Four to Score

16

I LOOKED AT MY WATCH. I'd been in the house for a half hour. Probably I shouldn't push my luck, but I really wanted to take a quick tour of the Glick half. It'd be helpful to find a ransom note left lying on the Glicks' kitchen counter. The key was in the drawer calling to me. Use me. Use me. Okay, what was the worst that could happen? The Glicks would catch me, and I'd be embarrassed. But that wouldn't happen because Lula was watching.

I pocketed the key, closed the window to within an inch of the sill, slipped out the door and stuck the key in the Glicks' lock. Bingo. The door clicked open.

The first thing I noticed was the wash of cool air. It had to be forty degrees in Betty Glick's kitchen. It was like walking into a refrigerator. The no-wax linoleum floor was spotless. The appliances were new. The countertops were Formica butcher block. The theme was country kitchen. Wooden hearts painted barn red and Newport blue, inscribed with homey messages, were hung on the walls. A small pine turned-leg table had been positioned under the back window. The toaster snuggled under a crafts fair toaster cover. Pot holders and dish towels sported rooster designs, and in a colorful, hand-painted bowl was the essential orange-scented potpourri.

Only problem was that the potpourri did nothing to disguise the fact that Betty Glick's kitchen smelled bad. Betty needed some baking soda down her sink drain. Or maybe Betty needed to empty the garbage. I did a quick look through the cupboards and drawers. Nothing unusual there. Also no dead rats or rotting chicken carcasses. The waste container was scrubbed clean and lined with a plastic bag. So what was that smell? There was a kitchen telephone, but no answering machine to snoop on. The sticky pad beside the telephone was blank, waiting for an important message. I looked in the refrigerator and the broom closet, which had been converted into a small pantry.

The smell was stronger on the broom closet side of the room, and suddenly I knew what I was smelling. Uh oh, I thought, take me out of here, feet! But my feet weren't listening. My feet were creeping closer to the source of the smell. My feet were heading for the cellar door next to the broom closet.

My cell phone was in my shoulder bag, and my shoulder bag was hung on my shoulder. I looked inside the bag to make sure the LED was lit. Yep. The phone was working.

I opened the cellar door and flipped the light switch. "Hel-lo-o," I called. If I'd have gotten an answer, I'd have fainted.

I crept halfway down the stairs and saw the body. I'd expected it would be Eddie or maybe Maxine. This body was neither. It was a man in a suit. Late fifties, early sixties, maybe. Very dead. He'd been placed on a tarp. No blood anywhere. I wasn't a forensics expert, but from the way this guy's eyes were bulging and his tongue was sticking out I'd say he hadn't died of natural causes.

So what the hell did this mean? Why would Betty have a corpse in her basement? I know it sounds crazy, but it struck me as especially odd since Betty was such a tidy housekeeper. The basement had been finished off with tile flooring and an acoustical ceiling. Laundry area to one side. Storage to the other, including some large equipment under another tarp. An average basement . . . except for the dead guy.

I stumbled back up the stairs and popped into the kitchen just as Betty and Leo came through the front door.

"What the hell?" Leo said. "What the hell is this?"

I didn't know what was going on, but it didn't feel healthy to hang around in Betty's kitchen. So I bolted for the back door.

BANG! A bullet sailed past my ear and embedded itself in the doorjamb.

"Stop!" Leo shouted. "Stop right where you are."

He'd dropped the box he'd been carrying, and he was aiming a semiautomatic at me. And he was looking much more professional with a gun in his hand than Sugar had looked.

"You touch that back door, and I'll shoot you," Leo said. "And before you die I'll chop your fingers off."

I stared at him bug-eyed and open-mouthed.

Betty rolled her eyes. "You and those fingers," she said to Leo.

"Hey, it's my trademark, okay?"

"I think it's silly. And beside, they did it in that movie about that short person. Everyone will think you're a copycat."

"Well, they're wrong. I did it first. I was clipping fingers years ago in Detroit."

