Two for the Dough (11 page)

The red light was blinking on my answering machine when I got home.

Spiro wondered if I’d made any progress finding his caskets, and did I want to go to dinner with him tomorrow after the Kingsmith viewing? The answer to both questions was an emphatic
NO!
I procrastinated relaying this to him, as even the sound of his voice on my machine gave me bowel problems.

The other message was from Ranger. “Call me.”

I tried his home phone. No answer. I tried his car phone.

“Yo,” Ranger said.

“It’s Stephanie. What’s happening?”

“Gonna be a party. Think you should get dressed for it.”

“You mean like heels and stockings?”

“I mean like a thirty-eight S and W.”

“I suppose you want me to meet you somewhere.”

“I’m in an alley at the corner of West Lincoln and Jackson.”

Jackson ran for about two miles, skirting junkyards, the old abandoned Jackson Pipe factory, and a ragged assortment of bars and rooming houses. It was an area of town so intensely depressed, it was deemed unworthy even of gang graffiti. Few cars traveled the second mile, beyond the pipe factory. Streetlights had been shot out and never replaced, fires were a common occurrence, leaving more and more buildings blackened and boarded, and discarded drug paraphernalia clogged garbage-filled gutters.

I gingerly took my gun out of the brown bear cookie jar and checked to make sure it was loaded. I slid it into my pocketbook, along with the KitKat, tucked my hair under my Rangers hat so I’d look androgynous, and crammed myself back into my jacket.

At least I was giving up a date with Bill Murray for a good cause. Most likely Ranger had a line on either Kenny or the caskets. If Ranger needed help with the takedown on someone he was personally tracking he wouldn’t call me. If you gave Ranger fifteen minutes he could assemble a team that would make the invasion of Kuwait look like a kindergarten exercise. Needless to say, I wasn’t at the head of his commando-for-hire list. I wasn’t even on the bottom of it.

I felt fairly safe driving down Jackson in the Buick. Anyone desperate enough to carjack Big Blue would probably be too stupid to pull it off. I figured I didn’t even have to worry about a drive-by shooting. It’s hard for a person to aim a gun when he’s laughing.

Ranger drove a black Mercedes sports car when he wasn’t expecting to transport felons. When it was hunting season, he came loaded for bear in a black Ford Bronco. I spotted the Bronco in the alley, and I feared the contents of my intestines would liquefy at the possibility of snagging someone on Jackson Street. I parked directly in front of Ranger and cut my lights, watching him come forward from the shadows.

“Something happen to the Jeep?” he asked.

“Stolen.”

“Word is there’s going to be a gun deal going down tonight. Military weapons with hard-to-get ammo. The guy with the goods is supposed to be white.”

“Kenny!”

“Maybe. Thought we should take a look. My source tells me there’s gonna be a yard sale at two-seventy Jackson. That’s the house facing us with the broken front window.”

I squinted at the street. A rusted Bonneville sat up on blocks two houses down from 270. The rest of the world was empty of life. All houses were dark.

“We’re not interested in busting up this business deal,” Ranger said. “We’re going to stay here and be nice and quiet and try to get a look at the white guy. If it’s Kenny, we’ll follow him.”

“It’s pretty dark to make an identification.”

Ranger handed me a pair of binoculars. “Night scope.”

Of course.

We were heading into the second hour of waiting when a panel van cruised down Jackson. Seconds later the van reappeared and parked.

I trained the scope on the driver. “He seems to be white,” I told Ranger, “but he’s wearing a ski mask. I can’t see him.”

A BMW sedan slid into place behind the van. Four brothers got out of the BMW and walked to the van. Ranger had his window down, and the sound of the side door to the van swinging open carried across the street to the alley. Voices were muffled. Someone laughed. Minutes passed. One of the brothers shuffled between the van and the Beemer carrying a large wooden box. He popped the trunk, stored the box, returned to the van, and repeated the procedure with a second wooden box.

Suddenly the door to the house with the car on blocks crashed open and cops bolted out, yelling instructions, guns drawn, running for the Beemer. A police car barreled down the street and swerved to a stop. The four brothers scattered. Shots were fired. The van revved up and jumped away from the curb.

