All characters named in this story were created by Janet Evanovich.
All of Morelli's cop experiences in this story have been creatively adapted from the experiences of Ralph L. Dettweiler, former Sergeant of South Carolina Sheriff's Department, found online at behindthebadge (net, not com). It's a must read!
Additional inspiration was gleaned from Charles Martin's novel Chasing Fireflies.
My name is Joseph Anthony Morelli. At least, that's what it says on my birth certificate. In truth, I've always wished I was someone else. As my name indicates, I'm an Italian. I live in Trenton, New Jersey, where I was born and raised in a little area called the Burg. My mother, Angela Morelli, is the epitome of a Burg housewife. She's thin with piercing black eyes. She keeps a spotless house, cooks like a gourmet, never misses a chance to go to mass, and never divorced my worthless, alcoholic father. His name was Anthony. My older brother, Tony, was named for him. My other brother is Paul and my sisters are Catherine and Mary. You can't get more Italian or more Catholic than the Morelli's.
When your life seems that laid out, when the expectations about who you are going to be are made so clear to you at a very young age, I think it takes the mystery and excitement – the adventure – out of life. I didn't want to be a Morelli. I never did. I left New Jersey and traveled the world in the U.S. Navy. I probably should have stayed in but, after cooling off for a year or two, I found I was homesick for the only life I had every known.
Somewhere along the way, I had made a promise to myself. I may have done more than my fair share of playing the field just like the other philandering Morelli men, but I was not going to be a Morelli in the archetypal sense of the word. I had been careful to avoid attachments, so I wasn't philandering. And if and when I decided to tie the knot, I would be faithful, God help me.
I had been raised by a strong line of great women who had been betrayed by Morelli men. I loved these women. My life had been filled with the love and affection of my mother, my grandmother Bella, my sisters, my Aunt Loretta, my godmother Tina Ragusto, and my great-aunt Mary Elizabeth, Bella's younger sister, who despite being an ex-nun drank highballs and smoked like a chimney. Finally, there was my aunt Rose, who left me her house in the Burg when she passed away. This gift of love provided me with one more proof that my lifetime residency in the Burg had been set in stone before I was born.
These women had been the source of the only permanent relationships I had ever known. That being said, they were also the source of my greatest fear and discomfort. I knew that behind those smiling lips that had given so many careless kisses to me as a little boy were hidden the lashing tongues of vipers. The catty complaining and maliciousness with which they spoke about Morelli men, and at times men in general, made it clear to me that upon my transition from their darling little boy to manhood, I would also be cast from their midst and regarded with contempt.
That was my real reason for joining the Navy. I was buying time, trying to figure a way out of the pattern of my family's multi-generational warfare. I came up with a tentative plan, summoned my courage, and took my honorary leave of the United States Navy. Upon returning to the Burg, I accepted my fate and set my course heading for the only acceptable career alternative open to Italian men in the Burg. I became a cop.
I thought this was the appropriate profession to differentiate me from the Morelli stigma while maintaining my mother's proud heritage as a Burg Italian. My mother was proud of me for becoming a cop. I knew that. And her approval mattered even more to me now that my father, Tony - a.k.a. Rocco Morelli - had passed and could never be appeased.
Every little boy dreams of being a cop. Most of us boys lived on the other side of the law as teens. I was particularly restless and always getting into trouble. Regardless, Burg cops made an impression on me. I can remember attending a funeral for a Burg cop when I was about 15. Everyone I had ever met in my life, and a lot of people I hadn't, were there. Everyone was crying and paying respects to the dead man and his family. That was when I realized what a tight-knit group cops were and how respected they were in the community. But most of all, I was struck by the image of the dead man's father standing stoically by the casket and telling everyone who shook his hand how proud he was of his son. I was so jealous of this cop who had been killed in the line of duty. I thought that if I had died on the way home from that funeral and they held a viewing for me, my father would have told the handful of people that attended what a worthless waste of his time I had turned out to be. At least I can rest easy knowing that he won't be saying anything at all at my funeral. That's a load off my mind.
After joining the force I started out as a patrolman, worked my way up to vice, and today I am a seasoned homicide detective. I've been thinking a lot about my own funeral because I've attended two funerals for fallen officers in as many weeks. They were both killed in the line of duty, and each time their proud fathers were present. I was glad for them, sad for their families, and worried for myself and my extended family of officers.
I was the detective in charge of both cases, and even I was at a loss as to why they had died. One was killed right in the Burg while responding to a domestic disturbance. Apparently the parents were fighting and the ten year old boy inside the house had loaded his father's gun and shot the officer when he walked in the door of the house. It was not a prosecutable case. The second was similar. A fourteen year old boy had shot a patrolman in the head when he was pulled over for joyriding. He was thrown into Juvie, but he wasn't going to be charged as an adult even though most people agreed he should have been. Previous Supreme Court rulings had pretty well eliminated that option.
Since the department had been cut short, we had a very green patrolman out on the streets. I had picked him up on the police scanner as I was heading home. Even though my job description was "Crimes Against Persons", I decided to take pity on the kid who had just arrived at the scene of what was doubtless a fatal auto accident on Route 1, a major freeway prone to fatal accidents.
