Smokin' Seventeen (2 page)

We all looked back at the grisly hand with the pinky ring.

“Okay, run the crime scene tape,” the M.E. said to one of the uniforms. “And get the state lab out here to exhume the
body. Someone’s going to have to stay on the scene until the state takes over. I don’t want a screwup.”

“Awesome,” Mooner said. “This is like
CSI:
Trenton.”

Mooner has shoulder-length brown hair, parted in the middle. He’s slim and built loosey-goosey. He’s my age. He’s a nice guy. And his head is for the most part empty since his brain got fried on drugs in high school and never totally regenerated.

“I’m not paying for special-duty cops,” Vinnie said. “This isn’t my bad. Dugan got himself planted at the back of the lot, under where the garbage cans used to sit. Seems to me that’s city property. This isn’t gonna hold up construction, is it? They were supposed to start pouring foundation this week. I’m renting bogus office space from Scooby Doo here. Every extra day is a fork in my eye.”

Truth is Vinnie wasn’t in a good spot. He was on thin ice with his wife, Lucille, and his father-in-law, Harry the Hammer. Vinnie and Lucille were newly reconciled from a nasty split, and Lucille was keeping her thumb on Vinnie’s doodles. Even worse, at Lucille’s request, Harry had agreed to go back into the bail bonds business and finance Vinnie’s operation. And Harry had his
boot
on Vinnie’s doodles. So needless to say Vinnie was walking very carefully to avoid intense pain.

A red Firebird pulled in, double-parked next to my car, and Lula got out. Lula is supposed to do filing for the office, but she pretty much does whatever she wants. She was a blond today,
her curly yellow hair contrasting nicely with her brown skin and her leopard print, spandex wrap dress. Her 5′ 5″ body is plus size, but Lula enjoys testing the limits of seam and fabric, squishing herself into size 2 petite.

“What’s going on here?” Lula wanted to know, sinking into the dirt in her four-inch Via Spiga stilettos. “This office-in-a-bus is a pain in the behind. I never know where anybody is. And nobody’s answering their cell phone. How the heck am I supposed to work like this?”

“You don’t work anyway,” Vinnie said.

Lula leaned forward, hands on hips. “That’s a disrespectful attitude, and I don’t tolerate no disrespect. I gotta work just to
find
your stupid office-on-wheels.” Her eyes moved to the pit and locked onto the hand. “What’s that? Are we getting ready for Halloween? This gonna be some kind of scary trick-or-treat place?”

“We’re thinking it’s Lou Dugan,” I said. “The backhoe accidentally dug him up.”

Lula’s eyes about popped out of her head. “Are you shitting me? Lou Dugan?
Mr. Titty
?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s disgustin’. Is there something attached to that hand? If there is I don’t want to know about it. Dead people give me the creeps. I might need fried chicken to take my mind off all this now. And anyways, what the heck was Mr. Titty doing under the bonds office?”

“Technically he was under the garbage cans,” Vinnie said.

“Let me get this straight. Some idiot dug a hole instead of throwing the body in the river or the landfill,” Lula said. “And they left the ring on his finger. What’s with that? That ring’s worth something. This here must have been a amateur job.”

Everyone stood silent. Lula was right. This wasn’t the way things were done in Trenton.

I turned to Morelli. “Did you catch this case?”

“Yep,” he said. “Lucky me.” His eyes dropped to my chest, and he leaned close, his lips brushing my ear. “You’re looking sexy today. I like this red shirt you’re wearing.”

I appreciated the compliment, but truth is Morelli thinks everything I wear is sexy. Morelli has testosterone oozing out of every pore.

“I’m going back to the bus,” Connie said. “I have new cases to process.”

“Where’s the bus goin’ next?” Lula asked. “I gotta get some chicken to settle my nerves, and then I might stop in to do some filing or something.”

“The bus is staying here,” Vinnie said. “I’m supposed to meet with the contractor this morning and go over some plans.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Lula said. “There’s probably all kinds of nasty juju leakin’ out of that decayin’ carcass. You hang around and you could catch something.”

Mooner went white. “Dude.”

Morelli wrapped an arm around me and moved me to my car. “I’ll buy you dinner tonight if you promise to wear this red top.”

“And if I don’t wear the red top?”

“I’ll buy you dinner anyway.” He opened the passenger-side door, removed the bakery box, and looked inside. “This isn’t your usual selection. You never get blueberry.”

