I KNEW SOMETHING bad was going to happen when Vinnie called me into his private office. Vinnie is my boss and my cousin. I read on a bathroom stall door once that Vinnie humps like a ferret. I'm not sure what that means, but it seems reasonable since Vinnie looks like a ferret . His ruby pinky ring reminded me of treasures found in Seaside Park arcade claw-machines. He was wearing a black shirt and black tie, his receding black hair was slicked back, casino pit boss-style. His facial expression was tuned to not happy .

I looked across the desk at him and tried not to grimace. "Now what?"

"I got a job for you," Vinnie said. "I want you to find that rat fink Eddie DeChooch, and I want you to drag his boney ass back here. He got tagged smuggling a truckload of bootleg cigarettes up from Virginia and he missed his court date."

I rolled my eyes so far into the top of my bead I could see hair growing. "I'm not going after Eddie DeChooch. He's old, and he kills people, and he's dating my grandmother."

"He hardly ever kills people anymore," Vinnie said. "He has cataracts. Last time he tried to shoot someone he emptied a clip into an ironing board."

Vinnie owns and operates Vincent Plum Bail Bonds in Trenton, New Jersey. When someone is accused of a crime, Vinnie gives the court a cash bond, the court releases the accused until trial, and Vinnie hopes to God the accused shows up for court. If the accused decides to forgo the pleasure of his court date, Vinnie is out a lot of money unless I can find the accused and bring him back into the system. My name is Stephanie Plum and I'm a bond enforcement officer . . . aka bounty hunter. I took the job when times were lean and not even the fact that I graduated in the top ninety-eight percent of my college class could get me a better position. The economy has since improved, and there's no good reason why I'm still tracking down bad guys, except that it annoys my mother and I don't have to wear panty hose to work.

"I'd give this to Ranger, but he's out of the country," Vinnie said. "So that leaves you."

Ranger is a soldier-of-fortune kind of guy who sometimes works as a bounty hunter. He's very good . . . at everything. And he's scary as hell. "What's Ranger doing out of the country? And what do you mean by out of the country? Asia? South America? Miami?"

"He's making a pickup for me in Puerto Rico." Vinnie shoved a file folder across his desk. "Here's the bond agreement on DeChooch and your authorization to capture. He's worth fifty thousand to me . . . five thousand to you. Go over to DeChooch's house and find out why he pulled a no-show on his hearing yesterday. Connie called and there was no answer. Christ, he could be dead on his kitchen floor. Going out with your grandma's enough to kill anyone."

Vinnie's office is on Hamilton, which at first glance might not seem like the best location for a bail bonds office. Most bail bonds offices are across from the jail. The difference with Vinnie is that many of the people he bonds out are either relatives or neighbors and live just off Hamilton in the Burg. I grew up in the Burg and my parents still live there. It's really a very safe neighborhood, since Burg criminals are always careful to do their crimes elsewhere. Well, okay, Jimmy Curtains once walked Two Toes Garibaldi out of his house in his pajamas and drove him to the landfill . . . but still, the actual whacking didn't take place in the Burg. And the guys they found buried in the basement of the candy store on Ferris Street weren't from the Burg, so you can't really count them as a statistic.

Connie Rosolli looked up when I came out of Vinnie's office. Connie is the office manager. Connie keeps things running while Vinnie is off springing miscreants and/or fornicating with barnyard animals.

Connie had her hair teased up to about three times the size of her head. She was wearing a pink V-neck sweater that molded to boobs that belonged on a much larger woman and a short black knit skirt that would have fit a much smaller woman.

Connie's been with Vinnie since he first started the business. She's stuck it out this long because she puts up with nothing and on exceptionally bad days she helps herself to combat pay from the petty cash.

She did a face scrunch when she saw I had a file in my hand. "You aren't actually going out after Eddie DeChooch, are you?"

"I'm hoping he's dead."

Lula was slouched on the faux leather couch that had been shoved against a wall and served as the holding pen for bondees and their unfortunate relatives. Lula and the couch were almost identical shades of brown, with the exception of Lula's hair, which happened to be cherry red today.

I always feel sort of anemic when I stand next to Lula. I'm a third-generation American of Italian-Hungarian heritage. I have my mother's pale skin and blue eyes and good metabolism, which allows me to eat birthday cake and still (almost always) button the top snap on my Levi's. From my father's side of the family I've inherited a lot of unmanageable brown hair and a penchant for Italian hand gestures. On my own, on a good day with a ton of mascara and four-inch heels, I can attract some attention. Next to Lula I'm wallpaper.

"I'd offer to help drag his behind back to jail," Lula said. "You could probably use the help of a plus-size woman like me. But it's too bad I don't like when they're dead. Dead creeps me out."

"Well, I don't actually know if he's dead," I said.

"Good enough for me," Lula said. "Sign me up. If he's alive I get to kick some sorry-ass butt, and if he's dead . . . I'm outta there."

Lula talks tough, but the truth is we're both pretty wimpy when it comes to actual butt kicking. Lula was a ho in a former life and is now doing filing for Vinnie. Lula was as good at ho'ing as she is at filing . . . and she's not much good at filing.

"Maybe we should wear vests," I said.

Lula took her purse from a bottom file drawer. "Suit yourself, but I'm not wearing no Kevlar vest. We don't got one big enough and besides it'd ruin my fashion statement."

I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and didn't have much of a fashion statement to make, so I took a vest from the back room.

"Hold on," Lula said when we got to the curb, "what's this?"

"I bought a new car."

"Well dang, girl, you did good. This here's an excellent car."

It was a black Honda CR-V, and the payments were killing me. I'd had to make a choice between eating and looking cool. And looking cool had won out. Well hell, there's a price for everything, right?

"Where we going?" Lula asked, settling in next to me. "Where's this dude live?"

"We're going to the Burg. Eddie DeChooch lives three blocks from my parents' house."

"He really dating your grandma?"

"She ran into him at a viewing two weeks ago at Stiva's Funeral Home, and they went out for pizza after."

"Think they did the nasty?"

I almost ran the car up on the sidewalk. "No! Yuck!"

"Just asking," Lula said.

DeChooch lives in a small brick duplex. Seventy-something Angela Marguchi and her ninety-something mother live in one half of the house, and DeChooch lives in the other. I parked in front of the DeChooch half, and Lula and I walked to the door. I was wearing the vest, and Lula was wearing a stretchy animal-print top and yellow stretch pants. Lula is a big woman and tends to test the limits of Lycra.

"You go ahead and see if he's dead," Lula said. "And then if it turns out he's not dead, you let me know and I'll come kick his ass."

"Yeah, right."

"Hunh," she said, lower lip stuck out. "You think I couldn't kick his ass?"

"You might want to stand to the side of the door," I said. "Just in case."

"Good idea," Lula said, stepping aside. "I'm not afraid or anything, but I'd hate to get bloodstains on this top."

I rang the bell and waited for an answer. I rang a second time. "Mr. DeChooch?" I yelled.

Angela Marguchi stuck her head out her door. She was half a foot shorter than me, white-haired and bird-boned, a cigarette rammed between thin lips, eyes narrowed from smoke and age. "What's all this racket?"

"I'm looking for Eddie."

She looked more closely and her mood brightened when she recognized me. "Stephanie Plum. Goodness, haven't seen you in a while. I heard you were pregnant by that vice cop, Joe Morelli."

"A vicious rumor."

"What about DeChooch," Lula asked Angela. "He been around?"

"He's in his house," Angela said. "He never goes anywhere anymore. He's depressed. Won't talk or nothing."

"He's not answering his door."

"He don't answer his phone, either. Just go in. He leaves the door unlocked. Says he's waiting for someone to come shoot him and put him out of his misery."

"Well, that isn't us," Lula said. " 'Course if he was willing to pay for it I might know someone . . ."

I carefully opened Eddie's door and stepped into the foyer. "Mr. DeChooch?"

"Go away."

The voice came from the living room to my right. The shades were drawn and the room was dark. I squinted in the direction of the voice.

"It's Stephanie Plum, Mr. DeChooch. You missed your court date. Vinnie is worried about you."

"I'm not going to court," DeChooch said. "I'm not going anywhere."

I moved farther into the room and spotted him sitting in a chair in the corner. He was a wiry little guy with white rumpled hair. He was wearing an undershirt and boxer shorts and black socks with black shoes.

"What's with the shoes?" Lula asked.

DeChooch looked down. "My feet got cold."

"How about if you finish getting dressed and we take you to reschedule," I said.

"What are you, hard of hearing? I told you, I'm not going anywhere. Look at me. I'm in a depression."

"Maybe you're in a depression on account of yon haven't got any pants on," Lula said. "Sure would make me feel happier if I didn't have to worry about seeing your Mr. Geezer hanging out of your boxer shorts."

"You don't know nothing," DeChooch said. "You don't know what it's like to be old and not to be able to do anything right anymore."

"Yeah, I wouldn't know about that," Lula said.

What Lula and I knew about was being young and not doing anything right. Lula and I never did anything right.

"What's that you're wearing?" DeChooch asked me. "Christ, is that a bulletproof vest? See, now that's so fucking insulting. That's like saying I'm not smart enough to shoot you in the head."

"She just figured since you took out that ironing board it wouldn't hurt to be careful," Lula said.

"The ironing board! That's all I hear about. A man makes one mistake and that's all anybody ever talks about." He made a dismissive hand gesture. "Ah hell, who am I trying to kid. I'm a has-been. You know what I got arrested for? I got arrested for smuggling cigarettes up from Virginia. I can't even smuggle cigarettes anymore." He hung his head. "I'm a loser. A fuckin' loser. I should shoot myself ."

"Maybe you just had some bad luck," Lula said. "I bet next time you try to smuggle something it works out fine."

"I got a bum prostate," DeChooch said. "I had to stop to take a leak. That's where they caught me . . . at the rest stop."

"Don't seem fair," Lula said.

"Life isn't fair. There isn't nothing fair about life. All my life I've worked hard and I've had all these . . . achievements. And now I'm old and what happens? I get arrested taking a leak. It's goddamn embarrassing."

His house was decorated with no special style in mind. Probably it had been furnished over the years with whatever fell off the truck. There was no Mrs. DeChooch. She'd passed away years ago. So far as I knew there'd never been any little DeChooches.

"Maybe you should get dressed," I said."We really need to go downtown."

"Why not," DeChooch said. "Don't make no difference where I sit. Could just as well be downtown as here." He stood, gave a dejected sigh, and shuffled stoop-shouldered to the stairs. He turned and looked at us. "Give me a minute."

The house was a lot like my parents' house. Living room in front, dining room in the middle, and kitchen overlooking a narrow backyard. Upstairs there'd be three small bedrooms and a bathroom.

Lula and I sat in the stillness and darkness, listening to DeChooch walking around above us in his bedroom.

"He should have smuggled Prozac instead of cigarettes," Lula said. "He could have popped a few."

"What he should do is get his eyes fixed," I said. "My Aunt Rose was operated on for cataracts and now she can see again."

"Yeah, if he got his eyes fixed he could probably shoot a lot more people. I bet that'd cheer him up."

Okay, maybe he shouldn't get his eyes fixed.

Lula looked toward the stairs. "What's he doing tip there? How long does it take to put a pair of pants on?"

"Maybe he can't find them."

"You think he's that blind?"

I shrugged.

"Come to think of it, I don't hear him moving around," Lula said. "Maybe he fell asleep. Old people do that a lot."

I went to the stairs and yelled up at DeChooch. "Mr. DeChooch? Are you okay?"

No answer.

I yelled again.

"Oh boy," Lula said.

I took the stairs two at a tine. DeChooch's bedroom door was closed, so I rapped on it hard. "Mr. DeChooch?"

Still no answer.

I opened the door and looked inside. Empty. The bathroom was empty and the other two bedrooms were empty. No DeChooch.

Shit.

"What's going on?" Lula called up.

"DeChooch isn't here."

"Say what?"

Lula and I searched the house. We looked under beds and in closets. We looked in the cellar and the garage. DeChooch's closets were filled with clothes. His toothbrush was still in the bathroom. His car was asleep in the garage.

"This is too weird," Lula said. "How could he have gotten past us? We were sitting right in his front room. We would have seen him sneak by."

We were standing in the backyard, and I cut my eyes to the second story. The bathroom window was directly above the flat roof that sheltered the back door leading from the kitchen to the yard. Just like my parents' house. When I was in high school I used to sneak out that window late at night so I could hang with my friends. My sister, Valerie, the perfect daughter, never did such a thing.

"He could have gone out the window," I said. "He wouldn't have had a far drop either because he's got those two garbage cans pushed against the house."

"Well, he's got some nerve acting all old and feeble and goddamned depressed, and then soon as we turn our backs he goes and jumps out a window. I'm telling you, you can't trust nobody anymore."

"He snookered us."

