Rubbed Out

by Barbara Block

Genres: Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Rubbed Out Robin Light has had better days. Business at her pet store is painfully slow. Syracuse has had twenty-three consecutive days of snow. And she's trying to quit smoking. . .again. So when ex-cop Paul Santini calls, offering a cakewalk of a job finding some rich lawyer's runaway wife, Robin takes the case--without getting all the facts. She gets her first clue that something isn't right during a visit to the worried husband, Walter Wilcox. His story--that his wife's therapist is to blame for her disappearance--doesn't ring true, either. It isn't long before Wilcox is singing a different tune, one that includes his eighteen-year-old mistress, expensive trinkets, and Janet Wilcox taking off with a good chunk of their money. Only it isn't really Wilcox's money. It belongs to his employers, a couple of Russian wiseguys who don't take kindly to being swindled--and before Robin can tell Walter that she's found his wife in New York City, she finds him tortured to death. It's too bad for Walter. . .and even worse for Robin. Apparently, lawyers talk a lot under extreme pressure. They even mention names, like that of a certain part-time P.I. Now, with the Russian mob convinced she knows where the money is, Robin is on the run, desperate to find Janet, recover the stolen goods, and keep everyone she knows from becoming landfill. . .

Release date: October 22, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Everything bad in my life that’s ever happened to me has started with a phone call. This was no exception.

It had been a slow week at Noah’s Ark. So slow that I’d closed up shop early on Tuesday evening and taken my dog Zsa Zsa downtown to listen to some jazz at the Shamrock. But the band hadn’t shown up and I’d downed a couple of Scotches, eaten a handful of pretzels in lieu of dinner, shared a beer with Zsa Zsa, and come home instead.

It was a little after eleven when I walked into the kitchen. The message light on my answering machine was blinking. I unwrapped my scarf and kicked off my boots as I hit the play button. Calli’s voice, frantic sounding, floated out into the room.

“Robin,” she said. “Where the hell are you? Lily’s gone. Someone stole her out of the backyard. Call me as soon as you get in.”

That had been two days ago and we’d been searching for her with increasing desperation ever since.

Tiger Lily was my friend’s three-year-old pregnant golden retriever bitch, her baby. I loved her too. Apologies to Zsa Zsa, my cocker spaniel, but goldens are my favorite breed. They are the true innocents of the world. With their goofy grins, they remind me of slightly dim-witted eighteen-month-old children dressed up in furry blond suits. Tiger Lily didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was sweet and trusting, the kind of dog who firmly believes that everyone in the universe adores her, and the thought of her alone, hurt, and afraid broke my heart.

I was hoping that someone had kidnapped her and was holding her for ransom, but when Calli didn’t get a note it was clear that whoever had stolen her had something else in mind. Like keeping her and selling her puppies. Without papers the puppies would be worth a fraction of what they would be with them, one hundred dollars instead of eight, but maybe the someone who took them didn’t know that. Or maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they just needed a quick way to make a few bucks.

I could make a pretty good guess who that someone was, but Calli didn’t want to hear about it. She didn’t take bad news well in the best of times, and these weren’t the best of times for her. She’d never been what you’d call tightly wrapped, but in the last couple of months the strings holding her together were fraying. On the other hand, not smoking wasn’t bringing out the best in me either.

Friday turned out to be as slow as Tuesday had been at the store. If things kept up this way, I’d just make the month’s expenses. I was cleaning out the gerbil cages when Calli called. Even before she told me her news, I could tell from the tone of her voice that she’d located Lily.

I reached into my jeans pocket for a cigarette and then remembered I wasn’t doing that anymore and got out a piece of gum instead. I unwrapped the stick, folded it into thirds, and popped it in my mouth as Calli talked.

“She’s chained up in back of this house on Fayette,” she said.

“How’d you find her?”

“Luck.” Calli took a deep breath and let it out.

“Luck?”

There was a brief pause; then Calli said, “What do you care how I found her? The important thing is that I did.”

“Have you called the cops?”

“And give the low-life scum who did it a chance to sneak out the back with Lily while the police are banging on the front? I don’t think so. We might never find her again.”

“True.”

“Damned right it is.”

I snugged the phone under my chin while I filled the gerbils’ food dish. They stood up on their hind legs waiting for me to finish.

“So what are you saying? Exactly.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“No. I don’t.”

“I’m saying we need to get my baby back. Now. It’s not as if you haven’t done this kind of thing before,” Calli said when I didn’t answer.

“After all, what are friends for if you can’t ask them to help you with a spot of robbery now and then?” I said as I put the cover back on the gerbil cage.

