“He was arrested on a minor charge and then missed a court appearance. The Plum agency arranged bail, so I need to find Mo and help him set a new date.”
“Mo would never do anything wrong,” Mrs. Steeger said.
God's word.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked.
She drew herself up an extra half inch. “No. And I think it's a shame you can't find anything better to do than to go out harassing good men like Moses Bedemier.”
“I'm not harassing him. I'm simply going to help him arrange a new court date.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Mrs. Steeger said. “You were a little fibber in the third grade, and you're a little fibber now. Always trying to sneak gum into my classroom.”
“Well, thanks anyway,” I said to Mrs. Steeger. “Nice seeing you after all these years.”
SLAM. Mrs. Steeger closed her door.
“Should of lied,” Lula said. “You never learn anything telling the truth like that. Should of told her you worked for the lottery commission, and Mo won a shitload of money.”
“Maybe next time.”
“Maybe next time we just open the door and start out with some bitch slapping.”
I gave Lula a horrified glare.
“Just a suggestion,” Lula said.
I stepped over to the next porch and was about to knock when Mrs. Steeger stuck her head out her door again.
“Don't bother,” she said. “The Whiteheads are in Florida. Harry always takes his vacation this time of the year. Won't be back for two weeks.”
SLAM. She vanished behind the closed door.
“No problem,” I said to Lula. “We'll try door number three.”
Dorothy Rostowski opened door number three.
“Dorothy?”
“Stephanie?”
“I didn't realize you were living here.”
“Almost a year now.”
She had a baby on her hip and another in front of the television. She smelled like she'd been knocking back mashed bananas and Chablis.
“I'm looking for Uncle Mo,” I said. “I expected he'd be working in the store.”
Dorothy shifted the baby. “He hasn't been here for two days. You aren't looking for him for Vinnie, are you?”
“Actually . . .”
“Mo would never do anything wrong.”
“Well, sure, but . . .”
“We're just trying to find him on account of he won the lottery,” Lula said. “We're gonna lay a whole load of money on his ass.”
Dorothy made a disgusted sound and slammed the door closed.
We tried the house next to Dorothy and received the same information. Mo hadn't been at the store for two days. Nothing else was forthcoming, with the exception of some unsolicited advice that I might consider seeking new employment.
Lula and I piled into the Buick and took another look at the bond agreement. Mo listed his address as 605 Ferris. That meant he lived over his store.
Lula and I craned our necks to see into the four second-story windows.
“I think Mo took a hike,” Lula said.
Only one way to find out. We got out of the car and walked to the back of the brick building where outdoor stairs led to a second-story porch. We climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. Nothing. We tried the doorknob. Locked. We looked in the windows. Everything was tidy. No sign of Mo. No lights left burning.
“Mo might be dead in there,” Lula said. “Or maybe he's sick. Could of had a stroke and be laying on the bathroom floor.”
“We are not going to break in.”
“Would be a humanitarian effort,” Lula said.
“And against the law.”
“Sometimes these humanitarian efforts go into the gray zone.”
I heard footsteps and looked down to see a cop standing at the bottom of the stairs. Steve Olmney. I'd gone to school with him.
“What's going on?” he asked. “We got a complaint from old lady Steeger that someone suspicious was snooping around Uncle Mo's.”
“That would be me,” I said.
“Where's Mo?”
“We think he might be dead,” Lula said. “We think someone better go look to see if he's had a stroke on the bathroom floor.”
Olmney came up the stairs and rapped on the door. “Mo?” he yelled. He put his nose to the door. “Doesn't smell dead.” He looked in the windows. “Don't see any bodies.”
“He's Failure to Appear,” I said. “Got picked up on carrying concealed and didn't show in court.”
“Mo would never do anything wrong,” Olmney said.
I stifled a scream. “Not showing up for a court appearance is wrong.”
“Probably he forgot. Maybe he's on vacation. Or maybe his sister in Staten Island got sick. You should check with his sister.”
Actually, that sounded like a decent idea.
Lula and I went back to the Buick, and I read through the bond agreement one more time. Sure enough, Mo had listed his sister and given her address.
“We should split up,” I said to Lula. “I'll go see the sister, and you can stake out the store.”
“I'll stake it out good,” Lula said. “I won't miss a thing.”
I turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb. “What will you do if you see Mo?”
“I'll snatch the little fucker up by his gonads and squash him into the trunk of my car.”
“No! You're not authorized to apprehend. If you see Mo, you should get in touch with me right away. Either call me on my cellular phone or else call my pager.” I gave her a card with my numbers listed.
