I looked across the desk at him and tried not to grimace.  "Now what?"

"I got a job for you," Vinnie said.  "I want you to find that ratfink Eddie DeChooch, and I want you to drag his boney ass back here.  He got tagged smuggling a truckload of bootleg cigarettes up from Virginia and he missed his court date."

I rolled my eyes so far into the top of my head I could see hair growing.  "I'm not going after Eddie DeChooch.  He's old, and he kills people, and he's dating my grandmother."

"He hardly ever kills people anymore," Vinnie said.  "He has cataracts.  Last time he tried to shoot someone he  emptied a clip into an ironing board."

Vinnie owns and operates Vincent Plum Bail Bonds in Trenton,  New Jersey.  When someone is accused of a crime, Vinnie gives the court a cash bond, the court releases the accused until trial, and Vinnie hopes to God the accused shows up for court.  If the accused decides to forgo the pleasure of his court date, Vinnie is out a lot of money unless I can find the accused and bring him back into the system.  My name is Stephanie Plum and I'm a bond enforcement officer ... aka bounty hunter.  I took the job when times were lean and not even the fact that I graduated in the top ninety-eight percent of my college class could get me a better position.  The economy has since improved and there's no good reason why I'm still tracking down bad guys except that it annoys my mother and I don't have to wear panty hose to work.

"I'd give this to Ranger, but he's out of the country," Vinnie said.  "So that leaves you."

Ranger is a soldier of fortune kind of guy who sometimes works as a bounty hunter.  He's very good ... at everything.  And he's scary as hell.  "What's Ranger doing out of the country? And what do you mean by out of the country?  Asia?  South America?  Miami?"

"He's making a pickup for me in Puerto Rico."  Vinnie shoved a file folder across his desk.  "Here's the bond agreement on DeChooch and your authorization to capture.  He's worth fifty thousand to me ... five thousand to you.  Go over to DeChooch's house and find out why he pulled a no-show on his hearing yesterday.  Connie called and there was no answer.  Christ, he could be dead on his kitchen floor.  Going out with your grandma's enough to kill anyone."

Vinnie's office is on Hamilton, which at first glance might not seem like the best location for a bail bonds office.  Most bail bonds offices are across from the jail.  The difference with Vinnie is that many of the people he bonds out are either relatives or neighbors and live just off Hamilton in the Burg.  I grew up in the Burg and my parents still live there.  It's really a very safe neighborhood as Burg criminals are always careful to do their crimes elsewhere.  Well okay, Jimmy Curtains once walked Two Toes Garibaldi out of his house in his pajamas and drove him to the landfill ... but still, the actual whacking didn't take place in the Burg.  And the guys they found buried in the basement of the candy store on Ferris Street weren't from the Burg so you can't really count them as a statistic.

Connie Rosolli looked up when I came out of Vinnie's office.  Connie is the office manager.  Connie keeps things running while Vinnie is off springing miscreants and/or fornicating with barnyard animals.
Connie had her hair teased up to about three times the size of her head.  She was wearing a pink V-neck sweater that molded to boobs that belonged on a much larger woman and a short black knit skirt that would have fit a much smaller woman.

Connie's been with Vinnie since he first started the business.  She's stuck it out this long because she puts up with nothing and on exceptionally bad days she helps herself to combat pay from the petty cash.

She did a face scrunch when she saw I had a file in my hand.  "You aren't actually going out after Eddie DeChooch, are you?"

"I'm hoping he's dead."

Lula was slouched on the faux leather couch that had been shoved against a wall and served as the holding pen for bondees and their unfortunate relatives.  Lula and the couch were almost identical shades of brown with the exception of Lula's hair which happened to be cherry red today.

I always feel sort of anemic when I stand next to Lula.  I'm a third generation American of Italian-Hungarian heritage.  I have my mother's pale skin and blue eyes and good metabolism which allows me to eat birthday cake and still (almost always) button the top snap on my Levi's.  From my father's side of the family I've inherited a lot of unmanageable brown hair and a penchant for Italian hand gestures.  On my own, on a good day with a ton of mascara and four-inch heels, I can attract some attention.  Next to Lula I'm wallpaper.

"I'd offer to help drag his behind back to jail," Lula said.  "You could probably use the help of a plus-size woman like me.  But too bad I don't like when they're dead.  Dead creeps me out."

