"Am not! I absolutely would not want a case commitment!"
"You're cute when you lie."
I pointed stiff-armed to the door. "Out!"
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I could have called Eddie Kuntz and told him the newest message, but I wanted to talk to him face-to-face. Maxine Nowicki's apartment had been ransacked, and two people connected to her had been mutilated. I was thinking maybe someone wanted to find her for something other than love letters. And maybe that someone was Eddie Kuntz.
Kuntz was washing his car when I drove up. He had a boom box on the curb, and he was listening to shock jock radio. He stopped when he saw me and shut the radio off.
"You find her?"
I gave him the note with the translation. "I found another message."
He read the message and made a disgusted sound. " 'Our spot,' " he said. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You didn't know you had a spot?"
"We had lots of spots. How am I supposed to know which spot she's talking about?"
"Think about it."
Eddie Kuntz stared at me, and I thought I caught a hint of rubber burning.
"She's probably talking about the bench," he said. "The first time we met was in the park, and she was sitting on a bench, looking at the water. She was always talking about that bench like it was some kind of shrine or something."
"Go figure."
Kuntz gave me a hands-up. "Women."
A Lincoln Town Car eased to the curb. Navy exterior, tinted windows, half a block long.
"Aunt Betty and Uncle Leo," Eddie said.
"Big car."
"Yeah. I borrow it sometimes to pick up a few extra bucks."
I wasn't sure if he meant driving people around or running people over. "I have your occupation listed as cook, but you seem to be home a lot."
"That's because I'm between jobs."
"When was your last job as a cook?"
"I dunno. This morning. I toasted a waffle. What's it to you?"
"Curious."
"Try being curious about Maxine."
Aunt Betty and Uncle Leo walked up to us.
"Hello," Aunt Betty said. "Are you Eddie's new girlfriend?"
"Acquaintance," I told her.
"Well, I hope you turn into a girlfriend. You're Italian, right?"
"Half Italian. Half Hungarian."
"Well, nobody's perfect," she said. "Come in and have some cake. I got a nice pound cake at the bakery."
"Gonna be another scorcher today," Uncle Leo said. "Good thing we got air."
"You got air," Kuntz said. "My half doesn't have air. My half's hotter'n hell."
"I gotta get in," Uncle Leo said. "This heat is murder."
"Don't forget about the cake," Betty said, following Leo up the steps. "There's cake any time you want it."
"So you're doing other stuff to find Maxine, right?" Kuntz asked. "I mean, you're not just waiting for these clues, are you?"
"I've been going through the list of names and businesses you gave me. The manager of the Seven-Eleven said Maxine stopped by Sunday night. So far, no one else has seen her."
"Christ, she's here all the time leaving these stupid clues. Why doesn't someone see her? What is she, the freaking Phantom?"
"The manager of the Seven-Eleven said something that stuck in my mind. She said Maxine always used to buy a lottery ticket, but this time she said she didn't need to win the lottery anymore."
The line of Kuntz's mouth tightened. "Maxine's a lunatic. Who knows what she's thinking."
I suspected Eddie Kuntz knew exactly what Maxine was thinking.
"You need to be on that bench tomorrow at three," I told Kuntz. "I'll call you in the morning and make the final arrangements."
"I don't know if I like this. She pitched a rock into my window. There's no telling what she might do. Suppose she wants to snuff me?"
"Throwing a rock through a window doesn't equate with killing someone." I stared at him for a moment. "Does she have a reason for wanting to kill you?"
"I pressed charges against her. Is that a reason?"
"It wouldn't be for me." This loser wasn't worth doing time for. "Hard to say about Maxine."
I LEFT KUNTZ fiddling with his boom box. I'm not sure why I'd felt compelled to see him in person. I suppose I wanted to look him in the eye and learn if he'd scalped Maxine's mother. Unfortunately, in my experience, eyes are vastly overrated as pathways to the soul. The only thing I saw in Eddie Kuntz's eyes was last night's booze tally, which I could sum up as being too much.
I looped past Mrs. Nowicki's house and saw no sign of life. Her windows were closed shut. Shades were drawn. I parked the car