“On the nose. So, what do you know about Abruzzi?”
Connie punched the name into her computer. In less than a minute, information started coming in. Home address, previous address, work history, wives, children, arrest history. She printed it out and handed it over to me. “We can find out his toothpaste brand and the size of his right nut, but it’ll take a little longer.”
“Tempting, but I don’t think I need to know his nut size just yet.”
“I bet they’re big.”
I clapped my hands over my ears. “I’m not listening!” I looked sideways at Connie.
“What else do you know about him?”
“I don’t know much. Just that he owns a bunch of real estate in the Burg and downtown. I’ve heard he’s not a nice guy, but I don’t know any details. A while back he was arrested on a minor racketeering charge. The charge was dropped due to lack of
“Morbid curiosity.”
“I got two skips in today. Laura Minello got picked up for shoplifting a couple weeks ago and was a no-show for her court appearance yesterday.”
“What did she shoplift?”
“A brand-new BMW. Red. Took it right off the lot in broad daylight.”
“Test drive?”
“Yeah, only she didn’t tell anyone she was taking it, and she tested it for four days before they caught her.”
“You’ve got to respect a woman with that kind of initiative.”
Connie passed me two files. “The second failure to appear is Andy Bender. ”He’s a repeat for domestic violence. I think you might have picked him up on a previous charge. He’s probably home, drunk as a skunk, without a clue if it’s Monday or Friday.“
I flipped through Bender’s file. Connie was right. I’d tangled with him before. He was a scrawny wasteoid of a man. And he was a nasty drunk.
“This is the guy who came after me with a chain saw,” I said.
“Yes, but look on the bright side,” Connie said. “He didn’t have a gun.”
I tucked the two files into my bag. “Maybe you could run Evelyn Soder through the computer and see if you could pull out her innermost secrets.”
“Innermost secrets is a forty-eight-hour search.”
“Put it on my tab. I have to take off. I need to talk to the Wizard.”
“The Wizard hasn’t been answering his page,” Connie said. “Tell him to call me.”
The Wizard is Ranger. He’s the Wizard because he’s magic. He mysteriously passes through locked doors. He seems to read minds. He’s able to refuse dessert. And he can give me a hot flash with the touch of a fingertip. I had mixed feelings about calling him. We were currently in a strange place, filled with double entendre and unresolved sexual tension. But we were also partners, of sorts, and he had contacts I’d never have. The Annie search would go much faster if I brought Ranger in.
I got into my car and dialed Ranger on my cell phone. I left a message on his machine and read through Bender’s file. Didn’t sound like much new had happened since I last saw Andy Bender. He was still unemployed. He was still beating on his wife. And he still lived in the projects on the other side of town. It wasn’t going to be hard to find Bender. The hard part was going to be wrestling him into the CR-V.
Hey, I thought, no sense being negative right from the start. Look on the bright side, right? Be a cup-is- half-full person. Maybe Mr. Bender will be sorry he missed his court date. Maybe he’ll be happy to see me. Maybe he won’t have any gas in his chain saw. I put the car in gear and headed across town. It was a pleasant afternoon, and the projects looked habitable. There was a hopefulness to the dirt front yards that suggested perhaps this year some grass might grow. Perhaps the junkers at the curb would stop leaking oil. Perhaps a Lotto ticket would pay out big. But then again, perhaps not. I parked in front of Bender’s unit and watched for a while. For lack of a better word, this part of the complex would be described as garden apartments. Bender lived on the ground floor. He had a battered wife and, thankfully, no kids.