“Don’t lose sight of the van,” Ranger shouted, sprinting back to the Bronco. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I slammed the Buick into drive and pressed my foot to the floor. I shot out of the alley as the van roared past, and realized too late that the van was being pursued by another car. There was a lot of screeching tires and cussing on my part, and the car in pursuit bounced off the Buick with a good solid
whump
. A little red flasher popped off the roof of the car and sailed away into the night like a shooting star. I’d hardly felt the impact, but the other car, which I assumed was a cop car, had been propelled a good fifteen feet.

I saw the van’s taillights disappearing down the street and debated following. Probably not a good idea, I decided. Might not look good to leave the scene after trashing one of Trenton’s finest unmarked.

I was fishing in my pocketbook, looking for my driver’s license, when the door was opened and I was yanked out and onto my feet by none other than Joe Morelli. We stared at each other in openmouthed astonishment for a beat, barely able to believe our eyes.

“I don’t believe this,” Morelli yelled. “I don’t fucking believe this. What do you do, sit in bed at night and think about ways to fuck up my life?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You almost killed me!”

“You’re overreacting. And it wasn’t personal. I didn’t even know that was your car.” If I’d known I wouldn’t have hung around. “Besides, you don’t hear me whining and complaining because
you
got in my way. I would have caught him if it hadn’t been for you.”

Morelli passed a hand over his eyes. “I should have moved out of state when I had the chance. I should have stayed in the navy.”

I looked over at his car. Part of the rear quarter panel had been ripped away, and the back bumper lay on the ground. “It’s not so bad,” I said. “Probably you can still drive it.”

We both turned our attention to Big Blue. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on it.

“It’s a Buick,” I said, by way of apology. “It’s a loaner.”

Morelli looked off into space. “Shit.”

A patrol car pulled up behind Morelli. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Wonderful.” Morelli said. “I’m fucking fine.”

The patrol car left.

“A Buick,” Morelli said. “Just like old times.”

When I was eighteen I’d sort of run over Morelli with a similar car.

Morelli looked beyond me. “I suppose that’s Ranger in the black Bronco.”

I cut my eyes to the alley. Ranger was still there, doubled over the steering wheel, shaking with laughter.

“You want me to file an accident report?” I asked Morelli.

“I wouldn’t dignify this with an accident report.”

“Did you get a look at the guy in the van? Do you think it was Kenny?”

“Same height as Kenny, but he seemed slimmer.”

“Kenny could have lost weight.”

“I don’t know,” Morelli said. “It didn’t feel like Kenny to me.”

Ranger’s lights flashed on, and the Bronco eased around the back of the Buick.

“Guess I’ll be leaving now,” Ranger said. “I know how three’s a crowd.”

I helped Morelli load his bumper into his backseat and kick the rest of the debris to the side of the road. Around the corner, I could hear the police packing up.

“I have to go back to the station,” Morelli said. “I want to be there when they talk to these guys.”

“And you’re going to run the plates on the van.”

“The van was probably stolen.”

I returned to the Buick and backed down the alley to avoid the broken glass in the road. I took the first driveway to Jackson and headed for home. After several blocks I swung around and drove to the police station. I parked deep in shadow, a car length back from the corner, across from the bar with the RC Cola sign. I’d been there for less than five minutes when two blue-and-whites rolled into the station parking lot, followed by Morelli in his bumperless Fairlane, followed by one of the big blue-and-white Suburbans. The Fairlane fit right in with the blue-and-whites. Trenton doesn’t waste money on cosmetic surgery. If a cop car gets a dent, it’s there for life. There wasn’t a car in the lot that didn’t look like it’d been used for demolition derby.

At this time of night the side lot was relatively empty. Morelli parked the Fairlane next to his truck and walked into the building. The blue-and-whites lined up at the cage to unload prisoners. I put the Buick into drive, slid into the lot, and parked next to Morelli’s truck.

After an hour the chill had begun to creep into the Buick, so I ran the heater until everything was toasty. I ate half the KitKat and stretched out on the bench seat. A second hour passed, and I repeated the procedure. I’d just finished the last morsel of chocolate when the side door to the station opened and the silhouette of a man appeared backlit through the door frame. Even in silhouette I knew it was Morelli. The door closed behind him, and Morelli headed for his truck. Halfway across the lot he spotted me in the Buick. I saw his lips move, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out the single word.

