07 Seven Up (4 page)

I parked in the lot and power-walked to the front entrance. Men stood in a knot on the porch, smoking and swapping stories. They were working-class men, dressed in unmemorable suits, their waists and hairlines showing the years. I moved past them to the foyer. Anthony Varga was in Slumber Room number one. And Caroline Borchek was in Slumber Room number two. Grandma Mazur was hiding behind a fake ficus tree in the lobby.

“He's in with Anthony,” Grandma said. “He's talking to the widow. Probably sizing her up, looking for a new woman to shoot and stash in his shed.”

There were about twenty people in the Varga viewing room. Most of them were seated. A few stood at the casket. Eddie DeChooch was among those at the casket. I could go in and quietly maneuver myself to his side and clap on the cuffs. Probably the easiest way to get the job done. Unfortunately, it would also create a scene and upset people who were grieving. More to the point, Mrs. Varga would call my mother and relay the whole gruesome incident. My other choices were that I could approach him at the casket and ask him to come outside with me. Or I could wait until he left and nab him in the parking lot or on the front porch.

“What do we do now?” Grandma wanted to know. “Are we just gonna go in and grab him, or what?”

I heard someone suck in some air behind me. It was Loretta Ricci's sister, Madeline. She'd just come in and spotted DeChooch.

“Murderer!” she shouted at him. “You murdered my sister.”

DeChooch went white-faced and stumbled backward, losing his footing, knocking into Mrs. Varga. Both DeChooch and Mrs. Varga grabbed the casket for support, the casket tipped precariously on its skirted trolley, and there was a collective gasp as Anthony Varga lurched to one side, bashing his head against the satin padding.

Madeline shoved her hand into her purse, someone yelled that Madeline was going for a gun, and everyone scrambled. Some went flat to the floor, and some surged up the aisle to the lobby.

Stiva's assistant, Harold Barrone, lunged at Madeline, catching her at the knees, throwing Madeline into Grandma and me, taking us all down in a heap.

“Don't shoot,” Harold yelled to Madeline. “Control yourself!”

“I was just getting a tissue, you moron,” Madeline said. “Get off me.”

“Yeah, and get off me,” Grandma said. “I'm old. My bones could snap like a twig.”

I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. No Eddie DeChooch. I ran out to the porch where the men were standing. “Have any of you seen Eddie DeChooch?”

“Yep,” one of the men said. “Eddie just left.”

“Which way did he go?”

“He went to the parking lot.”

I flew down the stairs and got to the lot just as DeChooch was pulling away in a white Cadillac. I said a few comforting cuss words and took off after DeChooch. He was about a block ahead of me, driving on the white line and running stoplights. He turned into the Burg, and I wondered if he was going home. I followed him down Roebling Avenue, past the street that would have taken him to his house. We were the only traffic on Roebling, and I knew I'd been made. DeChooch wasn't so blind that he couldn't see lights in his rearview mirror.

He continued to wind his way through the Burg, taking Washington and Liberty streets and then going back up Division. I had visions of myself following DeChooch until one of us ran out of gas. And what then? I didn't have a gun or a vest. And I didn't have backup. I'd have to rely on my powers of persuasion.

DeChooch stopped at the corner of Division and Emory, and I stopped about twenty feet behind him. It was a dark corner without a streetlight, but DeChooch's car was clear in my lights. DeChooch opened his door and got out all creaky-kneed and stooped. He looked at me for a moment, shielding his eyes against my brights. Then he matter-of-factly raised his arm and fired off three shots. Pow. Pow. Pow. Two hit the pavement beside my car and one zinged off my front bumper.

Yikes. So much for persuasion. I threw the CR-V into reverse and floored it. I wheeled around Morris Street, screeched to a stop, rammed the car into drive, and rocketed out of the Burg.

I'd pretty much stopped shaking by the time I parked in my lot and I'd ascertained that I hadn't wet my pants, so all in all, I was sort of proud of myself. There was a nasty gash in my bumper. Could have been worse, I told myself. Could have been a gash in my head. I was trying to cut Eddie DeChooch some slack because he was old and depressed, but truth is, I was starting to dislike him.

Mooner's clothes were still in the hall when I got out of the elevator, so I gathered them up on my way to my apartment. I paused at my door and listened. The television was on. Sounded like boxing. I was almost certain I'd shut the television off. I rested my forehead on the door. Now what?

