Joe's father could have been bought for five bucks and a sixpack, but his father was dead.
I'd opted for a professional image this morning, dressing in a tailored beige linen suit, complete with pantyhose and heels and tasteful pearl earrings. I parked at the curb, climbed the porch stairs, and knocked on the Morelli front door.
“Well,” Momma Morelli said, standing behind the screen, staring out at me with a degree of censure usually reserved for atheists and slackers. “Look who's here on my porch, bright and early . . . little miss bounty hunter.” She boosted her chin up an additional inch. “I heard all about you and your new job, and I have nothing to say to you.”
“I need to find Joe, Mrs. Morelli. He missed a court appearance.”
“I'm sure he had good reason.”
Yeah. Like he's guilty as hell. “I tell you what, I'll leave my card, just in case. I got them made yesterday.” I rooted through the big black bag, finding handcuffs, hair spray, flashlight, hairbrush—no cards. I tipped the bag to look inside, and my gun fell out onto the green indoor-outdoor carpeting.
“A gun,” Mrs. Morelli said. “What is this world coming to? Does your mother know you're carrying a gun? I'm going to tell her. I'm going to call and tell her right now.”
She sent me a look of utter disgust and slammed the front door shut.
I was thirty years old, and Mrs. Morelli was going to tell my mother on me. Only in the burg. I retrieved my gun, dumped it back into my purse, and found my cards. I stuck one of the cards between the screen and the molding. Then I drove the short distance back to my parents' house and used their phone to call my cousin Francie, who knew everything about everyone.
He's long gone, Francie had said. He's a smart guy and he's probably wearing a fake mustache by now. He was a cop. He has contacts. He knows how to get a new social security number and start over far away. Give it up, Francie had said. You'll never find him.
Intuition and desperation told me otherwise, so I called Eddie Gazarra, who was a Trenton cop and had been one of my very best friends since the day I was born. Not only was he a good friend, but he was married to my cousin, Shirley the Whiner. Why Gazarra had married Shirley was beyond my comprehension, but they'd been married for eleven years so I suppose they had something going between them.
I didn't bother with chitchat when I got Gazarra. I went right to the heart of the matter, telling him about my job with Vinnie and asking what he knew about the Morelli shooting.
“I know it's nothing you want to get involved in,” Gazarra said. “You want to work for Vinnie? Fine. Get him to give you some other case.”
“Too late. I'm doing this one.”
“This one has a real bad odor.”
“Everything in New Jersey has a bad odor. It's one of the few things a person can count on.”
Gazarra lowered his voice. “When a cop gets charged with murder, it's serious shit. Everybody gets touchy. And this murder was especially ugly because the physical evidence was so strong against Morelli. He was apprehended at the scene with the gun still warm in his hand. He claimed Ziggy was armed, but there was no weapon found, no bullet discharged into the opposite wall or floor or ceiling, no powder residue on Ziggy's hand or shirt. The grand jury had no choice but to indict Morelli. And then if things aren't bad enough . . . Morelli goes Failure To Appear. This is a black eye to the department and fucking embarrassing. You mention Morelli in the halls and everybody suddenly remembers they've got something to do. Nobody's going to be happy about you sticking your nose in this. You go after Morelli and you're gonna be swinging on a broken branch, high off the gound, all alone.”
“If I bring him in, I get $10,000.”
“Buy lottery tickets. Your chances will be better.”
“It's my understanding that Morelli went to see Carmen Sanchez, but that Sanchez wasn't there when he arrived.”
“Not only wasn't she on the scene, but she's disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Still?”
“Still. And don't think we haven't looked for her.”
“What about the guy Morelli says was in the apartment with Ziggy. The mystery witness?”
“Vanished.”
I felt my nose wrinkle in disbelief. “Do you think this is odd?”
“I think it's odder than odd.”
“Maybe Morelli went bad.”
I could feel Gazarra shrug over the phone line. “All I know is my cop intuition tells me something doesn't add up.”
“You think Morelli'll join the Foreign Legion?”