Hot Fudge (A Loretta Kovacs thriller) Page 4

  It was dark by the time Krupnick returned to his Jeep. From the mall, he drove directly to the Dunkin Donuts. Since they weren’t sure this was really Krupnick, Marvelli had insisted that they approach him when he was alone. If Vissa was wrong and this guy was just some average Joe Blow, they could be looking at a mondo lawsuit if they embarrassed the guy in public.

  The Jeep pulled out of its space and headed across the parking lot. Vissa waited until he had turned onto the road before she started following. Vissa had always been pretty good at trailing jumpers, Marvelli remembered. She had a lot of patience. That was one thing Loretta didn’t have.

  Vissa stayed two cars behind the fat man as he picked up speed, passing a series of strip malls and shopping centers with all the usual stores and restaurants—Home Depot, Staples, Apple-bee’s, Einstein Brothers Bagels, Kmart, Circuit City, Chili’s, CompUSA, Fuddrucker’s.

  “I’ll bet he stops at Blockbuster Video,” Marvelli said when he spotted the blue-and-yellow sign in the distance.

  “Why?” Vissa sounded dubious.

  “Because he’s got doughnuts. What goes better with doughnuts than a movie?”

  Vissa shook her head. “It’s amazing you’re not as big as a house, Marvelli. I’ve never met anyone who thinks about food as much as you do.”

  “I have a problem with low blood sugar. I have to eat more often than most people. Why is this so hard for people to understand?”

  “Because people know it’s bull.” Vissa was grinning at the windshield, her face lit from below by the dashboard lights. “Well, it’s true. And I don’t care what you believe.”

  “Does Loretta believe it?” she asked.

  “Of course she does.” But then he thought about the question.

  “Why do you care what Loretta believes?” he asked.

  “I would imagine food is a touchy issue with her.”

  Marvelli didn’t like the implication. “Lay off Loretta. Okay?”

  “You don’t have to get mad.”

  “Can we change the subject?”

  “Fine with me. How about them Mets?”

  He ignored her attempt at humor. Neither of them said anything for a while. The sound of the tires rolling along the pavement filled the silence. Marvelli stared at the Jeep’s taillights. He was thinking hard.

  Why was Vissa so interested in Loretta, he wanted to know. Was Vissa just being her usual flirtatious self, or was she angling for something else? Or was he just being paranoid?

  “Wrong again, Marvelli,” she suddenly said.

  He whipped his head toward her. “About what?” he said quickly. He thought she was reading his mind.

  “Krupnick renting a movie.” She pointed at the Blockbuster Video store as the Jeep sailed on by. “I think he’s going home.”

  “You mean you hope he’s going home.”

  “Yeah, that, too,” she said.

  They continued on that road until the stores and strip malls gave way to long stretches of open salt marsh. The pungent smell was unmistakable. In the distance Marvelli could see lights reflecting off the dark water, boats floating on Long Island Sound.

  The Jeep stopped at a red light, signaled for a turn, then turned right on red. Vissa did the same but slowed down, keeping a good distance between them. Marvelli noticed the name of the road as they turned, Cutters Mill Road. Arnie Farber’s house was on this road.

  “You got your gun?” Vissa asked.

  Marvelli glared at her. “Yes, I have my gun.” He opened his jacket to show her the .38 clipped to his belt.

  “Don’t bite my head off,” she said. “I’m only asking because I know you don’t like to carry your weapon.”

  “I always have it for an arrest,” he said, which was a lie. He never liked carrying a weapon because, for one thing, he was a lousy shot. He also felt that when trying to reason with a desperate criminal, the presence of a weapon only made things worse. As soon as a man sees a gun, he stops listening, and that’s when trouble starts.

  The road curved around a rocky point that jutted into the sound. Marvelli thought it must be pretty out here during the day. Modern-looking houses on both sides of the road were built far apart from one another. Almost every one had large picture windows that faced the water. The people who lived out here had to have money. If this guy wasn’t Krupnick, he’d probably have the resources to sue their pants off.

