Chapter Fourteen
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I put Herbert up front with me, and Lula and Jug in back with the cupcakes. By the time we got to the Throgs Neck Bridge, the cupcakes were half gone, and Lula had opened one of her screw-cap wine bottles. They didn’t have glasses, so Jug and Lula were chugging out of the bottle between cupcakes.
We hit traffic on the Cross Bronx and progress slowed to a crawl. After an hour we inched our way past fire trucks, cop cars, a tow truck, and a large black cinder that used to be a car. It was almost eight o’clock when I got on the turnpike.
“It’s too quiet in the back seat,” I said to Herbert. “What are they doing back there?”
“I’m afraid to look,” Herbert said.
“Look anyway.”
He turned in his seat and flashed his phone light on Lula and Jug. “They’re asleep.”
“They’re okay? They’re breathing?”
“I don’t know if they’re okay, but I think they’re breathing.”
“Good enough. Unless we hit more traffic, we should be home around nine.”
“I’m not going to last until nine,” Herbert said. “I’m hungry. I had doughnuts for lunch and nothing since.”
I was having the same thought. I was hungry. I was tired of driving. My ass was falling asleep. I had a leg cramp. I needed a potty break. And it wasn’t as if I had to get to Trenton by a certain time. Connie hadn’t been able to find a judge who would do us a favor and set bail after court hours. That meant I would have to turn Bruno over to the police and he’d be held until Monday. I would do it, but I wouldn’t feel good about it. So bottom line was, I might as well stop for coffee and a burger.
“There’s a service area just ahead,” I told Herbert. “I’ll pull in there. We can get something to eat and use the restroom.”
Five minutes later, I took the turnoff and cruised into the rest stop. There weren’t a lot of cars in the massive lot. Rush hour had come and gone, and day-tripping tourists were locked away in budget hotels.
“We can take turns going into the building,” I said to Herbert. “I don’t want to leave Lula and Bruno asleep all by themselves in the car. You go in first.”
I watched him walk to the building, he disappeared inside, and Morelli called.
“Sorry not to have phoned sooner,” he said. “I’m on call and I got tapped to check out a bloodbath on Bendle Street. I’m going to be stuck here for at least another hour. Where are you? There’s a lot of background noise.”
“I’m at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike. I hear the noise too. I don’t know what it is.”
“What are you doing on the turnpike?”
“I went to Long Island to pick up Jug.”
“And?”
“I have him in the back seat with Lula. Is there anything new on Zoran Djordjevic?”
“Nothing good. He’s sitting tight somewhere.”
“I know the neighborhood was canvassed. Did anything come of that?”
“People remember him moving in. And it sounds like he was friendly at first and then it was almost as if he didn’t live there anymore.”
“How about the Werly family? Was he friendly with Julie?”
“Not in a way that seemed to deserve further attention. Just the normal wave and hello to her and her family. I have to go. The ME just arrived. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Be careful driving.”
The noise from outside was a lot louder. It was the distinctive wop, wop, wop of a helicopter. A spotlight swept over my car and scanned the surrounding area. My immediate thought was that police were searching for someone. The helicopter touched down in the lot at some distance from me and I froze. It was a Sikorsky. I was thinking, no way, give me a break, while my brain was racing through my options. I could try to get Lula’s gun out of her tote bag and bluff my way into keeping Jug. That would involve climbing into the back seat and searching through her bag. I didn’t think I had time for that. Lou and another very large man were out of the helicopter, headed in my direction. Second option was to stomp on the gas and roar out of the lot and onto the road. That would involve abandoning Herbert. This had a lot of appeal, but I couldn’t do it. No man left behind.
I stayed at the wheel and lowered my window when Lou approached. “Did you just drop in for a burger and fries?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. “We were in the neighborhood.” He looked over my shoulder at Lula and Jug in the back seat. “Dead or alive?” he asked.
“Sleeping it off,” I told him. “They ate a dozen doughnuts and chugged a bottle of wine. How did you find me?”
“We plant AirTags on him. Every now and then he forgets to take his meds and he wanders away.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me keep him.”
“The family wouldn’t like it. He’s on ice for a while.”
I popped the door locks and Lou dragged Jug out of the car and stood him up.
Jug half opened his eyes and leaned into Lou. “Hey, Lou, how’s it hanging?”
“Do I get a receipt for merchandise returned?” I asked Lou.
“Stop by the office and I’ll give you another fruit basket,” Lou said.
Lou and the big guy got on either side of Jug and walked him to the helicopter. They went up the stairs, the door closed, and the helicopter lifted off and disappeared into the night.
Lula woke up. “What’s going on? Where is everybody? I was dreaming that I was being chased by a helicopter.”
