The Impossible Fortress(53)

“On your car?”

“Exactly. A baby food jar on the hood of the car. So I get out of Pudding’s car and I go to move the jar, and what do you think’s inside it?”

Members Only guy looks amused. “I’m going to guess not baby food?”

“You’re goddamn right it’s not baby food.”

“Oh, no.”

“Dog turds. Little tiny dog turds. Like a jar of black olives.”

“On the hood of your car?”

“On the hood of my fucking Mustang.”

“Jesus. What are the odds?”

“Odds have nothing to do with this! Someone put it there on purpose. Someone collected dog turds, put them in a baby food jar, transported the jar all the way out to the hospital, and then placed it on the hood of my Mustang.”

“Kincaid?”

“He’s on my short list. Him and that sneaky fucker Art Wong. Tomorrow I’m going to bring the jar to Forensics, see if McConnell can lift a print.”

The guy telling the story turned to face me. He was carrying a Dixie cup full of water and handed it to me. I drank it immediately.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Is it Billy or Will?” he asked me.

“Huh?”

“Your friends call you Billy, but Zelinsky calls you Will. Who are you?”

“Billy,” I said.

“All right, Billy. My name’s Detective Gagliano but you can call me Dante. We’re pretty casual here. This is my buddy Hooper.”

Hooper gave me a two-finger salute. Then he closed the door, sank into a chair, and pulled the brim of his ball cap over his face, like he was ready to take a snooze.

“You got banged up pretty bad,” Dante said, gesturing to the cut on my forehead. “Does that hurt?”

“Not really.”

“How about some more water?”

“No, thank you.”

“You’re sure? You drank that first cup pretty fast.”

I was still very thirsty. “All right,” I said. “Thank you.”

He made a big fuss of scooping up the cup and leaving the room to return to the water cooler. While he was gone, Hooper closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. I realized that I knew him from the store, I knew both of these guys from the store. They were among the regular group of cops who visited daily to receive free newspapers or razz Zelinsky about the Yankees.

Dante returned with a second cup, and I immediately drank it.

“More?” he asked.

“He’s fine!” Hooper said. He shot me a helpless, exasperated look. Then he said, “I’d like to get home before dawn, if that’s okay with you guys.”

“Sorry,” Dante said. “All right, let’s start.”

He sat in the third chair and immediately sprang up again. “Shit, I nearly forgot. I think this is yours.” He reached in his back pocket for a rolled-up Playboy magazine. “You left it in the car.”

“Is that Vanna?” Hooper asked, sitting up and snatching the magazine. “Howard Stern’s been talking up these pictures for weeks. He says they’re incredible.”

“So let’s see them already,” Dante said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

Hooper placed the magazine in the center of the table where all of us could see it. He hesitated for just a moment, toying with us. Then he opened to the pictorial, and there she was, America’s Sweetheart, standing before an open refrigerator in black lingerie. She was facing the camera and smiling coyly, like all three of us had entered the apartment and caught her unaware. Hooper turned the pages and the lingerie fell away; Vanna rolled across her bed, whispered into a telephone, and tickled a kitten. And even though I was sitting in a police station at three in the morning, the pictures still left me breathless. In spite of all the trouble they’d caused me, you could almost argue they were worth it.

“I don’t know about you guys,” Dante said, “but this is what I call a miracle. You put that face on that body? With those legs? And that ass? There’s just no other word to describe it. Miraculous.”

“I could look at these photos all night,” Hooper agreed, then turned to me. “Unfortunately . . .”

“Right,” Dante sighed. “Duty calls.” He raised the magazine to his lips, kissing some private part of Vanna’s anatomy, then placed the magazine to the side of the table. “Let’s keep her around for good luck. You can take her when you go.”

“All right,” I said, and already I felt considerably better. These guys were obviously not like the hard-assed detectives I’d seen in movies like Dirty Harry or Cobra. Instead they were more like the cool, laidback detectives I’d seen on TV. They were like Magnum, P.I.

Hooper reached into his pocket for a small microcassette recorder. “Chief makes us do everything by the book,” he explained. “Hope you don’t mind.” He pressed Record on the device and placed it in the center of the table. “You want to call your mom again before we start?”

I shook my head. “That’s okay.”

“Anyone else you want to call? We recommend you have a grown-up for this conversation.”

“No, I’m cool. I just want to tell you guys what happened.”