Betty retrieved the box Leo had dropped, carted it into the kitchen and set it on the counter. I read the printing on the side. It was a new chain saw. Black and Decker, 120 horsepower, portable.

Eek.

"You're not going to believe this," I said, "but there's a dead guy in your cellar. Probably you should call the police."

"You know when things start to go wrong, it all turns to crapola," Leo said. "You ever notice that?"

"Who is he?" I asked. "The man down there."

"Nathan Russo. Not that it matters to you. He was my partner, and he got nervous. I had to settle his nerves."

My phone rang inside my shoulder bag.

"Christ," Leo said, "what is that? One of those cellular phones?"

"Yeah. I should probably answer it. It might be my mother."

"Put your bag on the counter."

I put it on the counter. Leo rummaged through it with his free hand, found the phone and shut it off.

"This is a real pain in the ass now," Leo said. "Bad enough I have to get rid of one body. Now I have to get rid of two."

"I told you not to do it in the cellar," Betty said. "I told you."

"I was busy," Leo said. "I didn't have a lot of time. I didn't notice you helping any to get the money together. You think it's easy to get all that money?"

"I know this is a sort of dumb question," I said. "But what happened to Eddie?"

"Eddie!" Leo threw his hands in the air. "None of this would have happened if it wasn't for that bum!"

"He's just young," Betty said. "He's not a bad person."

"Young? He ruined me! My life's work . . . pooof! If he was here I'd kill him, too."

"I don't want to hear that kind of talk," Betty said. "He's blood."

"Hah. Wait until you're out on the street because your no-good nephew blew our pension plan. Wait until you need to get into a nursing home. You think they're gonna let you into assisted living on your good looks? No sirree."

Betty put her grocery bag on the small kitchen table and started to unpack. Orange juice, bread, bran flakes, a box of three-ply jumbo-sized trash bags. "We should have gotten two boxes of these trash bags," she said.

This made me swallow hard. I had a pretty good idea what they were going to do with the trash bags and chain saw.

"So go back to the store," Leo said. "I'll start downstairs, and you can go get more bags. We forgot to get steak sauce anyway. I was gonna grill steaks tonight."

"My God," I said. "How can you think of grilling steaks when you've got a dead man in your basement?"

"You gotta eat," Leo said.

Betty and Leo were standing with their backs to the side window. I looked over Leo's shoulder and saw Lula bob up and look in the window at us, her hair beads flopping around.

"Do you hear funny clicking sounds?" Leo asked Betty.

"No."

They both stood listening.

Lula bobbed up a second time.

"There it is again!"

Leo turned, but Lula was gone from the window.

"You're hearing things," Betty said. "It's all this stress. We should take a vacation. We should go to someplace fun like Disney World."

"I know what I heard," Leo said. "And I heard something."

"Well, I wish you'd hurry up and kill her," Betty said. "I don't like standing here like this. What if one of the neighbors comes over? How will it look?"

"Downstairs," Leo said to me.

"And don't make a mess," Betty said. "I just cleaned down there. Choke her like you did Nathan. That worked out good."

It was the second time in twenty-four hours someone had pointed a gun at me, and I was beyond scared. I was vacillating between cold, stark terror and being truly pissed. My stomach was hollow from fear, and the rest of my body was spastic with the need to grab Leo by his shirtfront and rap his head against the wall until his fillings fell out of his teeth.

I imagined Lula was scrambling to help, calling the police. And I knew what I needed was to stall for time, but it was hard to think coherently. I was sweating in Betty's forty-degree kitchen. It was the cold sweat of someone facing death badly. Not ready to go.

"I don't g-g-get it," I said to Leo. "Why are you doing all this killing?"

"I only kill when I have to," Leo said. "It's not like it's indiscriminate. I wouldn't have killed that sales clerk, but she pulled Betty's ski mask off."

"She seemed like such a nice girl, too," Betty said. "But what could we do?"

"I'm a n-n-nice girl," I said.

