One for the Money

“Another day in that van, and I might be glad to go to jail,” he said.

“Is that a Pino’s pizza?”

“Is there any other kind?”

“How’d you get it?”

“Pino delivers to felons.” He looked around. “Where’s your cable hookup?”

“In the living room.”

He plugged the TV in, set the pizza and the beer on the floor, and hit the remote. “You get any phone calls?”

“Nothing.”

He opened a beer. “It’s early yet. Ramirez does his best work at night.”

“I talked to Lula. She’s not going to testify.”

“Big surprise.”

I sat on the floor next to the pizza box. “Did you hear the conversation with Jimmy Alpha?”

“Yeah, I heard it. What the hell kind of outfit were you supposed to be wearing?”

“It was my slut outfit. I wanted to speed things up.”

“Christ, you had guys running their cars up on the curb. And where did you hide the mike? It wasn’t under that top. I’d have seen Scotch tape under that top.”

“I stuck it in my underpants.”

“Dang,” Morelli said. “When I get it back I’m going to have it bronzed.”

I popped open a beer and helped myself to a piece of pizza. “What do you make of Alpha? You think he could be pushed into testifying against Ramirez?”

Morelli flipped through the channels, clicked onto a ballgame, and watched it for a few seconds. “Depends how much he knows. If he’s got his head deep in the sand, he’s not going to have hard facts. Dorsey paid him a visit after you left, and he got less than you did.”

“You have Alpha’s office bugged?”

“No. Bar talk at Pino’s.”

There was one piece of pizza left. We both eyeballed it.

“It’ll go straight to your hips,” Morelli said.

He was right, but I took it anyway.

I kicked him out a little after one and dragged myself to bed. I slept through the night, and in the morning there were no messages on my machine. I was about to start coffee when the car alarm went off in the lot below. I grabbed my keys and ran from my apartment, taking the steps three at a time. The driver’s door was open when I got to the Jeep. The alarm was wailing away. I deactivated and reset the alarm, locked the car, and returned to my apartment.

Morelli was in the kitchen, and I could tell the effort to stay calm was jacking his blood pressure into the red zone.

“I didn’t want anyone to steal your car,” I said. “So I had an alarm installed.”

“It wasn’t ‘anyone’ you were worried about. It was me. You had a goddamn alarm installed in my goddamn car so I couldn’t snatch it out from under you!”

“It worked, too. What were you doing in our car?”

“It’s not our car. It’s my car. I’m allowing you to drive it. I was going to get some breakfast.”

“Why didn’t you take the van?”

“Because I wanted to drive my car. I swear, when this mess gets cleared up, I’m moving to Alaska. I don’t care what sort of sacrifice I have to make, I’m putting miles between us, because if I stay I’ll strangle you, and they’ll get me for murder one.”

“Jesus, Morelli, you sound like you have PMS. You have to learn to lighten up a little. It’s just a car alarm. You should be thanking me. I had it installed with my own money.”

“Well shit, what was I thinking of?”

“You’re under a lot of strain lately.”

There was a knock on the door, and we both jumped.

Morelli beat me to the peephole. He stepped back several paces and pulled me with him. “It’s Morty Beyers,” he said.

There was another knock on the door.

“He can’t have you,” I said. “You’re mine, and I’m not sharing.”

Morelli grimaced. “I’ll be under the bed if you need me.”

I went to the door and took a look for myself. I’d never seen Morty Beyers before, but this guy looked like he’d just had an appendectomy. He was close to forty, overweight, ashen-faced, and he was stooped over, holding his