"Of course it's a word. Klept. It's what kleptomaniacs do."
"A kleptomaniac steals, sweetheart," I say.
Laurie sits up a little straighter, poised and ready to pounce. "No, the run-of-the-mill losers that you represent steal. The real sickos klept."
I look around for the dictionary that we keep in the box with the game. It's nowhere to be found.
"Do you know where the dictionary is, my little honeybunch?" I ask.
"I looked for it before, but it's gone," she says, a razor-sharp edge in her voice. "I guess somebody must have klepted it."
The game rapidly heads downhill after that. I start to make moves too quickly, she slows down even more, and she beats me by sixty-seven points.
That's the bad news. The good news is it means we can go to bed, and bed with Laurie is much better than Scrabble with Laurie. Bed with Laurie is better than Scrabble with anybody. Though I'm speaking from a rather limited database, I think it's very likely that bed with Laurie is better than bed with anybody.
I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and turn on the television to the local news. Laurie is still sleeping, but the sound doesn't wake her. The sound of an enormous asteroid hitting Hackensack wouldn't wake her.
There is almost nothing of consequence on the local news. It's traffic, weather, boring banter, light features, and then back to the traffic and weather. Today is no exception. It's raining, so they have the poor weather-man out on a street corner, giving his report from under an umbrella. He's predicting that it's going to rain. All that money spent on meteorology school obviously paid off.
Laurie wakes up at seven and says something that sends a bolt of agony through me. "Weren't you going to the gym this morning?"
I've gained a few pounds lately and noticed a slight gut. Even worse, Laurie has noticed it. I announced that I was going to start going to a gym, and she made no effort to talk me out of it. Today was to be the first day. I had genuinely forgotten about it, though I would certainly have faked forgetting about it if I thought I could get away with it.
I get up, walk Tara, then throw some things in a bag, and go. I'm not yet a member of a gym myself, so for this initial foray into future fitness, I've chosen to be a guest of Vince Sanders. If I can't keep up with Vince, I'm going to stop off at the embalmer on the way home and turn myself in.
Vince is the city desk editor of the Bergen Record; it was a young reporter working for him that Willie Miller was accused of murdering. He helped me on that case, and we've become pretty friendly since. Vince is the single largest consumer of jelly donuts in New Jersey, with the gut to prove it.
I'm ten minutes late getting to the gym; it would have been longer if not for the fact that there's valet parking. Vince is a little grouchy about my late arrival.
"You here to work out or you here to be late?" he snarls.
It's not the most coherent of questions, so I just shrug my apology, and he flashes his guest pass and gets me in. The place is a spectacular modern facility, with state-of-the-art exercise machines, a fashionable workout clothing boutique, a fancy hair salon, and a restaurant/snack bar area that could host a debutante ball.
It's the restaurant that's our first stop. Vince orders a large fruit smoothie, banana nut muffin, and fruit salad. I get an orange juice, and by the time I'm finished drinking it, he's already eaten his tray clean. He orders a raisin scone and another smoothie and takes it with him as we head for our workout.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"The treadmills. Best workout you can have."
"How come?"
He sighs, as if he can't believe he's been saddled with this fitness novice. "Because it's the closest to everyday life. I walk in life, so I walk on the treadmill."
I nod. "If the trick is to imitate life, how come you don't go to the jelly-donut-eating machine?"
He begins a snarl, but it turns into a laugh. "Believe me, if they had one, I would."
We get to the treadmill, where I soon find that preparation is the key. Vince prepares by attaching his stereo headphones to outlets allowing him to hear sound from the large-screen TVs. Then he adjusts those headphones so they won't fall off his head should he ever decide to actually exercise. Then he adjusts the treadmill to the proper speed and elevation, which can best be described as slow and none. Then he hangs his towel neatly on the side bar, in case he should happen to sweat, which I don't think is a serious possibility.
I start my machine at a quicker pace with higher elevation, not too strenuous but enough to be of some possible value. Five minutes later Vince gets off, explaining that "this aerobic shit is good, but you don't want to overdo it." Ever the accommodating guest, I follow him into the locker room, where we take a whirlpool bath, in order to soothe our exhausted muscles.
While Vince may not qualify as a gym rat, he's as good a newspaperman as there is. His most valuable asset is his amazing knowledge about what is going on in the communities he covers. When it comes to northern New Jersey, he knows what is happening, who is causing it to happen, and whom it's happening to.
"Do you know a guy named Geoffrey Stynes?" I ask.
Nothing registers on his face. "Nope," he says. "Who is he?"
I shrug. "Just a guy."
"Oh, just a guy? You sure? I figured he was just a fish, or just a tennis racket. You asked about him, now who the hell is he?"
I'm sorry I brought it up; but my curiosity got the better of me. "It's privileged," I say.
Vince is incredulous. "He's your client? He's your client and you're asking me who he is?"
"Forget I asked."
He nods and goes back to enjoying the water churning around his blubbery body. After a few minutes of silence, he asks, "You want me to check him out?"
"I do."
"What's in it for me?" he asks.
"I promise not to tell anyone that I get more exercise using the TV remote control than you get in your entire workout."
He thinks for a moment. "Deal," he says.
We head back to the locker room to shower and change. According to the mirrors, I haven't lost any weight as a result of the workout, even though I'm sure I burned off at least eight or nine calories.
The locker room is as fancy as the rest of the place, and there are three or four televisions positioned so they can be viewed from anywhere. They are tuned to a local news show, and as I walk by one, I hear Alex Dorsey's name mentioned.
I look up and see a newscaster sitting at a desk and speaking. Behind him is a photograph of a man, and the type legend below his face is, "Arrested in Dorsey Murder."
I don't know who the man is, but he sure as hell is not Geoffrey Stynes.
LAURIE IS WAITING FOR ME WHEN I ARRIVE AT the office. It is no surprise that she is fully briefed on the media's version of the arrest; when it comes to Alex Dorsey, she is command central.
The arrested man's name is Oscar Garcia, a twenty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican immigrant living in Passaic. He is described as a handyman by trade and is said to have a few drug arrests, though no convictions, in his apparently less-than-illustrious biography.
While Laurie's awareness of the news was to be expected, her take on it is not. "There's no way Garcia did it, Andy," she says. "I know this guy."
"You do?"
She nods. "He's a small-time dealer who hangs out in Pennington Park introducing kids to the glories of cocaine. I busted him once."
"The radio said he's been arrested but not convicted."