Four to Score

That sounded reasonable to me . . . except for the paring knife with blood and pieces of hair stuck to it.

Lula bent at the waist and examined the towel, wrapped turban style. 'Must have been a good clonk she took. Lots of blood.'

Usually when people die their bodies evacuate and the smell gets bad fast. Mrs. Nowicki didn't smell dead. Mrs. Nowicki smelled like Jim Beam.

Carl and I were both registering this oddity, looking at each other sideways when Mrs. Nowicki opened one eye and fixed it on Lula.

'YOW!' Lula yelled, jumping back a foot, knocking into Sally. 'Her eye popped open!'

'The better to see you with,' Mrs. Nowicki rasped out, alto voiced, one pack short of lung cancer.

Carl stepped into Mrs. Nowicki's line of sight. 'We thought you were dead.'

'Not yet, honey,' Mrs. Nowicki said. 'But I'll tell you, I have one hell of a headache.' She raised a shaky hand and felt the towel. 'Oh, yeah, now I remember.'

'What happened?'

'It was an accident. I was trying to cut my hair, and my hand slipped, and I gave myself a little nick. It was bleeding some, so I wrapped my head in a towel and took a few medicinal hits from the bottle.' She struggled to sit. 'Don't exactly know what happened after that.'

Lula had her hand on her hip. 'Looks to me like you drained the bottle and passed out. Think you took one too many of them medicinal hits.'

'Looks to me like she didn't take enough,' Sally murmured. 'I liked her better dead.'

'I need a cigarette,' Mrs. Nowicki said. 'Anybody got a cigarette?'

I could hear cars pulling up outside and footsteps in the front room. The second uniform came in, followed by a suit.

'She isn't dead,' Carl explained.

'Maybe she used to be,' Lula said. 'Maybe she's one of them living dead.'

'Maybe you're one of them nut cases,' Mrs. Nowicki said.

Lights from an EMS truck flashed outside, and two paramedics wandered into the kitchen.

I eased my way out the door, to the porch and onto the lawn. I didn't especially want to be there when they unwound the towel.

'I don't know about you,' Lula said, 'but I'm ready to leave this party.'

I didn't have a problem with that. Carl knew where to find me if there were questions. Didn't look like there was anything criminal here, anyway. Drunken lush slices scalp with a paring knife and passes out. Probably happens all the time.

We piled into the Firebird and hauled ass back to the office. I said good-bye to Lula and Sally, slid behind the wheel of my CRX and motored home. When things calmed down I'd go back with some sort of long-handled mechanism for retrieving the bottle. I didn't want to explain to the cops about the clues.

In the meantime, there were a few phone calls I could make. I'd only gotten partially through Eddie Kuntz's list. It wouldn't hurt to run through the rest of the names.

Mrs. Williams, one of my neighbors, was in the lobby when I swung through the doors. 'I've got a terrible ringing in my ears,' she said. 'And I'm having a dizzy spell.'

Another neighbor, Mrs. Balog, was standing next to Mrs. Williams, checking her mailbox. 'It's the hardening of the arteries. Evelyn Krutchka on the third floor has it something awful. I heard her arteries are just about turned to stone.'

Most of the people in my building were seniors. There were a couple of single mothers with babies, Ernie Wall and his girlfriend, May, and one other woman my age, who only spoke Spanish. We were the segment of society on fixed incomes or incomes of dubious reliability. We weren't interested in tennis or sitting at poolside. For the most part we were a quiet, peaceful group, armed to the teeth for no good reason, violent only when a premium parking slot was at stake.

I took the stairs to the second floor, hoping they'd have some effect on the pie I'd had for breakfast. I let myself into my apartment and made an instant left turn into the kitchen. I stuck my head in the refrigerator and pushed things around some, searching for the perfect lunch. After a few minutes of this I decided on a hard-boiled egg and a banana.

I sat at my dining room table, which is actually in a little alcove off my living room, and I ate my egg and started on the list of names and businesses Kuntz had given me. I dialed Maxine's cleaner first. No, they hadn't seen her lately. No, she didn't have any clothes to pick up. I called my cousin Marion, who worked at Maxine's bank, and asked about recent transactions. No new postings, Marion said. The most recent transaction was two weeks ago when she withdrew three hundred dollars from the outside ATM.

Last name on the list was a 7-Eleven in north Trenton, a quarter mile from Eddie Kuntz and Mama Nowicki. The night manager had just come on when I called. She said a woman meeting Maxine's description had been in the night before. She remembered the woman because she was a regular. It had been late at night and store traffic had been slow. The woman had been chatty and had relieved the tedium.

I stuffed Maxine's photo into my shoulder bag and took off for the 7-Eleven to confirm the identification. I parked nose-in to the curb at the front of the store and stared beyond the plate glass windows to the register. There were four men in line. Three still in suits, looking rumpled from the heat and the workday. By the time I made my way through the door, there were two men left. I waited for them to complete their business before introducing myself to the woman behind the counter.

She extended her hand. 'Helen Badijian. I'm the night manager. We spoke on the phone.'

Her brown hair was plaited in a single braid that reached to her shoulder blades, and her face was devoid of makeup with the exception of eyes lined in smudgy black liner. 'I didn't get it straight on the phone,' Helen said.