“He said Mo didn’t need a lawyer, and I was off the case. I said Mo would have to tell that to me personally. And then the guy pulled a gun on me and said that for a lawyer I wasn’t very smart at reading between the lines. I told him I was getting smarter with each passing minute. He put the gun away and left.”
“He drive away? You get a plate number?”
Dickie’s face flushed. “I didn’t think.”
“Mo’s got a fan club,” I said. “Concerned citizens.”
“This is too weird.”
“What was the deal with Mo? What’s your contribution here?”
“You’re wasting your time. I’m not discussing this with you.”
“I know a lot of stuff about you that you probably wouldn’t want to get around. I know about your coke habit.”
“That’s history.”
“I know about Mallory’s wife.”
Dickie was out of his seat. “You were the one who told Morelli!”
“That Mallory is a mean son of a gun. No telling what he’d do if he found out someone was fooling around with his wife. He could plant drugs in your car, Dickie. Then you’d get arrested, and just think what fun that’d be…the strip search, the beating you got when you resisted arrest.”
Dickie’s eyes shrunk into hard, glittery little marbles. I figured his gonads were undergoing a similar transformation.
“How do I know you won’t go to Mallory even if I tell you about Mo?” Dickie asked.
“And lose my edge? I might want to blackmail you again.”
“Shit,” Dickie said. He pushed back in his chair. He stood and paced and returned to his seat. “There’s client confidentiality involved here.”
“As if you ever cared about client confidentiality.” I looked at my watch. “I haven’t got a lot of time. I have other things to do. I need to get in touch with the dispatcher before Mallory goes off shift.”
“Bitch,” Dickie said.
“Dickhead.”
His eyes narrowed. “Slut.”
“Asshole.”
“Fat cow.”
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t have to take this. I got a divorce.”
“If I tell you about Mo, you’ve got to promise to keep your mouth shut.”
“My lips are sealed.”
He rested his elbows on his desk, laced his fingers together and leaned forward. If it had been a normal-sized desk we would have been nose to nose. Fortunately, the desk was as big as a football field so we still had some space between us.
“First off, Mo didn’t do any of the killing. He got mixed up with some bad guys…”
“Bad guys? Could you be more specific than that?”
“I don’t know any more than that. I’m working as an intermediary. All I’m doing right now is setting up a line of communication.”
“And it’s these bad guys who did the killing?”
“Mo was fed up with the gangs and the drugs inching closer to his store, and Mo didn’t think the cops could do much. He figured the cops were bound up by laws and plea bargaining.
“But Mo knew a lot from listening to the kids. He knew the dealers’ names. He knew who specialized in kiddie sales. So Mo started his own little sting. He’d go to the dealer and suggest a partnership.”
“Let the dealer work from Mo’s store.”
“Yes. He’d set up a meeting, usually in his store or garage, someplace else if the dealer was jumpy. Then Mo would give the meeting information to a friend of his. Mo would disappear from the scene and the dealer would be taken care of by this friend. In the beginning, Mo didn’t know the dealers were being killed. I guess he thought they’d get roughed up or threatened and that would be the end of it. By the time he figured it out it was late in the game.”
“Why’d Mo jump bail?”
“Mo freaked. The gun he was carrying when Gaspick pulled him over was a murder weapon. It had been used to kill a dealer who subsequently floated in on the tide. I guess Mo had bought into some of it by then. Got caught up in the righteousness of being a vigilante. Mo said he never used the gun. In fact, it was empty when he was pulled over. Mo probably felt like John Wayne or something carrying it around. Don’t forget we’re talking about a shy, nerdy sort of guy who spent his entire life behind the counter of a candy store in the burg.”
I felt a painful stab in the midsection. Morelli had withheld that information from me. He’d never told me about the gun connection and the floater. Now it made sense. Now I realized why Morelli was interested in Mo from the very beginning. And why Mo had jumped bail.
“Why has Mo suddenly decided to turn himself in?”
“Just came to his senses, I suppose,” Dickie said. “Realized he was getting more and more involved and started to get scared.”
