The wind had picked up, and clouds scudded overhead, periodically obliterating the sliver of moon. Morelli parked next to the Buick and cut the engine. He reached over and toyed with the collar on my jacket. “Do you have any plans for tonight?”

I told him about the bodyguard deal.

Morelli just stared at me. “How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you walk into this stuff? If you knew what you were doing, you’d be a real threat.”

“Guess I lead a charmed life.” I looked at my watch. It was 7:30, and Morelli was still working. “You put in long hours,” I said. “I thought cops clocked on in eight-hour shifts.”

“Vice is flexible. I work when I need to.”

“You have no life.”

He shrugged. “I like my job. When I need a break I take off for a weekend at the shore or a week in the Islands.”

This was pretty interesting. I’d never thought of Morelli as being an “Islands” person. “What do you do when you go to the Islands? What’s the appeal?”

“I like to dive.”

“And what about the shore? What do you do at the Jersey shore?”

Morelli grinned. “I hide under the boardwalk and abuse myself. Old habits die hard.”

I had a tough time visualizing Morelli diving off the coast of Martinique, but the thought of him abusing himself under the boardwalk was crystal clear. I could see him as a horny little eleven-year-old, hanging outside the Seaside bars, listening to the bands, eyeballing the women in their elastic tank tops and skimpy shorts. And later, crawling under the boardwalk with his cousin Mooch, the two of them whacking off together before they had to meet up with Uncle Manny and Aunt Florence for the ride back to the bungalow in Seaside Heights. Two years later he would have substituted his cousin Sue Ann Beale for his cousin Mooch, but the basic routine would be the same.

I pushed the truck door open and lurched out into the parking lot. The wind whistled around Morelli’s antennae and whipped at my skirt. My hair flew about my face in a frenzied explosion of tangled frizz.

I made an attempt to tame it in the elevator while Morelli looked on, calmly curious about my efforts to shove the mess into an elastic band I’d found in my jacket pocket. He stepped into the hall when the doors opened. Waited while I fumbled for the key.

“How scared is Spiro?” Morelli wanted to know.

“Scared enough to hire me to protect him.”

“Maybe it’s just a ploy to get you into his apartment.”

I stepped into the entrance hall, flipped the light switch, and shrugged out of my jacket. “It’s an expensive ploy.”

Morelli went straight to the TV and buzzed in ESPN. The Rangers’ blue jerseys blinked onto the screen. The Caps were at home in white. I watched a face-off before bobbing into the kitchen to check my answering machine.