I got out of the car so it’d be more difficult to ignore me. “Well,” I said, all little Miss Cheerful. “How’d it go?”

“The stuff was from Braddock. That’s about it.” He took a step closer and sniffed. “I smell chocolate.”

“I had half a KitKat.”

“I don’t suppose you still have the other half?”

“I ate it earlier.”

“Too bad. I might have been able to remember some crucial piece of information if I had a KitKat.”

“Are you telling me I’m going to have to feed you?”

“You have anything else in your pocketbook?”

“No.”

“Any more apple pie at home?”

“I have popcorn and candy. I was going to watch a movie tonight.”

“Is it buttered popcorn?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Morelli said. “I guess I could settle for buttered popcorn.”

“You’re going to have to give me something pretty damn good if you expect to get half of my popcorn.”

Morelli did the slow smile.

“I was talking about information!”

“Sure,” Morelli said.

Morelli followed me from the station, hanging back in his new 4×4, no doubt worried about turbulence caused by the Buick as it plowed through the night.

We pulled into the lot behind my apartment building and parked side by side. Mickey Boyd was lighting up under the back door overhang. Mickey’s wife, Francine, got a nicotine patch the week before, and now Mickey wasn’t allowed to consume tar in their apartment.

“Whoa,” Mickey said, cigarette magically stuck to his lower lip, eye squinting against the smoke, “check out the Buick. Sweet car. I tell you, they don’t make cars like that anymore.”

I looked sideways at Morelli. “I guess this big car with portholes stuff is another one of those man things.”

“It’s the size,” Morelli said. “A man has to be able to haul.”

We took the stairs, and halfway up I felt my heart contract. Eventually the fright of having my apartment violated would dissipate, and the old casual security would return. Eventually. Not today. Today I struggled to hide my anxiety. Didn’t want Morelli to think I was a wimp. Fortunately, my door was locked and intact, and when we entered the apartment, I could hear the hamster wheel spinning in the dark.

I flipped the light switch and dropped my jacket and pocketbook onto the little hall table.

Morelli followed me into the kitchen and watched while I slid the popcorn into the microwave. “I bet you rented a movie to go with this popcorn.”

I opened the bag of peanut butter cups, and held the bag out to Morelli. “
Ghostbusters
.”

Morelli took a peanut butter cup, unwrapped it, and lobbed it into his mouth. “You don’t know much about movies either.”

“It’s my favorite!”

“It’s a sissy movie. Hasn’t even got DeNiro in it.”

“Tell me about the bust.”

“We got all four of the guys in the BMW,” Morelli said, “but no one knows anything. The deal was set up by phone.”

“What about the van?”

“Stolen. Just like I said. Local.”

The timer pinged, and I removed the popcorn. “Hard to believe anyone would bop out to Jackson Street in the middle of the night to buy hot GI guns from someone they’d only dealt with on the phone.”

“The seller knew names. Guess that was enough for these guys. They’re not big players.”

“Nothing to implicate Kenny?”

“Nothing.”

I dumped the popcorn into a bowl and handed the bowl to Morelli. “So what names did the seller use? Anyone I know?”

Morelli stuck his head into the refrigerator and came out with beer. “You want one?”

I took a can and snapped it open. “About those names …”

“Forget about the names. They aren’t going to help you find Kenny.”

“What about a description? What’d the seller’s voice sound like? What color were his eyes?”

“He was an average white guy with an average voice and no outstanding characteristics. No one noticed eye color. The interrogation went in the general direction that the brothers were looking for guns, not a fuckin’ date.”

“We wouldn’t have lost him if we’d been working together. You should have called me,” I said. “As an apprehension agent I have the right to be in on combined operations.”

“Wrong. Being invited to participate in combined operations is a professional courtesy we can extend to you.”

“Fine. Why wasn’t it extended?”

Morelli took a handful of popcorn. “There was no real indicator that Kenny would be driving the van.”

“But there was a possibility.”

“Yeah. There was a possibility.”

“And you chose not to include me. I knew it right from the beginning. I knew you’d cut me out.”

Morelli moved to the living room. “So what are you trying to tell me, that we’re back to war?”

“I’m trying to tell you that you’re slime. And what’s more, I want my popcorn back and I want you out of my apartment.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“We made a deal. Information for popcorn. You got your information, and now I’m entitled to my popcorn.”