“So what’s the deal? Mo sells out his friend for a reduced sentence?”
“I suppose, but it hasn’t actually gotten to that yet. Like I said, I’m just setting up a line of communication. And I advised Mo of his rights and the consequences of his participation.”
“So maybe these ski mask guys aren’t protecting Mo anymore. Maybe sentiments have changed and now they’re trying to find Mo before I do…. Very noble of you to remain as counsel after being threatened.”
“Fuck noble,” Dickie said. “I’m off this gig.”
I dropped a card on Dickie’s desk. “Call me if you hear from anyone.”
I found myself smiling in the elevator, comforted by the fact that Dickie had been harassed and threatened. I decided to continue the celebration by paying another visit to Mr. Alexander. If Mr. Alexander could make my hair orange, surely he could make it brown again.
“Impossible!” Mr. Alexander said. “I’m totally booked. I would love to help you out, lovey. I really would, but just look at my schedule. I haven’t a free moment.”
I held some orange frizz between thumb and forefinger. “I can’t live like this. Isn’t there anyone here who can help me?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“I’ve got a gun in my pocketbook. I’ve got pepper spray and an electric gizmo that could turn you into a reading lamp. I’m a dangerous woman, and this orange hair is making me crazy. There’s no telling what I might do if I don’t get my hair fixed.”
The receptionist hastily thumbed down the day page. “Cleo has a cancellation at two o’clock. It was only for a cut, but she might be able to squeeze a color in.”
“Cleo is a marvel at color,” Mr. Alexander said. “If anyone can help you, it’s Cleo.”
Three hours later, I was back in my apartment building, and I still had orange hair. Cleo had given it her best shot, but the orange had resisted change. It was a shade darker and perhaps not quite so bright, but it was still basically orange.
Okay, fuck it. So I have orange hair. Big deal. It could be worse. It could be ebola. It could be dengue fever. Orange hair wasn’t permanent. The hair would grow out. It wasn’t as if I’d wrecked my life.
I was alone in the lobby. The elevator doors opened, and I stepped in, my thoughts turning to Mo. Speaking of someone who’d wrecked his life. If Dickie could be believed, here was a man who’d lived his entire life selling candy to kids and then had snapped in frustration and made some bad choices. Now he was stuck in a labyrinth of judgment errors and terrible crimes.
I considered my own life and the choices I’d made. Until recently those choices had been relatively safe and predictable. College, marriage, divorce, work. Then, through no fault of my own, I didn’t have a job. Next thing, I was a bounty hunter, and I’d killed a man. It had been self-defense, but it was still a regrettable act that came creeping back to me late at night. I knew things about myself now, and about human nature, that nice girls from the burg weren’t supposed to know.
I traveled the length of the hall, searched for my key and opened my front door. I stepped inside, relieved to be home. Before I had a chance to turn and close the door, I was sent sprawling onto the foyer floor with a hard shove from b
ehind.
There were two of them. Both in masks and coveralls. Both too tall to be Maglio. One of them pointed a gun at me. The other held a lunch bag. It was the sort of soft-sided insulated bag an office worker might use. Big enough for a sandwich, an apple and a soda.
“You make a sound, and I’ll shoot you,” the guy with the gun said, closing and locking the door. “Shooting you isn’t what I want to do, but I’ll do it if I have to.”
“This isn’t going to work,” I told him. “Mo is talking to the police. He’s telling them all about you. He’s naming names.”
“Mo should have stuck to selling candy. We’ll take care of Mo. What we’re doing is for the good of the community…for the good of America. We’re not going to stop just because an old man got squeamish.”
“Killing people is for the good of America?”
“Eliminating the drug scourge.”
Oh boy. Scourge removers.
The man carrying the lunch bag jerked me to my feet and shoved me toward the living room. I thought about screaming or simply walking away, but I wasn’t sure how these lunatics would act. The one seemed comfortable with his gun. It was possible that he’d killed before, and I suspected killing was like anything else…the more you did it, the easier it got.
