Notorious Nineteen

THREE

MY PARENTS LIVE in a small mustard yellow and brown two-story house that shares a wall with an identical house that is painted lime green. I suppose the two-family house seemed like an economical idea forty years ago at the time of construction. And there are many of them in the Burg. Siamese twins conjoined at the living room downstairs and master bedroom upstairs, with separate brains. The house has a postage stamp front yard, a small front porch, and a long, narrow backyard. The floor plan is shotgun. Living room, dining room, kitchen. Three small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

My Grandma Mazur lives with my parents. She moved in when my Grandpa Mazur’s arteries totally clogged with pork fat and he got a one-way ticket to God’s big pig roast in the sky. Grandma was at the front door when Lula eased the Firebird to a stop at the curb. I used to think Grandma had a telepathic way of knowing when I approached, but I now realize Grandma just stands at the door watching the cars roll by, like the street is a reality show. Her face lit, and she waved as we drove up.

“I like your granny,” Lula said. “She always looks like she’s happy to see us. That’s not something happens every day. Half the time we knock on a door and people shoot at us.”

“Yes, but that’s only half the time. Sometimes they just run away. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, Kemo Sabe.”

“How’s business?” Grandma asked when I got to the door. “Did you catch anyone today? Where’s your car?”

“My car got blown up.”

“Again? How many does that make this month?”

“It’s the only one this month. I was hoping I could borrow Big Blue.”

“Sure, you can borrow it whenever you want. I don’t drive it on account of it don’t make me look hot.”

I suppose everything’s relative, but I thought it would take more than a fast car to make Grandma look hot. Gravity hasn’t been kind to Grandma. She also doesn’t have a license, due to a heavy foot on the accelerator. Still, I suspected lack of license wouldn’t stop her if she had access to a Ferrari.

I heard a car door slam and turned to see Lula coming toward us.

“I smell fried chicken,” Lula said.

Grandma waved her in. “Stephanie’s mother is frying some up for dinner. And we got a chocolate cake for dessert. We got plenty if you want to stay.”

A half hour later Lula and I were at the dining room table, eating the fried chicken with my mom, dad, and Grandma Mazur.

“Stephanie blew up another car,” Grandma Mazur announced, spooning out mashed potatoes.

“Technically some gang guy blew it up,” Lula said. “And the car wasn’t worth much. The battery was dead.”

My mother made the sign of the cross and belted back half a glass of what looked like ice tea but smelled a lot like Jim Beam. My father kept his head down and gnawed on a chicken leg.

“I wasn’t in it,” I said. “It was an accident.”

“I don’t understand how you have all these accidents,” my mother said. “I don’t know of a single other person who’s had his car blown up.” She looked down the table at my father. “Frank, do you know of anyone else who’s ever had their car blown up? Frank! Are you listening to me?”

My father picked his head up and a piece of chicken fell out of his mouth. “What?”

“It’s our job,” Lula said. “It’s one of them occupational hazards. Like another hazard is getting hospital cooties. We had to do some investigating in a hospital today, and I might have got the cooties.”

“I bet you were tracking down Geoffrey Cubbin,” Grandma said. “Connie called me asking about his doctor. I know something about it on account of Lorraine Moochy has a relative in Cranberry Manor, and Lorraine said Cubbin is gonna need a lot of doctors if those people get their hands on him.”

“What else did Lorraine say about him?” I asked Grandma.

“She said he seemed like a real nice man and then next thing he stole all the money. Cranberry Manor’s one of them places you buy into, and it isn’t cheap. Cranberry Manor’s top of the line considering it’s in Jersey. Lorraine says it could close down, and her relative would have her keester tossed out onto the street.”

“Sounds like she’s boned,” Lula said.

“Boned?” my mother asked.

Grandma selected another piece of chicken. “That’s a polite way of using the f word.”

My mother cut her eyes to the kitchen, and I knew she was thinking about refilling her “ice tea.” Grandma and I are a trial to her. My mother tries hard to be a good Christian woman and a model of decorum, but Grandma and I not so much. It isn’t that we don’t want to be decorous Christian women. It’s just that it doesn’t always go that way.

“Vinnie bonded Geoffrey Cubbin out,” Lula said. “And now we gotta find him.”

“It’s a real interesting case,” Grandma said. “He just up and got dressed in the middle of the night and walked out. If you ask me it’s fishy. And I know his doctor is named Fish, but I don’t mean that way. Cubbin had stitches and everything. You don’t go jogging down the hall and hailing a cab two days after you get your appendix cut out. You creep around hunched over, doing a lot of moaning and complaining.”

“So what do you think happened to him?” Lula asked.

“I don’t know, but seems to me he had to have help,” Grandma said.

“That’s what I think too. And why didn’t anyone see him standing waiting for the elevator?” Lula asked.

“Budget cuts,” Grandma said. “They hardly got any nurses working. And used to be they had cameras in the elevators, but I hear they go on the fritz all the time. I tell you, hospitals aren’t what they used to be. Myra and I go to Central for lunch once a week, but the food’s gotten terrible lately and people are turning surly.”

“You must know a lot of sick people,” Lula said.

“We don’t go to visit sick people,” Grandma said. “We just go for lunch. They always have a big buffet in the cafeteria, and it’s cheap because that’s where the people who work at the hospital eat. Everybody’s wearing those scrub clothes. It’s just like being in Grey’s Anatomy. All the seniors eat there, and sometimes you can score a date. I met a real hottie there last month, but he had an aneurysm and died before I could haul him in. And then after lunch we go to the Costco and get desserts from the free-sample ladies.”

