Hot Fudge (A Loretta Kovacs thriller) Read online

  “Sure. What?”

  “Why are you wearing that wig? Did something happen to your hair?”

  “No,” Loretta said abruptly. She didn’t have an excuse ready.

  “If you had chemo or something, and you lost all your hair, you can just tell me to shut up and mind my own business. It’s okay.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that,” Loretta said quickly, not wanting Dorie to think she was hiding something. “It’s a religious thing.”

  “Oh! You mean, like you’re Jewish. Like the really religious ones who live in New York? All those women have to wear wigs, right?”

  “Right, right,” Loretta said.

  “Gee,” Dorie said, “I didn’t think Kovacs was a Jewish name.”

  “It’s not. I converted.”

  “Ooooohhh,” Dorie said, nodding emphatically.

  Loretta couldn’t believe she’d just said that. Her Hungarian Catholic grandmother must be spinning in her grave.

  “Arnie’s Jewish,” Dorie said. “You two ought to meet. But I don’t think he’s very religious. In fact, I know he isn’t.”

  “I’d still like to meet him,” Loretta said. And handcuff him, she thought.

  “If you’d like, I could take you for a tour of the factory tomorrow. Arnie’ll probably be there.”

  “Great. I’d really like that.”

  “Have a seat and get comfortable,” Dorie said. “I’ll go tell Barry we’re here.”

  Loretta sat down on a huge L-shaped butternut leather sofa while Dorie headed up the open staircase to the second floor. She ran a pinkie along her cheek, pulling stray wig hairs out of the corner of her mouth as she wondered what Barry was like. He had to have more going on upstairs than Dorie, which made Loretta a little nervous. He might suspect that a supposedly converted Orthodox Jew with a Hungarian last name who used to be an assistant warden at a women’s correctional facility in New Jersey might not be entirely kosher.

  Somewhere in the house music was playing. Loretta could just about make it out. It sounded New Agey. A harp with gongs and chimes. She took in the room, which was an eclectic clutter of statues, masks, paintings, plants, and tchotchkes. No surface—wall, shelf, or table—was left uncovered. Dusting this place had to be a nightmare, she thought.

  She turned around to get a better look at the paintings on the wall. The centerpiece of the room was a large oil painting of a naked mythical creature with the head of a tiger and the body of a Playboy centerfold. She wondered if Dorie had been the model. All the pictures seemed to have an Asian theme—rickshaws on a crowded street, pagodas, a temple in the mountains, the Great Wall of China—but one in particular grabbed her attention. It was a close-up of an unusually small foot and a pair of hands. The hands were binding the feet tight in layer after layer of cloth wrapping. It made Loretta uncomfortable just to look at it. She knew about the ancient custom of binding little girls’ feet to keep them small, but seeing it was something else.

  A long, glass-topped wrought-iron coffee table was littered with all kinds of bric-a-brac—a cut-glass bowl full of chocolate Kisses, an array of glossy picture books full of sexual positions, a platoon of tiny figurines. The largest of the figurines caught her eye immediately. It was a carved ebony figure of a little man with a very big appendage. He looked like a pumpernickel version of the Pillsbury Doughboy with a super jumbo wiener sticking out of his crotch. It was so big it extended higher than his head, and he had to hold it up with both hands. The oddest thing about him was his expression—a great big sickle-moon smile and tiny, crinkled tight eyes. The little guy was totally self-satisfied and just tickled pink to be himself. Loretta thought of Marvelli and wondered if all men think of themselves that way. As long as their thing is working, the world is all right, and they’re just delirious.

  The sound of rapid clicking suddenly caught Loretta’s attention. It was the unmistakable sound of a dog’s untrimmed toenails trotting across a hardwood floor. Loretta scanned the room to locate the animal, imagining a loping Afghan hound with long, floppy, perfectly combed hair. If dogs looked like their owners, Dorie would have to have an Afghan. But what came out from behind the staircase sure as hell wasn’t an Afghan. Loretta wasn’t sure what it was.

  It was big and mostly black with light tan markings on its huge paws and around its droopy muzzle. The dog’s coat was wrinkled and rumpled, hanging in folds from its chest and flanks. Smaller folds fell from its brow, partially obscuring the eyes and giving the dog a haughty, aloof expression. It looked like a prune with an attitude.