“Loretta was in a hurry. It was a free sample, sort of.”

Morelli took the blueberry for a test drive, and I ate the Boston cream.

“Do you think Lou’s leaking bad juju?” I asked him.

“No more than he leaked it when he was alive.” Morelli finished off his doughnut and kissed me. “Mmm,” he said. “You taste like chocolate. I have to go back to the station to do paperwork now, but I’ll pick you up at five thirty.”

THREE

MOONER’D RECENTLY REDECORATED
the interior of his motor home, and now the walls and ceiling were upholstered in faux black velvet. The furniture was upholstered in black velour. The floor was black shag, and the countertop was black Formica. Mooner said it was like coming home to the womb, but I thought it was more like working inside the Death Star. Vinnie had commandeered the rear bedroom as his office, and Connie had her computer on the dinette table. A heavy-duty electrical cord, serving as power source, ran like an umbilical cord from the bus to the used bookstore next to the office. Vinnie had worked out an arrangement with the owner, Maggie Mason, for electric.

Lighting was dim to nonexistent, so I felt my way to the couch and inspected it closely before sitting down. Mooner
was a good guy, but housekeeping wasn’t a priority for him. Last time I was in his motor home I sat on a brownie that was camouflaged against the black velour.

“What’s new?” I asked Connie. “Any interesting cases come in?”

Connie passed two files to me. “Ziggy Glitch and Merlin Brown. Both failed to appear for court. Brown is a repeat. Armed robbery. Glitch is assault. Glitch is seventy-two years old. The police report says he’s a biter.”

Connie is a couple years older than me and a lot more voluptuous. Connie has bigger hair, bigger boobs, is a better shot, and has major cajones. She’s also related to half the mob in Trenton.

“Do you think Lou Dugan was a mob job?” I asked Connie.

“Usually there’s dinner table talk when someone’s eliminated, but I haven’t heard anything on this one,” she said. “I think most people thought Dugan was in trouble and hiding somewhere.”

I stuffed the files into my tote bag and called Lula on my cell phone.

“What?” Lula said.

“Are you coming back here?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I’m headed out. I’m on the hunt for two new FTAs.”

“Well I guess I should be on the hunt with you,” Lula said. “You probably don’t even got your gun. What if you gotta shoot someone? What then?”

“We don’t shoot people,” I told her.

“The hell.”

Ten minutes later I picked Lula up in the parking lot of Cluck-in-a-Bucket. She had her purse slung over her shoulder, a bucket of chicken tucked under her arm, and her hand wrapped around a liter bottle of soda.

“A girl needs breakfast,” she said, clicking the seat belt together. “Besides, I just come off a diet, and I gotta get my strength back.” She laid a paper napkin out on her lap and picked a piece of chicken out of the bucket. “Who we lookin’ for?”

“Merlin Brown.”

“Been there, done that,” Lula said. “We dragged him back to jail last year on that shoplifting charge. He was a real pain in the behind. He didn’t want to go. What’s he done now?”

“Armed robbery.”

“Good for him. Least he’s setting his sights higher. Who else you got?”

“Ziggy Glitch.” I handed her his file. “He’s seventy-two and wanted for assault. I thought we’d look for him first.”

Lula thumbed through the papers. “He lives in the Burg. Kreiner Street. And it says here he’s a biter. I hate them biters.”

The Burg is a chunk of Trenton attached to Hamilton Avenue, Liberty Street, Broad, and Chambersburg Street. Houses are small, streets are narrow, televisions are large. I was born and raised in the Burg, and my parents still live there.

I turned off Hamilton, passed St. Francis Hospital, and hit Kreiner.

“What’s Ziggy’s history?” I asked Lula.

“It says here he’s retired from working at the button factory. Never married as far as I can see. Has a sister who signed the bond agreement. She lives in New Brunswick. This looks like his first arrest. Probably he didn’t take his meds and got wacky and hit some other old geezer with his cane.” Lula leaned forward, counting off houses. “It’s the brick house with the red door. The one with black curtains hanging in all the windows. What’s with that?”

Ziggy lived in a narrow two-story house that had two feet of lawn and a small front porch. It looked like every other house on the block with the exception of the black curtains. We got out of the car, rang the doorbell and waited. No answer.

