“This is nice,” I said. “You’re usually long gone by the time I wake up.”
“I’m trying something different.”
I looked over at the bedside clock. It was eight o’clock, and I didn’t have to be at the ice cream plant until ten-thirty. I had time for something different.
“I’m game,” I told him, snuggling closer. “What did you have in mind?”
“Originally I was going to treat you to brunch, but I’ve been waiting for three hours and I think we might be looking at a fast cup of coffee.”
• • •
I rushed into my apartment at ten o’clock. I said good morning to Rex, gave him fresh water, and filled his cup with hamster food. I changed into clean clothes and was back in my junker car twenty minutes later.
Stan Ducker was waiting for me when I screeched to a stop at the loading dock. He was suited up and standing by his Jolly truck.
“They told me I had to take you with me,” he said. “Like my life isn’t bad enough.”
“Sorry,” I said. “This wasn’t my idea.”
“You need to get dressed. I’ve got an extra wig and suit for you. You can put it all on over your clothes.”
“Nobody said anything about getting dressed.”
“This is the Jolly truck. If you ride in it you gotta look like a Jolly Bogart clown. I’m not supposed to give rides to down-on-their-luck bimbos.”
“Are you implying I’m a down-on-my-luck bimbo?”
“Let’s just say you don’t look like the queen of England.” He hooked his thumb toward his truck. “The suit and wig are on the seat. We need to get moving. The nasty little brats are out there waiting for their Booger Bars.”
Jeez Louise. If this was how he started his day, what was he going to be like at the end of it?
I stepped into the clown costume and tugged the wig on. “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready to roll.”
“Not yet,” he said, handing me a can of red greasepaint. “You gotta do the nose.”
I smeared the stuff all over my nose and thought I was beginning to understand why Ducker was so grumpy. If being a clown wasn’t your lifelong ambition, this wasn’t the job for you.
We chugged out of the parking lot and headed for north Trenton.
“I heard about Gus,” I said. “People are saying he was deliberately locked in the freezer, and it looks like another murder.”
“I don’t know about that, but I always worried about it happening to me. There was an emergency call box in there, but it broke and was never fixed. That’s the way it is in this plant. Bogart cheaps out on everything. Him and his jolly, jolly, jolly crap. Everything has to look all sunshine and roses for the morons who snarf up his ice cream, but it’s not so jolly inside this fucking clown costume.”
“You really need to find a different job.”
Ducker turned onto Oak Street. “Not now, sweetie pie,” he said. “It’s finally getting to be fun. Bogart has to jolly his way through two murders. Jolly, jolly, jolly my ass.”
“Why do you suppose someone would want to murder Gus? He seemed like an okay guy.”
“Maybe the killer is just some nutcase. Gets his jollies from freezing people.” Ducker smiled. “Did you catch that? Gets his jollies?”
“I would expect you to be more upset.”
“My happy disposition is chemically enhanced.”
“I’m seeing a lot of that at the plant. Seriously, do you think the two murders are drug related?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” He pushed a button on the dash, and the Jolly Bogart song blasted out of the loudspeakers. “Showtime,” Ducker said.
We crawled along, stopping when people appeared. The drill was that Jolly would spring out of the truck, put on his happy face, and conduct business. He’d get back into the truck and mutter something about the dumb little fuckers. After an hour of this his mood had turned even more sullen.
“What time is it?” he asked me.
“It’s almost one o’clock.”
“Damn! We’re behind schedule. Hang on.”
Ducker stomped on the gas. The truck chirped its tires and shot forward. He blew through a stop sign, took a corner on two wheels, and raced down Central Avenue.
“What’s going on? Where are we going?” I shouted at him.
“The soccer games are over at one o’clock. Whoever gets the parking place by the gate gets to sell all the ice cream. The only other parking place is half a block away, and no one goes there.”
“Is it critical that you sell all your ice cream?”
“Yes! If I sell it all early I get to go home early. I don’t have to finish out the route.”
