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Stephanie Plum 1 - One for the Money
OnefortheMoney
One for the Money
Janet Evanovich
Stephanie Plum one - One for the Coin
1
THERE ARE SOME MEN who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me—not forever, only periodically.
Morelli and I were both born and raised in a blue-collar clamper of Trenton chosen the burg. Houses were attached and narrow. Yards were small. Cars were American. The people were mostly of Italian descent, with enough Hungarians and Germans thrown in to kickoff inbreeding. It was a good place to buy calzone or play the numbers. And, if you had to alive in Trenton anyway, it was an okay place to raise a family.
When I was a child I didn't ordinarily play with Joseph Morelli. He lived ii blocks over and was 2 years older. "Stay away from those Morelli boys," my female parent had warned me. "They're wild. I hear stories about the things they exercise to girls when they get them alone."
"What kind of things?" I'd eagerly asked.
"You don't want to know," my mother had answered. "Terrible things. Things that aren't nice."
From that moment on, I viewed Joseph Morelli with a combination of terror and prurient curiosity that bordered on awe. Two weeks later, at the age of six, with quaking knees and a squishy stomach, I followed Morelli into his father'south garage on the promise of learning a new game.
The Morelli garage hunkered detached and snubbed at the edge of their lot. It was a sad thing, lit by a single shaft of lite filtering through a grime-coated window. Its air was stagnant, smelling of corner must, discarded tires, and jugs of used motor oil. Never destined to firm the Morelli cars, the garage served other purposes. Onetime Man Morelli used the garage to take his belt to his sons, his sons used the garage to have their hands to themselves, and Joseph Morelli took me, Stephanie Plum, to the garage to play train.
"What's the name of this game?" I'd asked Joseph Morelli.
"Choo-choo," he'd said, down on his hands and knees, itch between my legs, his head trapped under my short pink skirt. "You lot're the tunnel, and I'm the train."
I suppose this tells something about my personality. That I'm not especially proficient at taking advice. Or that I was built-in with an overload of marvel. Or maybe it's about rebellion or boredom or fate. At any rate, it was a one-shot deal and darn disappointing, since I'd simply gotten to be the tunnel, and I'd really wanted to be the train.
Ten years after, Joe Morelli was still living two blocks over. He'd grown up big and bad, with eves like blackness fire one minute and melt-in-your-mouth chocolate the next. He had an eagle tattooed on his breast, a tight-assed, narrow-hipped swagger, and a reputation for having fast hands and clever fingers.
My best friend, Mary Lou Molnar, said she heard Morelli had a tongue like a cadger.
"Holy cow," I'd answered, "what's that supposed to mean?"
"But don't permit him get yous alone or you'll find out. In one case he gets you alone . . . that's it. Y'all're done for."
I hadn't seen much of Morelli since the train episode. I supposed he'd enlarged his repertoire of sexual exploitation. I opened my eyes wide and leaned closer to Mary Lou, hoping for the worst. "Yous aren't talking well-nigh rape, are you?"
"I'g talking almost lust! If he wants you lot, you're doomed. The guy is irresistible."
Bated from existence fingered at the historic period of six by you-know-who, I was untouched. I was saving myself for spousal relationship, or at to the lowest degree for college. "I'chiliad a virgin," I said, as if this was news. "I'thousand sure he doesn't mess with virgins."
"He specializes in virgins! The castor of his fingertips turns virgins into slobbering mush."
Two weeks later, Joe Morelli came into the bakery where I worked every twenty-four hour period afterwards school, Tasty Pastry, on Hamilton. He bought a chocolate-chip cannoli, told me he'd joined the navy, and charmed the pants off me four minutes after closing, on the floor of Tasty Pastry, behind the instance filled with chocolate éclairs.
The next time I saw him, I was three years older. I was on my way to the mall, driving my father's Buick when I spotted Morelli standing in forepart of Giovichinni's Meat Market. I gunned the big V-viii engine, jumped the curb, and clipped Morelli from behind, bouncing him off the front correct fender. I stopped the automobile and got out to assess the damage. "Anything broken?"