"Damn skippy."

I went into the house, searched the kitchen, and with minimum effort found a set of keys. I tried one of the keys on the front door. Perfect. I locked the house and pocketed the keys. It's been my experience that sooner or later, everyone comes home. And when DeChooch does come home he might decide to shut the house up tight.

I knocked on Angela's door and asked if she wasn't by any chance harboring Eddie DeChooch. She claimed she hadn't seen him all day, so I left her with my card and gave instructions to call me if DeChooch turned up.

Lula and I got into the CR-V, I cranked the engine over, and an image of DeChooch's keys floated to the forefront of my brain. House key, car key . . . and a third key. I took the key ring out of my purse and looked at it.

"What do you suppose this third key is for?" I asked Lula.

"It's one of them Yale locks that you put on gym lockers and sheds and stuff."

"Do you remember seeing a shed?"

"I don't know. I guess I wasn't paying attention to that. You think he could be hiding in a shed along with the lawn mower and weed whacker?"

I shut the engine off and we got out of the car and returned to the backyard.

"I don't see a shed," Lula said. "I see a couple garbage cans and a garage."

We peered into the dim garage for the second time.

"Nothing in there but the car," Lula said.

We walked around the garage to the rear and found the shed.

"Yeah, but it's locked," Lula said. "He'd have to be Houdini to get himself in there and then lock it from the outside. And on top of that this shed smells real bad .

I shoved the key in the lock and the lock popped open.

"Hold on," Lula said. "I vote we leave this shed locked. I don't want to know what's smelling up this shed."

I yanked at the handle, the door to the shed swung wide, and Loretta Ricci stared out at us, mouth open, eves unseeing, five bullet holes in the middle of her chest. She was sitting on the dirt floor, her back propped against the corrugated metal wall, her hair white from a dose of lime that wasn't doing much to stop the destruction that follows death.

"Shit, that ain't no ironing board," Lula said.

I slammed the door shut, snapped the lock in place, and put some distance between me and the shed. I told myself I wasn't going to throw up, and took a bunch of deep breaths. "You were right," I said. "I shouldn't have opened the shed."

"You never listen to me. Now look what we got. All on account of you had to be nosy. Not only that, but I know what's gonna happen next. You're gonna call the police, and we're gonna be tied up all day. If you had any sense you'd pretend you didn't see nothing, and we'd go get some fries and a Coke. I could really use some fries and a Coke."

I handed her the keys to my car. "Get yourself some food, but make sure you're back in a half hour. I swear, if you abandon me I'll send the police out after you."

"Boy, that really hurts. When did I ever abandon you?"

"You abandon me all the time!"

"Hunh," Lula said.

I flipped my cell phone open and called the police. Within minutes I could hear the blue-and-white pull up in front of the house. It was Carl Costanza and his partner, Big Dog.

"When the call came in, I knew it had to be you," Carl said to me. "It's been almost a month since you found a body. I knew you were due."

"I don't find that many bodies!"

"Hey," Big Dog said, "is that a Kevlar vest you're wearing?"

"Brand new, too," Costanza said. "Not even got any bullet holes in it."

Trenton cops are top of the line, but their budget isn't exactly Beverly Hills. If you're a Trenton cop you hope Santa will bring you a bulletproof vest because vests are funded primarily with miscellaneous grants and donations and don't automatically come with the badge.

I'd removed the house key from DeChooch's key ring and had it safely tucked away in my pocket. I gave the two remaining keys to Costanza. "Loretta Ricci is in the shed. And she's not looking too good."

I knew Loretta Ricci by sight, but that was about it. She lived in the Burg and was widowed. I'd put her age around sixty-five. I saw her sometimes at Giovichinni's Meat Market ordering lunch meat.

VINNIE LEANED FORWARD in his chair and narrowed his eyes at Lula and me. "What do you mean you lost DeChooch?"

"It wasn't our fault," Lula said. "He was sneaky."

"Well hell," Vinnie said, "I wouldn't expect you to be able to catch someone who was sneaky."

"Hunh," Lula said. "Your ass."

"Dollars to doughnuts he's at his social club," Vinnie said.

It used to be there were a lot of powerful social clubs in the Burg. They were powerful because numbers were run out of them. Then Jersey legalized gambling and pretty soon the local numbers industry was in the toilet. There are only a few social clubs left in the Burg now, and the members all sit around reading Modern Maturity and comparing pacemakers.

"I don't think DeChooch is at his social club," I told Vinnie. "We found Loretta Ricci dead in DeChooch's toolshed, and I think DeChooch is on his way to Rio."

FOR LACK OF something better to do I went home to my apartment. The sky was overcast and a light rain had started to fall. It was midafternoon, and I was more than a little creeped out by Loretta Ricci. I parked in the lot, pushed through the double glass doors that led to the small lobby, and took the elevator to the second floor.

I let myself into my apartment and went straight to the flashing red light on the phone machine.

The first message was from Joe Morelli. "Call me." Didn't sound friendly.

The second message was from my friend MoonMan. "Hey dude," he said. "It's the MoonMan." That was it. No more message.

The third message was from my mother. "Why me?" she asked. "Why do I have to have a daughter who finds dead bodies? Where did I go wrong? Emily Beeber's daughter never finds dead bodies. Joanne Malinoski's daughter never finds dead bodies. Why me!"

News travels fast in the Burg.

The fourth and last message was from my mother again. "I'm making a nice chicken for supper with a pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. I'll set an extra plate in case you don't have plans."

My mother was playing hardball with the cake.

My hamster, Rex, was asleep in his soup can in his cage on the kitchen counter. I tapped on the side of the cage and called hello, but Rex didn't budge. Catching up on his sleep after a hard night of running on his wheel.

I thought about calling Morelli back and decided against it. Last time I talked to Morelli we'd ended up yelling at each other. After spending the afternoon with Mrs. Ricci I didn't have the energy to yell at Morelli.

I shuffled into the bedroom and flopped down on the bed to think. Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different. I was in the middle of some very deep thinking when the phone rang. By the time I dragged myself out of my thinking mode there was no one left on the line, only another message from Mooner.

"Bummer," Mooner said. That was it. Nothing more.

MoonMan has been known to experiment with pharmaceuticals and for the better part of his life has made no sense at all. Usually it's best to ignore MoonMan.

I stuck my head in my refrigerator and found a jar of olives, some slimy brown lettuce, a lone bottle of beer, and an orange with blue fuzz growing on it. No pineapple upside-down cake.

There was a pineapple upside-down cake a couple miles away at my parents' house. I checked out the waistband on my Levi's. No room to spare. Probably I didn't need the cake.

I drank the beer and ate some olives. Not bad, but not cake. I blew out a sigh of resignation. I was going to cave. I wanted the cake.

MY MOTHER AND my grandmother were at the door when I pulled to the curb in front of their house. My Grandmother Mazur moved in with my parents shortly after my Grandfather Mazur took his bucket of quarters to the big poker slot machine in the sky. Last month Grandma finally passed her driver's test and bought herself a red Corvette. It took her exactly five days to acquire enough speeding tickets to lose her license.

"The chicken's on the table," my mother said. "We were just about to sit."

"Lucky for you the dinner got late," Grandma said, "on account of the phone wouldn't stop ringing. Loretta Ricci is big news." She took her seat and shook out her napkin. "Not that I was surprised. I said to myself a while ago that Loretta was looking for trouble. She was real hot to trot, that one. Went wild after Dominic died. Man-crazy."

My father was at the head of the table and he looked like he wanted to shoot himself.

"She'd just jump from one man to the next at the seniors' meeting," Grandma said. "And I heard she was real loosey-goosey."

The meat was always placed in front of my father so he got first pick. I guess my mother figured if my father got right down to the task of eating he wouldn't be so inclined to jump up and strangle my grandmother.

"How's the chicken?" my another wanted to know. "Do you think it's too dry?"

No, everyone said, the chicken wasn't dry. The chicken was just right.

"I saw a television show the other week about a woman like that," Grandma said. "This woman was real sexy, and it turned out one of the men she was flirting with was an alien from outer space. And the alien took the woman up to his spaceship and did all kinds of things to her."

My father hunkered lower over his plateful of food and mumbled something indiscernible except for the words . . . crazy old bat .

"What about Loretta and Eddie DeChooch?" I asked. "Do you suppose they were seeing each other?"

"Not that I know of," Grandma said. "From what I know, Loretta liked her men hot, and Eddie DeChooch couldn't get it up. I went out with him a couple times, and that thing of his was dead as a doorknob. No matter what I did I couldn't get nothing to happen."

My father looked up at Grandma, and a piece of meat fell out of his mouth.

My mother was red-faced at the other end of the table. She sucked in some air and made the sign of the cross. "Mother of God," she said.

I fiddled with my fork. "If I left now I probably wouldn't get any pineapple upside-down cake, right?"

"Not for the rest of your life," my mother said.

"So how did she look?" Grandma wanted to know. "What was Loretta wearing? And how was her hair done? Doris Szuch said she saw Loretta at the food store yesterday afternoon, so I'm guessing Loretta wasn't all rotted and wormy yet."

My father reached for the carving knife, and my mother cut him down with a steel-eyed look that said don't even think about it .

My father's retired from the post office. He drives a cab part-time, only buys American cars, and smokes cigars out behind the garage: when my mother isn't home. I don't think my dad would actually stab Grandma Mazur with the carving knife. Still, if she choked on a chicken bone I'm not sure he'd be all that unhappy.

"I'm looking for Eddie DeChooch," I said to Grandma. "He's FTA. Do you have any ideas about where he might be hiding?"

"He's friends with Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci. And there's his nephew Ronald."

"Do you think he'd leave the country?"

"You mean because he might have put those holes in Loretta? I don't think so. He's been accused of killing people before and he never left the country. At least not that I know of."

"I hate this," my mother said. "I hate having a daughter who goes out after killers. What's the matter with Vinnie for giving this case to you?" She glared at my father. "Frank, he's your side of the family. You need to talk to him. And why can't you be more like your sister, Valerie?" my mother asked me. "She's happily married with two beautiful children. She doesn't go around chasing after killers, finding dead bodies."

"Stephanie's almost happily married," Grandma said. "She got engaged last month."

"Do you see a ring on her finger?" my mother asked.

Everyone looked at my naked finger.

"I don't want to talk about it," I said.

"I think Stephanie's got the hots for someone else," Grandma said. "I think she's sweet on that Ranger fella."

My father paused with his fork plunged into a mound of potatoes. "The bounty hunter? The black guy?"

My father was an equal opportunity bigot. He didn't go around painting swastikas on churches, and he didn't discriminate against minorities. It was just that with the possible exception of my mother, if you weren't Italian you weren't quite up to standards.

"He's Cuban-American," I said.

My mother did another sign of the cross.

IT WAS DARK when I left my parents. I didn't expect Eddie DeChooch to be home, but I drove past his house anyway. Lights were blazing in the Marguchi half. The DeChooch half was lifeless. I caught a glimpse of yellow crime-scene tape still stretched across the backyard.

There were questions I wanted to ask Mrs. Marguchi, but they'd keep. I didn't want to disturb her tonight. Her day had been bad enough. I'd catch her tomorrow, and on the way I'd stop at the office and get an address for Garvey and Colucci.

I cruised around the block and headed for Hamilton Avenue. My apartment building is located a couple miles from the Burg. It's a sturdy, three-story chunk of brick and mortar built in the seventies with economy in mind. It doesn't come with a lot of amenities, but it has a decent super who'll do anything for a six-pack of beer, the elevator almost always works, and the rent is reasonable.

I parked in the lot and looked up at my apartment. The lights were on. Someone was home and it wasn't me. It was probably Morelli. He had a key. I felt a rush of excitement at the thought of seeing him, quickly followed by a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Morelli and I have known each other since we were kids, and life has never been simple between us.

I took the stairs, trying out emotions, settling on conditionally happy. Truth is, Morelli and I are pretty sure we love each other. We're just not sure we can stand to live together for the rest of our lives. I don't especially want to marry a cop. Morelli doesn't want to marry a bounty hunter. And then there's Ranger.

I opened the door to my apartment and found two old guys sitting on my couch, watching a ball game on television. No Morelli in sight. They both stood and smiled when I came into the room.

"You must be Stephanie Plum," one of the men said. "Allow me to make the introductions. I'm Benny Colucci and this is my friend and colleague, Ziggy Garvey."

"How did you get into my apartment?"

"Your door was open."

"No, it wasn't."

The smile widened. "It was Ziggy. He's got the touch with a lock."

Ziggy beamed and wiggled his fingers. "I'm an old coot, but my fingers still work."

"I'm not crazy about people breaking into my apartment," I said.

Benny solemnly nodded. "I understand, but we thought in this instance it would be okay, being that we have something of a very serious nature to discuss."

"And urgent," Ziggy added. "Also of an urgent nature."

