Three To Get Deadly

CHAPTER 4

I could ask Ranger to make inquiries on Mo. Or I could ask Lula. This was a dilemma, being that Ranger would be my first choice, but Lula was here in front of me, on the scent, reading my mind.

“Well?” Lula asked. Shifting her weight. Nervous. Belligerent. Rhino mode. Looking like her feelings would be hurt if I didn’t ask her to work with me. Looking like at any moment she might narrow her eyes and squash me like a bug.

So I was beginning to see the wisdom of using Lula. No point to hurting her feelings, right? And probably Lula would be cool with this. I mean, what was the big deal? All she had to do was show Mo’s picture to a few drug dealers and hookers. So she wasn’t subtle. Hey, was that a crime?

“You have a lot of contacts on Stark Street,” I said to Lula. “Maybe you could flash Mo’s picture. See if someone can give us a lead.”

Lula’s face brightened. “You bet. I could do that.”

“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “Get her out of the office for a while. She makes me nervous.”

“You should be nervous,” Lula told him. “I’m keeping my eye on your sad ass. You better not trifle with me, mister.”

Vinnie set his teeth, and I thought I saw wisps of steam curl out of his ears and evaporate off the top of his head. But maybe it was just my imagination.

“I’ll make some phone calls. I’ll see if I can get a name for Mo’s boyfriend,” Vinnie said, retreating into his private lair, slamming the door behind him.

Lula had one arm rammed into her coat. “And I’m gonna get right on this. I’m gonna detect the shit out of this case.”

With everyone else in motion, there didn’t seem to be much for me to do. I retraced my steps back to my Buick and drove home on autopilot. I pulled into the lot to my apartment building and looked up at my window. I’d left the light burning in my bedroom, and it was all cheerful and welcoming now. A rectangle of comfort floating high above the gray miasma of morning ice smog.

Mr. Kleinschmidt was in the lobby when I swung through the double glass doors.

“Ho,” Mr. Kleinschmidt said. “It’s the early bounty hunter that catches the worm. Tracking down a ruthless murderer today?”

“Nope. No murderers,” I said.

“Drug dealer? Rapist?”

“Nope. Nope.”

“Who then? What gets you up and out so early?”

“Actually, I’m looking for Moses Bedemier.”

“That’s not funny,” Mr. Kleinschmidt said. “That’s not a good joke. I know Moses Bedemier. Mo would never do anything bad. I think you should look for someone else.”

I stepped into the elevator and pushed the second-floor button. I gave Mr. Kleinschmidt a little finger-wave good-bye, but he didn’t wave back.

“Why me?” I said to the empty elevator. “Why me?”

I let myself into my apartment and looked in at Rex. He was sleeping in his soup can. Nice and quiet. That’s one of the terrific things about having a hamster as a roommate; hamsters keep their thoughts to themselves. If Rex had an opinion about Moses Bedemier, he didn’t lay it on me.

I nuked a cup of coffee and settled down to make phone calls.

I started with my cousin Jeanine, who worked at the post office. Jeanine told me Mo’s mail was being held, and that Mo hadn’t left a forwarding address, nor had he retrieved anything.

I talked to Linda Shantz, Loretta Beeber and Margaret Molinowsky. No one had much to say about Mo, but I found out my archenemy, Joyce Barnhardt, had a drug-resistant yeast infection. That cheered me up some.

At one o’clock I called Vinnie to see if he’d been able to get a name for me. The call was switched to the answering service, and I realized it was Saturday. The office was only open for a half day on Saturday.

I thought about doing something athletic, like going for a run, but when I looked out the living room window it was still January, so I trashed the physical fitness idea.

I returned to the phone and dialed up some more busybodies. I figured it would take me days to go through my list of gossips, and in the meantime I could pretend I was accomplishing something.

By three-thirty my ear felt swollen, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take being glued to the phone. I was contemplating a nap when someone hammered on my door.

I opened the door and Lula rolled in.

“Outta my way,” she said. “I’m so frozen I can’t walk straight. My black ass turned blue a half hour ago.”

“Do you want hot chocolate?”

“I’m way past hot chocolate. I need alcohol.”

I’m not much of a drinker. I’d long ago decided it was best not to muddy the waters of my brain with serious booze. I had a hard enough time making sense when I was sober.

“I haven’t got much in the way of alcohol,” I told Lula. “Light beer, red wine, mouth-wash.”

