“Bob and I are going to wait in the car,” I said to Lula. “I have some emails to catch up on.”
Lula came down a half hour later. “We got everything all straightened out,” she said. “He has good ideas and insurance is going to pay for some of it, and my landlord is going to pay for some of the improvements. And we’re going to discuss it at dinner tonight at his house. It turns out that he likes to cook. It’s a wonderful quality in a man. He said he learned to cook from his mama. Having his own house is another wonderful quality. Plus, he has an excellent tool belt. I noticed it contained a big hammer. It’s always a good sign when a man has a sizable hammer.”
I hadn’t noticed Julio’s hammer, but I felt like I was supposed to comment.
“No doubt,” I said. “He had a hell of a hammer.”
“Damn skippy.”
Lula took the Scargucci file from me and paged through it. “Scargucci lives on Makinnon Street,” she said. “And he’s a car mechanic at that fancy foreign-car dealer on Route 33. Probably he’s at work now.”
I left Lula’s neighborhood, got onto Hamilton, and followed it to Route 33. The dealership was just past the Regal Diner and the Dirty Car Wash.
“I would have dressed different if I knew we were coming here,” Lula said. “I would have worn something with a little glam.”
Lula was wearing a magenta wrap top that had a deep V-neck and some shimmer to it. Her giant boobs were barely contained in the top, so that there was a lot of flesh oozing out of the neckline and about a quarter mile of cleavage showing. Her skirt was black spandex and ended a couple inches below her hooha. She was wearing black six-inch FMPs and a glittery metallic magenta wig. This was her standard for casual work wear.
It was no surprise that Julio asked her to his house for dinner. He’d looked like his eyes were going to fall out of his head and roll around on the ground when he spied Lula.
I parked in the car dealer’s area reserved for service, and Lula and Bob and I strolled into the six-bay garage. I asked for Henry Scargucci and was directed to the third bay.
Scargucci was average height, string-bean thin, and he reminded me of my cousin Vinnie, who looked like the human version of a ferret. He had a vintage Porsche on the lift behind him, and he was looking at data on the computer in front of him. I assumed he was reading the car’s vital signs.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Henry Scargucci?”
He turned and looked at me, and then he looked at Lula and dropped the wrench that had been in his hand. Hard to tell if it was over the cleavage or the hair. It would definitely have been about the skirt if she’d bent over.
“Yeah,” he said, after he retrieved his wrench. “What’s up?”
I gave him my name and my mission.
“We need you to come downtown with us to re-up,” I said. “It won’t take long. And I’d rather not cuff you in front of your coworkers, so it would be good if you could explain to your boss than you need an hour off and just walk out with us.”
“Okay, I get that,” he said. “I don’t want to make a big deal of this. I like my job.”
Ten minutes later, we were in the Rangeman SUV with Scargucci.
“You look like you’re not too stupid,” Lula said to him. “Why were you trying to sell hot stuff to a cop?”
“I didn’t know he was a cop. He didn’t look like a cop. My fixer set it up, just like always.”
“Bummer,” Lula said.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Are you married?” Lula asked him.
“No,” he said. “Divorced.”
“Do you have a house?”
“Yeah. It’s nice. The bitch wife didn’t want it. She said the bathroom lighting was all wrong. She got the dog, and I got the house. It was a good deal. The dog had an attitude. She was ten pounds, and she barked all day.” Scargucci looked at Bob. “Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs, and you seem like a nice dog. It’s just that dogs decide who they like and who they don’t like, and this dog didn’t like me. Peed on my side of the bed and ate my underwear. I was nice to it too, but it didn’t matter.”
I could see that Bob was considering the part about eating underwear. Eating underwear was one of Bob’s favorite pastimes.
“Can you cook?” Lula asked him.
“I can get by. I don’t have a lot of time to cook what with working at the dealership and hijacking trucks.”
“I hear you,” Lula said. “Cooking takes time. And you gotta have a stove.”
“I like your hair,” Scargucci said to Lula. “If you don’t mind my asking, is it natural?”
“I got it online,” Lula said, “but I got natural hair too.”
“You’re next door to the Dirty Car Wash,” I said to Scargucci. “Is that owned by Ray Geara?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They’re all over the state.”
“Does he buy cars from your dealership?”
“No. He’s a Mercedes guy. Likes them new. Buys them from the Mercedes dealership. Sometimes we get one of his used to sell. One of his VPs buys from us. Frankie Plover. He likes flash but he has limited funds. He’ll come in all excited about a Lamborghini but he’s gotta feed his coke habit. Between you and me, he’s kind of a whack job. I mean, I don’t sell him cars. I just fix them, so what do I care, right?”
Right. But I cared. Frankie Plover had just moved to the top of my list of crazy people who might do anything.
“I could see you’re a mechanic with integrity,” Lula said to Scargucci.
“And you’re a lady with class,” Scargucci said. “When I make bail, we should get together.”
“I’m all about it,” Lula said.
We checked Scargucci in at the police station and called Connie to come bail him out.
“That was easy,” Lula said when we were walking back to the SUV. “He was okay. I figure he might be good as a backup.”
“He hijacks trucks,” I said.
“Eighty percent of all the men I know hijacked a truck at one time or another,” Lula said. “If I had to eliminate men who hijack trucks I’d never get to go out. And it’s not like he deals drugs. We’re talking about toasters and sneakers.”
My phone buzzed and the fire marshal’s name and number appeared on my screen.
“Yo, Jeremy,” I said. “What’s the word?”
“The word is that it’s not as bad as the last time you got firebombed. I assume you already know this since the tape on your door has been disturbed.”
“I took a quick look this morning. Is it officially safe to go in?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have information on the cause?”
“It looks like it was a good old-fashioned Molotov cocktail fired from a can cannon. There were shards of what I’m guessing was a beer bottle and the charred remains of half of a can. From the amount of destruction, I’m thinking there wasn’t a lot of accelerant and you didn’t have a lot of fast-burning material in the room. Your bed and a chest of drawers. Once the fire got to the living room it had more to work with, but you had a citizen go in with a handheld extinguisher and then the fire department arrived.”
“Thanks for the call,” I said.
“Do you ever think about finding a different line of work?”
“Constantly.”