“You can’t manage your own small talk?”
“Making polite conversation isn’t at the top of my skill set.”
“I’ve noticed.” Okay, so this doesn’t sound so bad, plus I’d get dinner, right? “What time will you pick me up?”
“Six o’clock. This event is in Atlantic City. Dinner is at eight.”
TWO
I LEFT RANGER and joined Lula in the bonds office. The building was brand-new and light-years better than the old office. It had been built on the same footprint as the old office but the walls were freshly painted, the tile on the floor was unscuffed, the furniture was inexpensive but comfortable and free from food and coffee stains.
Lula had claimed her usual spot on the faux leather couch, and Connie, the office manager, was at her desk. Connie is a couple years older than me, a much better shot, and better connected. Connie’s family is old school Italian mob and far more professional than Trenton’s gangsta morons when it comes to crime-related skills such as whacking, hijacking, and money laundering. Connie looks a lot like Betty Boop with big hair and a mustache. Today she was wearing a short black pencil skirt, a wide black patent-leather belt, and a tight red sweater with a low scoop neck that showed a lot of her Betty Boopness.
I looked over at the closed door behind Connie that led to my cousin Vinnie’s private office. “Is Vinnie in?” I asked her.
Connie looked up from her computer. “No. He’s downtown bonding out Jimmy Palowski. Palowski’s neighbor caught him watering her flowers without a watering can, if you get what I mean. He got arrested for drunk and disorderly, and indecent exposure.”
I sunk into the molded plastic office chair in front of Connie’s desk. “My car got blown up.”
“I heard. Same old, same old.”
“I need money. Anything good come in?”
“Do you remember Geoffrey Cubbin?”
“Yeah. He was arrested last month for embezzling five million dollars from Cranberry Manor.”
Connie handed me a file. “The judge set a really high bond, and Vinnie signed on the dotted line. Cubbin didn’t seem like much of a risk. No prior arrests, and he was claiming he was innocent. Plus he had a wife and a cat. Men with cats are usually good risks. Very stable.”
“And?”
“He’s gone. Disappeared off the face of the earth, along with the five million. There’s an article in the paper this morning. He was at home awaiting his trial, he woke up in the middle of the night with pain and fever and went to the ER, and four hours later he was minus his appendix. That was three days ago. When his wife arrived at the hospital yesterday to take him home, he was gone. Vanished. No one saw him leave.”
“Is this our problem?”
“It’ll officially be our problem on Monday. If he doesn’t show up for court we’ll forfeit the bond. Personally, I think it sounds like he skipped. His court date was right around the corner, and he panicked. If he’d gotten convicted, he’d be looking at a good chunk of prison time. You might want to poke around before the trail gets cold.”
I took the file and leafed through it. Geoffrey Cubbin was forty-two years old. Wharton business school graduate. Managed the Cranberry Manor assisted-living facility. I studied his photo. Pleasant-looking guy. Brown hair. Glasses. No tattoos or piercings noted. His height was listed at 5'10". Average weight plus a few extra pounds. He had a wife and a cat. No kids.
The hospital was the logical place to start. It was also the closest. Cubbin lived in Hamilton Township, and Cranberry Manor was a thirty-five- to forty-minute drive when traffic was heavy in downtown Trenton.
“No,” Lula said.
“No what?” I asked her.
“No, I’m not goin’ to the hospital with you. I saw that look on your face, and I know you figured you’d start by goin’ to the hospital. And I’m not goin’ on account of I don’t like hospitals. They smell funny, and they’re filled with sick people. Last time I was in a hospital it was depressin’. And I think I might have picked up a fungus. Lucky for me I got a high resistance to that sort of thing, and it was one of them twenty-four-hour funguses.”
