Carl pulled on rubber gloves.

“Gonna need more than that in there,” Lula said. “There’s cats.” And she sneezed and farted. “S’cuse me,” she said.

An EMT truck turned the corner and Big Dog flagged it down.

“I’ll stop at the station later today for my paperwork,” I said to Carl.

“Don’t rush. I have to get mine done first.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to Dolly.

“Thank you,” she said. “It was nice meeting you.”

Lula and I got into the Jeep, and I found my way back to Greenwood.

“That was a downer,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah,” she said. “It was anti climactic after waiting all this time to see the bigamist.”

“I can’t figure out if I’m more depressed that Dirk died or that Dolly didn’t know he was dead.”

“I take a philosophical view on these things, since I’m a observer of human nature,” Lula said. “I figure you gotta have the right attitude about this stuff. Take Dolly, for instance. Dolly was gonna try to keep her lunch date, which is a good thing, because life gotta go on. And even though he was dead, Dirk sort of looked like he was smiling.”

“He did look like he died smiling.”

“See, it’s all part of the circle of life,” Lula said. “And pretty soon, we’ll be dead, too, only you’ll go first because you’re older than me.”

“Do you have any doughnuts left? I need a doughnut.”

“I ate them all, but we can stop at the bakery again. They had some red velvet cupcakes that I’m pretty sure were made with beet juice. Either that or red dye #13.”

I hooked a left into the bakery lot and bought myself a doughnut with white icing and colorful sprinkles. “This is a happy doughnut,” I said to Lula.

“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “But then I never saw a sad doughnut.”

I ate my doughnut and felt much better, so I drove down Greenwood to Hamilton, past the office, and on to the government buildings on the river. It was lunchtime, and I was guessing Mickey Gritch would be hanging out, looking to run some numbers.

“Oh boy,” Lula said when I pulled into the 7-Eleven lot on Marble Street. “You’re not gonna do what I think you’re gonna do, are you?”

“I’m going to talk to Mickey Gritch.”

I spotted his car, parked to the side of the lot. No other cars around it. It was early. Lunch hours hadn’t kicked in yet. I pulled up beside him, and his tinted window rolled down.

Mickey Gritch had white-blond hair cut in a sixties Beatle mop style. He had little pig eyes that were always behind shades, a big pasty potato head, and a body gone soft. He was in his late forties, and he was living proof that anyone could be successful at crime in Trenton if he truly worked at it.

“What?” Mickey Gritch asked me.

“I want to talk to you about Vinnie.”