  They lost sight of the Jeep for a moment as the road curved sharply to the left, but as soon as it straightened out again, the Jeep was right there in front of them, about fifty yards ahead. It slowed down as it passed a house that looked like a big barn. The Jeep’s right-hand signal started blinking. Marvelli recognized the fat man’s house, the plain-looking boxy thing that stood on stilts to protect it from flooding. The timbers were as thick as telephone poles. If this was Krupnick, this kind of house sort of made sense, Marvelli thought. The place was like a fortress—easy to defend, hard to invade.

  As soon as the Jeep made the turn, Vissa floored the accelerator and raced up to Krupnick’s driveway. They didn’t want him getting into the house. They wanted to take him outside.

  “Here we go,” she said, as she spun the wheel and screeched into the driveway, loose gravel pelting the wheel wells.

  The fat man was just coming out of his car, the box of doughnuts in his left hand. He looked up, startled by the sound of the approaching car. Vissa’s high beams blinded him, so he shielded his eyes with the box.

  Vissa skidded to a stop, angling her car across the driveway so that the Jeep couldn’t get out. She threw her door open and stood behind it. “Sir,” she called out, “we’d like to talk to you.” Her gun was in her hand down by her side. A Smith & Wesson long-barrel .44.

  “About what?” the fat man said. “Who the hell are you?” His voice seemed shaky. He was backstepping toward the stairway that led up to his house.

  Marvelli got out of the car and moved toward him, keeping his hands where the fat man could see them. “We’re from the State of New Jersey Bureau of Parole, sir. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  The fat man started shaking his head. His mouth was open, fear flashing in his eyes. He turned to run—but only halfway. He was afraid to turn his back on them completely.

  “Stop!” Vissa yelled. She had her gun propped on the door frame, pointed at the fat man. “Put your hands above your shoulders, and don’t move.”

  But the fat man did just the opposite, turning around the rest of the way and running. But he was obviously unused to running. He stumbled and tripped over his own feet, falling flat on his face, his arms splayed out in a useless attempt to break the fall. The doughnut box went down with him, skidding upside down along the blacktop until it collided with one of the support timbers.

  “I’m not Ira!” the man cried out, flailing his arms. “I swear to God! I’m not him!”

  Vissa and Marvelli were standing over him, both wearing the same puzzled look.

  “You’re not Ira who?” Vissa asked.

  “Ira Krupnick!” the man screamed.

  She whispered to Marvelli, “Did you mention Krupnick’s name?”

  He shook his head. “No. You?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m telling you,” the man yelled, “I’m not Ira Krupnick. You gotta believe me. I can prove it.”

  Marvelli got down on one knee and patted the man down while he was prone, then helped him to his feet. “Why don’t we go inside and make some coffee?” Marvelli suggested. “You can tell us all about it.”

  Vissa took the fat man by the elbow and guided him toward the staircase while Marvelli retrieved the box of doughnuts. He weighed the box in his hand as he walked.

  Hope he bought some chocolate glazed, Marvelli thought.

  5

  When Loretta arrived at the office the next morning, she was happy to see Marvelli’s black-and-white houndstooth sport jacket hanging over the back of his desk chair. He was back. But when she noticed the black leather
car coat with the leopard skin collar draped on top of Marvelli’s desk, her mood turned sour. Vissa Mylowe was still around. Loretta went over to Marvelli’s desk, picked up Vissa’s coat, and hung it on the coatrack.

  “Hey, Loretta.”

  “How’s it going, Loretta?”

  Two other Jump Squad POs, Bobby McManus and Lionel Williams, were standing outside Julius Monroe’s office holding Styrofoam cups of coffee. Loretta was surprised to see these two because they were always out in the field and almost never hung around the office.

  “What’s going on?” she said, walking up to them.

  Lionel nodded toward the interrogation room down the hallway. “Marvelli and Vissa picked up Ira Krupnick last night.”

  “But he’s saying he’s not Krupnick,” McManus said, stroking the ends of his bandito mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “He called his lawyer. The guy just got here.”