  The dog clicked over to the sofa, stopped, and stared at Loretta. After a moment it cocked its head to one side.

  Loretta cocked her head to the other side. “What’re you looking at?” she muttered.

  The dog slid its front paws forward and lowered its head as if it were getting ready to lunge. The upper lip curled back, revealing a fierce row of teeth. A chill ran down Loretta’s spine. Generally she wasn’t afraid of dogs, but the fact that this one could bare its teeth without growling was very eerie.

  “Easy, Fido,” she said, deliberately keeping her hands still. “Be still, boy … girl … whatever you are.”

  Dorie came down the stairs. “Dragon,” she said to the dog, “what are you doing here?”

  The dog turned its head and a gave her a snotty look—but without the teeth.

  Dorie walked right up to the beast and stared down at it. “Where’s Sunny?” she asked. “Where is she, boy?”

  The dog wagged his tail, but with that wrinkly immobile face he didn’t seem happy.

  Dorie looked at Loretta. “Did you meet Sunny?” she asked.

  Loretta shook her head. “Who’s Sunny?”

  “Dragon’s mistress. She must be around here someplace.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone,” Loretta said. “Just the dog.” She noticed that Dorie wasn’t reaching down to pet the beast. Maybe Dragon was a biter. “What kind of dog is that?” Loretta asked.

  “Dragon is a rott-pei,” Dorie said, “a cross between a rottweiler and a shar-pei, which is why he’s so wrinkly. Sunny says he’s a kung-fu fighter. Aren’t you, boy?” Dorie looked down at Dragon affectionately, but she still wouldn’t touch him. “Shar-peis were fighting dogs in ancient China, but the fighting instinct was bred out of them a long time ago. Sunny said that crossing them with rotties brings back the old fighting spirit. Isn’t that right, boy? Don’t want to be a wimp, do you?”

  “Does Sunny fight him?” Loretta asked. An image of cock fighting ran through her mind.

  Dorie shrugged. “Gee … I don’t know.” That possibility apparently had never occurred to her.

  A man came down the stairs then. He had a heavy, plodding step. As soon as Loretta saw his face, she recognized him. It was Barry, the other guy on the ice-cream carton. He was wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeved blue chambray shirt open to the middle of his hairy chest. He wasn’t wearing anything on his feet.

  “Where’s Sunny?” Dorie asked him.

  He pointed up to the second floor. “Meditating.”

  “Oh.” Dorie nodded to herself. “Barry, this is Loretta Kovacs. Loretta, my husband Barry.”

  Loretta stood up, and they shook hands across the coffee table, but she kept an eye on Dragon. She didn’t trust him.

  “Nice to meet you,” Barry said. He had a broad smile and a big space between his front teeth.

  “You must be the most famous person I’ve ever met,” Loretta gushed. “I love your ice cream.” She figured it wouldn’t hurt to suck up a little, seeing as she was going to be staying at his house.

  “I’ll be right back,” Dorie said. “You two talk.” She slide-walked on her sandals across the polished floors and disappeared behind the staircase.

  “I hope you don’t mind my staying with you,” Loretta said. “I had planned to stay at a hotel in town, but Dorie kind of insisted.”

  “No problem,” Barry said. “We have plenty of room here.” He stepped over Dragon and t
ook a seat on the other side of the L-shaped sofa. He linked his fingers behind his head and stretched his legs out, which lifted his shirt and exposed a triangle of hairy belly.

  Dragon looked at Barry for a second, then went to the stairs and trotted up without giving Loretta a second look. Very rude, she thought. She usually liked dogs, but not this one.

  “So, Loretta, tell me about yourself. You married?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’m engaged.” She said that only because she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. He seemed a little too interested. The man made no attempt to conceal his roving eyes, and his expression was very similar to the ebony doughboy with the humongous cruller. With all the erotica in the room, Loretta couldn’t help but think of him as some kind of kinky trip-master. It figured that Dorie Jasson would end up marrying a guy like this. She’d always been a magnet for users. It made Loretta wonder who this Sunny person was and why he or she was meditating upstairs at Dorie’s house?

  Aren’t you supposed to meditate at home? Loretta thought. Or was meditating a private code word for something else?

