Lean Mean Thirteen

THIRTEEN

MORELLI'S HOUSE IS officially outside the Burg, but not by much. It was a five-minute drive from the bonds office. I parked the Cayenne and fished Morelli's house key out of my bag.

"I'll be right out," I said to Lula. "Stay here." Morelli lives in a narrow two-story house configured a lot like my parents'. Rooms are shotgunned with living room going to dining room going to kitchen. Front door. Back door. Downstairs powder room. Small, barren backyard leading to an alley. Three small bedrooms and old-fashioned bath upstairs. Morelli inherited the house from his Aunt Rose and little by little has been making it his own. I unlocked the front door and stepped into the short hallway that serves as foyer and also leads to the stairs. I'd expected the house would be silent and empty, but the television was on in the living room. My first reaction was confusion, fast followed by a rush of embarrassment. Someone was living here in Morelli's absence. Maybe an out-of-town relative or a down-on-his-luck cop. And I'd barged in unannounced.

I was about to quietly sneak out when Dickie Orr walked in from the kitchen. He was eating ice cream out of the tub, his hair was a mess, as if he'd just rolled out of bed, and he was in his underwear-a white undershirt with a chocolate ice cream stain dribbling down the front and baggy striped boxers.

Time stood still. The earth stopped rotating. My heart stuttered in my chest.

"Wha…" I said. "Wha…"

Dickie rolled his eyes and shoved his spoon into the ice cream. "Joe!" he yelled. "You've got company."

I could hear Morelli's sneakered feet on the stairs and then he was in the room.

"Oh, shit," Morelli said when he saw me.

I gave him a little finger wave. "Hi."

I was feeling awkward. Embarrassed that I had stumbled into this, and angry that it had been kept from me.

"I can explain," Morelli said.

"Uh-hunh."

"Good luck on that one," Dickie said. "There's no explaining to her. You make one slipup and that's it. Sayonara."

"Shut up, Dick breath," I said. "And anyway, it wasn't one slipup. In the fifteen minutes we were married, you screwed half the women in Trenton."

"I have a high libido," Dickie said to Morelli.

"It had nothing to do with your libido. It had to do with the fact that you're a pathological liar and a worm."

"You have control issues," Dickie said. "Men aren't designed for monogamy, and you can't handle that."

I narrowed my eyes at Morelli. "Hit him."

"I can't hit him," Morelli said. "He's in my protective custody."

"And you!" I said to Morelli.

"I had no choice," Morelli said. "He had to get squirreled away somewhere, and I had the house, so he got dropped in my lap."

"You could have told me!"

"I couldn't tell you. You would have acted differently."

"I thought I was going to jail for murder!"

"I told you not to worry," Morelli said.

"How was I supposed to know that actually meant something? People say that all the time."

"What about me?" Morelli said. "Where's the sympathy for me? I've been trapped in my house with this idiot."

"Boy, that hurts," Dickie said. "I thought we were bonding."

"What about the shooting at your house the night you disappeared?" I asked Dickie. "And what about the blood on your floor?"

Morelli was hands in pockets, rocked back on his heels. "Dickie shot one of the hired help in the knee. And then he ran like hell out his back door, right Dickie?"

"I ran like the wind."

"And why is Dickie here in protective custody?"

"They wanted him on ice while they investigated the law firm's client list. The original thought was we needed him to testify against his partners, but his partners have disappeared in one way or another. One is confirmed dead and another presumed dead. And the third dropped off the face of the earth when Dickie went missing."

"You can't find Petiak?"

"Vanished. We know he's still around because from time to time one of his goon squad surfaces."

"So I'm off the hook."

"Yep," Morelli said.

"What about Gorvich? I thought I was a suspect there."

"I wanted you to dredge up an alibi in case the press came to you." His attention fixed on my RangeMan jacket. "What are you doing in RangeMan clothes? You were head-to-toe RangeMan this morning."

"I ran out of clean clothes and these were available."

"Available? Where were they available?"

"In Ranger's closet."

"Are you fucking kidding me? I'm holed up here with the witness from hell and you've moved in with Ranger?"

"You told him to take care of me."

"Not that way!"

"There's no that way going on. It's no different from what you've got here. You've got Dick-head in protective custody. Does that mean you're sleeping with him?"

The color was rising in Morelli’s face. "I'll kill him."

"You will not kill him. Read my lips… nothing has happened between us." At least, not the main event. I chose to believe the prelims didn't count in this case. "And I'm not moved in with him. I'm going home and I'm going to get on with my life now that I know I'm not a murder suspect."

"Maybe you should move in here," Morelli said. "There's a lunatic out there with a flamethrower, and you're mixed up in it somehow."

"No thanks. I already did time with Dickie. I'll take my chances with the flamethrower." I went to the television and looked through the DVDs stacked alongside. "I just stopped around to borrow the Lethal Weapon collection." I found the boxed set and looked over at Morelli. "You don't mind?"

"What's mine is yours," Morelli said.

I let myself out and jogged to the Porsche.