"Well, I don't actually know if he's dead," I said.

"Good enough for me," Lula said.  "Sign me up.  If he's alive I get to kick some sorry-ass butt, and if he's dead ... I'm outta there."

Lula talks tough, but the truth is we're both pretty wimpy when it comes to actual butt kicking.  Lula was a ho in a former life and is now doing filing for Vinnie.  Lula was as good at ho'ing as she is at filing ... and she's not much good at filing.

"Maybe we should wear vests," I said.

Lula took her purse from a bottom file drawer.  "Suit yourself, but I'm not wearing no Kevlar vest.  We don't got one big enough and besides it'd ruin my fashion statement."

I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and didn't have much of a fashion statement to make so I took a vest from the back room.

"Hold on," Lula said when we got to the curb, "what's this?"

"I bought a new car."

"Well dang, girl, you did good.  This here's an excellent car."

It was a black Honda CR-V and the payments were killing me.  I'd had to make a choice between eating and looking cool and looking cool had won out.  Well hell, there's a price for everything, right?

"Where we going?" Lula asked, settling in next to me.  "Where's this dude live?"

"We're going to the Burg.  Eddie DeChooch lives three blocks from my parents' house."

"He really dating your grandma?"

"She ran into him at a viewing two weeks ago at Stiva's Funeral Home and they went out for pizza after."

"Think they did the nasty?"

I almost ran the car up on the sidewalk.  "No!  Yuck!"

"Just asking," Lula said.

DeChooch lives in a small brick duplex.  Seventy-something Angela Marguchi and her ninety-something mother live in one half of the house and DeChooch lives in the other.  I parked in front of the DeChooch half and Lula and I walked to the door.  I was wearing the vest and Lula was wearing a stretchy animal-print top and yellow stretch pants.  Lula is a big woman and tends to test the limits of Lycra.

"You go ahead and see if he's dead," Lula said.  "And then if it turns out he's not dead you let me know and I'll come kick his ass."

"Yeah, right."

"Hunh," she said, lower lip stuck out.  "You think I couldn't kick his ass?"

"You might want to stand to the side of the door," I said.  "Just in case."

"Good idea," Lula said, stepping aside, "I'm not afraid or anything, but I'd hate to get blood stains on this top."

 I rang the bell and waited for an answer.  I rang a second time.  "Mr. DeChooch?" I yelled.
Angela Marguchi stuck her head out her door.  She was half a foot shorter than me, white-haired and bird-boned, a cigarette rammed between thin lips, eyes narrowed from smoke and age.  "What's all this racket?"

"I'm looking for Eddie."

She looked more closely and her mood brightened when she recognized me.  "Stephanie Plum.  Goodness, haven't seen you in a while.  I heard you were pregnant by that vice cop, Joe Morelli."

"A vicious rumor."

"What about DeChooch," Lula asked Angela.  "He been around?"

"He's in his house," Angela said.  "He never goes anywhere anymore.  He's depressed.  Won't talk or nothing."

"He's not answering his door."

"He don't answer his phone either.  Just go in.  He leaves the door unlocked.  Says he's waiting for someone to come shoot him and put him out of his misery."

"Well that isn't us," Lula said.  "'Course if he was willing to pay for it I might know someone ... "

I carefully opened Eddie's door and stepped into the foyer.  "Mr. DeChooch?"

"Go away."

The voice came from the living room to my right.  The shades were drawn and the room was dark.  I squinted in the direction of the voice.

"It's Stephanie Plum, Mr. DeChooch.  You missed your court date and Vinnie is worried about you."

"I'm not going to court," DeChooch said.  "I'm not going anywhere."

I moved further into the room and spotted him sitting in a chair in the corner.  He was a wiry little guy with white rumpled hair. He was wearing an undershirt and boxer shorts and black socks with black shoes.

"What's with the shoes?" Lula asked.

DeChooch looked down.  "My feet got cold."

"How about if you finish getting dressed and we take you to reschedule," I said.

"What are you, hard of hearing?  I told you, I'm not going anywhere.  Look at me.  I'm in a depression."

"Maybe you're in a depression on account of you haven't got any pants on," Lula said.  "Sure would make me feel happier if I didn't have to worry about seeing your Mr. Geezer hanging out of your boxer shorts."

"You don't know nothing," DeChooch said.  "You don't know what it's like to be old and not to be able to do anything right anymore."

