Page 33 of Now or Never

“Do you want me to go in?” I asked him.

“Morelli would ban me from his weekly poker game if I let you go in there,” Jimmy said. “I’d never get any more of his mother’s lasagna. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Djordjevic isn’t home. We looked in all the windows and there’s no blood trail. No Zoran. No blood on any of the door handles. His car is parked in his driveway. He’s only a couple blocks from the laundromat. He probably walked to work. I’m going to leave two guys here to question the neighbors and keep an eye on things.”

“He’s FTA,” I told Jimmy. “I’d appreciate a call if you find him.”

“Sure thing,” Jimmy said.

I went back to my Trailblazer and got behind the wheel. “The perp’s name is pronounced ‘Georgiavich.’?”

“It doesn’t look like it sounds,” Lula said. “It’s not one of those phonetic names, and I don’t see it being a stellar name for a vampire. Georgiavich sounds too happy to belong to a vampire. It makes me think of Georgia peaches. Zoran is a better vampire name. He should just go by Zoran. There’s a bunch of people who just use one name. Dracula for starters. Then there’s Cher and Zorro and Chewbacca, and my favorite is Jungkook.”

“Actually, it’s Count Dracula,” I said.

“Yeah, but his friends call him Dracula.”

I started the car. “Jimmy said there’s no sign that Zoran is in the house. He’s leaving a couple guys here to canvass the neighborhood, so we might as well move on.”

“I’m thinking I need to move on to lunch,” Lula said.

“You just ate five candy bars.”

“They made me jittery. I need some bread and grease to even out the sugar. I need anti-vampire food like a Taylor pork roll sandwich and fries and slaw.”

“Taylor pork roll is anti-vampire food?”

“Hell yeah. You want to be Jersey strong? Eat Taylor pork roll. It’s made in Trenton. It’s full of nitrates so it increases your shelf life. You eat enough and you could live forever. Pino’s makes pork roll on a bun with a fried egg and cheese. I could probably kill a vampire with my bare hands after eating a couple of those babies.”

“That seems like a stretch.”

“I might have exaggerated,” Lula said.

I drove to Pino’s, and we were able to get a booth in the family section. We ordered and I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Just to review,” I said. “We have Eugene Fleck. He was supposedto show at the courthouse this morning.” I looked at my watch. “There’s still time. He’s got thirty minutes before the court breaks for lunch. Then there’s Bruno Jug. Waiting on a call from him.”

“Could be a long wait,” Lula said.

I nodded. “I can close out Jerry Bottles and his magnificent member. And that leaves Zoran.”

“I can’t get excited about our to-do list,” Lula said. “Eugene Fleck is a sweetie pie, but then you’ve got a mobster who kills people and a vampire who kills people. I’ll probably feel better after I eat my pork roll, but right now a job driving Uber sounds pretty good.”

I called Connie and asked her to check on Eugene. She called back just as our lunch was set on the table.

“Eugene didn’t check in at the courthouse,” Connie said. “And he isn’t answering his phone.”

I moved the call to speakerphone so Lula could hear. “Anything new on Robin Hoodie?”

“He posted a short video this morning. He hijacked a truck filled with cookies last night and unloaded the cookies at two encampments. The police said the truck was full when it was driven off the Blue Moon Diner lot at 10:30 p.m. and found empty in the Walmart parking lot at midnight.”

“Do you know about Zoran?” I asked Connie.

“Only that dispatch sent all hands to the laundromat.”

“Lula and I walked in on a man bending over a dead woman who was bleeding profusely from a wound on her neck. He bolted when he saw us.”

“And you think it was Zoran?”

“The man fit Zoran’s description and they were in Zoran’s office at the laundromat.”

“Was Lula wearing her garlic?”

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