One for the Money Page 0,14

the missing witness.

I took a can of soda from the refrigerator and a box of Fig Newtons from the pantry, deciding to talk to Ramirez first.

STARK STREET STARTED DOWN BY THE RIVER, just north of the statehouse, and ran in a northeasterly direction. Crammed with small inner-city businesses, bars, crack houses, and cheerless three-story row houses, the street stretched close to a mile. Most of the row houses had been converted to apartments or rooms to let. Few were air-conditioned. All were overcrowded. When it was hot, residents spilled from the row houses onto the stoops and street corners, looking for air and action. At ten-thirty in the morning, the street was still relatively quiet.

I missed the gym first time around, rechecked the address from the page I'd torn out of my phone book, and doubled back, driving slowly, reading off street numbers. I caught the sign, Stark Street Gym, professionally lettered in black on a door window. Not much of an advertisement, but then I supposed they didn't need much. They weren't exactly in competition with Spa Lady. It took two additional blocks before I found a parking space.

I locked the Nova, hung my big black bag over my shoulder, and set out. I'd put the fiasco with Mrs. Morelli behind me, and felt pretty damn slick in my suit and heels, toting my bounty hunter hardware. Embarrassing as it was to admit, I was beginning to enjoy the role, thinking there was nothing like packing a pair of cuffs to put some spring into a woman's step.

The gym sat in the middle of its block, over A & K Auto Body. The bay doors to the auto body were open, and catcalls and kissy sounds drifted out to me when I crossed the cement apron. My New Jersey heritage weighed heavy, demanding I respond with a few demeaning comments of my own, but discretion being the better part of valor, I kept my mouth shut and hurried on by.

Across the street, a shadowy figure pulled back from a filthy third-floor window, the movement catching my attention. Someone had been watching me. Not surprising. I'd roared down the street not once, but twice. My muffler had fallen off first thing this morning, and my engine noise had rumbled off the Stark Street brick storefronts. This wasn't what you'd call an undercover operation.

The door to the gym opened onto a small foyer with steps leading up. The stairwell walls were institutional green, covered with spray-painted graffiti and twenty years' worth of hand smudges. The smell was bad, ripe with urine steaming on the lower steps, bonding with the musty aroma of stale male sweat and body odor. Upstairs, the warehouse-style second floor was no better.

A handful of men were working the free weights. The ring was empty. No one was at the bags. I figured everybody must be out jumping rope or stealing cars. It was the last flip thought I entertained. Activity faltered when I entered, and if I'd been uncomfortable on the street, it hardly counted at all to what I felt here. I'd expected a champion to be surrounded by an aura of professionalism. I hadn't anticipated the atmosphere to be charged with hostility and suspicion. I was clearly a street-ignorant white woman invading a black man's gym, and if the silent rebuke had been any more forceful I'd have been hurled backward, down the stairs like a victim of a poltergeist.

I took a wide stance (more to keep myself from falling over in fright than to impress the boys) and hitched up my shoulder bag. "I'm looking for Benito Ramirez."

A hulking mountain of muscle rose from a workout bench. "I'm Ramirez."

He was over 6' tall. His voice was silky, his lips curved into a dreamy smile. The overall effect was eerie, the voice and the smile at odds to the stealthy, calculating eyes.

I crossed the room and extended my hand. "Stephanie Plum."

"Benito Ramirez."

His grasp was too gentle, too lingering. More of a caress than a handshake and unpleasantly sensual. I stared into his hooded, close-set eyes and wondered about prizefighters. Until this moment, I'd assumed boxing was a sport of skill and aggression, directed toward winning the match, not necessarily toward maiming the opponent. Ramirez looked like he'd enjoy the kill. There was something about the density of his eyes, black holes where everything gets sucked in and nothing comes out, that suggested a hiding place for evil. And the smile, a little goofy, a little