'Mostly Vito filled caskets. Hijacking was a sideline.'
'So you think it's possible Kenny used the caskets to smuggle the guns off the base?'
'Seems risky and unnecessarily melodramatic, but yeah, I think it's possible.'
'Okay, so Spiro, Kenny, and probably Moogey maybe stole all this stuff from Braddock, and stored it at R and J. Then all of a sudden the stuff is missing. Someone pulled a double cross, and we know it wasn't Spiro because Spiro hired me to find the caskets.'
'Doesn't seem like it was Kenny either,' Morelli said. 'When he said Spiro had something that belonged to him, my guess is he was talking about the stolen guns.'
'So who does that leave? Moogey?'
'Dead men don't set up late-night sales meetings with the Long brothers.' I didn't want to run over the jagged remnants of Morelli's taillight, so I picked the major pieces out of the gutter, and for lack of something better to do with them, handed the chunks of plastic to Morelli. 'Probably you're insured for this,' I said. Morelli looked pained.
'Are you still following me?' I asked.
'Yeah.'
'Then watch out for my tires when I go into Stiva's.'
Stiva's little side lot was totally filled with the matinee crowd, forcing me to park on the street. I got out of the Buick and tried to be cool about looking for Morelli. I couldn't find him, but I knew he was close because my stomach felt hot and squishy. Spiro was in the lobby doing his best impersonation of God directing traffic.
'How's it going?' I said.
'Busy. Joe Loosey came in last night. Aneurysm. And Stan Radiewski is here. He was an Elk. The Elks always get a big turnout.'
'I have some good news and some bad news,' I said. 'The good news is . . . I think I found your caskets.'
'And the bad news?'
I took the blackened clasp out of my pocket. 'The bad news is . . . this is all that's left.' Spiro looked at the clasp. 'I don't get it.'
'Someone barbecued a bunch of caskets last night. Had them all stacked up in one of the loading bays at the pipe factory, soaked the caskets in gasoline, and lit a fuse. They were pretty badly burned, but there was enough of one to identify as a casket in a crate.'
'And you saw this? What else got burned? Was there anything else?' Like a few LAWS? 'From what I could see there were just caskets. You might want to check for yourself.'
'Christ,' Spiro said. 'I can't go now. Who's gonna baby-sit all these fucking Elks?'
'Louie?'
'Jesus. Not Louie. It's going to have to be you.'
'Oh no. Not me.'
'All you have to do is make sure there's hot tea and say a lot of crapola like . . . the Lord moves in mysterious ways. I'll only be gone a half-hour.' He dug his keys out of his pocket. 'Who was there when you got to the pipe factory?'
'The fire marshal, a uniform, some guy I didn't know, Joe Morelli, a bunch of firemen packing up.'
'They say anything worth remembering?'
'Nope.'
'You tell them the caskets belonged to me?'
'No. And I'm not staying. I want my finder's fee, and then I'm out of here.'
