Two for the Dough (2 page)

There was a loud
wump
, and the Wrangler bucked out of control. I slammed my foot to the brake and the car came to a sudden stop with the left side tilted at a 30-degree angle.

Morelli got out to take a look. “You’re hung up on a safety island,” he said. “Back up, and you should be okay.”

I eased off the island and rolled several feet. The car pulled hard to the left. Morelli did the take-a-look thing again while I thrashed around in the driver’s seat, sputtering and fuming and berating myself for listening to Morelli.

“Tough break,” Morelli said, leaning into the open window. “You bent your rim when you hit the curb. You got road service?”

“You did this on purpose. You didn’t want me to catch your rotten cousin.”

“Hey, cupcake, don’t blame me just because you made some bad driving decisions.”

“You’re scum, Morelli. Scum.”

He grinned. “Better be nice. I could give you a ticket for reckless driving.”

I yanked the phone out of my pocketbook and called Al’s Auto Body. Al and Ranger were good friends. During the day Al ran a legitimate business. I suspected that at night he ran a chop shop, hacking up stolen cars. It didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get my tire fixed.

An hour later I was on my way. No sense trying to track down Kenny Mancuso. He’d be long gone. I stopped at a convenience store, bought a pint of artery-clogging coffee ice cream, and headed for home.

I live in a blocky three-story brick apartment building located a couple miles from my parents’ house. The front door to the building opens to a busy street filled with little businesses, and a tidy neighborhood of single-family bungalows sprawls to the rear.

My apartment is in the back of the building, on the second floor, overlooking the parking lot. I have one bedroom, one bath, a small kitchen, and a living room that combines with the dining area. My bathroom looks like it came off the set from
The Partridge Family
, and due to temporarily strained finances my furniture could be described as eclectic—which is a snooty way of saying nothing matches.

Mrs. Bestler from the third floor was in my hall when I got off the elevator. Mrs. Bestler was eighty-three and didn’t sleep well at night, so she walked the halls to get exercise.

“Hey, Mrs. Bestler,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Don’t do no good to complain. Looks like you’ve been out working tonight. You catch any criminals?”

“Nope. Not tonight.”

“That’s a pity.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” I said, unlocking my door, slipping inside.

My hamster, Rex, was running on his wheel, his feet a blur of pink. I tapped on the glass cage by way of greeting, causing him to momentarily pause, his whiskers twitching, his shiny black eyes large and alert.

“Howdy, Rex,” I said.

Rex didn’t say anything. He’s the small, silent type.

I dumped my black shoulder bag on the kitchen counter and got a spoon from the cutlery drawer. I popped the top on the ice cream container and listened to my phone messages while I ate.

All of the messages were from my mother. She was making a nice roast chicken tomorrow, and I should come for dinner. I should be sure not to be late because Betty Szajack’s brother-in-law died and Grandma Mazur wanted to make the seven o’clock viewing.

Grandma Mazur reads the obituary columns like they’re part of the paper’s entertainment section. Other communities have country clubs and fraternal orders. The burg has funeral parlors. If people stopped dying the social life of the burg would come to a grinding halt.

I finished off the ice cream and put the spoon in the dishwasher. I gave Rex a few hamster nuggets and a grape and went to bed.

I woke up to rain slapping against my bedroom window, drumming on the old-fashioned black wrought-iron fire escape that serves as my balcony. I liked the way rain sounded at night when I was snug in bed. I couldn’t get excited about rain in the morning.

I needed to harass Julia Cenetta some more. And I needed to run a check on the car that had picked her up. The phone rang, and I automatically reached for the portable at bedside, thinking it was early to be getting a phone call. The digital readout on my clock said 7:15.

It was my cop friend, Eddie Gazarra.

“ ‘Morning,” he said. “Time to go to work.”

“Is this a social call?” Gazarra and I had grown up together, and now he’s married to my cousin Shirley.

“This is an information call, and I didn’t make it. Are you still looking for Kenny Mancuso?”

“Yes.”

“The gas station attendant he nailed in the knee got dead this morning.”

This put me on my feet. “What happened?”

