High Five

2

I WENT BACK to Cloverleaf Apartments and parked in the lot. I got a black nylon web utility belt from the back of the Buick and strapped it on, arming it with a stun gun, pepper spray, and cuffs. Then I went in search of the building superintendent. Ten minutes later I had a key to Briggs' apartment and was at his door. I rapped twice and yelled, "Bail enforcement." No answer. I opened the door with the key and walked in. Briggs wasn't there.

Patience is a virtue bounty hunters need and I lack. I found a chair facing the door and sat down to wait. I told myself I'd stay for as long as it took, but I knew it was a lie. To begin with, being in his apartment like this was a little illegal. And then there was the fact that I was actually pretty scared. Okay, so he was only three feet tall . . . that didn't mean he couldn't shoot a gun. And it didn't mean he didn't have friends who were six-foot-four and nuts.

I'd been sitting for a little over an hour when there was a knock at the door, and I realized a piece of paper had been slipped under the doorjamb.

"Dear Loser, I know you're there," the message on the paper said, "and I'm not coming home until you leave."

Great.

* * * * *

MY APARTMENT BUILDING bears a striking resemblance to Cloverleaf. Same blocky brick structure, same minimalist attention to quality. Most of the tenants in my building are senior citizens with a few Hispanics thrown in to make things interesting. I'd come directly home after vacating Briggs' apartment. I'd gotten my mail when I'd passed through the lobby, and I didn't have to open the envelopes to know the contents. Bills, bills, bills. I unlocked my door, tossed the mail on the kitchen counter, and checked my answering machine for messages. None. My hamster, Rex, was asleep in his soup can in his cage.

"Hey, Rex," I said. "I'm home."

There was a slight rustling of pine shavings but that was it. Rex wasn't much for small talk. I went to the refrigerator to get him a grape and found a sticky note tacked to the door. "I'm bringing dinner. See you at six." The note wasn't signed, but I knew it was from Morelli by the way my nipples got hard.

I threw the note into the trash and dropped the grape into Rex's cage. There was a major upheaval of shavings. Rex appeared butt first, stuffed the grape into his cheek pouch, blinked his shiny black eyes, twitched his whiskers at me, and scooted back into the can.

I took a shower, did the gel-and-blow-dry thing with my hair, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, and flopped onto the bed facedown to think. My usual thinking position is on my back, but I didn't want to wreck my hair for Morelli.

The first thing I thought about was Randy Briggs and how it would feel good to drag him by his little feet down the stairs of his apartment building, with his stupid melon head going bump, bump, bump on the steps.

Then I thought about Uncle Fred, and I got a sharp pain in my left eyeball. "Why me?" I said, but there was no one around to answer.

Truth is, Fred wasn't exactly Indiana Jones, and I couldn't imagine anything other than an Alzheimer's attack happening to Fred, in spite of the gory photographs. I searched my mind for memories of him, but found very little. When he smiled it was big and phony, and his false teeth made a clicking sound. And he walked with his toes pointed out . . . like a duck. That was it. Those were my memories of Uncle Fred.

I dozed off while walking down memory lane, and suddenly I awoke with a start, all senses alert. I heard the front door to my apartment click open, and my heart started knocking around in my chest. I'd locked the door when I'd gotten home. And now someone had opened it. And that someone was in my apartment. I held my breath. Please, God, let it be Morelli. I didn't much like the idea of Morelli sneaking into my apartment, but it was a lot more palatable than coming face-to-face with some ugly, droolly guy who wanted to squeeze my neck until my tongue turned purple.

I scrambled to my feet and searched for a weapon, settling for a stiletto-heeled pink-satin pump left over from a stint as bridesmaid for Charlotte Nagy. I crept out of my bedroom, through the living room, and peeked into the kitchen.

It was Ranger. And he was dumping the contents of a large plastic container into a bowl.

"Jesus," I said, "you scared the hell out of me. Why don't you try knocking next time."

"I left you a note. I thought you'd be expecting me."

"You didn't sign the note. How was I supposed to know it was you?"

He turned and looked at me. "Were there any other possibilities?"

"Morelli."

"You back with him?"

Good question. I glanced at the food. Salad. "Morelli would have brought sausage sandwiches."

"That stuff'll kill you, Babe."

We were bounty hunters. People shot at us. And Ranger was worried about trans fats and nitrates. "I'm not sure our life expectancy is all that good anyway," I said.

