“I'm applying for a job at the mall,” Valerie said. “And then I have a second job interview downtown. I was wondering if I could swap cars with you. I want to make a good appearance.”
“What car are you driving now?”
“Uncle Sandor's '53 Buick.”
“Muscle car,” I said. “Very lesbian. Much better than my CR-V.”
“I never thought of that.”
I felt a little guilty because the truth is I didn't know if a '53 Buick would be favored by lesbians. It was just that I really didn't want to swap. I hate the '53 Buick.
I waved good-bye and wished her luck as she sashayed down the hall. Rex was out of his can and looking at me. Either he was thinking I was very clever, or else he was thinking I was a rotten sister. Hard to tell with hamsters. That's why they make such good pets.
I slung my black leather bag over my shoulder, grabbed my denim jacket, and locked up. Time to check back on Melvin Baylor. I felt a twinge of nervousness. Eddie DeChooch was worrisome. I didn't like the way he felt comfortable shooting at people on a moment's notice. And now that I was among the threatened I liked it even less.
I crept down the stairs and scurried through the lobby. I looked beyond the glass doors, into the lot. No DeChooch anywhere.
Mr. Morganstern stepped out of the elevator.
“Hello, cutie,” Mr. Morganstern said. “Whoa. Looks like you ran into a doorknob.”
“All part of the job,” I said to Mr. Morganstern.
Mr. Morganstern was very old. Possibly two hundred.
“I saw your young friend leaving yesterday. He might be a little funny in the head, but he travels in style. You've got to like a man who travels in style,” Mr. Morganstern said.
“What young friend?”
“The Mooner person. The one who wears the Superman suit and has long brown hair.”
My heart skipped a beat. It never occurred to me that any of my neighbors would have information about Mooner. “When did you see him? What time?”
“It was early in the morning. The bakery down the street opens at six and I walked there and back, so I guess I saw your friend around seven o'clock. He came out of the door just as I was going in. He was with a lady and they both got into a big black limousine. I never rode in a limousine. It must be something.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“He said . . . dude.”
“Did he look okay? Did he look worried?”
“Nope. He looked same as always. You know, like nobody's home.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“Nice-looking woman. Short, sort of brown hair. Young.”
“How young?”
“About sixty, maybe.”
“I don't suppose the limo had anything written on it? Like the name of the limo company?”
“Not that I recall. It was just a big black limo.”
I turned on my heel, went back upstairs, and started calling limo companies. It took me a half hour to go through all the listings in the phone book. Only two companies made pickups that early yesterday morning. Both pickups were Town Cars and they were both making airport runs. Neither was booked by or picked up a woman.
Dead end again.
I drove over to Melvin's apartment and knocked on his door.
Melvin answered with a bag of frozen corn on his head. “I'm dying,” he said. “My head's exploding. My eyes are on fire.”
He looked awful. Worse than yesterday and that was going some. “I'll be back later,” I told him. “Don't do any more drinking, okay?”
Five minutes later I was at the office. “Hey,” Lula said. “Look at this. Your eyes are sort of black and green today. That's a good sign.”
“Has Joyce been in yet?”
“She came in about fifteen minutes ago,” Connie said. “She was nuts, raving about shrimp chow mein.”
“She was gonzo,” Lula said. “Made no sense at all. Never seen her so mad. I don't suppose you know anything about the shrimp?”
“Nope. Not me.”
“How's Bob? He know anything about the chow mein?”
“Bob's fine. He had a stomach problem earlier this morning, but he's okay now.”
Connie and Lula did a high five.
“I knew it!” Lula said.
“I'm driving around checking out a few houses,” I said. “I was wondering if anyone wanted to go with me.”
“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “The only time you want company is when you're worried someone's out to get you.”
“Eddie DeChooch might sort of be looking for me.” Probably other people were after me, too, but Eddie DeChooch seemed the craziest and most likely to shoot me. Although the old lady with the scary eyes was starting to run a close second.
“I guess we can handle Eddie DeChooch,” Lula said, getting her handbag out of the bottom file drawer. “He's just a little bitty depressed old man.”
With a gun.
Lula and I dropped in on Mooner's roommates first.
“Is Mooner here?” I asked.
“Nope. Haven't seen him. He might be at Dougie's. He's there a lot.”
We went to Dougie's house next. I had taken Dougie's keys when Mooner got shot and I'd never given them back. I opened the front door and Lula and I did a walk-through. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I went back to the kitchen and looked in the freezer and refrigerator.
“What's that about?” Lula asked.
“Just checking.”
After Dougie's house we drove to Eddie DeChooch's house. The crime-scene tape was gone, and the DeChooch half looked dark and unlived in.