“A second shooting. I heard from Schmidty. He was working the desk when the call came in. A customer found the attendant, Moogey Bues, in the gas station office with a big hole in his head.”

“Jesus.”

“I thought you might be interested. Maybe there’s a tie-in, maybe not. Could be Mancuso decided shooting his pal in the knee wasn’t enough, and he came back to blow the guy’s brains out.”

“I owe you.”

“We could use a baby-sitter next Friday.”

“I don’t owe you that much.”

Eddie grunted and disconnected.

I took a fast shower, blasted my hair with the hair dryer, and squashed it under a New York Rangers hat, turning the brim to the back. I was wearing button-fly Levi’s, a red plaid flannel shirt over a black T-shirt, and Doc Martens in honor of the rain.

Rex was asleep in his soup can after a hard night on the wheel, so I tiptoed past him. I switched the answering machine on, grabbed my pocketbook and my black-and-purple Gore-Tex jacket, and locked up behind myself.

The gas station, Delio’s Exxon, was on Hamilton, not far from my apartment. I stopped at a convenience store on the way and got a large coffee to go and a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts. I figured if you had to breathe New Jersey air there wasn’t much point in getting carried away with always eating healthy food.

There were a lot of cops and cop cars at the gas station, and an emergency rescue truck had backed itself up close to the office door. The rain had tapered off to a fine drizzle. I parked half a block away and made my way through the crowd, taking my coffee and doughnuts with me, looking to spot a familiar face.

The only familiar face I saw belonged to Joe Morelli.

I sidled up to him and opened the doughnut box.

Morelli took a doughnut and shoved half in his mouth.

“No breakfast?” I asked.

“Got yanked out of bed for this.”

“I thought you were working vice.”

“I am. Walt Becker is the primary here. He knew I was looking for Kenny, and thought I’d want to be included.”

We both chewed some doughnut.

“So what happened?” I asked.

There was a crime photographer working in the office. Two paramedics stood by, waiting to zip the body into a bag and take off.

Morelli watched the action through the plate-glass window. “The M.E. estimates time of death at six-thirty. That’s right about when the victim would have been opening up. Apparently someone just walked in and blew him away. Three shots to the face, close range. No indication of theft. The cash drawer was intact. No witnesses so far.”

“A hit?”

“Looks like it.”

“This garage selling numbers? Dealing dope?”

“Nothing I know about.”

“Maybe it’s personal. Maybe he was screwing someone’s wife. Maybe he owed money.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe Kenny came back to shut him up.”

Morelli didn’t move a muscle. “Maybe.”

“You think Kenny’d do that?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say what Kenny’d do.”

“You run the plate on that car last night?”

“Yeah. It belongs to my cousin Leo.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a big family,” he said. “I’m not that close anymore.”

“You going to talk to Leo?”

“Soon as I’m out of here.”

I sipped some of the steaming coffee and watched his eyes lock onto the Styrofoam cup. “Bet you’d like to have some nice hot coffee,” I said.

“I’d kill for coffee.”

“I’ll let you have some if you’ll let me tag along when you talk to Leo.”

“Deal.”

I took one last sip and passed him the cup. “You check on Julia?”

“Did a drive-by. The lights were out. Didn’t see the car. We can talk to her after we talk to Leo.”

The photographer was finished and the paramedics went to work, trundling the body into a bag, hefting it onto a stretcher. The stretcher clattered as it rolled over the doorstep, the bag jiggling with its dead weight.

The doughnut sat heavy in my stomach. I didn’t know the victim, but I felt his loss all the same. Vicarious grief.

There were two homicide detectives on the scene, looking professional in trench coats. Under the trench coats they wore suits and ties. Morelli was wearing a navy T-shirt, Levi’s, a tweed sport coat, and running shoes. A fine mist had settled on his hair.

“You don’t look like the other guys,” I said. “Where’s your suit?”

“You ever see me in a suit? I look like a casino pit boss. I have special dispensation never to wear a suit.” He took his keys from his pocket and gestured to one of the detectives that he was leaving. The detective nodded acknowledgment.

Morelli was driving a city car. It was an old tan Fairlane sedan with an antenna wired from the trunk and a hula doll stuck in the back window. It looked like it couldn’t do 30 going uphill. It was dented and rusted and grime-coated.

