to the house in Deal.
Bob was taking the excitement in stride, sound asleep in the backseat. I wasn't feeling nearly so relaxed. I don't usually tail mobsters. Although technically, Hannibal Ramos wasn't a Mob member. Well, actually I didn't know that for sure, but my understanding was that the Mob was a different fraternal order from the gun cartel.
Hannibal exited Route 195 at the Parkway, drove two exits north, then cut over to Asbury Park, where he left- turned onto Ocean Avenue and followed the road to Deal.
Deal is an oceanside town where gardeners coax grass to grow in the inhospitable salt air, nannies commute in from nearby Long Branch, and property value supersedes all issues of national origin. The houses are large and sometimes behind gated drives. The residents are mostly plastic surgeons and rug merchants. And the only truly memorable event ever to take place in Deal was the gunning down of crime boss Benny 'The Roach' Raguchi in the Sea Breeze Motel in 1982.
Hannibal was two cars ahead of me. He slowed and signaled for a right turn into a walled compound with a gated drive. The house sat back on the dune, so the second story and roof were visible from the road and the rest of the property was hidden behind the pink stucco wall. The gate was fancy wrought-iron scrollwork. Alexander Ramos, international arms dealer and all-around macho man, lived in a pink house behind a pink wall. Go figure. Never happen in the Burg. Living in a pink house in the Burg would be right up there with castration.
Probably the pink stucco was very Mediterranean. And probably in the summer, when the awnings were unrolled and the porch furniture was uncovered, and the sun and the heat washed over the Jersey shore, the pink house felt like life itself. In March it looked like it was waiting for the Prozac to kick in. Pale and cold and stolid.
I caught a glimpse of a man exiting the jag as I cruised past the house. Same build and hair color as Hannibal, so it must be Hannibal. Unless, of course, Hannibal saw me in the tree again, and then saw me watching from the street and had a look-alike next-door neighbor sneak over through the backyards and drive the jag to Deal, just to throw me off.
'What do you think?' I asked Bob.
Bob opened an eye, gave me a blank stare, and went back to sleep.
That was what I thought, too.
I drove about a quarter-mile down Ocean Avenue, hung a U-turn, and made another pass by the pink house. I parked out of sight, around the corner. I tucked my hair up, under a Metallica ball cap, put on some dark glasses, grabbed Bob's leash, and set off toward the Ramos compound. Deal was a civilized town with pristine cement sidewalks designed with nannies and baby strollers in mind. Also very nice for snoopers masquerading as dogwalkers.
I was a few feet from the gate when a black Town Car rolled up. The gates opened and the Town Car slid through. Two men in front. The back windows were tinted. I fussed with Bob's leash and let him sniff around some. The Town Car stopped at the porticoed house entrance, and the two men in front got out. One went around to get bags from the trunk. The other man opened the door for the passenger in back. The passenger looked to be in his sixties. Medium height. Slim. Dressed in sports coat and slacks. Wavy gray hair. From the way people were dancing attendance I guessed this was Alexander Ramos. Probably flew in for his son's burial. Hannibal came out to greet the older man. A younger, slimmer version of Hannibal appeared in the doorway to the house but didn't descend the stairs. Ulysses, the middle son, I thought.
No one looked especially happy at the reunion. Understandable, I guess, considering the circumstances. Hannibal said something to the older man. The older man stiffened and smacked him on the side of the head. It wasn't a hard smack. Not something designed to knock a guy out. It was more of a statement.
Still, I reflexively flinched. And even at this distance I could see Hannibal clamp his teeth together.
6
HERE'S THE THING that stuck in my brain all the way home. If you were a father grieving over losing a son, would you greet your firstborn with a smack in the head?
'Hey, what do I know,' I said to Bob. 'Maybe they're going for Dysfunctional Family of the Year.'
And to tell the truth, it's always a comfort to discover a family more dysfunctional than my own. Not that my family is all that dysfunctional, by Jersey standards.
When I got to Hamilton Township I stopped at the Shop Rite, hauled out my cell phone, and dialed my mother.
'I'm at the meat counter,' I said. 'I want to make a meatloaf. What do I need?'
There was silence at the other end, and I could imagine my mother making the sign of the cross, wondering what could possibly have inspired her daughter to want to make a meatloaf, hoping against hope that it was a man.
'A meatloaf,' my mother finally said.
'It's for Grandma,' I told her. 'She needs a meatloaf.'
'Of course,' my mother said. 'What was I thinking?'
I CALLED MY mother again when I got home. 'Okay, I'm home,' I said. 'Now what do I do with this stuff?'
'You mix it together and put it in a loaf pan and bake it at three hundred and fifty degrees for an hour.'
'You didn't say anything about a loaf pan when I was at the store!' I wailed.
'You don't have a loaf pan?'
'Well, of course I have a loaf pan. I just meant… Never mind.'
'Good luck,' my mother said.
Bob was sitting in the middle of the kitchen, taking it all in.
'I don't have a loaf pan,' I told Bob. 'But hey, we're not gonna let a little thing like that stop us, are we?'
I dumped the ground beef into a bowl along with the other essential meatloaf ingredients. I added an egg and watched it slime across the surface. I poked it with a spoon.
'Eeeeyeu,' I said to Bob.
Bob wagged his tail. Bob looked like he loved gross stuff.
I mashed at the mess with the spoon, but the egg wouldn't mix in. I took a deep breath and plunged in with both hands. After a couple of minutes of hand squishing, everything was nice and mushy. I shaped it into a snowman. And then I shaped it into Humpty Dumpty. And then I smashed it flat. Smashed flat, it looked a lot like what I'd left in the McDonald's parking lot. Finally I rolled it into two big meatballs.
I'd bought a frozen banana cream pie for dessert, so I slid the pie out of its aluminum plate onto a dinner plate and used the pie plate for the giant meatballs.
'Necessity is the mother of invention,' I told Bob.
I put the meatballs in the oven, cut up some potatoes and set them to cooking, and opened a can of creamed corn and dumped it in a bowl so I could heat it up in the microwave at the last minute. Cooking wasn't so bad, I thought. In fact, it was a lot like sex. Sometimes it didn't seem like such a good idea in the beginning, but then after you got into it…
I set the table for two, and the phone rang just as I was finishing.
'Yo, babe,' Ranger said.
'Yo yourself. I have some news. The car that came to visit Hannibal last night belongs to Terry Gilman. I should have recognized her when she got out of the car, but I only saw her from the back, and I wasn't expecting her.'
'Probably carrying condolences from Vito.'
'I didn't realize Vito and Ramos were friends.'
'Vito and Alexander co-exist.'
'Another thing,' I said. 'This morning I followed Hannibal to the house in Deal.' Then I told Ranger about the older man in the Town Car, and the smack in the head, and the appearance of a younger man who I thought was Ulysses Ramos.
