Hard Eight (9 page)

I ate a bag of raw dough a week. I considered it to be one of the four major food groups. “I always eat raw cookie dough,” I said.

“Me, too,” Kloughn said. “I eat raw cookie dough all the time. I don’t believe that stuff about the cancer.” He looked into the bag and tentatively took out a frozen lump of dough. “So what do you do here? Do you, like, nibble on it? Or do you put it all in your mouth at once?”

“You’ve never had raw cookie dough, have you?”

“No.” He took a bite and chewed. “I like it,” he said. “Very good.”

I glanced down at my watch. “You’re going to have to go now. I have some unfinished business to take care of.”

“Is it bounty hunter business? You can tell me. I won’t
tell anybody, I swear. What are you doing? I bet you’re going after someone. You were waiting for nighttime, right?”

“Right.”

“So who are you going after? Is it anyone I know? Is it, like, a high-profile case? A killer?”

“It’s no one you know. It’s domestic abuse. A repeat offender. I’m waiting until he passes out in a drunken stupor, and then I’m going to capture him when he’s unconscious.”

“I could help you—”

“No!”

“You didn’t let me finish. I could help you drag him to the car. How are you going to get him to the car? You’re going to need help, right?”

“Lula will help me.”

“Lula has class tonight. Remember she said she had to go to school tonight. Do you have anyone else who helps you? I bet you don’t have anyone else, right?”

I was getting an eye twitch. Tiny, annoying muscle contractions below my right lower lid. “Okay,” I said, “you can come with me, but you can’t talk.
No talking
.”

“Sure. No talking. My lips are sealed. Look at me, I’m locking my lips and throwing the key away.”

I parked half a block from Andy Bender’s apartment, positioning my car between pools of light thrown by overhead halogens. Traffic was minimal. Vendors had closed up shop for the day, switching to nighttime pursuits of hijacking and shoplifting. Residents were locked behind closed doors, beer can in hand, watching reality television.
A nice break from their own reality, which wasn’t all that terrific.

Kloughn gave me a look that said
now what?

“Now we wait,” I told him. “We make sure nothing unusual is going on.”

Kloughn nodded and made the zippered mouth sign again. If he made the zippered mouth sign one more time I was going to smack him in the head.

After a half hour of sitting and waiting I was convinced that I didn’t want to sit and wait anymore. “Let’s take a closer look,” I said to Kloughn. “Follow me.”

“Shouldn’t I have a gun or something? What if there’s a shoot-out? Do you have a gun? Where’s your gun?”

“I left my gun home. We don’t need guns. Andy Bender has never been known to carry a gun.” Best not to mention he prefers chain saws and kitchen knives.

I approached Bender’s unit as if I owned it. Bounty hunter rule number seventeen—don’t look sneaky. Lights were on inside. The windows were curtained, but the curtains were a skimpy fit, and it was possible to look around the fabric. I put my nose to the window and stared in at the Benders. Andy was in a big, overstuffed recliner, feet up, open bag of chips on his chest, dead to the world. His wife sat on the tattered couch, eyes glued to the television.

“I’m pretty sure we’re doing something illegal,” Kloughn whispered.

“There’s all kinds of illegal. This is one of those things that’s only a little illegal.”

“I guess it’s okay if you’re a bounty hunter. There are special rules for bounty hunters, right?”

Right. And there really
is
an Easter bunny.

I wanted to get into the apartment, but I didn’t want
to wake Bender. I walked around the building and carefully tried Bender’s back door. Locked. I returned to the front and found that door locked, too. I gave a couple light raps on the door with my knuckles, hoping to get the wife’s attention without waking Bender.

Kloughn was looking in the window. He shook his head. No one was getting up to answer the door. I rapped louder. Nothing. Bender’s wife was concentrating on the television show. Damn. I rang the bell.

Kloughn jumped away from the window and rushed to my side. “She’s coming!”

The door opened, and Bender’s wife stood flat-footed in front of us. She was a large woman with pale skin, and a dagger tattooed on her arm. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dull. Her face expressionless. She wasn’t as wasted as her husband, but she was well on the way. She took a step back when I introduced myself.

“Andy don’t like to be disturbed,” she said. “He gets in a real bad mood when he’s disturbed.”

“Maybe you should go to a friend’s house, so you’re not here if Andy gets disturbed.” Last thing I wanted was for Andy to beat on his wife because she let us
disturb
him.