I parked the car and Lula and I did a walk-through in DeChooch's house. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Just for the hell of it I looked in the freezer and refrigerator. There was a pot roast in the freezer.
“I could see that pot roast turns you on,” Lula said.
“Dougie had a pot roast stolen from his freezer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“This could be it. This could be the stolen pot roast.”
“Let me get this straight. You think Eddie DeChooch broke into Dougie's house and stole a pot roast.”
Now that I heard it said out loud it sounded kind of dumb. “It could happen,” I said.
We drove by the social club and the church, cruised through Mary Maggie's parking garage, cut over to Ace Payers, and ended with Ronald DeChooch's house in north Trenton. In the course of our travels we covered most of Trenton and all of the Burg.
“That's it for me,” Lula said. “I need fried chicken. I want some of that Cluck in a Bucket extra spicy, extra greasy. And I want biscuits and cole slaw and one of them shakes that are so thick you gotta suck your guts out to get it up a straw.”
Cluck in a Bucket is just a couple blocks from the office. It has a big revolving chicken impaled on a pole that sprouts out of the macadam parking lot, and it has excellent fastfood fried chicken.
Lula and I got a bucket and took it to a table.
“So let me get this straight,” Lula said. “Eddie DeChooch goes to Richmond and picks up some cigarettes. While DeChooch is in Richmond, Louie D buys the farm and something gets screwed up. We don't know what.”
I selected a piece of chicken and nodded.
“Choochy comes back to Trenton with the cigarettes, drops some off with Dougie, and then gets himself arrested trying to take the rest of the cigarettes to New York.”
I nodded some more.
“Next thing Loretta Ricci is dead and Chooch takes off on us.”
“Yep. And then Dougie goes missing. Benny and Ziggy are looking for Chooch. Chooch is looking for something. Again, we don't know what. And somebody steals Dougie's pot roast.”
“And now Mooner's missing, too,” Lula said. “Chooch thought Mooner had the something. You told Chooch you had the something. And Chooch offered you money but no Mooner.”
“Yeah.”
“That's the dumbest load of shit I ever heard,” Lula said, biting i
nto a chicken thigh. She stopped talking and chewing and opened her eyes wide. “Urg,” she said. Then she started waving her arms and clutching her throat.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
More throat clutching.
“Whack her on the back,” someone offered from another table.
“That doesn't work,” someone else said. “You're supposed to do that Heimlich thing.”
I ran around to Lula and tried to wrap my arms around her to do the Heimlich, but my arms wouldn't go all the way around.
A big guy walked over from the counter, got Lula in a bear hug from behind, and squeezed.
“Ptoooh,” Lula said. And a piece of chicken flew out of her mouth and hit a kid two tables over in the head.
“You've got to lose some weight,” I said to Lula.
“It's just I've got big bones,” Lula said.
Everything quieted down, and Lula sucked on her milk shake.
“I had an idea while I was dying,” Lula said. “It's clear what you've got to do next. Tell Chooch you've decided to make the deal for money. Then we snatch him when he comes to pick up the thing. And after we got him we make him talk.”
“We haven't had much luck snatching him so far.”
“Yeah, but what have you got to lose here? He's gonna be picking up nothing.”
True.
“You should call up Mary Maggie the mud wrestler and tell her we'll deal,” Lula said.
I found my cell phone and dialed Mary Maggie, but there was no answer. I left my name and number and asked her to return my call.
I was putting my cell phone back in my shoulder bag when Joyce stormed in.
“I saw your car in the lot,” Joyce said. “You expect to find DeChooch in here eating chicken?”
“He just left,” Lula said. “We could have brought him in, but we thought it was too easy. We like a challenge.”
“You two wouldn't know what to do with a challenge,” Joyce said. “You're losers. Fatso and Ditzo. You two are pathetic.”
“Yeah, well we're not so pathetic we got a chow mein problem,” Lula said.
That caught Joyce short for a moment, not sure if Lula was in on the dastardly deed or merely provoking her.
Joyce's pager chirped. Joyce checked the readout and her lips curled back in a smile. “I have to go. I have a lead on DeChooch. It's a shame you two bimbos don't have anything better to do than sit here filling your faces. But then from the looks of you I guess that's what you do best.”
“Yeah, and from the looks of you I guess what you do best is fetch sticks and howl at the moon,” Lula said.
“Fuck you,” Joyce said and flounced off to her car.
“Hunh,” Lula said. “I expected something more original than that. Think Joyce must be off her form today.”
“Know what we should do?” I said. “We should follow her.”
Lula was already gathering the food together. “You read my mind,” Lula said.
The moment Joyce left the lot we were out the door and into the CR-V. Lula had the bucket of chicken and biscuits on her lap, we shoved the shakes into the drink holders, and took off.