They looked at each other and agreed. It was urgent.

"And besides," Ziggy said. "You got some nosy neighbors. We were waiting for you in the hall, but there was a lady who kept opening her door and looking at us. It made us uncomfortable."

"I think she was interested in us, if you know what I mean. And we don't do anything funny like that. We're married men."

"Maybe when we were younger," Ziggy said, smiling.

"So what's this urgent business?"

"Ziggy and me happen to be very good friends of Eddie DeChooch," Benny said. "Ziggy and Eddie and me go way back. So Ziggy and me are concerned about Eddie's sudden disappearance. We're worried Eddie might be in trouble."

"You mean because he killed Loretta Ricci?"

"No, we don't think that's a big issue. People are always accusing Eddie of killing people."

Ziggy leaned forward in a conspiratorial whisper. "Bum raps, all of them."

Of course.

"We're concerned because we think Eddie might not be thinking right," Benny said. "He's been in this depression. We go to see him and he don't want to talk to us. He's never been like that."

"It's not normal," Ziggy said.

"Anyway, we know you're looking for him, and we don't want him to get hurt, you understand?"

"You don't want me to shoot him."

"Yeah."

"I almost never shoot people."

"Sometimes it happens, but God forbid it would be Choochy," Benny said. "We're trying to prevent it from being Choochy."

"Hey," I said, "if he gets shot it won't be my bullet."

"And then there's something else," Benny said. "We're trying to find Choochy so we can help him."

Ziggy nodded. "We think maybe he should be seeing a doctor. Maybe he needs a psychiatrist. So we figured we could work together being that you're looking for him, too."

"Sure," I said, "if I find him I'll let you know." After I delivered him up to the court and had him safely behind bars.

"And we were wondering if you have any leads?"

"Nope. None."

"Gee, we were counting on you to have some leads. We heard you were pretty good."

"Actually, I'm not all that good . . . it's more that I'm lucky."

Another exchange of glances.

"So, are you, you know, feeling lucky about this?" Benny asked.

Hard to feel lucky when I've just let a depressed senior citizen slip through my fingers, found a dead woman in his shed, and sat through dinner with my parents. "Well, it's sort of too early to tell."

There was some fumbling at the door, the door swung open, and Mooner ambled in. Mooner was wearing a head-to-toe purple spandex bodysuit with a big silver M sewn onto the chest.

"Hey dude," Mooner said. "I tried calling you, but you were never home. I wanted to show you my new Super Mooner Suit."

"Cripes," Benny said, "he looks like a flaming fruit."

"I'm a superhero, dude," the Mooner said.

"Super fruitcake is more like it. You walk around in this suit all day?"

"No way, dude. This is my secret suit. Ordinarily I only wear this when I'm doing super deeds, but I wanted the dudette here to get the full impact, so I changed in the hall."

"Can you fly like Superman?" Benny asked Mooner.

"No, but I can fly in my mind, dude. Like, I can soar."

"Oh boy," Benny said.

Ziggy looked at his watch. "We gotta go. If you get a line on Choochy you'll let us know, right?"

"Sure." Maybe.

I watched them leave. They were like Jack Sprat and his wife. Benny was about fifty pounds overweight with chins spilling over his collar. And Ziggy looked like a turkey carcass. I assumed they both lived in the Burg and belonged to Chooch's club, but I didn't know that for certain. Another assumption was that they were on file as former Vincent Plum bondees since they hadn't felt it necessary to give me their phone numbers.

"So what do you think of the suit?" Mooner asked me when Benny and Ziggy left. "Dougie and me found a whole box of them. I think they're like for swimmers or runners or something. Dougie and me don't know any swimmers who could use them, but we thought we could turn them into Super Suits. See, you can wear them like underwear and then when you need to be a superhero you just take your clothes off. Only problem is we haven't got any capes. That's probably why the old dude didn't know I was a superhero. No cape."

"You don't really think you're a superhero, do you?"

"You mean like in real life?"

"Yeah."

Mooner looked astonished. "Superheroes are like, fiction. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

"Just checking."

I'd gone to high school with Walter "MoonMan" Dunphy and Dougie "The Dealer" Kruper.

Mooner lives with two other guys in a narrow row house on Grant Street. Together they form the Legion of Losers. They're all potheads and misfits, floating from one menial job to the next, living hand-to-mouth. They're also gentle and harmless and utterly adoptable. I don't exactly hang with Mooner. It's more that we keep in touch, and when our paths cross he tends to generate maternal feelings in me. Mooner is like a goofy stray kitten that shows up for a bowl of kibble once in a while.

Dougie lives several units down in the same row of attached houses. In high school Dougie was the kid who wore the dorky button-down shirt when all the other kids wore T-shirts. Dougie didn't get great grades, didn't do sports, didn't play a musical instrument, and didn't have a cool car. Dougie's solitary accomplishment was his ability to suck Jell-O into his nose through a straw.

After graduation it was rumored that Dougie had moved to Arkansas and died. And then several months ago Dougie surfaced in the Burg, alive and well. And last month Dougie got nailed for fencing stolen goods out of his house. At the time of his arrest his dealing had seemed more community service than crime since he'd become the definitive source for cut-rate Metamucil, and for the first time in years Burg seniors were regular.

"I thought Dougie shut down his dealership," I said to Mooner.

"No, man, I mean we really found these suits. They were like in a box in the attic. We were cleaning the house out and we came across them."

I was pretty sure I believed him.

"So what do you think?" he asked. "Cool, huh?"

The suit was lightweight Lycra, fitting his gangly frame perfectly without a wrinkle . . . and that included his doodle area. Not much left to the imagination. If the suit was on Ranger I wouldn't complain, but this was more than I wanted to see of the Mooner.

"The suit is terrific."

"Since Dougie and me have these cool suits, we decided we'd be crime-fighters . . . like Batman."

Batman seemed like a nice change. Usually Mooner and Dougie were Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

Mooner pushed the Lycra cap back off his head, and his long brown hair spilled out. "We were going to start fighting crime tonight. Only problem is, Dougie's gone."

"Gone? What do you mean gone?"

"Like he just disappeared, dude. He called me on Tuesday and told me he had some stuff to do, but I should come over to watch wrestling last night. We were gonna watch it on Dougie's big screen. It was like an awesome event, dude. Anyway, Dougie never showed up. He wouldn't have missed wrestling unless something awful happened. He wears like four pagers on him and he's not answering any of them. I don't know what to think."

"Did you go out looking for him? Could he be at a friend's house?"

"I'm telling you, it's not like him to miss wrestling," Mooner said. "Like nobody misses wrestling, dude. He was all excited about it. I think something bad's happened."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. I just have this bad feeling."

We both sucked in a breath when the phone rang, as if our suspecting disaster would make it happen.

"He's here," Grandma said at the other end of the line.

"Who? Who's where?"

"Eddie DeChooch! Mabel picked me up after you left so we could pay our respects to Anthony Varga. He's laid out at Stiva's and Stiva did a real good job. I don't know how Stiva does it. Anthony Varga hasn't looked this good for twenty-five years. He should have come to Stiva when he was alive. Anyway, we're still here, and Eddie DeChooch just walked into the funeral parlor."

"I'll be right there."

No matter if you're suffering depression or wanted for murder, you still pay your respects in the Burg.

I grabbed my shoulder bag off the kitchen counter and shoved Mooner out the door. "I have to run. I'll make some phone calls and I'll get back to you. In the meantime, you should go home and maybe Dougie will show up."

"Which home should I go to, dude? Should I go to Dougie's home or my home?"

"Your home. And check on Dougie's home once in a while."

Having Mooner worry about Dougie made me uneasy, but it didn't feel critical. Then again, Dougie'd missed wrestling. And Mooner was right . . . nobody misses wrestling. At least nobody in Jersey.

I ran down the hall and down the stairs. I bolted through the lobby, out the door, and into my car. Stiva's was a couple miles down Hamilton Avenue. I did a mental equipment inventory. Pepper spray and cuffs in my purse. The stun gun was probably in there, too, but it might not be charged. My .38 was home in the cookie jar. And I had a nail file in case things got physical.

Stiva's Funeral Parlor is housed in a white frame structure that was once a private residence. Garages for the various funeral-type vehicles and viewing rooms for the various dead have been added to accommodate business. There's a small parking lot. Black shutters frame the windows, and the wide front porch is covered in green indoor-outdoor carpet.

I parked in the lot and power-walked to the front entrance. Men stood in a knot on the porch, smoking and swapping stories. They were working-class men, dressed in unmemorable suits, their waists and hairlines showing the years. I moved past them to the foyer. Anthony Varga was in Slumber Room number one. And Caroline Borchek was in Slumber Room number two. Grandma Mazur was hiding behind a fake ficus tree in the lobby.

"He's in with Anthony," Grandma said. "He's talking to the widow. Probably sizing her up, looking for a new woman to shoot and stash in his shed."

There were about twenty people in the Varga viewing room. Most of them were seated. A few stood at the casket. Eddie DeChooch was among those at the casket. I could go in and quietly maneuver myself to his side and clap on the cuffs. Probably the easiest way to get the job done. Unfortunately, it would also create a scene and upset people who were grieving. More to the point, Mrs. Varga would call my mother and relay the whole gruesome incident. My other choices were that I could approach him at the casket and ask him to come outside with me. Or I could wait until he left and nab him in the parking lot or on the front porch.

"What do we do now?" Grandma wanted to know. "Are we just gonna go in and grab him, or what?"

I heard someone suck in some air behind me. It was Loretta Ricci's sister, Madeline. She'd just come in and spotted DeChooch.

"Murderer!" she shouted at him. "You murdered my sister."

DeChooch went white-faced and stumbled backward, losing his footing, knocking into Mrs. Varga. Both DeChooch and Mrs. Varga grabbed the casket for support, the casket tipped precariously on its skirted trolley, and there was a collective gasp as Anthony Varga lurched to one side, bashing his head against the satin padding.

Madeline shoved her hand into her purse, someone yelled that Madeline was going for a gun, and everyone scrambled. Some went flat to the floor, and some surged up the aisle to the lobby.

Stiva's assistant, Harold Barrone, lunged at Madeline, catching her at the knees, throwing Madeline into Grandma and me, taking us all down in a heap.

"Don't shoot," Harold yelled to Madeline. "Control yourself!"

"I was just getting a tissue, you moron," Madeline said. "Get off me."

"Yeah, and get off me ," Grandma said. "I'm old. My bones could snap like a twig."

I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. No Eddie DeChooch. I ran out to the porch where the men were standing. "Have any of you seen Eddie DeChooch?"

"Yep," one of the men said. "Eddie just left."

"Which way did he go?"

"He went to the parking lot."

I flew down the stairs and got to the lot just as DeChooch was pulling away in a white Cadillac. I said a few comforting cuss words and took off after DeChooch. He was about a block ahead of me, driving on the white line and running stoplights. He turned into the Burg, and I wondered if he was going home. I followed him down Roebling Avenue, past the street that would have taken him to his house. We were the only traffic on Roebling, and I knew I'd been made. DeChooch wasn't so blind that he couldn't see lights in his rearview mirror.

He continued to wind his way through the Burg, taking Washington and Liberty streets and then going back up Division. I had visions of myself following DeChooch until one of us ran out of gas. And what then? I didn't have a gun or a vest. And I didn't have backup. I'd have to rely on my powers of persuasion.

DeChooch stopped at the corner of Division and Emory, and I stopped about twenty feet behind him. It was a dark corner without a streetlight, but DeChooch's car was clear in my lights. DeChooch opened his door and got out all creaky-kneed and stooped. He looked at me for a moment, shielding his eyes against my brights. Then he matter-of-factly raised his arm and fired off three shots. Pow . Pow . Pow . Two hit the pavement beside my car and one zinged off my front bumper.

Yikes. So much for persuasion. I threw the CR-V into reverse and floored it. I wheeled around Morris Street, screeched to a stop, rammed the car into drive, and rocketed out of the Burg.

I'd pretty much stopped shaking by the time I parked in my lot and I'd ascertained that I hadn't wet my pants, so all in all, I was sort of proud of myself. There was a nasty gash in my bumper. Could have been worse, I told myself. Could have been a gash in my head. I was trying to cut Eddie DeChooch some slack because he was old and depressed, but truth is, I was starting to dislike him.

Mooner's clothes were still in the hall when I got out of the elevator, so I gathered them up on my way to my apartment. I paused at my door and listened. The television was on. Sounded like boxing. I was almost certain I'd shut the television off. I rested my forehead on the door. Now what?

I was still standing there with my forehead pressed to the door when the door opened and Morelli grinned out at me.

"One of those days, huh?"

I looked around. "Are you alone?"

"Who'd you expect to be here?"

"Batman, the Ghost of Christmas past, Jack the Ripper." I dumped Mooner's clothes on the foyer floor. "I'm a little freaked. I just had a shoot-out with DeChooch. Except he was the only one with a gun."

