“Go for it,” Connie said.
Lula packed herself into her jacket and grabbed her pocketbook. “This is gonna be good,” she said. “This is gonna be like Cagney and Lacey.”
I searched the big wall map for Moon's address. “Okay by me if it's okay wi
th Connie, but I want to be Cagney.”
“No way! I want to be Cagney,” Lula said.
“I said it first.”
Lula stuck her lower lip out and narrowed her eyes. “Was my idea, and I'm not doing it if I can't be Cagney.”
I looked at her. “We aren't serious about this, are we?”
“Hunh,” Lula said. “Speak for yourself.”
I told Connie not to wait up, and held the front door for Lula. “We're going to check out Louie Moon first,” I said to her.
Lula stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at Big Blue. “We going in this big motherfucker Buick?”
“Yep.”
“I knew a pimp once had a car like this.”
“It belonged to my uncle Sandor.”
“He a businessman?”
“Not that I know of.”
Louie Moon lived on the far perimeter of Hamilton Township. It was almost four when we turned onto Orchid Street. I counted off homes, searching for 216, amused that such an exotically named street had been blessed with a lineup of unimaginative crackerbox houses. It was a neighborhood built in the sixties when land was available, so the plots were large, making the two-bedroom ranches seem even smaller. Over the years homeowners had personalized their carbon-copy houses, adding a garage here, a porch there. The houses had been modernized with vinyl siding of various muted shades. Bay windows had been inserted. Azalea bushes had been planted. And still the sameness prevailed.
Louie Moon's house was set apart by a bright turquoise paint job, a full array of Christmas lights, and a five-foot-tall plastic Santa strapped to a rusted TV antenna.
“Guess he gets into the spirit early,” Lula said.
From the droop of the lights haphazardly stapled to his house and the faded look to Santa, I'd guess he was in the spirit all year long.
The house didn't have a garage, and there were no cars in the driveway or parked at the curb. The house looked dark and undisturbed. I left Lula in the car and went to the front door. I knocked twice. No answer. The house was one floor built on a slab. The curtains were all open. Louie had nothing to hide. I circled the house, peeking into windows. The inside was neat and furnished with what I guessed to be an accumulation of discards. There was no sign of recent wealth. No boxes of ammo stacked on the kitchen table. Not a single assault rifle in sight. It looked to me like he lived alone. One cup and one bowl in the dish drain. One side of the double bed had been slept in.
I could easily see Louie Moon living here, content with his life because he had a little blue house. I toyed with the idea of illegal entry, but I couldn't produce enough motivation to warrant the intrusion.
The air was damp and cold and the ground felt hard underfoot. I pulled my jacket collar up and returned to the car.
“That didn't take long,” Lula said.
“Not much to see.”
“We going to the undertaker next?”
“Yeah.”
“Good thing he don't live where he do his thing. I don't want to see what they collect in those buckets at the end of those tables.”
It was heavy twilight by the time we got to Century Courts. The two-story buildings were red brick with white window trim. Doors were set in four-door clusters. There were five clusters to a building, which meant there were twenty apartments. Ten up and ten down. All of the buildings were set on pipestems coming off Demby. Four buildings per pipestem.
Spiro had an end unit on the ground floor. His windows were dark, and his car wasn't in the lot. With Con in the hospital, Spiro was forced to keep long hours. The Buick was easily recognizable, and I didn't want to get caught if Spiro should decide to bop in for a fast change of socks, so I drove one pipestem over and parked.