“Pass on that. I just wanted to tell you about Mo, anyway. Carla, the ho on Seventh and Stark, says she saw Mo two days ago. According to Carla, Mo was looking for Shorty O.”

I felt my mouth fall open. Mo was on Stark Street two days ago. Holy cow.

“How reliable is Carla?”

“Well she wasn’t shaking or nothing today, so I think she could see the picture I showed her,” Lula said. “And she wouldn’t mess with me.”

“What about Shorty O? Do you know him?”

“Everybody knows Shorty O. Shorty’s one of those influential people on Stark Street. Middle management. Do some demolition work when there’s a need. I would have talked to him, but I couldn’t find him.”

“Do you think Mo found him?”

“Hard to say.”

“Anyone else see Mo?”

“Not that I know of. I asked lots of people, too, but with this weather, people aren’t out looking around.” Lula stamped her feet and made flapping warm-up motions with her arms. “I gotta go. I’m going home. It’s Saturday, and I got a date tonight. I gotta get my hair done. Just because I’m a natural beauty don’t mean I don’t need extra help sometime.”

I thanked Lula and saw her to the elevator. I returned to my apartment and thought about this latest development. Hard to believe Mo was on Stark Street for whatever reason. Still, I wasn’t going to totally discount anything…no matter how preposterous. Especially since this was my only lead.

I punched the speed-dial number for Ranger and left a message on his machine. If anyone could find Shorty O, it would be Ranger.

Sunday morning I got up at ten. I made hot chocolate and French toast, carried it into the living room and slid the Winnie the Pooh video into the VCR. When Winnie was done having his adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood it was almost noon, and I thought it was time to go to work. Since I didn’t have a social life, and I didn’t have an office, work time was any time I wanted.

And what I wanted today was to get stupid, spineless Stuart Baggett. Mo was cooking on the back burner, but Stuart wasn’t cooking at all.

I showered and dressed and resurrected Stuart’s file. He lived with his parents at 10 Applegate Street in Mercerville. I spread my street map on the dining room table and located Applegate. It looked to be about two miles from the mall where Stuart worked. Very convenient.

I’ve been told there are places in the country where stores close on Sunday. This would never happen in Jersey. We wouldn’t stand for it. In Jersey it’s part of our constitutional rights to shop seven days a week.

I parked the Buick in the mall lot and diligently ignored the stares from people with less imaginative cars. Since my bank account was at an all-time low, I went straight to the hot dog stand. Best not to detour through the shoe department at Macy’s and succumb to temptation.

Two young women were behind the hot dog counter.

“Yes ma’am,” one said. “What would you like?”

“I’m looking for Stuart Baggett.”

“He doesn’t work here anymore.”

Oh boy. Minor guilt trip. I got the poor schnook fired. “Gee, that’s a shame,” I said. “Do you know what happened? Do you know where I can find him?”

“He quit. Closed up early a couple days ago and never came back. Don’t know where he is.”

A small setback, but not devastating since I still had his home to visit.

Applegate was a pleasant street of well-kept single-family houses and mature trees. The Baggett house was a white Cape with blue shutters and a dark blue door. There were two cars and a kid’s bike in the driveway.

Mrs. Baggett answered the door. Stuart was close enough to my age that we might be friends. I thought I’d go with this approach first, saying very little, letting Mrs. Baggett assume the obvious.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Stuart.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, which might have been concern, or maybe she was just trying to place me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Stuart’s not home. Was he supposed to meet you here?”

“No. I just thought I might catch him.”

“He’s with one of his friends,” Mrs. Baggett said. “Moved out yesterday. Said he had a new job, and he was going to share a place with this friend of his.”

“Do you have an address or a phone number?”

“No. I don’t even have a name. He had some words with his father and stormed off. Would you like to leave a message?”

I gave her my card. “Stuart failed to appear in court. He needs to reschedule his court date as soon as possible. It’s very important.”

Mrs. Baggett made a distressed little sound. “I don’t know what to do with him. He’s just gone wild.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d call me if you hear from him.”

She nodded her head. “I will. I’ll call you.”

I could expend a lot of energy looking for Stuart, or I could wait for him to go home. I decided to go with the latter. Mrs. Baggett looked like a responsible, intelligent woman. I felt pretty confident that she’d get back to me. If not I’d make a return visit later in the week.

Ranger called back a little after seven with news that Shorty O had gone south for the winter. No one had seen him in days, and that probably included Mo.