I gave Morelli the lurid details, and when I got to the part about not wetting my pants, the phone rang.

"Are you all right?" my mother wanted to know. "Your grandmother just got home and said you took off after Eddie DeChooch."

"I'm fine, but I lost DeChooch."

"Myra Szilagy told me they're hiring at the button factory. And they give benefits. You could probably get a good job on the line. Or maybe even in the office."

Morelli was slouched on the couch, back to watching boxing, when I got off the phone. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a cream cable-knit sweater over jeans. He was lean and hard-muscled and darkly Mediterranean. He was a good cop. He could make my nipples tingle with a single look. And he was a New York Rangers fan. This made him just about perfect . . . except for the cop part.

Bob the Dog was on the couch beside Morelli. Bob is a cross between a golden retriever and Chewbacca. He'd originally come to live with me but then decided he liked Morelli's house better. One of those guy things, I guess. So now Bob mostly lives with Morelli. It's okay with me since Bob eats everything . Left to his own devices Bob could reduce a house to nothing more than a few nails and some pieces of tile. And because Bob frequently takes in large quantities of roughage such as furniture, shoes, and houseplants, Bob frequently expels mountains of dog doody.

Bob smiled and wagged his tail at me, and then Bob went back to watching television.

"I'm assuming you know the guy who took his clothes off in your hall," Morelli said.

"Mooner. He wanted to show me his underwear."

"Makes perfect sense to me."

"He said Dougie's gone missing. He said Dougie went out yesterday morning and never came back."

Morelli dragged himself away from the boxing. "Isn't Dougie coming up to trial?"

"Yes, but Mooner doesn't think Dougie skipped. Mooner thinks something's wrong."

"Mooner's brain probably looks like a fried egg. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in what Mooner thinks."

I handed Morelli the phone. "Maybe you could make a few phone calls. You know, check the hospitals." And the morgue. As a cop, Morelli had better access than I did.

Fifteen minutes later Morelli had run through the list. No one meeting Dougie's description had checked into St. Francis, Helen Fuld, or the morgue. I called Mooner and told him our findings.

"Hey man," Mooner said, "it's getting scary. It's not just Dougie. Now my clothes are gone."

"Don't worry about your clothes. I've got your clothes."

"Boy, you're good," Mooner said. "You're really good."

I did some mental eye rolling and hung up.

Morelli patted the seat next to him. "Sit down and let's talk about Eddie DeChooch."

"What about DeChooch?"

"He's not a nice guy."

A sigh inadvertently escaped from my lips.

Morelli ignored the sigh. "Costanza said you got to talk to DeChooch before he took off."

"DeChooch is depressed."

"I don't suppose he mentioned Loretta Ricci?"

"Nope, not a word about Loretta. I found Loretta all by myself."

"Tom Bell's primary on the case. I ran into him after work, and he said Ricci was already dead when she was shot."

" What?"

"He won't know the cause of death until after the autopsy."

"Why would someone shoot a dead person?"

Morelli did a palms-up.

Great. "Do you have anything else to give me?"

Morelli looked at me and grinned.

"Besides that," I said.

I WAS ASLEEP, and in my sleep I was suffocating. There was a terrible weight on my chest and I couldn't breathe. Usually I don't have dreams about suffocating. I have dreams about elevators shooting out the tops of buildings with me trapped inside. I have dreams of bulls stampeding down the street after me. And I have dreams of forgetting to get dressed and going to a shopping center naked. But I never have dreams of suffocating. Until now. I dragged myself awake and opened my eyes. Bob was sleeping next to me with his big dog head and front paws on my chest. The rest of the bed was empty. Morelli was gone. He'd tippy-toed out at the crack of dawn, and he'd left Bob with me.

"Okay, big guy," I said, "if you get off me I'll feed you."

Bob might not understand all the words, but Bob almost never missed the intent when it came to food. His ears perked up and his eyes got bright and he was off the bed in an instant, dancing around all happy-faced.

I poured out a caldron of dog crunchies and looked in vain for people food. No Pop-Tarts, no pretzels, no Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries. My mother always sends me home with a bag of food, but my mind had been on Loretta Ricci when I left my parents' house, and the food bag had been forgotten, left on the kitchen table.

"Look at this," I said to Bob. "I'm a domestic failure."

Bob gave me a look that said, Hey lady, you fed me, so how bad could you be ?

I stepped into Levi's and boots, threw a denim jacket on over my nightshirt, and hooked Bob up to his leash. Then I hustled Bob down the stairs and into my car so I could drive him to my archenemy Joyce Barnhardt's house to poop. This way I didn't have to do the pooper-scooper thing, and I felt like I was accomplishing something. Years ago I'd caught Joyce boinking my husband (now my ex -husband) on my dining room table, and once in a while I like to repay her kindness.

Joyce lives just a quarter mile away, but that's enough distance for the world to change. Joyce has gotten nice settlements from her ex-husbands. In fact, husband number three was so eager to get Joyce out of his life he deeded her their house, free and clear. It's a big house set on a small lot in a neighborhood of upwardly mobile professionals. The house is red brick with fancy white columns supporting a roof over the front door. Sort of like the Parthenon meets Practical Pig. The neighborhood has a strict pooper-scooper law, so Bob and I only visit Joyce under cover of darkness. Or in this case, early in the morning before the street awakens.

I parked half a block from Joyce. Bob and I quietly skulked to her front yard, Bob did his business, we skulked back to the car, and zipped off for McDonald's. No good deed goes unrewarded. I had an Egg McMuffin and coffee, and Bob had an Egg McMuffin and a vanilla milkshake.

We were exhausted after all this activity, so we went back to my apartment and Bob took a nap and I took a shower. I put some gel in my hair and scrunched it up so there were lots of curls. I did the mascara and eyeliner thing and finished with lip gloss. I might not solve any problems today, but I looked pretty damn good.

A half hour later Bob and I sailed into Vinnie's office, ready to go to work.

"Uh-oh," Lula said, "Bob's on the job." She bent down to scratch Bob's head. "Hey Bob, what's up."

"We're still looking for Eddie DeChooch," I said. "Anyone know where his nephew Ronald lives?"

Connie wrote a couple addresses on a sheet of paper and handed it over to me. "Ronald has a house on Cherry Street, but you'll have more luck finding him at work at this time of the day. He runs a paving company, Ace Pavers, on Front Street, down by the river."

I pocketed the addresses, leaned close to Connie, and lowered my voice. "Is there anything on the street about Dougie Kruper?"

"Like what?" Connie asked.

"Like he's missing."

The door to Vinnie's office burst open and Vinnie stuck his head out. "What do you mean he's missing?"

I looked up at Vinnie. "How did you hear that? I was whispering, and you had your door closed."

"I got ears in my ass," Vinnie said. "I hear everything."

Connie ran her fingers along the desk edges. "Goddamn you," Connie said, "you planted a bug again." She emptied her cup filled with pencils, rifled through her drawers, emptied the contents of her purse onto the desktop. "Where is it, you little worm?"

"There's no bug," Vinnie said. "I'm telling you I got good ears. I got radar."

Connie found the bug stuck to the bottom of her telephone. She ripped it off and smashed it with her gun butt. Then she dropped the gun back into her purse and threw the bug in the trash.

"Hey," Vinnie said, "that was company property!"

"What's with Dougie?" Lula asked. "Isn't he coming tip to trial?"

"Mooner said he and Dougie were supposed to watch wrestling together on Dougie's big screen, and Dougie never showed up. He thinks something bad's happened to Dougie."

"Wouldn't catch me missing a chance to see those wrestling guys wearing little spandex panties on a big screen," Lula said.

Connie and I agreed. A girl would have to be crazy to miss all that beefcake on a big screen.

"I haven't heard anything," Connie said, "but I'll ask around." The front door to the office crashed open and Joyce Barnhardt stormed in. Her red hair was teased out to its full potential. She was wearing SWAT-type pants and shirt, the pants tight across her butt and the shirt unbuttoned halfway down her sternum, showing a black bra and a lot of cleavage. BOND ENFORCEMENT was written in white letters across the back of the shirt. Her eyes were black-rimmed, and her lashes were heavily mascaraed.

Bob hid under Connie's desk, and Vinnie ducked into his office and locked the door. A while back, after a short consultation with his johnson, Vinnie had agreed to hire Joyce on as an apprehension agent. Mr. Nasty was still happy with the decision, but the rest of Vinnie didn't know what to do with Joyce.

"Vinnie, you limp dick, I saw you sneak back into your office. Get the hell out here," Joyce yelled.

"Nice to see you in such a good mood," Lula said to Joyce.

"Some dog did his business on my lawn again. This is the second time this week."

"Guess you have to expect that when you get your dates from the animal shelter," Lula said.

"Don't push me, fatso."

Lula narrowed her eyes. "Who you calling fatso? You call me fatso again and I'll rearrange your face."

"Fatso, fat ass, lard butt, blimpo . . ."

Lula launched herself at Joyce, and the two of them went down to the floor, scratching and clawing. Bob stayed firmly under the desk. Vinnie hid in his office. And Connie moseyed over, waited for her opportunity, and buzzed Joyce on the ass with the stun gun. Joyce let out a squeak and went inert.

"This is the first time I've used one of these things," Connie said. "They're kind of fun."

Bob crept out from under the desk to take a look at Joyce.

"So, how long you been taking care of Bob?" Lula asked, heaving herself to her feet.

"He spent the night."

"You suppose it was Bob-size poop on Joyce's lawn?"

"Anything's possible."

"How possible? Ten percent possible? Fifty percent possible?"

We looked down at Joyce. She was starting to twitch, so Connie gave her another buzz with the stun gun.

"It's just that I hate to use the pooper-scooper . . ." I said.

"Hah!" Lula said on a bark of laughter. "I knew it!"

Connie gave Bob a doughnut from the box on her desk. "What a good boy!"

"SINCE BOB WAS such a good boy, and I'm in such a good mood, I'm gonna help you find Eddie DeChooch," Lula said.

Her hair was sticking straight up from where Joyce had pulled it, and she'd popped a button off her shirt. Taking her along would probably ensure my safety because she looked genuinely deranged and dangerous.

Joyce was still on the floor, but she had one eye open and her fingers were moving. Best that Lula and Bob and I left before Joyce got her other eye open.

"So what do you think?" Lula wanted to know when we were all in the car and on our way to Front Street. "Do you think I'm fat?"

Lula didn't look like she had a lot of fat on her. She looked solid. Bratwurst solid. But it was a lot of bratwurst.

"Not exactly fat," I said. "More like big ."

"I haven't got none of that cellulite, either."

This was true. A bratwurst does not have cellulite.

I drove west on Hamilton, toward the river, to Front Street. Lula was in front riding shotgun, and Bob was in back with his head out the window, his eyes slitty and his ears flapping in the breeze. The sun was shining and the air was just a couple degrees short of spring. If it hadn't been for Loretta Ricci I'd have bagged the search for Eddie DeChooch and taken off for the shore. The fact that I needed to make a car payment gave me added incentive to point the CR-V in the direction of Ace Pavers.

Ace Pavers rolled asphalt and they were easy to find. The office was small. The garage was large. A behemoth paver sat in the chain-link holding pen attached to the garage, along with other assorted tar-blackened machinery.

I parked on the street, locked Bob in the car, and Lula and I marched up to the office. I'd expected an office manager. What I found was Ronald DeChooch playing cards with three other guys. They were all in their forties, dressed in casual dress slacks and three-button knit shirts. Not looking like executives and not looking like laborers. Sort of looking like wise guys on HBO. Good thing for television because now New Jersey knew how to dress.

They were playing cards on a rickety card table and sitting on metal folding chairs. There was a pile of money on the table, and no one appeared happy to see Lula or me.

DeChooch looked like a younger, taller version of his uncle with an extra sixty pounds evenly distributed. He put his cards facedown on the table and stood. "Can I help you ladies?"

I introduced myself and told them I was looking for Eddie.

Everyone at the table smiled.

"That DeChooch," one of the men said, "he's something. I heard he left you two sitting in the parlor while he jumped out the bedroom window."

This got a lot of laughs.

"If you'd known Choochy you'd have known to watch the windows," Ronald said. "He's gone out a lot of windows in his time. Once he got caught in Florence Selzer's bedroom. Flo's husband, Joey the Rug, came home and caught Choochy going out the window and shot him in the . . . what do you call it, glutamus maximus?"

A big guy with a big belly tipped back on his chair. "Joey disappeared after that."

"Oh yeah?" Lula said. "What happened to him?"

The guy did a palms-up. "No one knows. Just one of those things."

Right. He was probably an SUV bumper like Jimmy Hoffa. "So, have any of you seen Choochy? Anyone know where he might be?"

"You could try his social club," Ronald said.

