07 Seven Up (12 page)

“I don't want it.”

“Fine. The hell with you.” I hung up and stuck my tongue out at the phone. I grabbed my bag and my rain jacket and stomped out of my apartment and down the stairs.

Mrs. DeGuzman was in the lobby. Mrs. DeGuzman is from the Philippines and doesn't speak a word of English.

“Humiliating,” I said to Mrs. DeGuzman.

Mrs. DeGuzman smiled and bobbed her head like one of those dogs people put in their car rear window.

I got into the CR-V and sat there for a moment thinking things like, Prepare to die, DeChooch. And, No more Ms. Nice Guy, this is war. But then I couldn't figure out how to find DeChooch, so I did a quick run to the bakery.

It was close to five when I got back to my apartment. I opened my door and stifled a shriek. There was a man in my living room. I took another look and realized it was Ranger. He was sitting in a chair, looking relaxed, thoughtfully watching me.

“You hung up on me,” he said. “Don't ever hang up on me.”

His voice was quiet, but as always the authority was unmistakable. He was wearing black dress slacks, a long-sleeved lightweight black sweater pushed up on his forearms, and expensive black loafers. His hair was cut very short. I was used to seeing him in SWAT dress with long hair, and I hadn't immediately recognized him. I guess that was the point.

“Are you in disguise?” I asked.

He watched me without answering. “What's in the bag?”

“An emergency cinnamon bun. What are you doing here?”

“I thought we might make a deal. How bad do you want DeChooch?”

Oh boy. “What did you have in mind?”

“You find DeChooch. If you need help bringing him in you call me. If I succeed in the capture, you spend a night with me.”

My heart stopped beating. Ranger and I had been playing this game for a while now, but it had never been articulated in quite this way.

“I'm sort of engaged to Morelli,” I said.

Ranger smiled.

Shit.

There was the sound of a key being inserted in my front door lock and the door swung open. Morelli strode in and he and Ranger nodded to each other.

“Game over?” I asked Morelli.

Morelli gave me a death look. “The game's over and the baby-sitting is over. And I don't ever want to see this guy again.”

“Where is he?”

Morelli turned and looked. No Mooner. “Christ,” Morelli said. He went back to the hall and yanked Mooner into the room by Mooner's jacket collar, the Trenton PD equivalent to a mother cat dragging a demented offspring by the scruff of his neck.

“Dude,” Mooner said.

Ranger stood and passed me a card with a name and address written on it. “The owner of the white Cadillac,” he said. He slipped into a black leather jacket and left. Mr. Sociable.

Morelli deposited Mooner in a chair in front of the television, pointed his finger at him, and told him to stay.

I raised my eyebrows at Morelli.

“It works with Bob,” Morelli said. He put the television on and motioned me into the bedroom. “We need to talk.”

There was a time when the idea of being in a bedroom with Morelli scared the hell out of me. Now mostly it makes my nipples get hard.

“What's up?” I said, closing the door.

“Mooner tells me you picked out a wedding gown today.”

I closed my eyes and flopped back onto the bed. “I did! I let myself get sucked into it.” I groaned. “My mother and grandmother showed up and next thing I was trying on gowns at Tina's.”

“You'd tell me if we were getting married, wouldn't you? I mean, you wouldn't just appear on my doorstep in the gown one day and say we were due at the church in an hour.”

I sat up and narrowed my eyes at him. “No need to get snippy about it.”

“Men don't get snippy,” Morelli said. “Men get pissed. Women get snippy.”

I jumped up from the bed. “That's so typical of you to make a sexist remark!”

“Lighten up,” Morelli said. “I'm Italian. I'm supposed to make sexist remarks.”

“This is not going to work.”

“Cupcake, you'd better figure this out before your mother gets her Visa bill for that dress.”

“Well, what do you want to do? Do you want to get married?”

“Sure. Let's get married now.” He reached behind him and locked the bedroom door. “Take your clothes off.”

“What?”

Morelli pushed me down and leaned over me. “Marriage is a state of mind.”

“Not in my family.”

He picked up my shirt and looked under it.

“Hold it! Wait a minute!” I said. “I can't do this with Mooner in the next room!”

“Mooner's watching television.”

His hand cupped my pubic bone, he did something magical with his index finger, my eyes glazed over, and some drool trickled out of the corner of my mouth. “The door's locked, right?”

