Two for the Dough (7 page)

“Oh, boy.”

I shifted my bag higher onto my shoulder. “There was a guy at the viewing last night named Sandeman. Do you know him?”

“I busted him for possession about two years ago. He got caught in a sweep.”

“Ranger tells me Sandeman worked with Moogey at the garage. Said he heard Sandeman was there the day Moogey got shot in the knee. I was wondering if you’d talked to him.”

“No. Not yet. Scully was the investigating officer that day. Sandeman gave him a statement, but it didn’t say much. The shooting took place in the office, and Sandeman was in the garage working on a car at the time. Had an air wrench going and didn’t hear the shot.”

“Thought maybe I’d see if he had any ideas on Kenny.”

“Don’t get too close. Sandeman’s a real jerk. Bad temper. Bad attitude.” Morelli pulled car keys out of his pocket. “Terrific mechanic.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Morelli gave me a look of total no-confidence. “You sure you don’t want me to go with?” he asked. “I’m good at thumbscrews.”

“I’m not really into thumbscrews, but thanks for the offer.”

His Fairlane was parked next to my Jeep.

“I like the hula girl in the back window,” I said. “Nice touch.”

“It was Costanza’s idea. It covers an antenna.”

I looked at the top of her head and, sure enough, there was the tip of an antenna poking through. I squinted at Morelli. “You’re not going to follow me, are you?”

“Only if you say please.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

Morelli looked like he knew better.

I cut across town and left turned onto Hamilton. Seven blocks later I nosed into a parking slot to the side of the garage. Early morning and evening the pumps were in constant use. At this hour they didn’t see much action. The office door was open, but the office was empty. Beyond the office the doors to the bays were up. The third bay had a car on a rack.

Sandeman worked nearby, balancing a tire. He was wearing a faded black Harley tank top that stopped two inches short of low-rider, grease-stained jeans. His arms and shoulders were covered with tattoos of snakes, fangs bared, forked tongues sticking out. Stuck between snakes was a red heart with the inscription I LOVE JEAN. Lucky girl. I decided Sandeman could only be enhanced by a mouthful of rotting teeth and possibly a few festering facial sores.

He straightened when he saw me and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Yeah?”

“You’re Perry Sandeman?”

“You got it.”

“Stephanie Plum,” I said, forgoing the usual formality of an introductory handshake. “I work for Kenny Mancuso’s bondsman. I’m trying to locate Kenny.”

“Haven’t seen him,” Sandeman said.

“I understand he and Moogey were friends.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“Did Kenny come around the garage a lot?”

“No.”

“Did Moogey ever talk about Kenny?”

“No.”

Was I wasting my time? Yes.

“You were here the day Moogey was shot in the knee,” I said. “Do you think the shooting was accidental?”

“I was in the garage. I don’t know anything about it. End of quiz. I got work to do.”

I gave him my card and told him to get in touch if he should think of anything useful.

He tore the card in half and let the pieces float to the cement floor.

Any intelligent woman would have made a dignified retreat, but this was New Jersey, where dignity always runs a poor second to the pleasure of getting in someone’s face.

I leaned forward, hands on hips. “You got a problem?”

“I don’t like cops. That includes pussy cops.”

“I’m not a cop. I’m a bond enforcement agent.”

“You’re a fucking pussy bounty hunter. I don’t talk to fucking pussy bounty hunters.”

“You call me pussy one more time, and I’m going to get mad.”

“Is that supposed to worry me?”

I had a canister of pepper spray in my pocketbook, and I was itching to give him a blast. I also had a stun gun. The lady who owned the local gun shop had talked me into buying it, and so far it was untested. I wondered if 45,000 volts square in his Harley logo would worry him.

“Just make sure you’re not withholding information, Sandeman. Your parole officer might find it annoying.”

He gave me a shot to the shoulder that knocked me back a foot. “Somebody yanks my parole officer’s chain, and somebody might find out why they call me the Sandman. Maybe you want to think about that.”

Not anytime soon.

It was still early afternoon when I left the garage. About the only thing I’d learned from Sandeman was that I thoroughly disliked him. Under ordinary circumstances I couldn’t see Sandeman and Kenny being buddies, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances, and there was something about Sandeman that had my radar humming.

Poking around in Sandeman’s life wasn’t high on my list of favored activities, but I thought I should probably spare him some time. At the very least I needed to take a look at his home sweet home and make sure Kenny wasn’t sharing the rent.

I drove down Hamilton and found a parking place two doors from Vinnie’s office. Connie was stomping around the office, slamming file drawers and cussing when I walked in.

“Your cousin is dog shit,” Connie yelled at me. “
Stronzo!
”

“What did he do now?”

“You know that new file clerk we just hired?”

“Sally Something.”

“Yeah. Sally Who Knew the Alphabet.”

I looked around the office. “She seems to be missing.”

“You bet she’s missing. Your cousin Vinnie caught her at a forty-five-degree angle in front of the D drawer and tried to play hide the salami.”

“I take it Sally wasn’t receptive.”

“Ran out of here screaming. Said we could give her paycheck to charity. Now there’s no one to do the filing, so guess who gets the extra work?” Connie kicked a drawer shut. “This is the third file clerk in two months!”