I pulled my SUV in behind the black and white and flashed my badge at the patrolman. We walked to the first vehicle, which was lying its side. I reached through the broken windshield and determined the driver, a large male, was dead. I could only reach the ankle of the female passenger, but I felt a weak pulse. I ordered the patrolman to help me remove the driver so paramedics could gain access to the female. We worked together to pull the driver's limp body through the windshield and laid him out on the ground in front and to the side of the vehicle so the EMT's would have room to work.
I ordered the patrolman to go up to the road and assist with directing traffic since he was in uniform and I was not. He didn't move. I repeated the instructions, but he was white as a sheet. I reached out to pat him on the back and tell him he was doing okay, when he bent over and threw up.
I had forgotten what it was like to feel like that. I had not realized how far I had traveled down the road that hardens the man inside the uniform. When had I become one of them and how much of myself had I lost along the way, I wondered? I knew that in many ways I had become my job, but I was okay with that. Being a cop was a lifestyle, not a nine-to-five. I was always on duty, and that was fine. People liked Morelli the cop. I hadn't been Joseph Morelli the womanizing Italian with an arrogant smile for quite some time. I admit I made a lot of mistakes along the way, though, and some people were loathe to let me forget about it.
That went double for Stephanie Plum. As I drove home, I thought about our long history together. I was two years older than Stephanie. We had grown up only two blocks apart. My brothers and I were known as the little perverts of the neighborhood. This reputation was mostly owing to our possession of a large stash of Playboys and some much racier material our father kept in the garage which oddly never housed a single car. He mainly took us out to the garage to inflict corporal punishment. It was here that we also learned to abuse ourselves. And, at age eight, I began abusing girls, including Stephanie Plum.
I talked her into accompanying me into the garage on the pretense of teaching her a new game called "Train". She was the tunnel and I was the train, which was basically just another way of saying we played "doctor", only I was performing an exploratory procedure under the revealing beam of a flashlight.
Ten years later while home on leave from the Navy, I found myself looking into those same trusting, deep blue eyes over the Tasty Pastry counter where she was working. All I had wanted when I walked in was a chocolate-chip cannoli. That is, until I saw a more delectable item on the menu. An hour later I left with a Plum cherry.
Three years later, after I had returned home but before becoming a cop, I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Giovichinni's Meat Market when Stephanie spotted me. I never saw her coming. She mounted the pavement and ran me over with her father's Buick. All I remember is looking up into a blue sky that matched her eyes, then letting my eyes travel up those familiar, shapely legs and up her skirt. She asked if anything was broken. I told her she had broken my leg. "Good," she said, and marched back to the car, revved the V-8 engine, and took off towards the mall. I guessed she might have been mad about some of the things I had written on bathroom walls around town over the years. I'd meant it as a compliment. I swear!
Stephanie had gone one to marry a lawyer named Dickie Orr, who soon after had been caught with his pants down with Stephanie's arch-nemesis, Joyce Barnhardt. She was divorced the next time our paths crossed. She was a a newly hired and as-yet-untrained bounty hunter, working for her cousin Vinnie, proprietor of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. At the time, I was on the run, wanted for murder. The long and the short of it was this: I was innocent, she helped solve the case, she caught me and turned me in against my will, proved my innocence, and in the process stole my jeep and my heart. The jeep was destroyed, blown into a million fiery pieces. As to my heart, well…the jury is still out on that one.
As luck would have it, I'm not the only man enamored with her, although I would like to think I'm at the top of her list. It seems that Stephanie is also in love with a lunatic bounty hunter, Carlos Manoso, who goes by the street name Ranger. He's former Special Forces and runs a security services company called RangeMan. He employs the best goons the federal penitentiaries can provide, and I really wish Stephanie wouldn't spend so much time in his company. He's been mentoring her for a long time, and she really needs to be doing the job on her own if she's going to be a bounty hunter. I've been trying to get her to give it up for years, but with no success in sight.
Just a week ago, after Stephanie needed help escaping from yet another in a long line of psychos out to kill her, Ranger and I had arrived on the scene to sort things out. Typical of Ranger, he got a call and was needed by his men out in the field. He'd indicated that she was on my watch this week, but she was his next week. This really bothered me because Stephanie was still living with me at the time. I wanted to think he was kidding, but the truth was, I didn't believe it for a second. Stephanie had been bouncing back and forth between the two of us for years now. It seemed it took both of us to keep her even moderately safe.
I loved her. We had even been engaged once. But somehow, we hadn't made it work. Our relationship had been on-again-off-again, and every time we were off, Ranger moved in, and the two of them were growing closer every time. The next day, I found a small black RangeMan logo on a pair of her black panties that were mixed up in my laundry. I did what any self-respecting Italian boyfriend would do. I went berserk. Stephanie did what any self-respecting Hungarian-Italian girlfriend would do. She moved out. Again.
So, now, Stephanie was back to living in her own apartment with her hamster, Rex. Bob, the shaggy orange dog we had adopted, was living with me at my house, as usual.
Bob was waiting at the back door when I pushed it open. I grabbed his leash and led him around the back yard to do his business. The moon was bright and the night air was as clear as it ever gets in the Burg. I looked up at the night sky and wished on every star that I would wake up in the morning knowing what in the world I was supposed to do with a woman like Stephanie Plum.
To be continued...