At eight o’clock I was standing across the street from Uncle Mo’s, and I was feeling nervous. Even though I had a key to his apartment, there were some who might regard what I was about to do as breaking and entering. Of course I could always fib, and say Uncle Mo had asked me to look after his things. If it was a judge who was doing the asking I guess my answer might fall into that undesirable area of perjury. Perjury seemed like a good thing to avoid. Although in Jersey, written law often bowed to common sense. Which meant perjury was better than being dispatched to the landfill.

The sky was dark. The moon obscured by cloud cover. Lights were on in houses up and down Mo’s street, but Mo’s apartment windows were black. A car cruised by and parked three houses away. I was lost in shadow and the driver walked from his car to his house without seeming to notice me. I’d left the Buick on Lindal Street, one block away.

I could see Mrs. Steeger moving in her front room. I was waiting for her to settle before going closer. She peered out her living room window, and my heart stopped dead in my chest. She drew back from the window, and I gasped for air. Little black dots danced in front of my eyes. I clapped a hand to my chest. The woman made my blood run cold.

Headlights swung around the corner, and a car stopped at the Steeger house. The driver beeped, and Mrs. Steeger opened her door and waved. A moment later she was locking up behind herself. I held my breath and willed myself invisible. Mrs. Steeger carefully picked her way along the dark steps and sidewalk to the car. She seated herself next to the driver, slammed the door shut and the car drove off.

My lucky day.

I crossed the street and tried Mo’s house key on the candy store door with no success. I walked to the back and tried the same key on the rear entrance. The key didn’t work there either.

It had occurred to me while talking to Ranger that due to police interruption, I’d never gotten around to searching Mo’s store. I don’t know what I expected to find, but it felt like unfinished business.

Since the house keys didn’t work on the store doors, I assumed there had to be another set of keys in Mo’s apartment. I took the stairs as if I owned the place. When in doubt, always look like you know what you’re doing. I pulled a flashlight out of my pocketbook and knocked twice. I called to Uncle Mo. No answer. I unlocked the door, took one step inside and swept a beam of light around the room. Everything seemed to be in order, so I closed the door behind myself and did a fast walk-through of the rest of the apartment. There were no keys lying on open surfaces and no cute little key hooks on any of the walls. There was no evidence that anyone had been in the apartment since my last visit.

The kitchen was small. White metal cupboards over a gray Formica countertop and an old white porcelain sink that had a few black chips showing. The cupboards held a mismatched assortment of glasses, cups, plates and bowls. No keys. I went through the under-the-counter drawers. One dedicated to silverware. One for dish towels. One for plastic wrap, aluminum foil, plastic bags. One for junk. Still no keys.

I took a moment to look at the photos on the wall next to the fridge. Pictures of children. All from the burg. I recognized almost everyone. I searched until I found mine. Twelve years old, eating an ice cream cone. I remembered Mo taking the picture.

I poked in the refrigerator, checking for cleverly hollowed out heads of cabbage and fake cola cans. Not finding any, I moved on to the bedroom.

The double bed was covered with a quilted bedspread, its yellow and brown flowers faded, the cotton material softened from years of service. The bed and nightstand were inexpensive walnut veneer. Uncle Mo lived modestly. Guess there wasn’t all that much profit in ice cream cones.

I started with the top bureau drawer and sure enough, there was the key ring consigned to its own compartment in a removable wooden jewelry tray. I pocketed the key ring, closed the drawer and was about to leave when the stack of movie magazines caught my eye. Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, Soap Opera Digest, Juggs. Whoa! Juggs? Not the sort of reading material one would expect to find in a gay man’s bedroom.

I wedged the flashlight under my armpit, sank to the floor and flipped through the first half of Juggs. Appalling. I flipped through the second half. Equally appalling and fascinatingly disgusting. The next magazine in the stack had a naked man on the cover. He was wearing a black mask and black socks and his Mr. Happy hung almost to his knees. He looked like he’d been sired by Thunder the Wonder Horse. I was tempted to look inside, but the pages were stuck together, so I moved on. I found a couple magazines that I’d never heard of that were devoted primarily to amateurish snapshots of people in various stages of undress, in a variety of embarrassing poses labeled “Mary and Frank from Sioux City” and “Rebecca Sue in Her Kitchen.” There were some more Entertainment Weeklys, and on the bottom of the pile there were a couple photographic catalogues, which reminded me that I’d found a couple unopened boxes of film in the fridge.

