“What's going on?”
“Just humor me.”
I followed him into the kitchen and waited while he adjusted Venetian blinds. When he was done I took the tape out of my shoulder bag. “You have a recorder?”
There was a briefcase sitting on the kitchen table. Morelli opened the briefcase and took out a recorder. He slipped the tape into the recorder and pressed the play button.
Ranger came up first.
“Bad advice,” Morelli said.
“That's not what I want you to hear.”
The noise blasted out and then the man's voice. Morelli's face showed no expression while he listened to the message. Cop face, I thought. He ran the tape through a second time before shutting the machine off.
“Not Mickey Maglio,” he said.
“No.” A cop would know better than to have his voice recorded.
“You have any clue you were being followed?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Did you pick up a tail tonight?”
“No.”
“There's a record store, grunge shop across from the Shuman Building. It's got some video machines in it. It's a kid hangout. The call probably originated from there. I'll send someone over to ask a few questions.”
“Guess the crashing and scuffling we heard didn't come from your neighbor's dog.”
“Whoever was out there must have knocked the garbage can over trying to get a better look.”
“You don't seem very upset by this.”
There were dishes drying in a drainer on the sink. A dinner plate, a cereal bowl, a couple glasses. Morelli grabbed the dinner plate and threw it hard against the opposite wall, where it smashed into a million pieces.
“Okay,” I said. “So I was wrong.”
“You want to stay for dinner?”
“I don't think that's a good idea.”
Morelli made chicken sounds.
“Very adult,” I said. “Very attractive.”
Morelli grinned.
I paused with my hand on the door handle. “I don't suppose you want to tell me more about your conversation with Dickie.”
“No more to tell,” Morelli said.
Yeah, right.
“And don't follow me home,” I said. “I don't need a bodyguard.”
“Who said I was going to follow you home?”