  “Yeah,” Lionel said, grinning with all his teeth. “Now when was the last time a jumper asked for a lawyer?”

  McManus shrugged. “Must’ve been before my time because I can’t think of one. Can you, Loretta?”

  Loretta shrugged and shook her head.

  Lionel leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Julius is getting a little weirded out by all this. He doesn’t like all those people in the interrogation room. They’re invading his space.”

  Loretta knew exactly what Lionel was talking about. The interrogation room was where Julius liked to practice his flute. He said the acoustics were good in there, and the room was cluttered with his stuff—sheet music, music stand, and posters of some of his favorite jazz musicians. Julius’s dream was to become a full-time musician after he retired from the Bureau of Parole.

  The door to the interrogation room banged open, and Julius struggled out with a huge reel-to-reel tape deck. He looked like a mad little ant forced to abandon his hill.

  “You need help, boss?” McManus asked.

  “No,” Julius snapped. His tie was askew, and he was wearing the navy-blue suit jacket that had been hanging behind his door, unworn, for God knows how long.

  “You sure?” Lionel asked with a sly grin.

  Julius glared at the three of them. “What? Did we run out of jumpers?”

  The two men snickered. The office was bulging with stacks of files, each one representing a parolee who had skipped out on his or her parole. There had to be at least a couple of thousand.

  “Go!” Julius snapped. “Disperse! Work!”

  “But it’s not eight-thirty yet,” Lionel pointed out. “We’re still finishing our coffee.”

  “Finish it somewhere else. Vamoose!” Julius banged the tape deck into the doorjamb as he hauled it into his office.

  “Guess we’re not wanted here,” Lionel said to his partner.

  McManus frowned. “Guess not. Guess you gotta haul in an Ira Krupnick to get appreciated around here.”

  Julius’s voice boomed into the hallway from inside his office. “Go away!”

  The two POs were grinning as they shuffled back to their desks. Loretta, however, was curious. She slipped past Julius’s office and sneaked into the tiny viewing room that was next to the interrogation room. It was dark and musty from lack of use, and crowded with an assortment of broken desk chairs and battered file cabinets.

  Loretta quietly closed the door behind her and tiptoed around the clutter to get to the one-way window that took up most of one wall. She wiped away the dust with the sleeve of her blue chambray shirt, making a porthole for herself. A dusty brown and beige speaker hung over the window. Loretta followed the wire coming out of it to a painted-over wall switch. She flipped it on, and to her surprise the speaker still worked.

  Inside the interrogation room Marvelli and Vissa were seated at one end of a long conference table. A middle-aged fat man with a mostly gray beard and a pasty-faced man in his early sixties with longish, yellow white hair were huddled at the other end of the table. The pasty-faced man was wearing a pressed, charcoal gray suit and a crisp white shirt while the fat man, who was wearing khakis and a dark green polo shirt, looked like he’d slept in his clothes. Loretta assumed that this was Krupnick. The suit had to be his lawyer.

  Understandably Krupnick looked nervous. As he huddled with his lawyer, he kept glancing over at the pint of Arnie and Barry’s Elmer Fudge Whirl that was sitting on the table in front of Marvelli. Loretta wondered if Krupnick was hungry.

  At the other end of the table, Vissa was whispering something to Marvelli, who nodded attentively as he shoveled ice cream into his mouth with a plastic spoon. Vissa’s hand was flat on the table, her gaze locked on Marvelli’s face, demanding eye contact. Loretta didn’t like the woman’s body language. She was crowding Marvelli, encroaching on his space as if she deserved to be there. But what bothered Loretta more was that Marvelli wasn’t backing away from Vissa. Had the ice cream frozen his brain? Or did he want to be taken over?

  Loretta wondered what Marvelli really thought about Vissa. Stylewise they were perfectly compatible. They’d make a good greaser couple. But how did he really feel about her? Loretta had no reason to be jealous, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Marvelli was attracted, especially after what Freddy the pimp had said about Vissa being “genuine sexy.” Maybe what Vissa had was something that other women couldn’t recognize. Maybe it was a guy thing.

