Leanne Banks - Hot Stuff

Pugg nodded.

Cate walked out the front door and stood under the glow of the overhead globe light. A thunderstorm had just passed through, and the sidewalks were glistening wet and steaming themselves dry. There were few people on the street, most having been chased indoors by the storm.

A black town car pulled to the curb in front of Evian’s, the passenger-side door opened, and a man got out. It took Cate a moment to place him. He was one of Kitty Bergman’s goons. Cate turned to the bar and had her hand on the door when she was yanked back. There were a flash and a sizzle and then it was all black for a moment. Weak legs, scrambled brain. She stumbled and was pulled up. Hands under her armpits. Someone dragging her. And then she was in the car, in the backseat, next to a strange man. Her hands were shackled. She wasn’t sure how that happened. She gave her head a small shake to focus and looked hard at the man next to her. It was Marty. He was bearded and unkempt, in baggy, dirty jeans and a wrinkled denim shirt.

“You set me up,” Cate said to Marty.

“No,” Marty said. They were out here waiting for you, and they saw me walk out of the alley.”

One of the men in the front seat turned to Cate. “Yeah, we were real lucky. At first we didn’t recognize him. We thought he was dead. He caught our attention because he didn’t shuffle along like a guy on the street. And then we realized it was Marty.”

“Why were you waiting for me?”

“I’m sorry,” Marty said. “When they captured me the first time I told them about the water bowl and the microchip in the dog. And unfortunately, you have the dog.”

“Yeah,” the guy in the front said. “Marty avoids pain.” He had his cell phone in his hand and he punched in a number. “We have her,” he said to someone on the other end. “And we got someone else too. You’re gonna love this. We got Marty. Turns out he can swim.”

They were on Columbus and turned onto Dartmouth. Traffic was slow. Saturday night and it had rained. Everyone was in a car. Cate turned and looked out the back window, and saw Pugg running behind the town car. She was at once grateful and horrified. She didn’t want them to capture Pugg too. She was afraid Pugg wouldn’t avoid pain. She was afraid Pugg had too much hero in him for his own good.

“What happened to me back there?” Cate asked.

“Stun gun,” the guy in the front said. “We just gave you a jolt. We gave Marty enough to curl his hair when we threw him off the bridge.” He looked at Marty. “Who would have thought you’d swim out of it?”

Cate had a sick feeling in her stomach, and her heart was thudding in her chest. The atmosphere in the car was more conversational than confrontational, but her hands were cuffed in front of her, and she was being abducted. Marty had apparently told them what they needed to know, and they’d thrown him off a bridge, all the same. She’d be happy to get Beast and let them wand the number off him as long as he was returned to her unhurt. Even if Marty was a thief it was hard to believe he had anything valuable enough to go to all this trouble and risk exposure.

The town car turned left onto Commonwealth and Cate caught sight of Pugg running, shirttails flapping, on the sidewalk beside them. He had his eyes on the car and ran flat out into a woman walking a sheepdog. The last Cate saw of Pugg he was sprawled on the ground and he wasn’t moving.

The town car cut around to the alley behind the house with the red door and pulled into a parking space.

“We’re going to get out now, and we’re going to walk to the back door and go in,” the guy in the front said to Cate. “If you make a sound, I’ll hit you with the stun gun. If you struggle, I’ll hit you with the stun gun. If you try to run, I’ll knock you down, and then I’ll hit you with the stun gun.”

“Okey dokey,” Cate said. “Got it.”

Cate and Marty were walked through the back door into the kitchen, into the center hall, and up a flight of stairs to a bedroom.

“We’re gonna leave you here, and don’t try to do anything cute like jump out a window. We’d hear you screaming in pain when you hit the ground, and we’d drag your broken bones back in here and lock you in this room again.”

The two men left the room, locking the door behind them.

“I imagine we’re waiting for Kitty to arrive,” Marty said. “Ick. She’s like the slime monster dressed in Chanel. It just isn’t right.”

“What’s the deal with Kitty Bergman and you? I know you steal jewelry. What’s Kitty got to do with it?”

Marty sat on the edge of the bed. “I might as well tell you. The bitch will probably kill me anyway. It’s really a pretty sweet deal. Or at least it was until Kitty went gonzo. Kitty and I have been friends forever. I knew her before she married Ronald Bergman. I knew her when she was a waitress at the Domino Diner on the North Shore. And Kitty knew I was always good with my hands. Not that I ever stole anything of worth. It was just a hobby. A way to amuse myself.