We all knew he wouldn't go to his social club.

I put my business card on the table. "In case you think of something."

Ronald smiled. "I'm thinking of something already."

Ugh.

"That Ronald is slime," Lula said when we got into the car. "And he looked at you like you were lunch."

I gave an involuntary shiver and drove away. Maybe my mother and Morelli were right. Maybe I should get a different job. Or maybe I should get no job. Maybe I should marry Morelli and be a housewife like my perfect sister, Valerie. I could have a couple kids and spend my days coloring in coloring books and reading stories about steam shovels and little bears.

"It could be fun," I said to Lula. "I like steam shovels."

"Sure you do," Lula said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Kids' books. Remember the book about the steam shovel?"

"I didn't have books when I was a kid. And if I did have a book it wouldn't have been about a steam shovel . . . it would have been about a crack spoon."

I crossed Broad Street and headed back into the Burg. I wanted to talk to Angela Marguchi and possibly take a look in Eddie's house. Usually I could count on friends or relatives of the fugitive to help me with the chase. In Eddie's case, I didn't think this was going to work. Eddie's friends and relatives weren't of the snitch mentality.

I parked in front of Angela's house and told Bob I'd only be a minute. Lula and I got halfway to Angela's front door and Bob started barking in the car. Bob didn't like being left alone. And he knew I was fibbing about the minute.

"Boy, that Bob sure can bark loud," Lula said. "He's giving me a headache already."

Angela stuck her head out the door. "What's making all that noise?"

"It's Bob," Lula said. "He don't like being left in the car."

Angela's face lit. "A dog! Isn't he cute. I love dogs."

Lula opened the car door and Bob bounded out. He rushed up to Angela, put his paws on her chest, and knocked her on her ass.

"You didn't break nothing, did you?" Lula asked, picking Angela up.

"I don't think so," Angela said. "I got a pacemaker to keep me going, and I got stainless steel and Teflon hips and knees. Only thing I have to watch out for is getting hit by lightning or getting shoved in a microwave."

Thinking about Angela going into a microwave got me to thinking about Hansel and Gretel, who faced a similar horror. This got me to thinking about the unreliability of bread crumbs as trail markers. And that led to the depressing admission that I was in worse shape than Hansel and Gretel because Eddie DeChooch hadn't even left bread crumbs.

"I don't suppose you've seen Eddie," I asked Angela. "He hasn't returned home, has he? Or called and asked you to take care of his houseplants?"

"Nope. I haven't heard from Eddie. He's probably the only one in the whole Burg I haven't heard from. My phone's been ringing off the hook. Everybody wanting to know about poor Loretta."

"Did Eddie have many visitors?"

"He had some men friends. Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci. And a couple others."

"Anyone who drove a white Cadillac?"

"Eddie's been driving a white Cadillac. His car's been on the fritz and he borrowed a Cadillac from someone. I don't know who. He kept it parked in the alley behind the garage."

"Did Loretta Ricci visit often?"

"So far as I know that was the first time she visited Eddie. Loretta was a volunteer with that Meals-on-Wheels program for seniors. I saw her go in with a box about suppertime. I figure someone told her Eddie was depressed and not eating right. Or maybe Eddie signed up. Although I can't see Eddie doing something like that."

"Did you see Loretta leave?"

"I didn't exactly see her leave, but I noticed the car was gone. She must have been in there for about an hour."

"How about gunshots?" Lula asked. "Did you hear her get whacked? Did you hear screaming?"

"I didn't hear any screaming," Angela said. "Mom's deaf as a post. Once Mom puts the television on you can't hear anything in here. And the television is on from six to eleven. Would you like some coffee cake? I got a nice almond ring from the bakery."

I thanked Angela for the coffee cake offer but told her Lula and Bob and I had to keep on the job.

We exited the Marguchi house and stepped next door to the DeChooch half. The DeChooch half was off limits, of course, ringed with crime-scene tape, still part of an ongoing investigation. There were no cops guarding the integrity of the house or shed, so I assumed they'd worked hard yesterday to finish the collection of evidence.

"We probably shouldn't go in here, being that the tape's still up," Lula said.

I agreed. "The police wouldn't like it."

"Of course, we were in there yesterday. We probably got prints all over the place."

"So you're thinking it wouldn't matter if we went in today?"

"Well, it wouldn't matter if nobody found out about it," Lula said.

"And I have a key so it isn't actually breaking and entering." Problem is, I sort of stole the key.

As a bond enforcement officer I also have the right to enter the fugitive's house if I have good reason to suspect he's there. And if push came to shove, I'm sure I could come up with a good reason. I might be lacking a bunch of bounty hunter skills, but I can fib with the best of them.

"Maybe you should see if that's really Eddie's house key," Lula said. "You know, test it out."

I inserted the key into the lock and the door swung open. "Damn," Lula said. "Look at what happened now. The door's open."

We scooted into the dark foyer and I closed and locked the door behind us.

"You take lookout," I said to Lula. "I don't want to be surprised by the police or by Eddie."

"You can count on me," Lula said. "Lookout's my middle name."

I started in the kitchen, going through the cabinets and drawers, thumbing through the papers on the counter. I was doing the Hansel and Gretel thing, looking for a bread crumb that would start me on a trail. I was hoping for a phone number scribbled on a napkin, or maybe a map with a big orange arrow pointing to a local motel. What I found was the usual flotsam that collects in all kitchens. Eddie had knives and forks and dishes and soup bowls that had been bought by Mrs. DeChooch and used for the life of her marriage. There were no dirty dishes left on the counter. Everything was neatly stacked in the cupboards. Not a lot of food in the refrigerator, but it was better stocked than mine. A small carton of milk, some sliced turkey breast from Giovichinni's Meat Market, eggs, a stick of butter, condiments.

I prowled through a small downstairs powder room, the dining room, and living room. I peered into the coat closet and searched coat pockets while Lula watched the street through a break in the living room drape.

I climbed the stairs and searched the bedrooms, still hoping to find a bread crumb. The beds were all neatly made. There was a crossword book on the nightstand in the master bedroom. No bread crumbs. I moved on to the bathroom. Clean sink. Clean tub. Medicine chest filled to bursting with Darvon, aspirin, seventeen different kinds of antacids, sleeping pills, a jar of Vicks, denture cleaner, hemorrhoid cream.

The window over the tub was unlocked. I climbed into the tub and looked out. DeChooch's escape seemed possible. I got out of the tub and out of the bathroom. I stood in the hall and thought about Loretta Ricci. There was no sign of her in this house. No bloodstains. No indication of struggle. The house was unusually clean and tidy. I'd noticed this yesterday, too, when I'd gone through looking for DeChooch.

No notes scribbled on the pad by the phone. No matchbooks from restaurants tossed on the kitchen counter. No socks on the floor. No laundry in the bathroom hamper. Hey, what do I know? Maybe depressed old men get obsessively neat. Or maybe DeChooch spent the entire night scrubbing the blood from his floors and then did the laundry. Bottom line is no bread crumbs .

I returned to the living room and made an effort not to grimace. There was one place left to look. The cellar. Yuck. Cellars in houses like this were always dark and creepy, with rumbly oil burners and cobwebby rafters.

"Well, I suppose I should look in the cellar now," I said to Lula.

"Okay," Lula said. "The coast is still clear."

I opened the cellar door and flipped the light switch. Scarred wood stairs, gray cement floor, cobwebby rafters, and creepy rumbly cellar sounds. No disappointment here.

"Something wrong?" Lula asked.

"It's creepy."

"Uh-huh."

"I don't want to go down there."

"It's just a cellar," Lula said.

"How about if you go down."

"Not me. I hate cellars. They're creepy."

"Do you have a gun?"

"Do bears shit in the woods?"

I borrowed Lula's gun and crept down the cellar stairs. I don't know what I was going to do with the gun. Shoot a spider, maybe.

There was a washer and dryer in the cellar. A pegboard with tools . . . screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers. A workbench with a vise attached. None of the tools looked recently used. Some cardboard cartons were stacked in a corner. The boxes were closed but not sealed. The tape that had sealed them was left on the floor. I snooped in a couple of the boxes. Christmas decorations, some books, a box of pie plates and casserole dishes. No bread crumbs.

I climbed the stairs and closed the cellar door. Lula was still looking out the window.

"Uh-oh," Lula said.

"What uh-oh?" I hate uh-oh!

"Cop car just pulled up."

" Shit!"

I grabbed Bob's leash, and Lula and I ran for the back door. We exited the house and scooted over to the stoop that served as back porch to Angela's house. Lula wrenched Angela's door open and we all jumped inside.

Angela and her mother were sitting at the small kitchen table, having coffee and cake.

"Help! Police!" Angela's mother yelled when we burst through the door.

"This is Stephanie," Angela shouted to her mother. "You remember Stephanie?"

"Who?"

" Stephanie!"

"What's she want?"

"We changed our mind about the cake," I said, pulling a chair out, sitting down.

"What?" Angela's mother yelled. " What?"

"Cake," Angela yelled back at her mother. "They want some cake."

"Well for God's sake give it to them before they shoot us."

Lula and I looked at the gun in my hand.

"Maybe you should put that away," Lula said. "Wouldn't want the old lady to mess her pants."

I gave the gun to Lula and took a piece of cake.

"Don't worry," I yelled. "It's a fake gun."

"Looks real to me," Angela's mother yelled back. "Looks like a forty-caliber, fourteen-round Glock. You could put a good hole in a man's head with that. I used to carry one myself, but I switched to a shotgun when my eyesight went."

Carl Costanza rapped on the back door and we all jumped.

"We're making a security patrol and I saw your car outside," Costanza said, helping himself to the piece of cake in my hand. "Wanted to make sure you weren't thinking of doing anything illegal . . . like violating the crime scene."

"Who, me?"

Costanza smiled at me and left with my cake.

We turned our attention back to the table, where there was now an empty cake plate.

"For goodness sakes," Angela said, "there was a whole cake here. What on earth could have happened to it?"

Lula and I exchanged glances. Bob had a piece of white confectioners' sugar icing clinging to his lip.

"We should probably be going anyway," I said, dragging Bob to the front door. "Let me know if you hear from Eddie."

"That didn't do us much good," Lula said when we were on the road. "We didn't find out nothing about Eddie DeChooch."

"He buys sliced turkey breast from Giovichinni," I said.

"So what are you saying? We should bait our hook with turkey breast?"

"No. I'm saying this is a guy who's spent his whole life in the Burg and isn't going anywhere else. He's right here, driving around in a white Cadillac. I should be able to find him." It would be easier if I'd been able to get the number off the Cadillac's license plate. I had my friend Norma do a search at the DMV for white Cadillacs, but there were too many to check out.

I dropped Lula off at the office and went in search of the Mooner. Mooner and Dougie mostly spend their days watching television and eating Cheez Doodles, living off a shared semi-illegal windfall. Sometime soon I suspect the windfall will all have gone up in wacky tabacky smoke, and Mooner and Dougie will be living a lot less luxuriously.

I parked in front of Mooner's house and Bob and I marched up to the front stoop and I knocked on the door. Huey Kosa opened the door and grinned out at me. Huey Kosa and Zero Bartha are Mooner's two roommates. Nice guys but, like Mooner, they were living in another dimension.

"Dude," Huey said.

"I'm looking for Mooner."

"He's at Dougie's house. He like had to do laundry, and the Dougster has a machine. The Dougster has everything."

I drove the short distance to Dougie's house and parked. I could have walked, but that wouldn't have been the Jersey way.

"Hey dude," Mooner said when I rapped on Dougie's door. "Nice to see you and the Bob. Mi casa su casa. Well, actually it's the Dougster's casa, but I don't know how to say that."

He was wearing another one of the Super Suits. Green this time and without the M sewn onto the chest, looking more like PickleMan than MoonMan.

"Saving the world?" I asked.

"No. Doing the laundry."

"Have you heard from Dougie?"

"Nothing, dude. Nada."

The front door opened to a living room sparsely furnished with a couch, a chair, a single floor lamp, and a big-screen TV. Bob Newhart got offered a bag of roadkill from Larry, Daryl, and Daryl on the big-screen TV.

"It's a Bob Newhart retrospective," Mooner said. "They're playing all the classics. Solid gold."

"So," I said, looking around the room, "Dougie's never disappeared like this before?"

"Not as long as I've known him."

"Does Dougie have a girlfriend?"

Mooner went blank-faced. Like this was too big a question to comprehend.

"Girlfriend," he said finally. "Wow, I never thought of the Dougster with a girlfriend. Like, I've never seen him with a girl."

"How about a boyfriend?"

"Don't think he's got one of them, either. Think the Dougster's more . . . um, self-sufficient."

"Okay, let's try something else. Where was Dougie going when he disappeared?"

"He didn't say."

"He drove?"

"Yep. Took the Batmobile."