I was still standing there with my forehead pressed to the door when the door opened and Morelli grinned out at me.

“One of those days, huh?”

I looked around. “Are you alone?”

“Who'd you expect to be here?”

“Batman, the Ghost of Christmas past, Jack the Ripper.” I dumped Mooner's clothes on the foyer floor. “I'm a little freaked. I just had a shoot-out with DeChooch. Except he was the only one with a gun.”

I gave Morelli the lurid details, and when I got to the part about not wetting my pants, the phone rang.

“Are you all right?” my mother wanted to know. “Your grandmother just got home and said you took off after Eddie DeChooch.”

“I'm fine, but I lost DeChooch.”

“Myra Szilagy told me they're hiring at the button factory. And they give benefits. You could probably get a good job on the line. Or maybe even in the office.”

Morelli was slouched on the couch, back to watching boxing, when I got off the phone. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a cream cable-knit sweater over jeans. He was lean and hard-muscled and darkly Mediterranean. He was a good cop. He could make my nipples tingle with a single look. And he was a New York Rangers fan. This made him just about perfect . . . except for the cop part.

Bob the Dog was on the couch beside Morelli. Bob is a cross between a golden retriever and Chewbacca. He'd originally come to live with me but then decided he liked Morelli's house better. One of those guy things, I guess. So now Bob mostly lives with Morelli. It's okay with me since Bob eats everything. Left to his own devices Bob could reduce a house to nothing more than a few nails and some pieces of tile. And because Bob frequently takes in large quantities of roughage such as furniture, shoes, and houseplants, Bob frequently expels mountains of dog doody.

Bob smiled and wagged his tail at me, and then Bob went back to watching television.

“I'm assuming you know the guy who took his clothes off in your hall,” Morelli said.

“Mooner. He wanted to show me his underwear.”

“Makes perfect sense to me.”

“He said Dougie's gone missing. He said Dougie went out yesterday morning and never came back.”

Morelli dragged himself away from the boxing. “Isn't Dougie coming up to trial?”

“Yes, but Mooner doesn't think Dougie skipped. Mooner thinks something's wrong.”

“Mooner's brain probably looks like a fried egg. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in what Mooner thinks.”

I handed Morelli the phone. “Maybe you could make a few phone calls. You know, check the hospitals.” And the morgue. As a cop, Morelli had better access than I did.

Fifteen minutes later Morelli had run through the list. No one meeting Dougie's description had checked into St. Francis, Helen Fuld, or the morgue. I called Mooner and told him our findings.

“Hey man,” Mooner said, “it's getting scary. It's not just Dougie. Now my clothes are gone.”

“Don't worry about your clothes. I've got your clothes.”

“Boy, you're good,” Mooner said. “You're really good.”

I did some mental eye rolling and hung up.

Morelli patted the seat next to him. “Sit down and let's talk about Eddie DeChooch.”

“What about DeChooch?”

“He's not a nice guy.”

A sigh inadvertently escaped from my lips.

Morelli ignored the sigh. “Costanza said you got to talk to DeChooch before he took off.”

“DeChooch is depressed.”

“I don't suppose he mentioned Loretta Ricci?”

“Nope, not a word about Loretta. I found Loretta all by myself.”

“Tom Bell's primary on the case. I ran into him after work, and he said Ricci was already dead when she was shot.”

“What?”

“He won't know the cause of death until after the autopsy.”

“Why would someone shoot a dead person?”

Morelli did a palms-up.

Great. “Do you have anything else to give me?”

Morelli looked at me and grinned.

“Besides that,” I said.

I WAS ASLEEP, and in my sleep I was suffocating. There was a terrible weight on my chest and I couldn't breathe. Usually I don't have dreams about suffocating. I have dreams about elevators shooting out the tops of buildings with me trapped inside. I have dreams of bulls stampeding down the street after me. And I have dreams of forgetting to get dressed and going to a shopping center naked. But I never have dreams of suffocating. Until now. I dragged myself awake and opened my eyes. Bob was sleeping next to me with his big dog head and front paws on my chest. The rest of the bed was empty. Morelli was gone. He'd tippy-toed out at the crack of dawn, and he'd left Bob with me.

“Okay, big guy,” I said, “if you get off me I'll feed you.”

Bob might not understand all the words, but Bob almost never missed the intent when it came to food. His ears perked up and his eyes got bright and he was off the bed in an instant, dancing around all happy-faced.