“I can ask Dirk when he comes back if you don’t want to.”

“No. I’ll help.” Anything Dirk touched turned bad.

“It’ll be easy. All we have to do is pop in, grab Tiger Lily, and go.”

“It’s never that simple.” This I did know.

“This will be. So when can you get here?”

I checked my watch. It was ten minutes after twelve. Manuel was due in the store in twenty minutes. It would take me about twenty-five minutes to get to Calli’s, with a stop at my house to get what I needed. That should put us at the house a little before one.

Which would give us over an hour before the junior high students got out of school and started clogging the streets. Since most of the adults would probably be at work, not too many people would be around. I bit a nail while I thought. Eleven at night would be better, but this was doable. I told Calli I’d be by her house as soon as Manuel came, and then I called him on his cell and told him to hurry it up. He blew into Noah’s Ark ten minutes later.

“God, this weather sucks,” Calli said as she scanned the street for a parking space. “I wish I was back in California.”

“What do you expect? It’s February in Syracuse.”

“It’s depressing.” And she waved her hand in the air to indicate that she was talking about the block as well as the weather.

She was right. Most of the houses on the street needed painting. Torn plastic sheets flapped over windows. Trash bags spilled their guts onto the snow.

“I feel as if we’re living in a black-and-white movie,” Calli complained as she pulled the collar of her sheepskin jacket up and tucked her chin into it. Blue veins stood out on her forehead. “At least get the heater fixed in your car. If it’s twenty degrees in here, it’s a lot.” And she blew a couple of smoke rings to emphasize her point.

Which reminded me of what I wasn’t doing. God, this not smoking thing was making me crazy. Even with the patch I felt as if I had ants crawling up and down my skin. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the scrawl of graffiti on the lamppost. It didn’t help. Maybe lollipops would work. Either that or a gun to the head.

“Maybe we should use yours,” I said.

“Yes, a Beamer would fit in so well.”

“Dare I suggest you could get something less conspicuous?”

“One of the only benefits about living in a place like this is that I can afford a BMW.”

“I suppose,” I said and turned my attention back to the road.

We’d had twenty-three consecutive days of snow and the stuff was piled everywhere. With cars parked on both sides, the street reminded me of one of those narrow, windy mountain roads in Spain where only one vehicle at a time can get through and the other one has to back up.

“I hope Lily’s all right,” Calli said.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Calli’s lower lip quivering.

“She’ll be fine.”

“She better be.” A moment later she indicated a space right before the bus stop. “Pull in over there.”

“You’re sure she’s here?” I asked as I maneuvered the car around an overturned trash can. I could see it all now. I’m sorry, your honor. My friend got the wrong house. We meant to rob the one next door.

Calli nodded.

“Positive?”

“Absolutely.”

“You gonna tell me how you found out?”

“No. And don’t blame Dirk.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Okay. I was.”

Calli had always had bad taste in men, but Dirk was the worst of the bunch. Dirk? What kind of name is that anyway? It sounds like something out of a bad sword-and-armor movie. A drummer who’d last worked with a band called Tonto and the White Boys, Dirk lazed around Calli’s house, ate her food, and made long-distance phone calls to Rome—the Rome in Italy, not New York State—on her phone when she was down at the paper. Oh, did I forget to mention the minor fact of him forging her signature on a couple of checks? But Calli had an excuse for that too.

I had not a doubt in the world that he or one of his white trash, redneck buddies was behind Tiger Lily’s disappearance, but Calli refused to listen. I just couldn’t figure out what she saw in him. He wasn’t that hot. He certainly wasn’t that smart. Or nice. Or helpful. Maybe he was great in bed, but I couldn’t buy that either. He was too concerned with himself to be interested in someone else’s pleasure. Anyway, if he were I would have heard.

“This isn’t your business,” she reiterated as we got out of the car.

I flinched as the wind hit. I definitely needed a warmer jacket. The lining on this one was falling apart. “It is when you involve me.”

She reached for the bolt cutters. “Then give them to me. Wait here. I’ll get Lily back myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a two-person job. Anyway, you don’t know one end of these from the other.”

“I think I can figure it out.”

Calli wore high-heeled boots, believed shopping was an art form, and had trouble changing the lightbulbs in her kitchen fixture. She was most at home parked in her cubicle at the local paper, where she worked as a reporter.

The wind was making the lobes of my ears burn. I flipped the hood on my parka up and held on to my temper. “This is stupid. We both want the same thing: Tiger Lily home. Let’s just concentrate on that. Okay?”