“Remember, no squashing anyone into the trunk of your car!”
“Sure,” Lula said. “I know that.”
I dropped Lula at the office and headed for Route 1. It was the middle of the day and traffic was light. I got to Perth Amboy and lined up for the bridge to Staten Island. The roadside leading to the toll booth was littered with mufflers, eaten away from winter salt and rattled loose by the inescapable craters, sinkholes and multilevel strips of macadam patch that composed the bridge.
I slipped into bridge traffic and sat nose to tail with Petrucci's Vegetable Wholesalers and a truck labeled DANGEROUS EXPLOSIVES. I checked a map while I waited. Mo's sister lived toward the middle of the island in a residential area I knew to be similar to the burg.
I paid my toll and inched forward, sucking in a stew of diesel exhaust and other secret ingredients that caught me in the back of the throat. I adjusted to the pollution in less than a quarter of a mile and felt just fine when I reached Mo's sister's house on Crane Street. Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine.
Mo's sister lived in a pale green duplex with jalousied windows and white-and-yellow aluminum awnings. I parked at the curb and made my way up two flights of cement stairs to the cement stoop. I rang the bell and found myself facing a woman who looked a lot like my relatives on the Mazur side of my family. Good sturdy Hungarian stock. Black hair, black eyebrows and no-nonsense blue eyes. She looked to be in her fifties and didn't seem thrilled to find me on her doorstep.
I gave her my card, introduced myself and told her I was looking for Mo.
Her initial reaction was surprise, then distrust.
“Fugitive apprehension agent,” she said. “What's that supposed to mean? What's that got to do with Mo?”
I gave the condensed version by way of explanation. “I'm sure it was just an oversight that Mo didn't appear for his court session, but I need to remind him to reschedule,” I told her.
“I don't know anything about this,” she said. “I don't see Mo a whole lot. He's always at the store. Why don't you just go to the store.”
r /> “He hasn't been at the store for the last two days.”
“That doesn't sound like Mo.”
None of this sounded like Mo.
I asked if there were other relatives. She said no, not close ones. I asked about a second apartment or vacation house. She said none that she knew of.
I thanked her for her time and returned to my Buick. I looked out at the neighborhood. Not much happening. Mo's sister was locked up in her house. Probably wondering what the devil was going on with Mo. Of course there was the possibility that she was protecting her brother, but my gut instinct said otherwise. She'd seemed genuinely surprised when I'd told her Mo wasn't behind the counter handing out Gummi Bears.
I could watch the house, but that sort of surveillance was tedious and time-consuming, and in this case, I wasn't sure it would be worth the effort.
Besides, I was getting a weird feeling about Mo. Responsible people like Mo didn't forget court dates. Responsible people like Mo worried about that kind of stuff. They lost sleep over it. They consulted attorneys. And responsible people like Mo didn't just up and leave their businesses without so much as a sign in the window.
Maybe Lula was right. Maybe Mo was dead in bed or lying unconscious on his bathroom floor.
I got out of the car and retraced my steps back to the sister's front door.
The door was opened before I had a chance to knock. Two little frown lines had etched themselves into Mo's sister's forehead. “Was there something else?” she asked.
“I'm concerned about Mo. I don't mean to alarm you, but I suppose there's the possibility that he might be sick at home and unable to get to the door.”
“I've been standing here thinking the same thing,” she said.
“Do you have a key to his apartment?”
“No, and as far as I know no one else does, either. Mo likes his privacy.”
“Do you know any of his friends? Did he have a girlfriend?”
“Sorry. We aren't real close like that. Mo is a good brother, but like I said, he's private.”
An hour later I was back in the burg. I motored down Ferris and parked behind Lula.
“How's it going?” I asked.
Lula was slouched at the wheel of her red Firebird. “Isn't going at all. Most boring bullshit job I ever had. A person could do this in a coma.”
“Anyone stop around to buy candy?”
“A momma and her baby. That's all.”
“Did they walk around back?”
“Nope. They just looked in the front door and left.”
I glanced at my watch. School would be out soon. There'd be a lot of kids coming by then, but I wasn't interested in kids. I was interested in an adult who might show up to water Mo's plants or retrieve his mail.
“Hang tight here,” I said. “I'm going to speak to more neighbors.”
“Hang tight, hunh. I'm gonna like freeze to death sitting in this car. This isn't Florida, you know.”
“I thought you wanted to be a bounty hunter. This is what bounty hunters do.”