St. Francis Hospital is about a half mile down Hamilton Avenue from the bonds office. It’s on the opposite side of the street from the bonds office, so it’s officially in the Burg. The Burg is a close-knit, blue-collar, residential chunk of South Trenton that runs on gossip, good Catholic guilt, and pot roast at six o’clock. It’s bordered by Chambers Street, Hamilton Avenue, Broad Street, and Liberty Street. I grew up in the Burg and my parents still live there, in a small two-family house on High Street.
“Not a problem,” I said. “I can walk to St. Francis.”
“He wasn’t at St. Francis,” Connie said. “He went to Central Hospital on Joy Street.”
“You never gonna walk there,” Lula said. “That’s way off Greenwood.”
“Drive me to the hospital,” I said to Lula. “You can wait in the lobby.”
“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Lula said, “but I’m not waiting in no lobby. I’ll wait in my car.”
Central Hospital had been built in the forties and looked more like a factory than a hospital. Dark red brick. Five floors of grim little rooms where patients were warehoused. A small drive court for the ER. A double door in the front of the building. The double door opened onto a lobby with a standard issue information desk, brown leather couches, and two fake trees. I’d never been in the OR, but I imagined it as being medieval. The hospital didn’t have a wonderful reputation.
“Hunh,” Lula said, pulling into the parking garage. “I suppose I’m gonna have to go with you. If you don’t have me watching out for shit, you’re liable to not come out. That’s how hospitals get you. You go in to visit and before you know it they got a camera stuck up your butt and they’re lookin’ to find poloponies.”
“Do you mean polyps?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that what I said? Anyway my Uncle Andy had that done, and they said he had them polyps, and next thing they took his intestines out and he had to poop in a bag. So I’m here to tell you there’s no way I’m poopin’ in a bag.”
“I’m not crazy about this conversation,” I said. “Could we move on to something else?”
Lula parked her red Firebird on the second level and cut the engine. “I’m just sayin’.”
We entered the hospital through the front door and I approached the woman at the desk.
“I’m investigating the Cubbin disappearance,” I said to the woman. “I’d like to speak to your head of security.”
“Do you have ID?” she asked.
Here’s the deal about doing fugitive apprehension for a bail bondsman. I have all sorts of rights to apprehend because the bondee has signed them over, but I’m not a police officer. Fortunately most people aren’t clear on the technicalities. And most people don’t look too closely at my ID. Truth is, I bought my badge and my laminated ID on the Internet. Seven dollars and ninety-five cents plus postage. They look pretty genuine. Not that I’m lying or anything. They say Bond Enforcement Agent, and they have my name on them. Not my problem if people confuse me with a cop, right?
I flashed her my badge and my ID, her phone rang, and she moved me along.
“First floor,” she said. “Room 117. Down the corridor to the right. If no one’s there you can page him on the intercom at the door.”
I mouthed thank you and Lula and I went in search of Room 117.
“I’ve only been here a minute, and already I can feel myself getting hospital cooties,” Lula said. “I itch all over. I got the hospital heebie-jeebies.”
The door to Room 117 was closed. I knocked and someone inside grunted acknowledgment. I opened the door and was surprised to find Randy Briggs in a tan and blue security guard uniform.
I’ve crossed paths with Randy Briggs on several occasions, and some have been more pleasant than others. Briggs is single, in his early forties, has a small amount of sandy blond hair and a narrow face with close-set eyes. He’s
three feet tall, and he has the personality of a rabid raccoon.
“Whoa,” I said. “What’s with the uniform?”
“What’s it look like?” Briggs said. “I’m head of security.”
“You were always a tech guy,” I said. “What happened to the computer programming?”
“No jobs. The shit’s made in China and the tech support comes from Sri Lanka. The only reason I got this job is because they were afraid I’d pull a dwarf discrimination suit.”
“They let you have a gun?” Lula asked.
“Yeah,” Briggs said. “I’m real good at shooting guys in the nuts, being they’re at eye level.”
It was a small office furnished with a desk and some uncomfortable-looking chairs. There was a dinosaur computer, a phone, a stack of files in manila folders, and a couple walkie-talkies. There were a bunch of handwritten notes and several photographs tacked to a bulletin board behind the desk. It looked to me like one of the photographs was of Geoffrey Cubbin.
