My sister, Valerie, had been married to the same man for a hundred years and had two children. Valerie was the normal daughter.
Grandma Mazur was directly across from me and was downright frightening, with her hair still uncombed and her eyes focused inward. As my father would put it, her lights were on, but there was no one home.
“How much of that codeine has Grandma taken so far?” I asked my mother.
“Just one pill that I know of,” my mother said.
I felt my eye jump and put my finger to it. “She seems to be … disconnected.”
My father stopped buttering his bread and looked up. His mouth opened to say something, but he thought better of it and went back to buttering his bread.
“Mom,” my mother called out, “how many pills have you taken?”
Grandma’s head rotated in my mother’s direction. “Pills?”
“It’s a terrible thing that an old lady can’t be safe on the streets,” my mother said. “You’d think we lived in Washington, D.C. Next thing we’ll have drive-by shootings. The burg was never like this in the old days.”
I didn’t want to burst her bubble about the old days, but in the old days the burg had a Mafia staff car parked in every third driveway. Men were walked out of their homes, still in pajamas, and taken at gunpoint to the Meadowlands or the Camden landfill for ceremonial dispatch. Usually families and neighbors weren’t at risk, but there’d always been the possibility that a stray bullet would embed itself in the wrong body.
And the burg was never safe from the Mancuso and Morelli men. Kenny was crazier and more brazen than most, but I suspected he wasn’t the first of the Mancusos to leave a scar on a woman’s body. To my knowledge none of them had ever ice-picked an old woman, but the Mancusos and Morellis were notorious for their violent, alcohol-fueled tempers and for their ability to sweet-talk a woman into an abusive relationship.
I knew some of this firsthand. When Morelli had charmed the pants off me fourteen years ago, he hadn’t been abusive, but he hadn’t been kind, either.
Grandma was sound asleep by seven o’clock, snoring like a drunken lumberjack.
I slipped into my jacket and grabbed my pocketbook.
“Where are you going?” my mother wanted to know.
“To Stiva’s. He’s hired me to help him close.”
“Now that’s a job,” my mother said. “You could do a lot worse than to work for Stiva.”
I closed the front door behind me, and took a deep, cleansing breath. The air felt cool on my face. My eye relaxed under the dark night sky.
I drove to Stiva’s and parked in the lot. Inside, Andy Roche had reclaimed his position at the tea table.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Some old lady just told me I looked like Harrison Ford.”
I selected a cookie from the plate behind him. “Shouldn’t you be with your brother?”
“We weren’t all that close.”
“Where’s Morelli?”
Roche casually scanned the room. “No one ever knows the answer to that question.”
I returned to my car and had just settled in when the phone rang.
“How’s Grandma Mazur?” Morelli asked.
“She’s sleeping.”
“I hope this move to your parents’ house is temporary. I had plans for those purple shoes.”
This caught me by surprise. I’d expected Morelli to keep watching Spiro, but he’d followed me instead. And I hadn’t spotted him. I pressed my lips together. I was a dismal bounty hunter. “I didn’t see any other good alternatives. I’m worried about Grandma Mazur.”
“You have a terrific family, but they’ll have you on Valium in forty-eight hours.”
“Plums don’t do Valium. We mainline cheesecake.”
“Whatever works,” Morelli said, and hung up.
At ten of ten I pulled into the mortuary driveway, and parked to one side, leaving room for Spiro to squeeze past. I locked the Buick and entered the funeral home through the side door.
Spiro was looking nervous, saying good-byes. Louie Moon was nowhere to be seen. And Andy had disappeared. I slipped into the kitchen and clipped a holster to my belt. I loaded the fifth round into my .38 and shoved the gun into the holster. I clipped on a second holster for my pepper spray, and a third for a flashlight. I figured at $100 a shot, Spiro deserved the full treatment. I’d have heart palpitations if I had to use the gun, but that was my little secret.
I was wearing a hip-length jacket that for the most part hid my paraphernalia. Technically this meant I was carrying concealed, which was a legal no-no. Unfortunately, the alternative would generate instant phone calls all over the burg that I was packing at Stiva’s. The threat of arrest seemed pale by comparison.
When the last of the mourners cleared the front porch I walked Spiro through the public areas on the top two floors of the house, securing windows and doors. Only two rooms were occupied. One by the bogus brother.
The silence was eerie, and my discomfort with death was enhanced by Spiro’s presence. Spiro Stiva, Demonic Mortician. I had my hand on the butt of the little S & W, thinking it wouldn’t have hurt to load up with silver bullets.
We paced through the kitchen, into the back hall. Spiro opened the door to the cellar.
“Hold it,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“We need to check the cellar door.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we. Like in me and my fucking bodyguard.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You want to get paid?”
Not that bad. “Are there bodies down there?”
“Sorry, we’re fresh out of bodies.”
“So what’s down there?”
“The furnace, for Chrissake!”
I unholstered my gun. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Spiro looked at the five-shot Smith & Wesson. “Cripes, that’s a goddamn sissy gun.”
“I bet you wouldn’t say that if I shot you in the foot with it.”
