07 Seven Up (5 page)

Bob hid under Connie's desk, and Vinnie ducked into his office and locked the door. A while back, after a short consultation with his johnson, Vinnie had agreed to hire Joyce on as an apprehension agent. Mr. Nasty was still happy with the decision, but the rest of Vinnie didn't know what to do with Joyce.

“Vinnie, you limp dick, I saw you sneak back into your office. Get the hell out here,” Joyce yelled.

“Nice to see you in such a good mood,” Lula said to Joyce.

“Some dog did his business on my lawn again. This is the second time this week.”

“Guess you have to expect that when you get your dates from the animal shelter,” Lula said.

“Don't push me, fatso.”

Lula narrowed her eyes. “Who you calling fatso? You call me fatso again and I'll rearrange your face.”

“Fatso, fat ass, lard butt, blimpo . . .”

Lula launched herself at Joyce, and the two of them went down to the floor, scratching and clawing. Bob stayed firmly under the desk. Vinnie hid in his office. And Connie moseyed over, waited for her opportunity, and buzzed Joyce on the ass with the stun gun. Joyce let out a squeak and went inert.

“This is the first time I've used one of these things,” Connie said. “They're kind of fun.”

Bob crept out from under the desk to take a look at Joyce.

“So, how long you been taking care of Bob?” Lula asked, heaving herself to her feet.

“He spent the night.”

“You suppose it was Bob-size poop on Joyce's lawn?”

“Anything's possible.”

“How possible? Ten percent possible? Fifty percent possible?”

We looked down at Joyce. She was starting to twitch, so Connie gave her another buzz with the stun gun.

“It's just that I hate to use the pooper-scooper . . .” I said.

“Hah!” Lula said on a bark of laughter. “I knew it!”

Connie gave Bob a doughnut from the box on her desk. “What a good boy!”

“SINCE BOB WAS such a good boy, and I'm in such a good mood, I'm gonna help you find Eddie DeChooch,” Lula said.

Her hair was sticking straight up from where Joyce had pulled it, and she'd popped a button off her shirt. Taking her along would probably ensure my safety because she looked genuinely deranged and dangerous.

Joyce was still on the floor, but she had one eye open and her fingers were moving. Best that Lula and Bob and I left before Joyce got her other eye open.

“So what do you think?” Lula wanted to know when we were all in the car and on our way to Front Street. “Do you think I'm fat?”

Lula didn't look like she had a lot of fat on her. She looked solid. Bratwurst solid. But it was a lot of bratwurst.

“Not exactly fat,” I said. “More like big.”

“I haven't got none of that cellulite, either.”

This was true. A bratwurst does not have cellulite.

I drove west on Hamilton, toward the river, to Front Street. Lula was in front riding shotgun, and Bob was in back with his head out the window, his eyes slitty and his ears flapping in the breeze. The sun was shining and the air was just a couple degrees short of spring. If it hadn't been for Loretta Ricci I'd have bagged the search for Eddie DeChooch and taken off for the shore. The fact that I needed to make a car payment gave me added incentive to point the CR-V in the direction of Ace Pavers.

Ace Pavers rolled asphalt and they were easy to find. The office was small. The garage was large. A behemoth paver sat in the chain-link holding pen attached to the garage, along with other assorted tar-blackened machinery.

I parked on the street, locked Bob in the car, and Lula and I marched up to the office. I'd expected an office manager. What I found was Ronald DeChooch playing cards with three other guys. They were all in their forties, dressed in casual dress slacks and three-button knit shirts. Not looking like executives and not looking like laborers. Sort of looking like wise guys on HBO. Good thing for television because now New Jersey knew how to dress.

They were playing cards on a rickety card table and sitting on metal folding chairs. There was a pile of money on the table, and no one appeared happy to see Lula or me.

DeChooch looked like a younger, taller version of his uncle with an extra sixty pounds evenly distributed. He put his cards facedown on the table and stood. “Can I help you ladies?”

I introduced myself and told them I was looking for Eddie.

Everyone at the table smiled.

“That DeChooch,” one of the men said, “he's something. I heard he left you two sitting in the parlor while he jumped out the bedroom window.”

This got a lot of laughs.

