One for the Money (24 page)

There had to be something I was missing here. Something about Carmen or Kulesza or Morelli . . . or maybe the mystery witness.

An ugly little thought wriggled around in a back corner of my brain. So far as I could see, I was a genuine, mortal threat to only one person. That person was Morelli.

The phone rang at eleven, and I caught it before the machine picked up.

“Are you alone?” Morelli asked.

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why the hesitation?”

“How do you feel on the subject of murder?”

“Whose murder are we talking about?”

“Mine.”

“I feel warm all over.”

“Just wondering.”

“I'm coming up. Watch for me at the door.”

I tucked the defense spray into the waistband of my shorts and covered it with my T-shirt. I glued my eye to the peephole and opened the door when Morelli strolled down the hall. Every day he looked a little bit worse. He needed a haircut, and he had a week's worth of beard that probably had only taken him two days to grow. His jeans and T-shirt were street-person quality.

He closed and locked the door behind himself. He took in my scorched, bruised face and the bruises on my arm. His expression was grim. “You want to tell me about it?”

“The cut lip and the bruises are from Ramirez. We had a tussle, but I think I won. I gassed him and left him throwing up in the road.”

“And the singed eyebrows?”

“Mmmm. Well, that's a little complicated.”

His face darkened. “What happened?”

“Your car blew up.”

There was no reaction for several beats. “You want to run that by me again?” he finally said.

“The good news is . . . you don't have to worry about Morty Beyers anymore.”

“And the bad news?”

I took his license plate from the kitchen counter and handed it to him. “This is all that's left of your car.”

He stared down at the plate in shocked silence.

I told him about Morty Beyers's wife leaving him, and the bomb, and the three phone calls from Dorsey.

He drew the same conclusion I'd drawn. “It wasn't Ramirez.”

“I made a mental list of people who might want me dead, and your name was at the top.”

“Only in my dreams,” he said. “Who else was on the list?”

“Lonnie Dodd, but I think he's still in prison.”

“You ever get death threats? How about ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends? You run over anyone recently?”

I had no intention of dignifying that question with a reaction.

“Okay,” he said. “So you think this is associated with the Kulesza murder?”

“Yes.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you'll be careful.” He opened my refrigerator door, pulled out the leftovers my mom had sent home with me, and ate them cold. “You need to be careful when you talk to Dorsey. If he finds out you've been working with me, he could charge you with aiding and abetting.”

“I have this very disturbing suspicion that I've been talked into an alliance that's not in my best interest.”

He cracked a beer open. “The only way you're going to collect that $10,000 is if I allow you to bring me in. And I'm not going to allow you to bring me in if I can't prove myself innocent. Any time you want to call the deal off, just let me know, but you can kiss your money good-by.”

“That's a rotten attitude.”

He shook his head. “Realistic.”

“I could have gassed you any number of times.”

“I don't think so.”

I whipped the spray out, but before I could aim he'd knocked the canister from my hand and sent it flying across the room.

“Doesn't count,” I said. “You were expecting it.”

He finished his sandwich and slid his dish into the dishwasher. “I'm always expecting it.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“We keep doing more of the same. Obviously we're hitting a nerve.”

“I don't like being a target.”

“You aren't going to whine about this, are you?” He settled himself in front of the television and starting working the channel changer. He looked tired, sitting with his back against the wall, one leg bent at the knee. He locked in a late night show and closed his eyes. His breathing grew deep and even and his head slumped to his chest.

“I could gas you now,” I whispered.

He raised his head, but he didn't open his eyes. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “It's not your style, Cupcake.”

*    *    *    *    *

 HE WAS STILL SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR in front of the television when I got up at eight. I tiptoed past him and went out to run. He was reading the paper and drinking coffee when I returned.

“Anything in there about the bombing” I asked.

“Story and pictures on page three. They're calling it an unexplained explosion. Nothing especially interesting.” He looked over the top of the paper at me. “Dorsey left another message on your machine. Maybe you should see what he wants.”

I took a fast shower, dressed in clean clothes, slathered some aloe cream on my blistered face, and followed my scaly nose to the coffeepot. I drank half a cup while I read the funnies, and then I called Dorsey.

