07 Seven Up (3 page)

My father reached for the carving knife, and my mother cut him down with a steel-eyed look that said don't even think about it.

My father's retired from the post office. He drives a cab part-time, only buys American cars, and smokes cigars out behind the garage: when my mother isn't home. I don't think my dad would actually stab Grandma Mazur with the carving knife. Still, if she choked on a chicken bone I'm not sure he'd be all that unhappy.

“I'm looking for Eddie DeChooch,” I said to Grandma. “He's FTA. Do you have any ideas about where he might be hiding?”

“He's friends with Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci. And there's his nephew Ronald.”

“Do you think he'd leave the country?”

“You mean because he might have put those holes in Loretta? I don't think so. He's been accused of killing people before and he never left the country. At least not that I know of.”

“I hate this,” my mother said. “I hate having a daughter who goes out after killers. What's the matter with Vinnie for giving this case to you?” She glared at my father. “Frank, he's your side of the family. You need to talk to him. And why can't you be more like your sister, Valerie?” my mother asked me. “She's happily married with two beautiful children. She doesn't go around chasing after killers, finding dead bodies.”

“Stephanie's almost happily married,” Grandma said. “She got engaged last month.”

“Do you see a ring on her finger?” my mother asked.

Everyone looked at my naked finger.

“I don't want to talk about it,” I said.

“I think Stephanie's got the hots for someone else,” Grandma said. “I think she's sweet on that Ranger fella.”

My father paused with his fork plunged into a mound of potatoes. “The bounty hunter? The black guy?”

My father was an equal opportunity bigot. He didn't go around painting swastikas on churches, and he didn't discriminate against minorities. It was just that with the possible exception of my mother, if you weren't Italian you weren't quite up to standards.

“He's Cuban-American,” I said.

My mother did another sign of the cross.

IT WAS DARK when I left my parents. I didn't expect Eddie DeChooch to be home, but I drove past his house anyway. Lights were blazing in the Marguchi half. The DeChooch half was lifeless. I caught a glimpse of yellow crime-scene tape still stretched across the backyard.

There were questions I wanted to ask Mrs. Marguchi, but they'd keep. I didn't want to disturb her tonight. Her day had been bad enough. I'd catch her tomorrow, and on the way I'd stop at the office and get an address for Garvey and Colucci.

I cruised around the block and headed for Hamilton Avenue. My apartment building is located a couple miles from the Burg. It's a sturdy, three-story chunk of brick and mortar built in the seventies with economy in mind. It doesn't come with a lot of amenities, but it has a decent super who'll do anything for a six-pack of beer, the elevator almost always works, and the rent is reasonable.

I parked in the lot and looked up at my apartment. The lights were on. Someone was home and it wasn't me. It was probably Morelli. He had a key. I felt a rush of excitement at the thought of seeing him, quickly followed by a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Morelli and I have known each other since we were kids, and life has never been simple between us.

I took the stairs, trying out emotions, settling on conditionally happy. Truth is, Morelli and I are pretty sure we love each other. We're just not sure we can stand to live together for the rest of our lives. I don't especially want to marry a cop. Morelli doesn't want to marry a bounty hunter. And then there's Ranger.

I opened the door to my apartment and found two old guys sitting on my couch, watching a ball game on television. No Morelli in sight. They both stood and smiled when I came into the room.

“You must be Stephanie Plum,” one of the men said. “Allow me to make the introductions. I'm Benny Colucci and this is my friend and colleague, Ziggy Garvey.”

“How did you get into my apartment?”

“Your door was open.”

“No, it wasn't.”

The smile widened. “It was Ziggy. He's got the touch with a lock.”

Ziggy beamed and wiggled his fingers. “I'm an old coot, but my fingers still work.”

“I'm not crazy about people breaking into my apartment,” I said.

Benny solemnly nodded. “I understand, but we thought in this instance it would be okay, being that we have something of a very serious nature to discuss.”

“And urgent,” Ziggy added. “Also of an urgent nature.”

They looked at each other and agreed. It was urgent.

“And besides,” Ziggy said. “You got some nosy neighbors. We were waiting for you in the hall, but there was a lady who kept opening her door and looking at us. It made us uncomfortable.”