He was sprawled on the pavement, looking upward my brim. "My leg."
"Good," I said. Then I turned on my heel, got into the Buick, and drove to the mall.
I attribute the incident to temporary insanity, and in my own defense, I'd similar to say I haven't run over anyone since.
* * * * *
DURING WINTER MONTHS, wind ripped upwardly Hamilton Artery, whining past plate-glass windows, banking trash against curbs and storefronts. During summer months, the air sat all the same and gauzy, leaden with humidity, saturated with hydrocarbons. It shimmered over hot cement and melted road tar. Cicadas buzzed, Dumpsters reeked, and a dusty haze hung in perpetuity over softball fields statewide. I figured it was all part of the great adventure of living in New Jersey.
This afternoon I'd decided to ignore the August buildup of ozone catching me in the back of my pharynx and get, convertible top downwardly, in my Mazda Miata. The air conditioner was blasting flat out, I was singing forth with Paul Simon, my shoulder-length brown hair was whipping around my face in a frenzy of frizz and snarls, my ever vigilant blue eyes were coolly hidden backside my Oakleys, and my foot rested heavy on the gas pedal.
It was Sun, and I had a date with a pot roast at my parents' house. I stopped for a lite and checked my rearview mirror, swearing when I saw Lenny Gruber 2 car lengths back in a tan sedan. I thunked my forehead on the steering wheel. "Damn." I'd gone to high school with Gruber. He was a maggot then, and he was a maggot now. Unfortunately, he was a maggot with a just cause. I was behind on my Miata payments, and Gruber worked for the repo company.
Six months ago, when I'd bought the car, I'd been looking good, with a nice flat and flavour tickets to the Rangers. And then bam! I got laid off. No coin. No more A-1 credit rating.
I rechecked the mirror, fix my teeth, and yanked up the emergency brake. Lenny was like fume. When yous tried to grab him, he evaporated, and then I wasn't about to waste this one last opportunity to bargain. I hauled myself out of my car, apologized to the man caught between the states, and stalked back to Gruber.
"Stephanie Plum," Gruber said, full of joy and simulated surprise. "What a care for."
I leaned ii easily on the roof and looked through the open window at him. "Lenny, I'm going to my parents' firm for dinner. You wouldn't snatch my car while I was at my parents' firm, would you lot? I mean, that would be really low, Lenny."
"I'm a pretty low guy, Steph. That'due south why I've got this neat job. I'k capable of about anything."
The light changed, and the commuter behind Gruber leaned on his horn.
"Perchance we tin make a deal," I said to Gruber.
"Does this bargain involve you getting naked?"
I had a vision of grabbing his nose and twisting it Three Stooges style until he squealed like a pig. Problem was, it'd involve touching him. Better to go with a more than restrained approach. "Allow the keep the automobile tonight, and I'll drive it to the lot first thing tomorrow morning."
"No mode," Gruber said. "Y'all're damn sneaky. I've been chasing after this machine for five days."
"So, one more than won't matter."
"I'd expect you to be grateful, yous know what I hateful?"
I almost gagged. "Forget information technology. Take the car. In fact, you could take it right at present. I'll walk to my parents'."
Gruber's eves were locked halfway down my chest. I'm a 36B. Respectable but far from overwhelming on my 5' 7" frame. I was wearing blac
k spandex shorts and an over-sized hockey jersey. Not what y'all would call a seductive outfit, but Lenny was ogling anyway.
His smile widened plenty to show he was missing a tooth. "I guess I could wait for tomorrow. Afterwards all, we did become to high school together."
"Un huh." It was the best I could do.
V minutes subsequently I turned off Hamilton onto Roosevelt. Two blocks to my parents' house, and I could experience familial obligation sucking at me, pulling me into the heart of the burg. This was a community of extended families. There was safety here, along with dear, and stability, and the condolement of ritual. The clock on the dash told me I was seven minutes late, and the urge to scream told me I was dwelling house.