“We've got the analysis back from the lab,” he said. “It was definitely a bomb. Professional job. Of course, you can get a book out of any library that will tell you how to do a professional bombing. You could build a fucking nuke if you wanted to. Anyway, I thought you'd want to know.”

“I suspected as much.”

“You have any ideas who would do such a thing?”

“No names.”

“How about Morelli?”

“That's a possibility.”

“I missed you at the station yesterday.”

He was fishing. He knew there was something screwy about all of this. He just hadn't figured it out yet. Welcome to the club, Dorsey. “I'll try to get there today.”

“Try real hard.”

I hung up and topped off my coffee. “Dorsey wants me to come in.”

“Are you going?”

“No. He's going to ask questions I can't answer.”

“You should put in some time on Stark Street this morning.”

“Not this morning. I have things to do.”

“What things?”

“Personal things.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I have some loose ends to tie up . . . just in case,” I said.

“Just in case what?”

I made an exasperated gesture. “Just in case something happens to me. For the past ten days I've been stalked by a professional sadist, and now I'm on the happy bomber's hit list. I feel a little insecure, okay? Give me a break, Morelli. I need to see some people. I have a few personal errands to run.”

He gently peeled a strip of loose skin off my nose. “You're going to be okay,” he said softly. “I understand that you're scared. I get scared too. But we're the good guys, and the good guys always win.”

I really felt like a jerk, because here was Morelli being nice to me, and what I actually wanted to do was hop on over to Bernie's to buy a blender and get my free daiquiri mix.

“How were you planning on running these errands without the Jeep?” he asked.

“I retrieved the Nova.”

He winced. “You didn't park it in the lot, did you?”

“I was hoping the bomber wouldn't know it was my car.”

“Oh boy.”

“I'm sure I have nothing to worry about,” I said.

“Yeah. I'm sure, too. I'll go down with you just to make double sure.”

I collected my gear, checked the windows, and reset the answering machine. Morelli was waiting for me at the door. We walked downstairs together, and we both paused when we reached the Nova.

“Even if the bomber knew this was your car, he'd have to be stupid to try the same thing twice,” Morelli said. “Statistically the second hit comes from a different direction.”

Made perfect sense to me, but my feet were stuck to the pavement and my heart was rocketing around in my chest. “All right. Here I go,” I said. “Now or never.”

Morelli had dropped to his belly and was looking under the Nova.

“What do you see?” I asked him.

“A hell of an oil leak.” He crawled out and got to his feet.

I raised the hood and checked the dipstick. Wonder of wonders, the car needed oil. I fed it two cans and slammed the hood down.

Morelli had taken the keys from the door handle and angled himself behind the wheel. “Stand back,” he said to me.

“No way. This is my car. I'll start it up.”

“If one of us is going to get blown apart it might as well be me. I'm as good as dead if I don't find that missing witness, anyway. Move away from the car.”

He turned the key. Nothing happened. He looked at me.

“Sometimes you have to smack it around,” I said.

He turned the key again and brought his fist down hard on the dash. The car coughed and caught. It idled rough and then settled in.

Morelli slumped against the wheel, eyes closed. “Shit.”

I looked in the window at him. “Is my seat wet?”

“Very funny.” He got out of the car and held the door for me. “Do you want me to follow?”

“No. I'll be fine. Thanks.”

“I'll be on Stark Street if you need me. Who knows . . . maybe the witness will show up at the gym.”

When I got to Bernie's store I noticed people weren't standing in line to go through the door, so I assumed I was in good shape for the daiquiri mix.

“Hey,” Bernie said, “look who's here.”

“I got your message about the blender.”

“It's this little baby,” he said, patting a display blender. “It chops nuts, crushes ice, mashes bananas, and makes a hell of a daiquiri.”

I looked at the price affixed to the blender. I could afford it. “Sold. Do I get my free daiquiri mix?”

“You bet.” He took a boxed blender to the register, bagged it, and rang it up. “How's it going?” he asked cautiously, his eyes fixed on the singed stumps of hair that had once been eyebrows.