I poured out a caldron of dog crunchies and looked in vain for people food. No Pop-Tarts, no pretzels, no Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries. My mother always sends me home with a bag of food, but my mind had been on Loretta Ricci when I left my parents' house, and the food bag had been forgotten, left on the kitchen table.

“Look at this,” I said to Bob. “I'm a domestic failure.”

Bob gave me a look that said, Hey lady, you fed me, so how bad could you be?

I stepped into Levi's and boots, threw a denim jacket on over my nightshirt, and hooked Bob up to his leash. Then I hustled Bob down the stairs and into my car so I could drive him to my archenemy Joyce Barnhardt's house to poop. This way I didn't have to do the pooper-scooper thing, and I felt like I was accomplishing something. Years ago I'd caught Joyce boinking my husband (now my ex-husband) on my dining room table, and once in a while I like to repay her kindness.

Joyce lives just a quarter mile away, but that's enough distance for the world to change. Joyce has gotten nice settlements from her ex-husbands. In fact, husband number three was so eager to get Joyce out of his life he deeded her their house, free and clear. It's a big house set on a small lot in a neighborhood of upwardly mobile professionals. The house is red brick with fancy white columns supporting a roof over the front door. Sort of like the Parthenon meets Practical Pig. The neighborhood has a strict pooper-scooper law, so Bob and I only visit Joyce under cover of darkness. Or in this case, early in the morning before the street awakens.

I parked half a block from Joyce. Bob and I quietly skulked to her front yard, Bob did his business, we skulked back to the car, and zipped off for McDonald's. No good deed goes unrewarded. I had an Egg McMuffin and coffee, and Bob had an Egg McMuffin and a vanilla milkshake.

We were exhausted after all this activity, so we went back to my apartment and Bob took a nap and I took a shower. I put some gel in my hair and scrunched it up so there were lots of curls. I did the mascara and eyeliner thing and finished with lip gloss. I might not solve any problems today, but I looked pretty damn good.

A half hour later Bob and I sailed into Vinnie's office, ready to go to work.

“Uh-oh,” Lula said, “Bob's on the job.” She bent down to scratch Bob's head. “Hey Bob, what's up.”

“We're still looking for Eddie DeChooch,” I said. “Anyone know where his nephew Ronald lives?”

Connie wrote a couple addresses on a sheet of paper and handed it over to me. “Ronald has a house on Cherry Street, but you'll have more luck finding him at work at this time of the day. He runs a paving company, Ace Pavers, on Front Street, down by the river.”

I pocketed the addresses, leaned close to Connie, and lowered my voice. “Is there anything on the street about Dougie Kruper?”

“Like what?” Connie asked.

“Like he's missing.”

The door to Vinnie's office burst open and Vinnie stuck his head out. “What do you mean he's missing?”

I looked up at Vinnie. “How did you hear that? I was whispering, and you had your door closed.”

“I got ears in my ass,” Vinnie said. “I hear everything.”

Connie ran her fingers along the desk edges. “Goddamn you,” Connie said, “you planted a bug again.” She emptied her cup filled with pencils, rifled through her drawers, emptied the contents of her purse onto the desktop. “Where is it, you little worm?”

“There's no bug,” Vinnie said. “I'm telling you I got good ears. I got radar.”

Connie found the bug stuck to the bottom of her telephone. She ripped it off and smashed it with her gun butt. Then she dropped the gun back into her purse and threw the bug in the trash.

“Hey,” Vinnie said, “that was company property!”

“What's with Dougie?” Lula asked. “Isn't he coming tip to trial?”

“Mooner said he and Dougie were supposed to watch wrestling together on Dougie's big screen, and Dougie never showed up. He thinks something bad's happened to Dougie.”

“Wouldn't catch me missing a chance to see those wrestling guys wearing little spandex panties on a big screen,” Lula said.

Connie and I agreed. A girl would have to be crazy to miss all that beefcake on a big screen.

“I haven't heard anything,” Connie said, “but I'll ask around.” The front door to the office crashed open and Joyce Barnhardt stormed in. Her red hair was teased out to its full potential. She was wearing SWAT-type pants and shirt, the pants tight across her butt and the shirt unbuttoned halfway down her sternum, showing a black bra and a lot of cleavage. BOND ENFORCEMENT was written in white letters across the back of the shirt. Her eyes were black-rimmed, and her lashes were heavily mascaraed.