Lisa Scottoline - Lady Killer

“I know. You two used to be friends, right?”

“Hold on, not recently.” Waites’s gaze darted nervously to the hall outside his office, then he lowered his voice. “I haven’t talked to Bobby since the summer after graduation. That was a long time ago. I heard he got in with the Mob, but I didn’t know anything about that. Live by the sword, die by the sword.” Waites focused on her, frowning behind costly rimless glasses. “Wait a minute. Who did you say you were, anyway?”

“I was a friend of his, I don’t know if he mentioned me. I tutored him and we went out a few times.”

“I don’t remember your name, but my family only moved here in the second half of senior year.” Waites rubbed his face. “I saw in the paper they think he kidnapped Trish Gambone. I didn’t even know he was still seeing her. Is that what this is about?”

“Yes.” Mary cut to the chase. “I’m trying to find Trish. She’s still missing. I thought if you had stayed in touch, you might know-”

“Like I said, we didn’t stay in touch. Not at all.” Waites sounded like he was speaking for the record, though none existed. “I don’t know what he did with her, if that’s where you’re going.”

Mary switched tacks. “Okay, that aside, I’m trying to locate a house he bought, where he could have taken her.”

“I didn’t know he bought a house.” Waites looked outside again. “Look, we didn’t stay in touch, as I said, and I don’t want to get involved.”

“Did he ever talk about a place he went, a place he liked especially?”

“No.”

“Did he have any hobbies, that you knew of?”

“Does boozing count?” Waites snapped, and Mary faked a smile.

“Did he drink, even then?”

“Oh yeah. Too much, and he was a mean drunk. Yelled. Screamed. Not good. Punched a hole through a wall more than once.”

“Scary.” Mary shuddered.

“Yes.”

“Was there anyplace you went together, back then? In the yearbook, he mentioned Wildwood.” She took the photocopied page from her purse and handed it to him. “Does that help?”

“Bad to the Bone, eh?” Waites eyed the photo, reminiscing for a minute. “It’s sad.”

“It sure is.” Mary was liking him better. “It all turned out so well for you, and obviously not for him. I wonder how that happens.”

“I’ll tell you how.” Waites looked up, his thin lips a grim line. “I had a great dad. Bobby didn’t. That guy was a jerk.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He just was.” Waites tossed the page back to Mary. “He put Bobby down all the time. Favored the real brother, who was a thug, always in and out of trouble. Bobby’s house was hell. He did everything he could to get out of it. It’s the reason he played ball, I think. He never talked about it, but you could tell. Except for the sister. He was tight with his sister.”

“Rosaria.”

“Right.” Waites nodded. “Bobby was a great guy, a quiet guy, but he kept a lot inside. You knew that, if you knew him. We did go to Wildwood, once. Rented a house there one summer, bussed tables. Kids gettin’ crazy down the shore, you know.”

“Where was the house?”

“God knows.” Waites scoffed. “I doubt it’s even there anymore.”

“Did you ever go anywhere else, back then or later?”

“No.”

“Did he say he liked Wildwood or anything like that?” Mary was thinking of Rosaria, in Brick. “Did he mention liking the Jersey shore?”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“He couldn’t swim. Almost drowned that summer, one day when the undertow was bad.”

Mary hadn’t known. She eliminated the possibility of a shore house. “Did he have any hobbies you knew of? Fishing? Hunting?”

“Not that I know. I wasn’t that close to him. Scuzzy was the closest. They were tight.”

“Scaramuzzo?” Mary’s heart leaped with hope.

“Yes. They stayed in good touch, too, at least until Scuzzy died.”

“When was that?” Mary groaned inwardly.

“Two years ago. Blood cancer. He wasn’t even thirty.”

“How about PopTop? Paul Meloni? Was he close with Bobby?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t stay in touch. I liked the guy but I’m busy.” Waites gestured at the credenza, covered with school pictures, like kiddie mug shots. “I got six kids.”

“A good Catholic.”

“No, married three times.” Waites chuckled again, then stopped. “Last I knew, PopTop was in drug rehab. Neumann graduated the best, but I hung with all the losers. I’m a late bloomer, let me tell you.”

“Does he still work for the school district?” Mary checked the addresses she’d copied from the library.

“No. He got fired. I know where you can find him, though.” Waites tore a Post-it from a yellow cube, scribbled an address on it, and handed it to her, stuck to his fingerpad. “Here you go. Now, if I could get back to work.”

“Sure, thanks for your time. If you think of anything else that might help me, will you let me know?” Mary stood up and handed him her business card, though now it had an expiration date. “Call on the cell.”

“No sweat. Thanks for coming by.” Waites stood up, nodded a little good-bye, and Mary went to the door, then turned, curious.

“By the way, what’s Jimmy 4G stand for?”

“I didn’t have a lot of dates, back then. It means ‘Jimmy waits for girls.’ Get it?” Waites smiled. “Bobby gave me that nickname. He was king of the nicknames.”

“What was his?”

Waites paused. “Come to think of it, he didn’t have one. He gave out the nicknames, so I guess he never got one.”

“Thanks,” Mary said, and for some reason, it made her sad.

Olde City was the colonial section of the city, a grid of skinny cobblestone streets bordered by the Delaware River. The oldest street in America, Elfreth’s Alley, was here, and many of the vintage brick buildings had been refurbished to house hip restaurants and artsy shops. But gentrification hadn’t reached everywhere, and on one of the grimier back streets sat a skinny glass storefront, mashed like a ham sandwich between two brick houses. It was a tattoo parlor, and a chipped black-iron grate covered the front door, which bore a printed sign that read, UNDER EIGHTEEN PARENTS MUST SIGN WAIVER! Mary yanked open the door and went inside.

Every square inch of the walls of the small room was plastered with samples of colorful tattoos: American flags, orange koi fish, flowers, hearts, banners of every color, and Chinese and Egyptian letters. Dragons with curling tails and flaring nostrils hung next to Jesus himself, and the praying hands looked incongruous, if not sacrilegious, next to hollow-eyed skulls and daggers that dripped blood. The shop wasn’t busy, and a man with a shaved head and a faded CitySports T-shirt was tattooing a black banner on a young man’s forearm, which read IN MEMORY O. The machine made a loud buzzing sound, attached to a cord wrapped with electrician’s tape.

“Can I help you?” asked a man behind the counter, and Mary walked over, trying not to freak at the inked tarantulas that crawled up his bare arms to encircle his neck. He obviously worked out, because his shoulder caps bulged under a jungle of green-and-black leaves, hiding a striped Bengal tiger about to pounce.

“My name’s Mary DiNunzio and I’m looking for Paul Meloni.”

“That’s me.” He extended a multicolored hand across the counter and they shook. His brown hair was cut so close that his head looked like a rifle bullet, and he had round, dark-brown eyes and a long, bony nose. He wore a blue tank top and jeans, and a row of small hoop earrings hung from one ear. “How can I help you?”

“I came to talk to you about Bobby Mancuso. I knew him in high school.”