Two for the Dough (12 page)

I helped Grandma out of the car. “I’m not here as a bounty hunter. I’m here to talk to Spiro. I’m helping him with a small problem.”

“I bet. What’s he lost? I bet he lost a body.”

“He didn’t lose a body.”

“Too bad. I wouldn’t mind looking for a body.”

We made our way up the stairs and through the door. We stopped for a moment to study the viewing schedule.

“Who’re we supposed to be here to see?” Grandma wanted to know. “We gonna see Feinstein or Mackey?”

“Do you have a preference?”

“I guess I could go see Mackey. Haven’t seen him in years. Not since he quit working at the A and P.”

I left Grandma to herself and went looking for Spiro. I found him in Con’s office, sitting behind the big walnut desk, phone in hand. He broke the connection and motioned me into a chair.

“That was Con,” he said. “He calls all the time. I can’t get off the phone with him. He’s getting to be a real pain in the ass.”

I thought it would be nice if Spiro made a move on me, so I could give him some volts. Maybe I could give the little jerk some anyway. If I could get him to turn around I could give it to him in the back of the neck and claim it was someone else. I could say some crazed mourner ran into the office and stuck it to Spiro and then ran off.

“So, what’s the word?” Spiro asked.

“You’re right about the caskets. They’re gone.” I put the locker key on his desk. “Let’s think about the key again. You only got one, right?”

“Right.”

“Did you ever make a duplicate?”

“No.”

“Did you ever pass it on to someone else?”

“No.”

“How about valet parking? Was it on your key chain?”

“No one had access to the key. I kept the key at home, in the top drawer of my dresser.”

“What about Con?”

“What about him.”

“Did he ever have access to the key?”

“Con doesn’t know about the caskets. I did this on my own.”

I wasn’t surprised. “Just out of morbid curiosity, what did you expect to do with these caskets? You’re not going to sell them to anyone in the burg.”

“I was sort of a middleman. I had a buyer.”

A buyer. Unh! Mental head slap. “Does this buyer know his coffins are history?”

“Not yet.”

“A you’d prefer not to ruin your credibility.”

“Something like that.”

I didn’t think I wanted to know any more. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue to look for the caskets.

“Okay,” I said. “New subject. Kenny Mancuso.”

Spiro sunk deeper into Con’s chair. “We used to be friends,” Spiro said. “Me and Kenny and Moogey.”

“I’m surprised Kenny didn’t ask you for help. Maybe ask you to hide him out.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“You want to enlarge on that?”

“He’s out to get me.”

“Kenny?”

“He was here.”

This brought me out of my chair. “When? Did you see him?”

Spiro slid the middle drawer open and extracted a sheet of paper. He flipped the paper over to me. “I found this on my desk when I came in this morning.”

The message was cryptic. “You have something that’s mine, now I have something that’s yours.” The message was formed from silver paste-on letters. It was signed with a silver
K
. I stared at the paste on the letters and swallowed audibly. Spiro and I had a common pen pal.

“What does this mean?” I asked Spiro.

Spiro was still sunk into the chair. “I don’t know what it means. It means he’s crazy. You’re going to keep looking for the caskets, aren’t you?” Spiro asked. “We made a deal.”

Here Spiro is, totally stressed over this bizarre note from Kenny, and in the next breath he’s quizzing me about the caskets. Very suspicious, Dr. Watson.

“I suppose I’ll keep looking,” I told him, “but in all honesty, I’m stumped.”

I found Grandma still in the Mackey room, manning the command post at the head of the casket with Marjorie Boyer and Mrs. Mackey. Mrs. Mackey was nicely snockered on 100-proof tea, entertaining Grandma and Marjorie with a slightly slurred version of the story of her life, concentrating on the seamier moments. She was swaying and gesturing, and every now and then a splot of whatever would slurp out of her teacup and splatter onto her shoe.

“You have to see this, “ Grandma said to me. “They gave George a dark blue satin liner on account of his lodge colors are blue and gold. Isn’t that something?”

“All the lodge brothers’ll be here tonight,” Mrs. Mackey said. “They’re gonna have a ceremony. And they sent a spray … THIS BIG!”

“That’s a pip of a ring George is wearing,” Grandma said to Mrs. Mackey.

Mrs. Mackey chugged the rest of her tea. “It’s his lodge ring, the Lord rest his soul, George wanted to be buried with his lodge ring.”

Grandma bent down for a better look. She leaned into the casket and touched the ring. “Uh-oh.”

We were all afraid to ask.

Grandma straightened and turned to face us. “Well, will you look at this,” she said, holding an object the size of a Tootsie Roll in her hand. “His finger came off.”