“Anyway, several years ago, Kitty approached me about using my unique skill for good purpose. Kitty was involved in every charity known to mankind, and Ronald was a big tightwad. Kitty would squeeze money out of him by padding furniture bills and whatnot, and then she’d use it for her charities, but it wasn’t enough. Kitty made promises she couldn’t keep. So she came up with this plan where she’d recommend me as entertainment for a function, and then when I had a free moment I’d look around for a nice piece of jewelry. When I got back to Boston I’d fence the jewelry and give the money to Kitty, and she’d give me a commission.

“It was really quite noble, I thought. I was taking a bauble from the rich, and Kitty was giving the proceeds to the poor. You might say I was Robin Hood.”

Cate wondered if Robin Hood had a cave full of original art and a Mercedes hidden away in Sherwood Forest.

“Well, we did this for a couple years, and I started to get worried. Kitty was out of control, needing more and more money, and I felt like we were taking too much. I was fencing the pieces in Europe as added security, but even so, it was becoming excessive. So I had a plan. I decided I would squirrel some of the jewelry away until it wasn’t so hot. And when I had enough jewelry set aside I’d quit for a while. Then we could fence the pieces as we needed money.”

“And Kitty didn’t like this,” Cate said.

“Kitty signed on for massive amounts of money to the hospital and to the literacy program. All wonderful causes, but it meant I’d be working nonstop for the next forty years. I told her she had to find a different way to fund her charities. And then I made the mistake of telling her about the retirement cache. She insisted I cash it in immediately, and I refused. Most of the pieces in the vault were one of a kind and still too hot to take to market. It would have been suicide to float all that jewelry.”

“So she threw you off a bridge?”

“I knew she’d be pissed. I didn’t think she’d be that pissed. I mean, I told her everything she wanted to know. I told her about Beast and the safe. There really was no reason to throw me off the bridge. Personally, I think it’s her age. You know, hormonal. My new rule is never engage in business with a menopausal woman.”

“What about your agent? Was he menopausal?”

Marty put his hand to his heart. “That dreadful man! It wasn’t enough he was sucking my blood getting twenty percent of everything I made. He tried to blackmail me. I was careless after a gig last month and Irwin saw a necklace in my suitcase. I wasn’t expecting him to stop by, and he just popped in while I was unpacking. It used to be that I’d go straight to Kitty’s house on Commonwealth and use the safe until I was ready to sell the piece. When I decided I needed to start setting some aside, I had a safe installed in my condo and that’s how Irwin saw the necklace. I got in late, and I had my suitcase open. I told him it was part of my Judy Garland collection, but he didn’t buy it. He’d seen a news clip about the robbery and they’d broadcast a picture of the necklace.”

“So you pushed him down the stairs?”

“No! Good heavens. I’m a thief, not a murderer. I just got so enraged. I mean, it was so unjust that Irwin would want to extort money from me. And I paid him once and then he came back again. Can you imagine? The man was just so disreputable. Well, after all, what can you expect? He’s an agent, which is just another word for parasite if you ask me.”

Cate thought Marty probably had a different opinion of agents when he was out of work and couldn’t get a job on his own, but heck, what did she know about showbiz?

“I noticed a knife was missing from the kitchen,” Cate said.

“Actually, it was very satisfying. I went kind of berserk when he asked for more money, and I punched him in the nose. It was the first time I’ve ever punched anyone, and I was really good at it. I just went pop, right on his beak, and he started bleeding and yelling. And then I kind of got into it and grabbed the carving knife and told him I was going to cut him up into little pieces. And that was when he ran out of the condo and tried to get the elevator, but I was right behind him with the knife, so he took the stairs and slipped and fell and broke his neck. Personally, I think it was karma.”

Cate looked around the room. It looked like it had been furnished in pieces Kitty no longer wanted in her big house. A queen-sized bed with a cream-colored quilted spread. A tufted headboard in peach tones. An Oriental area rug at the foot of the bed. An ornate mahogany chest of drawers. Audubon prints in slim walnut frames. She’d noticed as they walked through that there were two bedrooms on this floor. She suspected this wasn’t the bedroom Marty used when he stayed in the house. There were no personal touches in the room. No photos, no books or magazine, no mints or keys or spare change. And she couldn’t see Marty enduring the peach headboard. It was nice, but it very much wasn’t Marty.