04 Four to Score (23 page)

“Been waiting for you,” Carl said. “Didn't know if you wanted us to board your window.”

“No. It'll be okay for tonight, and tomorrow I'll get a glass guy over here.”

“You coming in, or you gonna do the report in the morning?” Carl asked.

“I'll do it in the morning.”

“Congratulations,” Costanza said to me. “I hear you're preggers.”

“I'm not preggers!”

Costanza draped an arm around me and leaned close. “Would you like to be?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Okay, but remember me in case you change your mind,” Carl said.

An old man in a bathrobe came up to Morelli and gave him the elbow. “Just like old times, huh? I can remember when Ziggy Kozak's house got machine-gunned into Swiss cheese. Boy, I tell you, those were the days.”

Morelli went into the house, got the firebomb and gave it to Carl. “Have this checked for prints and put it in the lockup. Anybody canvass the neighborhood for a witness?”

“No witnesses. We did every house.”

“How about the car?”

“Hasn't turned up yet.”

The cops got into their cars and drove off. The people dispersed. I followed Morelli into the living room, where we both stood looking at the glass shards scattered over the floor.

“I'm really sorry,” I said. “This is my fault. I shouldn't have come here.”

“Don't worry about it,” Morelli said. “Life was getting dull.”

“I could move out.”

Morelli grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me to him. “You're just afraid you're going to cave and have to pay me fifty dollars.”

I felt a smile come on. “Thanks.”

Morelli leaned in and kissed me. He had his knee between my legs and his tongue in my mouth, and I got a hot rush that dropped my stomach about six inches.

He backed off and grinned at me. “Good night.”

I blinked. “G'nite.”

The grin widened. “Gotcha.”

I grit my teeth. “I'm going to bed.”

“I'll be down here if you get lonely. I'm going to sleep on the couch tonight just to make sure no one crawls through my window and walks off with my television.”

I WAS UP early, but Joe was up earlier. He'd cleaned the glass away and was eating lasagna for breakfast when I trooped into the kitchen.

I poured coffee and gave the lasagna a wistful glance.

“Go for it,” Morelli said.

If I ate the lasagna I'd have to do something physical, like jog a couple of miles. Not my favorite activity. I preferred to get my exercise by walking through a shopping mall. Okay, what the hell, I should probably go out for a run anyway. Keep in shape, and all that crap.

I sat across from him and dug in. “You back on the mystery case today.”

“Surveillance.”

I hated surveillance. Surveillance meant you sat in a car all by yourself until your ass fell asleep. And if you left to go to the bathroom all hell broke loose and you missed it.

Morelli pushed his empty plate away. “What are your plans?”

“Find Maxine.”

“And?”

“And that's it. I have no ideas. I'm out of leads. Everyone's disappeared. Eddie Kuntz's probably dead. For all I know Mrs. Nowicki, Margie and Maxine are dead. Dead and buried.”

“Boy, it's nice to see you so positive this morning.”

“I like to start out right.”

Morelli got up and rinsed his plate. “I have to go to work. If you were an ordinary person I'd tell you to be careful. Since you are who you are, I'll just wish you good luck. Oh, yeah, and someone's supposed to show up at nine to fix the window. Can you hang around until he's done?”

“No problem.”

He kissed me on the top of the head and left.

I looked at Rex. “This feels a little strange,” I said. “I'm not used to being a housewife.”

Rex sat on his haunches and stared at me. At first glance you might think he was contemplating what I'd just said. More likely he wanted a grape.

For lack of something better to do I called Eddie Kuntz. No answer. “Dead,” I said to Rex. I wanted to drive over and have another chat with Betty, but I had to wait for the glass to get fixed. I had a second cup of coffee. And then I had a second piece of lasagna. At nine o'clock the glazier arrived, and he was followed by yet another Italian lady bearing food. A chocolate cake this time. I ate half while I waited for the windows.

*    *    *    *    *

I DIDN'T HAVE TO KNOCK on the door to know Eddie Kuntz wasn't home. No car out front. No lights anywhere. Windows and doors closed up tight. The only thing missing was black crepe.

I knocked on Betty's door instead.

