At four I left the pickup and positioned myself just inside the building entrance where I could flash Mo's picture and question the tenants. By seven I was out of tenants and out of luck. Not a single person had recognized Mo's picture.
I bagged the stakeout at eight. I was cold. I was starved. And I was twitchy with pent-up energy. I drove back to the burg, to Pino's Pizzeria.
Two blocks from Pino's I stopped for a stop sign, and sensed seismic activity under the hood. I sat through a few shakes and some rough idle. KAPOW. The truck backfired and stalled. “Son of a bitch!” I yelled out. “Goddamn Japanese piece-of-shit truck. Goddamn lying, cheating, goat-piss mechanic!”
I rested my forehead on the steering wheel for a second. I sounded like my father. This was probably how it felt to go down on the Titanic.
I babied the truck into Pino's lot, swiveled from behind the wheel and bellied up to the bar. I ordered a draft beer, a deluxe fried chicken sandwich, a small pepperoni pizza and fries. Failure makes me hungry.
Pino's was a cop hangout. Partly because half of the force lived in the burg, and Pino's was in a convenient location. Partly because Pino had two sons who were cops, and cops supported cops. And partly because the pizza was top of the line. Lots of cheese and grease, a little tomato sauce and great crust. Nobody cared that the roaches in the kitchen were as big as barn c
ats.
Morelli was at the other end of the bar. He watched me order, but held his distance. When my food arrived he moved to the stool next to me.
“Let me guess,” he said, surveying the plates. “You've had a bad day.”
I made a so-so gesture with my hand.
He was six hours over on a five o'clock shadow. Even in the darkened barroom I could see the tiny network of lines that appeared around his eyes when he was tired. He slouched with one elbow on the bar and picked at my fries.
“If you had a decent sex life you wouldn't need to gratify yourself like this,” he said, his mouth curved into a grin, his teeth white and even against the dark beard.
“My sex life is okay.”
“Yeah,” Morelli said. “But sometimes it's fun to have a partner.”
I moved my fries out of his reach. “Been to any good autopsies lately?”
“Postponed to tomorrow morning. The doc is hoping Cameron Brown will be thawed out by then.”
“Know anything on cause of death? Like what kind of bullet did the job?”
“Won't know until tomorrow. Why the interest?”
I had my mouth full of chicken sandwich. I chewed and swallowed and washed it back with beer. “Just curious.” Curious because this was the second dead drug dealer I'd stumbled over since starting the Mo search. It was a stretch to think there might be a connection. Still, my radar was emitting a low-level hum.
Morelli looked pained. “You and your girlfriends didn't do him the first time, did you?”
“No!”
He stood and tugged at my hair. “Be careful driving home.”
He snagged a brown leather bomber jacket off a hook on the wall at the far end of the bar and left.
I stared after him, dumbstruck. He'd tugged my hair. First a chuck on the chin, and now a tug at my hair. This was a definite put-off. It was one thing for me to snub Morelli. It was an entirely different matter for him to snub me. This was not how the game was played.
I rolled out of Pino's at nine-thirty, feeling sulky and suspicious. I stood staring at my truck for a moment before getting in. More misery. My truck wasn't cute anymore. It looked like it needed orthodontia. I'd gotten new points and plugs, but I didn't have money for the body work. I slipped behind the wheel and shoved the key in the ignition. The truck started and . . . stalled.
“SHIT!”
My parents' house was only three blocks away. I raced the engine all the way and was relieved to finally be able to let the rotten truck die at the curb.
The Buick sat gloating in the driveway. Nothing was ever wrong with the Buick.
The phone woke me out of a dead sleep. The digital display on my bedside clock read 2 A.M. The voice at the other end was girlish.
“Hi ya,” the voice said. “It's Gillian!”