His obsidian eyes locked with mine. “I hear you killed a man with that gun.”
Not something I wanted to rap about with Spiro. “Are we going downstairs, or what?”
The basement was basically one large room, and pretty much what you’d expect from a basement. With the possible exception of caskets stacked in one of the corners.
The outside door was just to the right at the foot of the stairs. I checked the door to make sure the bolt was thrown. “Nobody here,” I said to Spiro, holstering my gun. I’m not sure whom I’d expected to shoot. Kenny, I suppose. Maybe Spiro. Maybe ghosts.
We returned to the first floor, and I waited in the hall while Spiro bumbled around in his office, finally emerging wearing a top coat, carrying a gym bag.
I followed him to the back door and held the door open, watching him activate the alarm and hit the light switch. The lights inside dimmed. The exterior lights remained on.
Spiro shut the door and pulled car keys from his coat pocket. “We’ll take my car. You ride shotgun.”
“How about you take your car, I take my car.”
“No way. I pay a hundred bucks, I want my gunny sitting next to me. You can take the car home with you and pick me up in the morning.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“You were out there anyway. I saw you in the lot this morning, waiting for Kenny to make a move, so you could haul his ass back to jail. What’s the big deal, so you drive me to work.”
Spiro’s Lincoln was parked close to the door. He aimed his remote at the car, and the alarm chirped off. He lit up when we were safely inside.
We were sitting in a pool of light on a deserted patch of driveway. Not a good spot to linger. Especially if Morelli wasn’t in a position to see this part of the property.
“Put it in gear,” I said to Spiro. “It’s too easy for Kenny to get to us here.”
He rolled the engine over, but he didn’t move forward. “What would you do if a
ll of a sudden Kenny jumped up alongside the car and pointed a gun at you?”
“I don’t know. You never really know what you’ll do in a situation like that until you do it.”
Spiro thought about that for a moment. He took another drag on his cigarette and shifted to drive.
We stopped for a light at Hamilton and Gross. Spiro’s head didn’t move, but his eyes cut to Delio’s Exxon. The pumps were lit, and there was a light on in the office. The bays were dark and closed. Several cars and a truck had been parked in front of the end bay. Drop-offs to be serviced first thing in the morning.
Spiro stared in silence, his face devoid of emotion, and I couldn’t guess at his thoughts.
The light changed, and we motored through the intersection. We were halfway down the block when my brain kicked in. “Oh my God,” I said. “Go back to the gas station.”
Spiro braked and pulled to the side. “You didn’t see Kenny, did you?”
“No. I saw a truck! A big white truck with black lettering on the side!”
“You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
“When I talked to the woman who managed the storage lockers she said she remembered seeing a white truck with black lettering make several passes in the area of your locker. It was too vague to mean anything at the time.”
Spiro waited for a break in traffic and wheeled a U-turn. He parked at the edge of the macadam apron, behind the drop-offs. Chances of Sandeman still being at the station were slim, but I strained to see in the office all the same. I didn’t want a confrontation with Sandeman if I could avoid it.
We got out and took a look at the truck. It belonged to Macko Furniture. I knew the store. It was a small family-owned business that had steadfastly stayed with a downtown location when others were moving to highway strip malls.
“This mean anything to you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. Don’t know anybody at Macko Furniture.”
“It’s the right size for caskets.”
“There must be fifty trucks in Trenton that fit this description.”
“Yes, but this one is at the garage where Moogey worked. And Moogey knew about the caskets. He went down to Braddock and drove them back for you.”
Dumb chick feeds information to slimy guy. Come on, slimy guy, I thought. Get careless. Give me some information in return.
“So you think Moogey was tight with someone from Macko Furniture, and they decided to steal my caskets,” Spiro said.
“It’s possible. Or maybe while the truck was being serviced, Moogey borrowed it.”
“What would Moogey want with twenty-four caskets?”
“You tell me.”
“Even with the hydraulic tailgate, you’d need at least two guys to move those caskets.”
“Doesn’t seem like a problem to me. You find some big oaf, pay him minimum wage. He helps you move caskets.”
Spiro had his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just hard to believe Moogey’d do something like that. There were two things you could always count on from Moogey. He was loyal, and he was dumb. Moogey was a big, dumb shit. Kenny and me let him hang out with us because he was good for laughs. He’d do anything we told him. We’d say, hey, Moogey, how about you run over your dick with a lawn mower. And he’d say, sure, you want me to get a hard-on first?”
“Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as you thought.”
Spiro didn’t say anything for a couple beats, then he turned on his heel and walked back to the Lincoln. We kept quiet for the rest of the trip. When we reached Spiro’s parking lot I couldn’t resist another shot with the caskets.
“Kind of funny about you and Kenny and Moogey. Kenny thinks you’ve got something that belongs to him. And now we think maybe Moogey had something that belonged to you.”
Spiro slid into a space, put the car in park, and swiveled his body in my direction. He draped his left arm over the wheel, his top coat gaped, and I caught a glimpse of a gun butt and shoulder holster.
“What are you getting at?” Spiro asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud. Thinking that you and Kenny have a lot in common.”