“We’re at a rest stop,” I said. “Herbert got hungry.”
“Where’s Jug?”
“Lou came and got him.”
“Are you kidding me? When did this happen?”
“A couple minutes ago.”
“I missed it!”
“There wasn’t much to miss,” I said. “The helicopter landed in the parking lot, Lou and another guy got out and repossessed Jug, and the helicopter flew away with them.”
“That’s a bitch,” Lula said. “Is this the rest stop with Chick-fil-A?”
Twenty minutes later we were all back in the car with our bags of food. I wolfed down a double cheeseburger followed by a venti caffè mocha. Plus, I had an additional caffè mocha in the driver’s-side cupholder. I pulled out of the lot with Lula riding shotgun next to me, eating at a more leisurely pace.
“There’s something voodoo going on with Jug,” Lula said. “It’s not normal the way we keep almost bringing him in and then whoosh , he gets snatched away. And this is going on at the same time we got a vampire on the loose and we can’t find him. There’s stars in misalignment somewhere. It’s like when all those spooks got set loose in Ghostbusters .”
I thought an alternative explanation might be that I sucked as a bounty hunter.
“Call Connie,” I said to Lula. “Tell her she can stop trying to get a judge for Jug.”
I dropped Herbert off at the office and helped him transfer his equipment into his Prius. “Thanks for flying the drone,” I said. “It was really helpful.”
“This was great,” Herbert said. “Usually, I’m looking at a building or a park or something boring. This was like private investigator or CIA stuff. I’m sorry I didn’t see the helicopter land. That had to be exciting. I’ve never seen a helicopter land in person. At least I saw it leave. I was coming out of the building, and I saw it lift off. You probably see stuff like that all the time.”
“Not all the time,” I said.
“So, call me if you need anything,” Herbert said. “They were supposed to hang your television today. I hope they did a good job. I would have supervised, but since I couldn’t be there, I asked your building super to make sure everything was okay.”
“Television?”
“I hope it’s not too big, but I figure big is always better. Except for ears and noses. Mine might be borderline too big, but my mother thinks they’re perfect. I guess she should know, right?”
“Right.”
“I got you a premium package and it’s paid up for a year, so you don’t have to worry about anything. You can watch Netflix and Amazon Prime and all that stuff. I watch a lot of shows on BritBox. Maybe sometime we can watch some shows together. I could come over now to get you started if you want.”
“Jeez.”
“If tonight is bad, I could come over tomorrow.”
“I’ll call you,” I said. “I have to check my schedule. And I might be coming down with something. Maybe COVID.”
“Yeah, you look a little feverish. I thought it was just the caffè mochas. I get blotchy if I have too much caffeine.”
I got back behind the wheel and looked at myself in the rearview mirror. “Do I look feverish?” I asked Lula.
“You look fried,” Lula said. “I think you had too much mocha. Your one eye is twitching.”
I put my finger to it to make it stop.
“Maybe I should drive you home,” Lula said.
I pulled away from the curb. “You drank half a bottle of wine. I’m driving you home.”
“Okay, but then you have to pick me up tomorrow for whatever it is that we’re gonna do, because I won’t have my car.”
“Not a problem.”
“And since we’re on the topic… what are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I have to go home and think about it.”
“Are we going back to Long Island?”
“No.”
“That narrows down our activities to shopping, pedicure, or hunting a vampire.”
I idled in front of Lula’s apartment. “I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.”
“Should I bring garlic?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
I drove home on autopilot and parked, and while I was in the elevator I promised God I would be a better person if he would make sure Herbert wasn’t waiting for me in my apartment. I entered my apartment and looked around. No Herbert. Hard to tell if God had anything to do with it, but I’d be on my best behavior for a day or two just in case.
I said hello to Rex, dumped my messenger bag on the dining room table, and stood with my mouth open and my eyes wide, staring at the giant television attached to my living room wall. The remote and some instructional material were on the end table next to the couch. I turned the television on and flipped through a bunch of channels. The picture and sound were fantastic, but nothing jumped out at me that I’d want to see. I shut the television off and went back to the dining room and reviewed everything I had on Zoran. I went onto the internet and researched vampires. Some of them sort of looked like Zoran. Good thing I didn’t believe in vampires or else I’d have been pretty freaked out. My eye was twitching again. Stupid caffè mocha. I went into the kitchen and got a banana. Bananas and Pop-Tarts are two of my favorite things because you just peel off the wrapper and eat it. Pop-Tarts have an edge over bananas because they don’t turn black if you forget about them. I collected my thoughts while I ate the banana. Either Zoran actually believed he was a vampire or else he enjoyed the pretending. Maybe it was some of both those things. It could be hard to separate reality from lunacy when you were on shrooms and acid.