“I bet she's a big liar,” Lula said. “I bet there's no lead. She's probably going to the mall.”
I stayed a couple cars back so she wouldn't make me, and Lula and I kept our eyes glued to the back bumper of Joyce's SUV. There were two heads visible through Joyce's rear window. She had someone riding shotgun with her.
“She's not going to the mall,” I said. “She's going in the opposite direction. Looks like she's heading for center city.”
Ten minutes later I had a bad feeling about Joyce's destination.
“I know where she's going,” I said to Lula. “She's going to talk to Mary Maggie Mason. Someone told her about the white Cadillac.”
I followed Joyce into the parking garage, keeping well behind. I parked two lanes over from her and Lula and I sat tight and watched.
“Uh-oh,” Lula said, “there she goes. Her and her flunky. They're going up to talk to Mary Maggie.”
Damn. I know Joyce too well. I've seen her work. She would go in like gangbusters, guns drawn, and search room-to-room, claiming just cause. It's the sort of behavior that gives bounty hunting a bad reputation. And even worse, it sometimes gets results. If Eddie DeChooch is hiding under Mary Maggie's bed, Joyce will find him.
I didn't recognize her partner from this distance. They were both dressed in black T-shirts and black cargo pants with BOND ENFORCEMENT printed in bright yellow on the back of their shirts.
“Boy,” Lula said, “they got costumes. How come we don't have costumes?”
“Because we don't want to look like a couple goons?”
“Yep. That's the answer I was thinking of.”
I jumped out of the car and yelled at Joyce. “Hey Joyce!” I said. “Wait a minute. I want to talk to you.”
Joyce whirled around in surprise. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me, and she said something to her partner. The conversation didn't carry to me. Joyce punched the up button. The elevator doors opened and Joyce and her partner disappeared.
Lula and I got to the elevator seconds after the doors closed. We pressed the button and waited a few minutes.
“Know what I think?” Lula said. “I don't think this elevator's going to show up. I think Joyce is holding on to it.”
We started up the stairs, fast at first, and then slower.
“Something wrong with my legs,” Lula said at the fifth floor. “I got rubber legs. They don't want to work anymore.”
“Keep going.”
“Easy for you to say. You're dragging that boney-ass body of yours up these stairs. Look what I'm hauling.”
It wasn't easy for me to say at all. I was sweating and I could barely breathe. “We've got to get into shape,” I said to Lula. “We should go to a gym or something.”
“I'd sooner set myself on fire.”
That about summed it up for me, too.
We staggered out of the stairwell into the hall at the seventh floor. Mary Maggie's door was open and Mary Maggie and Joyce were shouting at each other.
“If you don't get out of here this second I'm calling the police,” Mary Maggie yelled.
“I am the police,” Joyce yelled back.
“Oh yeah? Where's your badge?”
“It's here on this chain on my neck.”
“That's a fake badge. You bought that badge from a catalogue. I'm telling on you. I'm calling the police and telling them you're impersonating a cop.”
“I'm not impersonating anybody,” Joyce said. “I never said I was the Trenton police. I happen to be the bond police.”
“You happen to be the dodo police,” Lula said, wheezing.
Now that I was closer I recognized Joyce's partner. It was Janice Molnari. I went to school with Janice. Janice was an okay person. I couldn't help wondering what she was doing working for Joyce.
“Stephanie,” Janice said. “Long time no see.”
“Not since Loretta Beeber's shower.”
“How's it going?” Janice asked.
“Pretty good. How's it with you?”
“Pretty good. My kids are all in school now, so I thought I'd try working part-time.”
“How long have you been with Joyce?”
“About two hours,” Janice said. “This is my first job.”
Joyce had a sidearm strapped to her thigh, and she had her hand on the sidearm. “So what are you doing here, Plum? Following me around so you can see how it's done?”
“That's it,” Mary Maggie said. “I want all of you out! Now!”
Joyce shoved Lula toward the door. “You heard her. Move it.”
“Hey,” Lula said, giving Joyce a shot in the shoulder. “Who you telling to move it?”
“I'm telling you to move it, you big tub of lard,” Joyce said.
“Better to be a tub of lard than chow mein barf and dog doody,” Lula said.
Joyce gave a gasp. “How do you k
now? I didn't tell you all that.” Her eyes opened wide. “It's you! You're the one!” Besides the gun, Joyce was wearing a utility belt complete with cuffs, defense spray, stun gun, and baton. She pulled the stun gun out of the belt and flipped it on. “I'm going to make you pay,” Joyce said. “I'm going to fry you. I'm going to stick this to you until my battery is dead and you're nothing but a pool of liquefied fat slime.”