Two for the Dough (16 page)

Spiro knocked Louie aside with a sweep of his hand and charged out, yelling, “Jesus H. Christ and mother fucker.”

Minutes later, Spiro was back in his office, his face mottled, his hands clenched. “I don’t fucking believe this,” he roared through clenched teeth. “I leave for half an hour, and someone comes in and hacks off Loosey’s dick. You know who that someone was? Kenny, that’s who. I leave you in charge, and you let Kenny come in and hack off a dick.”

The phone rang and Spiro snatched at it. “Stiva.”

His lips narrowed, and I knew it was Kenny.

“You’re nuts,” Spiro said. “Too much nose candy. Too many of those little tattoos.”

Kenny did some talking, and Spiro cut in.

“Shut up,” Spiro said. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing when you mess with me. I see you around here, and I’ll kill you. And if I don’t kill you I’ll have Cookie here kill you.”

Cookie? Was he talking about me? “Excuse me,” I said to Spiro, “what was that last part?”

Spiro slammed the phone down. “Fucking jerk.”

I put palms flat on his desk and leaned forward. “I am
not
a cookie. And I am
not
a hired gun. And if I was in the protection business I would
not
protect
your
slimy body. You are a mold spore, a boil, a dog turd. If you ever tell anyone I will kill them on your behalf again, I’ll make sure you sing soprano for the rest of your life.”

Stephanie Plum, master of the empty threat.

“Let me guess … you’re on the rag, right?”

Good thing I didn’t have my gun with me, because I might have shot him.

“There are a lot of people who wouldn’t pay you anything for finding burned-up stuff,” Spiro said, “but because I’m such a good guy I’m going to write you a check. We could consider it like a retainer. I could see where it’d be handy to have a chick like you around.”

I took the check and left. I didn’t see the value in talking any further since there clearly wasn’t anyone home. I stopped to get gas and Morelli pulled in behind me.

“This is getting strange,” I said to Morelli. “I think Kenny’s gone over the edge.”

“Now what?”

I told him about Mr. Loosey and his mishap, and about the phone call.

“You should be giving this car high-test,” Morelli said. “You’re going to get engine knock.”

“God forbid I’d get engine knock.”

Morelli looked disgusted. “Shit,” he said.

I thought this seemed like a strong reaction to my lack of automotive maintenance. “Is engine knock that bad?”

He leaned against the fender. “A cop was killed in New Brunswick last night. Took two hits through his vest.”

“Army ammo?”

“Yeah.” He raised his eyes to me. “I have to find this stuff. It’s right under my nose.”

“You think Kenny could be right about Spiro? You think Spiro could have emptied the caskets and hired me to cover his ass?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t feel right. My gut instinct is that this started off with Kenny, Moogey, and Spiro, and somehow a fourth player came in and screwed everything up. I think someone snatched the stuff out from under Kenny, Moogey, and Spiro and started them fighting among themselves. And it’s probably not someone from Braddock, because it’s being sold piecemeal in Jersey and Philly.”

“It would have to be someone close to one of those three. A confidant … like a girlfriend.”

“It could be someone who found out by accident,” Morelli said. “Someone who overheard a conversation.”

“Like Louie Moon.”

“Yeah. Like Louie Moon,” Morelli said.

“And it would have to be someone who had access to the locker key. Like Louie Moon.”

“There are probably lots of people Spiro could have talked to and who would have had access to his key. Everyone from his cleaning lady to Clara. Same with Moogey. Just because Spiro told you no one but him had a key doesn’t mean it’s true. Probably all three of them had keys.”

“If that’s the case, then what about Moogey’s key? Has that been accounted for? Was it on his key chain when he was killed?”

“His key chain was never found. It was assumed that he left his keys somewhere in the garage and sooner or later they’d turn up. It didn’t seem like an important issue at the time. His parents came with an extra key and drove his car home.

“Now that the caskets have surfaced I have some cause to harass Spiro. I think I’ll go back and lean on him. And I want to talk to Louie Moon. Can you keep out of trouble for a while?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I thought maybe I’d go shopping. See if I could find a dress to go with the purple shoes.”

