20 Takedown Twenty Read Online Free PDF Page A

about a hour old.”
    “You know that by looking at it?”
    “It’s my professional opinion. We should get out of the car and look on foot. The little guy must be hiding somewhere.”
    “He’s not a little guy, and there’s nowhere he could hide here. You’d need a grain silo to hide a giraffe.”
    We were on Sixteenth Street. A door opened toward the end of the block, and Moe stepped out and lit up. He sucked in some tar and nicotine, looked our way, and gave his head a small disgusted shake, as if our presence was ruining his euphoric lung-destroying experience. He stubbed out his cigarette and sauntered over to my car.
    “See, here’s the thing,” Moe said, looking in my window. “It’s actually unhealthy for your health that you should be in this neighborhood.”
    “We were looking for the giraffe,” Lula said.
    “You shouldn’t be looking for that, either,” Moe said. “It’s all detrimental to your well-being.”
    “Do you know the giraffe?” Lula asked.
    “Not personally,” Moe said.
    “Move out of the way,” I said to Moe. “We’re looking for Sunny, and I think he’s in that house.”
    “It happens he isn’t in that house,” Moe said. “And you’re not looking there anyway.” He pulled a gun and shot two rounds into my back door. “I’d hate to think that could be your head.”
    “You got a lot of nerve doing that to her car,” Lula said. “You’re gonna hear from her insurance company.”
    Moe stepped back and looked at the Taurus. “You got insurance on this?”
    I blew out a sigh. “No.”
    “How about life insurance?” he asked me. “You got any of that?”
    “No.”
    “Then you should be extra careful, girlie.”
    I put the car in gear and drove away.
    “He got a attitude issue,” Lula said. “If you ask me, he could use a personality adjustment.”
    “Do you think Sunny
is
in that house?”
    “We could go around back and do some investigating.”
    I drove around the block and came back down the alley that ran behind the Sixteenth Street buildings. We counted off houses and stopped three from the end. I moved up a house and pulled in behind an Econoline van.
    “We gonna be peeping Toms?” Lula asked.
    “Yes.”
    A silver Toyota sedan drove past us and parked behind the house. A woman got out and took two brown grocery bagsfrom the backseat. She was in her forties, clearly ate a lot of pasta, and needed a new hairdresser. The back door opened, and Moe came out and took the grocery bags. They both went into the house and closed the door.
    “That’s sweet,” Lula said. “He came out to help with the bags. I bet that’s Mrs. Moe.”
    So probably we’d found Moe’s house, and chances weren’t good that Sunny was holed up there.
    “Let’s check out Rita Raguzzi,” I said to Lula.
    I backtracked on Olden and headed for Hamilton Township. Rita Raguzzi lived in a residential neighborhood of single-family houses that had been developed in the seventies. Yards were large and lawns were green. Homes were comfortable but not luxurious. Raguzzi’s house was a split-level with an attached garage. Convenient for sneaking a man in and out when he was someone else’s husband. There was a black Mercedes in the driveway. It was the economy model, if there is such a thing.
    “Looks to me like someone’s home,” Lula said. “Maybe Uncle Sunny’s here, walking around in his underwear.”
    I thought that was doubtful but not impossible.
    “You want me to sneak around and snoop while you ring the doorbell?” Lula asked.
    “Sure.”
    I rang the doorbell, and Lula crept around the side of the house, walking tiptoed so her four-inch spike-heel Manolo knockoffs wouldn’t sink into the grass.
    A woman opened the door and looked out at me. “What?”
    She was in her late forties to early fifties. Her complexion was Mediterranean and her hair was platinum, cut short with one side tucked behind her ear and the other side dramatically sweeping across her forehead and