“Mo should have stuck to selling candy. We'll take care of Mo. What we're doing is for the good of the community . . . for the good of America. We're not going to stop just because an old man got squeamish.”
“Killing people is for the good of America?”
“Eliminating the drug scourge.”
Oh boy. Scourge removers.
The man carrying the lunch bag jerked me to my feet and shoved me toward the living room. I thought about screaming or simply walking away, but I wasn't sure how these lunatics would act. The one seemed comfortable with his gun. It was possible that he'd killed before, and I suspected killing was like anything else . . . the more you did it, the easier it got.
I was still wearing my jacket, still carrying my shoulder bag, the warning of retaliation ringing in my ears. I still had the blister from my last meeting with Mo's vigilantes, and the thought of being burned again sickened my stomach. “I'm going to give you a chance to leave, before you do something really stupid,” I said, working to keep the panic out of my voice.
The guy carrying the lunch bag set it on my coffee table. “You're the stupid one. We keep reasoning with you and warning you, and you refuse to listen. You're still sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. You and that lawyer you keep visiting. So we figured we'd give you a product demo. Show you the threat firsthand.” He removed a small glassine packet from the lunch bag and held it up for me to see. “High-quality boy.” The next item to be removed from the carrier was a small bottle of spring water. Then a bottle cap with a wire handle fashioned around it. “The best cooker comes from a wine bottle. Nice and deep. The dopers like this better than a spoon or a soda bottle cap. Do you know what boy is?”
Boy was heroin. Coke was girl. “Yeah, I know what it is.”
The man filled the cap with water and mixed in some of the powder from the packet. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and held it under the cap. Then he produced a syringe from the carrier and filled the syringe with the liquid.
I still had my pocketbook on my shoulder. I ran a shaky hand over the outside, feeling for my .38.
The gunman stepped forward and ripped the bag off my shoulder. “Forget it.”
Rex was in his cage on the coffee table. He'd been running on his wheel when we'd come into the room. When the lights flashed on, Rex had paused, whiskers whirring, eyes wide with the expectation of food and attention. After a few moments he'd resumed his running.
The man with the syringe flipped the lid off Rex's cage, reached in and scooped Rex up in his free hand. “Now we get to begin the demonstration.”
My heart gave a painful contraction. “Put him back,” I said. “He doesn't like strangers.”
“We know a lot about you,” the man said. “We know you like this hamster. We figure he's like family to you. Now suppose this hamster was a kid. And suppose you thought you were doing all the right things, like feeding that kid good food and helping with his homework and raising him in a neighborhood with a good school. And then somehow, in spite of everything you did, that kid got started experimenting with drugs. How would you feel? Wouldn't you feel like going after the people who were giving him the drugs? And suppose your kid was sold some bad stuff. And your kid died of an overdose. Wouldn't you want to go out there and kill the drug dealer who killed your kid?”
“I'd want him brought to justice.”
“The hell you would. You'd want to kill him.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
The man with the syringe paused and stared at me. I could see his eyes behind the ski mask, and I guessed my question had hit home.
“I'm sorry,” I said.
“Then you understand why we have to do this. It's essential that our work isn't jeopardized. And it's essential that you understand our commitment. We'd prefer not to kill you. We're fair and reasonable people. We have ethics. So, pay attention. This is the last warning. This time we kill the hamster. Next time we kill you.”
I felt tears starting behind my eyes. “How can you justify killing an innocent animal?”
“It's a lesson. You ever see anyone die from an overdose? It's not a nice way to go. And it's what's going to happen to you if you don't take a vacation.”
Rex's eyes were black and shiny, his whiskers a blur of motion, his little feet treading air, his body squirmy. Not enjoying his confinement.
“Say good-bye,” the man with the syringe said. “I'm going to shoot this directly into his heart.”
There's a limit to how far a woman can be pushed. I'd been gassed, attacked, stalked by masked men, lied to by Morelli and I'd been swindled by my mechanic. And I'd stayed pretty damn calm through it all. Threatening my hamster brought out a whole new set of rules. Threatening my hamster made me Godzilla. I had no intention of saying goodbye to my hamster.
I blinked back the threat of tears, swiped at my nose and narrowed my eyes. “Listen to me, you two bags of monkey shit,” I yelled. “I am not in a good mood. My car keeps stalling. The day before yesterday I threw up on Joe Morelli. I was called a fat cow by my ex-husband. And if that isn't enough . . . my hair is ORANGE! ORANGE, FOR CHRISSAKE! And now you have the gall to force yourself into my home and threaten my hamster. Well, you have gone too far. You have crossed the line.”
I was shouting and waving my arms, totally out of control. And while I was out of control I was watching Rex, because I knew what would happen if he was held long enough. And when it happened I was going to act.