And this reminded me that I was supposed to be conducting an illegal search, not comparing anatomical features with women wearing crotchless panties and spiked dog collars.

I neatened everything up and crept out of the room, out of the apartment, thinking that Uncle Mo was a very weird guy.

There were two keys on the ring. I tried one of the keys on the back door to the store and struck out. I tried the second key and had to squelch a nervous giggle when the door clicked open. There’d been a part of me that hadn’t wanted the keys to work. Probably it was the smart part. The part that knew I wouldn’t look good in prison clothes.

The door opened to a narrow hall. Three doors ran off the hall, and the hall opened to the store. I could look the length of the hall and the length of the store, through the front plate-glass window, and see lights shining in the house across the street. This meant they could also see lights shining in the store, so I would have to be careful how I used my flashlight. I gave the hall and the store a quick flick of the beam to make sure I was alone. I opened the first door to my right and discovered stairs leading to a basement.

I called, “Hello, anybody down there?”

No one answered, so I closed the door. Hollering into the dark was about as brave as I was going to get on the cellar investigation.

The second door was a lavatory. The third door was a broom closet. I cut the light and took a moment to allow my eyes to adjust. It had probably been two or three years since I’d been in the store, but I knew it well, and I knew nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed at Uncle Mo’s.

A counter ran front to rear. The back half of the counter was luncheonette style with five stationary stools. Behind this part of the counter Mo had a small cooktop, a plastic cooler of lemonade, a four-spigot soda dispenser, two milkshake shakers, an ice cream cone dispenser and two hotplates for brewing coffee. The front half of the counter consisted of a display case for tubs of ice cream and another display case devoted to candy.

I prowled around, not sure what I was looking for, but pretty sure I hadn’t found it. Nothing seemed out of place. Mo had neatened up before he left. There were no dirty dishes or spoons in the sink. No indication that Mo had been disrupted or left in a rush.

I opened the cash drawer. Empty. Not a nickel. I hadn’t found any money in the apartment either.

A shadow cut into the ambient light filtering through the front window, and I crouched low behind the counter. The shadow passed, and I wasted no time scuttling to the back of the store. I held up in the hallway, listening.

Footsteps sounded on the cement walk-way. I stopped breathing and watched the doorknob turn. The door didn’t open. The door was locked. I heard the rasp of a key and stood rooted to the floor in dumbstruck panic. If it was anyone other than Mo I was in very deep shit.

I quietly took two steps back, listening carefully. The key wasn’t working. Maybe it wasn’t working because it wasn’t a key! Maybe someone else was trying to break into Uncle Mo’s!

Damn. What were the chances of two people breaking into Mo’s at the same time? I shook my head in disgust. Crime was getting out of hand in Trenton.

I slipped into the bathroom, silently closed the door and held my breath. I heard the tumbler click and the back door swing open. Two footsteps. Someone was standing in the hall, getting used to the dark.

Go for the cash drawer and get this over with, I thought. Take all the friggin’ ice cream. Have a party.

Shoes scuffed on the wood floor, and a door opened next to me. This would be the door to the cellar. It was held open long enough for someone to look down into the darkness and then was quietly closed. Whoever was in Mo’s store was doing the exact same thing I’d done, and I knew with sickening certainty my door would be opened next. There was no way for me to lock the door, and no window to use for escape.

I had my flashlight in one hand and defense spray in the other. I had a gun in my pocketbook, but I knew from past experience I’d be slow to use it. And besides, I wasn’t sure I’d remembered to load the gun. Better to go with the defense spray. I was willing to gas almost anyone.

I heard a hand grasp the bathroom doorknob and in the next instant the door to the bathroom was yanked open. I pressed my thumb against the flashlight’s switch, catching angry black eyes in my beam. The plan had been to temporarily blind the intruder, make identification and decide how to act.

The error in the plan was in assuming blindness led to paralysis.

Less than a millisecond after hitting the flashlight ON button, I felt myself fly through the air and slam against the back wall of the lavatory. There was a red flash, fireworks exploded in my brain and then everything went black.

My next memory was of struggling to regain consciousness, struggling to open my eyes, struggling to place my surroundings.

It was dark. Night. I put my hand to my face. My face was sticky. A black stain spread from under my cheek. I dumbly stared at the stain. Blood, I thought. Car crash. No, that wasn’t right. Then I remembered. I was at Mo’s. I was on my side in the little lavatory, my body impossibly twisted around the toilet, my head under the small sink.