“Are those the ones who got away?” I asked Briggs.
“That’s what they tell me. I haven’t been on the job that long. I’ve only had one go south on my watch.”
“Geoffrey Cubbin.”
“Yep. The night nurse checked him at two A.M. and reported him sleeping. The next entry on his chart was at six A.M. and he was gone, along with his clothes and personal effects.”
“Is that what his chart says?” I asked Briggs.
“No. That’s what the paper said. Jesus, don’t you read the paper?”
“So how’s this dude manage to walk out of here if he just had his appendix yanked out?” Lula asked. “That gotta hurt. Maybe it was that he died and got rolled down to the meat locker and no one thought to look there. Oh no, wait a minute, he wouldn’t have gotten dressed to die.”
“Cubbin was looking at about ten years of eating prison food and stamping out license plates,” Briggs said. “You could get past a little pain to walk away from that.”
“I’d like to talk to his doctor and the night nurse,” I said to Briggs. “Do you have their names?”
“No. And I’m not getting them for you either. I’m here to uphold hospital confidentiality. I’m the top cop.”
“Looks to me like you’re the bottom half of the top cop,” Lula said.
Briggs cut his eyes to Lula. “Looks to me like you’re fat enough to be a whole police force.”
“You watch your mouth,” Lula said. “I could sit on you and squash you like a bug. Be nothing left of you but a grease spot on the floor.”
“There’ll be no squashing,” I said to Lula. “And you,” I said to Briggs, pointing my finger at him. “You need to get a grip.”
I whirled around and swished out of Briggs’s office with Lula close on my heels. I returned to the lobby and called Connie.
“Do we know who operated on Cubbin?” I asked her. “I want to talk to the doctor.”
“Hang tight. I’ll make some phone calls.”
Lula and I browsed through the gift shop, took a turn around the lobby, and Connie called back.
“The doctor’s name is Craig Fish,” Connie said. “I got his name from your grandmother. She’s plugged into the Metamucil Medicare Gossip Hotline. He’s a general surgeon in private practice, with privileges at St. Francis and Central. His office is in the Medical Arts Building two blocks from Central. He’s married with two kids in college. One in California and the other in Texas. No litigation against him. No derogatory information on file.”
We drove to the Medical Arts Building, and Lula dropped me off at the door.
“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in that gas station on the corner,” she said. “I might have to get some donuts on account of I feel weak after being in the hospital and getting the cooties and all.”
“I thought you were trying to lose weight.”
“Yeah, but this could be an emergency situation. The cooties might have eaten up all my sugar, and I need to shovel some more in.”
“That’s so lame,” I said to her. “Why don’t you just admit you want donuts and you have no willpower?”
“Yeah, but that don’t sound as good. You want any donuts?”
“Get me a Boston Kreme.”
I took the elevator to the fourth floor and found Fish’s office. There were two people in the waiting room. A man and a woman. Neither of them looked happy. Probably contemplating having something essential removed from their bodies in the near future. I flashed my credentials at the receptionist and told her I’d like to have a moment with the doctor.
“Of course,” she said. “He’s with a patient right now, but I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Ten minutes and three dog-eared magazines later I was ushered into Fish’s small, cluttered office.
“I only have a few minutes,” he said. “How can I help you?”
Craig Fish was a bland man in his mid-fifties. He had steel gray hair, a round cherubic face, and his blue and white striped dress shirt was stretched tight across his belly. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t fit either. He had some family photos on his desk. His two kids on a beach somewhere, smiling at the camera. And a picture of himself getting cozy with a blond woman who looked on the short side of thirty. She was spilling out of her slinky dress, and she had a diamond the size of Rhode Island on her finger. I assumed this was his latest wife.
“Did Geoffrey Cubbin give any indication he intended to leave early?” I asked him.