He turned onto the street that ran along the playing fields, and his face got as red as his nose when he saw the Mo Morris truck parked by the gate.
“Sonnovabitch! That sonnovabitch!” he yelled. “He knows that’s my spot. I hate that sonnovabitch.”
Ducker drove past the Mo truck and gave the driver the finger, then wheeled around and parked nose to nose with him.
“You’re in my spot!” Ducker yelled. “Get out of my spot.”
“I got here first,” the Mo driver said. “It’s my spot today.”
Ducker reached under his seat, hauled out a big semiautomatic, and pointed it at the driver. “You want to play Mister Tough Guy?”
The Mo driver went pale, backed his truck out of the parking space, and drove away. Ducker returned the gun to its hidey-hole under his seat and got out to sell ice cream.
So I’m thinking that now I might have three suspects. Ducker was a raving lunatic. He was also in the right spot at the right time. I had his employment record, but I didn’t have any of his financials. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at him.
I called Connie and asked her to run a report on Stan Ducker and Kenny Morris.
“Do you want me to email them to you, or do you want to pick them up here?” Connie asked. “I’ll be here until three o’clock.”
“I’ll pick them up. If I don’t get there by three just leave them by the back door. Is Lula working today?”
“She’s here at the office. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s working.”
I hung up with Connie and called Eddie Gazarra.
“Do you still need a babysitter for tonight?” I asked him.
“No, it’s a wash,” Eddie said. “My youngest woke up with a stomach bug and is running a fever. I’m not all that unhappy. We were supposed to go to a baby shower. I’d like to get hold of the idiot who thought it was a good idea to have men invited to baby showers.”
I murmured condolences to the youngest and congratulations to Eddie. I disconnected, swiveled in my seat, and looked out at Ducker. He was surrounded by people wanting ice cream.
“Do you need help?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Try to get them into a line before I get trampled.”
I got everyone lined up, and Ducker collected the money and handed out the ice cream. The last person in line got the last Bogart Bar. He wanted two Bogart Bars, but there was only one left, so Ducker gave him a Bogart Kidz Kup for free.
“Done and done,” Ducker said, getting up behind the wheel.
“You sold everything?”
“We sold all the Bogart Bars, and there aren’t enough Kidz Kups left to worry about. Now we just have one more stop. I always get a lottery ticket when I’m done on Saturday. It’s a ritual. I go to the deli on Beverly Street, and I get a hot dog and a lottery ticket.”
I thought a hot dog and a lottery ticket sounded like a good idea. I was familiar with the deli. It was half bakery and half deli. Besides a hot dog and a lottery ticket I could also get a fresh-filled cannoli.
Ducker drove to the cross street and turned right onto Beverly. The deli was in the middle of the block, squashed between three-story row houses. Across the street was an empty lot that served as a repository for bags of trash, a discarded couch, and God-knows-what that lurked in the weeds and rubbl
e of a demolished building.
He parked the ice cream truck at the curb in front of the empty lot. I hiked my messenger bag onto my shoulder and we crossed the street to the deli.
“You go ahead and get what you want,” Ducker said. “I have to use the men’s room.”
I got a cannoli and a hot dog and I went to the register. I bought a lottery ticket, paid for everything, and went to the door. I was about to walk outside when the truck blew up.
BAROOOM!
It was a sturdy truck, but the doors flew off and the whole thing jumped a couple feet off the ground. The deli’s plate glass windows rattled, and I felt the force of the explosion in my chest. An instant fireball consumed the vehicle. Clouds of black smoke billowed off the flames, and the acrid scent of burning tires penetrated the deli.
I was gobsmacked. I stood frozen at the door with my hot dog in one hand and my cannoli in the other.
Ducker came up beside me. “What the fuck?” he said.
“It was sitting there all by itself and it blew up,” I said.