"We didn't even get any information from her," Leo said. "I cut off her finger to show I was serious, and she still wouldn't talk. What kind of a person is that? All she said was that Maxine was in Point Pleasant. Big deal. Point Pleasant. Maxine and twenty thousand other people."

"Maybe that was all she knew."

Leo shrugged.

I did a panicked search for another question. "You know what else I don't get? I don't get why you scalped Mrs. Nowicki. Everybody else had their finger cut off."

"I forgot my clippers," Leo said. "And all she had in the house was this dinky paring knife. You can't do real good work with a paring knife. Not unless it's supersharp."

"I keep telling you, you should take ginko," Betty said. "You don't remember anything anymore."

"I'm not taking any damn ginko. I don't even know what ginko is."

"It's an herb," Betty said. "Everybody takes it."

Leo rolled his eyes. "Everybody. Unh."

Lula bobbed up at the window again. And this time she had a gun in her hand. She squinted and sighted and BAM! The window shattered, and a rooster pot holder hanging from a hook on the opposite wall jumped in place.

"Jesus H. Christ," Leo said, dodging aside, whirling around to face the window.

"Drop your gun, you punk-ass old coot," Lula yelled. "You don't drop your gun, I'm gonna bust a cap up your ass!"

Leo shot at the window. Lula returned fire, taking out the microwave. And Betty and I dove under the table.

Sirens whooped in the distance.

Leo ran for the front door, where there was more gunfire and a lot of cussing from both Leo and Lula. Police strobes flashed through the front windows, and there was more shouting.

"I hate this part," Betty said.

"You've done this before?"

"Well, not exactly like this. It was much more orderly last time."

Betty and I were still under the table when Morelli came in.

"Excuse me," Morelli said to Betty. "I'd like to speak to Ms. Plum in private."

Betty crawled out and stood and looked like she didn't know where to go.

I crawled out, too. "You might want to detain her," I said to Morelli.

Morelli passed her off to a uniform and glared at me. "What the hell's going on here? I answer my page and it's Lula screaming how someone's shooting you."

"Well, he didn't actually get around to shooting me."

Morelli sniffed. "What's that smell?"

"Dead guy in the basement. Leo's partner."

Morelli wheeled around and went downstairs. A minute later he came up smiling. "That's Nathan Russo."

"And?"

"He's our friendly neighborhood funny money distributor. He's the guy we've been watching."

"Small world."

"There's a press down there, too. Under a tarp.

I felt my face crumple and my eyes fill with tears. "He wanted to kill me."

"I know the feeling," Morelli said. He put an arm around me and kissed the top of my head.

"I hate to cry," I said. "I get all blotchy, and it makes my nose run."

"Well, you're not blotchy right now," Morelli said. "Right now you're white. The guy downstairs has more color than you." He guided me through the house to the porch, where Lula was pacing, looking like she'd break out in hives any minute. Morelli sat me down on the step and told me to put my head between my legs.

After a minute the clanging stopped in my head, and I didn't feel like throwing up anymore. "I'm okay," I said. "I feel better."

Lula sat next to me. "First time I ever saw a white person who really was white."

"Don't go anywhere," Morelli said. "I need to talk to both of you."

"Yessir, boss," Lula said.

Morelli squatted next to me and lowered his voice. "You weren't in this house illegally, were you?"

"No." I shook my head for emphasis. "The door was open. I was invited in. The wind blew the door . . ."

Morelli narrowed his eyes. "You want to pick one?"

"Which one do you like?"

"Christ," Morelli said.

He went back into the house, which was now filled with cops. An EMS truck had arrived. No need for that. No one had been hurt, and the body in the basement would go home with the coroner in his body snatcher truck. Neighbors had collected on the sidewalk by the EMS truck. Others stood on porches across the street. Betty and Leo were sitting in two separate blue-and-whites. They'd be kept apart from now on and questioned independently.

"Thanks for coming to my rescue," I said to Lula. "Boy, you really nailed that pot holder."