Mrs. Mackey fainted crash onto the floor, and Marjorie Boyer ran screaming out of the room.

I inched forward for a better look. “Are you sure?” I asked Grandma Mazur. “How could that happen?”

“I was just admiring his ring, feeling the smooth glass stone, and next thing I knew his finger came off in my hand,” she said.

Spiro charged into the room with Marjorie Boyer close on his heels. “What’s this about a finger?”

Grandma held it out for him to see. “I was just taking a close look, and next thing I knew here was the finger.”

Spiro snatched at the finger. “This isn’t a real finger. This is wax.”

“It came off his hand,” Grandma said. “See for yourself.”

We all peered into the casket, staring at the little stump where George’s middle finger used to be.

“There was a man on TV the other night said aliens were snatching up people and doing scientific experiments on them,” Grandma said. “Maybe that’s what happened here. Maybe aliens got George’s finger. Maybe they got some other parts too. You want me to check out the rest of George’s parts?”

Spiro flipped the lid closed. “Sometimes accidents happen during the preparation process,” he said. “Sometimes it’s necessary to do a little artificial enhancement.”

A creepy thought skittered into my mind regarding George’s finger loss. Nah, I told myself. Kenny Mancuso wouldn’t do something like that. That would be too gross even for Mancuso.

Spiro stepped over Mrs. Mackey and moved to the intercom just outside the door. I followed after him and waited while he instructed Louie Moon to call the ERT and then to bring some putty to room number four.

“About that finger,” I said to Spiro.

“If you were doing your job he’d be locked up by now,” Spiro said. “I don’t know why I ever hired you to find the caskets when you can’t find Mancuso. How hard can it be? The guy’s freaking nuts, leaving me notes, hacking up stiffs.”

“Haking up stiffs as in cutting off fingers?”

“Only one finger,” Spiro said.

“Have you called the police?”

“What, are you serious? I can’t call the police. They’ll go right to Con. Con finds out about any of this he’ll go apeshit.”

“I’m still sort of shaky on the finer points of the law, but it seems to me you have an obligation to report this stuff.”

“I’m reporting it to you.”

“Oh no, I’m not taking responsibility for this.”

“It’s my business if I want to report a crime,” Spiro said. “There’s no law says you have to tell the cops everything.”

Spiro’s gaze settled on a spot over my left shoulder. I turned to see what had caught his attention and was unnerved to see Louie Moon standing just inches from me. He was easy to identify because his name was written in red thread just over the breast pocket of his white cotton jumpsuit. He was average height and average weight and probably in his thirties. His skin was very pale, and his eyes were flat and faded blue. His blond hair had started to recede. He gave me a fast glance, just enough to acknowledge my presence, and handed Spiro the putty.

“We have a fainter in here,” Spiro told him. “How about if you direct the ERT to the back door and then send them up here?”

Moon left without saying a word. Very mellow. Maybe working with dead people does that for you. I suppose it could be peaceful once you get over the body fluids stuff. Not much conversation going on, but probably good for the blood pressure.

“How about Moon?” I said to Spiro. “Did he ever have access to the locker key? Does he know about the caskets?”

“Moon doesn’t know about anything. Moon has the IQ of a lizard.”

I didn’t exactly know how to reply to this, since Spiro was so lizardlike himself.

“Let’s go through this from the beginning,” I said. “When did you get the note?”

“I came in to make some phone calls and found the note on my desk. It must have been a few minutes before twelve.”

“How about the finger? When did you find out about the finger?”

“I always do a walk-through before viewings. I noticed old George was short a finger and gave him a patch-up job.”

“You should have told me.”

“It wasn’t something I wanted to share. I didn’t think anybody’d find out. I didn’t count on Granny Disaster showing up.”

“You have any idea how Kenny got in?”

“Must have just walked in. When I leave at night I set the alarm. I shut it off when I open up in the morning. During the day the back door is always open for deliveries. Usually the front door’s open too.”

I’d watched the front door for a good part of the morning and no one had used it. A florist had pulled around back. That was about it. Of course, Kenny could have waltzed in before I got there.

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“Louie and I were working in the addition most of the morning. People know to use the intercom if they need us.”

“So who was in and out?”

“Clara does hair for us. She got here around nine-thirty to work on Mrs. Grasso. She left about an hour later. I guess you could talk to her. Just don’t tell her anything. Sal Munoz delivered some flowers. I was up here when he came and left, so I know he won’t be any help.”

“Maybe you should check around. Make sure you’re not missing anything else.”

“I don’t want to know what else I’m missing.”