“If you'd known Choochy you'd have known to watch the windows,” Ronald said. “He's gone out a lot of windows in his time. Once he got caught in Florence Selzer's bedroom. Flo's husband, Joey the Rug, came home and caught Choochy going out the window and shot him in the . . . what do you call it, glutamus maximus?”

A big guy with a big belly tipped back on his chair. “Joey disappeared after that.”

“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “What happened to him?”

The guy did a palms-up. “No one knows. Just one of those things.”

Right. He was probably an SUV bumper like Jimmy Hoffa. “So, have any of you seen Choochy? Anyone know where he might be?”

“You could try his social club,” Ronald said.

We all knew he wouldn't go to his social club.

I put my business card on the table. “In case you think of something.”

Ronald smiled. “I'm thinking of something already.”

Ugh.

“That Ronald is slime,” Lula said when we got into the car. “And he looked at you like you were lunch.”

I gave an involuntary shiver and drove away. Maybe my mother and Morelli were right. Maybe I should get a different job. Or maybe I should get no job. Maybe I should marry Morelli and be a housewife like my perfect sister, Valerie. I could have a couple kids and spend my days coloring in coloring books and reading stories about steam shovels and little bears.

“It could be fun,” I said to Lula. “I like steam shovels.”

“Sure you do,” Lula said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Kids' books. Remember the book about the steam shovel?”

“I didn't have books when I was a kid. And if I did have a book it wouldn't have been about a steam shovel . . . it would have been about a crack spoon.”

I crossed Broad Street and headed back into the Burg. I wanted to talk to Angela Marguchi and possibly take a look in Eddie's house. Usually I could count on friends or relatives of the fugitive to help me with the chase. In Eddie's case, I didn't think this was going to work. Eddie's friends and relatives weren't of the snitch mentality.

I parked in front of Angela's house and told Bob I'd only be a minute. Lula and I got halfway to Angela's front door and Bob started barking in the car. Bob didn't like being left alone. And he knew I was fibbing about the minute.

“Boy, that Bob sure can bark loud,” Lula said. “He's giving me a headache already.”

Angela stuck her head out the door. “What's making all that noise?”

“It's Bob,” Lula said. “He don't like being left in the car.”

Angela's face lit. “A dog! Isn't he cute. I love dogs.”

Lula opened the car door and Bob bounded out. He rushed up to Angela, put his paws on her chest, and knocked her on her ass.

“You didn't break nothing, did you?” Lula asked, picking Angela up.

“I don't think so,” Angela said. “I got a pacemaker to keep me going, and I got stainless steel and Teflon hips and knees. Only thing I have to watch out for is getting hit by lightning or getting shoved in a microwave.”

Thinking about Angela going into a microwave got me to thinking about Hansel and Gretel, who faced a similar horror. This got me to thinking about the unreliability of bread crumbs as trail markers. And that led to the depressing admission that I was in worse shape than Hansel and Gretel because Eddie DeChooch hadn't even left bread crumbs.

“I don't suppose you've seen Eddie,” I asked Angela. “He hasn't returned home, has he? Or called and asked you to take care of his houseplants?”

“Nope. I haven't heard from Eddie. He's probably the only one in the whole Burg I haven't heard from. My phone's been ringing off the hook. Everybody wanting to know about poor Loretta.”

“Did Eddie have many visitors?”

“He had some men friends. Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci. And a couple others.”

“Anyone who drove a white Cadillac?”

“Eddie's been driving a white Cadillac. His car's been on the fritz and he borrowed a Cadillac from someone. I don't know who. He kept it parked in the alley behind the garage.”

“Did Loretta Ricci visit often?”

“So far as I know that was the first time she visited Eddie. Loretta was a volunteer with that Meals-on-Wheels program for seniors. I saw her go in with a box about suppertime. I figure someone told her Eddie was depressed and not eating right. Or maybe Eddie signed up. Although I can't see Eddie doing something like that.”

“Did you see Loretta leave?”

“I didn't exactly see her leave, but I noticed the car was gone. She must have been in there for about an hour.”

“How about gunshots?” Lula asked. “Did you hear her get whacked? Did you hear screaming?”

“I didn't hear any screaming,” Angela said. “Mom's deaf as a post. Once Mom puts the television on you can't hear anything in here. And the television is on from six to eleven. Would you like some coffee cake? I got a nice almond ring from the bakery.”