"Yeah, only I was aiming for Leo. Sorry I didn't call you in time. I kept getting interference. Lucky I got through to Morelli right away."

At the end of the block a black Jeep screeched to a halt and a naked man jumped out.

"Goddamn!" Lula said. "I know that naked motherfucker."

I was on my feet and running. The naked motherfucker was Eddie Kuntz! Eddie saw the crowd in front of his house and immediately scurried behind some shrubbery. I skidded to a stop directly in front of the shrub and stared. Kuntz was tattooed head to toe with colorful messages like "pencil dick" and "woman beater" and "I like to be buttfucked."

"Ommigod," I said, trying hard not to be obvious about comparing messages with equipment displayed.

Kuntz was rabid. "They've been holding me hostage. They tattooed my entire body!"

Lula was next to me. "Think they been generous with the pencil dick," she said. "Think you're more a stubby eraser."

"I'm going to kill her," Kuntz said. "I'm going to find her and kill her."

"Maxine?"

"And don't think you're getting your thousand dollars, either."

"About the car you just got out of . . ."

"It was that other bounty hunter. The one with the knockers. Said she'd picked up a police call on her scanner and was heading over here. She picked me up on Olden. That's where Maxine dumped me off. Olden! In front of the Seven-Eleven!"

"Do you know where Maxine was going?"

"The airport. All three of them. They're in a blue Honda Civic. And I take that back about the thousand. You bring that cunt to me, and I'll make you goddamn rich."

I whirled around and ran for the Firebird.

Lula was pounding pavement behind me. "I'm on it," she was saying. "I'm on it!"

We both jumped in the car, and Lula rocketed away before I even had my door closed.

"They'll take Route One," she said. "That's why they dropped him off on Olden. They were heading for One." She cornered Olden with two wheels touching pavement, took the turnoff and hit Route I north.

I'd been so excited I'd forgotten to ask which airport. Like Lula, I'd just assumed it was Newark. I looked over at the speedometer and saw it hovering at ninety. Lula put her foot to the floor, and I braced myself and turned my face away.

"They got that little prick good," Lula said. "I almost hate to pick Maxine up. You gotta admire her style."

"Creative," I said.

"Damn skippy."

Actually, I thought the tattooing might be a little excessive. I didn't like Eddie Kuntz but I had to wince at the thought of Maxine needling him head to foot.

I was looking for the blue Honda, and I was also looking for Joyce. Wouldn't you know, Joyce would happen on Eddie Kuntz. If there was a naked man anywhere near Joyce, she'd find him.

"There they are!" I yelled. "On the side of the road."

"I see 'em," Lula said. "Looks like Maxine got stopped by the cops."

Not the cops. They got stopped by Joyce Barnhardt, who'd stuck a portable red flasher on the roof of her Jeep. We pulled in behind Joyce and ran to see what was happening.

Joyce was standing on the shoulder of the road, holding a gun on Maxine, Mrs. Nowicki and Margie. The three women were spreadeagled on the ground by Joyce with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

Joyce smiled when she saw me. "You're a little late, sweetiepie. I've already made the apprehension. Too bad you're such a loser."

"Hunh," Lula said, slitty eyed.

"You've got three people cuffed, Joyce, and only one of them is a felon. You have no right to manhandle the other two women."

"I can manhandle whoever I want," Joyce said. "You're just pissy because I got your collar."

"I'm pissy because you're being an unprofessional jerk."

"Careful what you say to me," Joyce said. "You get me annoyed and you and lard butt might find yourselves on the ground with these three. I've got a couple more cuffs left."

"Excuse me," Lula said. "Lard butt?"

Joyce trained her gun on Lula and me. "You've got thirty seconds to get your fat asses out of here. And you should both look for new jobs, because it's clear I'm the primo bounty hunter now."

"Yeah," Lula said. "We don't deserve to have a cool job like bounty hunter. I've been thinking maybe I'd get a job at that new place just opened, Lickin' Chicken. They tell me you work there you get to eat whatever you want. You even get them biscuits when they're fresh out of the oven. Here, let me help you get these women into your car."