“You ever wash this thing?” I asked.

“Never. I’m afraid to see what’s under the dirt.”

“Trenton likes to make law enforcement a challenge.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Wouldn’t want it to be too easy. Take all the fun out of it.”

Leo Morelli lived with his parents in the burg. He was the same age as Kenny, and he worked for the Turnpike Authority, like his father.

A blue-and-white was parked in their driveway, and the whole family was outside talking to a uniform when we pulled up.

“Someone stole Leo’s car,” Mrs. Morelli said. “Can you imagine? What’s this world coming to? These things never used to happen in the burg. Now look.”

These things never happened in the burg because it was like a retirement village for the mob. Years ago when Trenton rioted no one even considered sending a squad car in to protect the burg. Every old soldier and capo was up in his attic getting out his tommy gun.

“When did you notice it gone?” Morelli asked.

“This morning,” Leo said. “When I came out to go to work. It wasn’t here.”

“When did you see it last?”

“Last night. When I came home from work at six o’clock.”

“When was the last time you saw Kenny?”

Everybody blinked.

“Kenny?” Leo’s mother said. “What’s Kenny got to do with this?”

Morelli was back on his heels with his hands in his pockets. “Maybe Kenny needed a car.”

No one said anything.

Morelli repeated it. “So, when was the last time anybody talked to Kenny?”

“Christ,” Leo’s father said to Leo. “Tell me you didn’t let that asshole idiot have your car.”

“He promised me he’d bring it right back,” Leo said. “How was I to know?”

“Shit for brains,” Leo’s father said. “That’s what you got … shit for brains.”

We explained to Leo how he’d been aiding and abetting a felon, and how a judge might look askance at such an activity. And then we explained how if he ever saw or heard from Kenny again he should right away rat on him to his cousin Joe or Joe’s good friend Stephanie Plum.

“Do you think he’ll call us if he hears from Kenny?” I asked when we were alone in the car.

Morelli stopped for a light. “No. I think Leo will beat the crap out of Kenny with a tire iron.”

“It’s the Morelli way.”

“Something like that.”

“A man thing.”

“Yeah. A man thing.”

“How about after he beats the crap out of him? Do you think he’ll call us then?”

Morelli shook his head. “You don’t know much, do you?”

“I know a lot.”

This brought a smile to Morelli’s lips.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Julia Cenetta.”

Julia Cenetta worked in the bookstore at Trenton State College. We checked her house first. When no one answered we headed off for the college. Traffic was steady, with everyone around us rigidly obeying the speed limit. Nothing like an unmarked cop car to slow things down to a crawl.

Morelli entered through the main gate and looped around toward the single-level brick-and-cement bookstore complex. We passed by a duck pond and a few trees and expanses of lawn that hadn’t yet succumbed to winter blight. The rain had picked up again and was coming down with the boring relentlessness of an all-day soaker. Students walked head down, with the hoods pulled up on raincoats and sweatshirts.

Morelli took a look at the bookstore lot, filled to capacity with the exception of a few slots on the outermost rim, and without hesitation parked in a no-parking zone at the curb.

“Police emergency?” I asked.

“You bet your sweet ass,” Morelli said.

Julia was working the register, but no one was buying, so she was standing hip against the cash drawer, picking at her fingernail polish. Little frown lines appeared between her eyebrows when she saw us.

“Looks like a slow day,” Morelli said to her.

Julia nodded. “It’s the rain.”

“Hear anything from Kenny?”

Color crept into Julia’s cheeks. “Actually, I sort of saw him last night. He called right after you left, and then he came over. I told him you wanted to talk to him. I told him he should call you. I gave him your card with your beeper numbers and everything.”

“Do you think he’ll come back tonight?”

“No.” She shook her head for emphasis. “He said he wasn’t coming back. He said he had to keep a real low profile because there were people after him.”

“The police?”

“I think he meant someone else, but I don’t know who.”

Morelli gave her another card with instructions to call him anytime, day or night, if she heard from Kenny.

She looked noncommittal, and I didn’t think we should count on much help from Julia.