"Yeah, I wouldn't know about that," Lula said.

What Lula and I knew about was being young and not doing anything right.  Lula and I never did anything right.

"What's that you're wearing?" DeChooch asked me.  "Christ, is that a bulletproof vest?  See, now that's so fucking insulting.  That's like saying I'm not smart enough to shoot you in the head."

"She just figured since you took out that ironing board it wouldn't hurt to be careful," Lula said.

"The ironing board!  That's all I hear about.  A man makes one mistake and that's all anybody ever talks about."  He made a dismissive hand gesture.  "Ah hell, who am I trying to kid.  I'm a has-been.  You know what I got arrested for?  I got arrested for smuggling cigarettes up from Virginia.  I can't even smuggle cigarettes anymore."  He hung his head.  "I'm a loser.  A fuckin' loser. I should shoot myself."

"Maybe you just had some bad luck," Lula said.  "I bet next time you try to smuggle something it works out fine."

"I got a bum prostate," DeChooch said.  "I had to stop to take a leak.  That's where they caught me ...at the rest stop."

"Don't seem fair," Lula said.

"Life isn't fair.  There isn't nothing fair about life.  All my life I've worked hard and I've had all these ...achievements.  And now I'm old and what happens?  I get arrested taking a leak.  It's goddamn embarrassing."

His house was decorated with no special style in mind.  Probably it had been furnished over the years with whatever fell off the truck.  There was no Mrs. DeChooch.  She'd passed away years ago.  So far as I knew there'd never been any little DeChooches.

"Maybe you should get dressed," I said.  "We really  need to go downtown."

"Why not," DeChooch said.  "Don't make no difference where I sit.  Could just as well be downtown as here."  He stood, gave a dejected sigh, and shuffled to the stairs stoop-shouldered.  He turned and looked at us.  "Give me a minute."

The house was a lot like my parents' house.  Living room in front, dining room in the middle, and kitchen overlooking a narrow backyard.  Upstairs there'd be three small bedrooms and a bathroom.

Lula and I sat in the stillness and darkness, listening to DeChooch walking around above us in his bedroom.

"He should have smuggled Prozac instead of cigarettes," Lula said.  "He could have popped a few."

"What he should do is get his eyes fixed," I said.  "My Aunt Rose was operated on for cataracts and now she can see again."

"Yeah, if he got his eyes fixed he could probably shoot a lot more people.  I bet that'd cheer him up."

Okay, maybe he shouldn't get his eyes fixed.

Lula looked toward the stairs.  "What's he doing up there?  How long does it take to put a pair of pants on?"

"Maybe he can't find them."

"You think he's that blind?"

I shrugged.

"Come to think of it, I don't hear him moving around," Lula said.  "Maybe he fell asleep.  Old people do that a lot."

I went to the stairs and yelled up at DeChooch.  "Mr. DeChooch?  Are you okay?"

No answer.

I yelled again.

"Oh boy," Lula said.

I took the stairs two at a time.  DeChooch's bedroom door was closed so I rapped on it hard.  "Mr. DeChooch?"
Still no answer.

I opened the door and looked inside.  Empty.  The bathroom was empty and the other two bedrooms were empty.  No DeChooch.

Shit.

"What's going on?" Lula called up.

"DeChooch isn't here."

"Say what?"

Lula and I searched the house.  We looked under beds and in closets.  We looked in the cellar and the garage.  DeChooch's closets were filled with clothes.  His toothbrush was still in the bathroom.  His car was asleep in the garage.

"This is too weird," Lula said.  "How could he have gotten past us.  We were sitting right in his front room.  We would have seen him sneak by."

We were standing in the backyard and I cut my eyes to the second story.  The bathroom window was directly above the flat roof that sheltered the back door leading from the kitchen to the yard.  Just like my parents' house.  When I was in high school I used to sneak out that window late at night so I could hang with my friends.  My sister Valerie, the perfect daughter, never did such a thing.

"He could have gone out the window," I said.  "He wouldn't have had a far drop either because he's got those two garbage cans pushed against the house."

"Well he's got some nerve acting all old and feeble and goddamned depressed and then soon as we turn our back he goes and jumps out a window.  I'm telling you, you can't trust nobody anymore."

"He snookered us."

"Damn skippy."