Lula hoisted Maxine to her feet, and when she handed her over to Joyce, Joyce made a sound like "Ulk" and crumpled to the ground.

"Oops," Lula said. "Another one of them dizzy spells."

Helped along by a few volts from Lula's stun gun.

There was a medium-sized duffel bag on the backseat in Joyce's car. I searched through the bag and found the keys to the cuffs. I unlocked Mrs. Nowicki's cuffs and then Margie's cuffs. I stepped away. "You're on your own," I told them. "I'm not authorized to arrest you, but Treasury is looking for you, and you'd be smart to turn yourselves in."

"Yeah, sure," Mrs. Nowicki said. "I'm gonna do that."

Lula got Maxine to her feet and dusted her off, while Mrs. Nowicki and Margie shuffled uncomfortably on the side of the road.

"What about Maxie?" Margie asked. "Can't you let Maxie go, too?"

"Sorry. Maxine has to report back to the court."

"Don't worry about it," Maxine said to her mother and Margie. "It'll work out okay."

"Don't feel right to leave you like this," Mrs. Nowicki said.

"It's no big deal," Maxine said. "I'll meet up with you after I get this straightened out."

Mrs. Nowicki and Margie got into the blue Honda and drove away.

Joyce was still lying on the ground, but she'd started to twitch a little, and one of her eyes was open. I didn't want Joyce to get accosted while she was coming around, so Lula and I picked Joyce up and stuffed her into the Jeep. Then we took the Jeep keys and locked Joyce in, nice and snug and safe. The little red light was still flashing on the roof of her car, so chances were good that a cop would stop to investigate. Since the little red light was illegal, it was possible that Joyce might get arrested. But then, maybe not. Joyce was good at talking cops out of tickets.

* * * * *

MAXINE WASN'T FEELING TALKATIVE on the way to the station, and I suspected she was composing her story. She looked younger than she had in her photo. Less trampy. Maybe that's what happens when you tattoo out anger. Like breathing life back into a drown victim. In goes the good air, out comes the bad air. Or maybe it was the hundred-dollar haircut and color, and the seventy-five-dollar DKNY T-shirt. Maxine didn't look like she was hurting for money.

The Trenton Police Station is on North Clinton. The building is red brick and utilitarian. The parking lot is Brooklyn south . . . about an acre of secondrate blacktop surrounded by ten-foot-high chain-link fencing. The hope is that the fencing will prevent the theft of police cars, but there's no guarantee.

We pulled into the police lot and saw there were two cruisers backed up to the drop-off behind the building. Leo Glick was helped from one of the cars. He looked our way. His gaze was piercing and angry.

"No sense making a big scene," I said to Lula. "We'll take Maxine in through the front so she doesn't have to deal with Leo."

Sometimes, if court was in session, I could take my apprehension directly to the judge, but court was adjourned for the day, so I walked Maxine back to the docket lieutenant. I gave him my paperwork and handed Maxine over.

"I have a message for you," he said. "Morelli called in about five minutes ago and left this number. Wants you to call him back. You can use the phone in the squad room."

I made the call and waited for Morelli to come on the line.

"Since you're at the station I assume you brought Maxine in," Morelli said.

"I always get my man."

"That's a scary thought."

"I was speaking professionally."

"I need a rundown on what happened at the house here."

I skipped over the part about using Kuntz's key to get into the house and told him the rest.

"How did you get to me so fast today?" I asked.

"I was back on surveillance at the Seven-Eleven." There was a moment of silence between us when I could hear people talking in the background. "Kuntz is being cooperative," Morelli said. "He's so pissed off he's willing to tell us anything we want to know. He said Maxine was on her way to the airport."

"Yeah. I got her on Route One."

"She alone?"

"Nope. "

"I'm waiting," Morelli said.

"Margie and Mrs. Nowicki were with her."

"And?"