"Just exactly what does the Batmobile look like?"

"It looks like a black Corvette. I rode around looking for it, but it's nowhere."

"Probably you should report this to the police."

"No way! The Dougster will be up the creek on his bond."

I was getting a bad vibe here. Mooner was looking nervous, and this was a seldom-seen side of his personality. Mooner is usually Mr. Mellow.

"There's something else going on," I said. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Hey, nothing, dude. I swear."

Call me crazy, but I like Dougie. He might be a schnook and a schemer, but he was kind of an okay schnook and schemer. And now he was missing, and I was having a bad feeling in my stomach.

"How about Dougie's family? Have you spoken to any of them?" I asked.

"No, dude, they're all in Arkansas someplace. The Dougster didn't talk about them a lot."

"Does Dougie have a phone book?"

"I've never seen one. I guess he could have one in his room."

"Stay here with Bob and make sure he doesn't eat anything. I'll check out Dougie's room."

There were three small upstairs bedrooms. I'd been in the house before, so I knew which room was Dougie's. And I knew what to expect of the interior design. Dougie didn't waste time with the petty details of housekeeping. The floor in Dougie's room was littered with clothes, the bed was unmade, the dresser was cluttered with scraps of paper, a model of the starship Enterprise , girlie magazines, food-encrusted dishes and mugs.

There was a phone at bedside but no address book beside the phone. There was a piece of yellow notepaper on the floor by the bed. There were a lot of names and numbers scribbled in no special order on the paper, some obliterated by a coffee cup stain. I did a fast scan of the page and discovered several Krupers were listed in Arkansas. None in Jersey. I scrounged through the mess on his dresser and just for the hell of it snooped in his closet.

No clues there.

I didn't have any good reason to look in the other bedrooms, but I'm nosey by nature. The second bedroom was a sparsely furnished guest room. The bed was rumpled, and my guess was Mooner slept there from time to time. And the third bedroom was stacked floor-to-ceiling with hijacked merchandise. Boxes of toasters, telephones, alarm clocks, stacks of T-shirts, and God-knows-what-else. Dougie was at it again.

"Mooner!" I yelled. "Get up here! Now !"

"Whoa," Mooner said when he saw me standing at the doorway to the third bedroom. "Where'd all that stuff come from?"

"I thought Dougie gave up dealing?"

"He couldn't help himself, dude. I swear he tried, but it's in his blood, you know? Like, he was born to deal."

Now I had a better idea of the origin of Mooner's nervousness. Dougie was still involved with bad people. Bad people are just fine when everything's going good. They become a concern when your friend shows up missing.

"Do you know where these boxes came from? Do you know who Dougie was working with?"

"I'm like, clueless. He took a phone call and then next thing there's a truck in the driveway and we've got this inventory. I wasn't paying too much attention. Rocky and Bullwinkle were on, and you know how hard it is to tear yourself away from ol' Rocky."

"Did Dougie owe money? Was there something wrong with the deal?"

"Didn't seem like it. Seemed like he was real happy. He said the stuff he got was a quick sale. Except for the toasters. Hey, you want a toaster?"

"How much?"

"Ten bucks."

"Sold."

I MADE A quick stop at Giovichinni's for a few food-type essentials, and then Bob and I hustled home for lunch. I had my toaster under one arm and my grocery bag in another when I got out of the car.

Benny and Ziggy suddenly materialized from nowhere.

"Let me help you with that bag," Ziggy said. "A lady like you shouldn't be carrying her own bag."

"And what's this? A toaster," Benny said, relieving me of the toaster, looking at the box. "This is a good one, too. It's got those extra-wide slots so you can do English muffins."

"I'm fine," I said, but they already had the bag and the toaster and were ahead of me, going through the door to my building.

"We just thought we'd stop by and see how things were going," Benny said, punching the elevator button. "You have any luck with Eddie yet?"

"I saw him at Stiva's, but he got away."

"Yeah, we heard about that. That's a shame."

I opened my door and they handed me my bag and toaster and peeked inside my apartment.

"You don't got Eddie in here, do you?" Ziggy asked.

"No!"

Ziggy shrugged. "It was a long shot."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Benny said.

And they left.

"You don't have to pass an intelligence test to get into the mob," I said to Bob.

I plugged my new toaster in and fed it two slices of bread. I made Bob a peanut butter sandwich with untoasted bread, I took the toasted peanut butter sandwich, and we ate, standing in the kitchen, enjoying the moment.

"I guess it's not so hard to be a housewife," I said to Bob, "as long as you have peanut butter and bread."

I called Norma at the DMV and got the license number for Dougie's 'Vette. Then I called Morelli to see if he'd heard anything about anything.

"The autopsy report on Loretta Ricci hasn't come back yet," Morelli said. "No one's nabbed DeChooch, and Kruper hasn't floated in with the tide. The ball's in your court, Cupcake."

Oh great.

"So I guess I'll see you tonight.," Morelli said. "I'll pick you and Bob up at five-thirty."

"Sure. Anything special?"

Phone silence. "I thought we were invited to your parents' house for dinner."

"Oh rats! Damn. Shit."

"Forgot, huh?"

"I was just there yesterday."

"Does this mean we don't have to go?"

"If only it was that easy."

"Pick you up at five-thirty," Morelli said, and he hung up.

I like my parents. I really do. It's just that they drive me nuts. First of all, there's my perfect sister, Valerie, with her two perfect children. Fortunately, they live in L. A., so their perfection is lessened by distance. And then there's my alarming marital status, which my mother feels compelled to fix. Not to mention my job, my clothes, my eating habits, my church attendance (or lack of).

"Okay, Bob," I said, "time to get back to work. Let's go cruising."

I thought I'd spend the afternoon looking for cars. I needed to find a white Cadillac and the Batmobile. Start with the Burg, I decided, and then enlarge the search area. And I had a mental list of restaurants and diners with earlybird specials that catered to seniors. I'd save the diners for last and see if the white Cadillac turned up.

I dropped a chunk of bread into Rex's cage and told him I'd be home by five. I had Bob's leash in my hand and was about to take off when there was a knock on my door. It was StateLine Florist.

"Happy Birthday," the kid said. He handed me a vase of flowers and left.

This was a little strange since my birthday's in October and it was now April. I set the flowers on the kitchen counter and read the card.

Roses are red. Violets are blue. I've got a hard-on and it's because of you.

It was signed Ronald DeChooch. Bad enough he creeped me out at the social club, now he was sending me flowers.

"YUCK. ICK. GROSS!" I grabbed the flowers and tried to throw them away, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I had a hard enough time throwing dead flowers away, much less flowers that were all fresh and hopeful and pretty. I dropped the card on the floor and jumped up and down on it. Then I tore it into tiny pieces and pitched it into the garbage. The flowers were still on my counter, looking happy and colorful but giving me the creeps. I picked them up and carefully set them out in the hall. I jumped back into my apartment and closed the door. I stood there for a couple beats to see how it felt.

"Okay, I can live with this," I said to Bob.

Bob didn't look like he had much of an opinion.

I snagged a jacket off the hook in the foyer. Bob and I exited my apartment, hustled past the flowers in the hall, then calmly walked down the stairs and out to the car.

After half an hour of riding around the Burg I decided looking for the Cadillac was a dumb idea. I parked on Roebling and dialed Connie on my cell phone.

"What's new?" I asked. Connie was related to half the mob in Jersey.

"Dodie Carmine got a boob job."

This was good stuff but not what I wanted. "Anything else?"

"You're not the only one looking for DeChooch. I got a call from my Uncle Bingo, wondering if we had a line out. After that I talked to my Aunt Flo and she said something went wrong in Richmond when DeChooch went down there for the cigarettes. She didn't know anything more."

"It says on the arrest sheet that DeChooch was alone when he was picked up. Hard to believe he didn't have a partner."

"From what I know he was on his own. He set the deal up, rented a truck, and drove to Richmond."

"Blind old dude drives to Richmond to heist some cigs."

"You got it."

I had Metallica wailing away. Bob was riding shotgun next to me, digging Lars on the drums. The Burg was conducting business behind closed doors. And I suddenly had a disturbing thought.

"DeChooch was arrested between here and New York?"

"Yeah, the rest stop in Edison."

"Do you think he could have dropped some cigarettes off in the Burg?"

There was a moment of silence. "You're thinking of Dougie Kruper," Connie said.

I snapped the phone closed, put the car in gear, and headed for Dougie's house. I didn't bother knocking when I got there. Bob and I barged right in.

"Hey," Mooner said, ambling out of the kitchen, spoon in one hand, opened can in the other, "I'm having lunch here. You want some orange and brown stuff in a can? I got extra. Shop & Bag was having a two-for-one sale on cans without labels."

I was halfway up the stairs. "No thanks. I want to take another look at Dougie's inventory. He get anything other than that one shipment?"

"Yeah, some old guy dropped a couple boxes off a couple days ago. Wasn't much to it, though. Just a couple boxes."

"Do you know what's in those boxes?"

"First-quality ciggies. You want some?"

I pushed my way through the merchandise in the third bedroom and found the cartons of cigarettes. Damn.

"This isn't good," I said to Mooner.

"I know. They'll kill you, dude. Better off with weed."

"Superheroes don't do weed," I said.

"No way!"

"It's true. You can't be a superhero if you do drugs."

"Next thing you'll be telling me they don't drink beer."

Hard call. "I don't actually know about beer."

"Bummer."

I tried to imagine Mooner when he wasn't high, but I couldn't get a picture. Would he suddenly start wearing three-piece suits? Would he become a Republican?

"You need to get rid of this stuff," I said.

"You mean like sell it?"

"No. Get rid of it. If the police come in here you'll be charged with possession of stolen property."

"The police are here all the time, dude. They're some of Dougie's best customers."

"I mean officially. Like if they're investigating Dougie's disappearance."

"Ahhhh," Mooner said.

Bob eyed the can in Mooner's hand. The stuff in the can looked a lot like dog food. Of course when you have a Bob dog everything is dog food. I shoved Bob out the door, and we all went back downstairs.

"I have some phone calls to make," I told Mooner. "I'll let you know if anything turns up."

"Yeah, but what about me?" Mooner asked. "What should I do? I should be like . . . helping."

"Get rid of the stuff in the third bedroom!"

THE FLOWERS WERE still in the hall when Bob and I stepped out of the elevator. Bob sniffed at them and ate a rose. I dragged Bob into the apartment and, first thing, checked my phone messages. Both were from Ronald. Hope you like the flowers, the first said, they set me back a couple bucks. The second suggested we should get together because he thought we had something going between us.

Blech.

I made myself another peanut butter sandwich to get my mind off Ronald. Then I made one for Bob. I took the phone to the dining room table and called all of the Krupers on the piece of yellow paper. I told them I was a friend and I was looking for Dougie. When I was given Dougie's Burg address I faked surprise that he was back in Jersey. No need to alarm Dougie's relatives.

"We scored a big zero with the phone thing," I said to Bob. "Now what?"

I could take Dougie's photo and shop it around, but chances of anyone remembering Dougie were shin to nonexistent. I had a hard time remembering Dougie when I was standing in front of him. I called for a credit check and found Dougie had a MasterCard. That was the extent of Dougie's credit history.

Okay, now I was getting into very bleak territory. I'd eliminated friends, relatives, business accounts. This was pretty much my arsenal. And what's worse, my stomach felt hollow and icky. It was the something-is-wrong feeling. I really didn't want Dougie to be dead, but I wasn't finding any proof that he was alive.

Well, that's stupid, I said to myself. Dougie's a goof. God only knows what he could be doing. He could be on a pilgrimage to Graceland. He could be playing blackjack in Atlantic City. He could be losing his virginity to the late-night cashier of the local 7-Eleven.

And maybe the hollow, icky feeling in my stomach is hunger. Sure, that's it! Good thing I went shopping at Giovichinni's. I dug out the Tastykakes, and gave Bob a coconut layer cake. I ate the package of butterscotch krimpets.

"What do you think?" I asked Bob. "Do you feel better now?"

I felt better. Cake always makes me feel better. In fact I felt so good I decided to go out and look for Eddie DeChooch again. Different neighborhood this time. This time I was going to try Ronald's neighborhood. There was the added incentive of knowing Ronald wasn't at hone.

Bob and I drove across town to Cherry Street. Cherry Street is part of a residential pocket at the northeast corner of Trenton. It's a neighborhood of mostly two-family houses on small building lots and it feels a little like the Burg. It was late afternoon. School was out. Televisions ran in living rooms and kitchens. Crockpots simmered.

I crept past Ronald's house looking for the white Cadillac, looking for Eddie DeChooch. Ronald's house was a single family with red-brick facing. Not as pretentious as Joyce's with her columns but not all that tasteful, either. The garage door was closed. A minivan sat in the driveway. The small front yard was neatly landscaped around a three-foot-tall, blue-and-white statue of the Virgin Mary. She looked composed and at peace in her plaster shrine. More than I could say for myself in my fiberglass Honda.

