MOONER AND I stood in the hall in front of my apartment. Mooner had a small duffel bag with him that I a.s.sumed contained a change of clothes and a full range of drugs.

"Okay," I said, "here's the thing. You're welcome to stay here, but you can't do drugs."

"Dude," Mooner said.

"Are there any drugs in the bag?"

"Hey, what do I look like?"

"You look like a stoner."

"Well, yeah, but that's because you know me."

"Empty the bag on the floor."

Mooner dumped the contents of the bag on the floor. I put Mooner's clothes back in the bag, and I confiscated everything else. Pipes and papers and an a.s.sortment of controlled substances. I let us into my apartment, flushed the contents of the plasticene bags, and tossed the hardware in the trash.

"No drugs as long as you live here," I said.

"Hey, that's cool," Mooner said. "The Mooner doesn't actually need drugs. The Mooner is a recreational user."

Uh-huh.

I gave Mooner a pillow and a quilt, and I went to bed. At 4:00 A.M. I woke up to the television blaring in the living room. I shuffled out in my T-shirt and flannel boxers and squinted at Mooner.

"What's going on? Don't you sleep?"

"I usually sleep like a rock. I don't know the deal here. I think it's all like, too much. I'm feeling b.u.mmed, man. You know what I'm saying? Edgy."

"Yeah. Sounds to me like you need a joint."

"It's medicinal, dude. In California you can get pot by prescription."

"Forget it." I went back to my bedroom, closed and locked the door, and put the pillow over my head.

THE NEXT TIME I straggled out it was seven, Mooner was asleep on the floor, and Sat.u.r.day morning cartoons were on. I got the coffee machine started, gave Rex some fresh water and food, and dropped a slice of bread into my brand-new toaster. The smell of coffee brewing got Mooner to his feet.

"Yo," he said, "what's for breakfast?"

"Toast and coffee."

"Your grandmother would have made me pancakes."

"My grandmother isn't here."

"You're just trying to make it hard on me, man. Probably you've been scarfing down doughnuts and all I'm allowed to eat is toast. I'm talking about my rights, here." He wasn't exactly yelling, but he wasn't talking softly, either. "I'm a human being and I've got rights."

"What rights are you talking about? The right to have pancakes? The right to have doughnuts?"

"I don't remember."

Oh boy.

He flopped down on the couch. "This apartment is depressing. It makes me, like, nervous. How can you stand to live here?"

"Do you want coffee, or what?"

"Yes! I want coffee and I want it now." His voice ratcheted up a notch. Definitely yelling now. "You can't expect me to wait forever for coffee!"

I slammed a mug down on the kitchen counter, slopped some coffee in it, and shoved it at Mooner. Then I dialed Morelli.

"I need drugs," I said to Morelli. "You have to get me some drugs."

"You mean like antibiotic?"

"No. Like marijuana. I flushed all Mooner's drugs down the toilet last night, and now I hate him. He's completely PMS."

"I thought the plan was to dry him out."

"It isn't worth it. I like him better when he's high."

"Hang in there," Morelli said. And he hung up.

"This is like bogus coffee, dude," Mooner said. "I need a latte."

"Fine! Let's go get a d.a.m.n latte." I grabbed my bag and keys and shoved Mooner out the door.

"Hey, I need shoes, man," Mooner said.

I performed an exaggerated eye roll and sighed really loudly while Mooner grumped back into the apartment to get his shoes. Great. I wasn't even strung out and now I was PMSing, too.

SITTING IN A coffeehouse leisurely sipping a latte wasn't on my morning schedule, so I opted for the McDonald's drive-through, where the breakfast menu listed french vanilla lattes and and pancakes. They weren't Grandma-caliber pancakes, but they weren't bad, either, and they were easier to come by. pancakes. They weren't Grandma-caliber pancakes, but they weren't bad, either, and they were easier to come by.

The sky was overcast, threatening rain. No surprise there. Rain is de rigueur for Jersey in April. Steady, gray drizzle that encourages statewide bad hair and couch potato mentality. In school they used to teach us April showers bring May flowers. April showers also bring twelve-car pileups on the Jersey Turnpike and swollen, snot-clogged sinuses. The upside to this is that we frequently have reason to shop for new cars in Jersey, and we're recognized worldwide for our distinctive nasal version of the English language.

"So how's your head?" I asked Mooner on the way home.

"Filled with latte. My head is mellow, dude."

"No, I mean how are the twelve st.i.tches you have in your head?"