"I thought you decided to take a nap in there," Lula said.

I handed the DVDs over to her and pulled the car out of Morelli's driveway. "It took a while to find them."

In a half hour, we were in front of Coglin's house. I paged through his file, found his phone number, and called him.

"I'm in front of your house," I said. "I want to talk to you, and I don't want to end up with squirrel guts in my hair. Can we call a truce for ten minutes?"

"Yeah, I guess that would be okay," Coglin said. "If you promise you won't try to take me in now."

"Promise."

Lula followed me to the door. "He better not go back on his word. I don't want to smell like rodent when Tank comes over tonight."

I opened the door and took a step back. "Is it okay to come in?" I yelled into the house.

Coglin appeared in the hall. "I disconnected the booby trap. It's safe to come in."

"Someday you're gonna hurt someone with those beaver bombs," Lula said.

"I only use stuffing that's soft," Coglin said.

"Yeah, but what about them button eyes? Suppose you got hit with one of them eyes? That would leave a bruise."

Coglin had an apron on. "I'm kind of busy," he said. "What did you want?"

"Are you stuffing up some roadkill?" Lula asked.

"No. I'm making a meatloaf for supper."

"I wanted to talk to you about your court appearance," I said to Coglin. "When you didn't show up, you became a felon. And the original charge didn't look that bad. Destruction of property. The details aren't on the bond application. What sort of property did you destroy?"

"I went nuts and exploded an opossum in a cable company truck."

"Uh oh," Lula said. "The cable police will get you for that one."

Coglin turned white. "Omigod, there are cable police?"

"She's kidding," I told him. "You're kidding, right?" I said to Lula.

"Probably," Lula said.

"It all started when the city put in new water pipes," Coglin said. "They cut through my cable line when they dug a trench through my front yard to lay the new pipe. So I called the cable company and left my name, but they never called me back."

"Those fuckers," Lula said. "They never call anyone back."

"I called them and left my name every day for three weeks, and no one ever called me back. Then after three weeks someone actually answered a phone at the cable company. A real person."

"Get out," Lula said. "They don't have real people working there. Everyone knows that."

"No. I swear, it's true. Someone answered the phone. So after they had me on hold for an hour, I explained the problem and they said they would send someone out in two weeks, and they gave me the day. So I stayed home all that day, and the next day, and the next day. And on the third day, someone came to fix my cable problem. Except they were told the problem was inside my house, and it was really outside, so they couldn't fix it.

"It's not like I just have television, you know. I sell my animals on the Internet, and I didn't have any Internet connection all this time. So I gave the guy twenty dollars, and he ran a line from the junction box across the street to my house. Only it's like a plastic cable kind of thing, so right away, with all the cars rolling over it, the cable started breaking. So I wrapped it in electrician's tape. And I do that twice a day to hold the cable together."

"How long you been doing this?" Lula asked.

"Three months. I keep calling them back and telling them, and they keep saying they're going to send the first available crew out to me, but I have to be home or I'll get put at the end of the line. So that's why I can't go downtown with you. I never leave for more than five minutes unless it's real late at night. Even when it looks like my car is gone and I'm not in the house, I'm watching from somewhere. I can't take a chance on missing the cable repairman."

"And the opossum in the truck?"

"The cable repairman stopped at my neighbor's house three weeks ago and swapped out his broken box, and I went postal and threw a performance piece through the drivers side window."

"And you think they're still gonna give you cable service after you bombed their truck?"

"They send me a bill every month, and I always pay on time. I figure that means something. And twice I got an automated message that said a crew was scheduled, but they never showed up."

"Well, I can understand why you can't go to the police station and get re-bonded," Lula said. "There's extenuating circumstances."

"They might never show up," I told Coglin.

"My friend Marty lives on the next block, and he had the exact same thing happen, and they showed up one day and fixed his cable."

"How long did he wait?"

"It was almost five months."

"And he stayed home for five months?" I asked Coglin.

"Yes, you have to. It's the rule. He lost his job, but he got his cable fixed."

"I hate those fuckers," Lula said.

"So as soon as the cable guy shows up and fixes your cable, you'll call me?"

"Yes."

Lula and I walked back to the Cayenne and stopped to look at the cable running across the road. It was thick with electrician's tape, and in places had been wrapped in foam and then over wrapped with the tape."

"So what's going on with you and Tank?" I asked Lula. "Is it serious?"

"Yeah, but only for about twelve minutes at a time."

"Twelve minutes is good."

"We've been working up to it. And then, if you add all the twelve minutes together, you get a whole hour. You want an hour with Morelli, you just get him watching one of them Lethal Weapon movies."

I wasn't sure I wanted an hour. My egg timer was set on twenty-two minutes. Eighteen, if Morelli was on his game. An hour sounded like a lot of work. And if it was divided up into five twelve-minute sessions, I suspected I'd need mechanical devices. Although there was no doubt in my mind Morelli could manage it.

I drove Lula back to the office and dropped her at her car.

"Looks like Joyce is parked across the street," Lula said. "And she's got Smullen's girlfriend with her."