“So if you want to scare someone, you picked the wrong person,” I shrieked. “And don't think I'm going to allow you to harm one hair on that hamster's head!”
And then Rex did what any sensible pissed-off hamster would do. He sank his fangs into his captor's thumb.
The man gave a yelp and opened his fist. Rex dropped onto the floor with a thunk and scurried under the couch. And the guy with the gun swung his weapon in Rex's direction and fired off several rounds reflexively.
I grabbed the table lamp to my right and, keeping the momentum going, smashed the lamp against the gunman's head. The man went down like a bag of sand, and I took off for the door.
I had one foot in the hall when I was grabbed from behind and yanked back into the apartment by the man wielding the syringe. I kicked and clawed at him, the two of us wrestling for our lives in front of the door. My foot connected with his crotch and there was a heart-stopping moment of immobility where I saw his eyes widen in pain, and I thought he might shoot me, or stick me or smack me senseless. But then he doubled over and tried to suck air, inadvertently backing out the door, into the hall.
The elevator door opened, and Mrs. Bestler jumped out with her walker. Clomp, clomp, clomp with lightning speed, she stomped down the hall and rammed the man, knocking him to his knees.
Mrs. Karwatt's door crashed open, and Mrs. Karwatt trained her .45 on the man on the floor. “What's going on? What did I miss?”
Mr. Kleinschmidt came shuffling down the hall carrying an M-16. “I heard a gunshot.”
Mrs. Delgado was right behind Mr. Kleinschmidt. Mrs. Delgado had a cleaver and a blue steel Glock with “sidekick” rubber grips.
Mrs. Karwatt looked at Mrs. Delgado's gun. “Loretta,” she said, “you got a new gun.”
“Birthday present,” Mrs. Delgado said proudly. “My daughter Jean Ann gave it to me. Forty caliber, just like the cops use. More stopping power.”
“I've been thinking of getting a new gun,” Mrs. Karwatt said. “What kind of kick do you get with that Glock?”
I brought Rex into the bedroom with me for the night. He seemed okay after the evening's trauma. I wasn't sure if the same could be said for me. The police had arrived and unmasked the two men. The man with the needle was a stranger to me. The man who'd held the gun had been a schoolmate. He was married now and had two kids. I'd run into him at the food store a couple weeks ago and had said hello.
I slept through most of the morning and felt pretty decent when I got up. I mig
ht not be the most patient woman in the world, or the most glamorous, or the most athletic, but I'm right up there at the top of the line when it comes to resiliency.
I was pouring a second cup of coffee when the phone rang.
It was Sue Ann Grebek. “Stephanie!” she shouted into the phone. “I've got something good!”
“On Mo?”
“Yeah. High-quality vicious rumor. Only one person removed. It might even be true.”
“Give it to me!”
"I was just at Fiorello's, and I ran into Myra Balog. You remember Myra? Went steady with that dork Larry Skolnik all through high school. I never knew what she saw in him. He made weird noises with his nose, and he used to write secret messages on his hands. Like 'S.D.O.B.G.' And then he wouldn't tell anyone what it meant.
“Anyway, I got to talking to Myna, and one thing led to another and we got to talking about Mo. And Myra said that one day Larry told her this really off-the-wall story about Mo. Said Larry swore it was true. Course we don't know what that means, because Larry probably thought he got beamed up a couple times, too.”
“So what was the story?”
I sat and stared at the phone for a few minutes after talking to Sue Ann. I didn't like what I had heard, but it made some sense. I thought about what I'd seen in Mo's apartment and pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.
What I needed to do now was to visit Larry Skolnik. So I double-timed down to the lot, stuck the key in the ignition and held my breath. The engine caught and went into a quiet idle. I slowly exhaled, feeling my cynicism giving way to cautious optimism.
Larry Skolnik worked in his father's dry cleaning store on lower Hamilton. Larry was behind the counter when I walked into the store. He'd blimped up by about a hundred pounds since high school, but it wasn't all bad news—his hands were message free. He was an okay person, but if I'd have to take a winger on his social life, I'd say he probably talked to his tie a lot.
He smiled when he saw me. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said back.
“You got laundry here?”
“Nope. I came to see you. I wanted to ask you about Uncle Mo.”
“Moses Bedemier?” A flush crept into his cheeks. “What about him?”
Larry and I were alone in the store. No one else behind the counter. No one else in front of the counter. Just me and Larry and three hundred shirts.
I repeated the story Sue Ann had told me.
Larry fidgeted with a box of homeless shirt buttons that had been placed by the register. “I tried to tell people, but nobody believed me.”
“It's true?”
More fidgeting. He chose a white pearl button and examined it more closely. He made a honking sound in his nose. His face flushed some more. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to honk.”
“That's okay. A little stress-related honking never hurt anybody.”