Calli’s hand dropped to her side. “Okay.”

I slipped the bolt cutter under my jacket. It made for awkward walking. I probably should have taken a smaller one, but I’d wanted to make sure it could do the job. I wanted to snip the metal and go in, not stand there struggling with the damned links. We were conspicuous enough as it was. I glanced at Calli as we walked down the street. The cold had leached the color from her skin. She looked like an advertisement for a vampire movie with her white skin and blood-red lipstick.

“Lily will be fine,” I repeated. I didn’t know what else to say.

“She’s due in two weeks. I hope the stress doesn’t make her deliver early.”

“Me too.”

“Dirk says he’ll help.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Can’t you ever drop anything?”

“No.”

“Even when I ask you to?”

“Don’t you want to hear the truth?”

“Your truth?”

I shut up. Sometimes there’s no talking to Calli.

“Fine then,” Calli said.

I watched her hunch her shoulders up against the wind and keep walking. A moment later we arrived at the fence. It was as Calli had described it. Standard chain link. Except for one thing. There were five other dogs staked out in the small junk-cluttered backyard. I counted two nondescript, medium-sized black-and-tan mutts, a young black lab, a German shepherd with torn-up ears, and a beagle.

Tiger Lily started woofing the moment she saw us. Great big woofs. The other dogs joined in a few seconds later. The din was enough to alert everyone in a three-block area. All the dogs were tied up to metal stakes on short leads. No water or food bowls were in evidence. Even though it was minus seventeen with the wind chill factor, there wasn’t as much as a blanket, let alone a shelter of any kind in sight. The snow around the dogs was stained brown with feces.

“You should have called Animal Control the moment you saw this,” I said.

Calli put her hand on my arm. “I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to get Lily. We’ll call Animal Control once we get Lily in the car. An hour more or less won’t make any difference”

“It would if you were the one freezing out there.”

“Robin, be reasonable. I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t do it.”

“You should have allowed me the courtesy of making up my own mind.”

As I turned toward the fence, I reflected that the problem with old friends is that you take things from them you wouldn’t take from anyone else.

“Aside from everything else, given the noise the dogs are making, it’s only a matter of time before someone comes over to find out what we’re doing.”

“I know.” Calli buried her hands underneath her armpits and hopped up and down while I took the bolt cutter out of my jacket and got to work.

In a minute I’d made a hole big enough for Calli and me to crawl through. By now Tiger Lily was wagging her tail so hard, her hindquarters were wiggling from side to side. The other dogs were barking hysterically.

“Oh, Lily,” Calli said and ran toward her. She wrapped her arms around Lily’s neck and buried her nose in her coat. The golden licked Calli’s cheeks. “You poor thing.” And she started to cry.

I snipped the rope that was holding Lily with the bolt cutter and tapped Calli on her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Calli stood up. Released, Tiger Lily jumped up and put her paws on Calli’s shoulders and gave her another long lick. Her coat was matted and dirty, but a good bath and brushing would take care of that. The other dogs looked about the same.

“Don’t you worry, guys,” I told them. “You’ll be out of here soon.”

We had taken a couple of steps when we heard a woman yell, “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Calli and I turned. A heavyset woman wearing a bathrobe and unlaced work boots was standing by the side door shaking a broom at us.

Calli grabbed onto Tiger Lily’s collar. I noticed it was a frayed blue nylon. The people who’d taken her must have gotten rid of the expensive leather one Calli . had purchased for her in Florence. I wondered what they’d done with it as Calli screamed, “I’m taking my dog.”

The woman took a few steps toward us. Her hair was black. She had prominent cheekbones. I saw her mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear most of what she was saying because her voice was being drowned out by the noise the dogs were making. But then she changed her mind because she whirled around and headed back inside her house instead. I didn’t know what she was going to do, but I did know I didn’t want to be around to see.

“Come on,” I said to Calli. “Let’s go.”

We ran for the hole in the fence. Lily bounded along beside us. Delirious with joy, she was wagging her tail so hard, it was difficult for her to move and Calli had to keep urging her forward.

When we got to my car, I threw the bolt cutters in the back seat and Tiger Lily hopped in after them, while Calli and I got in the front. A moment later, Lily jumped up front and started lapping Calli’s chin. Calli was laughing and trying to push her away, but it’s hard to overcome a determined golden retriever.

After a couple of tries I managed to extract my cell phone from under Lily’s ample rump and call Animal Control. Then I drove Calli and Lily home.

“Don’t lie to me next time,” I said to Calli as she got out of the car.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Miss Meekness. But I could tell from the expression on her face that she was glad she’d done what she had.