I went into the house, searched the kitchen and with minimum  effort found a set of keys.  I tried one of the keys on the front door.  Perfect.  I locked the house and pocketed the keys.  It's been my experience that sooner or later, everyone comes home.  And when DeChooch does come home he might decide to shut the house up tight.

I knocked on Angela's door and asked if she wasn't by any chance harboring Eddie DeChooch.  She claimed she hadn't seen him all day, so I left her with my card and gave instructions to call me if DeChooch turned up.

Lula and I got into the CR-V, I cranked the engine over and an image of DeChooch's keys floated to the forefront of my brain.  House key, car key ...and a third key.  I took the key ring out of my purse and looked at it.

"What do you suppose this third key is for?" I asked Lula.

"It's one of them Yale locks that you put on gym lockers and sheds and stuff."

"Do you remember seeing a shed?"

"I don't know.  I guess I wasn't paying attention to that.  You think he could be hiding in a shed along with the lawn mower and weed whacker?"

I shut the engine off and we got out of the car and returned to the backyard.

"I don't see a shed," Lula said.  "I see a couple garbage cans and a garage.
We peered into the dim garage, for the second time.

"Nothing in there but the car," Lula said.

We walked around the garage to the rear and found the shed.

"Yeah, but it's locked," Lula said.  "He'd have to be Houdini to get himself in there and then lock it from the outside.  And on top of that this shed smells real bad."

I shoved the key in the lock and the lock popped open.

"Hold on," Lula said.  "I vote we leave this shed locked.  I don't want to know what's smelling up this shed."

I yanked at the handle, the door to the shed swung wide, and Loretta Ricci stared out at us, mouth open, eyes unseeing, five bullet holes in the middle of her chest.  She was sitting on the dirt floor, her back propped against the corrugated metal wall, her hair white from a dose of lime that wasn't doing much to stop the destruction that follows death.

"Shit, that ain't no ironing board," Lula said.

I slammed the door shut, snapped the lock in place and put some distance between me and the shed.  I told myself I wasn't going to throw up and took a bunch of deep breaths.  "You were right," I said.  "I shouldn't have opened the shed."

"You never listen to me.  Now look what we got.  All on account of you had to be nosy.  Not only that, but I know what's gonna happen next.  You're gonna call the police and we're gonna be tied up all day.  If you had any sense you'd pretend you didn't see nothing and we'd go get some fries and a Coke.  I could really use some fries and a Coke."

I handed her the keys to my car.  "Get yourself some food, but make sure you're back in a half hour.  I swear, if you abandon me I'll send the police out after you."

"Boy, that really hurts.  When did I ever abandon you?"

"You abandon me all the time!"

"Hunh," Lula said.

I flipped my cell phone open and called the police.  Within minutes I could hear the blue-and-white pull up in front of the house.  It was Carl Costanza and his partner Big Dog.

"When the call came in, I knew it had to be you," Carl said to me.  "It's been almost a month since you found a body.  I knew you were due."

"I don't find that many bodies!"

"Hey," Big Dog said, "is that a Kevlar vest you're wearing?"

"Brand new, too," Costanza said.  "Not even got any bullet holes in it."

Trenton cops are top of the line, but their budget isn't exactly Beverly Hills.  If you're a Trenton cop you hope Santa will bring you a bulletproof vest because vests are funded primarily  with miscellaneous grants and donations and don't automatically come with the badge.

I'd removed the house key from DeChooch's key ring and had it safely tucked away in my pocket.  I gave the two remaining keys to Costanza.  "Loretta Ricci is in the shed.  And she's not looking too good."

I knew Loretta Ricci by sight but that was about it.  She lived in the Burg and was widowed.  I'd put her age around sixty-five.  I saw her sometimes at Giovichinni's Meat Market ordering lunch meat.

*     *     *

Vinnie leaned forward in his chair and narrowed his eyes at Lula and me.  "What do you  mean you lost DeChooch?"

"It wasn't our fault," Lula said.  "He was sneaky."

"Well hell," Vinnie said, "I wouldn't expect you to be able to catch someone who was sneaky."

"Hunh," Lula said.  "Your ass."

"Dollars to doughnuts he's at his social club," Vinnie said.