My kitchen is small, and Ranger seemed to be taking up a lot of space, standing very close. He reached around me and snagged two salad bowls from the over-the-counter cabinet. "It's not length of life that's important," he said. "It's the quality. The goal is to have purity of mind and body."

"Do you have a pure mind and body?"

Ranger locked eyes with me. "Not right now."

Hmm.

He filled a bowl with salad and handed it to me. "You need money."

"Yes."

"There are lots of ways to make money."

I stared down into my salad, pushing greens around with my fork. "True."

Ranger waited for me to look up at him before he spoke. "You sure you want to do this?"

"No, I'm not sure. I don't even know what we're talking about. I don't actually know what it is that you do. I'm just searching for a second profession that'll supplement my income."

"Any restrictions or preferences?"

"No drugs or illegal gun sales."

"Do you think I'd deal drugs?"

"No. That was thoughtless."

He helped himself to salad. "What I have going now is a renovation job."

This sounded appealing. "You mean like interior decorating?"

"Yeah. Guess you could call it interior decorating."

I tried the salad. It was pretty good, but it needed something. Croutons fried in butter. Big chunks of fattening cheese. And beer. I looked in vain for another bag. I checked the refrigerator. No beer there either.

"This is the way it works," Ranger said. "I send a team in to renovate, and then I place one or two people in the building to take care of long-term maintenance." Ranger looked up from his food. "You're keeping in shape, right? You run?"

"Sure. I run all the time." I run never. My idea of exercise is to barrel through a shopping mall.

Ranger gave me a dark look. "You're lying."

"Well, I think about running."

He finished his food and put the bowl in the dishwasher. "I'll pick you up tomorrow at five A.M."

"Five A.M.! To start an interior decorating job?"

"It's the way I like to do it."

A warning message flashed through my brain. "Maybe I should know more—"

"It's routine. Nothing special." He checked his watch. "I have to go. Business meeting."

I didn't want to speculate on the nature of his business meeting.

* * * * *

I BUZZED THE television on, but couldn't find anything to watch. No hockey. No fun movies. I went to my shoulder bag and pulled out the large envelope from the copier. I'm not sure why, but I'd made color copies of the pictures before meeting Morelli. I'd been able to fit six photos to a page and had filled four pages. I spread the pages on my dining-room table.

Not nice stuff to look at.

When the photos were laid out side-by-side, certain things became evident. I was pretty sure there was only one body and that it wasn't the body of an old person. No gray hair. And the skin was firm. Difficult to tell if it was a woman or a young man. Some of the pictures had been taken quite close. Some were from further away. It didn't look like the parts were ever rearranged. But the bag was sometimes pulled down to reveal more.

Okay, Stephanie, put yourself in the photographer's shoes. Why are you taking these pictures? Trophy shots? I didn't think so, because none showed the face. And there were twenty-four pictures here, so the roll was intact. If I wanted a remembrance of this grisly act, I'd want a face shot. Ditto for proof that the job had been done. Proof of a kill required a face shot. What was left? A visual record by someone who didn't want to disturb the evidence. So maybe Uncle Fred happened on a bag of body parts and ran out and got himself a point-and-shoot. And then what? Then he put the pictures in his desk drawer and disappeared while running errands.

That was my best guess, as weak as it was. The truth is, the pictures could have been taken five years ago. Someone could have given them to Fred for safekeeping or as a macabre joke.

I stuffed the prints back into their envelope and grabbed my shoulder bag. I thought searching the neighborhood around Grand Union would be wasted effort, but I felt the need to do it anyway.

I drove to a residential area behind the strip mall and parked on the street. I grabbed my flashlight and set out on foot, walking streets and back alleys, looking behind bushes and trash cans, calling Fred's name. When I was a kid I had a cat named Katherine. She showed up on our doorstep one day and refused to leave. We started feeding her on the back porch, and then somehow she found her way into the kitchen. She went out at night to roam the neighborhood, and slept curled up in a ball on my bed during the day. One night Katherine went out and never came back. For days I walked the streets and alleys, looking behind bushes and trash cans, calling her name, just like I was doing now for Fred. My mother said cats sometimes wander off like that when it's their time to die. I thought it was a lot of hooey.

* * * * *

I STUMBLED OUT of bed at four-thirty, staggered into the bathroom and stood in the shower until my eyes opened. After a while my skin started to shrivel, and I figured I was done. I toweled off and shook my head by way of styling my hair. I didn't know what I was supposed to wear for interior decorating, so I wore what I always wore . . . jeans and a T-shirt. And then to dress it up, just in case this actually turned out to be interior decorating, I added a belt and a jacket.

