“A hit?”

“Looks like it.”

“This garage selling numbers? Dealing dope?”

“Nothing I know about.”

“Maybe it’s personal. Maybe he was screwing someone’s wife. Maybe he owed money.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe Kenny came back to shut him up.”

Morelli didn’t move a muscle. “Maybe.”

“You think Kenny’d do that?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say what Kenny’d do.”

“You run the plate on that car last night?”

“Yeah. It belongs to my cousin Leo.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a big family,” he said. “I’m not that close anymore.”

“You going to talk to Leo?”

“Soon as I’m out of here.”

I sipped some of the steaming coffee and watched his eyes lock onto the Styrofoam cup. “Bet you’d like to have some nice hot coffee,” I said.

“I’d kill for coffee.”

“I’ll let you have some if you’ll let me tag along when you talk to Leo.”

“Deal.”

I took one last sip and passed him the cup. “You check on Julia?”

“Did a drive-by. The lights were out. Didn’t see the car. We can talk to her after we talk to Leo.”

The photographer was finished and the paramedics went to work, trundling the body into a bag, hefting it onto a stretcher. The stretcher clattered as it rolled over the doorstep, the bag jiggling with its dead weight.

The doughnut sat heavy in my stomach. I didn’t know the victim, but I felt his loss all the same. Vicarious grief.

There were two homicide detectives on the scene, looking professional in trench coats. Under the trench coats they wore suits and ties. Morelli was wearing a navy T-shirt, Levi’s, a tweed sport coat, and running shoes. A fine mist had settled on his hair.

“You don’t look like the other guys,” I said. “Where’s your suit?”

“You ever see me in a suit? I look like a casino pit boss. I have special dispensation never to wear a suit.” He took his keys from his pocket and gestured to one of the detectives that he was leaving. The detective nodded acknowledgment.

Morelli was driving a city car. It was an old tan Fairlane sedan with an antenna wired from the trunk and a hula doll stuck in the back window. It looked like it couldn’t do 30 going uphill. It was dented and rusted and grime-coated.

“You ever wash this thing?” I asked.

“Never. I’m afraid to see what’s under the dirt.”

“Trenton likes to make law enforcement a challenge.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Wouldn’t want it to be too easy. Take all the fun out of it.”

Leo Morelli lived with his parents in the burg. He was the same age as Kenny, and he worked for the Turnpike Authority, like his father.

A blue-and-white was parked in their driveway, and the whole family was outside talking to a uniform when we pulled up.

“Someone stole Leo’s car,” Mrs. Morelli said. “Can you imagine? What’s this world coming to? These things never used to happen in the burg. Now look.”