It used to be there were a lot of powerful social clubs in the Burg.  They were powerful because numbers were run out of them.  Then Jersey legalized gambling and pretty soon the local numbers industry was in the toilet.  There are only a few social clubs left in the Burg now and the members all sit around reading Modern Maturity and comparing pacemakers.

"I don't think DeChooch is at his social club," I told Vinnie.  "We found Loretta Ricci dead in DeChooch's tool shed, and I think DeChooch is on his way to Rio."  

For lack of something better to do I went home to my apartment.  The sky was overcast and a light rain had started to fall.  It was midafternoon and I was more than a little creeped out by Loretta Ricci.  I parked in the lot, pushed through the double glass doors that led to the small lobby and took the elevator to the second floor.

I let myself into my apartment and went straight to the flashing red light on the phone machine.

The first message was from Joe Morelli.  "Call me."  Didn't sound friendly.

The second message was from my friend, MoonMan.  "Hey dude," he said.  "It's the MoonMan."  That was it.  No more message.

The third message was from my mother.  "Why me?" she asked.  "Why do I have to have a daughter who finds dead bodies?  Where did I go wrong?  Emily Beeber's daughter never finds dead bodies.  Joanne Malinoski's daughter never finds dead bodies.  Why me!"

News travels fast in the Burg.

The fourth and last message was from my mother again.  "I'm making a nice chicken for supper with a pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.  I'll set an extra plate in case you don't have plans."

My mother was playing hardball with the cake.

My hamster Rex was asleep in his soup can in his cage on the kitchen counter.  I tapped on the side of the cage and called hello, but Rex didn't budge.  Catching up on his sleep after a hard night of running on his wheel.

I thought about calling Morelli back and decided against it.  Last time I talked to Morelli we'd ended up yelling at each other.  After spending the afternoon with Mrs. Ricci I didn't have the energy to yell at Morelli.

I shuffled into the bedroom and flopped down on the bed to think.  Thinking very often resembles napping but the intent is different.  I was in the middle of some very deep thinking when the phone rang.  By the time I dragged myself out of my thinking mode there was no one left on the line, only another message from Mooner.

"Bummer," Mooner said.  That was it.  Nothing more.

MoonMan has been known to experiment with pharmaceuticals and for the better part of his life has made no sense at all.  Usually it's best to ignore MoonMan.

I stuck my head in my refrigerator and found a jar of olives, some slimy brown lettuce, a lone bottle of beer, and an orange with blue fuzz growing on it.  No pineapple upside-down cake.

There was a pineapple upside-down cake a couple miles away at my parents' house.  I checked out the waistband on my Levi's.  No room to spare.  Probably I didn't need the cake.

I drank the beer and ate some olives.  Not bad, but not cake.  I blew out a sigh of resignation.  I was going to cave.  I wanted the cake.

*     *     *

My mother and my grandmother were at the door when I pulled to the curb in front of their house.  My Grandmother Mazur moved in with my parents shortly after my Grandfather Mazur took his bucket of quarters to the big poker slot machine in the sky.  Last month Grandma finally passed her driver's test and bought herself a red Corvette.  It took her exactly five days to acquire enough speeding tickets to lose her license.

"The chicken's on the table," my mother said.  "We were just about to sit."

"Lucky for you the dinner got late," Grandma said, "on account of the phone wouldn't stop ringing.  Loretta Ricci is big news."  She took her seat and shook out her napkin.  "Not that I was surprised.  I said to myself a while ago that Loretta was looking for trouble.  She was real hot to trot, that one.  Went wild after Dominic died.  Man-crazy."

My father was at the head of the table and he looked like he wanted to shoot himself.

"She'd just jump from one man to the next at the seniors meeting," Grandma said.  "And I heard she was real loosey-goosey."
The meat was always placed in front of my father so he got first pick.  I guess my  mother figured if my father got right down to the task of eating he wouldn't be so inclined to jump up and strangle my grandmother.

"How's the chicken?" my mother wanted to know.  "Do you think it's too dry?"

No, everyone said, the chicken wasn't dry.  The chicken was just right.

"I saw a television show the other week about a woman like that," Grandma said.  "This woman was man-crazy and it turned out one of the men she was flirting with was an alien from outer space.  And the alien took the woman up to his space ship and did all kinds of things to her."

My father hunkered lower over his plateful of food and mumbled something indiscernible except for the words Öcrazy old bat.

"What about Loretta and Eddie DeChooch?" I asked.  "Do you suppose they were seeing each other?"