I turned around and drove back to the house we’d just left. I wanted to make sure that Animal Control showed up, because sometimes they didn’t.

This time the truck showed up twenty minutes later. I got out of my car and explained the situation to the officer. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered man who looked as if he’d been doing this job for too long. He shook his head when he saw the backyard.

“People,” he said in disgust. “I don’t know why they say we’re the higher species. Last week, I found twenty dogs in a basement. No food. No water. We had to put most of them down.”

He clamped his lips together, marched toward the house, and knocked. The door opened. The woman who’d shaken a broom at us, as well as a skinny, light-complexioned kid who I put at about twenty-one, came out.

“Madam,” he said, “I’m Officer Driscoll from Animal Control, and I’d like to talk to you about the dogs you’ve got in your backyard.”

“What about them?” the woman said. By now she’d changed into gray sweats.

“They look in pretty bad shape.”

The kid gave Driscoll a sullen stare. “They’re fine.”

“Perhaps we can discuss this inside,” Driscoll said.

“Fuck you,” the kid said. Then he looked up and spotted me. “She’s the one you should be hassling.” He pointed a finger in my direction. “She stole a dog from us.”

“She’s the one who lodged the complaint,” Driscoll said.

“You believe her ’cause she’s white.”

“Yeah,” Driscoll replied. “That’s it.”

“She did,” the woman said. “I saw her and her friend take one of my dogs.”

“Did you steal a dog from them?” Driscoll turned and asked me.

“Absolutely not,” I replied, giving him my most winning smile.

“There you go,” Driscoll said to the boy and the woman. “Now, are you going to let me in there or am I going to have to call the cops?”

“You got no call to take our animals,” the boy said. “We love them.”

Driscoll grimaced. “If this is love, give me hate. So what’s it gonna be?” he asked when the kid didn’t answer. “You gonna let me in or not?”

“Not.” And the kid ran back in the house.

“Damn,” Driscoll said as the woman followed, slamming the door behind her. “My wife said my horoscope was predicting this was going to be a bad day.”

The dogs in the backyard were still barking as the woman yelled through the door, “You better get out of here ’cause I got a gun and I sure do know how to use it.”

“Great. Fiiggin’ great. I got Annie Oakley here. What I want to know,” Driscoll said to me as we walked toward his truck, “is how come I get all the morons.”

I didn’t have an answer, though it was a question I’d often asked myself.

“You sure took long enough,” Manuel told me as I walked into Noah’s Ark. He was playing with one of the red-tailed boas we’d gotten in on trade a couple of weeks ago.

In all, it had taken a little over two hours for the police to talk the woman and the boy into coming out and to load the dogs in the truck.

“The situation was a little more complicated than I expected.”

Manuel snorted as the snake slithered up his arm.

“It always is with you.”

“There were five other dogs out there with Tiger Lily. I had to wait for Animal Control to come take them.”

“That sucks. Were they in bad shape?”

“How happy would you be chained outside without any shelter, food, or water?”

“Someone should take a baseball bat to people who do things like that,” Manuel commented as the boa wound itself around his upper arm.

“I think this woman is crazy.” I peeled off my gloves and stuffed them in my pocket.

“And that makes what she did okay?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you got Lily?” Manuel asked as Zsa Zsa came out of the back room.

“When have I ever not accomplished what I set out to do?”

“Excuse me,” Manuel said. “I forgot I was talking to Wonder Woman.”

“Well, don’t,” I told him as I laid the bolt cutter on the counter and bent down to pet Zsa Zsa. She jumped up and lapped my chin. I rubbed the fur behind her ears for a little while before straightening up.

“And she’s okay?”

“She’s fine.”

“How about the other dogs?”

“They looked worse than they are.”

Manuel unwound the boa. It started moving toward his neck.

“Now me,” he said. “I would have lifted Lily over the fence instead of using those.”

He nodded in the direction of the bolt cutters. When you’re seventeen, you think you know everything.

“She weighs over a hundred pounds.”

“I could do that easy.”

“Really? You weigh what? One-forty?”

He bristled and indicated my left hand. “At least then you wouldn’t have gotten that.”

I glanced down. I had a nasty gash on my thumb. I must have done it on the edge of the metal when I was trying to bend the links back. Suddenly my thumb began to throb. I rubbed it. Funny how things like that work. Something not bothering you until you know about it.

“That guy with the tattoo of a cross on his cheek was in,” Manuel continued as the snake curled around his neck and began slithering down his shirt. “He wants to sell you some more angelfish.”