I parked at the curb and looked at the narrow two-story duplex with its jalousied front porch and aluminum awnings. The Plum half was xanthous, just as it had been for forty years, with a dark-brown shingle roof. Snowball bushes flanked either side of the cement stoop, and red geraniums had been evenly spaced the length of the porch. Information technology was basically a flat. Living room in front end, dining room in the middle, kitchen at the rear. 3 bedrooms and bath upstairs. It was a small, tidy house crammed with kitchen smells and besides much furniture, comfortable with its lot in life.
Next door, Mrs. Markowitz, who was living on social security and could just afford closeout paint colors, had painted her side lime green.
My mother was at the open up screen door. "Stephanie," she called. "What are you doing sitting out there in your car? Yous're belatedly for dinner. You know how your father hates to eat belatedly. The potatoes are getting cold. The pot roast will be dry."
Food is of import in the burg. The moon revolves effectually the earth, the earth revolves around the sun, and the burg revolves around pot roast. For every bit long as I can remember, my parents' lives accept been controlled by five-pound pieces of rolled rump, done to perfection at six o'clock.
Grandma Mazur stood ii feet back from my mother. "I gotta get me a pair of those," she said, eyeballing my shorts. "I've still got pretty good legs, yous know." She raised her brim and looked down at her knees. "What do you call up? You think I'd wait skilful in them biker things?"
Grandma Mazur had knees like doorknobs. She'd been a beauty in her time, simply the years had turned her slack-skinned and spindle-boned. Still, if she wanted to habiliment biker shorts, I idea she should go for it. The way I saw it, that was one of the many advantages to living in New Jersey—fifty-fifty old ladies were allowed to await outlandish.
My father gave a grunt of cloy from the kitchen, where he was carving up the meat. "Biker's shorts," he muttered, slapping his palm against his forehead. "Unh!"
Two years agone, when Grandpa Mazur'southward fat-clogged arteries sent him to the big pork roast in the sky, Grandma Mazur had moved in with my parents and had never moved out. My male parent accepted this with a combination of Old-Earth stoicism and tactless mutterings.
I recall him telling me about a dog he'd had as a kid. The story goes that this domestic dog was the ugliest, oldest, almost peabrained canis familiaris ever. The canis familiaris was incontinent, dribbling urine wherever it went. Its teeth were rotted in its mouth, its hips were fused solid with arthritis, and huge fatty tumors lumped under its hibernate. One solar day my Grandfather Plum took the dog out behind the garage and shot it. I suspected in that location were times when my father fantasized a similar ending for my Grandma Mazur.
"Yous should vesture a clothes," my female parent said to me, bringing green beans and creamed pearl onions to the table. "Thirty years sometime and you're still dressing in those teeny-bopper outfits. How will y'all always catch a nice man like that?"
"I don't want a human being. I had one, and I didn't like it."
"That's considering your husband was a equus caballus's backside," Grandma Mazur said.
I agreed. My ex-married man had been a horse's behind. Peculiarly when I'd caught him flagrante delicto on the dining room table with Joyce Barnhardt.
"I hear Loretta Buzick's male child is separated from his wife," my mother said. "You lot think him? Ronald Buzick?"
I knew where she was heading, and I didn't desire to become there. "I'one thousand not going out with Ronald Buzick," I told her. "Don't fifty-fifty think about it."
"So what's incorrect with Ronald Buzick?"
Ronald Buzick was a butcher. He was balding, and he was fat, and I suppose I was being a snob about the whole thing, but I plant it difficult to call back in romantic terms about a man who spent his days stuffing giblets upward chicken butts.
My mother plunged on. "All right, and then how about Bernie Kuntz? I saw Bernie Kuntz in the dry cleaners, and he made a signal about request for you. I think he's interested. I could invite him over for coffee and cake."
With the way my luck was running, probably my female parent had already invited Bernie, and at this very moment he was circling the block, popping Tic Tacs. "I don't want to talk near Bernie," I said. "There's something I need to tell you. I have some bad news . . ."