“Right,” Morelli said. He had my pants down to my knees.

“Maybe you should check.”

“Check on what?”

“On Mooner. Make sure he's not listening at the door.”

“I don't care if he's listening at the door.”

“I care.”

Morelli sighed and rolled off me. “I should have fallen in love with Joyce Barnhardt. She would have invited Mooner in to watch.” He opened the door a crack and looked out. He opened it wider. “Oh shit,” he said.

I was on my feet with my pants up. “What? What?”

Morelli was out of the room, moving through the house, opening and closing doors. “Mooner's gone.”

“How could he be gone?”

Morelli stopped and faced me. “Do we care?”

“Yes!”

Another sigh. “We were only in the bedroom for a couple minutes. He can't have gone far. I'll go look for him.”

I crossed the room to the window and looked down into the parking lot. A car was leaving. It was hard to see the car in the rain, but it looked like Ziggy and Benny. Dark, American-made midsize. I grabbed my bag, locked my door, and ran the length of the hall. I caught up with Morelli in the lobby. We pushed through the doors to the lot and stopped. No Mooner in sight. The dark sedan no longer in view.

“I think it's possible he's with Ziggy and Benny,” I said. “I think we should try their social club.” I couldn't imagine where else they'd take Mooner. I didn't think they'd take him home with them.

“Ziggy and Benny and Chooch belong to Domino on Mulberry Street,” Morelli said, both of us climbing into his truck. “Why do you think Mooner's with Benny and Ziggy?”

“I thought I saw their car pull out of the lot. And I have a feeling Dougie and DeChooch and Benny and Ziggy are all mixed up in something that started with the cigarette deal.”

We wound our way through the Burg to Mulberry and sure enough, Benny's dark blue sedan was parked in front of the Domino Social Club. I got out and felt the hood. Warm.

“How do you want to play this?” Morelli asked. “Do you want me to wait in the truck? Or do you want me to muscle you in?”

“Just because I'm a liberated woman doesn't mean I'm a moron. Muscle me in.”

Morelli knocked on the door, and an old man opened the door with the security chain attached.

“I'd like to talk to Benny,” Morelli said.

“Benny's busy.”

“Tell him it's Joe Morelli.”

“He's still gonna be busy.”

“Tell him if he doesn't come to the door right now I'm going to set his car on fire.”

The old guy disappeared and returned in less than a minute. “Benny says if you set his car on fire he's gonna hafta kill you. And he'll tell your grandmother on you, too.”

“Tell Benny he better not have Walter Dunphy in there because Dunphy is under my grandmother's protection. Anything happens to Dunphy and Benny gets the eye.”

Two minutes later the door opened for a third time and Mooner got pitched out.

“Dang,” I said to Morelli. “I'm impressed.”

“Dude,” Morelli said.

We put Mooner in the truck and drove him back to my apartment. He got the giggles halfway there, and Morelli and I knew what kind of bait Benny had used on Mooner.

“How lucky was that,” Mooner said, smiling and awestruck. “I stepped out for a minute to find some shit, and the two dudes were right there in the lot. And now they like me.”

FOR AS LONG as I can remember my mother and grandmother have gone to church on Sunday morning. And on the way home from church, my mother and grandmother stop at the bakery and buy a bag of jelly doughnuts for my father, the sinner. If Mooner and I timed it right we'd arrive a minute or two behind the doughnuts. My mother would be happy because I'd come to visit. Mooner would be happy because he'd get a doughnut. And I'd be happy because my grandmother would have gotten the very latest gossip relating to everybody and everything, including Eddie DeChooch.

“I've got big news,” Grandma said when she came to the door. “Stiva got hold of Loretta Ricci yesterday and the first viewing's going to be tonight at seven. It'll be one of those closed-casket ones, but it should be worth something, anyway. Maybe Eddie will even show up. I'm going to wear my new red dress. There'll be a packed house tonight. Everybody'll be there.”

Angie and Mary Alice were in the living room in front of the television with the sound turned up so loud the windows were vibrating. My father was in the living room, too, staked out in his favorite chair, reading the paper, his knuckles white with the effort.

“Your sister's in bed with a migraine,” Grandma said. “Guess the cheerful thing was too much of a strain. And your mother's making cabbage rolls. We've got doughnuts in the kitchen and if that don't do it for you, I've got a bottle in my bedroom. This place is bedlam.”

