'At home, reading, watching television.'
'I might do some of that.'
Morelli pulled into my parking lot and rolled to a stop. 'When you're up to it, you need to stop in at the station and make a formal report.'
I jumped out. 'Okay.'
'Hold it,' Morelli said, 'I'll go up with you.'
'Not necessary. Thanks anyway. I'm fine.'
Morelli was grinning again. 'Afraid you might lose control in the hall and beg me to come in and make love to you?'
'In your dreams, Morelli.'
When I got up to my apartment the red light on my phone machine was blinking, blinking, blinking. And Bunchy was asleep on my couch.
'What are you doing here?' I yelled at him. 'Get up! Get out! This isn't the Hotel Ritz. And do you realize what you're doing is breaking and entering?'
'Boy, don't get your panties in a bunch,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Where have you been? I got worried about you. You didn't come home last night.'
'What are you, my mother?'
'Hey, I'm concerned, that's all. You should be happy to have a friend like me.' He looked around. 'Do you see my shoes?'
'You are not my friend. And your shoes are under the coffee table.'
He retrieved the shoes and laced them up. 'So where were you?'
'I had a job. I was moonlighting.'
'Must have been some job. Your mother called and said she heard you blew someone up.'
'You talked to my mother?'
'She left a message on your machine.' He was looking around again. 'Do you see my gun?'
I turned on my heel and went in to the kitchen to play my messages.
'Stephanie, it's your mother. What's this about an explosion? Edna Gluck heard from her son, Ritchie, that you blew someone up? Is this true? Hello? Hello?'
Bunchy was right. Damn that big-mouth Ritchie.
I played the second message. Breathing. As was message number three.
'What's with the breathing?' Bunchy wanted to know, standing in the middle of my kitchen floor, hands stuck in his pockets, his rumpled, beyond-faded, plaid flannel shirt hanging loose.
'Wrong number.'
'You'd tell me if you had a problem, right? Because, you know, I have a way of solving problems like that.'
No doubt in my mind. He didn't look like a bookie, but I had no trouble at all believing he could solve
He prowled through my cabinets, looking for food, finding nothing that interested him. Guess he wasn't crazy about hamster pellets.
'I wanted to know if you found anything,' he said. 'Like, do you have clues or something?'
'No. No clues. Nothing.'
'I thought you were supposed to be this hotshot detective.'
'I'm not a detective at all. I'm a bail enforcement agent.'
'Bounty hunter.'
'Yeah. Bounty hunter.'
'So, that's okay. You go out and find people. That's what we want to have happen here.'
'How much money did Fred owe you?'
'Enough that I want it. Not enough to make a man feel like he had to disappear. I'm a pretty nice guy, you know. It isn't like I go around breaking people's knees 'cause they don't pay up. Well, okay, so sometimes I might break a knee, but it's not like it happens every day.'
I rolled my eyes.
'You know what I think you should do?' Bunchy said. 'I think you should go check at his bank. See if he's taken any money out. I can't do things like that on account of I look like I might break people's knees. But you're a pretty girl. You probably got a friend works in the bank. People would want to do a favor for you.'
'I'll think about it. Now go away.'
Bunchy ambled to the door. He took a beat-up brown leather jacket from one of the pegs on the wall and turned to look at me. His expression was serious. 'Find him.'
What hung unsaid in the air was . . . or else.
