Excerpt of Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
(Page 5 of 9)
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“Too early in the day to do the pizza delivery routine,” I
said.
“Can’t do the flower delivery either. Nobody believe
someone sending flowers to this dope.”
“If you hadn’t changed clothes you could do the hooker
delivery routine,” I said to Lula. “He would have opened
the door to you in that gold thing.”
“Maybe we pretend we’re selling cookies. Like Girl
Scouts. All we gotta do is go back to the 7-Eleven and get
some cookies.”
I looked Johnson’s phone number up on the bond sheet
and called him from my cell.
“Yeah?” a man said.
“Lonnie Johnson?”
“What the fuck you want? Fuckin’ bitch calling me at
this hour. You think I got nothin’ better to do than answer
this phone?” And he hung up.
“Well?” Lula asked.
“He didn’t feel like talking. And he’s angry.”
A shiny black Hummer with tinted windows and bling
wheel covers rolled down the street and stopped in front
of Johnson’s house.
“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “Company.”
The Hummer sat there for a moment and then opened
fire on Johnson’s house. Multiple weapons. At least one
was automatic, firing continuous rounds. Windows blew
out and the house was drilled with shots. Gunfire was returned
from the house, and I saw the nose of a rocket
launcher poke out a front window. Obviously the Hummer
saw it too because it laid rubber taking off.
“Maybe this isn’t a good time,” I said to Lula.
“I told you to go for the pervert.”
Melvin Pickle worked in a shoe store. The store
was part of the mall that attached to the multiplex where
he’d been caught shaking hands with the devil. I didn’t
have a lot of enthusiasm for this capture, since I had some
sympathetic feelings for Pickle. If I had to work in a shoe
store all day I might go to the multiplex to whack off once
in a while too.
“Not only is this going to be an easy catch,” Lula said,
parking at the food court entrance, “but we can get pizza
and go shopping.”
A half hour later, we were full of pizza and had taken a
couple new perfumes out for a test drive. We’d moseyed
down the mall and were standing in front of Pickle’s shoe
store, scoping out the employees. I had a photo of Pickle
that had come with his bond agreement.
“That’s him,” Lula said, looking into the store. “That’s
him on his knees, trying to sell that dumb woman those
ugly-ass shoes.”
According to Pickle’s paperwork he’d just turned forty.
He had sandy-colored hair that looked like it had been cut
in boot camp. His skin was pale, his eyes hidden behind
round-rimmed glasses, his mouth accented by a big herpes
sore. He was five-foot-seven and had an average build
gone soft. His slacks and dress shirt were just short of
shabby. He didn’t look like he cared a whole lot if the
woman bought the shoes.
I moved my cuffs from my shoulder bag to my jeans
pocket. “I can manage this,” I said to Lula. “You stay here
in case he bolts.”
“I don’t think he looks like a bolter,” Lula said. “I think
he looks more like the walking dead.”
I agreed with Lula. Pickle looked like he was two steps
away from putting a bullet in his brain. I moved behind
him and waited for him to stand.
“I love this shoe,” the woman said. “But I need a size
nine.”
“I don’t have a size nine,” Pickle said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you should go back and look again.”
Pickle sucked air for a couple beats and nodded. “Sure,”
he said.
Excerpted from Twelve Sharp, copyright (c) 2006, Janet Ivanovich. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved.