I was actually having trouble breathing. My heart was pounding, and I was trying to push air out of my lungs. If the explosion had occurred fifteen seconds later I’d be dead. Morelli was right. I should stay far away from everything associated with ice cream.
“Someone blew up my truck,” Ducker said.
He sounded stunned, but when I turned to look at him he was grinning.
“Some sonnovabitch blew up my truck,” he said, dancing around in his clown suit. “This is my freaking lucky day. I’m golden. I’m hot.” He stopped dancing. “I need a lottery ticket. I gotta go buy a lottery ticket.”
The clerk was the only other person in the deli, and he was flat on the floor behind the counter.
“We’ve been bombed,” he said.
“Not exactly,” I told him. “It was the ice cream truck. I think you can get up.”
“I need a lottery ticket,” Ducker told the clerk. “And a hot dog.”
I could hear sirens in the distance, and people were venturing out of houses and businesses to check out the fire.
“Has it occurred to you that someone probably just tried to kill you?” I asked Ducker.
“I don’t think so,” Ducker said. “I’m the Jolly clown. Everyone loves me. I think someone was trying to kill you. You’re a bounty hunter. Everyone knows about you. And probably no one likes you. Except me. I like you a lot because you got my truck blown up.”
Bummer.
I called Lula and asked her to pick me up. There were police cars and fire trucks and ambulances in the street, so I told her I’d meet her at the corner. I ate my hot dog and cannoli, peeled off my clown suit, and got rid of the wig. Ducker stood in the street, talking to a couple cops. I didn’t see any reason for me to join in the discussion. I could give a statement some other time. So I left the deli and walked to the cross street to wait for Lula.
I couldn’t get the Jolly Bogart jingle out of my head. It had played on a constant loop the whole time I’d been in the truck. I looked back down the street and wondered if it was still playing. “Jolly, jolly, jolly, jolly.” Another pleasant memory from my childhood shot to hell. I’d only been in the truck for three hours, but after the initial shock of the explosion wore off there was some relief that it had been destroyed.
Lula’s Firebird pulled up in front of me. I tossed the clown suit into the back and got in next to Lula.
“There’s a story here,” Lula said.
“I had to ride around with the Jolly Bogart clown today. We sold all the ice cream, so we stopped at the deli for a hot dog and the truck blew up. End of story.”
“Same old, same old,” Lula said. “What’s with the red nose?”
I put my finger to my nose, and it came away red. I flipped the visor down and looked at myself in the mirror.
“Greasepaint,” I said.
I got a tissue out of my messenger bag and scrubbed my nose. Some red greasepaint came off onto the tissue, but my nose was still bright red.
“That’s not attractive,” Lula said. “People are gonna call you Rudolph.”
“I need makeup remover.”
“There’s some at the office. I keep it there in case I need to change my look halfway through the day. Sometimes first thing in the morning I’m feeling like blue eye shadow and then after lunch I might want to warm up my color palette and go more to the pink tones. We can get your car and then get you fixed up.”
EIGHTEEN
CONNIE WAS PACKING up to leave when we walked in. “I have the two reports you wanted,” she said. “What’s wrong with your nose? It’s red.”
“It’s more like what’s wrong with her life,” Lula said. “She rode around with the Jolly clown this morning until his truck got blown up.”
Connie handed the reports to me. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No,” I said. “We were in the deli on Beverly Street when it happened. Fortunately the truck was parked in front of an empty lot, and no one was walking by when the explosion occurred. I think it must have been a bomb on a timer.”
I shoved the reports into my bag and went to the restroom. I used Lula’s makeup remover, and I tried hand soap. My nose was still red. I dabbed concealer on it and gave it a light dusting of powder. It was toned down to a rosy glow. I returned to the office.
“This is as good as it’s going to get,” I said.
“It’s not so bad,” Lula said. “I bet if it was nighttime you’d hardly notice it at all.”
Something to look forward to.