I was still wearing my jacket, still carrying my shoulder bag, the warning of retaliation ringing in my ears. I still had the blister from my last meeting with Mo’s vigilantes, and the thought of being burned again sickened my stomach. “I’m going to give you a chance to leave, before you do something really stupid,” I said, working to keep the panic out of my voice.
The guy carrying the lunch bag set it on my coffee table. “You’re the stupid one. We keep reasoning with you and warning you, and you refuse to listen. You’re still sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. You and that lawyer you keep visiting. So we figured we’d give you a product demo. Show you the threat firsthand.” He removed a small glassine packet from the lunch bag and held it up for me to see. “High-quality boy.” The next item to be removed from the carrier was a small bottle of spring water. Then a bottle cap with a wire handle fashioned around it. “The best cooker comes from a wine bottle. Nice and deep. The dopers like this better than a spoon or a soda bottle cap. Do you know what boy is?”
Boy was heroin. Coke was girl. “Yeah, I know what it is.”
The man filled the cap with water and mixed in some of the powder from the packet. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and held it under the cap. Then he produced a syringe from the carrier and filled the syringe with the liquid.
I still had my pocketbook on my shoulder. I ran a shaky hand over the outside, feeling for my .38.
The gunman stepped forward and ripped the bag off my shoulder. “Forget it.”
Rex was in his cage on the coffee table. He’d been running on his wheel when we’d come into the room. When the lights flashed on, Rex had paused, whiskers whirring, eyes wide with the expectation of food and attention. After a few moments he’d resumed his running.
The man with the syringe flipped the lid off Rex’s cage, reached in and scooped Rex up in his free hand. “Now we get to begin the demonstration.”
My heart gave a painful contraction. “Put him back,” I said. “He doesn’t like strangers.”
“We know a lot about you,” the man said. “We know you like this hamster. We figure he’s like family to you. Now suppose this hamster was a kid. And suppose you thought you were doing all the right things, like feeding that kid good food and helping with his homework and raising him in a neighborhood with a good school. And then some-how, in spite of everything you did, that kid got started experimenting with drugs. How would you feel? Wouldn’t you feel like going after the people who were giving him the drugs? And suppose your kid was sold some bad stuff. And your kid died of an overdose. Wouldn’t you want to go out there and kill the drug dealer who killed your kid?”
“I’d want him brought to justice.”
“The hell you would. You’d want to kill him.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
The man with the syringe paused and stared at me. I could see his eyes behind the ski mask, and I guessed my question had hit home.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Then you understand why we have to do this. It’s essential that our work isn’t jeopardized. And it’s essential that you understand our commitment. We’d prefer not to kill you. We’re fair and reasonable people. We have ethics. So, pay attention. This is the last warning. This time we kill the hamster. Next time we kill you.”
I felt tears starting behind my eyes. “How can you justify killing an innocent animal?”
“It’s a lesson. You ever see anyone die from an overdose? It’s not a nice way to go. And it’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t take a vacation.”
Rex’s eyes were black and shiny, his whiskers a blur of motion, his little feet treading air, his body squirmy. Not enjoying his confinement.
“Say good-bye,” the man with the syringe said. “I’m going to shoot this directly into his heart.”
There’s a limit to how far a woman can be pushed. I’d been gassed, attacked, stalked by masked men, lied to by Morelli and I’d been swindled by my mechanic. And I’d stayed pretty damn calm through it all. Threatening my hamster brought out a whole new set of rules. Threatening my hamster made me Godzilla. I had no intention of saying good-bye to my hamster.
I blinked back the threat of tears, swiped at my nose and narrowed my eyes. “Listen to me, you two bags of monkey shit,” I yelled. “I am not in a good mood. My car keeps stalling. The day before yesterday I threw up on Joe Morelli. I was called a fat cow by my ex-husband. And if that isn’t enough…my hair is ORANGE! ORANGE, FOR CHRISSAKE! And now you have the gall to force yourself into my home and threaten my hamster. Well, you have gone too far. You have crossed the line.”