  Barry was staring at her hands, looking for an engagement ring no doubt, but she wasn’t going to make up an excuse for why she didn’t have one, not to Barry the ice-cream pervert. But that got her thinking about Marvelli again. What were the chances that he’d ever give her a ring now that Vissa the viper was on the scene?

  “So were you really Dorie’s warden?” Barry asked. He was grinning as if this were amusing.

  “That was a long time ago,” she said. “I’ve been out of corrections for several years now.”

  Barry nodded, that weird grin plastered to his face. “You know, you should come down to the plant while you’re here. I can arrange for you to get the private tour.”

  “Dorie already offered. Thanks. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Great.”

  Why was it great? she wondered. Did he have something in mind?

  “So do you have any new flavors coming out?” she asked, to change the subject.

  All of a sudden Barry’s face turned grim. He sat up straight and put his feet flat on the floor. “I don’t handle R and D. That’s Arnie’s end.” Clearly that had been the wrong question to ask.

  “I’m back.” Dorie said, sliding back into the living room. She was carrying a teak tray with three cobalt blue bowls, three spoons, and three pints of Arnie and Barry’s ice cream. “The specialty of the house,” Dorie announced. The three flavors she’d brought were Rainforest Rum Raisin, Nuts to You, and of course, Elmer Fudge Whirl. But as soon as she set down the tray on top of their copy of the Kama Sutra, Barry suddenly stood up and snatched the pint of Fudge Whirl off the tray.

  “Don’t eat this one,” he grumbled. “Bad batch.” He carried it back to the kitchen with a scowl on his face.

  Loretta tracked him with her eyes until he was out of the room. “What was that all about?” she whispered to Dorie.

  Dorie shrugged as she dug into the Nuts to You. “Must be a bad batch,” she said, keeping her eyes on what she was doing.

  Suddenly Loretta noticed a figure looming at the top of the stairs. Dragon was staring down at her, silently baring his teeth.

  9

  The next morning Loretta and Dorie were on the main floor of the Arnie and Barry’s plant in Berkeley, watching empty pint containers zip along on a conveyor belt, stopping momentarily to be filled with softened Elmer Fudge Whirl, moving on, then stopping again to have a lid automatically plopped on. From here the pints raced on like lemmings to the sea, tumbling off the edge of the conveyor where a young man in a white lab coat and a hair net quickly arranged them on metal racks that were stacked on an electric trolley by second man in a lab coat and a hair net. When the trolley had a full load, it shuttled off to the freezer where the ice cream would set.

  Loretta was wearing a borrowed banana-yellow parka with the Arnie and Barry’s logo on the back. The main floor of the plant was kept very cool, of course, to keep the ice cream from melting. It was a huge space with a two-story ceiling to accommodate the hulking machinery. Workers in white lab coats scuttled around busily, making sure the flow of pints continued uninterrupted. On the wall above the commotion was a mural of the Arnie and Barry’s logo, their smiling faces superimposed over a rainbow-colored tie-dyed sunburst. High on the wall opposite the mural were a line of glass panels where the endless stream of people on the public tour peered down at the ice-cream works.

  Loretta gazed up at them shuffling by as she tried to scratch her head through her wig. The damn thing was hot and itchy, and it was really starting to bug her. She wished she hadn’t lied to Dorie and told her she was wearing it for religious reasons. Dorie had actually gone out and gotten her matzo for breakfast, which Loretta had no choice but to eat. But even with butter, eating those dry brittle sheets of unleavened bread was like eating wallboard, and Loretta knew she was going to be constipated for a month.

  “You think I’ll get to meet Arnie today?” Loretta asked, raising her voice over the constant clack and grind of the packaging machinery.

  Dorie shrugged. “Depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “How busy he is, his mood, the I Ching … lots of things.”

  “I should’ve brought my Eight Ball,” Loretta muttered to herself.

  “What?” Dorie said, cupping her ear. “Nothing,” Loretta shouted back.

  Loretta was getting nervous about this whole thing. She still hadn’t figured out what she was going to do when she met Arnie a.k.a. Ira Krupnick. If she arrested him and hauled him back to Jersey by herself just to show up Vissa, she’d be leaving Marvelli alone with her here in San Francisco, which might not be the smartest thing to do, all things considered. No telling what might happen if those two stayed together too long.