Bob and I cruised the street, peeking down driveways, straining to see the shadowy figures who moved behind sheer curtains. We drove Cherry Street twice and then began investigating the rest of the neighborhood, dividing it into grids. We saw a lot of big old cars, but we didn't see any big old white Cadillacs. And we didn't see Eddie DeChooch.

"No stone unturned," I said to Bob, trying to justify time wasted.

Bob gave me a look that said whatever . He had his head out the window, looking for cute miniature poodles.

I turned onto Olden Avenue and headed for home. I was about to cross Greenwood when Eddie DeChooch sailed past me in the white Caddy, going in the opposite direction.

I hung a U-turn in the middle of the intersection. It was coming up to rush hour and there were a lot of cars on the road. A dozen people leaned on their horns and flipped me hand signals. I forced myself into the stream of traffic and tried to keep Eddie in my line of vision. I was about ten cars behind him. I saw him wheel off onto State Street, heading for center city. By the time I was able to make the turn I'd lost him.

I GOT HOME ten minutes before Joe arrived.

"What's with the flowers in the hall?" he wanted to know.

"Ronald DeChooch sent them. And I don't want to talk about it."

Morelli watched me for a beat. "Am I going to have to shoot him?"

"He's laboring under the delusion that we're attracted to each other."

"A lot of us labor under that delusion."

Bob galloped over to Morelli and pushed against him to get Morelli's attention. Morelli gave Bob a hug and a full body rub. Lucky dog.

"I saw Eddie DeChooch today," I said.

"And?"

"And I lost him again."

Morelli grinned. "Famous bounty hunter loses old guy . . . twice." Actually it was three times!

Morelli closed the space between us and slid his arms around me. "Do you need consoling?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"How much time do we have?"

I did a sigh. "Not enough." God forbid I should be five minutes late for dinner. The spaghetti would be overcooked. The pot roast would be dry. And it would all be my fault. I would have ruined dinner. Again. And worse, my perfect sister, Valerie, has never ruined dinner. My sister had the sense to move thousands of miles away. That's how perfect she is.

MY MOTHER OPENED the door to Joe and me. Bob bounded in, ears flopping, eyes bright.

"Isn't he cute," Grandma said. "Isn't he something."

"Get the cake up on the refrigerator," my mother said. "And where's the pot roast? Don't let him near the pot roast."

My father was already at the table, keeping his eye on the pot roast, staking out the end slab of beef.

"So what's happening with the wedding?" Grandma asked when we were all at the table, digging into the food. "I was just at the beauty parlor, and the girls wanted to know about the date. And they wanted to know did we have a hall rented? Marilyn Biaggi tried to get the firehouse for her daughter Carolyn's shower, and it was taken clear through the rest of the year."

My mother slipped a look at my ring finger. No ring on the ring finger. Just like yesterday. My mother pressed her lips together and cut her meat into tiny pieces.

"We're thinking about a date," I said, "but we haven't settled on anything yet." Liar, liar, pants on fire. We have never discussed a date. We've avoided a discussion of the date like the plague.

Morelli hung an arm across my shoulders. "Steph suggested we skip the wedding and start living together, but I don't know if that's such a good idea." Morelli was no slouch when it came to lying, either, and sometimes he had a nasty sense of humor.

My mother sucked in some air and stabbed a piece of meat so hard her fork clanked against her plate.

"I hear that's the modern way of doing things," Grandina said. "I don't see nothing wrong with it myself. If I wanted to shack up with a man I'd just go ahead and do it. What's a silly piece of paper mean anyways? In fact I would have shacked up with Eddie DeChooch, but his penis don't work."

"Jesus Christ," my father said.

"Not that I'm only interested in a man for his penis," Grandma added. "It's just that Eddie and me only had a physical attraction. When it came to talking we didn't have too much to say."

My mother was making motions like she was stabbing herself in her chest. "Just kill me," she said. "It would be easier."

"It's the change," Grandma whispered to Joe and me.

"It's not the change," my mother shrieked. "It's you! You make me crazy!" She pointed her finger at my father. "And you make me crazy! And you, too," she said, glaring at me. "You all make me crazy. Just once I'd like to have a dinner without talk about private parts, and aliens, and shooting. And I want grandchildren at this table. I want them here next year, and I want them here legally. You think I'm going to last forever? Pretty soon I'll be dead and then you'll be sorry."

Everyone sat slack-jawed and paralyzed. No one said anything for a full sixty seconds.

"We're getting married in August," I blurted out. "The third week in August. We were keeping it a surprise."

My mother's face brightened. "Really? The third week in August?"

No. It was an absolute flat-out fabrication. I don't know where it came from. Just popped out of my mouth. Truth is, my engagement was kind of casual, being that the proposal was made at a time when it was difficult to distinguish between the desire to spend the rest of our lives together and the desire to get sex on a regular basis. Since Morelli's sex drive makes mine look insignificant he usually is more frequently in favor of marriage than I am. I suppose it would be most accurate to say we were engaged to be engaged. And that's a comfortable place for us to live because it's vague enough to absolve Morelli and me of serious marital discussion. Serious marital discussion always leads to a lot of shouting and door slamming.

"Have you been looking at dresses?" Grandma asked. "August don't give us much tune. You need a gown. And then there's the flowers and the reception. And you need to reserve the church. Have you asked about the church yet?" Grandma jumped out of her chair. "I've got to go call Betty Szajack and Marjorie Swit and tell them the news."

"No, wait!" I said. "It's not official."

"What do you mean . . . not official?" my mother asked.

"Not many people know." Like Joe.

"How about Joe's granny?" Grandma asked. "Does she know? I wouldn't want to cross Joe's granny. She could put the jinx on things."

"Nobody can put the jinx on things," my mother said. "There's no such thing as a jinx." Even as she said it I could see she was fighting back the urge to cross herself.

"And besides," I said, "I don't want a big wedding with a gown and everything. I want a . . . barbecue." I couldn't believe I was saying this. Bad enough I'd announced my wedding date, now I had it all planned out. A barbecue! Jeez! It was like I had no control over my mouth.

I looked at Joe and mouthed help !

Joe draped an arm around my shoulders and grinned. The silent message was, Sweetheart, you're on your own with this one .

"Well, it'll be a relief just to see you happily married," my mother said. "Both my girls . . . happily married."

"That reminds me," Grandma said to my mother. "Valerie called last night when you were out at the store. Something about taking a trip, but I couldn't figure out what she was saying on account of there was all this yelling going on behind her."

"Who was yelling?"

"I think it must have been the television. Valerie and Steven never yell. Those two are just the perfect couple. And the girls are such perfect little ladies."

Gag me with a spoon.

"Did she want me to call her back?" my mother asked.

"She didn't say. Something happened and we got cut off."

Grandma sat up straighter in her seat. She had a clear view through the living room to the street, and something caught her attention.

"There's a taxi stopping in front of our house," Grandma said.

Everyone craned their neck to see the taxi. In the Burg a taxi stopping in front of a house is big entertainment.

"For goodness sakes!" Grandma said. "I could swear that's Valerie getting out of the taxi."

We all jumped up and went to the door. Next thing, my sister and her kids swooped into the house.

Valerie is two years older than me and an inch shorter. We both have curly brown hair, but Valerie's dyed her hair blond and has it cut short, like Meg Ryan. I guess that's what they do with hair in California.

When we were kids Valerie was vanilla pudding, good grades, and clean white sneakers. And I was chocolate cake, the dog ate my homework, and skinned knees.

Valerie was married right out of college and immediately got pregnant. Truth is, I'm jealous. I got married and immediately got divorced. Of course I married a womanizing idiot, and Valerie married a really nice guy. Leave it to Valerie to find Mr. Perfect.

My nieces look a lot like Valerie before Valerie did the Meg Ryan thing. Curly brown hair, big brown eyes, skin a shade more Italian than mine. Not much Hungarian made it to Valerie's gene pool. And even less trickled down to her daughters, Angie and Mary Alice. Angie is nine, going on forty. And Mary Alice thinks she's a horse.

My mother was flushed and teary, hormones revved, hugging the kids, kissing Valerie. "I don't believe it," she kept saying. "I don't believe it! This is such a surprise. I had no idea you were coming to visit."

"I called," Valerie said. "Didn't Grandma tell you?"

"I couldn't hear what you were saying," Grandma said. "There was so much noise, and then we got cut off."

"Well, here I am," Valerie said.

"Just in time for dinner," my mother said. "I have a nice pot roast and there's cake for dessert."

We scrambled to add chairs and plates and extra glasses. We all sat down and passed the pot roast and potatoes and green beans. The dinner immediately elevated to a party, the house feeling filled with holiday.

"How long will you be staying with us?" my mother asked.

"Until I can save up enough money to buy a house," Valerie said.

My father's face went pale.

My mother was elated. "You're moving back to New Jersey?"

Valerie selected a single, lean piece of beef. "It seemed like the best thing to do."

"Did Steve get a transfer?" my mother asked.

"Steve isn't coming." Valerie surgically removed the one smidgen of fat that clung to her meat. "Steve left me."

So much for the holiday.

Morelli was the only one who didn't drop his fork. I glanced over at Morelli and decided he was working hard at not smiling.

"Well, isn't this a pisser," Grandma said.

"Left you," my mother repeated. "What do you mean, he left you? You and Steve are perfect together."

"I thought so, too. I don't know what went wrong. I thought everything was just fine between us and then poof , he's gone."

" Poof?" Grandma said.

"Just like that," Valerie answered. "Poof." She bit into her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

My mother and father and grandmother and I panicked at the trembling lip. We didn't do this sort of emotional display. We did temper and sarcasm. Anything beyond temper and sarcasm was virgin territory. And we certainly didn't know what to make of this from Valerie. Valerie is the ice queen. Not to mention that Valerie's life has always been perfect. This sort of thing just doesn't happen to Valerie.

Valerie's eyes got red and teary. "Could you pass the gravy?" she asked Grandma Mazur.

My mother jumped out of her chair. "I'll get you some hot from the kitchen."

The kitchen door swung closed behind my mother. There was a shriek and the sound of a dish smashing against the wall. I automatically looked for Bob, but Bob was sleeping under the table. The kitchen door swung open and my mother calmly walked out with the gravy dish.

"I'm sure this is just temporary," my mother said. "I'm sure Steve will come to his senses."

"I thought we had a good marriage. I made nice meals. And I kept the house nice. I went to the gym so I'd be attractive. I even got my hair cut like Meg Ryan. I don't understand what went wrong."

Valerie has always been the articulate member of the family. Always in control. Her friends used to call her Saint Valerie because she always looked serene . . . like Ronald DeChooch's statue of the Virgin. So here she was with her world crumbling around her and she wasn't exactly serene, but she wasn't berserk, either. Mostly she seemed sad and confused.

From my point of view it was a little weird since, when my marriage dissolved, people three miles away heard me yelling. And when Dickie and I went into court I was told there was a point when my head spun around like the kid in The Exorcist . Dickie and I didn't have such a great marriage, but we got our money's worth out of the divorce.

I got caught up in the moment and sent Morelli a men-are-bastards look.

Morelli's eyes darkened and the hint of a grin tugged at his mouth. He brushed a fingertip along the back of my neck, and heat rushed through my stomach clear to my doo-dah. "Jesus," I said.

The smile widened.

"At least you should be okay financially," I said. "Under California law don't you get half of everything?"

"Half of nothing is nothing," Valerie said. "The house is mortgaged beyond its value. And there's nothing in the bank account because Steve's been shipping our money out to the Caymans. He is such a good businessman. Everyone always says that. It's one of the things I found most attractive in him." She took a deep breath and cut Angie's meat. And then she cut Mary Alice's meat.

"Child support," I said. "What about child support?"

"In theory, I suppose he should be helping with the girls, but, well, Steve's disappeared. I think he might be in the Caymans with our money."

"That's awful!"

"The truth is, Steve ran away with our baby-sitter."

We all gasped.

"She turned eighteen last month," Valerie said. "I gave her a Beanie Baby for her birthday."

Mary Alice whinnied. "I want some hay. Horses don't eat meat. Horses have to eat hay."

"Isn't that cute," Grandma said. "Mary Alice still thinks she's a horse."

"I'm a man horse," Mary Alice said.

"Don't be a man horse, sweetheart," Valerie said. "Men are scum."

"Some men are okay," Grandma said.

"All men are scum," Valerie said. "Except for Daddy, of course."

No mention of Joe in the exclusion of scumminess.

"Man horses can gallop faster than lady horses," Mary Alice said, and she flicked a spoonful of mashed potatoes at her sister. The potatoes flew past Angie and landed on the floor. Bob lunged out from under the table and ate the potatoes.