“I think she was interested in us, if you know what I mean. And we don't do anything funny like that. We're married men.”

“Maybe when we were younger,” Ziggy said, smiling.

“So what's this urgent business?”

“Ziggy and me happen to be very good friends of Eddie DeChooch,” Benny said. “Ziggy and Eddie and me go way back. So Ziggy and me are concerned about Eddie's sudden disappearance. We're worried Eddie might be in trouble.”

“You mean because he killed Loretta Ricci?”

“No, we don't think that's a big issue. People are always accusing Eddie of killing people.”

Ziggy leaned forward in a conspiratorial whisper. “Bum raps, all of them.”

Of course.

“We're concerned because we think Eddie might not be thinking right,” Benny said. “He's been in this depression. We go to see him and he don't want to talk to us. He's never been like that.”

“It's not normal,” Ziggy said.

“Anyway, we know you're looking for him, and we don't want him to get hurt, you understand?”

“You don't want me to shoot him.”

“Yeah.”

“I almost never shoot people.”

“Sometimes it happens, but God forbid it would be Choochy,” Benny said. “We're trying to prevent it from being Choochy.”

“Hey,” I said, “if he gets shot it won't be my bullet.”

“And then there's something else,” Benny said. “We're trying to find Choochy so we can help him.”

Ziggy nodded. “We think maybe he should be seeing a doctor. Maybe he needs a psychiatrist. So we figured we could work together being that you're looking for him, too.”

“Sure,” I said, “if I find him I'll let you know.” After I delivered him up to the court and had him safely behind bars.

“And we were wondering if you have any leads?”

“Nope. None.”

“Gee, we were counting on you to have some leads. We heard you were pretty good.”

“Actually, I'm not all that good . . . it's more that I'm lucky.”

Another exchange of glances.

“So, are you, you know, feeling lucky about this?” Benny asked.

Hard to feel lucky when I've just let a depressed senior citizen slip through my fingers, found a dead woman in his shed, and sat through dinner with my parents. “Well, it's sort of too early to tell.”

There was some fumbling at the door, the door swung open, and Mooner ambled in. Mooner was wearing a head-to-toe purple spandex bodysuit with a big silver M sewn onto the chest.

“Hey dude,” Mooner said. “I tried calling you, but you were never home. I wanted to show you my new Super Mooner Suit.”

“Cripes,” Benny said, “he looks like a flaming fruit.”

“I'm a superhero, dude,” the Mooner said.

“Super fruitcake is more like it. You walk around in this suit all day?”

“No way, dude. This is my secret suit. Ordinarily I only wear this when I'm doing super deeds, but I wanted the dudette here to get the full impact, so I changed in the hall.”

“Can you fly like Superman?” Benny asked Mooner.

“No, but I can fly in my mind, dude. Like, I can soar.”

“Oh boy,” Benny said.

Ziggy looked at his watch. “We gotta go. If you get a line on Choochy you'll let us know, right?”

“Sure.” Maybe.

I watched them leave. They were like Jack Sprat and his wife. Benny was about fifty pounds overweight with chins spilling over his collar. And Ziggy looked like a turkey carcass. I assumed they both lived in the Burg and belonged to Chooch's club, but I didn't know that for certain. Another assumption was that they were on file as former Vincent Plum bondees since they hadn't felt it necessary to give me their phone numbers.

“So what do you think of the suit?” Mooner asked me when Benny and Ziggy left. “Dougie and me found a whole box of them. I think they're like for swimmers or runners or something. Dougie and me don't know any swimmers who could use them, but we thought we could turn them into Super Suits. See, you can wear them like underwear and then when you need to be a superhero you just take your clothes off. Only problem is we haven't got any capes. That's probably why the old dude didn't know I was a superhero. No cape.”

“You don't really think you're a superhero, do you?”

“You mean like in real life?”

“Yeah.”

Mooner looked astonished. “Superheroes are like, fiction. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?”

“Just checking.”

I'd gone to high school with Walter “MoonMan” Dunphy and Dougie “The Dealer” Kruper.

