“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.