"Okay," I said. "I'll see if I can find someone to rat on Alphonse."
I pushed through the glass door to the lobby and did a fast sweep to make sure Ramirez wasn't lying in wait for me. I took the stairs and felt safe when I stepped onto my floor. There was the smell of bacon cooking behind Mrs. Karwatt's door. And the television was blaring in Mr. Wolesky's apartment. A normal morning. Business as usual. Aside from the fact that I'd barfed and been scared half to death by a psychopathic maniac.
I opened my door and found Bunchy on the couch, reading the paper.
"You've got to stop breaking into my apartment," I said. "It's rude."
"I feel conspicuous sitting out in the hall. I figure it doesn't look good for you to have men loitering. What'll people think?"
"Then loiter in your car, in the lot."
"I was cold."
Someone knocked on my door. I went to the door and peeked out. It was my neighbor from across the hall, Mr. Wolesky.
"Did you take my paper again?" he asked.
I got the paper from Bunchy and returned it to Mr. Wolesky.
"Out," I told Bunchy. "Good-bye."
"What are you doing today? Just so I know."
"I'm going to the office, and then I'm putting some posters up at the Grand Union."
"The office, huh? Maybe I'll pass on the office. But you can tell Lula there's gonna be payback for making me lose you the other day."
"You should be happy she didn't use her stun gun."
He stood at the couch with his hands in his pockets. "You want to tell me about the color copies on your table?"
Damn. I hadn't put the prints away. "They're nothing special."
"Body parts in a garbage bag?"
"Do you find them interesting?"
"I don't know who it is, if that's what you're getting at." He moved to the table. "Twenty-four pictures. The whole roll. Two with the bag tied up. That's got me thinking. And they're recent, too."
"How do you know that?"
"There are newspapers stuck in the bag along with the body. I looked at them with your magnifying glass, and you see this one here with the color? I'm pretty sure this is a supplement from Kmart advertising the Mega Monster. I know because my kid made me go get him one the second he saw the ad."
"You have a kid?"
"Why is that such a big shock? He lives with my ex-wife."
"When was the first time the ad ran?"
"I called and checked. It was a week ago Thursday."
The day before Fred disappeared.
"Where'd you get these pictures?" Bunchy asked.
"Fred's desk."
Bunchy shook his head. "Fred was involved in some very bad shit."
I locked and bolted the door after Bunchy left. I showered and dressed in Levi's and a black turtleneck. I tucked the turtleneck in and added a belt. I stuffed Uncle Fred's picture into my shoulder bag and took off to do my pseudo-private investigator thing.
My first stop was at the office to collect my pittance on Briggs.
Lula looked up from the filing when I walked in. "Girl, we've been waiting for you. We heard how you beat the crap out of that Briggs guy. Not that he didn't deserve it, but I think if you was gonna beat the crap out of someone, you could let me in on it. You know how bad I wanted to beat the crap out of that little wiener."
"Yeah," Connie said to me, "you've got some nerve hogging all the brutality."
"I didn't do anything," I said. "He fell down the stairs."
Vinnie opened his office door and stuck his head out. "Jesus Christ," he said. "How many times have I told you not to hit people in the face? You hit them in the body where it doesn't show. Kick them in the nuts. Sucker-punch them in the kidney."
"He fell down the stairs!" I said again.
"Yeah, but you pushed him, right?"
"No!"
"See, that's good," Vinnie said. "Lying is good. Stick with that story. I like it." He stepped back into his office and slammed the door shut.
I gave Connie the body receipt, and Connie wrote me a check.
"I'm off to find a witness," I said.
Lula had her purse in her hand. "I'll go with you. Just in case that Bunchy guy decides to follow you some more. I'll take care of his ass."
I smiled. This should be interesting.
* * * * *
WE STARTED AT the copy store on Route 33. I enlarged Fred's photo and reproduced it onto a hand-printed request for information about Fred's disappearance.
After the copy store, I cruised into the Grand Union lot and was disappointed not to see Bunchy waiting for us. I parked close to the store, and Lula and I took the posters inside.
"Hold on here," Lula said. "They got Coke on sale. This is a real good price for Coke. And they got some good-lookin' lunchmeat in the deli section. What time is it? Is it lunchtime? You mind if I do some food shopping?"
"Hey," I said to Lula, "don't let me slow you down." I tacked a poster onto the bulletin board in the front of the store. Then I took the original photo and started quizzing shoppers while Lula foraged in the bakery aisle.
"Have you seen this man?" I asked.
The reply would be no. Or sometimes, "Yeah, that's Fred Shutz. What a putz."
No one could remember seeing him on the day of the disappearance. And no one had seen him since. And no one especially cared that he was missing.
"How's it going?" Lula asked, wheeling a shopping cart past me, en route to the car.
"Slow. No takers."
"I'm gonna drop these bags off. And then I'm going to look in that little video store at the end."
"Knock yourself out," I said. I showed Fred's photo to a few more people and at noon I broke for lunch. I searched my pockets and the bottom of my bag and came up with enough money to buy a small bag of nutritious, already washed and ready-to-eat baby carrots. For the same amount of money I could also buy a giant Snickers bar. Boy, what a tough decision.
Lula returned from the video store just as I was licking the last of the chocolate off my fingers. "Look at this," Lula said. "They had Boogie Nights on sale. I don't care much about the movie. I just like to look at the ending once in a while."
"I'm going door-to-door with Fred's photo," I told her. "Want to help?"
"Sure, you just give me one of them posters, and I'll door-to-door the hell out of you."
We divided the neighborhood in half and decided to work until two o'clock. I was done early, scoring a big zero. One woman said she saw Fred go off with Harrison Ford, but I thought that was unlikely. And another woman said she'd seen a vision of Fred floating across her television screen. I didn't put a lot of stock in that, either.
Since I had some time to kill I went back to the Grand Union to buy pantyhose for the wedding. I stepped into the glass vestibule and noticed an elderly woman was staring at the Fred poster I'd tacked up on the community bulletin board. That's good, I thought. People read these things.
I bought the pantyhose, and as I was leaving I saw the woman was still standing in front of the poster. "Have you seen him?" I asked.
"Are you Stephanie Plum?"
"Yes."
"I thought I recognized you. I remember your picture from when you blew up that funeral home."
"Do you know Fred?"
"Sure, I know Fred. He's in my seniors club. Fred and Mabel. I didn't realize he was missing."
"When did you see him last?"
"I was trying to remember that. I was sitting on the bench outside Grand Union here, waiting for my nephew to come pick me up, on account of I don't drive anymore. And I saw Fred come out of the cleaners."
"That must have been Friday."
"That's what I think, too. I think it was Friday."
"What did Fred do when he came out of the cleaners?"