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Time to talk to them. The body could wait, it wasn’t going anywhere.
—
Donnell “Donny” Backus had been crying. Huge, baby-faced, kettle-gut guy in his early thirties. Muttonchops, body ink up the neck. What the guys at the gym called soft-strong.
Moe introduced himself, played friendly while checking Backus’s eyes and breath and overall body odor. Nothing. Guy was sweating but not giving off anything alcoholic or dope-like. On the contrary, a pleasant, piney shampoo aroma wafted from him. Recent shower; good hygiene.
Alfred “Alfie” LaMotta was dry-eyed, looked more angry than upset. Dark hair, ponytail, fox-featured, wiry build, no tats. His lined, chiseled face was dominated by steady dark eyes. Nothing overtly impaired about him, either, and anyway, he’d been the passenger.
Moe’s gut feeling intensified: wrong place, wrong time for everyone.
But you never put on blinders.
He had the two of them go over it again, mostly LaMotta doing the talking with Backus sniffing. Heard the same thing the uniform had related, copied it down in his pad. “Thanks, anything else you can think of?”
Alfie LaMotta said, “Dude has no clothes on. Got to be a nutcase or a junkie, right? Charging into us like that.”
Waiting for Moe’s confirmation. Moe didn’t offer it.
LaMotta frowned. “Sir, we did nothing wrong, this is our worstnightmare. We came here especially early to avoid traffic and people and any kind of hassle. Who’d figure some guy’s going to dart out in the darkness? If he’d of been in front of us, we might’ve even seen him. But from the side? We thought it was a critter. A cay-ote or a deer. We see them all the time. Especially deer, they’re the worst. Kill more people ’cause of accidents than bears do. Right?”
Leveling the question at Backus, who sniffed and nodded and shook his head and bit his lip and said something unintelligible.
Moe said, “What’s that?”
“I am so, so sorry.”
LaMotta frowned. “What could you do, man?”
“Nothing,” said Backus. “I’m just sorry. For it happening.”
LaMotta sighed and turned to Moe. “My man was a choirboy.”
Backus said, “I’d be sorry anyway.”
Moe said, “So your destination is four blocks away.”
LaMotta said, “Four friggin’ blocks north then we unload, go figure. Don’t imagine we can get there anytime soon.”
“We’ll need photos of the van’s exterior, photographer’s on the way. And if you don’t mind, a go-through of the interior.”
“What’re you looking for? Dope?”
“I’m sure you guys are clean but—”
“No prob, do your thing,” said LaMotta, gritting his teeth. “My man here was a choirboy and I drank in high school, put weight on, took it off, and haven’t touched a drop since. We do coffee, we’re not Mormons, we like our coffee.Liveon coffee. For the purpose of we don’tneedanything else besides coffee.”
Moe said, “Got it.”
“You also need to know the company mandates rests and meals, we take every single one, you can check our logs. We slept appropriately, you want to verify, check with the Islander Motel, Anaheim Boulevard. Exactly for that reason—sleeping well, being fit—we sacked out therelast night, paid with the company card. You can also check with the twenty-four-hour Dee-Lite Donuts across the street where we got coffee and bearclaws. Kid at the counter had a pizza face.”
Moe copied.
Alfie LaMotta said, “You’re really going to verify?”
“I like to be thorough, sir.”
“Fine. Us, too. We two got the lowest breakage rate in the company. Check that, too. Never had a problem before.Never.”