“What can I tell you?” Betty said. “He's not home. Like I told you before, last I saw him was Saturday.”

She didn't look worried or confused. What she looked was pissed. Like I was bothering her.

“Does he do this a lot? Do you think we should notify the police?”

“He's on a bender,” Leo said from his chair in front of the TV. “He picked up one of his trashy girlfriends, and they're shacked up somewhere. That's the end of it. He'll be home when he's home.”

“You're probably right,” I said. “Still, it might not hurt to do a little investigating. Maybe it would be a good idea if we checked out his apartment. You have a key?”

Leo was more adamant this time. “He's on a bender, I'm telling you. And you don't go snooping around in a man's home just because he goes on a bender. Anyway, why are you so interested in finding Eddie? I thought you were looking for Maxine Nowicki.”

“Eddie's disappearance might be related.”

“For the last time, I'm telling you it's not a disappearance.”

Sounded like denial to me, but what do I know? I went back to the Buick and drove to Mrs. Nowicki's house. It looked even worse than it had the first time I saw it. No one was cutting the grass, and a dog had done number two right in the middle of the sidewalk. Just for the hell of it I walked around the house and looked in the windows. No sign of life.

I got back in the car and headed for Margie's house. I took New York to Olden, turned onto Olden and spotted the beat-up Fairlane Morelli uses for surveillance. He was parked across the street from the 7-Eleven where Helen Badijian had worked before her death. Morelli was working with the Feds, so I assumed it was drugs, but really it could be anything from running guns to blackmarket babies. Or maybe he'd stopped there to have lunch and take a nap.

Margie's house looked better kept than Nowicki's, but empty all the same. I looked in the windows, and I wondered what Margie had done with her cat.

The next-door neighbor stuck her head out her front door and caught me peeking in Margie's window.

“I'm looking for Margie,” I said. “I work with her at the diner, and I haven't seen her for a couple days, so I got worried. She doesn't seem to be home.”

“She went on vacation. She said it was too hard to work with her finger cut like that, so she took some time off. I think she went to the shore. I'm surprised you didn't know.”

“I knew she wasn't working. I didn't know she went to the shore.” I looked around. “Where's her cat? She take it with her?”

“No. They don't allow cats in the house she rented. I'm feeding the cat. It's no bother.”

I was half a block away when it hit me. The finger! She'd have to have it looked at. She'd have to get her stitches removed. And Maxine's mother probably needed medical attention, too. She'd still had her head all wrapped up when I saw her in Point Pleasant.

I hustled to the office so I could use the by-street directory. Connie was doing her nails, and Lula had her ears plugged in to a Walkman. Lula's back was to me, and her beads were clicking around her head, and her ass was going side to side in some jive step. She caught me in her peripheral vision and turned the Walkman down.

“Uh oh,” she said. “You're not getting any.”

“How do you know that?” I yelled. I threw my hands into the air. “I don't believe this!”

Vinnie poked his head around the corner. “What's all the racket about?”

“Stephanie's here,” Connie said.

Vinnie had a cigar in his mouth that I'm willing to bet was twice the size of his dick. “Where's Maxine? I forfeit my money in five days, for crissake. I should never have taken Barnhardt off.”

“I'm closing in.”

“Right,” Vinnie said. “Closing in on my liver.” He ducked into his office and slammed the door.

I traced Margie's address in the directory and came up with her last name. There are three hospitals in the Trenton area. Helene Fuld is a short distance from Nowicki's neighborhood. Margie's address is equal distance between Helene Fuld and St. Francis.

I went home to Joe's house, helped myself to another wedge of chocolate cake and called my cousin Evelyn, who works at Helene Fuld. I gave her the two names and asked her to nose around. Neither Margie nor Mama Nowicki was wanted by the police, so (assuming they were alive) they had no reason not to return to their doctors. Their only concern was keeping me from following them back to Maxine.

*    *    *    *    *

IT WAS three o'clock, and I was sort of hoping another Italian lady would stop around with something new for dinner. I kept looking out the window, but I didn't see any big black cars bearing food. This posed a problem because the idea of being in Morelli's kitchen, making him dinner, felt like a Doris Day movie.

