CHAPTER ONE
My name is Stephanie Plum and I’m a fugitive apprehension agent in Trenton, New Jersey. I’m not especially brave, so you would think I’d pretty much stay out of trouble. Unfortunately, I occasionally ignore the obvious signs of danger and stumble into something ugly with the potential for disaster. This was one of those times. I was in a tunnel under a strip club, and I was with my coworker, Lula.
“This is a bad idea,” Lula said to me. “My nipples are all shrunk up and trying to hide inside my body. It’s like what men’s gonads do when someone comes at them with a butcher knife. Those suckers abandon ship and there’s nothing left but an empty nut sack. Not that I know firsthand. I’m just sayin’ what I hear.”
Aside from being a bounty hunter, I think I’m pretty normal. I have shoulder-length curly brown hair that’s usually pulled back into a ponytail, blue eyes from my mother’s Hungarian ancestors, and a bunch of rude hand gestures from my father’s Italian side of the family. My nipples aren’t as smart or nearly as big as Lula’s. They were currently snug inside my sports bra, going along for the ride, and not paying attention to much of anything.
“Not only that, but I think my hair’s standing on end,” Lula said. “Look at it. Is it standing on end? It feels like it. My scalp is all tingly. That’s a for-sure sign that something horrible is going to happen to us.”
Lula’s hair is always a surprise. Some days it’s lavender. Some days it’s braided. Some days it isn’t even Lula’s real hair. Today it was a massive puffball of chemically induced black ringlets shot through with hot pink highlights and sprinkled with glittery tiny pink stars. It was awesome. The rest of Lula is equally awesome, as her bounty runneth over in booty and boob and everything else. Today she was packed into a yellow spandex mini bandage dress that was sized for a much, much smaller woman. I was in my usual uniform of sneakers, jeans, and girly T-shirt.
Lula and I were playing hooky from bounty huntering to track down Lou Salgusta, a mob guy who specializes in information extraction and revenge by barbecuing various body parts of his victims. He’s one of six hit men who, years ago, bought a strip club called the Mole Hole. It’s located in downtown Trenton, and it’s famous for its cheap drinks, outstanding burgers, and mob-occupied back room. It was common knowledge that the six club owners each had a personal La-Z-Boy recliner in the back room, and the possession of one of those recliners was as good as, if not better than, being made.
Recently, Salgusta and one of his La-Z-Boy pals, Charlie Shine, decided my grandmother had the key to a treasure. They kidnapped Grandma and me, and while we endured some terrifying moments, we were able to escape with minimum damage. Problem is, Shine and Salgusta still want the key to the treasure, and we saw them murder a man in cold blood while we were captive. So, there’s incentive for Salgusta and Shine to capture us again, persuade Grandma to give them the key, and then kill us.
“I know it’s a righteous undertaking to protect your granny,” Lula said, “but we aren’t exactly that Die Hard guy.”
“John McClane?”
“No, Bruce Willis. I’m guessing you don’t even have a gun. I’m guessing your gun is home in your brown bear cookie jar.”
She was right about the gun, and she was right about us not being Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, I can’t let any of that stop me, because I love my grandma, and I will do whatever it takes to protect her. And as I see it, the only way to protect her is to track down Salgusta and Shine and get them behind bars.
Twenty minutes ago, I got a call from my mom, who’d gotten a call from Margie Wisneski, who’d gotten a call from her alcoholic brother that he was having his midmorning pick-me-up at the Mole Hole, and that Lou Salgusta had just walked in and gone straight to the back room.
Lula and I rushed to the scene, but the back room was empty when we arrived. Margie’s brother was still at the bar and swore that Salgusta went into the back room and didn’t come out.
“There’s gotta be a secret way out of that room,” Lula said. “That’s the way it always is in the gangster movies. You’ve got to have a way to sneak out when the bulls show up. That’s what they used to call the police. I know all about this because I got the classics movie channel on my TV package.”
We returned to the back room and looked around. Six La-Z-Boy chairs. A monster safe. A card table with four folding chairs. Big-screen TV. No windows or doors other than the door opening to the barroom.
After several minutes of searching, we found a trapdoor hidden under a rug. We opened the door, climbed down a ladder, and stood squinting in the dim light of an escape tunnel that was approximately six feet high and three feet wide. It was encased in concrete and lit by a single bulb that was about thirty feet in front of the ladder.
Lula and I were now standing under that bulb. The tunnel changed from concrete to dirt at this point. It was supported by wood posts at regular intervals and it narrowed slightly.
“I’m going back,” Lula said. “No way in hell am I going to squeeze myself into that dirt tunnel. First off, it’s going to smudge up my dress. And second, it’s the tunnel to death and doom.”
“I imagine you got the death-and-doom message from your nipples?”
“Don’t underestimate my nipples. I got nipple radar. When they talk, I listen.”
Lula turned and huffed back to the ladder. She climbed the ladder and stopped at the top.
“This here door’s closed,” she said.
“You followed me down. Did you close the door?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want anyone to know we were down here. I didn’t count on it being so hard to get open again.”
“Maybe there’s a latch somewhere. A button to push,” I said.
“I’m feeling all around and I don’t see no button.”
“Are you sure you can’t push the door open?”
“Would I be standing here on this freaking ladder if I could get the freaking door open?” Lula said.
I replaced Lula on the ladder and tried the door. No luck. I climbed down the ladder and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. No bars. I looked down the corridor at the dark, dirt tunnel of death and doom.
“Guess what?” I said.
“I don’t like ‘guess what.’ And I don’t like the way this place smells,” Lula said, following me to the end of the concrete.
“It smells like dirt.”
“Exactly,” Lula said. “There’s no other smells besides dirt, and that would indicate that we’re underground with no windows or anything. Like we’re in a tomb. You see what I’m saying?”
“We aren’t in a tomb. We’re in a tunnel that Lou Salgusta just used so it has to go somewhere.”
Okay, truth is, I was every bit as creeped out as Lula. I didn’t like being underground. It was claustrophobic. The air was heavy with dirt and damp, and I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t suffocating. Even worse was the thought that Lou Salgusta might be waiting at the other end. I wanted to capture him, but I wasn’t confident that I could do it under these circumstances.
I tapped my phone’s flashlight app. “Stay close behind me and don’t use your phone,” I said to Lula. “We should save your battery.”