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“I need to get cash for my capture check and my bank is closed.”
“No problem. I know someone who can fix that too if you don’t mind a twenty-five-dollar transaction fee.”
• • •
It was a little after five when I walked into my apartment. I dropped the envelope with $5,000 in cash onto the counter, grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, and made myself a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. Rex came out of his soup can and looked at me, whiskers twitching, eyes bright. I gave him a corner of my sandwich. He stuffed it into his cheek and scurried back into his can.
I called Ranger and gave him the details on the ice cream truck explosion. I told him about Kenny Morris. I told him the Jolly Bogart clown was a lunatic.
“Babe,” Ranger said.
“Dude,” I said back at him.
I thought I sensed him smile, but I could be wrong.
We disconnected, and Morelli called me. “Were you the second clown in the ice cream truck?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“I can’t get the red greasepaint off my nose, but aside from that I’m good.”
“Do we have a plan for tonight? Are you babysitting Gazarra’s kids?”
“Babysitting was canceled, but I have some errands to run.”
“?‘Errands’?”
“Work related. I should be home around eleven o’clock. Also, if anyone finds a semiautomatic in whatever is left of the ice cream truck they should run a ballistics test against the bullet taken out of Arnold Zigler.”
“Are you kidding? You think the Jolly Bogart clown killed Zigler?”
“All I’m saying is that he had a gun, and why not test it if it turns up?”
“Fair enough.”
I pulled the two reports out of my messenger bag and took them to my dining room table to read. There wasn’t much on Ducker. He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a large apartment complex in Hamilton Township. He drove a leased Kia. He had a bunch of credit cards. He had no arrest history. He was a high school graduate. After high school he’d enlisted in the Army and served for three years. Never saw combat. Was unemployed for almost a year after the Army. Eventually was hired by Bogart. Never married. His parents lived in Newark. His father was a butcher.
Kenny Morris graduated from Lafayette College and went to work in his father’s ice cream business. He worked on the floor for a year and then moved to a corner office, where he presided over the test kitchen. He’d been in the corner office for two years. He was twenty-five years old. His two older brothers weren’t interested in ice cream. One was a lawyer in Philadelphia with a wife and two kids. The other was a graphic designer, working in Silicon Valley. Kenny also had no arrest history. His credit rating was top-notch. He drove a black Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Hard Rock, which I thought was a badass car. He lived at home with his parents. And he was in love with Bogart’s daughter. Connie had included Kenny’s college yearbook picture. Blond hair, blond eyebrows, shy smile. A little bland looking.
I opened my computer and was about to check my email when I got a call from Lula.
“Gaylord got a car for you,” Lula said. “They’re getting it detailed now, and then it’ll get brought over to your building. Wayne’s got all the paperwork, and all you gotta do is give him the money.”
“What kind of car is it?”
“Don’t know,” Lula said. “I forgot to ask, but Gaylord said it didn’t have no dents and it wasn’t leaking nothing.”
“I need to go to Kranski’s Bar in north Trenton. Do you want to tag along?”
“Sure. We were going to do a filming but it got canceled, so I got the night free.”
“Was this another Naked and Afraid episode?”
“No. It was this other idea I had where I say I feel like I’m a guy today, and I go into a public men’s room. And then we film my positive experience. Only problem was I did a test run this afternoon and there were already a bunch of women in there with the men. The men were all standing back, looking confused, and the women were taking selfie videos of themselves trying to use the urinals. It was a ugly scene. Those women weren’t having any luck with those urinals. I like to think I’m a open-minded person, but I don’t see where this whole unisex thing is going to work. It don’t even make good television. I mean, if you can’t make a decent reality show out of a situation, what’s the point of going there?”
This was wrong on so many levels I almost had a seizure from rolling my eyes, and yet in the end her point was sort of valid.