“I love those ladies,” Lula said.

“At the end of the month if Myra and me run out of Social Security we skip the hospital and just have lunch from the free-sample ladies,” Grandma said.

“Honestly,” my mother said. “You make it sound like I don’t feed you. There’s always good food here for lunch.”

“I like to eat out once in a while,” Grandma said. “Gives me a reason to put lipstick on. And there’s always a lot of drama at the hospital. I got the dirt on all the nurses. You just gotta sit by the right people and keep your ears open.”

“We should put you on the case,” Lula said to Grandma. “We went to the hospital, and we couldn’t find out nothing.”

“You tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll find it,” Grandma said. “I’m real nosy, and I’ve been thinking about turning professional.”

“That would be an excellent plan,” Lula said. “We wouldn’t have to go back to Central if you were there. We could spend our time doing other important stuff that’s not in a hospital.”

“It’s not an excellent plan,” my mother said. “It’s an awful plan. Isn’t it enough she causes havoc in every funeral home in a twenty-mile radius?”

“Not always,” Grandma said. “I just don’t like when they have a closed casket. I think it’s a gyp. How do you know if there’s anyone in there?”

My mother shook her fork at me. “I’m holding you responsible. If your grandmother gets arrested for disturbing the peace in that hospital you can kiss chocolate cake goodbye for the rest of your life. Pineapple upside-down cake too.”

“Boy, that’s hardball,” Lula said.

“I wouldn’t want you to do without pineapple upside-down cake,” Grandma said. “I guess I shouldn’t snoop for you. I gotta go to the hairdresser anyway. There’s going to be a big viewing tomorrow night for Stanley Kuberski, and I want to look good. The paper said the Elks will be holding a ceremony for him, and there’s a couple hot Elks I got my eye on.”

“You should go with your grandmother,” my mother said. “Loretta Gross’s boy, Cameron, is an Elk. I bet he’ll be there, and he just got a divorce.”

“Is he hot?” Grandma asked. “I might be interested in him.”

“He’s too young for you,” my mother said.

My father shoveled in potatoes. “Everyone is too young for her.”

“I’m aiming for young,” Grandma said. “When I go out with someone old they die before I can reel them in. Besides, I’ve been told I don’t look my age.”

It’s true that Grandma doesn’t look her age. She looks about ninety.

It was a little after eight o’clock when Lula and I left my parents’ house. Lula drove off in her red Firebird, and I drove off in Big Blue. I had a bag of leftovers on the seat beside me, and I was at a crossroads. I could take the leftovers home, or I could drive the short distance to Morelli’s house and share. Sharing seemed like the way to go since I was going to beg off our Friday night date.

Joe Morelli inherited a house from his Aunt Rose. It’s just outside the Burg boundary, on a quiet street in a blue-collar neighborhood much like the Burg. It’s a small two-story row house that is a comfortable mix of Morelli and his aunt. Her old-fashioned curtains still hang on the windows, but most of the furniture belongs to Morelli and his shaggy red-haired dog Bob. Bob is part Golden Retriever and part Wookiee. He eats everything, loves everyone, and mellows out Morelli.

I parked in front of Morelli’s house, went to the door, and let myself in. “Hey!” I yelled. “I’ve got food. Anybody home?”

Bob gave a woof from the kitchen at the back of the house and I heard him gallop toward me. He came at me full speed, put his front paws on my chest, and knocked me flat on my back. He ripped the food bag out of my hand and galloped off.

Morelli sauntered over from the living room and helped me up. “Are you okay?”

“I was bringing you fried chicken, but Bob knocked me down and took the bag of food.”

“Damn,” Morelli said. “He can’t have chicken bones. He hacks them up in the middle of the night.”

Morelli left me to track down Bob, there was a lot of yelling and growling from the vicinity of the kitchen, and Morelli returned to the living room with the bag of food, a fork, and two beers. He wrapped an arm around my neck, pulled me into him, and kissed me.

“The Mets are up by two runs,” he said. “What’s going on with you?”

I sat next to him on the couch and took a beer. “I had to borrow Big Blue, so I had dinner with my parents.”

“Something wrong with your car?”

“It accidentally got blown up.”

Morelli turned and focused on me. “Car bomb?”

“Hand-held rocket.”

The line of his mouth tightened a little, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “It was an accident?”

“I was on Stark Street.”

“That explains it,” Morelli said, his attention back to the bag of food.

He ate the chocolate cake first. He gave some potatoes to Bob. And he put the rest in the fridge for later.

“This is a nice surprise,” he said, settling back into the couch. “Do you want to take your clothes off?”

“Whatever happened to romance? What about foreplay?”

“Foreplay goes faster without clothes.”

“Fast is important?”

Morelli flicked his eyes back to the television. “They’re changing the pitcher. We probably have ten minutes.”

“I need more than ten minutes.”

Morelli grinned at me, and his eyes got soft and dark. “I know.”

“And I get distracted by television.”

He remoted the television off. “Yeah, I know that too.”

“What happens after ten minutes and the new pitcher’s ready to go?”

“Fireworks. And then you tell me I’m amazing.”

“Suppose there aren’t fireworks after ten minutes?”

“I’m no quitter,” Morelli said.

I knew this to be true. “I think I’m getting in the mood,” I said to him. “And I can see you’re already a couple steps ahead of me.”

“You noticed.”

“Hard not to.”

He nuzzled my neck, popped the snap at the top of my jeans, and slid the zipper down. “Let me help you catch up.”