Read 14 Fearless Fourteen for Free Online Page A

over to me. “This guy just came
in. Failed to appear for his court appearance. Not a big bond, but
it shouldn't be hard to find him. He lives with his brother in a
row house on Vine Street.”
    “What's the charge?”
    “Indecent exposure.”
    “That sounds like fun,” Lula said. “I might have to help you
with that one.”
    I read through the bond document. “He's
eighty-one.”
    “Now that I think about it,” Lula said, “I got a lot to do. I
might not have time to round up some eighty-one-year-old naked
guy.”
    “I'm sure he's not always naked,” I said to Lula. “He probably
just forgot to close the barn door.”
    “Okay, I'll go with you, but I don't want to get involved with
no eighty-year-old doodles, you see what I'm
saying?”
    “Before I forget, Mary Ann Falattio is having a purse party
tonight,” Connie said. “Are you interested?”
    Mary Ann Falattio's husband, Danny, hijacked trucks for the
Trenton Mob, and from time to time, Mary Ann supplemented her
household budget by tapping into the merchandise stored in her
garage. “What's she got?” I asked Connie.
    “She said Danny got a load of Louis Vuitton last night. Picked
them up at Port Newark.”
    “I'm in,” Lula said. “I could use a new bag. She just get bags
or did she get shoes, too?”
    “I don't know,” Connie said. “It was a message on my
machine.”
    I shoved the new file into my pocket. “I'm working tonight.
Brenda's having dinner with the mayor. If she passes out early
enough, I'll stop by.”
    There was still rush-hour traffic clogging Hamilton when Lula
and I left the bonds office. The sky was as blue as it gets in
Jersey, and the air was warm enough that I could unzip my
sweatshirt.
    Lula walked half a block to my parked car and stopped short,
eyes bugged, mouth open. “Holy cow.”
    Zook was written over the entire car in black and scarlet and
gold, surrounded by swirling flames edged in metallic
green.
    “He did it when I took a shower this morning. He said it would
wash off,” I told Lula.
    “Too bad. It's a real improvement on this hunk of junk
car.”
    “It's supposed to protect me from the griefer.”
    “You can never have too much protection,” Lula
said.
    We buckled in and I drove the short distance to Conway
Street.
    “I'll just be a minute,” I told Lula. “I need to talk to Dominic
Rizzi.”
    “Holler if you need help. I hear he's a nut
case.”
    Alma Rizzi's small front yard was bare of landscaping, with the
exception of a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin and
the weather-beaten gray clapboard house behind it were stoic.
They'd seen it all. Good times and bad.
    I knocked on the front door and Dom answered. He was about
five-feet-nine, with a barrel chest and a head like a melon. He was
a couple years older than Loretta, and a lot of pounds heavier. He
looked like Friar Tuck with road rage.
    “Stephanie Plum,” he said. “You got a lot of nerve coming here.
First you put my kid sister in jail, and then you kidnap my nephew.
If I wasn't on probation, I'd shoot you.”
    “I didn't kidnap Mario. Loretta made me promise to take him. And
if you'd bail her out, he could go back home instead of living with
Morelli and me.”
    Dom went goggle-eyed. “Mario is living with Joe Morelli? That
bastard has my nephew?”
    “Yeah.”
    “In his house?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dom was just about vibrating in front of me, hands fisted, neck
cords bulging, spit foaming at the corners of his mouth, face
purple.
    “Sonovabitch. Sonovabitch. I'm gonna kill that snake Morelli. I
swear to God, I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna cut off his head.
That's what you do to a snake.”
    Yikes. “Yeah, but not when you're on probation,
right?”
    “Fuck probation. He deserves to die. First he got my kid sister
pregnant. And then he took Rose's house. And now he's got
Mario.”
    “Whoa, wait up a minute. What do you mean he got Loretta
pregnant?”
    “It's obvious,” Dom said. “Take a look at the kid.