I'd been dreading this and had put information technology off for as long every bit possible.
My mother clapped a hand to her rima oris. "Yous establish a lump in your breast!"
No i in our family had always found a lump in their breast, only my mother was ever watchful. "My breast is fine. The problem is with my job."
"What about your job?"
"I don't have one. I got laid off."
"Laid off!" she said on a sharp inhale. "How could that happen? Information technology was such a expert job. You loved that task."
I'd been a discount lingerie buyer for E.E. Martin, and I'd worked in Newark, which is not exactly the garden spot of the Garden State. In truth, it had been my female parent who had loved the job, imagining it to be glamorous when in reality I'd by and large haggled over the cost of full-fashion nylon underpants. Due east.E. Martin wasn't exactly Victoria'southward Secret.
"I wouldn't worry," my mother said. "There'due south ever work for lingerie buyers."
"There's no work for lingerie buyers." Especially ones who worked for Due east.E. Martin. Having held a salaried position with Eastward.E. Martin made me every bit highly-seasoned equally a leper. Due east.Due east. Martin had skimped on the palm greasing this winter, and as a result its mob affiliations were made public. The C.E.O. was indicted for illegal business practices, E.E. Martin sold out to Baldicott, Inc., and, through no error of my own, I was defenseless in the housecleaning sweep. "I've been out of work for 6 months."
"Six months! And, I didn't know! Your own mother didn't know you were out on the streets?"
"I'yard not out on the streets. I've been doing temporary jobs. Filing and stuff." And steadily sliding downhill. I was registered with every search firm in the greater Trenton area, and I religiously read the desire ads. I wasn't existence all that choosy, drawing the line at telephone soliciting and kennel bellboy, just my future didn't look great. I was overqualified for entry level, and I lacked experience in direction.
My male parent forked another slab of pot roast onto his plate. He'd worked for the post part for xxx years and had opted for early retirement. At present he drove a cab office-time.
"I saw your cousin Vinnie yesterday," he said. "He's looking for someone to practise filing. You should requite him a call."
Just the career motility I'd been hoping for—filing for Vinnie. Of all my relatives, Vinnie was my least favorite. Vinnie was a worm, a sexual lunatic, a domestic dog turd. "What does he pay?" I asked.
My male parent shrugged. "Gotta be minimum wage."
Wonderful. The perfect position for someone already in the depths of despair. Rotten dominate, rotten job, rotten pay. The possibilities for feeling sorry for myself would be endless.
"And the best function is that it'south close," my mother said. "You can come home every twenty-four hour period for lunch."
I nodded numbly, thinking I'd sooner stick a needle in my middle.
* * * * *
SUNLIGHT SLANTED THROUGH THE Fissure in my bedroom curtains, the air-workout unit in the living room window droned ominously, predicting another scorcher of a morning time, and the digital display on my clock radio flashed electric blue numbers, telling me it was nine o'clock. The day had started without me.
&
nbsp; I rolled out of bed on a sigh and shuffled into the bathroom. When I was washed in the bathroom, I shuffled into the kitchen and stood in front end of the refrigerator, hoping the refrigerator fairies had visited during the night. I opened the door and stared at the empty shelves, noting that food hadn't magically cloned itself from the smudges in the butter keeper and the shriveled flotsam at the bottom of the crisper. One-half a jar of mayo, a bottle of beer, whole-wheat bread covered with blueish mold, a head of iceberg lettuce, shrink-wrapped in dark-brown slime and plastic, and a box of hamster nuggets stood betwixt me and starvation. I wondered if 9 in the morning was too early on to drink beer. Of course in Moscow it would exist 4 in the afternoon. Good enough.
I drank half the beer and grimly approached the living room window. I pulled the curtains and stared downwards at the parking lot. My Miata was gone. Lenny had hit early. No surprise, but still, it lodged painfully in the middle of my throat. I was now an official deadbeat.
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