Our eyes held, and cold fear ran the length of my spine and crawled through my stomach. Morelli was right about Spiro. He’d eat his young, and he wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet in my worthless brain. I hoped I hadn’t pushed too hard.
“Maybe you should stop thinking out loud. Maybe you should stop thinking altogether,” Spiro said.
“I’m going to raise my rates if you’re going to get cranky.”
“Christ,” Spiro said, “you’re already fucking overpaid. For a hundred dollars a night, the least you could do is throw in a blow job.”
What I was going to throw in was a nice long time behind bars. It was a comforting thought, and it kept me going while I did my bodyguard thing in his apartment, flipping on lights, scoping out closets, counting dustballs under his bed, and gagging at the soap scum behind his shower curtain.
I gave his place a green light, drove the Lincoln back to the funeral home, and exchanged it for my Buick.
I caught Morelli in my rearview mirror half a block from my parents’ house. He idled in front of the Smullenses’ until I parked the Buick. When I stepped out of the car, he crept forward and parked behind me. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for being cautious.
“What were you doing at Delio’s?” Morelli wanted to know. “I assume you were baiting Spiro about the truck.”
“You assume right.”
“Anything come of it?”
“He said he didn’t know anyone from Macko Furniture. And he discounted the possibility that Moogey might have taken the caskets. Apparently Moogey was the group idiot. I’m not even sure Moogey was involved.”
“Moogey drove the caskets to New Jersey.”
I leaned back against the Buick. “Maybe Kenny and Spiro didn’t include Moogey in the master plan, but somewhere along the line Moogey found out and decided to cut himself in.”
“And you think he borrowed the furniture truck to move the caskets.”
“It would be one theory.” I pushed off from the Buick and hitched my bag higher onto my shoulder. “I’m picking Spiro up at eight tomorrow to take him to work.”
“I’ll catch up with you in his lot.”
I let myself into the darkened house and paused for a moment in the front hall. The house was always at its best when it was asleep. There was an air of satisfaction to the house at the end of the day. Maybe the day hadn’t gone exactly right, but the day had been lived and the house had been there for its family.
I hung my jacket in the hall closet and tiptoed into the kitchen. Finding food in my kitchen was always hit or miss. Finding food in my mother’s kitchen was a sure thing. I heard the stairs creak and knew from the tread that it was my mother.
“How did it go at Stiva’s?” she asked.
“It went okay. I helped him lock up, and then I drove him home.”
“I guess it’s hard for him to drive with his wrist. I hear he got twenty-three stitches.”
I pulled out some ham and provolone cheese.
“Here, let me,” my mother said, taking the ham and cheese, reaching for the loaf of rye bread on the counter.
“I can do it,” I said.
My mother took her good carving knife from the knife drawer. “You don’t slice the ham thin enough.”
When she’d made each of us a sandwich, she poured two glasses of milk and set it all on the kitchen table. “You could have invited him in for a sandwich,” she said.
“Spiro?”
“Joe Morelli.”
My mother never ceased to amaze me. “There was a time when you would have chased him out of the house with that carving knife.”
“He’s changed.”
I tore into the sandwich. “So he tells me.”
“I hear he’s a good cop.”
“A good cop is different from a good person.”
> I woke up disoriented, staring at a ceiling from a previous life. Grandma Mazur’s voice snapped me back to the present.
“If I don’t get into that bathroom there’s gonna be a big mess in the hall,” she yelled. “Last night’s supper’s going through me like goose grease.”
I heard the door open. Heard my father mumble something indiscernible. My eye started to twitch, and I squinched it closed. I focused my other eye on the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. Damn. I’d wanted to get to Spiro’s early. I jumped out of bed and rummaged through the laundry basket for clean jeans and a shirt. I ran a brush through my hair, grabbed my pocketbook, and rushed into the hall.
“Grandma,” I hollered through the door. “Are you going to be long?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?” she yelled back.
All right, I could postpone the bathroom for half an hour. After all, if I’d gotten up at nine I wouldn’t have used the bathroom for another hour and a half.
My mother caught me with my jacket in hand. “Where are you going?” she asked. “You haven’t had breakfast.”
“I told Spiro I’d pick him up.”
“Spiro can wait. The dead people won’t mind if he’s fifteen minutes late. Come eat your breakfast.”
“I don’t have time for breakfast.”
“I made some nice oatmeal. It’s on the table. I poured your juice.” She looked down at my shoes. “What kind of shoes are they?”
“They’re Doc Martens.”
“Your father wore shoes like that when he was in the army.”
“These are great shoes,” I said. “I love these shoes. Everyone wears shoes like this.”
“Women interested in getting married to a nice man do not wear shoes like that. Women who like other women wear shoes like that. You don’t have any funny ideas about women, do you?”
I clapped my hand over my eye.
“What’s wrong with your eye?” my mother asked.
“It’s twitching.”
“You’re too nervous. It’s that job. Look at you rushing out of the house. And what’s that on your belt?”
“Pepper spray.”
“Your sister, Valerie, doesn’t wear such things on her belt.”
I looked at my watch. If I ate real fast, I could still get to Spiro by eight.
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