"And I let them go. I wasn't authorized to arrest them." And I didn't especially want to see them caught. I had a hard time believing they were involved in the counterfeiting. For that matter, I hadn't especially wanted to bring Maxine in, either. What I suspected was that they'd extorted money from Leo and were on their way to the good life. This was really terrible, but something inside me wanted them to succeed.

"You should have told me right away. You knew I wanted to talk to Maxine's mother."

Morelli was mad. He was using his cop voice.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"That's it for now."

I stuck out my tongue at the phone and hung up. I was feeling very mature.

* * * * *

MY FATHER was slouched in his chair, watching baseball on television. My grandmother was asleep sitting up, head back on the couch, and my mother was next to her, crocheting. This was a nightly pattern, and there was comfort in the ritual. Even the house itself seemed to fall into a satisfied stupor when the dishes were done and the only sound was the drone of the ball game.

I was outside, on my parents' steps, doing nothing. I could have been doing something deep, like thinking about my life, or Mother Teresa's life, or life in general, but I couldn't get turned on by that. What turned me on right now was the luxury of doing nothing.

After I'd handed Maxine over, I'd gone to see my apartment and had been surprised to find repairs were already underway. I'd visited with Mrs. Karwatt and Mrs. Delgado, and then I'd gone back to Morelli's house and packed up my few possessions. The threat of danger was gone, and staying with Morelli now would have smacked of relationship. What was wrong was that there was no relationship. There was great sex and some genuine affection, but the future was too far in the future to feel comfortable. And on top of that, Morelli made me nuts. Morelli pushed all my buttons without even trying. Not to mention Grandma Bella. Not to mention all those Morelli sperms swimming upstream, trying to bash their way through the end of the condom. My eye started to twitch, and I put my finger to it. You see? That's what Morelli does to me . . . gives me an eye twitch.

Better to live with my parents than Morelli. If I could just make it through a few weeks with my parents, I could move back into my own apartment, and then my life will get back to normal. And then my eye will stop twitching.

It was almost ten, and there was no activity on the street. The air was still and dense. The temperature had dropped. There were a few stars overhead, struggling to shine through Trenton's light pollution, not having much luck with it.

Someone was bouncing a basketball blocks away. Air conditioners hummed, and a lone cricket chirped in the side yard.

I heard the whine of a motorcycle, and I thought there was a slim chance I knew the biker. The sound was mesmerizing. Not the thunder of a hog. This was the sound of a crotch rocket. The bike drew closer, and finally I saw the outline under the streetlight at the end of the block. It was a Ducati. All speed and agility and Italian sexiness. The perfect bike for Morelli.

He eased the Duc to the curb and removed his helmet. He was wearing jeans and boots and a black T-shirt, and he looked like the sort of man a woman had to worry about. He kicked the stand out and strolled over to me.

"Nice night to be sitting out," he said.

I was reminded of the time I went to Girl Scout camp and sat too close to the fire and my boots started smoking.

"Thought you'd want to know how the interrogation went."

I leaned forward, greedy with curiosity. Of course I wanted to know!

"It was a total bitchfest," Morelli said. "I've never seen so many people so eager to incriminate themselves. It turns out that Leo Glick has a record a mile long. He grew up in Detroit, working for the Angio family. Was an enforcer. Twenty years ago he decided he was getting too old to do muscle work, so he apprenticed himself to a printer he met in prison. The printer, Joe Costa, had a set of really good plates. Leo spent three years with Costa, learning the business, and then one day Costa got dead. Leo doesn't know how this happened."

I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah," Morelli said. "That's what I think, too. Anyway, Leo and Betty left Detroit and moved to Trenton, and after a couple years they set up shop.

"Leo knew Nathan Russo from Detroit. Nathan was a bag man for the Angios. Leo got Nathan to relocate and launder for him. It was all pretty clever. Nathan runs a dry-cleaning business. Betty was the go-between, and she made all the exchanges in bundles of laundry. Very sanitary."

"That's terrible."

Morelli grinned.

"What about Maxine?" I asked.