I was shouting and waving my arms, totally out of control. And while I was out of control I was watching Rex, because I knew what would happen if he was held long enough. And when it happened I was going to act.
“So if you want to scare someone, you picked the wrong person,” I shrieked. “And don’t think I’m going to allow you to harm one hair on that hamster’s head!”
And then Rex did what any sensible pissed-off hamster would do. He sank his fangs into his captor’s thumb.
The man gave a yelp and opened his fist. Rex dropped onto the floor with a thunk and scurried under the couch. And the guy with the gun swung his weapon in Rex’s direction and fired off several rounds reflexively.
I grabbed the table lamp to my right and, keeping the momentum going, smashed the lamp against the gunman’s head. The man went down like a bag of sand, and I took off for the door.
I had one foot in the hall when I was grabbed from behind and yanked back into the apartment by the man wielding the syringe. I kicked and clawed at him, the two of us wrestling for our lives in front of the door. My foot connected with his crotch and there was a heart-stopping moment of immobility where I saw his eyes widen in pain, and I thought he might shoot me, or stick me or smack me senseless. But then he doubled over and tried to suck air, inadvertently backing out the door, into the hall.
The elevator door opened, and Mrs. Bestler jumped out with her walker. Clomp, clomp, clomp with lightning speed, she stomped down the hall and rammed the man, knocking him to his knees.
Mrs. Karwatt’s door crashed open, and Mrs. Karwatt trained her .45 on the man on the floor. “What’s going on? What did I miss?”
Mr. Kleinschmidt came shuffling down the hall carrying an M-16. “I heard a gunshot.”
Mrs. Delgado was right behind Mr. Kleinschmidt. Mrs. Delgado had a cleaver and a blue steel Glock with “sidekick” rubber grips.
Mrs. Karwatt looked at Mrs. Delgado’s gun. “Loretta,” she said, “you got a new gun.”
“Birthday present,” Mrs. Delgado said proudly. “My daughter Jean Ann gave
it to me. Forty caliber, just like the cops use. More stopping power.”
“I’ve been thinking of getting a new gun,” Mrs. Karwatt said. “What kind of kick do you get with that Glock?”
I brought Rex into the bedroom with me for the night. He seemed okay after the evening’s trauma. I wasn’t sure if the same could be said for me. The police had arrived and unmasked the two men. The man with the needle was a stranger to me. The man who’d held the gun had been a schoolmate. He was married now and had two kids. I’d run into him at the food store a couple weeks ago and had said hello.
I slept through most of the morning and felt pretty decent when I got up. I might not be the most patient woman in the world, or the most glamorous, or the most athletic, but I’m right up there at the top of the line when it comes to resiliency.
I was pouring a second cup of coffee when the phone rang.
It was Sue Ann Grebek. “Stephanie!” she shouted into the phone. “I’ve got something good!”
“On Mo?”
“Yeah. High-quality vicious rumor. Only one person removed. It might even be true.”
“Give it to me!”
“I was just at Fiorello’s, and I ran into Myra Balog. You remember Myra? Went steady with that dork Larry Skolnik all through high school. I never knew what she saw in him. He made weird noises with his nose, and he used to write secret messages on his hands. Like ‘S.D.O.B.G.’ And then he wouldn’t tell anyone what it meant.
“Anyway, I got to talking to Myra, and one thing led to another and we got to talking about Mo. And Myra said that one day Larry told her this really off-the-wall story about Mo. Said Larry swore it was true. Course we don’t know what that means, because Larry probably thought he got beamed up a couple times, too.”
“So what was the story?”
I sat and stared at the phone for a few minutes after talking to Sue Ann. I didn’t like what I had heard, but it made some sense. I thought about what I’d seen in Mo’s apartment and pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.
What I needed to do now was to visit Larry Skolnik. So I double-timed down to the lot, stuck the key in the ignition and held my breath. The engine caught and went into a quiet idle. I slowly exhaled, feeling my cynicism giving way to cautious optimism.
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