“So what is it that you have and Kenny wants?”

Spiro grabbed his crotch and gave a hoist. “He was small. You know what I mean?”

I felt my upper lip curl back. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You never know what motivates people. Sometimes these things eat at them.”

“Yeah, well, if you come up with anything else let me know.”

I went back to the room and collected Grandma Mazur. Mrs. Mackey was on her feet, looking okay. Marjorie Boyer seemed a little green, but maybe it was just the lighting.

When we got to the lot I noticed an odd tilt to the Buick. Louie Moon was standing beside it, his expression serene, his eyes locked onto a large screwdriver sticking out of the whitewall. He could just as well have been watching grass grow.

Grandma squatted down to get a better look. “Don’t seem right that someone should do this to a Buick,” she said.

I hated to give in to paranoia, but I didn’t for a minute think this was an act of random vandalism.

“Did you see who did this?” I asked Louie.

He shook his head no. When he spoke his voice was soft and as flat as his eyes. “I just came out here to wait for the ERT.”

“And no one was in the lot? You didn’t see any cars driving away?”

“No.”

I allowed myself the luxury of a sigh and went back inside to call for road service. I used the pay phone in the hall, unhappy to find that my hand was shaking as I fumbled to find a quarter in the bottom of my pocketbook. It’s just a punctured tire, I told myself. It’s no big deal. It’s a car, for chrissake … an old car.

I had my father come to rescue Grandma Mazur, and while I waited for the tire to be replaced, I tried to imagine Kenny sneaking into the funeral home and leaving the note. It would have been fairly easy for Kenny to come in the back door and not be seen. Slicing off a finger would have been more difficult. It would have taken time.

The back door to the funeral home opened to a short hall, which led to the lobby. The door to the basement, the side door to the kitchen, and Con’s office all opened from the hall. A small vestibule and double glass door, located between Con’s office and the basement door, gave access to the macadam driveway running back to the garages. It was through this door that the deceased rolled on his last journey.

Two years ago Con had hired a decorator to spiff the place up. The decorator’s colors of choice, mauve and lime, dotted the walls with pastoral landscapes. The floors were heavily padded and carpeted. Nothing squeaked. The entire house was designed to keep noise to a minimum, and now Kenny was sneaking about and not being heard.

I ran into Spiro in the hall. “I want to know more about Kenny,” I said to him. “Where would Kenny go to hide out? Someone must be helping him. Who would he turn to?”

“Morellis and Mancusos always go back to the family. Someone dies, it’s like they all died. They come in here in their ugly black dresses and coats and cry buckets for each other. My guess is he’s living in a Mancuso attic.”

I wasn’t so sure. Seemed to me Joe would know by now if Kenny was hiding in a Mancuso attic. The Mancusos and Morellis weren’t known for their ability to keep secrets from each other.

“If he wasn’t in a Mancuso attic?”

Spiro shrugged. “He went to Atlantic City a lot.”

“He seeing any girls besides Julia Cenetta?”

“You want to go through the phone book?”

“That many, huh?”

I left through the side door and waited impatiently while Al from Al’s Auto Body unjacked my car. Al stood and wiped his hands on his coveralls before handing me the bill.

“Weren’t you driving a Jeep last time I gave you a new tire?”

“The Jeep got stolen.”

“You ever think about using public transportation?”

“What happened to the screwdriver?”

“I put it in your trunk. Never know when you need a screwdriver.”

Clara’s Beauty Parlor was three blocks down Hamilton, next to Buckets of Donuts. I found a parking space, gritted my teeth, held my breath, and backed the Buick in at warp speed. Better to get it over with. I knew I was close when I heard glass breaking.

I slunk out of the Buick and assessed the damage. None to the Buick. Broken headlight on the other guy’s car. I left a note with insurance information and made for Clara’s.

Bars, funeral homes, bakeries, and beauty parlors form the hub of the wheel that spins the burg. Beauty parlors are especially important because the burg is an equal-opportunity neighborhood caught in a 1950s time warp. The translation of this is that girls in the burg become obsessed with hair at a very early age. The hell with coed peewee football. If you’re a little girl in the burg you spend your time combing out Barbie’s hair. Barbie sets the standard. Big gunky black eyelashes, electric-blue eye shadow, pointy outthrust breasts, and a lot of platinum-blond phony-looking hair. This is what we all aspire to. Barbie even teaches us how to dress. Tight glittery dresses, skimpy shorts, an occasional feather boa, and, of course, spike heels with everything. Not that Barbie doesn’t have more to offer, but little girls in the burg know better than to get sucked in by yuppie Barbie. They don’t buy into any of that tasteful sportswear, professional business suit stuff. Little girls in the burg go for the glamour.

