Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich [76]
“You’re getting a late start,” I said when he disconnected.
“I want to talk to you, and I didn’t want to do it until Zook was out of the house. There was a padded envelope stuck under my windshield wiper when I went out this morning. I put the contents in the freezer.”
My heart stuttered in my chest.
“I’ve been talking to Larry Skid and Spanner and the Fed who headed the bank job, and they’re going to set up a sting. I doubt Dom will go back to Bugger’s house. And it doesn’t seem likely he’ll get in touch with you, so we’re going without him. Hang the scarf in the window and tell the fourth partner you talked to Dom and you know everything. Tell him you want to swap what you know for Loretta. Let the partner suggest how to make the exchange. He’ll be less suspicious of a trap if he sets it up. The Feds have a garage in place.” Morelli handed me a page from his notebook. “This is the address. Make sure he passes you Loretta before you give him this information.”
“Was it another toe?”
“Yeah.” He poured coffee into a travel mug, and took two bubble-wrapped packages from the freezer and dropped them into a plastic bag. “I’m taking these in with me, along with the gun. Don’t call me on your cell phone if you want to talk about this. Call me on something that’s secure.” He kissed me and left.
I gave him twenty minutes and hung a red scarf in the window. It was cashmere and had been a Christmas present from Morelli’s mom two years ago. He’d never worn it. He wasn’t a red scarf kind of guy.
I got a call on my cell phone ten minutes after I hung the scarf.
“Who hung the scarf?” he said.
I recognized the voice. Slight rasp. Flat. “I did,” I told him.
“And?”
“I know everything. I had a conversation with Dom yesterday. He wants to make a deal for Loretta.”
“Why isn’t he talking to me?”
“Afraid, I guess.”
“But you’re not afraid?”
“I’m not involved like Dom.”
“What about Morelli?”
“He’s not part of it.”
I sat out a full sixty seconds of silence. I suppose he was debating whether to go forward. Or maybe he was waiting to see if I’d get nervous and start blabbering.
“Here’s the deal,” he finally said. “You tell me where the van is located, and I give you Loretta.”
“I need Loretta first.”
“Not gonna happen, sweetie.”
I hated this guy. I hated his voice. I hated his arrogance and his ability to kill and maim in cold blood. And I hated that he called me sweetie.
“You’re going to have to come up with a plan we can both live with,” I told him.
“I’m a reasonable guy,” he said. “I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”
By the time he called, my eye was twitching and my stomach was clenched in a knot. The phone rang and I jumped in my seat. I took a moment to breathe and steady my voice, and I answered the phone.
“The keys are taped to the underside of a bench in front of the train station,” he said. “Look for the bus stop with the Nike ad. When you get the keys, you can use them to get the van. After you’ve secured the van, you can call me. The phone number is in the envelope with the keys. You need to remember two things. If anything goes wrong, I’ll kill Loretta. Then I’ll kill her son. And then I’ll kill you. And don’t doubt for a moment that I won’t.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“Be careful not to set off the detonation device.”
Oh boy. “Dom didn’t tell me about the detonation device.”
There was a moment of silence. “Allen booby-trapped the van. Allen loved doing that sort of thing. In this case, it wasn’t a bad idea, since none of us could really be trusted. The key is necessary to disarm the mechanism. So, while Dom has always known where the van was located, he had no access to the money without the key. Allen probably could have bypassed his system, but he didn’t know the location of the van. Once Zero was convinced he knew where the key was located, he eliminated Allen. And then, of course, I eliminated Zero after we retrieved the keys.