“No. He didn’t seem unusually anxious. The operation was routine, and his post-op was normal.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“Usually when patients leave prior to discharge they go home.”
“Apparently that wasn’t the case this time. Does this happen a lot?”
“Not a lot, but more often than you’d think. People get homesick, dissatisfied with care, worried about expenses, and sometimes it’s the result of a drug reaction and the patient isn’t thinking clearly.”
“Has Cubbin made an appointment for a recheck?”
“You’d have to ask my receptionist about that. I only see my patient list for the current day.”
His intercom buzzed and his receptionist reminded him Mrs. Weinstein was in Examining Room 3.
I stopped at the desk on the way out and asked if Geoffrey Cubbin had scheduled a post-op appointment. I was told he had not.
Lula was idling at the curb when I left the medical building. I buckled myself in next to her and looked into the Dunkin’ Donuts box on the floor. It was empty.
“Where’s my donut?” I asked her.
“Oops. I guess I ate it.”
Lucky me. Better on Lula’s thighs than on mine. Especially since I was going to have to squeeze into a cocktail dress tomorrow night.
“Now what?” Lula asked. “Are we done for the day? I’m not feeling so good after all those donuts. I was only going to eat two, but then I lost track of what I was doing and next thing there weren’t any more donuts. It was like I blacked out and someone came and ate the donuts.”
“You have powdered sugar and jelly stains on your tank top.”
“Hunh,” Lula said, looking down at herself. “Guess I was the one ate them.”
“It would be great if you could drive me to my parents’ house so I can borrow Big Blue.”
Big Blue is a ’53 powder blue and white Buick that got deposited in my father’s garage when my Great Uncle Sandor checked himself in to Happy Hills Nursing Home. It drives like a refrigerator on wheels, and it does nothing for my image. Only Jay Leno could look good driving this car. In its favor, it’s free.
THREE
MY PARENTS LIVE in a small mustard yellow and brown two-story house that shares a wall with an identical house that is painted lime green. I suppose the two-family house seemed like an economical idea forty years ago at the time of construction. And there are many of them in the Burg. Siamese twins conjoined at the living room downstairs and master bedroom upstairs
, with separate brains. The house has a postage stamp front yard, a small front porch, and a long, narrow backyard. The floor plan is shotgun. Living room, dining room, kitchen. Three small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.
My Grandma Mazur lives with my parents. She moved in when my Grandpa Mazur’s arteries totally clogged with pork fat and he got a one-way ticket to God’s big pig roast in the sky. Grandma was at the front door when Lula eased the Firebird to a stop at the curb. I used to think Grandma had a telepathic way of knowing when I approached, but I now realize Grandma just stands at the door watching the cars roll by, like the street is a reality show. Her face lit, and she waved as we drove up.
“I like your granny,” Lula said. “She always looks like she’s happy to see us. That’s not something happens every day. Half the time we knock on a door and people shoot at us.”
“Yes, but that’s only half the time. Sometimes they just run away. See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, Kemo Sabe.”
“How’s business?” Grandma asked when I got to the door. “Did you catch anyone today? Where’s your car?”
“My car got blown up.”
“Again? How many does that make this month?”
“It’s the only one this month. I was hoping I could borrow Big Blue.”
“Sure, you can borrow it whenever you want. I don’t drive it on account of it don’t make me look hot.”
I suppose everything’s relative, but I thought it would take more than a fast car to make Grandma look hot. Gravity hasn’t been kind to Grandma. She also doesn’t have a license, due to a heavy foot on the accelerator. Still, I suspected lack of license wouldn’t stop her if she had access to a Ferrari.
I heard a car door slam and turned to see Lula coming toward us.
“I smell fried chicken,” Lula said.
Grandma waved her in. “Stephanie’s mother is frying some up for dinner. And we got a chocolate cake for dessert. We got plenty if you want to stay.”
A half hour later Lula and I were at the dining room table, eating the fried chicken with my mom, dad, and Grandma Mazur.