Ranger was waiting in the parking lot when I swung out the back door. He was driving a shiny black Range Rover with tinted side windows. Ranger's cars were always new and their point of purchase was never easy to explain. Three men took up the backseat. Two were black, one was of indeterminate origin. All three men had Marine buzz cuts. All were wearing black SWAT pants and black T-shirts. All were heavily muscled. Not an ounce of fat among them. None of them looked like interior decorators.

I buckled myself into the seat next to Ranger. "Is that the interior decorating team in the backseat?"

Ranger smiled in the predawn darkness and cruised out of the lot.

"I'm dressed different from everybody else," I said.

Ranger stopped at the light on Hamilton. "I've got a jacket and a vest for you in the back."

"This isn't interior decorating, is it?"

"There's all kinds of interior decorating, Babe."

"About the vest—"

"Kevlar."

Kevlar was bulletproof. "Rats," I said. "I hate getting shot at. You know how I hate getting shot at."

"Just a precaution," Ranger said. "Probably no one will get shot."

Probably?

We rode in silence through center city. Ranger was in his zone. Thinking private thoughts. The guys in back looking like they had no thoughts at all—ever. And me, debating jumping out of the car at the next light and running like hell back to my apartment. And at the same time, as ridiculous as it sounds, I was keeping an eye peeled for Fred. He was stuck in my brain. It was like that with my cat, Katherine, too. She'd been gone fifteen years, but I always looked twice when I caught a glimpse of a black cat. Unfinished business, I guess.

"Where are we going?" I finally asked.

"Apartment building on Sloane. Gonna do some house cleaning."

Sloane Street runs parallel and two blocks over from Stark. Stark is the worst street in the city, filled with drugs and despair and feed-lot housing. The ghetto gentrifies as the blocks march south, and much of Sloane is the demarcation line between the lawless and the law-abiding. It's a constant struggle to hold the line and keep the pushers and hookers off Sloane. And word is that lately Sloane's been losing the battle.

Ranger drove three blocks up Sloane and parked. He nodded at the yellow-brick building across the street, two doors down. "That's our building. We're going to the third floor."

The building was four stories tall, and I guessed there were two or three small apartments on each floor. Ground-level brick was covered with gang graffiti. Windows were dark. No street traffic. Wind-blown trash banked against curbs and collected in doorways.

I glanced from the building to Ranger. "You sure this is legal?"

"Been hired by the landlord," Ranger said.

"Does this housecleaning involve people or is it just . . . things?"

Ranger looked at me.

"There's a legal process involved in getting people and their possessions out of an apartment," I said. "You need to present an eviction notice and—"

"The legal process is moving a little slow," Ranger said. "And in the meantime, the kids in this building are being harassed by the people who come to shoot up in 3C."

"Think of this as community service," one of the guys in the back said.

The other two nodded. "Yeah," they said. "Community service."

I cracked my knuckles and chewed on my lower lip.

Ranger angled from behind the wheel, walked to the rear of the Range Rover, and opened the door. He gave everyone a flak vest, and then he gave everyone a black windbreaker that had SECURITY printed in large white letters on the back.

I strapped my vest on and watched while everyone else buckled on black nylon web utility belts and holstered guns.

"Let me take a wild guess here," Ranger said, slinging an arm around my shoulder. "You forgot to bring your gun."

"Interior decorators don't use guns."

"They do in this neighborhood."

The men were lined up in front of me.

"Gentlemen," Ranger said, "this is Ms. Plum."

The indeterminate-origin guy put his hand out. "Lester Santos."

The next man in line did the same. "Bobby Brown."

The last man was Tank. It was easy to see how he'd come by the name.

"I better not get into trouble for this," I said to Ranger. "I'm going to be really bummed if I get arrested. I hate getting arrested."

Santos grinned. "Man, you don't like to get shot. You don't like to get arrested. You don't know how to have fun at all."

Ranger shrugged into his jacket and set off, crossing the street with the band of merry men closing ranks behind him.

We entered the building and climbed two flights of stairs. Ranger went to 3C and listened at the door. The rest of us flattened against the wall. No one spoke. Ranger and Santos stood, guns in hand. Brown and Tank held flashlights.

I braced myself, expecting Ranger to kick the door down, but instead, he took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. The door started to open but caught on a security chain. Ranger took two steps back and threw himself at the door, catching the door at chain height with his shoulder. The door popped open, and Ranger was in first. Then everyone was in except me. Lights flashed on. Ranger shouted, "Security!" and everything was chaos. Half-naked people were scrambling off floor mattresses. Women were shrieking. Men were swearing.

