Dating Is Murder

I said, “So catching him might involve the DEA as well as the FBI?”

“Everyone wants a piece of this guy. Someone’ll get him, too, because he’s cocky. By the way-” There was a pause. “Happy Thanksgiving. I did a little checking, and you still want the address of that pickup you were interested in buying, grab a pencil.”

“The-what?-oh. Oh!” He’d called the DMV for me. “You’re a saint, Pete.”

“No, we’re friends. I don’t know anything about the truck, how many miles on it, so forth, so you’re on your own, if you catch my drift. And you didn’t hear about it from me. I have mixed feelings about this. I can’t check it out myself, for… reasons. So you have to promise me to take along someone who knows… trucks.”

I glanced at Joey, sitting on a table, long legs swinging, reading a copy of some glossy periodical called the Robb Report. I smiled. “I promise.”

“Vic Mauser. That’s the guy’s name,” I said. Joey’s old Mercedes zipped west toward the Brentwood address Cziemanski had given me. “Sounds like an assault rifle. Shouldn’t we wait until daylight to do this? And what is it we’re doing, by the way?”

“Surprising him,” Joey said. “We won’t get a signed confession, but if we do this right, we’ll find out if he knows about A

“How?”

“By asking. He doesn’t expect it, so there’s this window of opportunity while he gets his story together where we’ll see it in his face. We only get one shot, but it’s perfect. Thanksgiving: wine, football, L-tryptophan, the stuff in turkey that makes you sleepy. He’s mellow.”

“He didn’t look mellow three days ago,” I said. “You really think he spent today giving thanks?”

“You think only nice people do holidays?”

I felt a qualm of conscience. “What about your Thanksgiving, Joey? Where’s Elliot?”

She kept her eyes on the road. “Atlantic City. Elliot thinks holidays are sappy. It’s okay, I got calls from four hundred family members, which more than compensated. You know, I bet Cziemanski can’t check out Vic Mauser himself because it’s not his case and it wouldn’t be cool. I’m also guessing he asked around and found out the sheriff’s guys don’t think much of the A

“What about the FBI?” I asked. “Do you think-oops.”

Joey’s head swiveled to me. “Your boyfriend’s in the FBI? Not the DEA?”

“Oh, God. I can’t believe I just said that. I promised I wouldn’t-”

“Oh, boy, a Fed. A fun Fed, better than DEA. My cousin Stewart’s FBI, so- Look, Chenault. What’s the number?”

We parked on Barrington and walked to Chenault, a small street ending in a cul-de-sac, as Joey reassured me about my indiscretion. “It’s their own fault. Anyone who’s known you five minutes can see you’re not wired for deception. Where’s Vic’s pickup?”

“They must have underground parking,” I said as we reached the building. “Unless he’s out assaulting someone.”

“Wollie, check this out.” Joey pointed to the intercom box, with its dialing instructions and list of tenants. Code 004 was Mauser/Wooster.

“Vic Mauser… lives with Bing Wooster?” I said, confused. We tried on the possibility of Bing being gay. It wasn’t a good fit. And Vic, even on short acquaintance, suggested severe heterosexuality. “This is stupid,” I said. “Sane people don’t go knocking on the doors of dangerous strangers, and how do we even get into the building-”

“Look, if he’s lying, we pretend to believe him and walk away. There’s no reason for him to shoot us in the back. And relax. We’ll get in. I have a plan.”

Joey’s plan involved a tenant turning up with a key or a visitor letting us in with them. When this didn’t happen she began punching codes. The intercom squawked. Joey squawked back, “It’s me!” On the fourth try, someone hit the buzzer.

We found 2E. We looked at each other. Joey pressed the doorbell.

A woman answered the door. She wore maroon jeans and an argyle sweater. Her hair was red, not Joey’s Irish setter red, but a short, fluffy tangerine. She looked like she’d packed sixty years of living into forty years of life. “Yeah?”

“Hi,” I said. “We’re looking for Vic Mauser?”

She frowned. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Pe

“Someone to see you,” she yelled back, not taking her eyes from me.

“Who?!”

“I don’t know!”

There was a short curse. I imagined the goateed man hauling himself out of a sofa, with unbuttoned trousers and unbuckled belt, dining recovery measures.

He appeared at Pe

“Who?” Pe

A child appeared in the doorway, wearing pajamas with attached feet. She held a fork in her mouth. Her hair looked like a bright orange Brillo pad, inherited from her mom. Vic glanced down. “Go back and finish your pie. Go on. Pe

“A

His eyebrows drew together. “What?”

“Where is she?” Joey asked.

“Who?” Vic barked.

“A

“I can’t even understand what you’re saying. Who buzzed you in, by the way?”

“A friend of ours is missing,” I said. “We thought maybe Bing and you-maybe that’s what your argument was about the other night. A

He looked back and forth at us. “I don’t know what this is about, but you tell that slime bucket Wooster that his kid waited all day for him to show. If he can’t stop reading his own fan mail long enough to pick up the phone-”

“The slime bucket,” Joey said, “didn’t send us. The slime bucket’s not a friend of ours. We just have the misfortune to work with him. Sorry.”

I was already pulling Joey down the hall. “Sorry to disturb your Thanksgiving. Really.”

The elevator smelled like curry. Joey and I were melancholy with thoughts of small girls and absent fathers. There was also something about the idea of fan mail that bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what.

“So when Vic talked about making people disappear,” Joey said, “I guess he meant Bing’s child, taking her out of state, maybe, if Bing didn’t show some interest.”

“I’ve heard Bing mention a wife or ex-wife,” I said, “so that must be her. Pe

“The whole thing depresses me.”

“Joey,” I said. “Does the show get fan mail?”

“Well, it gets mail, and some of it’s positive. Mostly on the Web site. Don’t you check the Web site? No, of course not. Anyhow. I really hoped to co

I agreed. Much as I wanted Bing to be Little Fish, he was more of a worm. I couldn’t imagine him being of interest to some Big Fish, or scaring A

Scariness, of course, is relative. For instance, in ninety minutes I had a date. It would be my first nontelevised date in four months, since the night Doc left my life and broke my heart. And I was scared stupid.