The way I see it is, we’re so far behind we’re actually ahead of the rest of the country. We never had to go through any of that messy readjustment with roles stuff. You are who you want to be in the burg. It’s never been men against women. In the burg it’s always been weak against strong.

When I was a little girl I got my bangs cut at Clara’s. She set my hair for my first communion and for my high school graduation. Now I go to the mall to get my hair trimmed by Mr. Alexander, but I still go to Clara sometimes to get my nails done.

The beauty parlor is in a converted house that was gutted to form one large room with a bathroom at the rear. There are a few chrome-and-upholstered chairs in the front where you can wait your turn and read dog-eared magazines or flip through hairdressing books showing styles no one can duplicate. Beyond the waiting area the washing bowls face off with the comb-out chairs. Just in front of the bathroom is a small manicure station. Posters showing more exotic, unobtainable hairstyles line the walls and reflect in the bank of mirrors.

Heads swiveled under dryers when I walked in.

Under the third dryer from the rear was my archenemy, Joyce Barnhardt. When I was in the second grade Joyce Barnhardt spilled a paper cup filled with water onto the back of my chair and told everyone I’d wet my pants. Twenty years later I’d caught her flagrante delicto on my dining room table, riding my husband like he was Dickie the Wonder Horse.

“Hello, Joyce,” I said. “Long time no see.”

“Stephanie. How’s it going?”

“Pretty good.”

“I understand you lost your job selling undies.”

“I didn’t sell undies.” Bitch. “I was the lingerie buyer for E.E. Martin, and I lost my job when they consolidated with Baldicott.”

“You always did have a problem with undies. Remember when you wet your pants in the second grade?”

If I’d been wearing a blood pressure cuff it would have popped off my arm. I punched the hood back on the dryer and got so far in her face our noses were touching. “You know what I do for a living now, Joyce? I’m a bounty hunter, and I carry a gun, so don’t piss me off.”

“Everybody in New Jersey carries a gun,” Joyce said. She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a 9-mm Beretta.

This was embarrassing because not only didn’t I have my gun with me, but my gun was smaller.

Bertie Greenstein was under the dryer next to Joyce. “I like a forty-five,” Bertie Greenstein said, hauling a Colt government model out of her tote bag.

“Too much kick,” Betty Kuchta told Bertie from across the room. “And it takes up too much room in your pocketbook. You’re better off with a thirty-eight. That’s what I carry now. A thirty-eight.”

“I carry a thirty-eight,” Clara said. “I used to carry a forty-five but I got bursitis from the weight, so my doctor said to switch to a lighter gun. I carry pepper spray, too.”

Everyone but old Mrs. Rizzoli, who was getting a perm, had pepper spray.

Betty Kuchta waved a stun gun in the air. “I’ve got one of these, too.”

“Kiddie toy,” Joyce said, brandishing a taser.

Nobody could one-up the taser.

“So, what’ll it be?” Clara asked me. “Manicure? I just got in some new polish. Luscious Mango.”

I looked at the bottle of Luscious Mango. I hadn’t actually intended to get my nails done, but the Luscious Mango was pretty awesome. “Luscious Mango will be good,” I said. I dropped my jacket and pocketbook over the back of the chair, sat down at the little manicure stand, and plunged my fingers into the soaking bowl.

“Who are you after now?” old Mrs. Rizzoli wanted to know. “I heard it was Kenny Mancuso.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Not me,” Mrs. Rizzoli said. “But I heard Kathryn Freeman saw him coming out of that Zaremba girl’s house at two in the morning.”

“That wasn’t Kenny Mancuso,” Clara said. “That was Mooch Morelli. I heard it right from Kathryn herself. She lives across the street, and she was up letting her dog out. He had diarrhea from eating chicken bones. I told her not to give that dog chicken bones, but she never listens.”

“Mooch Morelli!” Mrs. Rizzo said. “Can you imagine? Does his wife know?”

Joyce pulled the dryer back over her head. “I hear she’s filing for divorce.”

They all went back under the dryers and buried their faces in magazines since this was getting kind of close to home for Joyce and me. It was common knowledge who’d been caught with whom on my dining room table, and no one wanted to risk being present at a shootout with her hair in curlers.

“How about you?” I asked Clara while she filed a nail into a perfect oval. “Have you seen Kenny?”

She shook her head. “Not in a long time.”

“I heard someone saw him sneaking into Stiva’s this morning.”

Clara stopped filing, and her head came up. “Holy mother. I was at Stiva’s this morning.”