Ranger's team went room by room, cuffing people, lining them up against the living room wall. Six people in all.

One of the men was berserk, waving his arms to avoid getting cuffed. "You can't do this, you fuckers," he was yelling. "This is my apartment. This is private property. Somebody call the fucking police." He pulled a knife from his pants pocket and flicked it open.

Tank grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt, lifted him off his feet, and threw him out the window.

Everyone went still, staring dumbstruck at the shattered glass. My mouth was open and my heart had gone dead in my chest.

Ranger didn't look all that disturbed. "Have to replace that window," he said.

I heard a groan and some scraping sounds. I crossed the room to the window and looked out. The guy with the knife was spreadeagle on the fire escape, making feeble attempts to right himself.

I clapped a hand to my heart, relieved to find it had started beating again. "He's on the fire escape! God, for a minute there I thought you dumped him three stories."

Tank looked out the window with me. "You're right. He's on the fire escape. Sonovagun."

It was a small apartment. One small bedroom, one small bath, small kitchen, small living room. Kitchen counters were littered with fast-food wrappers and bags, empty soda cans, food-encrusted plates, and cheap, dented pots. The Formica was scarred with burn marks from cigarettes and crack cookers. Used syringes, half-eaten bagels, filthy dish towels, and unidentifiable garbage clogged the sink. Two stained and torn mattresses had been pushed against the wall in the living room. No lamps, no tables, no chairs, no sign that civilized man occupied the apartment. Just filth and clutter. The same refuse that banked against gutters outside filled the rooms of 3C. The air was stale with the odors of urine and pot and unwashed bodies and something nastier.

Santos and Brown herded the bedraggled occupants into the hall and down the stairs.

"What happens to them now?" I asked Ranger.

"Bobby'll drive them over to the meth clinic and drop them off. They're on their own from there."

"No arrests?"

"We don't do arrests. Not unless someone's FTA."

Tank returned from the car with a cardboard box filled with interior decorating supplies, which in this case consisted of disposable gloves, trash bags, and a coffee can for syringes.

"This is the deal," Ranger said to me. "We strip the apartment of everything not nailed down. Tomorrow the landlord will bring someone in to clean and do repairs."

"What's to stop the tenant from returning?"

Ranger just stared at me.

"Right," I said. "Stupid question."

* * * * *

IT WAS MIDMORNING when we went through with the broom. Santos and Brown had positioned themselves on folding chairs in the small vestibule downstairs. They were to take the first security shift. Tank was on his way to the landfill with the mattresses and bags of garbage. Ranger and I were left to lock up the apartment.

Ranger angled the brim of a Navy SEALS ball cap to shade his eyes. "So," he said, "what do you think of security work? You want to be on the team? I can let you take the graveyard shift with Tank."

"He isn't going to throw any more people out windows, is he?"

"Hard to say, Babe."

"I don't know if I'm cut out for this."

Ranger took his SEALS hat off and put it on me, tucking my hair behind my ears, letting his hands linger a moment too long. "You have to believe in what you're doing."

That could be a problem. And Ranger could be a problem. I was feeling much too attracted to him. Ranger wasn't listed under potential boyfriends in my Rolodex. Ranger was listed under crazed mercenaries. An attraction to Ranger would be like chasing after the doomsday orgasm.

I took a steadying breath. "I guess I could try a shift," I said. "See how it goes."

* * * * *

I WAS STILL wearing the hat when Ranger dropped me off at my apartment. I removed the cap and held it out to him. "Don't forget your SEALS hat."

Ranger looked at me from behind dark glasses. His eyes hidden. His thoughts unreadable. His voice soft. "Keep it. Looks good on you."

"It's a righteous hat."

He smiled. "Live up to it, Babe."

I pushed through the double glass doors into the lobby. I was about to take the stairs when the elevator opened and Mrs. Bestler leaned out. "Going up," she said. "Step to the rear of the car."

Mrs. Bestler was eighty-three and had an apartment on the third floor. When things got boring she played elevator operator.

"Morning, Mrs. Bestler," I said. "Second floor."

She hit the two button and eyeballed me. "Looks like you've been working. Catch any bad guys today?"

"Helped a friend clean an apartment."

Mrs. Bestler smiled. "What a good girl." The elevator stopped and the doors opened. "Second floor," Mrs. Bestler sang out. "Better dresses. Designer suits. Ladies' lounge."