“I bet he’s in there,” Lula said. “Where else would he be? He don’t work, and there’s no bingo at this time of the morning.”

I rang the bell again, we heard some shuffling inside the house, and the door opened a crack.

“Yes?” the pale face on the other side of the crack asked.

From what I could see he fit the description of Ziggy Glitch. Thinning gray hair, bony at 5′10″.

“I represent your bail bond agent,” I said. “You missed a court date and you need to reschedule.”

“Come back after dark.” And he slammed the door shut and locked it.

“Good going,” Lula said to me. “I don’t know why you use that lame-ass line. It never works. Everybody knows you’re gonna drag their keister off to jail. And if they wanted to be
in jail they would have kept their stupid court date in the first place.”

“Hey!” I yelled at Ziggy. “Come back here and open this door, or we’re going to kick it open.”

“I’m not kicking no door in my Via Spigas,” Lula said.

“Great. I’ll kick it open all by myself.”

We both knew this was baloney. Kicking down a door wasn’t on my list of skills mastered.

“I’m going to the car,” Lula said. “I got a bucket of chicken there with my name on it.”

I followed Lula to the car and drove us the short distance to my parents’ house. The Burg is a tight-knit community that runs on gossip and pot roast. Ever since my Grandpa Mazur rode the gravy train to heaven, my Grandma Mazur has lived with my mom and dad. Grandma Mazur knows everything about everyone. And I was betting she knew Ziggy Glitch.

FOUR

I PARKED IN
my parents’ driveway. “Here’s hoping Grandma knows Ziggy and can get him to cooperate.”

Lula stowed her chicken bucket on the floor. “I love your granny. I want to be just like her when I grow up.”

Grandma Mazur was at the front door, waiting for us, driven by some maternal instinct sensing the approach of offspring. She’s sharp-eyed and slack-skinned, and her steel gray hair is cut short and set into curls. She was wearing a silky lavender-and-white warm-up suit and white tennis shoes.

“What a nice surprise,” she said. “I got a coffee cake on the table.”

“I wouldn’t mind some coffee cake,” Lula said. “I was just thinking coffee cake would be real tasty.”

My mother was in the kitchen ironing. Physically she’s a
younger version of my Grandma Mazur, and physically I’m a younger version of my mother. Mentally and emotionally my mother is on her own. Lunacy seems to have skipped a generation and my mother is left to bear the burden of maintaining standards of decorum for the family. My grandmother and I are the loose cannons.

“So why’s there ironing going on?” Lula asked.

We all knew my mother ironed when she was upset. She ironed for days when my divorce went through.

Grandma cut a wide swath around my mother and set the coffeepot on the table. “Margaret Gooley’s daughter got engaged, and they already got the Polish National Hall for a November wedding.”

“And?” Lula asked.

“I graduated high school with her,” I said.

Lula sat at the table and cut herself a piece of coffee cake. “And?”

My mother pressed the iron into a pair of slacks with enough force to set a seam for the rest of its days. “I don’t know why everyone else’s daughter gets married but mine!” she said. “Is it too much to ask to have a happily married daughter?”

“I
was
married,” I said. “I didn’t like it.”

Grandma slathered butter on her piece of coffee cake. “He was a horse’s patoot.”

“You’ve been seeing Joseph Morelli for years now,” my mother said. “It’s the talk of the neighborhood. Why aren’t you at least
engaged
?”

That was an excellent question, and I didn’t have an answer. At least not an answer I wanted to say out loud. Truth is Morelli wasn’t the only man in my life. I was in love with
two
men. How screwed up is that?

“Yeah,” Lula said to me, “you need to make a decision about Morelli or someone else is gonna snatch him up. He’s a real hottie. And he’s got his own house and a dog and everything.”

I liked Morelli. I really did. And Lula was right. He was hot. And I thought he’d make a good husband … probably. And there were days when I suspected he might actually consider marrying me. Problem was just when I thought marrying Morelli held some appeal, Ranger would ooze into my mind like smoke under a closed door.

Ranger was
not
husband material. He was a heart-stopping handsome Latino, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. He was strong inside and out, an enigma who kept his life scars pretty much hidden.

“I need to bring Ziggy Glitch in for a reschedule,” I said to Grandma. “I thought maybe you could call him and get him to go with me.”

“I could do that, but you have to wait until it gets dark. He don’t go out during the day.” Grandma paused. “He’s got a condition.”