"Maxine was in love with Kuntz, but Kuntz is a real asshole. Slaps women around. Maxine isn't the first. Abuses them in other ways, too. Kept telling Maxine she was stupid.

"So one day they have a real bad fight and Maxine takes off with Kuntz's car. Kuntz figures he'll show her, so he presses charges and has her arrested. Maxine gets out on bail and is berserk. She goes back to Kuntz and pretends to be lovey, but what she really wants is to get even. Kuntz has been bragging about what a big gangster he is and how he has this counterfeit operation going. Maxine goads him into showing her the plates, and Eddie, with his very small brain, goes next door when Leo and Betty are at the supermarket and gets the plates and the account book and a duffel bag of twenties. Then Maxine screws his brains out, sends him into the shower to get ready for round two, and takes off with everything."

"Maxine is the shit."

"Yes," Morelli said. "Maxine is definitely the shit. In the beginning it was just supposed to be a revenge game. You know, make Kuntz sweat. Send him on a treasure hunt from hell. But Leo finds out about it and sets off to find Maxine, Detroit style. He interrogates Marge and Maxine's mother, and they don't know anything about anything."

"Even after he encourages them to talk by slicing off a body part."

"Yeah. Leo's not too good at character analyses. He doesn't know he can't get blood from a stone. Anyway, when Maxine finds out about the finger and the scalping, she's outraged, and she decides to cut her mother and Marge in and go for the gold.

"She's gone through the account books by now, so she knows she's dealing with Leo. She calls him up and gives him the terms. A million in real money for the plates and the account book."

"Did Leo have that kind of money?"

"Apparently. Of course, Maxine's denying the extortion part of the story."

"Where's the million?"

Morelli looked like he really liked this part. "Nobody knows. I think it's out of the country. It's possible the only charges that'll stick against anyone is the original auto theft and the failure to appear against Maxine. There isn't actually any proof of extortion."

"What about kidnapping Eddie Kuntz?"

"No charges pressed. If you had 'pencil dick' tattooed all over your ass would you want to go public? Besides, most of those tattoos weren't permanent. The first night Eddie was kidnapped Maxine locked him in a room with a bottle of gin. He got stinking drunk and passed out and when he woke up he was Mr. Tattoo."

I was looking at the Duc, and I was thinking that it was very cool and that if I had a Duc I'd really be the shit.

Morelli nudged my knee with his. "Want to go for a ride?"

Of course I wanted to go for a ride. I was dying to get my legs around those 109 horses and feel them wind out.

"Do I get to drive?" I asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's my bike."

"If I had a Ducati, I'd let you drive."

"If you had a Ducati you probably wouldn't talk to a lowlife like me."

"Remember when I was six and you were eight, and you conned me into playing choo-choo in your father's garage?"

Morelli's eyes narrowed. "We aren't going to go through this again, are we?"

"I never got to be the train. You were always the train. I always had to be the tunnel."

"I had better train equipment."

"You owe me."

"I was eight years old!"

"What about when I was sixteen, and you seduced me behind the éclair case at the bakery?"

"What about it?"

"I never got the top. I was only the bottom."

"This is entirely different."

"This is no different! This is the same thing!"

"Jesus," Morelli said. "Just get on the damn bike."

"You're going to let me drive, right?"

"Yeah, you're going to drive."

I ran my hand over the bike. It was sleek and smooth and red. Morelli had a second helmet strapped to the backseat. He unhooked the cord and gave me the helmet. "Seems a shame to cover up all those pretty curls."

I buckled on the helmet. "Too late for flattery."

It had been a while since I'd driven a bike. I settled myself onto the Duc and looked things over.

Morelli took the seat behind me. "You know how to drive this, right?"

I revved the engine. "Right."

"And you have a license?"

"Got a bike license when I was married to Dickie. I've kept it current."

He held me at the waist. "This is going to even the score."

"Not nearly."

"Entirely," he said. "In fact, this ride's going to be so good you're going to owe me when it's done."

Oh boy.