Mooner lives with two other guys in a narrow row house on Grant Street. Together they form the Legion of Losers. They're all potheads and misfits, floating from one menial job to the next, living hand-to-mouth. They're also gentle and harmless and utterly adoptable. I don't exactly hang with Mooner. It's more that we keep in touch, and when our paths cross he tends to generate maternal feelings in me. Mooner is like a goofy stray kitten that shows up for a bowl of kibble once in a while.

Dougie lives several units down in the same row of attached houses. In high school Dougie was the kid who wore the dorky button-down shirt when all the other kids wore T-shirts. Dougie didn't get great grades, didn't do sports, didn't play a musical instrument, and didn't have a cool car. Dougie's solitary accomplishment was his ability to suck Jell-O into his nose through a straw.

After graduation it was rumored that Dougie had moved to Arkansas and died. And then several months ago Dougie surfaced in the Burg, alive and well. And last month Dougie got nailed for fencing stolen goods out of his house. At the time of his arrest his dealing had seemed more community service than crime since he'd become the definitive source for cut-rate Metamucil, and for the first time in years Burg seniors were regular.

“I thought Dougie shut down his dealership,” I said to Mooner.

“No, man, I mean we really found these suits. They were like in a box in the attic. We were cleaning the house out and we came across them.”

I was pretty sure I believed him.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “Cool, huh?”

The suit was lightweight Lycra, fitting his gangly frame perfectly without a wrinkle . . . and that included his doodle area. Not much left to the imagination. If the suit was on Ranger I wouldn't complain, but this was more than I wanted to see of the Mooner.

“The suit is terrific.”

“Since Dougie and me have these cool suits, we decided we'd be crime-fighters . . . like Batman.”

Batman seemed like a nice change. Usually Mooner and Dougie were Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

Mooner pushed the Lycra cap back off his head, and his long brown hair spilled out. “We were going to start fighting crime tonight. Only problem is, Dougie's gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“Like he just disappeared, dude. He called me on Tuesday and told me he had some stuff to do, but I should come over to watch wrestling last night. We were gonna watch it on Dougie's big screen. It was like an awesome event, dude. Anyway, Dougie never showed up. He wouldn't have missed wrestling unless something awful happened. He wears like four pagers on him and he's not answering any of them. I don't know what to think.”

“Did you go out looking for him? Could he be at a friend's house?”

“I'm telling you, it's not like him to miss wrestling,” Mooner said. “Like nobody misses wrestling, dude. He was all excited about it. I think something bad's happened.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. I just have this bad feeling.”

We both sucked in a breath when the phone rang, as if our suspecting disaster would make it happen.

“He's here,” Grandma said at the other end of the line.

“Who? Who's where?”

“Eddie DeChooch! Mabel picked me up after you left so we could pay our respects to Anthony Varga. He's laid out at Stiva's and Stiva did a real good job. I don't know how Stiva does it. Anthony Varga hasn't looked this good for twenty-five years. He should have come to Stiva when he was alive. Anyway, we're still here, and Eddie DeChooch just walked into the funeral parlor.”

“I'll be right there.”

No matter if you're suffering depression or wanted for murder, you still pay your respects in the Burg.

I grabbed my shoulder bag off the kitchen counter and shoved Mooner out the door. “I have to run. I'll make some phone calls and I'll get back to you. In the meantime, you should go home and maybe Dougie will show up.”

“Which home should I go to, dude? Should I go to Dougie's home or my home?”

“Your home. And check on Dougie's home once in a while.”

Having Mooner worry about Dougie made me uneasy, but it didn't feel critical. Then again, Dougie'd missed wrestling. And Mooner was right . . . nobody misses wrestling. At least nobody in Jersey.

I ran down the hall and down the stairs. I bolted through the lobby, out the door, and into my car. Stiva's was a couple miles down Hamilton Avenue. I did a mental equipment inventory. Pepper spray and cuffs in my purse. The stun gun was probably in there, too, but it might not be charged. My .38 was home in the cookie jar. And I had a nail file in case things got physical.

Stiva's Funeral Parlor is housed in a white frame structure that was once a private residence. Garages for the various funeral-type vehicles and viewing rooms for the various dead have been added to accommodate business. There's a small parking lot. Black shutters frame the windows, and the wide front porch is covered in green indoor-outdoor carpet.