"Not that I know of," Grandma said.  "From what I know, Loretta liked her men hot and Eddie DeChooch couldn't get it up.  I went out with him a couple times and that thing of his was dead as a doorknob.  No matter what I did I couldn't get nothing to happen."

My father looked up at Grandma and a piece of meat fell out of his mouth.

My mother was red-faced at the other end of the table.  She sucked in some air and made the sign of the cross.  "Mother of God," she said.
I fiddled with my fork.  "If I left now I probably wouldn't get any pineapple upside-down cake, right?"

"Not for the rest of your life," my mother said.

"So how did she look?" Grandma wanted to know.  "What was Loretta wearing?  And how was her hair done?  Doris Szuch said she saw Loretta at the food store yesterday afternoon, so I'm guessing Loretta wasn't all rotted and wormy yet."

My father reached for the carving knife and my mother cut him down with a steel-eyed look that said Ödon't even think about it.

My father's retired from the post office.  He drives a cab part-time, only buys American cars, and smokes cigars out behind the garage when my mother isn't home.  I don't think my dad would actually stab Grandma Mazur with the carving knife.  Still, if she choked on a chicken bone I'm not sure he'd be all that unhappy.

"I'm looking for Eddie DeChooch," I said to Grandma.  "He's FTA.  Do you have any ideas about where he might be hiding?"

"He's friends with Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci.  And there's his nephew Ronald."

"Do you think he'd leave the country?"

"You mean because he might have put those holes in Loretta? I don't think so.  He's been accused of killing people before and he never left the country.  At least not that I know of."

"I hate this," my mother said.  "I hate having a daughter who goes out after killers.  What's the matter with Vinnie for giving this case to you?"  She glared at my father.  "Frank, he's your side of the family.  You need to talk to him.  And why can't you be more like your sister Valerie?" my mother asked  me.  "She's happily married with two beautiful children.  She doesn't go around chasing after killers, finding dead bodies."

"Stephanie's almost happily married," Grandma said.  "She got engaged last month."

"Do you see a ring on her finger?" my mother asked.

Everyone looked at my naked finger.

"I don't want to talk about it," I said.

"I think Stephanie's got the hots for someone else," Grandma said.  "I think she's sweet on that Ranger fella."

My father paused with his fork plunged into a mound of potatoes.  "The bounty hunter?  The black guy?"

My father was an equal opportunity bigot.  He didn't go around painting swastikas on churches and he didn't discriminate against minorities.  It was just that with the possible exception of my mother, if you weren't Italian you weren't quite up to standards.

"He's Cuban-American," I said.

It was dark when I left my parents.  I didn't expect Eddie DeChooch to be home, but I drove past his house anyway.  Lights were blazing in the Marguchi half.  The DeChooch half was lifeless.  I caught a glimpse of yellow crime-scene tape still stretched across the backyard.

There were questions I wanted to ask Mrs. Marguchi, but they'd keep.  I didn't want to disturb her tonight.  Her day had been bad enough.  I'd catch her tomorrow, and on the way I'd stop at the office and get an address for Garvey and Colucci.

I cruised around the block and headed for Hamilton Avenue.  My apartment building is located a couple miles from the Burg.  It's a sturdy, three-story chunk of brick and mortar built in the seventies with economy in mind.  It doesn't come with a lot of amenities, but it has a decent super who'll do anything for a six-pack of beer, the elevator almost always works, and the rent is reasonable.

I parked in the lot and looked up at my apartment.  The lights were on.  Someone was home and it wasn't me.  It was probably Morelli.  He had a key.  I felt a rush of excitement at the thought of seeing him, quickly followed by a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach.  Morelli and I have known each other since we were kids and life has never been simple between us.

I took the stairs, trying out emotions, settling on conditionally happy.  Truth is, Morelli and I are pretty sure we love each other.  We're just not sure we can stand to live together for the rest of our lives.  I don't especially want to marry a cop.  Morelli doesn't want to marry a bounty hunter.  And then there's Ranger.

I opened the door to my apartment and found two old guys sitting on my couch, watching a ball game on television.  No Morelli in sight.  They  both stood and smiled when I came into the room.

"You must be Stephanie Plum," one of the men said.  "Allow me to make the introductions.  I'm Benny Colucci and this is my friend and colleague, Ziggy Garvey."