The line of Morelli’s mouth tightened. “You’re lying. You’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”

“Boy, that really hurts. I thought you’d be excited about a purple dress with the purple shoes. I was going to look for spandex, too. A short spandex dress with bugle beads and sequins.”

“I know you, and I know you’re not going shopping.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. I’m going shopping. I swear to you.”

One corner of Morelli’s mouth hitched up a fraction of an inch. “You’d lie to the pope.”

I caught myself halfway through the sign of the cross. “I almost never lie.” Only when it’s absolutely necessary. And on those occasions when the truth doesn’t seem appropriate.

I watched Morelli drive away, and then I headed over to Vinnie’s office to get some addresses.

Connie and Lula were yelling at each other when I walked into the office.

“Dominick Russo makes his own sauce,” Connie shouted. “With plum tomatoes. Fresh basil. Fresh garlic.”

“I don’t know about any of that plum tomato shit. All I know is the best pizza in Trenton comes from Tiny’s on First Street,” Lula shouted back. “Ain’t nobody makes pizza like Tiny. That man makes soul pizza.”

“Soul pizza? What the hell is soul pizza?” Connie wanted to know.

They both turned and glared at me.

“You settle it,” Connie said. “Tell know-it-all here about Dominic’s pizza.”

“Dom makes good pizza,” I said. “But I like the pizza at Pino’s.”

“Pino’s!” Connie curled her upper lip. “They use marinara sauce that comes in five-gallon cans.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I love that canned marinara sauce.” I dropped my pocketbook on Connie’s desk. “Glad to see you two getting along so well.”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

I plopped onto the couch. “I need some addresses. I want to do some snooping.”

Connie got a directory from the bookcase behind her. “Who you need?”

“Spiro Stiva and Louie Moon.”

“Wouldn’t want to look under the cushions in Spiro’s house,” Connie said. “Wouldn’t look in his refrigerator, either.”

Lula grimaced. “He the undertaker guy? Shoot, you aren’t gonna do breaking and entering on an undertaker, are you?”

Connie wrote an address on a piece of paper and searched for the second name.

I looked at the address she’d gotten for Spiro. “You know where this is?”

“Century Court Apartments. You take Klockner to Demby.” Connie gave me the second address. “I haven’t a clue on this one. Somewhere in Hamilton Township.”

“What are you looking for?” Lula asked.

I stuffed the addresses into my pocket. “I don’t know. A key, maybe.” Or a couple crates of guns in the living room.

“Maybe I should come with you,” Lula said. “Skinny ass like you shouldn’t be sneaking around all by yourself.”

“I appreciate your offer,” I told her, “but riding shotgun isn’t part of your job description.”

“Don’t think I got much of a job description,” Lula said. “Seems to me I do whatever got to be done, and right now I’ve done it all unless I want to sweep the floor and scrub the toilet.”

“She’s a filing maniac,” Connie said. “She was born to file.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Lula said. “Wait’ll you see me be an assistant bounty hunter.”

“Go for it,” Connie said.

Lula packed herself into her jacket and grabbed her pocketbook. “This is gonna be good,” she said. “This is gonna be like Cagney and Lacey.”

I searched the big wall map for Moon’s address. “Okay by me if it’s okay with Connie, but I want to be Cagney.”

“No way! I want to be Cagney,” Lula said.

“I said it first.”

Lula stuck her lower lip out and narrowed her eyes. “Was my idea, and I’m not doing it if I can’t be Cagney.”

I looked at her. “We aren’t serious about this, are we?”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “Speak for yourself.”

I told Connie not to wait up, and held the front door for Lula. “We’re going to check out Louie Moon first,” I said to her.

Lula stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at Big Blue. “We going in this big motherfucker Buick?”

“Yep.”

“I knew a pimp once had a car like this.”

“It belonged to my uncle Sandor.”

“He a businessman?”

“Not that I know of.”

