Munch was arrested and booked, but the magnetometer was never recovered. In a moment of insanity, Vinnie wrote a bond for Munch, and now Munch is playing hard to get with his contraption.

“This is a white-collar guy,” Connie said. “He hasn‘t grown up in a crime culture. His friends and family are probably horrified. I can‘t see them hiding him.”

“He hasn‘t got a lot of friends and family,” I told her. “From what I can determine, he has neighbors who have never spoken to him, and the only family is a grandmother in a retirement home in Cadmount. He was employed at the research facility for two years, and he never socialized. Before that, he was a student at Princeton, where he never got his face out of a book.

“His neighbors tell me a couple months ago a guy started visiting Munch. The guy was a little over six feet tall, with an athletic build and expensive clothes. He drove a black Ferrari and had shoulder- length black hair and pale, almost white skin. Sometimes Munch would leave with him and not come back for several days. That‘s the whole enchilada.”

“Sounds like Dracula,” Lula said. “Was he wearing a cape? Did he have fangs?”

“No one said anything about a cape or fangs.”

“Munch must have come in when I was out sick last week,” Lula said. “I don‘t remember him.”

“So what was it?” I asked her. “The flu?”

“I don‘t know what it was. My eyes were all swollen, and I was sneezing and wheezing, and I felt like I had a fever. I just stayed in my apartment, drinking medicinal whiskey and taking cold pills, and now I feel fine. What‘s this Munch look like?”

I took his file from my Prada knockoff messenger bag and showed Lula his mug shot, plus a photo.