She looked at her husband, still asleep in his chair. Then she looked at us. And then she took off, out the door, disappearing into the darkness.

Kloughn and I tiptoed up to Bender and took a closer look.

“Maybe he’s dead,” Kloughn said.

“I don’t think so.”

“He smells dead.”

“He always smells like that.” I was prepared this time. I had my stun gun with me. I leaned forward, pressed my
stun gun to Bender, and hit the juice button. Nothing happened. I examined the stun gun. It looked okay. I put it to Bender again. Nothing. Goddamn electronic piece of shit. Okay, go to backup plan. I grabbed the cuffs I had tucked into my back pocket and quietly clicked a bracelet on Bender’s right wrist.

Bender’s eyes flew open. “What the hell?”

I pulled his cuffed hand across his body and secured the second bracelet onto his left wrist.

“Goddamn,” he yelled. “I hate being disturbed when I’m watching television! What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“The same thing I was doing in your house yesterday. Bond enforcement,” I said. “You’re in violation of your bond. You need to reschedule.”

He glared at Kloughn. “What’s with the dough boy?”

Kloughn handed Bender his business card. “Albert Kloughn, attorney at law.”

“I hate clowns. They creep me out.”

Kloughn pointed to his name on the card. “K-l-o-u-g-h-n,” he said. “If you ever need a lawyer, I’m real good.”

“Oh yeah?” Bender said. “Well, I hate lawyers even more than clowns.” He jumped forward and knocked Kloughn on his ass with a head butt to Kloughn’s face. “And I hate
you
,” he said, lunging at me, head down.

I sidestepped and tried the stun gun on him again. No effect. I ran after him and made another stab. He never broke stride. He was across the room, through the open front door. I threw the stun gun at him. It bounced off his head, he yelled
ouch
, and he was gone, into the darkness.

I was torn between following after him and helping
Kloughn. Kloughn was on his back, blood trickling from his nose, mouth open, eyes glazed. Hard to tell if he was just stunned or in a genuine coma.

“Are you okay?” I yelled at Kloughn.

Kloughn didn’t say anything. His arms were in motion, but he wasn’t making any progress at getting up. I went to his side and dropped to one knee.

“Are you okay?” I asked again.

His eyes focused, and he reached for me, grabbing a handful of shirt. “Did I hit him?”

“Yeah. You hit him with your face.”

“I knew it. I knew I’d be good under pressure. I’m pretty tough, right?”

“Right.” God help me, I was starting to like him.

I dragged him up and got him some paper towels from the kitchen. Bender was long gone, along with my cuffs. Again.

I retrieved the useless stun gun, packed Kloughn into the CR-V, and took off. It was a cloudy, moonless night. The projects were dark. Lights burned behind drawn shades but did nothing to illuminate lawns. I drove along the streets surrounding the projects, searching the shadows for movement, staring into the occasional uncurtained window.

Kloughn had his head tipped back with the towels stuffed up his nose. “Does this happen a lot?” he asked. “I thought it would be different. I mean, this was pretty fun, but he got away. And he didn’t smell good. I didn’t expect him to smell that bad.”

I looked over at Kloughn. He seemed different. Crooked, somehow. “Has your nose always curved to the left?” I asked him.

He gingerly touched his nose. “It feels funny. You don’t think it’s broken, do you? I’ve never had anything broken before.”

It was just about the most broken nose I’d ever seen. “It doesn’t look broken to me,” I said. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor look at it. Maybe we should make a quick stop-off at the emergency room.”

I opened my eyes and looked at the clock: 8:30. Not exactly an early start to the day. I could hear rain spattering on my fire escape and on my windowpane. My feeling on rain is that it should only occur at night when people are sleeping. At night, rain is cozy. During the day, rain is a pain in the gumpy. Another screwup on the part of creation. Like waste management. When you’re planning a universe you have to think ahead.

I rolled out of bed and sleepwalked to the kitchen. Rex was done running for the night, sound asleep in his soup can. I got coffee going and shuffled to the bathroom. An hour later I was in my car, ready to start the day, not sure what to do first. Probably I should pay a condolence visit on Kloughn. I’d gotten his nose broken. By the time I’d dropped him at his car, his eyes were black and his nose was being held straight by a Band-Aid. Problem is, if I go see him now, I run the risk of having him latch onto me for the day. And I really didn’t want Kloughn tagging along. I was fairly inept when left to my own devices. With Kloughn tagging along, I was a disaster waiting to happen.