“Well, I did it. The story is true,” Larry said. “And I'm proud of it. So there.”
If he said nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, I was going to smack him.
“I hung around the store a lot,” Larry said, looking down into the button box when he talked, poking at the buttons with his finger, making canals in the button collection. "And then when I was seventeen Mo gave me a job sweeping up and polishing the glass in the showcase. It was great. I mean, I was working for Uncle Mo. All the kids wanted a job working for Uncle Mo.
“The thing is, that's how we got to sort of be buddies. And then one day he asked me to . . . um, you know. And I'd never done anything like that before, but I thought what the heck.”
He stopped talking and stared aimlessly at the buttons. I waited awhile but Larry just keep quietly looking at the buttons. And it occurred to me that maybe Larry wasn't just weird. Maybe Larry wasn't very smart.
“This is important to me,” I finally said. “I need to find Mo. I thought maybe you had some idea where he might be. I thought you might still be in touch.”
“Do you really think he killed all those people?”
“I'm not sure. I think he must have been involved.”
“I think so too,” Larry said. “And I have a theory. I don't have it all put together. But maybe you can make something of it.” He forgot about the buttons and leaned forward on the counter. "One time I was paired up with a guy named Desmond, and we got to talking. Sort of one pro to another, if you know what I mean. And Desmond told me how Mo found him.
“See, it's important that Mo can always be finding young guys, because that's what Mo likes.”
By the time Larry finished telling me his theory I was just about dancing with excitement. I had a totally off-the-wall connection between Mo and the drug dealers. And I had renewed interest in the second-house idea. Mo had driven Larry to a house in the woods when he'd wanted Larry to do his thing.
There was no guarantee that Mo was still using the same house, but it was a place to start looking. Unfortunately, Larry had always gone to the house during evening hours, and even on a good day, Larry's memory wasn't top of the line. What he remembered was going south and then turning into a rural area.
I thanked Larry for his help and promised to come back with dry cleaning. I hopped into the truck and started it up. I wanted to talk to Vinnie, but Vinnie wouldn't be in the office this early. That was okay. I'd visit the weak link in Mo's chain while I waited for Vinnie.
I parked on the street, across from Lula's apartment. All the row houses looked alike on this block, but Gail's was easy to find. It was the one with the light on over the front stoop.
I went straight to the second floor and knocked on Gail's door. She answered after the second series of knocks. Sleepy-eyed again. A doper.
“Yuh?” she said.
I introduced myself and asked if I could come in.
“Sure,” she said. Like who would care.
She sat on the edge of her bed. Hands folded in her lap, fingers occasionally escaping to pick at her skirt. The room was sparsely furnished. Clothes lay in heaps on the floor. A small wood table held a cache of groceries. A box of cereal, half a loaf of bread, peanut butter, a six-pack of Pepsi with two cans missing. A straight-backed chair had been pulled up to the table.
I took the chair for myself and edged it closer to Gail, so we could be friendly. “I need to talk to you about Harp.”
Gail grabbed a whole handful of skirt. “I don't know nothin'.”
“I'm not a cop. This isn't going to get you into trouble. This is just something I've got to know.”
“I already told you.”
It wouldn't take much to wear Gail down. Life had already worn her down about as far as she could go. And if that wasn't enough, she'd obviously gotten up early to do some pharmacological experimentation.
“What was the deal with Mo and Elliot? They did business together, didn't they?”
“Yuh. But I didn't have nothin' to do with it. I wouldn't be a party.”
It was almost noon when I got to the office.
Lula was shaking a chicken leg at Connie. “I'm telling you, you don't know nothing about fried chicken. You Italians don't have the right genes. You Italians only know about stuff with tomato paste on it.”
“You know what you are?” Connie said, pawing through the chicken bucket, settling on a breast. “You're a racist bigot.”
Lula chewed off some of the leg meat. “I got a right to be. I'm a minority.”
“What? You think Italians aren't minorities?”
“Not anymore. Italians were last year's minorities. Time to move over, baby.”
I helped myself to a napkin and a mystery part. “Is Vinnie in?”
“Hey Vinnie,” Connie yelled. “Are you in? Stephanie's here.”
Vinnie was immediately at the door. “This better be good news.”
“I want to know about Mo's boyfriend. The one you saw in New Hope.”
“What about him?”
“How do you know they were lovers? Were they kissing? Were they holding hands?”
> “No. They were excited. I don't mean like they had a hardon. I mean like they were charged. And they were looking at pictures of each other. And this other guy was as queer as a three-dollar bill.”
“Did you see the pictures?”
“No. I was across the room.”
“How do you know they were of Mo and his friend?”
“I guess I don't, but I know they were dirty.”
“Must have been one of those psychic things,” Lula said. “Like the Great Carnac.”