“Maybe we should chip in and get Vinnie neutered.”

Connie opened her middle desk drawer and extracted a stiletto. She pressed the button and the blade flashed out with a lethal click. “Maybe we should do it ourselves.”

The phone rang and Connie flipped the knife back into her drawer. While she was talking I thumbed through the file cabinet looking for Sandeman. He wasn’t in the file, so either he hadn’t bothered making bail on his arrest, or else he’d used another bondsman. I tried the Trenton area phone book. No luck there. I called Loretta Heinz at the DMV. Loretta and I went way back. We’d been Girl Scouts together and had bitched our way through the worst two weeks of my life at Camp Sacajawea. Loretta punched up her handy-dandy computer and,
voilà
, I had Sandeman’s address.

I copied the address and mouthed “ ’bye” to Connie.

Sandeman lived on Morton Street in an area of large stone houses that had gone to trash. Lawns were neglected, torn shades hung limp in dirty windows, cornerstones bore spray-painted gang slogans, and paint blistered from window trim. Most of the houses had been converted to multiple occupancy. A few of the houses had been torched or abandoned and were boarded. A few of the houses had been restored and struggled to recapture some of their original grandeur and dignity.

Sandeman lived in one of the multifamily houses. Not the nicest on the street, but not the worst either. An old man sat on the front stoop. The whites of his eyes had yellowed with age, gray stubble clung to cadaverous cheeks, and his skin was the color of road tar. A cigarette hung from the side of his mouth. He sucked in some smoke and squinted at me.

“Guess I know a cop when I see one,” he said.

“I’m not a cop.” What was it with this cop stuff? I looked down at my Doc Martens, wondering if it was the shoes. Maybe Morelli was right. Maybe I should get rid of the shoes. “I’m looking for Perry Sandeman,” I said, presenting my card. “I’m interested in finding a friend of his.”

“Sandeman isn’t home. Works at the garage during the day. Not home much at night either. Only comes here when he’s drunk or doped up. And then he’s mean. You want to stay away from him when he’s drunk. Gets extra mean when he’s drunk. Good mechanic, though. Everybody says so.”

“You know his apartment number?”

“Three C.”

“Anybody there now?”

“Haven’t seen anybody go in.”

I moved past the man, into the foyer, and stood for a moment letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The air was stagnant, thick with the smell of bad plumbing. Stained wallpaper peeled back at the edges. The wood floor was gritty underfoot.

I transferred the canister of pepper spray from my pocketbook to my jacket pocket and ascended the stairs. There were three doors on the third floor. All were closed and locked. A television droned on behind one of the doors. The other two apartments were silent. I rapped on 3C and waited for a reply. I rapped again. Nothing.

On the one hand, the thought of confronting a felon scared the hell out of me, and I wanted nothing more than to leave pronto. On the other hand, I wanted to catch Kenny and felt obligated to see this through.

There was a window to the back of the hall, and through the window I could see black rusty bars that looked like a fire escape. I moved to the window and looked out. Yep, it was a fire escape all right, and it bordered part of Sandeman’s apartment. If I got out onto the fire escape I could probably look in Sandeman’s window. No one seemed to be on the ground below. The house to the rear had all the shades drawn.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. What was the worst that could happen? I could get arrested, shot, pitched overboard, or beaten to a pulp. Okay, what was the best that could happen? No one would be home, and I’d be off the hook.

I opened the window and crawled out feet first. I was an old hand at fire escapes, since I’d spent many hours on my own. I quickly scuttled to Sandeman’s window and looked in. There was an unmade cot that served as his bed, a small Formica kitchen table and chair, a TV on a metal stand, and a dorm-sized refrigerator. Two hooks on the wall held several wire clothes hangers. A hot plate rested on the table, along with crushed beer cans, soiled paper plates, and crumpled food wrappers. There were no doors other than the front door, so I assumed Sandeman had to use the john on the second floor. I bet that was a treat.

Most important, there was no Kenny.

I had one foot through the hall window when I looked down between the bars and saw the old man standing directly below me, looking up, shading his eyes from the sun, my card still pressed between his fingers.

“Anybody home?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Won’t be home for a while yet.”

“Nice fire escape.”

“Could use some repair, what with the bolts being all rusted out. Don’t know if I’d trust it. Course if there was a fire a body might not care about rust.”

I sent him a tight smile and crawled the rest of the way through the window. I wasted little time getting down the stairs and out of the building. I hopped into my Jeep, locked the doors, and took off.

Half an hour later I was back in my apartment, deciding what to wear for an evening of sleuthing. I settled on boots, a long denim skirt, and a white knit shirt. I spiffed up my makeup and put a few hot rollers in my hair. When the rollers came out I was several inches taller. I still wasn’t tall enough to make it in pro ball, but I bet I could intimidate the hell out of the average Pakistani.

I was debating Burger King versus Pizza Hut when the phone rang.

“Stephanie,” my mother said, “I have a big potful of stuffed cabbages. And spice cake for dessert.”

“Sounds good,” I said, “but I’ve made plans for this evening.”

“What plans?”

“Dinner plans.”