I was sitting in my lot, staring out the rain-smeared window, and I realized there was a plastic sandwich bag attached to my windshield wiper. I opened the door and snatched the bag off the wiper. There was a note-size piece of white paper folded four times inside the bag. The message on the paper was written in black marker.

Did you like the snakes?

Wonderful. Just the way I wanted to start my day. I returned the note to the bag and put the bag in the glove compartment. On the seat beside me were the two FTA folders Connie had given me. Andrew Bender, still at large. And Laura Minello. I’d go out and capture one of them this morning, but I didn’t have any handcuffs. And I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than get another pair of cuffs from the office. That left Annie Soder.

I put the CR-V in gear and drove to the Burg. I parked in front of my parents’ house, but I knocked on Mabel’s door.

“Who did Evelyn hang out with when she was a kid?” I asked Mabel. “Did she have a best friend?”

“Dotty Palowski. They went all through grade school together. High school, too. Then Evelyn got married and Dotty moved away.”

“Did they stay friends?”

“I think they lost touch. Evelyn kept more and more to herself after she married.”

“Do you know where Dotty is now?”

“I don’t know where Dotty’s living but her folks are still here in the Burg.”

I knew the family. Dotty’s parents lived on Roebling. There were some aunts and uncles and cousins in the
Burg, too. “I need one more thing,” I said to Mabel. “I need a list of Evelyn’s relatives. All of them.”

I had the list in my hand when I left. It wasn’t a long list. An aunt and an uncle in the Burg. Three cousins, all in the Trenton area. A cousin in Delaware.

I jumped the railing that divided the porches and went next door to see Grandma Mazur.

“I went to the Shleckner viewing,” Grandma said. “I’m telling you, that Stiva is a genius. When it comes to morticians, you can’t beat Stiva. You know how old Shleckner had all those big scabby things on his face? Well, Stiva covered them all somehow. And you couldn’t even tell Shleckner had a glass eye. They both look just the same. It was a miracle.”

“How do you know about the glass eye? Didn’t they have his eyes closed?”

“Yeah, but they might have come open for a second while I was standing there. It might have happened when I accidentally dropped my reading glasses into the casket.”

“Hmmm,” I said to Grandma.

“Well, you can’t blame a person for wondering about those things. Wasn’t my fault, either. If they’d left his eyes open I wouldn’t have had to wonder.”

“Did anyone see you prying Shleckner’s eyes open?”

“No. I was real sneaky.”

“Did you hear anything useful about Evelyn or Annie?”

“No, but I got an earful about Steven Soder. He likes to drink. And he likes to gamble. The rumor is that he’s lost a lot of money, and that he lost the bar. The story goes that he lost the bar in a card game a while back, and now he’s got
partners
.”

“I’ve heard some of those same rumors. Anyone give names to the partners?”

“Eddie Abruzzi is what I heard.”

Oh boy. Why am I not surprised at this?

I was in my car, ready to roll, when my cell phone rang. It was Kloughn.

“Boy, you should see me,” he said. “I’ve got two black eyes. And my nose is swollen. At least it’s straight now. I was real careful how I slept on it.”

“I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.”

“Hey, no biggie. I guess you have to expect stuff like this when you’re a crime fighter. So what are we doing today? Are we going after Bender again? I have some ideas. Maybe I could meet you for lunch.”

“See, here’s the thing . . . I usually work alone.”

“Sure, but once in a while you work with a partner, right? And I could be that partner sometimes, right? I got myself all prepared. I got a black hat with BOND ENFORCEMENT printed on it this morning. And I got pepper spray and handcuffs . . .”

Handcuffs? Be still, my fast-beating heart. “Are these regulation handcuffs with a key and everything?”

“Yeah. I got them at that gun store on Rider Street. I would have gotten a gun, too, but I didn’t have enough money.”

“I’ll pick you up at twelve.”

“Oh boy, this is going to be great. I’ll be all ready. I’ll be at my office. Maybe we can get fried chicken this time. Unless you don’t want fried chicken. If you don’t want fried chicken, we could get a burrito, or we could get a burger, or we could—”