Valerie frowned at Mary Alice. "It's not polite to flick potatoes."

"Yeah," Grandma said. "Little ladies don't flick potatoes at their sisters."

"I'm not a little lady," Mary Alice said. "How many tinges do I have to tell you. I'm a horse!" And she lobbed a handful of potatoes at Grandma.

Grandma narrowed her eyes and bounced a green bean off Mary Alice's head.

"Grammy hit me with a bean!" Mary Alice yelled. "She hit me with a bean! Make her stop throwing beans at me."

So much for the perfect little ladies.

Bob immediately ate the bean.

"Stop feeding the dog," my father said.

"I hope you don't mind me coming home like this," `'alerie said. "It's just until I get a job."

"We only have one bathroom," my father said. "I gotta have the bathroom first thing in the morning. Seven o'clock is my time in the bathroom."

"It will be wonderful having you and the girls in the house," my mother said. "And you can help with Stephanie's wedding. Stephanie and Joe have just set a date."

Valerie choked up again with the red, watery eyes. "Congratulations," she said.

"The wedding ceremony of the Tuzi tribe lasts seven days and ends with the ritualistic piercing of the hymen," Angie said. "The bride then goes to live with her husband's family."

"I saw a special on television about aliens," Grandma said. "And they didn't have hymens. They didn't have any parts down there at all."

"Do horses have hymens?" Mary Alice wanted to know.

"Not man horses," Grandma said.

"It's really nice that you're going to get married," Valerie said. And then Valerie burst into tears. Not sniffling, dainty tears, either. Valerie was doing big, loud, wet sobbing, gulping in air and bellowing out misery. The two little ladies started crying, too, doing open-mouthed wailing like only a kid can pull off. And then my mother was crying, sniffling into her napkin. And Bob was howling. Aaarooooh. Aaarooooooh!

"I'm never going to get married again," Valerie said between sobs. "Never, never, never. Marriage is the work of the devil. Men are the Antichrist. I'm going to become a lesbian."

"How do you do that?" Grandma asked. "I always wanted to know. Do you have to wear a fake penis? I saw a TV show once and the women were wearing these things that were made out of black leather and were shaped like a great big--"

"Kill me," my mother shouted. "Just kill me. I want to die."

My sister and Bob went back to the bawling and howling. Mary Alice whinnied at the top of her lungs. And Angie covered her ears so she couldn't hear. "La, la, la, la," Angie sang.

My father cleaned his plate and looked around. Where was his coffee? Where was his cake?

"You're going to owe me big time for this one," Morelli whispered in my ear. "This is a doggy-sex night."

"I'm getting a headache," Grandma said. "I can't take this racket. Somebody do something. Put the television on. Get the liquor out. Do something!"

I heaved myself out of my chair and went into the kitchen and got the cake. As soon as it hit the table the crying stopped. If we pay attention to anything in this family . . . it's dessert.

MORELLI AND BOB and I rode home in silence, no one knowing what to say. Morelli pulled into my lot, cut the engine, and turned to me.

"August?" he asked, his voice higher than usual, not able to keep out the incredulous. "You want to get married in August?"

"It just popped out of my mouth! It was all that dying stuff from my mother."

"Your family makes any family look like the Brady Bunch."

"Are you kidding me? Your grandmother is crazy. She gives people the eye."

"It's an Italian thing."

"It's a crazy thing."

A car swerved into the lot, jerked to a stop, the door opened, and Mooner rolled out onto the pavement. Joe and I hit the pavement at the same time. When we got to Mooner he'd dragged himself up to a sitting position. He was holding his head, and blood trickled from between his fingers.

"Hey dude," Mooner said, "I think I've been shot. I was watching television and I heard a sound on the front porch, so I turned around and looked and there was this scary face looking in the window at me. It was this scary old lady with real scary eyes. It was, like, dark, but I could see her through the black glass. And next thing she had a gun in her hand and she shot me. And she broke Dougie's window and everything. There should be a law against that sort of thing, dude."

The Mooner lived two blocks from St. Frances Hospital, but he drove past the hospital and came to me for help. Why me? I asked. And then I realized I sounded like my mother and gave myself a mental smack in the head.

We loaded Mooner back into his car. Joe drove the Mooner to the hospital, and I followed in Joe's truck. Two hours later all the medical and police formalities were behind us, and Mooner had a big Band-Aid on his forehead. The bullet had grazed him just above his eyebrow and ricocheted off into Dougie's living room wall.

We stood in Dougie's living room and studied the hole in his front window.

"I should have been wearing the Super Suit," Mooner said. "That would have confounded them, dude."

Joe and I looked at each other. Confounded. Yes, indeed.

"Do you think it's safe for him to stay in his house?" I asked Joe.

"Hard to say what's safe for the Mooner," Joe said.

"Amen," Mooner said. "Safety floats on butterfly wings."

"I don't know what the hell that means," Joe said.

"It means safety is elusive, dude."

Joe pulled me aside. "Maybe we should check him into rehab."

"I heard that, dude. That's a bummer idea. Those people in rehab are weird. They're like, real downers. They're all like, druggies."

"Well jeez, we wouldn't want to put you in with a bunch of druggies," Joe said.

Mooner nodded. "Fuckin' A, man."

"I guess he could stay with me for a couple days," I said. Even as I said it . . . I was regretting it. What was the deal with me today? It was as if my mouth wasn't connected to my brain.

"Wow, you'd do that for the Mooner? That is so awesome." Mooner gave me a hug. "You won't be sorry. I'll be an excellent roommate."

Joe didn't look nearly as happy as the Mooner. Joe had plans for the evening. There'd been that remark at the table about me owing him doggy sex. Probably he'd been teasing. But then, maybe not. Hard to tell with men. Maybe it was best to go with the Mooner.

I sent Joe a shrug that said, Hey, what's a girl to do ?

"Okay," Joe said, "let's lock up and get out of here. You take the Mooner and I'll take Bob."

MOONER AND I stood in the hall in front of my apartment. Mooner had a small duffel bag with him that I assumed contained a change of clothes and a full range of drugs.

"Okay," I said, "here's the thing. You're welcome to stay here, but you can't do drugs."

"Dude," Mooner said.

"Are there any drugs in the bag?"

"Hey, what do I look like?"

"You look like a stoner."

"Well, yeah, but that's because you know me."

"Empty the bag on the floor."

Mooner dumped the contents of the bag on the floor. I put Mooner's clothes back in the bag, and I confiscated everything else. Pipes and papers and an assortment of controlled substances. I let us into my apartment, flushed the contents of the plasticene bags, and tossed the hardware in the trash.

"No drugs as long as you live here," I said.

"Hey, that's cool," Mooner said. "The Mooner doesn't actually need drugs. The Mooner is a recreational user."

Uh-huh.

I gave Mooner a pillow and a quilt, and I went to bed. At 4:00 A. M. I woke up to the television blaring in the living room. I shuffled out in my T-shirt and flannel boxers and squinted at Mooner.

"What's going on? Don't you sleep?"

"I usually sleep like a rock. I don't know the deal here. I think it's all like, too much. I'm feeling bummed, man. You know what I'm saying? Edgy."

"Yeah. Sounds to me like you need a joint."

"It's medicinal, dude. In California you can get pot by prescription."

"Forget it." I went back to my bedroom, closed and locked the door, and put the pillow over my head.

THE NEXT TIME I straggled out it was seven, Mooner was asleep on the floor, and Saturday morning cartoons were on. I got the coffee machine started, gave Rex some fresh water and food, and dropped a slice of bread into my brand-new toaster. The smell of coffee brewing got Mooner to his feet.

"Yo," he said, "what's for breakfast?"

"Toast and coffee."

"Your grandmother would have made me pancakes."

"My grandmother isn't here."

"You're just trying to make it hard on me, man. Probably you've been scarfing down doughnuts and all I'm allowed to eat is toast. I'm talking about my rights, here." He wasn't exactly yelling, but he wasn't talking softly, either. "I'm a human being and I've got rights."

"What rights are you talking about? The right to have pancakes? The right to have doughnuts?"

"I don't remember."

Oh boy.

He flopped down on the couch. "This apartment is depressing. It makes me, like, nervous. How can you stand to live here?"

"Do you want coffee, or what?"

"Yes! I want coffee and I want it now." His voice ratcheted up a notch. Definitely yelling now. "You can't expect me to wait forever for coffee!"

I slammed a mug down on the kitchen counter, slopped some coffee in it, and shoved it at Mooner. Then I dialed Morelli.

"I need drugs," I said to Morelli. "You have to get me some drugs."

"You mean like antibiotic?"

"No. Like marijuana. I flushed all Mooner's drugs down the toilet last night, and now I hate him. He's completely PMS."

"I thought the plan was to dry him out."

"It isn't worth it. I like him better when he's high."

"Hang in there," Morelli said. And he hung up.

"This is like bogus coffee, dude," Mooner said. "I need a latte."

"Fine! Let's go get a damn latte." I grabbed my bag and keys and shoved Mooner out the door.

"Hey, I need shoes, man," Mooner said.

I performed an exaggerated eye roll and sighed really loudly while Mooner grumped back into the apartment to get his shoes. Great. I wasn't even strung out and now I was PMSing, too.

SITTING IN A coffeehouse leisurely sipping a latte wasn't on my morning schedule, so I opted for the McDonald's drive-through, where the breakfast menu listed french vanilla lattes and pancakes. They weren't Grandma-caliber pancakes, but they weren't bad, either, and they were easier to come by.

The sky was overcast, threatening rain. No surprise there. Rain is de rigueur for Jersey in April. Steady, gray drizzle that encourages statewide bad hair and couch potato mentality. In school they used to teach us April showers bring May flowers. April showers also bring twelve-car pileups on the Jersey Turnpike and swollen, snot-clogged sinuses. The upside to this is that we frequently have reason to shop for new cars in Jersey, and we're recognized worldwide for our distinctive nasal version of the English language.

"So how's your head?" I asked Mooner on the way home.

"Filled with latte. My head is mellow, dude."

"No, I mean how are the twelve stitches you have in your head?"

Mooner felt along the Band-Aid. "Feels okay." He sat for a moment with his lips slightly parted and his eyes searching the back recesses of his mind, and then a light flicked on. "Oh yeah," he said. "I was shot by the scary old lady."

That's the good part about smoking pot all your life . . . no short-term memory. Something horrible happens to you and ten minutes later you can't remember a thing.

Of course, that's also the bad part about smoking pot, because when disaster strikes, like your friend goes missing, there's the possibility that important messages and events are lost in the haze. And there's the possibility that you could hallucinate a face in the window when the shot was actually fired by a passing car.

In the case of the Mooner, the possibility was a good probability.

I drove past Dougie's house to make sure it hadn't burned down while we slept.

"Everything looks okay," I said.

"Looks lonely," Mooner said.

WHEN WE GOT back to my apartment Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci were in the kitchen. They each had a mug of coffee and a piece of toast.

"Hope you don't mind," Ziggy said. "We were curious about your new toaster."

Benny gestured with his toast. "This is excellent toast. See how evenly brown it is. Not burned on the edges at all. And it's crisp throughout."

"You should get some jelly," Ziggy said. "Some strawberry jelly would be good on this toast."

"You broke into my apartment again! I hate when you do that."

"You weren't home," Ziggy said. "We didn't want it to look like you had men loitering in your hall."

"Yeah, we didn't want to sully your good name," Benny said. "We didn't think you were that kind of girl. Although there's been a lot of rumors throughout the years about you and Joe Morelli. You should be careful of him. He has a very bad reputation."

"Hey, look," Ziggy said. "It's the little fruit. Where's your uniform, kid?"

"Yeah, and what's with the Band-Aid? You fall off your high heels?" Benny asked.

Ziggy and Benny elbowed each other and laughed as if this were some great inside joke.

An idea skittered through my head. "You guys wouldn't happen to know anything about the need for the Band-Aid, would you?"

"Not me," Benny said. "Ziggy, you know anything about that?"

"I don't know nothing about it," Ziggy said.

I leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed my arms. "So what are you doing here?"

"We thought we should check in," Ziggy said. "It's been a while since we talked, and we wanted to see if anything new turned up."

"It's been less than twenty-four hours," I said.

"Yeah, that's what we said. It's been a while."

"Nothing's turned up."

"Gee, that's too bad," Benny said. "You come so recommended. We had high hopes you could help us."

Ziggy finished his coffee, rinsed the mug in the sink, and set it on the dish drain. "We should be going now."

"Pig," Mooner said.

Ziggy and Benny paused at the door.

"That's a rude thing to say," Ziggy said. "We're gonna overlook it because you're Miss Plum's friend." He looked to Benny for backup.

"That's right," Benny said. "We're gonna overlook it, but you should learn some manners. It's not right to talk to old gentlemen like that."

"You called me a fruit!" Mooner yelled.