I thanked Angela for the coffee cake offer but told her Lula and Bob and I had to keep on the job.

We exited the Marguchi house and stepped next door to the DeChooch half. The DeChooch half was off limits, of course, ringed with crime-scene tape, still part of an ongoing investigation. There were no cops guarding the integrity of the house or shed, so I assumed they'd worked hard yesterday to finish the collection of evidence.

“We probably shouldn't go in here, being that the tape's still up,” Lula said.

I agreed. “The police wouldn't like it.”

“Of course, we were in there yesterday. We probably got prints all over the place.”

“So you're thinking it wouldn't matter if we went in today?”

“Well, it wouldn't matter if nobody found out about it,” Lula said.

“And I have a key so it isn't actually breaking and entering.” Problem is, I sort of stole the key.

As a bond enforcement officer I also have the right to enter the fugitive's house if I have good reason to suspect he's there. And if push came to shove, I'm sure I could come up with a good reason. I might be lacking a bunch of bounty hunter skills, but I can fib with the best of them.

“Maybe you should see if that's really Eddie's house key,” Lula said. “You know, test it out.”

I inserted the key into the lock and the door swung open. “Damn,” Lula said. “Look at what happened now. The door's open.”

We scooted into the dark foyer and I closed and locked the door behind us.

“You take lookout,” I said to Lula. “I don't want to be surprised by the police or by Eddie.”

“You can count on me,” Lula said. “Lookout's my middle name.”

I started in the kitchen, going through the cabinets and drawers, thumbing through the papers on the counter. I was doing the Hansel and Gretel thing, looking for a bread crumb that would start me on a trail. I was hoping for a phone number scribbled on a napkin, or maybe a map with a big orange arrow pointing to a local motel. What I found was the usual flotsam that collects in all kitchens. Eddie had knives and forks and dishes and soup bowls that had been bought by Mrs. DeChooch and used for the life of her marriage. There were no dirty dishes left on the counter. Everything was neatly stacked in the cupboards. Not a lot of food in the refrigerator, but it was better stocked than mine. A small carton of milk, some sliced turkey breast from Giovichinni's Meat Market, eggs, a stick of butter, condiments.

I prowled through a small downstairs powder room, the dining room, and living room. I peered into the coat closet and searched coat pockets while Lula watched the street through a break in the living room drape.

I climbed the stairs and searched the bedrooms, still hoping to find a bread crumb. The beds were all neatly made. There was a crossword book on the nightstand in the master bedroom. No bread crumbs. I moved on to the bathroom. Clean sink. Clean tub. Medicine chest filled to bursting with Darvon, aspirin, seventeen different kinds of antacids, sleeping pills, a jar of Vicks, denture cleaner, hemorrhoid cream.

The window over the tub was unlocked. I climbed into the tub and looked out. DeChooch's escape seemed possible. I got out of the tub and out of the bathroom. I stood in the hall and thought about Loretta Ricci. There was no sign of her in this house. No bloodstains. No indication of struggle. The house was unusually clean and tidy. I'd noticed this yesterday, too, when I'd gone through looking for DeChooch.

No notes scribbled on the pad by the phone. No matchbooks from restaurants tossed on the kitchen counter. No socks on the floor. No laundry in the bathroom hamper. Hey, what do I know? Maybe depressed old men get obsessively neat. Or maybe DeChooch spent the entire night scrubbing the blood from his floors and then did the laundry. Bottom line is no bread crumbs.

I returned to the living room and made an effort not to grimace. There was one place left to look. The cellar. Yuck. Cellars in houses like this were always dark and creepy, with rumbly oil burners and cobwebby rafters.

“Well, I suppose I should look in the cellar now,” I said to Lula.

“Okay,” Lula said. “The coast is still clear.”

I opened the cellar door and flipped the light switch. Scarred wood stairs, gray cement floor, cobwebby rafters, and creepy rumbly cellar sounds. No disappointment here.

“Something wrong?” Lula asked.

“It's creepy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don't want to go down there.”

“It's just a cellar,” Lula said.

“How about if you go down.”

“Not me. I hate cellars. They're creepy.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Do bears shit in the woods?”

I borrowed Lula's gun and crept down the cellar stairs. I don't know what I was going to do with the gun. Shoot a spider, maybe.