* * *
Connie was alone in the office when Diesel and I walked in.
“Have you heard from Lula?” I asked Connie.
“Not since she swapped out your car for hers,” Connie said. “She stopped in long enough to tell me you were with Diesel and to tell me about the bat in her hair and then she took off.”
“Did you get anything on Oswald?”
“Nothing new. He didn’t list a car on his bond application,” Connie said.
“It turns out that he didn’t list lots of things we would have found interesting. For instance, the women in his life tend to disappear without a trace, and Diesel is looking for him in connection to a hacking incident.”
“As in computer hacking?” Connie asked. “Maybe Melvin Schwartz knows him.”
“Who’s Melvin Schwartz?”
“Vinnie bailed him out a couple of times,” Connie said. “He never skipped so you wouldn’t remember him. When he was a senior in high school he hacked into the system and shut all the schools down for two weeks. He had a scholarship to Harvard, but he got kicked out for hacking into the system and adjusting his first semester grades. A couple months ago, he got arrested for replacing the six o’clock evening news with a porn movie.”
“Where can I find him?” I asked Connie.
Connie pulled Schwartz’s file up on her computer, printed it out, and handed it over to me. “He’s probably at home. So far as I know, he doesn’t have a job.”
“What happened with the evening news arrest?”
“He got a slap on the wrist, just like always. He’s never done time. Trenton hasn’t got jail cells for pranksters. We’re full up with drug dealers and shooters.”
Diesel and I left the bail bonds office and stood on the sidewalk.
“I’m driving,” I said.
“The Ducati is more fun,” Diesel said.
“And you’re all about fun?”
“I’m all about taking a nap on a tropical island, in the shade of a palm tree, but that’s not going to happen.”
“How about if I drive and you close your eyes and pretend about the palm tree?”
Diesel got into my car and buckled up. “This doesn’t smell like a tropical island. It doesn’t even smell like a car.”
I blew out a sigh. “It smells like wet dog. I took Morelli’s dog, Bob, to the dog park yesterday and we got caught in the rain.” I pulled into traffic. “Where are we going?”
Diesel paged through the file. “Beeker Street.”
“That’s an odd address. It’s off State Street and it’s mainly warehouses and auto body shops.”
I went south on State Street, turned left onto Beeker, and stopped in front of Deacon Plumbing Supply. It was a cavernous cement block building with a showroom on the ground floor.
“This is it,” I said, pulling into the lot and parking. “If Melvin Schwartz doesn’t live here, I can price out a new toilet just for the heck of it.”
There were several cars in the parking lot but only one man in the showroom. I approached the man and told him I was looking for Melvin Schwartz.
“Melvin’s upstairs,” he said. “There’s a door by the loading dock on the side of the building.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I was sure I had the wrong address.”
He nodded. “Happens all the time. No one can ever find him. We should have a sign out front.”
Diesel and I walked around to the loading dock and rang the buzzer by the side door.
“What?” someone yelled on the intercom.
“Melvin Schwartz?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“I have a computer question. Can I come up?”
“Who’s the big Neanderthal with you?”
“That’s just Diesel.”
The door clicked open, and Diesel and I walked up two flights of stairs to an open loft. There was an unmade bed in a corner and some cardboard packing boxes and a couple of laundry baskets by the bed. From the distance it looked like the boxes and baskets were filled with clothes. Hard to say if they were clean or dirty. Another corner of the loft held a small kitchenette with a table and two kitchen chairs. The rest of the loft was cluttered with workbenches and desks filled with electronic equipment and computers. A lumpy couch faced a massive flat-screen TV. A large wooden coffee table sat in front of the couch. A bunch of fast-food bags, crumpled soda cans, and two laptop computers were on the coffee table.
Melvin Schwartz was standing in the middle of the loft. He was five feet ten inches tall, and he looked like a giant, chubby cherub. He had wispy blond hair, apple cheeks, and a soft Pillsbury Doughboy body. He was wearing gray wool socks and pajamas with dinosaurs on them. According to his file he was twenty-six years old.