“You see or hear anything?”

“No. It must have been after I left. I guess it doesn’t surprise me. Kenny and Spiro were real good friends.”

Betty Kuchta leaned forward from the dryer hood. “He was never all there, you know,” she said, pointing a finger to her head. “He was in my Gail’s class in the second grade. The teachers all knew never to turn their back.”

Mrs. Rizzoli nodded in agreement. “A bad seed. Too much violence in the blood. Like his uncle Guido.
Pazzo
.”

“You want to be careful of that one,” Mrs. Kuchta said to me. “You ever notice his pinky finger? When Kenny was ten he chopped off the end of his pinky finger with his father’s ax. Wanted to see if it would hurt.”

“Adele Baggionne told me all about it,” Mrs. Rizzoli said. “Told me about the finger and lots of other things, too. Adele said she was watching out her back window, wondering what Kenny was going to do with the ax. Said she saw him put his hand on the wood stump next to the garage and chop his finger off. Said he never cried. Said he just stood there looking at it, smiling. Adele said he would have bled to death if she hadn’t called the rescue squad.”

It was close to five when I left Clara’s. The more I heard about Kenny and Spiro the creepier I felt. I’d started the search thinking Kenny was a wise-ass, and now I was worried he was crazy. And Spiro didn’t sound any better.

I drove straight home with my mood darkening by the minute. I was so spooked by the time I reached my apartment I had my pepper spray in my hand when I unlocked my front door. I flashed the lights on and relaxed a little when everything seemed in order. The red light was blinking on my answering machine.

It was Mary Lou. “So what’s the deal here? You shacked up with Kevin Costner or something and don’t have time to call?”

I shrugged out of my jacket and dialed her number. “I’ve been busy,” I told her. “Not with Kevin Costner.”

“Then with who?” she asked.

“With Joe Morelli, for one.”

“Even better.”

“Not that way. I’ve been looking for Kenny Mancuso and not having any luck.”

“You sound depressed. You should get a manicure.”

“I got a manicure, and it didn’t help.”

“Then there’s only one thing left.”

“Shopping.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Mary Lou said. “I’ll meet you at Quaker Bridge at seven. Macy’s shoes.”

Mary Lou was already deep into shoes when I showed up.

“What do you think of these shoes?” she asked, pirouetting in black ankle-high boots with stiletto heels.

Mary Lou is five foot three and built like a brick shithouse. She had a lot of hair, which happened to be red this week, and she favored huge hoop earrings and the wet look in lipstick. She’d been happily married for six years and had two kids. I liked her kids, but for right now I was content with a hamster. A person doesn’t need a diaper pail with a hamster.

“They look familiar,” I said about the shoes. “I think Witch Hazel was wearing shoes like that when she found Little Lulu picking beebleberries in her front yard.”

“You don’t like them?”

“Are these special occasion shoes?”

“New Year’s Eve.”

“What, no sequins?”

“You should get shoes,” she said. “Something sexy.”

“I don’t need shoes. I need a night scope. You think they sell night scopes someplace here?”

“Omigod,” Mary Lou said, holding up a pair of purple suede platform pumps. “Look at these shoes. These shoes were made for you.”

“I don’t have the money. I’m between paychecks.”

“We could steal them.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since a long time. Anyway, I never stole anything big. There was just that once we took some gum from Sal’s because we hated Sal.”

“What about the jacket from Salvation Army?”

“It was MY jacket!” When I was fourteen my mother gave my favorite denim jacket to Salvation Army, and Mary Lou and I retrieved it. I told my mother I’d bought it back, but really we’d shoplifted it.

“You should at least try them on,” Mary Lou said. She snagged a salesman. “We want these shoes in a size seven and a half.”

“I don’t want new shoes,” I said. “I need too many other things. I need a new gun. Joyce Barnhardt has a bigger gun than me.”

“Ah-ha! Now we’re getting somewhere.”

I sat down and unlaced my Doc Martens. “I saw her in Clara’s today. It was all I could do to keep from choking her.”

“She did you a favor. Your ex-husband was a jerk.”

“She’s evil.”

“She works here, you know. Cosmetics. I saw her doing a makeover when I came in. Had some old lady looking like Lily Munster.”

I took the shoes from the salesman and slid them on.

“Are they wonderful, or what?” Mary Lou said.

“They’re pretty nice, but I can’t shoot anyone with them.”

“You never shoot anyone anyway. Well, okay, maybe once.”

“You think Joyce Barnhardt has purple shoes?”

“I happen to know Joyce Barnhardt has size ten feet and would look like a cow in these shoes.”