  Julius Monroe came back into the room and took a seat at the middle of the table between the two camps. “Okay,” he said, “so where were we?”

  “Nowhere,” Vissa said with disgust. “Mr. Krupnick here continues to deny that he is who he is. And his counsel, Mr. Garrett, is supporting him in this charade.”

  Garrett the lawyer pushed a hank of his white-blond hair off his brow. “I take exception to your characterization of the situation, Ms. Mylowe. My client’s legal name is Arthur Berman, not Ira Krupnick. You have the wrong man.”

  “I don’t care what you say his name is,” Vissa said. “You can change your name legally for three bucks. That’s no big deal.”

  Garrett exchanged glances with his client. “We will concede that Arthur Berman was not born Arthur Berman. He did change his name, yes.”

  The fat man mopped his brow with the back of his hand. He did not look comfortable. And he kept looking at Marvelli’s ice cream.

  “Then we’ll have to fingerprint him,” Marvelli said with his mouth full. “That’ll tell us who he is.”

  The fat man gripped his lawyer’s forearm and started shaking his head violently. “No fingerprints,” he whispered.

  Julius was silently playing bongos on the tabletop. “Sir,” he said, staring at the fat man, “if you are indeed not Ira Krupnick, why won’t you let us clear this up with a fingerprint analysis? Or could it be that you have something else to hide?”

  The lawyer started to answer, but the fat man cut him off. “Yes,” he blurted, his chest heaving. “I do have something to hide, but it’s not what you think. I’m not Ira.”

  “Then pray tell, who are you?” Julius asked.

  “Arthur, you don’t have to answer that,” Garrett said.

  But the fat man ignored his lawyer. “I’m not Ira,” he repeated. “That’s Ira.” He pointed at Marvelli, whose eyes shot open just as he was about to take another bite from the pint of Elmer Fudge Whirl

  “Are you crazy?” Vissa said, rushing to Marvelli’s defense. “This is definitely not Ira Krupnick.”

  Julius was chortling into his fist, and Marvelli couldn’t suppress a grin of his own.

  “No, not him,” the fat man said excitedly. “On the ice cream container. That guy!”

  Marvelli held out the pint of Arnie and Barry’s and furrowed his brows at it. The cardboard container had black-and-white pictures of Arnie and Barry on the label. Arnie had a scruffy beard while Barry was clean-shaven. They were both sort of pudgy and round-faced.

  The fat man reached out for the pint, and reluctantly Marvelli relinquished it. “Him,” the fat man said, pointing to
the picture of the man with the scruffy beard. “That’s Ira Krupnick.”

  “No way,” Marvelli said, shaking his head with absolute certainty.

  “Trust me,” the fat man said. “That’s not Arnie. I’m Arnie.”

  “Hold it, hold it, hold it,” Marvelli said. “You’re saying you’re Arnie of Arnie and Barry, and this guy in the picture is Ira Krupnick?”

  “That’s right.”

  Vissa was drumming her fingernails on the table. “I can’t wait to hear this,” she groaned.

  Julius flipped his palms up. “You’ve got the floor, my friend,” he said to the fat man. “Take your solo.”

  “I don’t know if I can advise this—” the lawyer said, but again the fat man ignored him.

  “Okay,” the fat man said. “This is the God’s honest truth. Okay? My real name is Arnie Bloomfield.” He was pointing to the pint in his hand. “I’m the original Arnie of Arnie and Barry.”

  Marvelli just rolled his eyes and reached for the pint. He wanted his Fudge Whirl back.

  “No, wait!” Arnie pulled the pint out of Marvelli’s reach. “You can see from this picture that Ira Krupnick and I look pretty similar. We could almost be doubles. See, it used to be my picture that was on the cartons. Ira saw it there, and that’s how he got the idea of switching.”

  “Switching?” Vissa asked skeptically.

  “Yeah. He became me, and I became someone else, Arthur Berman.”

  Marvelli and Vissa exchanged knowing glances. “Why?” Marvelli asked the fat man. “What was in it for you?”