Two for the dough

personalized their carbon-copy houses, adding a garage here, a porch there. The houses had been modernized with vinyl siding of various muted shades. Bay windows had been inserted. Azalea bushes had been planted. And still the sameness prevailed.

Louie Moon's house was set apart by a bright turquoise paint job, a full array of Christmas lights, and a five-foot-tall plastic Santa strapped to a rusted TV antenna.

'Guess he gets into the spirit early,' Lula said.

From the droop of the lights haphazardly stapled to his house and the faded look to Santa, I'd guess he was in the spirit all year long.

The house didn't have a garage, and there were no cars in the driveway or parked at the curb. The house looked dark and undisturbed. I left Lula in the car and went to the front door. I knocked twice. No answer. The house was one floor built on a slab. The curtains were all open. Louie had nothing to hide. I circled the house, peeking into windows. The inside was neat and furnished with what I guessed to be an accumulation of discards. There was no sign of recent wealth. No boxes of ammo stacked on the kitchen table. Not a single assault rifle in sight. It looked to me like he lived alone. One cup and one bowl in the dish drain. One side of the double bed had been slept in.

I could easily see Louie Moon living here, content with his life because he had a little blue house. I toyed with the idea of illegal entry, but I couldn't produce enough motivation to warrant the intrusion.

The air was damp and cold and the ground felt hard underfoot. I pulled my jacket collar up and returned to the car.

'That didn't take long,' Lula said.

'Not much to see.'

'We going to the undertaker next?'

'Yeah.'

'Good thing he don't live where he do his thing. I don't want to see what they collect in those buckets at the end of those tables.'

It was heavy twilight by the time we got to Century Courts. The two-story buildings were red brick with white window trim. Doors were set in four-door clusters. There were five clusters to a building, which meant there were twenty apartments. Ten up and ten down. All of the buildings were set on pipestems coming off Demby. Four buildings per pipestem. Spiro had an end unit on the ground floor. His windows were dark, and his car wasn't in the lot. With Con in the hospital, Spiro was forced to keep long hours. The Buick was easily recognizable, and I didn't want to get caught if Spiro should decide to bop in for a fast change of socks, so I drove one pipestem over and parked.

'I bet we find some serious shit here,' Lula said, getting out of the car. 'I got a feeling about this one.'

'We're just going to scope things out,' I said. 'We're not going to do anything illegal . . . like breaking and entering.'

'Sure,' Lula said. 'I know that.'

We cut across the grassy area to the side of the buildings, walking casually, as if we were out for a stroll. Curtains were drawn on the windows in the front of Spiro's apartment, so we went to the back. Again, curtains were drawn. Lula tested the sliding patio door and the two windows and found them both to be locked.

'Ain't this a bitch?' she said. 'How we supposed to find anything out this way? And just when I had a feeling, too.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'I'd love to get into this apartment.' Lula swung her pocketbook in a wide arc and crashed it into Spiro's window, shattering the glass. 'Where there's a will, there's a way,' she said. My mouth dropped open, and when words finally came out they were in a whispered screech. 'I don't believe you did that! You just broke his window!'

'The Lord provides,' Lula said.

'I told you we weren't doing anything illegal. People can't just go around breaking windows.'

'Cagney would of done it.'

'Cagney would never have done that.'

'Would of.'

'Would not!'