  But on the other hand if Loretta let Vissa and Marvelli arrest Arnie, and Loretta just happened to be on the scene, she’d look like a jealous idiot. She chewed on her lip, trying to figure out what to do. This jealousy thing was driving her crazy. She wasn’t proud of herself for feeling this way, but she couldn’t help it. It was how she felt.

  Please, Marvelli, she thought. Just be the good guy I always thought you were. That’s all I ask.

  “Loretta, are you all right?” Dorie asked. “You’re mumbling to yourself.”

  “Ah … just saying prayers,” Loretta said.

  “Prayers?”

  “It’s a Jewish thing.”

  “Oh … ” Dorie moved around to the back of a huge machine. “Look over here,” she said. “You have to see this.”

  Loretta had to stand on her tiptoes to see what Dorie was pointing at. Inside a stainless-steel vat that was as big as a living room, metal rakes rotated through a lifetime’s worth of Elmer Fudge Whirl. And it was one of three vats sitting in a row, two of them waiting in line to be hooked up to the packaging machine.

  Dorie whispered into Loretta’s ear. “This is where Arnie does his ‘fine-tuning.’ That’s what he calls it. For the Fudge Whirl he always adds a little something special at this stage. His secret ingredient.”

  Loretta nodded, wondering if and when Arnie would pop out. With all these white-coated workers buzzing around in double time, she was beginning to feel like a refugee in the merry old land of Oz. She stared into the vat at the swirling waves of vanilla ice cream.

  “They add the fudge at the very end,” Dorie said, pointing to a smaller vat that loomed over the next vat in line, “so that it doesn’t blend in completely.”

  “Right,” Loretta said. The swirling ice cream was hypnotic, forcing her to stare deeper and harder. When she closed her eyes, she could see neon pinwheels. She opened her eyes and looked up, trying to focus on something else. But what she saw instantly made her see red.

  Up on the walkway behind the glass, shuffling along with all the tourists, were Marvelli and Vissa. She had her arm hooked around his, grinning and hunching her shoulders as if she were a sweet little newly
wed. But she was far from that. She was a flying monkey as far as Loretta was concerned. Vissa must be short for vicious, Loretta thought. When Vissa hugged Marvelli’s arm and laid her big teased-up head on his shoulder, Loretta wanted to scream.

  Loretta shaded her eyes and squinted, desperate to make out the expression on Marvelli’s face. Was he enjoying this or just tolerating it? They were just pretending to be a couple while they scouted out the factory. Right? Right, Marvelli? she yelled in her head.

  “Loretta?” Dorie was tapping Loretta on the shoulder. “There he is.” Dorie nodded at the large man charging across the room. He smiled at the workers as he passed, but they all gave him a wide berth. He was carrying what looked like two pint-size metal milk cartons, one in each hand. Loretta glanced up at Arnie’s painted face on the mural. Yes, this was definitely Arnie.

  He marched right up to the vats and quickly dumped the contents of one of the containers into one of the vats, then did the same to the other vat. Whatever was in the containers was quickly swallowed up by the swirling ice cream because Loretta didn’t even see what color it was.

  “What’s that?” Loretta asked Dorie.

  “The secret ingredient,” Dorie whispered. She waved to Arnie from across the vat to get his attention. “Arnie? I want you to meet someone.”

  “Not now, sweetie pie,” he said. He was already halfway across the floor, heading back to the doorway he’d just come through. A small sign on the door said PRIVATE in red block letters.

  Loretta glanced up at Marvelli and Vissa, who were focused intently on Arnie. They apparently hadn’t recognized her. But why not? she wanted to know. Shouldn’t Marvelli be able to recognize her, even with the wig on? After all, they’d been practically inseparable for the past three months. And she was even wearing the white cowboy shirt with the roses embroidered on the front that she’d worn to the Jersey Devils hockey game at the Meadowlands two weeks ago. Shouldn’t he remember that?

  The door marked PRIVATE slammed shut with an abrupt bang. Loretta gritted her teeth and made a face. Arnie disappeared as quickly as he’d come, and she didn’t even get to meet him.