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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.
A metal trough was shoved through the window, and wet cement began pouring into the room. I pulled Grandma against the far wall and tried to unscramble my thoughts and calm myself. The door was locked. I couldn’t reach the window. I watched the cement creep toward us, and I wondered how long it would take for the cement to fill the room. We had some time, right? They’d need a lot of cement. They might even need to get a second truck.
The cement reached our feet and then the entire floor was covered. There was no longer any trace of Rita. The tuft of hair and the red shoes were covered in wet cement.
“This is a bitch,” Grandma said. “I have one of them top-of-the-line caskets put on layaway at the funeral parlor. This is not the way I wanted to go out. Even if they find us and chip me out, it’ll be closed casket, and you know how I hate that.”
The cement was pouring in, and my heart was pounding in my chest. It was above my ankles, and then it was almost to my knees. And suddenly it stopped. The trough got pulled away, and Moe stuck his head into the open window and looked around.
“This is good,” he said. “Tell Fitz he can get back to his job.”
I heard engine sounds, heard the barrel of the cement mixer churning cement, and then I heard the truck leave.
Moe stuck his head through the window again. “This is what we call shooting fish in a barrel,” he said.
He leaned in a little farther, with his gun in his han
d, and before he could aim there was a scream from somewhere in the alley. The scream was followed by a gunshot that sounded like it came out of a cannon.
Moe yelped and pitched forward. I slogged across the room, grabbed his arm, and used my weight to pull him through the window. He fell on top of me into the wet cement, and we rolled around until Grandma got hold of the gun and fired off a shot.
I was head-to-toe cement, but I managed to get to my feet. Moe was still down, holding his leg, with Grandma training the gun on him. Her hand was shaking, but her eyes were narrowed and steady.
“I’m feeling mean as a snake,” she said to Moe. “And I’d love to have an excuse to shoot you, so go ahead and make a move.”