It was very quiet. I didn’t move. I listened to the silence and waited for my head to clear. I ran my tongue over my teeth. No teeth were broken. I gingerly touched my nose. My nose seemed okay.

The blood had to be coming from somewhere. I was lying in a pool of it.

I pushed up to hands and knees and saw the source of the blood. A body lying facedown in the narrow hallway. Light from an alley streetlight carried through the store’s open back door, enabling me to recognize the man on the floor.

It was the guy who’d pitched me against the wall.

I crept forward and took a closer look, seeing the hole in the back of the man’s shirt where the bullet had entered, and a similar hole in the back of his head. The wall to my right had been sprayed with blood and brain and the left half of the dead man’s face. His right eye was intact, wide and unseeing. The mouth was open, as if he’d been mildly surprised.

The sound that carved up from my throat was part scream, part gag as I floundered away from the body, arms windmilling out, searching for a handhold where none existed. I sat down hard on the floor, back to the wall, unable to think, breathing hard, only aware that time was passing. I swallowed back bile and closed my eyes, and a thought snaked into the horror. The thought was of hope…that this wasn’t so bad, so final. That the man could be saved. That a miracle would happen.

I opened my eyes and all hope vanished. The man on the floor was beyond a medical miracle. I had brain gunk and bone fragments stuck to my jeans. My assailant had been murdered, and I’d missed it. Unconscious in the bathroom. The idea was ludicrous.

And the killer. Dear God, where was the killer? My heart gave a painful contraction. For all I knew he was hidden in shadow, watching me struggle. My shoulder bag was on the floor, under the sink. I reached inside and found my gun. The gun wasn’t loaded. Dammit, I was such a screwup.

I rose to a crouch and looked through the open back door. The yard was partially illuminated, as was the hallway. I was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. I was bathed in sweat, shivering with fear. I wiped my hands on my jeans. Go for the door, I thought, then run for Ferris Street.

I clenched my teeth and took off, stumbling over the obstructing body. I burst through the door and sprinted the length of the building and across the street. I ran to shadow and held up, gasping for air, searching the neighborhood for movement or for the glint of a gun or belt buckle.

A siren sounded in the distance, and at the end of the street I caught the flash of cop lights. Someone had called the police. A second blue-and-white turned the corner at Lindal. The two cars angled into the curb in front of the store. The uniforms got out and trained a flashlight beam into Mo’s front window. I didn’t recognize either of the uniforms.

I had myself backed into a corner between stoop and porch, two houses down. I kept my eye on the road and rummaged in my pocketbook, looking for my cell phone. I found the phone and dialed Morelli. Personal feelings aside, Morelli was a very good cop. I wanted him to be first homicide on the scene.

It was well after midnight when Morelli brought me home. He parked his Toyota in my lot and escorted me into the building. He punched the elevator button and stood silently beside me. Neither of us had spoken a word since we’d left the station. We were both too weary for anything other than the most necessary conversation.

I’d given an on-scene report to Morelli and was ordered to go to St. Francis Hospital to have my head examined, inside and out. I was told I had a concussion and a lump. My scalp was intact. After the hospital, I went home to shower and change my clothes and was brought to the station in a blue-and-white for further questioning. I’d done my best to recall details accurately, with the exception of a small memory lapse concerning the key to Mo’s apartment and store and how those two doors happened to swing open for me. No need to burden the police with things that didn’t matter. Especially if it might give them the wrong idea about unlawful entry. And then there was the matter of my gun, which happened to no longer be in my pocketbook by the time I got to the police station. Wouldn’t want to confuse the issue with that either. Or to be embarrassed by the fact that I’d forgotten to load the miserable thing.

When I closed my eyes I saw the intruder. Heavy-lidded black eyes, dark skin, long dreadlocks, mustache and goatee. A big man. Taller than me. And he’d been strong. And quick. What else? He was dead. Very dead. Shot in the back at close range with a .45.

The motive for the shooting was unknown. Also unknown was why I’d been spared.

Mrs. Bartle, across from Mo’s store, had called the police. First, to report seeing a suspicious light through the storefront window, and then a second time when she heard gunshot.

Morelli and I stepped out of the elevator and walked the short distance down the hall to my apartment. I unlocked my door, stepped inside and flipped the light switch. Rex paused on his wheel and blinked at us.

Morelli casually looked into the kitchen. He moved to the living room and lit a table lamp. He sauntered into the bedroom and bath and returned to me. “Just checking,” he said.