"How did you get into my apartment?"

"Your door was open."

"No it wasn't."

The smile widened.  "It was Ziggy.  He's got the touch with a lock."

Ziggy beamed and wiggled his fingers.  "I'm an old coot, but my fingers still work."

"I'm not crazy about people breaking into my apartment," I said.

Benny solemnly nodded.  "I understand, but we thought in this instance it would be okay, being that we have something of a very serious nature to discuss."

"And urgent," Ziggy added.  "Also of an urgent nature."

They looked at each other and agreed.  It was urgent.

"And besides," Ziggy said.  "You got some nosy neighbors.  We were waiting for you in the hall, but there was a lady who kept opening her door and looking at us.  It made us uncomfortable."

"I think she was interested in us, if you know what I mean.  And we don't do anything funny like that.  We're married men."
"Maybe when we were younger," Ziggy said, smiling.

"So what's this urgent business?"

"Ziggy and me happen to be very good friends of Eddie DeChooch," Benny said.  "Ziggy and Eddie and me go way back.  So Ziggy and me are concerned about Eddie's sudden disappearance.  We're worried Eddie might be in trouble."

"You mean because he killed Loretta Ricci?"

"No, we don't think that's a big issue.  People are always accusing Eddie of killing people."

Ziggy leaned forward in a conspiratorial whisper.  "Bum raps, all of them."

Of course.

"We're concerned because we think Eddie might not be thinking right," Benny said.  "He's been in this depression.  We go to see him and he don't want to talk to us.  He's never been like that."

"It's not normal," Ziggy said.

"Anyway, we know you're looking for him, and we don't want him to get hurt, you understand?"
"You don't want me to shoot him."

"Yeah."

"I almost never shoot people."

"Sometimes it happens, but God forbid it would be Choochy," Benny said.  "We're trying to prevent it from being Choochy."

"Hey," I said, "if he gets shot it won't be my bullet."

"And then there's something else," Benny said.  "We're trying to find Choochy so we can help him."

Ziggy nodded.  "We think maybe he should be seeing a doctor.  Maybe he needs a psychiatrist.  So we figured we could work together being that you're looking for him, too."

"Sure," I said, "if I find him I'll let you know."  After I delivered him up to the court and had him safely behind bars.

"And we were wondering if you have any leads?"

"Nope.  None."

"Gee, we were counting on you to have some leads.  We heard you were pretty good."

"Actually, I'm not all that good Öit's more that I'm lucky."

Another exchange of glances.

"So, are you, you know, feeling lucky about this?" Benny asked.

Hard to feel lucky when I've just let a depressed senior citizen slip through my fingers, found a dead woman in his shed, and sat through dinner with my parents.  "Well, it's sort of too early to tell."

There was some fumbling at the door, the door swung open, and Mooner ambled in.  Mooner was wearing a head-to-toe purple spandex body suit with a big silver M sewn onto the chest.

"Hey dude," Mooner said.  "I tried calling you, but you were never home.  I wanted to show you my new Super Mooner suit."

"Cripes," Benny said, "he looks like a flaming fruit."

"I'm a superhero, dude," the Mooner said.

"Super fruit-cake is more like it.  You walk around in this suit all day?"

"No way, dude.  This is my secret suit.  Ordinarily I only wear this when I'm doing super deeds, but I wanted the dudette here to get the full impact so I changed in the hall."

"Can you fly like Superman?" Benny asked Mooner.

"No, but I can fly in my mind, dude.  Like, I can soar."

"Oh boy," Benny said.

Ziggy looked at his watch.  "We gotta go.  If you get a line on Choochy you'll let us know, right?"

"Sure."  Maybe.

I watched them leave.  They were like Jack Sprat and his wife.  Benny was about fifty pounds overweight with chins spilling over his collar.  And Ziggy looked like a turkey carcass.  I assumed they both lived in the Burg and belonged to Chooch's club, but I didn't know that for certain.  Another assumption was that they were on file as former Vincent Plum bondees since they hadn't felt it necessary to give me their phone numbers.

"So what do you think of the suit?" Mooner asked me when Benny and Ziggy left.  "Dougie and me found a whole box of them.  I think they're like for swimmers or runners or something.  Dougie and me don't know any swimmers who could use them, but we thought we could turn them into Super Suits.  See, you can wear them like underwear and then when you need to be a superhero you just take your clothes off.  Only problem is we haven't got any capes.  That's probably why the old dude didn't know I was a superhero.  No cape."

