from Sears. And they marked time while they built equity and hoped their properties would appreciate, so they could buy bigger tract houses in Hamilton Township.
I turned to Sally. "Do you think Sugar will come here looking for you?"
"If he doesn't come for me, he'll come for you. He was fucking flipped out."
We walked to the middle of the block and stared across the street at Morelli's house. A shoe scuffed on the stoop behind us, and a figure slid from deep shadow. Morelli.
"Out for a stroll?" he asked.
I looked beyond him at the bike parked on the small yard. "Is that a Ducati?"
"Yeah. I don't get to ride it much."
I moved closer. It was the 916 Superbike. Red. The motorcycle to die for. Smart choice for tailing someone who'd just firebombed your house. Faster and better maneuverability than a car. I found myself liking Morelli more now that I knew he owned a Duc.
"You out here alone?" I asked.
"For now. Roice is coming on at two."
"I guess they weren't able to pick Sugar up."
"We're looking for the car, but so far it's a big zero."
Headlights appeared at the end of the street, and we all shrank back against the house. The car rolled past us and turned two blocks down. We eased forward, out of hiding.
"Sugar have friends outside of the band?" Morelli asked Sally.
"Lots of casual friends. Not many close ones. When I first joined the band, Sugar had a lover."
"Would Sugar go to him for help?"
"Not likely. It wasn't a happy parting."
"How about the band? You have anything scheduled?"
"Rehearsal on Friday. Club date on Saturday."
That seemed like a millennium away. And Sugar would have to be a fool to show up. It had been stupid of him to attack Morelli. Cops get touchy when someone drops a firebomb in a fellow officer's house.
"Get in touch with the other band members," Morelli said to Sally. "Let them know you're staying with Stephanie and me. Ask if they've seen Sugar."
I looked over at Morelli. "You'll call me if anything happens?"
"Sure."
"You have my pager number?"
"Committed to memory."
I'd done this drill before. He wouldn't call me. Not until it was all over.
Sally and I crossed the street, entered Morelli's house, walked the length of it and exited the back door. I stood for a moment in the yard and thought about Morelli, lost in shadow again, his street appearing deserted. It gave me a creepy feeling. If Morelli could disappear, so could Sugar.
ONCE A WEEK Grandma Mazur went to the beauty parlor and had her hair shampooed and set. Sometimes Dolly would use a rinse and Grandma would have hair the color of an anemic apricot, but mostly Grandma lived with her natural color of steel gray. Grandma kept her hair short and permed with orderly rows of curls marching across her shiny pink scalp. The curls stayed miraculously tidy until the end of the week, when they'd begin to flatten and blend together.
I'd always wondered how Grandma had managed this feat. And now I knew. Grandma rolled her pillow under her neck so barely any skull touched the bed. And Grandma slept like the dead. Arms crossed over her chest, body straight as a board, mouth open. Grandma never moved a muscle, and she snored like a drunken lumberjack.
I crawled out of bed at six A.M. bleary-eyed and rattled from my night's experience. I'd had maybe thirty minutes of sleep, and that had been accumulated time. I grabbed some clothes and dressed in the bathroom. Then I crept downstairs and made coffee.
An hour later I heard movement overhead and recognized my mother's footsteps on the stairs.
"You look terrible," she said. "You feel okay?"
"You ever try to sleep with Grandma?"
"She sleeps like the dead."
"You got it."
Doors opened and slammed shut upstairs, and my grandmother yelled for my father to get out of the bathroom.
"I'm an old lady," she yelled. "I can't wait all day. What are you doing in there anyway?"
More doors slamming, and my father clomped into the kitchen and took his place at the breakfast table. "I gotta go out with the cab this morning," he said. "Jones is in Atlantic City, and I said I'd cover his shift."
My parents owned their house free and clear, and my father got a decent pension from the post office. He didn't need the money from hacking. What he needed was to get out of the house, away from my mother and my grandmother.
The stairs creaked, and an instant later Sally's frame