Mooner took a doughnut and drifted into the living room to watch television with the kids. I helped myself to coffee and sat at the kitchen table with my doughnut.

Grandma sat across from me. “What are you up to today?”

“I have a lead on Eddie DeChooch. He's been driving around in a white Cadillac, and I just got the owner's name. Mary Maggie Mason.” I took the card frorn my pocket and looked at it. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“Everybody knows Mary Maggie Mason,” Grandma said. “She's a star.”

“I never heard of her,” my mother said.

“That's because you never go anywhere,” Grandma said. “Mary Maggie's one of them mud wrestlers at The Snake Pit. She's the best.”

My mother looked up from her pot of beef and rice and tomatoes. “How do you know all this?”

“Elaine Barkolowski and me go to The Snake Pit sometimes after bingo. On Thursdays they got men wrestling and they only wear little Baggies on their privates. They're not as good as The Rock, but they're pretty good all the same.”

“That's disgusting,” my mother said.

“Yeah,” Grandma said. “It costs five dollars to get in but it's worth it.”

“I have to go to work,” I said to my mother. “Is it okay if I leave Mooner here for a while?”

“He doesn't do drugs anymore, does he?”

“Nope. He's clean.” For a whole twelve hours. “You might want to lock up the glue and cough syrup, though . . . just in case.”

The address Ranger had given me for Mary Maggie Mason was an upscale high-rise condo building that looked out at the river. I rode through the underground parking, checking out cars. No white Cadillac, but there was a silver Porsche with MMM-YUM on the license plate.

I parked in a slot reserved for guests and rode the elevator to the seventh floor. I was wearing jeans and boots and a black leather jacket over a black knit shirt, and I didn't feel dressed right for the building. The building called for gray silk and heels and skin that had been lasered and buffed to perfection.

Mary Maggie Mason answered on the second knock. She was wearing sweats, and her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. “Yes?” she asked, peering at me from behind tortoiseshell glasses, a Nora Roberts book in her hand. Mary Maggie, the mud wrestler, reads romance. In fact, from what I could see beyond her door, Mary Maggie read everything. There were books everywhere.

I gave her my card and introduced myself. “I'm looking for Eddie DeChooch,” I said. “It's been brought to my attention that he's driving your car around town.”

“The white Cadillac? Yeah. Eddie needed a car, and I never drive the Caddy. I inherited it when my Uncle Ted died. I should probably sell it, but it's nostalgic.”

“How do you know Eddie?”

“He's one of the owners of The Snake Pit. Eddie and Pinwheel Soba and Dave Vincent. Why are you looking for Eddie? You're not going to arrest him, are you? He's really a sweet old guy.”

“He missed his court date and he needs to reschedule. Do you know where I can find him?”

“Sorry. He stopped by one day last week. I don't remember which day. He wanted to borrow the car. His car is a real lemon. Always something wrong with it. So I loan him the Cadillac a lot. He likes to drive it because it's big and white and he can find it at night in a parking lot. Eddie doesn't see all that well.”

It's none of my business, but I wouldn't be loaning my car to a blind guy. “Looks like you do a lot of reading.”

“I'm a book junkie. When I retire from wrestling I'm going to open a mystery bookstore.”

“Can you make a living selling mysteries?”

“No. Nobody makes a living selling mysteries. The stores are all fronts for numbers operations.”

We were standing in the foyer and I was looking around as best I could for evidence that DeChooch might be hiding out with Mary Maggie.

“This is a great building,” I said. “I didn't realize there was this much money in mud wrestling.”

“Mud wrestling doesn't pay anything. I stay alive with the endorsements. And I've got a couple corporate sponsors.” Mary Maggie glanced at her watch. “Yikes, look at the time. I have to go. I'm supposed to be at the gym in a half hour.”

I pulled out of the underground garage and parked on a side street so I could make a few calls. First call was to Ranger's cell phone.

“Yo,” Ranger said.

“Do you know DeChooch owns a third of The Snake Pit?”

“Yeah, he won it in a crap game two years ago. I thought you knew.”

“I didn't know!”

Silence.

“So what else do you know that I don't know?” I asked.

“How much time do we have?”

I hung up on Ranger and called Grandma.