Mooner felt along the Band-Aid. "Feels okay." He sat for a moment with his lips slightly parted and his eyes searching the back recesses of his mind, and then a light flicked on. "Oh yeah," he said. "I was shot by the scary old lady."

That's the good part about smoking pot all your life . . . no short-term memory. Something horrible happens to you and ten minutes later you can't remember a thing.

Of course, that's also the bad part about smoking pot, because when disaster strikes, like your friend goes missing, there's the possibility that important messages and events are lost in the haze. And there's the possibility that you could hallucinate a face in the window when the shot was actually fired by a pa.s.sing car.

In the case of the Mooner, the possibility was a good probability.

I drove past Dougie's house to make sure it hadn't burned down while we slept.

"Everything looks okay," I said.

"Looks lonely," Mooner said.

WHEN WE GOT back to my apartment Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci were in the kitchen. They each had a mug of coffee and a piece of toast.

"Hope you don't mind," Ziggy said. "We were curious about your new toaster."

Benny gestured with his toast. "This is excellent toast. See how evenly brown it is. Not burned on the edges at all. And it's crisp throughout."

"You should get some jelly," Ziggy said. "Some strawberry jelly would be good on this toast."

"You broke into my apartment again! I hate hate when you do that." when you do that."

"You weren't home," Ziggy said. "We didn't want it to look like you had men loitering in your hall."

"Yeah, we didn't want to sully your good name," Benny said. "We didn't think you were that kind of girl. Although there's been a lot of rumors throughout the years about you and Joe Morelli. You should be careful of him. He has a very bad reputation."

"Hey, look," Ziggy said. "It's the little fruit. Where's your uniform, kid?"

"Yeah, and what's with the Band-Aid? You fall off your high heels?" Benny asked.

Ziggy and Benny elbowed each other and laughed as if this were some great inside joke.

An idea skittered through my head. "You guys wouldn't happen to know anything about the need for the Band-Aid, would you?"

"Not me," Benny said. "Ziggy, you know anything about that?"

"I don't know nothing about it," Ziggy said.

I leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed my arms. "So what are you doing here?"

"We thought we should check in," Ziggy said. "It's been a while since we talked, and we wanted to see if anything new turned up."

"It's been less than twenty-four hours," I said.

"Yeah, that's what we said. It's been a while."

"Nothing's turned up."

"Gee, that's too bad," Benny said. "You come so recommended. We had high hopes you could help us."

Ziggy finished his coffee, rinsed the mug in the sink, and set it on the dish drain. "We should be going now."

"Pig," Mooner said.

Ziggy and Benny paused at the door.

"That's a rude thing to say," Ziggy said. "We're gonna overlook it because you're Miss Plum's friend." He looked to Benny for backup.

"That's right," Benny said. "We're gonna overlook it, but you should learn some manners. It's not right to talk to old gentlemen like that."

"You called me a fruit!" Mooner yelled.

Ziggy and Benny looked at each other, perplexed.

"Yeah?" Ziggy said. "So?"

"Next time feel free to loiter in the hall," I said. I closed and locked the door behind Ziggy and Benny. "I want you to think," I said to the Mooner. "Do you have any idea why someone shot at you? Are you sure about the woman's face in your window?"

"I don't know, man. I'm having a hard time thinking. My mind is like, busy."

"How about strange phone calls?"

"There was just one, but it wasn't all that strange. A woman called up while I was at Dougie's and said she thought I had something that wasn't mine. And I was like, well, yeah."

"Did she say anything else?"

"No. I asked her if she wanted a toaster or a Super Dude Suit, and she hung up."

"Is that all the inventory you've got left? What happened to the cigarettes?"

"Got rid of the cigarettes. I know this real heavy smoker . . ."

It was as if Mooner had been caught in a time warp. I had memories of him in high school, looking exactly like this. Long, thin brown hair, parted in the middle and tied back into a ponytail. Pale skin, slim build, average height. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans that probably had been delivered to Dougie's house under cover of darkness. He'd floated through high school in a gra.s.s-induced fog of mellow well-being, talking and giggling through lunch, nodding off in English cla.s.s. And here he was . . . still floating through life. No job. No responsibility. Now that I thought about it, it sounded pretty good.

Connie usually worked mornings on Sat.u.r.day. I phoned the office and waited while she got off a call.

"That was my Aunt Flo on the line," she said. "Remember I told you there was trouble in Richmond when DeChooch was down there? She thinks it's related to Louie D buying the farm."