“If he comes back, tell him the last fish he sold me had ick. Anything else?”

“Yeah.” Manuel scratched his goatee. “El Pendejo called. He says he has a job for you.” Pendejo is Spanish for putz, Manuel’s favorite name for Paul Santini.

“Did he say what kind of job?”

“No. But he wants you to get in touch with him ASAP.” Manuel pulled the snake out of his shirt by his tail and put him back on his arm. “I didn’t think you were talking to him anymore.”

“Santini?”

“No. The snake.”

“That was last month.”

“You should keep it that way.”

“Why don’t you like him?”

Manuel grimaced. “What’s to like? The guy’s a schmuck. He thinks he’s friggin’ Christ Almighty.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would.” Manuel did an imitation of Santini’s New Jersey accent. “ ‘Make sure you tell her I called or I’m gonna come down and tan your ass.’ I mean, what’s that about?”

“You could try giving me his messages.”

Manuel grinned. “Then he should be nicer.”

“So should you.” I was picking up my backpack when Manuel said, “How much you think Lily’s pups are going to go for?”

“Why? You want one?”

“No. Bethany does.”

I groaned. Bethany was Manuel’s girlfriend. Under-aged girlfriend. Right now she was living with Manuel’s mother because she’d gotten kicked out of her nice middle-class suburban house.

“Her birthday’s coming up.”

“We’ll talk later.” Manuel opened his mouth. “Later,” I repeated.

Otherwise I’d say something I’d regret.

“Fine,” Manuel said and ostentatiously turned away from me and started talking to the snake.

I didn’t care. I went into the back room, poured myself a cup of coffee, and unwrapped the Snickers bar I’d bought earlier in the day. It was a little late for lunch, but what the hell. A girl’s got to keep her strength up.

Paul Santini is an ex-cop who’d opened up his own shop a couple of years ago. He was an old friend of George’s—they met on the force—but the friendship had ended when I slept with him.

I was pissed with George for walking out on me, and Paul was convenient, the closest guy around who was expressing an interest in me. So I was getting even. So what. Lots of people have done lots worse. The sex we had wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I’m not sorry it happened, but the fact that I do work for him means there are more levels to deal with than I’d like.

Paul specializes in security work, with a sprinkling of missing children and matrimonial stuff thrown in. He’s licensed and bonded and advertises in the yellow pages and does all the rest of that professional stuff. Unlike me, who is unlicensed and get my jobs strictly through word-of-mouth referrals.

A while back my husband Murphy died and I inherited Noah’s Ark. Not that I wanted to run a pet store, but I couldn’t sell the place without taking a big loss. To make matters worse, one of my employees was killed and I was tapped for the murder. It’s amazing what you can do when your ass is on the line. I discovered I had an aptitude for survival I didn’t know I possessed. All those investigative skills I used as a reporter leaped into action.

I’ve been doing it part-time ever since in a low-key kind of way. I like finding things out and fitting those pieces together. Helping people now and then doesn’t hurt either. I figure it helps with my karmic debt. Which is huge. I handle missing children and animals and the occasional missing spouse.

Once in a while I help Santini out. He pays me fairly well and, more importantly, he’ll run checks for me on his computer. Of course I could get my own. I’m probably the only person in the known universe who isn’t wired, but right now my cell phone is as far as I’m prepared to go technology-wise. It startles me to think that in my heart I’m a conservative instead of the liberal I always believed myself to be.

A couple of months ago, out of curiosity, I’d paid $39.95 to an on-line company to write a report about me. The next day they e-mailed me the result. It included my complete credit history as well as a list of every place I’d lived in the past eight years. And that list included the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all my neighbors. It was very impressive. And even though this kind of thing makes my job easier, it scares the hell out of me.

I was eating the last bit of my candy when Manuel popped his head in the back. “So what does he want?”

I threw the wrapper in the trash and licked my fingers.

“I haven’t called him yet. Why do you care anyway?”

“I figured maybe there’ll be something in it for me.”

“I thought you said he was an asshole.”

Manuel shrugged. “He is, but if I only did business with the people I liked, I wouldn’t be doing any at all.”

A demonstration of trickle-down economics at its finest. I work for Santini and Manuel works for me.

They say pain bonds and maybe it does because Manuel and I had been shot by the same person and become friends when we were in the hospital recovering. Hobbling around the corridors together, we found we liked each other. I still can’t figure out why. A highschool dropout, Manuel gets by doing a little of this and a little of that. Most of what he does is in the gray area between legal and illegal, although he’s no. . .