My first thought was of my pocketbook, lying on the hall table. I could give Morelli the Eugene Petras treatment.

“Don’t even think about it,” Morelli said. “You get anywhere near the hall table, and I’ll write you up for carrying concealed.”

“That’s disgusting. That’s an abuse of your power as a police officer.”

Morelli took the
Ghostbusters
cartridge from the top of the TV and slid it into the VCR. “Are you going to watch this movie with me, or what?”

I woke up feeling grumpy and not sure why. I suspected it had something to do with Morelli and the fact that I hadn’t gotten to gas him or zap him or shoot him. He’d left when the movie had run its course and the popcorn bowl was empty. His parting words were that I should have faith in him.

“Sure,” I’d said. When pigs fly.

I got the coffee going, dialed Eddie Gazarra, and left a message for a call back. I painted my toenails while I waited, drank some coffee, and made a pan of Rice Krispies marshmallow treats. I sliced the pan into bars, ate two, and the phone rang.

“Now what?” Gazarra asked.

“I need the names of the four brothers that got busted on Jackson Street last night. And I want the names the van driver gave as reference.”

“Shit. I don’t have access to that stuff.”

“You still need a baby-sitter?”

“I always need a baby-sitter. I’ll see what I can do.”

I took a fast shower, ran my fingers through my hair, and dressed in Levi’s and a flannel shirt. I removed the gun from my pocketbook and cautiously returned it to the cookie jar. I turned on the answering machine and locked up after myself.

The air was crisp and the sky was almost blue. Frost sparkled on the Buick’s windows like pixie dust. I slid behind the wheel, powered up, and turned the defroster on full blast.

Going with the philosophy that doing
anything
(no matter how tedious and insignificant) is better than doing nothing, I dedicated the morning to drive-bys on Kenny’s friends and relatives. While I drove I kept an eye out for my Jeep and for white trucks with black lettering. I wasn’t finding anything, but the list of items to look for was getting longer, so maybe I was making progress. If the list got long enough, sooner or later I was bound to find something.

After the third pass I gave up and headed for the office. I needed to pick up my check for bringing Petras in, and I wanted to access my answering machine. I found a space available two doors down from Vinnie, and I took a stab at parallel-parking Big Blue. In slightly less than ten minutes, I got the car pretty well angled in,with only one rear tire on the sidewalk.

“Nice parking job,” Connie said. “I was afraid you were going to run out of gas before you berthed the
QE Two
.”

I dumped my pocketbook onto the Naugahyde couch. “I’m getting better. I only hit the car behind me twice, and I missed the parking meter totally.”

A familiar face popped up from behind Connie. “Sheeeit, that better not a been my car you hit.”

“Lula!”

Lula posed her 230 pounds with hand on outthrust hip. She was wearing white sweats and white sneakers. Her hair had been dyed orange and looked like it had been cut by a bush hog and straightened with wallpaper paste.

“Hey, girl,” Lula said. “What you doing dragging your sad ass in here?”

“Came to pick up a paycheck. What are you doing here? Trying to make bail?”

“Hell no. I just been hired to whip this office into shape. I’m gonna file my ass off.”

“What about your previous profession?”

“I’m retired. I gave the corner over to Jackie. I couldn’t go back to bein’ a ho after I was cut so bad last summer.”

Connie was smiling ear to ear. “I figure she can handle Vinnie.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “He try anything with me, and I’ll stomp on the little motherfucker. He mess with a big woman like me, and he be nothin’ more than a smelly spot on the carpet.”

I liked Lula a lot. We’d met a few months ago, when I was just starting out on my bounty hunter career, and I’d found myself looking for answers on her corner on Stark Street.

“So, do you still get around? You still hear things on the street?” I asked Lula.

“What kinda things?”

“Four brothers tried to buy some guns last night and got busted.”

“Hah. Everybody knows about that. That’s the two Long boys, and Booger Brown and his dumber’n-cat-shit cousin, Freddie Johnson.”

“You know who they were buying the guns from?”

“Some white dude. Don’t know more’n that.”

“I’m trying to get a line on the white dude.”

“Sure does feel funny being on this side of the law,” Lula said. “Think this is gonna take some getting used to.”

