Chapter 7

I HAD thought about her case and I DID have another plan ... sort of.

I admit I was a little desperate at this point. Having been given a reprieve for trying to pull a fast one, and knowing I would have at least one more chance to make her happy, I had been thinking about what had gone wrong during my earlier abortive attempt at burglary. I didn't feel bad about trying that. The way I was thinking about it, those skates belonged to Ronnie, Melody's complicated musings be damned.

It occurred to me that I had been very stupid to try to go in that garage while she was sleeping in the house (Duh!). The woman worked, for pity's sake, and left the house unguarded for at least eight hours a day. That didn't give much respect to Muttley, but then he hadn't really earned much, in my opinion. He was a good barker, but as long as someone gave him enough meat, that was about as far as he went.

So I had already decided to try plan C again, except this time I'd go while the dragon lady was at work. I didn't tell Peaches about it, though.

I had already scoped out the neighborhood, but I put in a little surveillance, both to make sure she left for work and to see what the neighbors were up to. It was a blue collar neighborhood, without a lot of bikes or kids toys in the yards. I saw both a man and woman leave for work from the house on the garage side of Maddie's house, then she got in her car and drove off, too. A middle aged woman from across the street left soon after.

I waited twenty minutes, in case she came back for something she'd forgotten, then parked my car down the street in the parking lot of a little strip mall, where it wouldn't be noticed if it sat for a while. Then I walked down the street and up to the breezeway entrance like I knew what I was doing.

Muttley must have been expecting me, because he only gave one short yip and wagged his tail. Maybe he smelled the meat I was carrying in a plastic bag. Hamburger this time. I was already into this case for a lot of dough and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to see any of it back in cold, hard cash. He happily wagged his tail while I gave him what he was expecting.

I was able to turn on the lights in the garage this time, which turned out to be a good thing, because there was a ton of stuff to go through. I looked around. The box I had been transferring things to last time was still where I'd abandoned it. I couldn't tell if anything else had been moved or not. It was going to take hours to dump all those boxes out. I sighed. I didn't want the noise I was going to make to get Muttley all excited, so I closed the door.

There was a piece of paper taped to the back of the door.

It said: "You won't find them, because I'm not stupid enough to leave them here. Give it up, you putz. You just made the price go up another five hundred bucks. And by the way, I installed a silent alarm, and I WILL press charges."

There was a little smiley face drawn at the end of the message.

The only upside was that I figured out she was lying about the silent alarm. The cops not only didn't come screaming in to arrest me as I beat another hasty retreat, they never showed up at all.

But I still didn't have the skates, and now I had no idea where to look for them.

I was getting tired of driving back and forth between Chicago and Dayton. I was also getting tired of confessing my ineptitude to one Veronica Powers. I didn't even think about trying to keep what had happened a secret from her. I told her about it over pizza.

"I'm beginning to think this isn't worth it," she sighed.

"Nonsense," I said. "They're your skates. You have a right to have them."

"I don't want them if you're going to keep doing stupid things and end up in prison," she said. She had this way of chastising me that didn't hurt as much as you'd think it did.

"I didn't get caught," I pointed out.

"Only because my mother is too lazy and too cheap to actually get a silent alarm," she said. "You have to promise me you won't do anything else illegal."

"It's not exactly illegal," I argued. "Recovering someone's stolen property isn't against the law, as long as that's all you do."

"I'm not sure a judge would see it that way," she said. "Promise me."

"You know, you're no fun at all," I said, trying to avoid making any promises.

"I'm more fun than you could handle, old man," she said. "Promise me!"

"Damn, woman, you don't have to get nasty about it. I'm not THAT old!" I complained.

"Promise me, Bob, or you're fired!"

"OK, OK, take it easy."

"That's not a promise," she said.

"I promise. There! Are you happy now?"

"I'll be happy when you figure out a legal way to get my skates for me and I can build you a web site," she said.

I had promised I wouldn't do anything else illegal. I hadn't promised that nobody else would.

I went to see Vinny.

Vinny runs numbers for the mob. He's not a bad guy, and from one perspective, he's just a guy doing a job that there's a demand for. Yeah, people lose their paycheck to him, but then nobody forces them to make bets, right? The way I see it, it's all part of natural selection. The weak are taken down and the strong survive.

Well, it would work that way if politics didn't get involved, but that's another story.

Anyway, Vinny had connections, and I was out of ideas. Some of his friends had innovative ways of dealing with recalcitrant clients, and I thought that either he or they might have some ideas I hadn't thought of yet to try. And if any of those ideas were a little on the wrong side of legal, and THEY pursued them ... then I wasn't breaking my promise, right?

I told him the whole story, and the first thing out of his mouth was "I can get the bitch hit for a couple grand."

I didn't think Ronnie would approve, so I said, "Let's try something a little less permanent first. Besides, she only wants fifteen hundred for the skates. Why would I want to spend another five?"

He grinned. "If she's kaput she can't complain about anything. That's just five hundred worth of insurance."

"I don't think my client is going to be all that happy with me if her mother ends up on a slab," I said.

"OK then," said Vinny. "I can get her knees broke for maybe five hundred. You think she'll keep it a secret where the fucking roller skates are while somebody's breaking bones?"

"I think I'll pass on the aggravated assault, too," I said.

"Suit yourself," he said, shrugging. "So what you need is some leverage then."

"I threatened to call the cops about her smoking dope and it didn't faze her," I said.

"That's kid stuff," said Vinny. "You need real leverage, like that she's sucking little boy dicks or something like that."

"And what makes you think she's doing that?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, shrugging again. "There's all kinds of lowlifes in the world."

I thought it was interesting that a guy mixed up with the mob would characterize anybody but a snitch as a "lowlife," but I didn't start that conversation with him.

"Just watch her long enough and you'll get something on her," said Vinny. "Everybody's got some kind of skeleton they want to keep in a closet. You should know that. You deal with that shit in your line of work all the time."

Vinny had pointed out the obvious. I WAS in the business of getting the goods on people. True, that leverage was usually used in some kind of a trial or suit, but there had been cases where things were settled out of court.

And it just so happened that Vinny had access to what I needed to do a long term surveillance on the target. It was an old panel van that had one time belonged to some police drug task force. It had a periscope in it that was disguised as an air vent. It also had a bed, a little chemical camping potty, and a refrigerator in it that worked off of extra batteries. When it was retired from government service, it was put on the auction block. If you think it's ironic that a criminal enterprise bought it, it isn't. Cops and robbers copy each other's technology all the time.

Of course I had to rent it, but it would allow me to sit someplace for an extended amount of time without drawing too much attention. It even came with a selection of magnetic signs to attach to the outside, to make it look like a commercial vehicle, if so desired.

The periscope had three magnification settings on it, and I was pleased to find that if I parked in the very corner of that strip mall parking lot I'd used before, I could see when Maddie came and went and who visited her. Though most people don't know it, for a couple of bucks any citizen can find out who anybody else's license plate is registered to, as well as his or her address. Such are the delights of transparent government.

I had no idea what I was looking for, but I went prepared to stay for a while. A visit to the local Army/Navy store got me a couple of cases of MREs, which would cover my food needs. And Ronnie was plugged into this operation, too. I'd told her what I was going to do and that I'd call her occasionally, to report what I saw. She might notice something important that I missed.