"You don't really think you're a superhero, do you?"

"You mean like in real life?"

"Yeah."

Mooner looked astonished.  "Superheroes are like, fiction.  Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

"Just checking."

I'd gone to high school with Walter "MoonMan" Dunphy and Dougie "The Dealer" Kruper.

Mooner lives with two other guys in a narrow row house on Grant Street.  Together they form the Legion of Losers.  They're all potheads and misfits, floating from one menial job to the next, living hand to mouth.  They're also gentle and harmless and utterly adoptable.  I don't exactly hang with Mooner.  It's more that we keep in touch, and when our paths cross he tends to generate maternal feelings in me.  Mooner is like a goofy stray kitten that shows up for a bowl of kibble once in a while.

Dougie lives several units down in the same row of attached houses.  In high school Dougie was the kid who wore the dorky button-down shirt when all the other kids wore T-shirts.  Dougie didn't get great grades, didn't do sports, didn't play a musical instrument, and didn't have a cool car.  Dougie's solitary accomplishment was his ability to suck Jell-O into his nose through a straw.

After graduation it was rumored that Dougie had moved to Arkansas and died.  And then several months ago Dougie surfaced in the Burg, alive and well.  And last month Dougie got nailed for fencing stolen goods out of his house.  At the time of his arrest his dealing had seemed more community service than crime since he'd become the definitive source for cut-rate Metamucil, and for the first time in years Burg seniors were regular.

"I thought Dougie shut down his dealership," I said to Mooner.

"No, man, I mean we really found these suits.  They were like in a box in the attic.  We were cleaning the house out and we came across them."

I was pretty sure I believed him.

"So what do you think?" he asked.  "Cool, huh?"

The suit was lightweight Lycra, fitting his gangly frame perfectly without a wrinkle Öand that included his doodle area.  Not much left to the imagination.  If the suit was on Ranger I wouldn't complain, but this was more than I wanted to see of the Mooner.

"The suit is terrific."

"Since Dougie and me have these cool suits, we decided we'd be crime fighters Ölike Batman."

Batman seemed like a nice change.  Usually Mooner and Dougie were Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

Mooner pushed the Lycra cap back off his head and his long brown hair spilled out.  "We were going to start fighting crime tonight.  Only problem is, Dougie's gone."

"Gone?  What do you mean gone?"

"Like he just disappeared, dude.  He called me on Tuesday and told me he had some stuff to do but I should come over to watch wrestling last night.  We were gonna watch it on Dougie's big screen.  It was like an awesome event, dude. Anyway, Dougie never showed up.  He wouldn't have missed wrestling unless something awful happened.  He wears like four pagers on him and he's not answering any of them.  I don't know what to think."

"Did you go out looking for him?  Could he be at a friend's house?"

"I'm telling you, it's not like him to miss wrestling."  Mooner said.  "Like nobody misses WWF stuff, dude.  He was all excited about it.  I think something bad's happened."

"Like what?'

"I don't know.  I just have this bad feeling."

We both sucked in a breath when the phone rang as if our suspecting disaster would make it happen.

"He's here," Grandma said at the other end of the line.

"Who?  Who's where?"

"Eddie DeChooch!  Mabel picked me up after you left so we could pay our respects to Anthony Varga.  He's laid out at Stiva's and Stiva did a real good job. I don't know how Stiva does it.  Anthony Varga hasn't looked this good for twenty-five years.  He should have come to Stiva when he was alive.  Anyway, we're still here and Eddie DeChooch just walked into the funeral parlor."

"I'll be right there."

No matter if you're suffering depression or wanted for murder, you still pay your respects in the Burg.

I grabbed my shoulder bag off the kitchen counter and shoved Mooner out the door.  "I have to run.  I'll make some phone calls and I'll get back to you.  In the meantime, you should go home and maybe Dougie will show up."

"Which home should I go to, dude?  Should I go to Dougie's home or my home?"

"Your home.  And check on Dougie's home once in a while."

Having Mooner worry about Dougie made me uneasy, but it didn't feel critical.  Then again, Dougie'd missed wrestling.  And Mooner was right Önobody misses Triple H and The Rock.  At least nobody in Jersey.