Free Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich

hundred years old and liked to play elevator operator.
    “Second floor,” I told her.
    “Second floor, ladies handbags and better dresses,” she sang out, punching the button.
    “Cripes,” Mr. Spiga said. “This place is filled with loonies.”
    First thing I did when I entered my apartment was check my messages. I work with a mysterious bounty hunter guy who turns me to jelly and makes sexual innuendoes and never follows through. And I’m in the off-again phase of an off-again-on-again relationship with a cop guy I think I might want to marry . . . someday, but not now. That’s my love life. In other words, my love life is a big zero. I can’t remember the last time I had a date. An orgasm is nothing more than a distant memory. And there were no messages on my machine.
    I flopped onto my couch and closed my eyes. My life was in the toilet. I did about a half hour of self-pity and was about to get up and take a shower when my doorbell rang. I went to the door and looked out my security peephole. Nobody there. I turned to walk away and heard rustling on the other side of the door. I looked out again. Still no one there.
    I called my neighbor across the hall and asked him to look out his door and tell me if anyone was there. Okay, so this is a little despicable on my part, but no one ever wants to kill Mr. Wolesky and from time to time people want to kill me. Doesn’t hurt to be careful, right?
    “What are you crazy?” Mr. Wolesky said. “I’m watching
The Brady Bunch
. You called right in the middle of
The Brady Bunch
.”
    And he hung up.
    I was still hearing the rustling sounds, so I got my gunout of the cookie jar, found a bullet in the bottom of my purse, put the bullet in the gun, and opened the door. There was a dark green canvas bag hanging from my doorknob. The bag had a drawstring pulled tight at the top and something was moving in the bag. My first thought was an abandoned kitten. I removed the bag from the doorknob, opened the drawstring, and looked inside.
    Snakes. The bag was filled with big black snakes.
    I shrieked and dropped the bag on the floor, and the snakes slid out. I jumped back into my apartment and slammed my door shut. I looked out my peephole. The snakes were scattering. Shit. I opened the door and shot a snake. Now I was out of bullets. Shit again.
    Mr. Wolesky opened his door and looked out. “What the . . . ?” he said, and slammed his door shut.
    I ran into my kitchen to look for more bullets, and a snake followed me in. Another shriek and I climbed onto my kitchen counter.
    I was still on the counter when the police arrived. Carl Costanza and his partner, Big Dog. I’d gone to school with Carl, and we were friends, in a strange, distant sort of way.
    “We got a weird call from your neighbor about snakes,” Carl said. “Since there’s one shot to shit on your doorstep, and you’re up there on the counter, I suppose the call isn’t a hoax.”
    “I ran out of bullets,” I said.
    “So by a rough estimate, how many snakes do you think we got here?”
    “I’m pretty sure there were four in the bag. I shot one. I saw one go down the hall. I saw one head for my bedroom. And one is God knows where.”
    Carl and Big Dog grinned up at me. “Is the big, bad bounty hunter afraid of snakes?”
    “Just
find
them, okay?”
Yeesh.
    Carl adjusted his gun belt and swaggered off with Big Dog a step behind him.
    “Here, snakey, snakey, snakey,” Carl crooned.
    “I think we should look in her panties drawer,” Big Dog said. “That’s where I’d go if I was a snake.”
    “Pervert!” I yelled.
    “I don’t see any snakes here,” Carl said.
    “They go under things, and they hide in corners,” I told him. “Did you check under the couch? Did you look in my closet? Under my bed?”
    “I’m not looking under your bed,” Carl said. “I’m afraid I’ll find some knuckle dragger hiding there.”
    This got a laugh out of Big Dog. I didn’t think it was funny since it was