I made myself a chicken salad sandwich and took some potato chips from the bag on the table. “Do you have any ideas about where this safe might be located besides New Jersey?” I asked Grandma.
“Not exactly,” Grandma said, “but I got a lot of feelers out. And I’m doing what you said about not telling anyone I found the keys. I’m just making it sound like I’m curious.”
“This is stupid,” my mother said to Grandma. “You’re going to get kidnapped again. Salgusta and Shine are going to burn our house down. You need to get rid of the keys. If you don’t want to give them to Salgusta or Shine, you should give them to Benny. Maybe he’ll give you some of the treasure.”
“No way,” Grandma said, “but I’ll hand some of the treasure over to Benny when I find it, being that he’s the one who was nice enough to give me Jimmy’s old chair. I was thinking Stephanie should talk to him and maybe he’ll spill the beans about the safe. He’s on a lot of meds. He might not know he’s giving up the secret.”
I had to give credit to Grandma. She was a master schemer. And she could be right about Benny. He was in his golden years that weren’t entirely golden. He had heart issues and weight issues. It took two wise guys to get him out of his La-Z-Boy. He was on prescribed meds and I suspected recreational meds, not to mention he liked a good cigar and never passed up a glass of whiskey. The names on the keys were all geriatric or dead hit men who were mostly okay guys when they weren’t whacking someone. This was true about Benny.
“I hear Benny is at home all depressed,” Grandma said. “He used to meet up with all his cronies at the Mole Hole, but now they’re either dead or hiding out. He’d probably be happy to have a visitor. I could even go with you. I’m real clever at worming information out of people.”
My mother did an eye roll and made the sign of the cross.
“I’ll stop in after lunch,” I said to Grandma. “I’ll go alone this time. If I can’t get anything out of him, we’ll bring you in next time.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Grandma said. “I have stuff to do anyway. I have follow-up phone calls to make. Jean Mulanowski said her nephew is a pit boss at one of the casinos in Atlantic City, and he told her that Jimmy was a regular. Her nephew is checking to see if Jimmy gave a local address. We’re thinking he might have kept a second apartment there.”
Originally, I thought I’d be pretty good at finding a treasure. After all, my real job is finding people and dragging them back to jail. People, treasure, what’s the difference other than the payoff? Finding skips has me living paycheck to paycheck, if I’m lucky. My thinking is, the treasure has to be worth a lot more. Unfortunately, it’s also turning out to be more difficult to find.
When I go after people, I already have a file full of clues assembled by the bond agency. Home addresses, work addresses, names of relatives, a picture. In the case of the treasure, I have to go find the clues before I can put it all together and actually go on the hunt. Then there’s the danger factor. Most of my skips are dangerous, but not usually at the same level as Shine and Salgusta. Grandma and I were lucky to survive our last encounter with them, and I was pretty certain the only thing keeping Grandma and me alive and untortured up to this point is that Shine and Salgusta can’t figure out how to snatch us. They used to have a bunch of wise guys working for them in the past, but not lately. And if they confided their plans to the wrong person, it would spread like wildfire through the Burg. It would be told to the second cousin of a first niece of a friend’s brother who goes to church with his butcher’s son, who happens to be a cop. This could result in not only jail time but also no treasure for Shine and Salgusta. So, I’m thinking they’re being careful right now, but it’s only a matter of time before they come after us.
CHAPTER THREE
I stopped at the bakery and got a box of freshly filled cannoli. If there’s one thing a cardiac patient craves its full-fat ricotta cheese in deep-fried pastry. Steak and fried onion rings would be a second. I drove to Benny’s house and parked at the curb. A purple Kia was in the driveway. Benny’s wife, Carla, had late-stage Parkinson’s, and I thought the Kia probably belonged to Carla’s caregiver.
I rang the bell, a young woman answered, and I told her I’d come to talk to Benny.
“Who’s there?” Benny yelled from another room.
“Stephanie Plum,” I yelled back.
“He’s watching television in the den,” the woman said. “Just walk straight back.”
The den was a small room that had been tacked onto the living room. Benny was wedged into a club chair positioned in front of a large flat-screen TV. A leather recliner was next to him. A tiger-striped cat was curled up in the recliner.
Benny smiled when he saw me, his eyes instantly focusing on the white bakery box.
“Cannoli,” I said.
“You’re gonna kill me,” he said. “Are they fresh filled?”
“Of course.”
“Hand them over,” he said. “You want one?”
“No. I just had lunch at my mother’s house.” I looked at the cat. “I’m guessing the cat is in your chair.”
Benny took a cannoli out of the box. “Yeah, he’s an old guy. I don’t like to disturb him when he’s sleeping.”
“I heard you weren’t going to the Mole Hole anymore.”
“None of the guys are there,” he said. “It’s not the same. And I hear it smells like dead rat roast.”
This tells me that Benny is getting some real-time reporting from someone at the Mole Hole.
“I followed Lou Salgusta into the tunnel and he tried to cremate me,” I said. “I managed to get away. The rats weren’t so lucky.”
Benny finished off the first cannoli and took a second. “Trust me, if Lou really wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. He was probably just playing around.”
“So, you know about the tunnel?”
“We all knew about the tunnel. It’s been there for years. I used it a bunch of times. We had plans to make improvements but never got around to it.”
“Is that where Jimmy hid the treasure?”
“In the tunnel? No. There’s nothing down there but dirt.”
“I don’t get why the keys are so important. If you know where the treasure is kept, why don’t you just get it some other way. A locksmith or something.”
“I knew there was a catch to the cannoli,” Benny said. “You want to know about the treasure, right?”
“I’m curious.”
“The freaking thing is boobytrapped. You try to get at the treasure without using both keys, and it’ll look like Hiroshima. Stupid idea.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Where’d you get these? Italian bakery? I can always tell. Best cannoli in Jersey. It’s the ricotta they use.”
“Hiroshima is big.”
“No shit. Excuse my French. Nobody ever thought the keys would get lost. Jimmy was Keeper of the Keys, and he was supposed to always have the keys with him.” Benny ate half of another cannoli. “The keys weren’t on or in Jimmy, so that means your granny has them. It’s the only explanation. She was with him when he checked out. We looked everywhere. We x-rayed his corpse, he should rest in peace.”