“If you’re depressed over your nose we could do something fun like go car shopping,” Lula said. “I know a guy that could fix you right up, and you wouldn’t have to drive that ghetto car no more.”
I stared out the window at my car. It was leaking something.
“Okay,” I said, “but I can’t go over five thousand dollars, and the car has to be legal. I don’t want a stolen car.”
“Boy, you got a lot of rules,” Lula said. “I think you might have to compromise on one or the other.”
“Where is this car person located?”
“Just follow me,” Lula said. “He operates out of his house.”
We took Hamilton to Broad, crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, and headed north on River Road to Yardley. Lula turned away from the river into a wooded area, and I stayed close behind. I was hoping we got to this guy soon because I wasn’t sure what was leaking from my car, and I worried what would happen when it stopped. Lula put her blinker on, and we left the road and followed a single-lane dirt drive that opened into a large field. A split-level house sat in the middle of the field. There were several cars lined up on the grass by the house. Lula found a place to park by the front door, and I pulled up alongside her.
A wiry little black man with close-cropped hair and a skinny mustache looked out at us. He was wearing a red satin tracksuit and fancy basketball shoes.
“Lula,” he yelled. “You lookin’ for work?”
“Hell, no, you nasty-ass moron. I’m looking for a car for my friend.”
He left the house, walked over to us, and gave Lula a hug. She was wearing over-the-knee boots with five-inch heels, and when the little guy hugged her, his nose got buried in her Grand Canyon–size cleavage.
“This is my friend Stephanie,” Lula said to him. “We gotta find her a good car.”
He pulled his nose out of her cleavage and turned to me. “Gaylord Brown,” he said. “It’s the perfect name because I’m gay and I’m brown.”
“Since when are you gay?” Lula asked him.
“It comes and goes,” he said. “I like to keep an open mind. So what kind of car does Sugar Cookie want?”
“Well, as you can see the one she’s got isn’t in perfect condition,” Lula said.
Gaylord looked at the car and grimaced. “Tragic,” he said.
“Exactly,” Lula agreed. “So she needs something right away. We don’t want something leaking vital body fl
uids like this one. And we don’t want something with a big dent in it like this one. And it would be desirable if the backseat wasn’t a mold factory.”
“No problem so far,” Gaylord said.
“She works with me in the bounty hunter business, so she needs four doors so she can chuck the bad guys into the backseat. It could be a sedan or a SUV.”
Gaylord nodded. “Noted.”
“She don’t want it too old, and I ride around in it sometime so it should be shiny and have a good sound system.”
“Goes without saying,” Gaylord said. “You got a color in mind?”
“I’m partial to red,” Lula said, “but I guess we could be flexible on that one.”
“And how much you got to spend?”
“She don’t want to go over five thousand.”
“Okay, I might have to work a little, but I might find something.”
“Gaylord is a specialist middleman,” Lula said to me. “You tell him what you want and then he finds it for you.”
“Anything else?” Gaylord asked.
“She wants it legal,” Lula said. “You know, with a VIN and papers and all that shit.”
“All my cars come with papers,” Gaylord said. “And we’ll make sure it has everything looking legal.”
“What did I tell you?” Lula said to me. “He’s a sweetie, right?”
I noticed he’d said everything would look legal, and it occurred to me that looking legal might be different from being legal. I glanced back at my SUV and gave an involuntary shiver. It would never make it back across the river. It was a miracle I’d been able to drive it this far. Okay, so he looked like a nice man. And if I harp on the legal issue he might get insulted, right? I wouldn’t want to insult one of Lula’s friends. And, honestly, did I even care? I gave up a sigh. Of course I cared. I didn’t want to be involved in a crime, and I didn’t want to encourage crime. On the other hand, I needed a car. And who was I to prejudge this businessman?
“What about my current car?” I asked. “What’s it worth?”
Gaylord cut his eyes to the Explorer. “Fifty.”
“Fifty dollars?” I said. “That’s all you’ll give me for a trade-in?”
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