“Where does Loretta Ricci fit into this?”
Another palms-up from Connie. “Don't know.”
“Mooner and Dougie?”
“Don't know that, either,” Connie said.
“So DeChooch is looking for Louie D's heart.”
Connie was still smiling. Connie really liked this. “Apparently.”
I thought about it for a minute. “Somewhere along the way DeChooch decided Dougie had the heart. Then he decided Mooner had the heart.”
“Yeah,” Lula said, “and now he thinks you have the heart.”
A bunch of black dots danced across my field of vision and bells started clanging in my head.
“Uh-oh,” Lula said, “you don't look so good.”
I put my head between my legs and tried to take a deep breath. “He thinks I have Louie D's heart!” I said. "He thinks I'm walking around with a heart. My God, what kind of a person walks around with a dead guy's heart?
“I thought we were talking about drugs. I thought I was trading some coke for Mooner. How am I ever going to pull off a swap for a heart?”
“Don't seem like anything you have to worry about,” Lula said, “since DeChooch doesn't have Mooner or Dougie.”
I told Connie and Lula about the limo and Mooner.
“Isn't that perfect,” Lula said. “Some old lady kidnapped the Mooner. Maybe it was Louie D's wife trying to get Louie's heart back.”
“You better hope it wasn't Louie D's wife,” Connie said. “She makes Morelli's grandmother look sane. There's a story told about her that she thought a neighbor disrespected her, and the next day the woman was found dead with her tongue cut out.”
“She made Louie kill th
e woman?”
“No,” Connie said. “Louie wasn't home at the time. He was away on business.”
“Omigod.”
“Anyway, it's probably not Sophia because I hear she's been locked in her house ever since Louie died, lighting candles and praying and cursing DeChooch.” Connie thought about it for a minute. “You know who else could have kidnapped Mooner? Louie D's sister, Estelle Colucci.”
It wouldn't be difficult to kidnap Mooner, either. All you have to do is offer Mooner a joint and he'll happily follow you to the ends of the earth.
“Maybe we should go talk to Estelle Colucci,” I said to Lula.
“I'm ready to roll,” Lula said.
BENNY AND ESTELLE Colucci live in a nicely maintained duplex in the Burg. For that matter, just about every house in the Burg is nicely maintained. It's mandatory for survival. Decorating taste might vary, but windows damn well better be clean.
I parked the bike in front of the Colucci house, walked to the door, and knocked. No answer. Lula pushed into the bushes under the front windows and looked inside.
“Don't see anyone,” Lula said. “No lights on. Television's not going.”
We tried the club next. No Benny. I drove two blocks to Hamilton and recognized Benny's car at the corner of Hamilton and Grand, parked in front of the Tip Top Sandwich Shop. Lula and I squinted in through the plate-glass window. Benny and Ziggy were inside having a late breakfast.
The Tip Top is a narrow hole-in-the-wall café that serves homemade food for reasonable prices. The green-and-black linoleum on the floor is cracked, the overhead light fixtures are dim from grime, the Naugahyde seats in the booths are patched with duct tape. Mickey Spritz was an army cook during the Korean conflict. He opened the Tip Top when he got out of the army thirty years ago and he hasn't changed a thing since. Not the flooring, the booth seats, the menu. Mickey and his wife do all the cooking. And a retarded man, Pookie Potter, buses the tables and washes the dishes.
Benny and Ziggy were concentrating on eating their eggs when Lula and I approached.