For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,82

to smile and shake hands, and they were the most strenuous things he’d do that day. “What’s on your mind?”

There are times you go into an interview with prepared questions and an agenda, and other times you simply ask the first thing that’s on your mind. These free-association type interviews are generally more interesting, because you’re flying without a net, and you can crash and burn much more easily. And that’s what I was in danger of doing with Sam Olszowy. I didn’t expect anything from this interview, so I winged it, throwing out the first name I thought he’d recognize.

“Milt Ladowski,” I said.

“That son of a bitch,” were Olszowy’s first words. “I don’t know how many times he’s tried to get me thrown out of office. Technicality this, Sunshine Law that. Lawyers. Can’t trust a one of ’em.”

“I’m married to a lawyer.”

“Lock up your wallet at night,” he said. “You’re not safe in your own bed.”

“So why have you kept Ladowski on for all these years?” I asked, ignoring the slight to my wife.

“The mayor in this town has less power than the deputy in the animal control department,” he said. “I’ve tried to get rid of Ladowski five times. And if I’m re-elected, I’ll try again. But he’s assured of a position if that bitch is elected. She’s already promised him he can stay on, and she’ll even raise his salary so he can buy another goddam kraut car.”

I left before he had time to offer me coffee. I wasn’t sure what I’d found out, but I did know one thing: neither candidate was getting my vote for mayor in less than two weeks.

Chapter 22

Milton J. Ladowski, Esquire, has a very nice private office on the thirty-second floor of an office building in Edison, New Jersey, right near the Metropark train station. Ladowski’s office features real maple doors, thick pile carpeting, a wet bar, seven telephone lines, computers networking together Ladowski’s sixteen associates, a stereo system (which usually plays Mozart and Brahms while Ladowski is working), and a view of the surrounding area, which includes parks, highways, shopping malls, and condominium complexes.

I’ve never actually been inside Ladowski’s private office, only his borough office. That description comes from a piece that New Jersey Monthly magazine ran on Ladowski in 1998. The feature was written by a freelancer I know casually, who would believe you if you told her that King Kong used to date your cousin. So take the information for what it’s worth.

I have, however, been outside Ladowski’s building, and I was there at about 10:30 the following Monday morning, in the blue 1991 Plymouth minivan that Abigail forced me to buy. Her reasoning was that when Leah or Ethan wanted to go somewhere with their friends, I could drive more of the kids together at once. My reasoning was that this was, at best, a dubious advantage. Her reasoning prevailed, I signed the purchase agreement against my will, and we have a minivan. What the hell? If we didn’t have one, we’d probably be voted out of Midland Heights, though we’re in serious danger of that, anyway, these days.

Detective novels go to great lengths to explain to their readers exactly how tedious and awful stakeouts are. They seem to think that the movies have made stakeouts seem glamorous and exciting, when in reality, movies and TV generally show two grungy men sitting in a nondescript car while, inevitably, it rains, and lots of time passes, as seen through lap dissolves.

This was my first stakeout, and so far, it had been brief and quite pleasant. I had gotten there about fifteen minutes before I knew Ladowski would be leaving the building. I had called his office that morning and asked if he’d been in all day. No, his secretary said, he’d be leaving around 10:30. Thanks, I said, and that pretty much did it for sitting around for long periods of time fogging the window with my breath and hot chocolate steam. In the movies, it’s coffee steam.

Also, it was sunny and about sixty-five degrees, this early but pleasant April day. I had my tape player on, and Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Someone To Watch Over Me” when Ladowski walked out of the building, into the parking lot, and to the door of a silver Infiniti. Don’t ask me the model. All obscenely expensive cars look alike to me.

I started up my pain-in-the-butt-minivan, checking my disguise in the vanity mirror, which is on one side of my sun