Louie Moon lived on the far perimeter of Hamilton Township. It was almost four when we turned onto Orchid Street. I counted off homes, searching for 216, amused that such an exotically named street had been blessed with a lineup of unimaginative crackerbox houses. It was a neighborhood built in the sixties when land was available, so the plots were large, making the two-bedroom ranches seem even smaller. Over the years homeowners had personalized their carbon-copy houses, adding a garage here, a porch there. The houses had been modernized with vinyl siding of various muted shades. Bay windows had been inserted. Azalea bushes had been planted. And still the sameness prevailed.

Louie Moon’s house was set apart by a bright turquoise paint job, a full array of Christmas lights, and a five-foot-tall plastic Santa strapped to a rusted TV antenna.

“Guess he gets into the spirit early,” Lula said.

From the droop of the lights haphazardly stapled to his house and the faded look to Santa, I’d guess he was in the spirit all year long.

The house didn’t have a garage, and there were no cars in the driveway or parked at the curb. The house looked dark and undisturbed. I left Lula in the car and went to the front door. I knocked twice. No answer. The house was one floor built on a slab. The curtains were all open. Louie had nothing to hide. I circled the house, peeking into windows. The inside was neat and furnished with what I guessed to be an accumulation of discards. There was no sign of recent wealth. No boxes of ammo stacked on the kitchen table. Not a single assault rifle in sight. It looked to me like he lived alone. One cup and one bowl in the dish drain. One side of the double bed had been slept in.

I could easily see Louie Moon living here, content with his life because he had a little blue house. I toyed with the idea of illegal entry, but I couldn’t produce enough motivation to warrant the intrusion.

The air was damp and cold and the ground felt hard underfoot. I pulled my jacket collar up and returned to the car.

“That didn’t take long,” Lula said.

“Not much to see.”

“We going to the undertaker next?”

“Yeah.”

“Good thing he don’t live where he do his thing. I don’t want to see what they collect in those buckets at the end of those tables.”

It was heavy twilight by the time we got to Century Courts. The two-story buildings were red brick with white window trim. Doors were set in four-door clusters. There were five clusters to a building, which meant there were twenty apartments. Ten up and ten down. All of the buildings were set on pipestems coming off Demby. Four buildings per pipestem.

Spiro had an end unit on the ground floor. His windows were dark, and his car wasn’t in the lot. With Con in the hospital, Spiro was forced to keep long hours. The Buick was easily recognizable, and I didn’t want to get caught if Spiro should decided to bop in for a fast change of socks, so I drove one pipestem over and parked.

“I bet we find some serious shit here,” Lula said, getting out of the car. “I got a feeling about this one.”

“We’re just going to scope things out,” I said. “We’re not going to do anything illegal … like breaking and entering.”

“Sure,” Lula said. “I know that.”

We cut across the grassy area to the side of the buildings, walking casually, as if we were out for a stroll. Curtains were drawn on the windows in the front of Spiro’s apartment, so we went to the back. Again, curtains were drawn. Lula tested the sliding patio door and the two windows and found them both to be locked.

“Ain’t this a bitch?” she said. “How we supposed to find anything out this way? And just when I had a feeling, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d love to get into this apartment.”

Lula swung her pocketbook in a wide arc and crashed it into Spiro’s window, shattering the glass. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said.

My mouth dropped open, and when words finally came out they were in a whispered screech. “I don’t believe you did that! You just broke his window!”

“The Lord provides,” Lula said.

“I told you we weren’t doing anything illegal. People can’t just go around breaking windows.”

“Cagney would of done it.”

“Cagney would
never
have done that.”

“Would of.”

“Would not!”

She slid the window open and poked her head inside. “Don’t look like nobody home. Guess we should go in and make sure this broken glass didn’t do any damage.” She had the entire upper half of her body shoved into the window. “Could of made this window bigger,” she said. “Can’t hardly fit a full-bodied woman like me in this sucker.”

I gnawed on my lower lip and held my breath, not sure whether I should push her through or pull her out. She looked like Pooh when he was stuck in the rabbit hole.

She gave a grunt and suddenly the back half of her disappeared behind Spiro’s curtain. A moment later the patio door clicked open and Lula poked her head out. “You gonna stand out there all day, or what?”

