Ranger rapped again, with more force. “Fugitive apprehension agent,” he called out. “Open the door.”

This drew a response, and the door was opened, not by Julia Cenetta or Kenny Mancuso, but by Joe Morelli, a Trenton Police Department plainclothesman.

We all stood silent for a moment, everyone surprised to see everyone else.

“That your truck in the driveway?” Ranger finally asked Morelli.

“Yeah,” Morelli said. “Just got it.”

Ranger nodded. “Good-looking vehicle.”

Morelli and I were both from the burg, a blue-collar chunk of Trenton where dysfunctional drunks were still called bums and only pansies went to Jiffy Lube for an oil change. Morelli had a long history of taking advantage of my naïveté. I’d recently had the opportunity to even the score, and now we were in a period of reevaluation, both of us jockeying around for position.

Julia peeked at us from behind Morelli.

“So what happened?” I said to Julia. “I thought Kenny was supposed to stop around tonight?”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “Like he ever does anything he says.”

“Did he call?”

“Nothing. No call. Nothing. He’s probably with Denise Barkolowski. Why don’t you go knock on her stupid door?”

Ranger stayed stoic, but I knew he was smiling inside. “I’m out of here,” he said. “Don’t like to get involved in these domestic unpleasantries.”

Morelli had been watching me. “What happened to your hair?” he asked.

“It’s under my hat.”

He had his hands shoved into his jeans pockets, “Very sexy.”

Morelli thought everything was sexy.

“It’s late,” Julia said. “I gotta go to work tomorrow.”

I looked at my watch. It was ten-thirty. “You’ll let me know if you hear from Kenny?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Morelli followed me out. We walked to his truck and stared at it in silence for a while, thinking our own thoughts. His last car had been a Jeep Cherokee. It had been bombed and blown to smithereens. Fortunately for Morelli, he hadn’t been in the car at the time.

“What are you doing here?” I finally asked.

“Same as you. Looking for Kenny.”

“I didn’t think you were in the bond enforcement business.”

“Mancuso’s mother was a Morelli, and the family asked if I’d look for Kenny and talk to him before he got himself into any more trouble.”

“Jesus. Are you telling me you’re related to Kenny Mancuso?”

“I’m related to everyone.”

“You’re not related to me.”

“You have any leads besides Julia?”

“Nothing exciting.”

He gave that some thought. “We could work together on this.”

I raised an eyebrow. Last time I worked with Morelli I’d gotten shot in the ass. “What would you contribute to the cause?”

“Family.”

Kenny might be dumb enough to turn to family. “How do I know you won’t cut me out at the end?” As he was sometimes prone to do.

His face was all hard planes. The sort of face that started off handsome and gained character as it aged. A paper-thin scar sliced through his left eyebrow. Mute testimony to a life lived outside the normal range of caution. He was thirty-two. Two years older than me. He was single. And he was a good cop. The jury was still out on its assessment of him as a human being.