I waved at them. "Hi," I said.

"Fuck you," Joyce yelled.

"She's in a mood," Lula said.

Most likely because it was a lot harder to pick up my trail now that I wasn't broadcasting.

"Have fun tonight," I said to Lula. "See you tomorrow."

I drove to my apartment with Joyce tagging along. No threat there. I wasn't going to lead her to anything. It was late afternoon, and I was going to have a peaceful evening at home. I'd call Ranger and tell him I was home with Rex and that everything was right with my world. Then I'd shove something frozen into the microwave, crack open a beer, and watch television. And Joyce could sit in my lot until her ass fell asleep. The $40 million was out there somewhere, but I didn't care anymore. Joyce's problem, not mine. I was off the hook. I wasn't wanted for murder. Hooray.

I parked, ran upstairs, and waltzed into my apartment. Nice and quiet. Not as luxurious as Rangers apartment, but it was mine, and it felt like home. I gave Rex fresh water and dropped a small chunk of cheese into his cage.

Something banged against my front door. I went to the peephole to look out but before I reached the door, there was a wrenching noise and another loud thud, and the door flew open and crashed against the wall.

It was the big, bleached-blond, muscle-bound moron with the stapled balls. He rushed inside and grabbed me. I shrieked, and he clamped a hand to my mouth.

"Shut up," he said, "or I'll hit you. I'd like to do that anyway, except my boss wants you in one piece."

"Why?"

"I don't know. That's just his way."

"No, I mean why does he want me?"

"My boss doesn't like people who get too nosy. And you've got a knack for being in places you don't belong. My boss thinks you know something."

"Who, me? No way. I don't know anything. You could fill a room with what I don't know."

"You can tell it to my boss. He wants to talk to you. You can cooperate and walk out with me. Or I can stun-gun you and carry you out. Which is it?"

One more stun gun and I was going to permanently forget half the alphabet.

"I'll walk out."

He turned and Joyce was standing there with a gun in her hand.

"No way, Jose," Joyce said. "I'm following her. I saw her first. You want the money? Find it yourself."

"Fuck off. And my name isn't Jose. It's Dave."

"I'm counting to three, Dave. If you aren't hauling ass by three, I'm going to shoot you in the nuts."

"What is it with my nuts? Why's everybody picking on my nuts?"

"One," Joyce said.

"You're getting on my nerves."

“Two.”

"Screw this," Dave said.

He grabbed the barrel of the gun, the gun discharged, and Joyce shot off the top of his pinkie finger.

Dead silence. We were all surprised.

Dave looked at his shortened pinkie, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he crashed face-first to the floor.

"Shit, Joyce," I said to her. "There's blood all over the hall and Dillon just did the floors."

Joyce put her boot to Dave and rolled him onto his back. "Was his nose always flat like that?"

"No. And he didn't used to have blood coming out of it either. He broke it when he fell on his face."

Joyce took his hand and shoved it into his pants so he wouldn't get any more blood on the floor. "What do you want to do with him? We could call 911. Or we can put him in the elevator and push the button."

"Was he alone?"

"No. He has a partner waiting in a black BMW."

"We'll turn him over to the partner."

We dragged him to the elevator and rode him down to the ground level. Then we dragged him out to the parking lot, and Joyce whistled through her teeth to get the partner's attention.

The BMW drove up and the partner got out and squinted down at Dave. Dave still had his hand rammed into his pants, and his crotch had a big bloodstain.

"Jesus, lady," Dave's partner said. "Goddamn."

"It's not as bad as it looks. Joyce wanted to shoot him in the nuts, but the gun discharged prematurely. Probably that happens a lot with you guys, right?"

"What?"

"Anyway, she just shot his pinkie finger off. We put his hand in his pants so he wouldn't bleed on the carpet."

"Man, that's cold."

"Do you need help getting him into the car?"

Dave's partner reached inside and popped the trunk.

"He's not dead," I said to the partner.

"This is a new BMW with real leather seats. I don't want him bleeding all over everything. He'll be fine in the trunk."

Joyce had her gun drawn, presumably protecting her investment, which was me. Go figure, saved by Joyce Barnhardt.

"Don't try anything stupid," Joyce said to Dave's partner. "It was disappointing to have to settle for a pinkie finger. I wouldn't mind getting a second chance to shoot someone's nuts off."

I grabbed Dave's leg and helped wrangle him into the trunk. We closed the lid, and the BMW sped out of the lot.

"So what's the deal for the rest of the day?" Joyce said. "Are you staying here?"

That was the original plan, but I had a feeling Dave might come back after he got his nose straightened and his finger stitched up.

"I'm going to spend the night at RangeMan," I told Joyce.

"Give him a hug for me," Joyce said. And she walked to her car and took off.

I ran upstairs, hung my bag on my shoulder, and wrapped my arms around Rex's aquarium. I carted Rex out to the Porsche. Then I ran down to the basement and told Dillon about the door and the carpet. Dillon didn't look all that surprised. It wasn't the first tune he'd had to fix my door.