“We could get arrested for this!”

“Hah, like you never did any illegal entry shit?”

“I never broke anything.”

“You didn’t this time neither. I did the breaking. You just gonna do the entering.”

I supposed it was okay since she put it that way.

I slipped behind the patio curtain and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. “Do you know what Spiro looks like?”

“Ratty-faced little guy?”

“Yeah. You do lookout on the front porch. Knock three times if you see Spiro drive up.”

Lula opened the front door and peeked out. “Everything clear,” she said. Then she let herself out and closed the door.

I locked both doors and flipped the dining room light on, turning the dimmer until the light was low. I started in the kitchen, methodically going through cabinets. I checked the refrigerator for phony jars and did a cursory search of the kitchen trash.

I made my way through the dining room and living room without discovering anything worthwhile. Breakfast dishes were still in the sink, the morning paper was strewn across the table. A pair of black dress shoes had been kicked off and left in front of the TV. Other than that the apartment was clean. No guns, no keys, no threatening notes. No addresses hastily scribbled on a pad beside the kitchen wall phone.

I flicked on the light in the bathroom. Dirty clothes lay in a heap on the bathroom floor. There wasn’t enough money in the world to get me to touch Spiro’s dirty clothes. If there was a clue in his pocket, it was safe from me. I went through the medicine chest and glanced at the wastebasket. Nothing.

His bedroom door was closed. I held my breath, opened the door, and almost fainted with the relief of finding the room empty. The furniture was Danish modern, the bedspread was black satin. The ceiling over the bed had been covered with paste-on mirror tiles. Porn magazines were stacked on a chair beside the bed. A used condom was stuck to one of the covers.

Soon as I got home I was going to take a shower in boiling water.

A desk hugged the wall in front of his window. I thought this looked promising. I sat in the black leather chair and carefully rifled through the junk mail, bills, and personal correspondence that lay scattered across the polished desk top. The bills all seemed within reason, and most of the correspondence related to the funeral home. Thank-you notes from the recently bereaved. “Dear Spiro, thank you for overcharging me in my time of sorrow.” Phone messages had been recorded on whatever was handy … backs of envelopes and letter margins. None of the messages were labeled “death threats from Kenny.” I made a list of unexplained phone numbers and stuffed it into my pocketbook for future investigation.

I opened the drawers and poked through paper clips, rubber bands, and other assorted stationery flotsam. There were no messages on his answering machine. Nothing under his bed.

I found it hard to believe there were no guns in the apartment. Spiro seemed like the kind of person to take trophies.

I pawed through his clothes in the dresser and turned to his closet. The closet was filled with undertaker suits and shirts and shoes. Six pairs of black shoes lined up on the floor, and six shoe boxes. Hmmm. I opened a shoe box. Bingo. A gun. A Colt .45. I opened the other five boxes and ended up with a tally of three handguns and three shoe boxes filled with ammo. I copied the serial numbers off the guns and took down the information on the boxes of ammo.

I pulled the bedroom window aside and peeked out at Lula. She was sitting on the stoop, filing her nails. I rapped on the windowpane, and the file flew from her fingers. Guess she wasn’t as calm as she looked. I motioned to her that I was leaving and would meet her out back.

I made sure everything was as I’d found it, shut off all lights, and exited through the patio door. It would be obvious to Spiro that someone had broken into his apartment, but chances were good he’d blame it on Kenny.

“Give me the shit,” Lula said. “You found something, didn’t you?”

“I found a couple guns.”

“That don’t float my boat. Everybody got guns.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Yo, momma. Damn right I got a gun.” She pulled a big black gun out of her pocketbook. “Blue steel,” she said. “Got it off Harry the Horse back when I was a ho. You want to know why we call him Harry the Horse?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“That mother was fearful. He just wouldn’t fit in anywhere. Hell, I had to use two hands to give him the poor man’s special.”

I dropped Lula back at the office and went on home. By the time I pulled into my lot, the sky had blackened under the cloud cover and a light rain had begun to fall. I slung my pocketbook over my shoulder and hurried into the building, happy to be home.