“You want me to shoot them?” Shorty asked.
“No. You don’t know who’s watching here. Remember the trouble Sunny got into because he was filmed running over some a-hole.”
“Damn cellphone cameras,” Shorty said. “There’s no privacy anymore.”
Moe poked Grandma with the barrel of his gun. “Move.”
“Make me,” Grandma said.
“All I want is to get home to watch a dopey movie with my wife,” Moe said. “Could you try to cooperate?”
Grandma squinched her eyes together and opened her mouth to scream, and Shorty rushed at her and tagged her with his stun gun. Grandma squeaked and crumpled to the ground. I took a step toward Grandma, and Shorty pointed his stun gun at me.
“Stay,” Shorty said.
“She’s old and fragile,” I said. “She could be hurt.”
“First off, she doesn’t look too fragile to me. And second, that’s the least of her problems,” Shorty said.
Moe waved his gun at me. “We’re going two houses down to where the construction Dumpster is sitting. I don’t want to make a scene out here, but I will if I have to. I can shoot you and drag you, or you can walk.”
Shorty looked down at Grandma. “What about her?”
“You zapped her, so you get to drag her.”
“I got a bad back. Why don’t we get Bobby over here?”
“It’ll take too long. Just suck it up and drag the old lady to the Dumpster.”
Shorty got Grandma by the ankles. “I’m gonna remember this. I’m making a list. I’m tired of always being the one to drag people. I dragged Paul Mooney. And he wasn’t no lightweight. I dragged him all the way to the river when we found out we didn’t bring shovels to bury him.”
Moe cracked a smile. “That was pretty funny.”
Shorty smiled too. “We should write a book.”
I watched Shorty drag Grandma down the alley, and I was so angry I could barely breathe. I didn’t find any of this funny. I wanted to rip these two guys apart with my bare hands.
We got to the building that was under renovation, Moe tapped a security code into a door lock, and the door clicked open. Grandma was twitching and mumbling and trying to stand.
“Get her up and get her inside,” Moe said to me.
I helped Grandma stand and maneuvered her inside. We were in a small back hall that was lit by a single overhead light. An open doorway led down to the basement.
“The party’s downstairs,” Moe said.
My rage was draining away, getting replaced by gut-clenching dread. The best-case scenario was that they’d lock us in the basement and Lula would have a chance to rescue us. I didn’t want to think about the worst-case scenario.
The basement was dark and damp, lit by overhead bare bulbs dangling from sockets attached to wires. I carefully helped Grandma negotiate the construction-grade wood stairs. She was still wobbly, and I could feel her hand shaking in mine. A furnace and two water heaters were on a far wall. Rolls of fiberglass insulation were stacked by the water heaters. The floor was packed dirt, and the dirt smell was cloying. There was a door by the furnace. It was heavy wood with a large padlock attached.
“Over there,” Moe said, motioning to the door.
I wanted this to be a closet or a storeroom, someplace where they would stash us until the time was more convenient for them to kill us. If I had enough time, someone would find me. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be Ranger. The messenger bag, with my cellphone and Ranger’s tracking gizmo, was back in Sunny’s bachelor pad.
Moe opened the padlock and pushed Grandma and me into a room that was about ten by fourteen. The floor was poured concrete. The ceiling was unfinished, with exposed pipes and electrical wires running between wood beams. There was one small window high on the wall. It had been painted black.
“Fitz is here,” Shorty said. “He just texted me.”
“Okay, ladies,” Moe said. “Make yourselves comfy. We have to help Fitz.”
The door closed and locked, and we were in total darkness. Not a shred of light.
“I’m sort of scared,” Grandma said. “And I think I wet myself when they electrocuted me.”
I was scared too. I wanted to believe Lula was looking for us and had called in help, but I wasn’t convinced. I could hear a truck rumbling in the alley. Men were talking. I thought I recognized Moe’s voice. There were scraping sounds at the window, and the window opened. A shaft of light filtered in from the open window and drew my attention to something embedded in the cement floor. It was a tuft of platinum hair. Four feet away from the tuft of hair, like a small island in a sea of rock-hard cement, I found what I feared was the pointy toe to Rita Raguzzi’s red patent-leather stilettos. I felt the chill originate at my heart and rush through me to all other parts.