“Do you have a date?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t have any plans.”

“There’s more to life than dates.”

“Like what?”

“Like work.”

“Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, you work for your no-good cousin Vinnie catching hoodlums. This is no kind of work.”

I mentally bashed my head against the wall.

“I’ve got vanilla ice cream, too, for the spice cake,” she said.

“Is it low-fat ice cream?”

“No, it’s the expensive kind that comes in the little cardboard tub.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

Rex popped out of his soup can and stretched, front feet out, hindquarters raised. He yawned and I could see down his throat all the way to the insides of his toes. He sniffed at his food cup, found it lacking, and moved on to his wheel.

I gave him a rundown on my night, so he wouldn’t worry if I came home late. I left the light burning in the kitchen, turned my answering machine on, grabbed my pocketbook and brown leather bomber jacket, and locked up after myself. I’d be a little early, but that was okay. It’d give me time to read through the obits and decide where to go after supper.

Streetlights were blinking on when I pulled up to the house. A harvest moon hung low and swollen in the dusky evening sky. The temperature had dropped since the afternoon.

Grandma Mazur met me in the foyer. Her steel gray hair was tightly curled in little sausage rolls all over her head. Pink scalp gleamed between the rolls.

“Went to the beauty parlor today,” she said. “Thought I might pick up some information for you on the Mancuso case.”

“How’d it go?”

“Pretty good. I got a nice set. Norma Szajack, Betty’s second cousin, was there getting her hair dyed, and everyone said that’s what I should do. I would have tried it out, but I saw on a show that some of them hair dyes give you cancer. I think it might have been Kathy Lee. Had on this woman with a tumor the size of a basketball, and she said it came from hair dye.

“Anyway, Norma and me got to talking. You know Norma’s boy Billie went to school with Kenny Mancuso and now Billie works at one of them casinos in Atlantic City. Norma said when Kenny got out of the army he started going down to Atlantic City. She said Billie told her Kenny was one of them high rollers.”

“Did she say if Kenny had been to Atlantic City lately?”

“Didn’t say. Only other thing was that Kenny called Billie three days ago and asked to borrow some money. Billie said yeah, he could do that, but then Kenny never showed up.”

“Billie told all this to his mother?”

“Billie told it to his wife, and she went and told Norma. I guess she wasn’t too happy that Billie was gonna loan money to Kenny.”

“You know what I think?” Grandma Mazur said. “I think someone whacked Kenny. I bet he’s fish food. I saw a show about how real professionals get rid of people. It was on one of them educational channels. What they do is they slit their throats, and then they hang them upside down in the shower to drain all the blood so they don’t ruin the carpet what with the bleeding and all. Then the trick is to gut the dead guy and puncture his lungs. If you don’t puncture the lungs they float when you dump them in the river.”

My mother made a strangled sound from the kitchen, and I could hear my father choking behind his paper in the living room.

The doorbell rang and Grandma Mazur jumped to attention. “Company!”

“Company,” my mother said. “What company? I wasn’t expecting company.”

“I invited a man for Stephanie,” Grandma said. “This one’s a real catch. Not much to look at, but he’s got a good job with money.”

Grandma opened the front door and Spiro Stiva walked in.

My father peered over the top of his paper. “Christ,” he said, “it’s a fucking undertaker.”

“I don’t need stuffed cabbage this bad,” I said to my mother.

She patted my arm. “It might not be so awful, and it wouldn’t hurt to be a little friendly with Stiva. Your grandmother’s not getting any younger, you know.”

“I invited Spiro over, being his mother’s spending all that time with Con in the hospital, and Spiro isn’t getting any good home-cooked meals.” Grandma winked at me and whispered in my direction. “Got you a live one this time!”

Just barely.

My mother slid an extra plate on the table. “It’s certainly nice to have company,” she said to Spiro. “We’re always telling Stephanie she should bring her friends home for dinner.”

“Yeah, except lately she’s gotten so picky with her men friends she don’t see much action,” Grandma told Spiro. “Just wait until you taste the spice cake for dessert. Stephanie made it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“She made the cabbages too,” Grandma said. “She’s gonna make someone a good wife some day.”

Spiro glanced at the lace tablecloth and the plates decorated with pink flowers. “I’ve been shopping around for a wife. A man in my position needs to think about his future.”

Shopping around for a wife? Excuse me?

Spiro took the seat next to me at the table, and I discreetly inched my chair away with the hope that distance would get the little hairs on my arm to lie flat.

Grandma passed the cabbages to Spiro. “I hope you don’t mind talking about business,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of questions. For instance, I’ve always wondered about whether you dress the deceased in underwear. It don’t seem really necessary, but on the other hand …”

My father paused with the tub of margarine in one hand and the butter knife in the other, and for an irrational moment I thought he might stab Grandma Mazur.

“I don’t think Spiro wants to talk about underwear,” my mother said.

Spiro nodded and smiled at Grandma Mazur. “Trade secret.”

At ten minutes to seven Spiro finished off his second piece of cake and announced he would have to leave for the evening viewing.

Grandma Mazur waved to him as he pulled away. “That went pretty good,” she said. “I think he likes you.”