I dialed my number and accessed my messages. There was another invitation from Spiro and a list of names from Eddie Gazarra. The first four were the same names Lula had given me. The last three were the gangster references given by the gun seller. I wrote them down and turned to Lula.

“Tell me about Lionel Boone, Stinky Sanders, and Jamal Alou.”

“Boone and Sanders deal. They go in and out of lock-up like it was a vacation condo. Life expectancy don’t look good, if you know what I mean. Don’t know Alou.”

“How about you?” I asked Connie. “You know any of these losers?”

“Not offhand, but you can check the files.”

“Whoa,” Lula said. “That’s my job. You just stand back and watch me do this.”

While she was checking the files I called Ranger.

“Talked to Morelli last night,” I said to Ranger. “They didn’t get a lot out of the brothers in the BMW. Mostly all they got was that the driver of the van used Lionel Boone, Stinky Sanders, and Jamal Alou as references.”

“Bunch of bad people,” Ranger said. “Alou is a craftsman. Can customize anything that goes bang.”

“Maybe we should talk to them.”

“Don’t think you’d want to hear what they’d have to say to you, babe. Be better if I look the boys up by myself.”

“Okay by me. I have other things to do anyway.”

“Ain’t got none of those assholes on file,” Lula called. “Guess we too high-class.”

I got my check from Connie and moseyed out to Big Blue. Sal Fiorello had come out of the deli and was peering into Blue’s side window. “Will you look at the condition of this honey,” he said to no one in particular.

I rolled my eyes and stuck the key in the door lock. “Morning Mr. Fiorello.”

“That’s some car you got here,” he said.

“Yep,” I replied. “Not everyone can drive a car like this.”

“My uncle Manni had a fifty-three Buick. They found him dead in it. Found him at the landfill.”

“Gee, I’m really sorry.”

“Ruined the upholstery,” Sal said. “Was a damn shame.”

I drove to Stiva’s and parked across the street from the mortuary. A florist’s truck pulled into the service driveway and disappeared around the side of the building. There was no other activity. The building seemed eerily still. I wondered about Constantine Stiva in traction in St. Francis. I’d never known Constantine to take a vacation, and now here he was flat on his back with his business turned over to his ratty stepson. It had to be killing him. I wondered if he knew about the caskets. My guess was no. My guess was that Spiro had screwed up and was trying to keep it from Con.

I needed to give Spiro a no-progress report and decline his dinner invitation, but I was having a hard time motivating myself to cross the street. I could manage a mortuary at seven at night when it was filled with the K of C. I wasn’t crazy about tippy-toeing around at eleven in the morning, just me and Spiro and the dead people.

I sat there a while longer, and I got to thinking how Spiro, Kenny, and Moogey had been best friends all through school. Kenny, the wise guy. Spiro, the not-too-bright kid with bad teeth and an undertaker for a stepfather. And Moogey, who as far as I could tell was a good guy. It’s funny how people form alliances around the common denominator of simply needing a friend.

Now Moogey was dead. Kenny was missing in action. And Spiro was out twenty-four cheap caskets. Life can get pretty strange. One minute you’re in high school, shooting baskets and stealing little kids’ lunch money, and then next thing you know you’re using mortician’s putty to fill in the holes in your best friend’s head.

A weird thought steamed from my brain like the Phoenix rising. What if this was all tied together? What if Kenny stole the guns and hid them in Spiro’s caskets? Then what? I didn’t know then what.

Feathery clouds had stolen into the sky, and the wind had picked up since I left my apartment this morning. Leaves rattled across the street and whipped against the windshield. I thought if I sat there long enough I’d probably see Piglet soar by.

By twelve it was clear that my feet weren’t going to bypass my chicken heart. No problem. I’d go with plan number two. I’d go home to my parents, mooch lunch, and drag Grandma Mazur back with me.

It was almost two o’clock when I pulled into Stiva’s small side lot with Grandma perched beside me on the big bench seat, straining to see over the dashboard.

“Ordinarily I don’t go to afternoon viewings,” Grandma said, gathering her purse and gloves together. “Sometimes in the summer when I feel like taking a walk I might stop in, but usually I like the crowd that comes in the evening. Of course things are all different when you’re bounty hunters … like us.”