“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. Can you get over here? I need help.”
“I’m on my way.” I disconnected and grabbed my bag. “Gotta go,” I said to Diesel. “Morelli needs help with a naked woman.”
“I didn’t know you were into that,” Diesel said.
“It’s not a party. It’s a problem. I’ll be on my cell if you notice the cloud of doom hanging over my apartment building.”
Ten minutes later, I walked into the disaster area that used to be Morelli’s living room. It was littered with empty beer cans, fast-?food wrappers, and discarded socks, shoes, and underwear. Crumpled pages ripped off a yellow lined pad were scattered across the floor. A rumpled pillow and balled-?up quilt were pushed to one end of the couch.
Morelli smiled when he saw me, and I got warm inside and smiled back. He was still in work clothes. Dark jeans and boots. Cream-?colored sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Gun on his hip. He had a garbage bag in one hand and a can of air freshener in the other.
“I thought your mother was coming over to clean?” I said to him.
“She was here this morning. This is afternoon trash.”
“What’s with all the crumpled pieces of lined paper?”
“Anthony decided he should write a book about his life.”
“Because why?” I asked Morelli.
“He thinks his life is fascinating. He’s calling his book ‘Love Your Inner Jerk.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Morelli said, “but it can’t be good.”
I helped gather beer cans and food wrappers and stuffed them into the garbage bag. I left the underwear for Morelli. I wouldn’t touch the underwear with a big stick.
“Doesn’t Anthony have a job?” I asked.
“Not this week. He took the week off to get his act together.”
“Looks to me like he’s spreading his act all over your house.”
“This is nothing. You should see what I’ve got upstairs.”
“The naked woman?”
“Yeah. She won’t leave. She says she’s waiting for Anthony to come back with pizza.”
“So when he comes back she’ll leave, right?”
“He’s been gone for almost two hours. For all I know, he could be gone for two days. It’s happened.”
“Did you try telling her to leave?”
“Yeah. She told me to take a hike.”
“You’re a cop. You probably drag naked women out of bedrooms all the time.”
“Almost never. And this is my bedroom. And this woman was brought here by my married brother. I’m supposed to be keeping him in line. If this gets back to my sister-?in-?law and my mother, I’m in big trouble. And even worse, if I lay a hand on this bimbo, she could scream rape or police brutality or God knows what.”
“So you want me to get rid of her for you.”
“Yeah.” Morelli grinned at me again. “If you did that one thing for me, I’d be nice to you. Really nice.”
“And then what? Would I have to be really nice to you?”