I let myself into my apartment and went straight to the phone machine and its blinking red light.

I had two messages. The first was from Morelli, and it was for dinner. Miss Popularity, that's me.

"Meet you at Pino's at six," Morelli said.

Morelli's invitations always produced mixed emotions. The initial reaction was a sexual rush at the sound of his voice, the rush was followed by a queasy stomach while I considered his motives, and the queasy stomach eventually gave way to curiosity and anticipation. Ever the optimist.

The second message was from Mabel. "A man just came asking about Fred," Mabel said. "Something about a business deal, and he needed to find Fred right away. I explained how I couldn't help him, but I said you were on the job, so he shouldn't worry. I thought you might want to know."

I called Mabel back and asked who the man was and what he looked like.

"He was about my height," she said. "And he had brown hair."

"Caucasian?"

"Yes. And now that you mention it, he didn't give me his name."

"What kind of business deal was he talking about?"

"I don't know. He didn't say."

"Okay," I said. "Let me know if he bothers you again."

I checked in with the office to see if there were any new FTAs and was told no luck. I called my best friend, Mary Lou, but she couldn't talk because her youngest kid was sick with a cold, and the dog had eaten a sock and had just pooped it out on the living room rug.

I was contemplating Rex's soup can with new appreciation when the phone rang.

"I got it," Grandma said. "I got a name for you. I was at the beauty parlor this morning getting a set, and Harriet Schnable was there for a perm, and she said she heard at bingo that Fred's been paying calls on Winnie Black. Harriet isn't one of those to make something of nothing."

"Do you know Winnie Black?"

"Only through the seniors' club. She goes on the bus trip to Atlantic City sometimes. Her and her husband, Axel. I guess that's how Fred meets most of his honeys these days . . . at the seniors' meetings. A lot of those women are real hot to trot, if you know what I mean. I even got Winnie's address," Grandma said. "I called Ida Lukach. She's the club's membership chairman. She knows everything."

I took down the address and thanked Grandma.

"Personally, I'm hoping it was aliens," Grandma said. "But then I don't know what they'd want with an old fart like Fred."

I settled my new hat on my brown bear cookie jar and traded my jeans for a beige suit and heels. I didn't know Winnie Black, and I thought it wouldn't hurt to look professional. Sometimes people responded better to a suit than to jeans. I grabbed my shoulder bag, locked the apartment, and joined Mrs. Bestler in the elevator.

"Did he find you?" Mrs. Bestler wanted to know.

"Did who find me?"

"There was a man looking for you. Very polite. I let him off on your floor about ten minutes ago."

"He never knocked on my door. I would have heard him. I was in the kitchen almost the whole time."

"Isn't that odd." The elevator door opened to the lobby, and Mrs. Bestler smiled. "First floor. Ladies' handbags. Fine jewelry."

"What did the man look like?" I asked Mrs. Bestler.

"Oh, dear, he was big. Very big. And dark-skinned. African-American."

Not the man Mabel just called about. That guy was short and Caucasian.

"Did he have long hair? Maybe pulled back into a ponytail?"

"No. He almost didn't have any hair at all."

I did a fast check of the lobby. No big guy lurking in the corners. I exited the building and looked around the lot. Nobody there either. My visitor had disappeared. Too bad, I thought. I'd love an excuse not to visit Winnie Black. I'd talk to a census taker, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, a religious zealot. All preferable to Winnie Black. It was bad enough knowing cheapskate Uncle Fred had a girlfriend. I really didn't want to see her. I didn't want to confront Winnie Black and have to imagine her in the sack with duck-footed Fred.

* * * * *

WINNIE LIVED IN a little bungalow on Low Street. White clapboard with blue shutters and a red door. Very patriotic. I parked, marched up to her front door, and rang the bell. I hadn't any idea what I was going to say to this woman. Probably something like, Excuse me, are you going around the block with my uncle Fred?

I was about to ring a second time when the door opened and Winnie Black peered out at me.

She had a pleasant, round face and a pleasant, round body, and she didn't look like the sort to boff someone's uncle.

I introduced myself and gave her my card. "I'm looking for Fred Shutz," I said. "He's been missing since Friday, and I was hoping you might be able to give me some information."

The pleasant expression froze on her face. "I'd heard he was missing, but I don't know what I can tell you."

"When did you see him last?"