“What were you checking for?”

“I suppose I was checking for the phantom assailant.”

I collapsed into a chair. “I wasn’t sure you believed me. I don’t exactly have an airtight alibi.”

“Honey, you don’t have any alibi at all. The only reason I didn’t book you for murder is I’m too tired to fill out the paperwork.”

I didn’t have the energy for indignation. “You know I didn’t kill him.”

“I don’t know anything,” Morelli said. “What I have is opinion. And my opinion is that you didn’t kill the guy with the dreads. Unfortunately, there are no facts to support that opinion.”

Morelli was wearing boots and jeans and a heavy olive drab jacket that looked like army issue. The jacket had lots of pockets and flaps and was slightly worn at the cuffs and collar. By day Morelli looked lean and predatory, but sometimes late at night when his features were softened by exhaustion and eighteen hours of beard growth there were glimpses of a more vulnerable Morelli. I found the vulnerable Morelli to be dangerously endearing. Fortunately, the vulnerable Morelli wasn’t showing its face tonight. Tonight Morelli was all tired cop.

Morelli strolled into the kitchen, lifted the lid on my brown bear cookie jar and looked inside. “Where’s your thirty-eight? It wasn’t on you, and it’s not in your cookie jar.”

“It’s sort of lost.” It was lost two houses down and across the street from Mo’s store, neatly tucked into an azalea bush. I’d called Ranger when I’d stopped home to shower, and I’d asked him to quietly retrieve the gun for me.

“Sort of lost,” Morelli said. “Unh.”

I saw him out and locked the door after him. I dragged myself into the bedroom and flopped on the bed. I lay there fully clothed with all the lights blazing and finally fell asleep when I could see the sun shining through my bedroom curtains.

At nine o’clock I opened my eyes to pounding on my apartment door. I lay there for a moment hoping the pounder would go away if I ignored him.

“Open up. It’s the police,” the pounder yelled.

Eddie Gazarra. My second-best friend all through grade school, now a cop, married to my cousin Shirley.

I rolled out of bed, shuffled to the door and squinted at Gazarra. “What?”

“Jesus,” he said. “You look like hell. You look like you slept in those clothes.”

My head was throbbing and my eyes felt like they were filled with sand. “It makes it easier in the morning,” I said. “Not a lot of fuss.”

Gazarra shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

I looked down at the white bakery bag hanging from his chunky Polish hand. “Are there doughnuts in that bag?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Gazarra said.

“Do you have coffee too?”

He held a second bag aloft.

“God bless you,” I said. “God bless your children and their children.”

Gazarra got a couple plates from the kitchen, grabbed the roll of paper towels and took everything into the dining room. We divided up the doughnuts and coffee and ate in silence until all that was left was a splot of raspberry jelly on the front of Gazarra’s uniform.

“So what is this?” I finally asked. “Social call, pity party, show of faith?”

“All of the above,” Gazarra said. “Plus a weather report, which you didn’t get from me.”

“I hope it’s warm and sunny.”

Gazarra flicked at the mess on his shirt-front with a wad of paper napkin. “There are members of the department who’d like to pin last night’s homicide on you.”

“That’s crazy! I had no motive. I didn’t even know that guy.”

“Turns out his name is Ronald Anders. Arrested on the eleventh of November for possession and sale of a controlled substance and illegal possession of firearms. Failed to appear in court two weeks later. Recovery never made…until last night. Guess who his bondsman is?”

“Vinnie.”

“Yes.”

Direct hit to the brain. No one had said anything to me about the FTA, including Morelli.

The doughnuts were sitting heavy in my stomach. “How about Morelli? Does Morelli want to charge me?”

Gazarra stuffed the paper coffee cups and napkins into a bag and carted it all off to the kitchen. “I don’t know. I’m short on details. What I know is that you might want to get your ducks in a row just in case.”

We faced each other at the door.

“You’re a good friend,” I said to Gazarra.

“Yeah,” Gazarra said. “I know.”

I closed and locked the door behind him and leaned my forehead against the doorjamb. The backs of my eyeballs hurt and the pain radiated out to the rest of my skull. If ever there was a time for clear thought, this was it, and here I was without a clear thought in my head. I stood a few minutes longer trying to think, but no wondrous revelations, no brilliant deductions burst into my consciousness. After a while I suspected I’d been dozing.

I was debating taking a shower when there was a loud rap on the door. I rolled my eye to the peephole and looked out. Joe Morelli.

Shit.