Evelyn called and told me it was my lucky day. Both women had been treated at Fuld. Both women would go to their own doctors for follow-up. She gave me the names of the attending physicians and also the names listed for primary care through their medical plans. I told her I owed her. She said a detailed description of Morelli in bed would do the trick.

I called the doctors and lied my ass off to their receptionists, telling them I'd forgotten my appointment time. Both women had Wednesday appointments. Shit, I was good.

Morelli dragged in with a sweat stain the length of his gray Tshirt. He went to the refrigerator and stuck his head in the freezer. “I've gotta get air in this house.”

I thought the weather was pretty good compared to yesterday. Today you could sort of see a yellow glow where the sun was behind the layer of funk air.

He pulled his head out of the freezer, tossed his gun on the counter and got a beer.

“Bad day?”

“Average.”

“I saw you in north Trenton.”

“You made me?”

“I recognized the car. I figured you were watching the Seven-Eleven.”

“And watching, and watching, and watching.”

“Drugs?”

“Funny money.”

“I thought you weren't supposed to tell me.”

“Fuck it. Treasury has this case so screwed up it doesn't matter. There've been bogus twenties coming out of Trenton for five years that we know of . . . probably more. Treasury has everything in place. They go in to get the guy. No plates where the plates are supposed to be. No paper. No nothing. Including no funny money traffic. We can't even make an arrest. We look like a bunch of fucking amateurs. Then all of a sudden, yesterday, a couple of the twenties get passed at the convenience store on Olden. So we start all over, looking to see who goes in that store.”

“The clerk didn't know who passed them?”

“They were discovered at the bank when the teller was counting them out for deposit.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we had the right guy the first time. Some fluky thing happened and the stuff wasn't there.”

“I just had a weird thought. We attributed Helen Badijian's death to her connection with Maxine. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Maxine. Maybe it had to do with the funny money.”

“I thought of that, too, but the MO ties it to Maxine. Cause of death to Badijian was a blow to the head, but she also had one of her fingers chopped off.”

I had an even weirder thought, but I didn't want to say it out loud and sound like a dunce.

The phone rang, and Morelli answered. “Yes, Mrs. Plum,” he said.

I jumped out of my chair and started to run for the front door. I was halfway through the dining room when Morelli snagged me by the back of my shirt and stopped my progress with a sharp yank that had me pressed against his chest.

“Your mother,” he said, handing me the phone.

“Stephanie,” my mother said. “What is this I hear about your being pregnant?”

“I'm not pregnant. This is a living arrangement, not a marriage.”

“Everybody's talking. Everybody thinks you're pregnant. What should I tell Mrs. Crandle?”

“Tell her I'm not pregnant.”

“Your father wants to talk to you.”

I could hear the phone being transferred and then some breathing.

“Dad?”

“Yeah,” he said. “How's the Buick running? You gotta give it high test, you know.”

“Don't worry. I always give it high test.” I never gave it high test. It didn't deserve high test. It was ugly.

He gave the phone back to my mother, and I could hear my mother rolling her eyes at him.

“I have a nice pot roast on the stove,” she said. “With peas and mashed potatoes.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll come for dinner.”

“And Joseph.”

“No. He can't make it.”

“Yes, I can,” Joe said.

I gave a big sigh. “He'll come, too.”

I disconnected and gave him the phone. “You'll be sorry.”

*    *    *    *    *

“NOTHING LIKE BEING PREGNANT to give a woman a glow,” Grandma said.

“I may be glowing, but I'm not pregnant.”

Grandma looked down at my stomach. “You look pregnant.”

It was all that damn Italian food. “It's cake,” I said.

“You might want to get rid of that cake before the wedding,” Grandma said. “Or you're going to have to buy one of them empire gowns that don't have a waist.”

“I'm not getting married,” I said. “There's no wedding.”

Grandma sat up straighter. “What about the hall?”

“What hall?”

“We figured you'd hold your reception at the Polish National Hall. It's the best place for it, and Edna Majewski said they had a cancellation, but you'd have to act fast.”

“You didn't hire a hall!”

“Well, we didn't put down no deposit,” Grandma said. “We weren't sure of the date.”