Page 44 of Now or Never

We got to the clothes store and the dribbles ended.

“Hold on,” Lula said at the curb. “I think there’s a footprint here but it’s hard to see. It looks like he crossed the street, but there was a lot of traffic here when the cops and EMTs arrived. Everything got run over.”

We went to the other side of the street and searched around.

“If I was Zoran, I’d go through that alleyway on the side of the grocery,” Lula said.

We took the alleyway and came out on Stark Street. There was a bar on one side and a narrow, three-story rooming house on the other. The front door to the bar was open. The interior was dark. We stepped inside, and I was knocked over with the stench of stale beer and pot. A skinny guy in a tank top was standing holding a mop on the far side of the room.

“Something I can do for you ladies?” he asked.

Lula was rocking a red Raquel Welch wig and a scoop-neck top that was two sizes too small and showed about a quarter mile of cleavage. “You want me to take point on this?” she asked me.

I nodded. “Yup. Go for it.”

She stepped forward so the mop guy could get a good look. “We’re businesswomen,” Lula said. “One of our clients was supposed to meet us on the corner about a half hour ago, and he hasn’t shown up. We thought he might have been thirsty and stopped in here.”

“Nobody been here this morning but me.” The mop guy looked at Lula and then at me. “He supposed to do business with both of you?”

“He’s a regular,” Lula said. “We give him a twofer. Maybe you know him. His name is Zoran.”

“I don’t know anybody named Zoran.”

“He works at the laundromat on the next street,” Lula said. “White guy with weird teeth.”

“That’s Fang,” mop guy said. “Everybody knows him as Fang. You make a comment about his teeth to his face, and he tells you he’s a vampire. Like he’s real proud of it. I heard he got hungry during work hours and killed a customer.”

“Did he come in here a lot?” I asked mop guy.

“Not a lot. Once in a while. Some of the street vendors conduct business in the alleyway, and we get some trade from it. This is a shitty bar but it’s the only one open in the morning. If you’re a morning freak and want a place to sit and do your thing, this is it.”

“And Fang comes in to do his thing?”

“I guess you’d have to do some kind of substance abuse to get through hanging out in a laundromat all day,” Lula said. “What is Fang into?”

“He was old-school,” mop guy said. “Liked the psychedelics. Shrooms, acid, pot, special K. A couple times I saw him with roofies. Not that it’s any of my business, but I figured with his dental problems he probably needed Scooby Snacks to get a cooperative date.”

“I don’t like men who take advantage of a woman with that kind of stuff,” Lula said.

“I hear you,” mop guy said. “I guess Fang found a better way, right? Spend time with you ladies.” He smiled, showing a large gold tooth in the front with a small diamond embedded in it. “What would it take to get a twofer from you? I got a back room here, and I could pay you in liquor. You could take your pick.”

“That’s real appealing,” Lula said, “but we’re on the clock, and we gotta be back on the corner for a pickup. We’ll stop in when we got more time. You don’t want to rush a twofer with us.”

“You know where to find me,” mop guy said.

“What time do you open?” I asked him.

“I come in to clean up around seven o’clock.”

Lula and I left the bar. We moseyed around a little looking for signs of blood, but we didn’t spot any dribbles or footprints. We gave up on the tracking project and took the long way back to my SUV, avoiding the alleyway. The state’s mobile crime lab was parked in front of the laundromat. A squad car was parked behind it in the exact spot where we’d seen a footprint.

“Looks like the cops are busy obscuring evidence,” Lula said.

Morelli and Jimmy had both been on the scene yesterday. They were good cops. They were smart. The initial blood trail was obvious, and I was sure that the footprint had already been documented. I was also sure that they knew about the alleyway drug market. The twofer ladies had the advantage over Morelli and Jimmy when it came to getting information out of the mop guy.

“I’ve still got some friends on the street,” Lula said. “One of them might know something, but they don’t get up this early. I could talk to them after lunch.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “In the meantime, I’m going to visit Bruno Jug.”

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