"The day he disappeared. He stopped by for some coffee and cake. He did that sometimes. It was right after lunch. And he stayed for about an hour. Axel, my husband, was out getting the tires rotated on the Chrysler."

Axel was getting his tires rotated. Unh! Mental head slap. "Did Fred seem sick or worried? Did he give any indication that he might be going off somewhere?"

"He was . . . distracted. He said he had something big going on."

"Did he say any more about it?"

"No. But I got the feeling it had to do with the garbage company. He was having a problem with his account. Something about the computer deleting his name from the customer list. And Fred said he had the goods on them, and he was going to make out in spades. Those were his exact words—'make out in spades.' I guess he never got to the garbage company."

"How do you know he never got to the garbage company?" I asked Winnie.

Winnie seemed surprised at the question. "Everyone knows."

No secrets in the Burg.

"One other thing," I said. "I found some photographs on Fred's desk. Did Fred ever mention any photographs to you?"

"No. Not that I can think of. Were these family photographs?"

"They were pictures of a garbage bag. And in some of the pictures you could see the bag's contents."

"No. I would have remembered something like that."

I looked over her shoulder into the interior of her neat little house. No husband in sight. "Is Axel around?"

"He's at the park with the dog."

I got back in the Buick and drove two blocks to the park. It was a patch of well-tended grass, two blocks long and a block wide. There were benches and flower beds and large trees, and there was a small kids' play area at one end.

It wasn't hard to spot Axel Black. He was sitting on a bench, lost in thought, with his dog at his side. The dog was a small mutt type, sitting there, eyes glazed, looking a lot like Axel. The difference was that Axel had glasses and the dog had hair.

I parked the car and approached the two. Neither moved, even when I was standing directly in front of them.

"Axel Black?" I asked.

He looked up at me. "Yes?"

I introduced myself and gave him my card. "I'm looking for Fred Shutz," I said. "And I've been talking to some of the seniors who might have known Fred."

"Bet they've been giving you an earful," Axel said. "Old Fred was a real character. Cheapest man who ever walked the earth. Argued over every nickel. Never contributed to anything. And he thought he was a Romeo, too. Always cozying up to some woman."

"Doesn't sound like you thought much of him."

"Had no use for the man," Axel said. "Don't wish him any harm, but don't like him much either. The truth is, he was shifty."

"You have any idea what happened to him?"

"Think he might have paid too much attention to the wrong woman."

I couldn't help thinking maybe he was talking about Winnie as being the wrong woman. And maybe he ran Fred over with his Chrysler, picked him up, shoved him in the trunk, and dumped him into the river.

That didn't explain the photographs, but maybe the photographs had nothing to do with Fred's disappearance.

"Well," I said, "if you think of anything, let me know."

"You bet," Axel said.

Fred's sons, Ronald and Walter, were next on my list. Ronald was the line foreman at the pork roll factory. Walter and his wife, Jean, owned a convenience store on Howard Street. I thought it wouldn't hurt to talk to Walter and Ronald. Mostly because when my mother asked me what I was doing to find Uncle Fred I needed to have something to say.

Walter and Jean had named their store the One-Stop. It was across the street from a twenty-four-hour supermarket and would have been driven out of business long ago were it not for the fact that in one stop customers could purchase a loaf of bread, play the numbers, and put down twenty dollars on some nag racing at Freehold.

Walter was behind the register reading the paper when I walked into the store. It was early afternoon, and the store was empty. Walter put the paper down and got to his feet. "Did you find him?"

"No. Sorry."

He took a deep breath. "Jesus. I thought you were coming to tell me he was dead."

"Do you think he's dead?"

"I don't know what I think. In the beginning I figured he just wandered off. Had another stroke or something. But now I can't figure it. None of it makes sense."

"Do you know anything about Fred having problems with his garbage company?"

"Dad had problems with everyone," Walter said.

I said good-bye to Walter, fired up the Buick, and drove across town to the pork roll factory. I parked in a visitor slot, went inside, and asked the woman at the front desk to pass a note through to Ronald.

Ronald came out a few minutes later. "I guess this is about Dad," he said. "Nice of you to help us look for him. I can't believe he hasn't turned up by now."

"Do you have any theories?"

"None I'd want to say out loud."

"The women in his life?"

Ronald shook his head. "He was a pip. Cheap as they come and could never keep his pecker in his pants. I don't know if he can still fire up the old engine, but he's still running around. Christ, he's seventy-two years old."

"Do you know anything about a disagreement with the garbage company?"

"No, but he's had a year-long feud with his insurance company."