“Wouldn't mind doing this if I thought at the end of it all I'd get to shoot someone, but there isn't even any guarantee of that. All I hear's don't do this and don't do that. Can't even stuff the sonovabitch in my trunk if I find him.”
I crossed the street and spoke to three more neighbors. Their replies were standard. They had no idea where Mo could be, and they thought I had a lot of nerve implying he was a felon.
A teenager answered in the fourth house. We were dressed almost identically. Doc Martens, jeans, flannel shirt over Tshirt, too much eye makeup, lots of brown curly hair. She was fifteen pounds slimmer and fifteen years younger. I didn't envy her youth, but I did have second thoughts about the dozen doughnuts I'd picked up on my way through the burg, which even as we spoke were calling to me from the backseat of my car.
I gave her my card, and her eyes widened.
“A bounty hunter!” she said. “Cool!”
“Do you know Uncle Mo?”
“Sure I know Uncle Mo. Everybody knows Uncle Mo.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “He do something wrong? Are you after Uncle Mo?”
“He missed a court date on a minor charge. I want to remind him to reschedule.”
“That is like amazing. When you find him are you going to rough him up and lock him in the trunk of your car?”
“No!” What was with this trunk business? “I just want to talk to him.”
“I bet he did something really terrible. I bet you want him for cannibalism.”
Cannibalism? The man sold candy. What would he want with fingers and toes? This kid had great taste in shoes, but her mind was a little scary. “Do you know anything about Mo that might be helpful? He have any close friends in the neighborhood? Have you seen him recently?”
“I saw him a couple days ago in the store.”
“Maybe you could keep a lookout for me. My numbers are on the card. You see Mo or anyone suspicious you give me a call.”
“Like I'd almost be a bounty hunter?”
“Almost.”
I jogged back to Lula. “Okay,” I told her, “you can return to the office. I found a replacement. The kid across the street is going to spy for us.”
“Good thing too. This was getting old.”
I followed Lula to the office and called my friend Norma, who worked at the DMV. “Got a name,” I told her. “Need a plate and a car.”
“What's the name?”
“Moses Bedemier.”
“Uncle Mo?”
“That's the one.”
“I'm not giving you information on Uncle Mo!”
I gave her the bull about rescheduling, which was sounding very tired.
Computer keys clicked in the background. “If I find out you harmed a single hair on Uncle Mo's head I'll never give you another plate.”
“I'm not going to hurt him,” I said. “I never hurt anyone.”
“What about that guy you killed last August? And what about when you blew up the funeral home?”
“Are you going to give me this information, or what?”
“He owns a ninety-two Honda Civic. Blue. You got a pencil? I'll read off the plate.”
“Oh boy,” Lula said, peering over my shoulder. “Looks like we got more clues. We gonna look for this car?”
“Yes.” And then we'd look for a key to the apartment. Everyone worries about getting locked out. If you don't have someone in the neighborhood you can trust with your key, you hide it nearby. You carefully place it over the doorjamb, put it in a fake rock next to your foundation or slide it under the doormat.
I wasn't about to do forced entry, but if I found a key . . .
“I haven't had any lunch,” Lula said. “I can't keep working if I don't have lunch.”
I pulled the bag of doughnuts out of my big black leather shoulder bag, and we dug in.
“Things to do. Places to go,” I said minutes later, shaking powdered sugar off my shirt, wishing I'd stopped at two doughnuts.
“I'm going with you,” Lula said. “Only this time I drive. I got a big motherfucker stereo in my car.”
“Just don't drive too fast. I don't t want to get picked up by Officer Gaspick.”
“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “You carrying concealed like Uncle Mo?”
Not at the moment. My .38 Smith & Wesson was at home, sitting on my kitchen counter, in the brown bear cookie jar. Guns scared the hell out of me.
We piled into Lula's red Firebird and headed for Ferris with rap rattling windows in our wake.
“Maybe you should turn it down,” I yelled to Lula after a couple blocks. “I'm getting arrhythmia.”
Lula punched the air. “Un ha, ha, ha, haa.”
“Lula!”
She cut her eyes to me. “You say something?”
I edged the volume back. “You're going to go deaf.”
“Hunk,” Lula said.
We cruised down Ferris and looked for blue Civics, but there were none parked near t
he store. We scoped out the cross streets and parallel streets on either side. No blue Civics. We parked at the corner of Ferris and King and walked the alley behind the store, looking into all the garages. No blue Civics. The single-car garage that sat at the edge of the small yard backing off from the candy store was empty.