“I’ll check on it,” Ranger said. “Anything else?”
“Did you just take a shower?”
“This morning.”
“You smell nice.”
A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He leaned in and kissed me. Our tongues touched, and I curled my fingers into his shirt.
“Criminy,” I said.
He gave me a light parting kiss. “You have my number.”
Oh yeah.
I watched him drive away, and I went back into the office.
“Criminy,” Lula said.
I nodded agreement. “So true. Where’s Connie?”
“Courthouse, covering for Vinnie. I’m babysitting the office but nothing’s going on, so I’m working on my reality show. We’re gonna shoot it tonight. We did some preliminary test runs but this is the real thing. I’m just going over the script one more time.”
“I thought reality shows were unscripted.”
“They’re scripted unscripted. Not a lot of people know that. Just us on the inside,” Lula said. “You want to hear my script?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to have to think about you and Briggs naked.”
“Yeah, I could see where that would be a problem with Briggs. He’s not real attractive once you get his clothes off him. Not a lot to look at, if you know what I mean.”
“Did we get any new FTAs?”
“A shoplifter and a mime.”
“What did the mime do?”
“He pooped in the middle of the street. Right at the corner of Hamilton and Broad.”
“Get out.”
“Cross my heart. You can look on his arrest sheet. Everybody was taking pictures. Traffic was stopped all over the place. He was trending big on YouTube when it happened, but it’s dropped off some now. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.”
“Why did he do you-know-what in the middle of the street?”
“He said it was performance art. He said he was making a statement about our repressive society. Problem was, he repressed traffic because he was posing too long with his art, so he got arrested.”
“What were the charges against him?” I asked Lula.
“Obstruction of something and making a general nuisance of himself. Personally, if it was me, I couldn’t see myself pooping in the middle of the street. Even if I had to go real bad. I’d be afraid I’d get run over. I mean, even dogs know enough not to poop in the middle of the street. You ever see a dog poop in the middle of the street? I bet a turkey wouldn’t poop in the middle of the street, and I hear they’re real dumb.”
I agreed. Turkeys were known to be dumb.
“So, about the reality show,” I said. “Where are you doing this?”
“Mill Street. I got a map worked out. We’re going to start on the second block and work our way up to no-man’s-land.”
“Are you insane? You’ll die.”
Mill Street ran parallel to Stark Street, one block over. It wasn’t as bad as Stark, but it was still pretty bad. Residential in a crack house kind of way for a block or two and then mostly warehouses.
“We got a plan,” Lula said. “We’re shooting two blocks, and then we’re faking the rest. I mean, it’s dark out, right? Nobody’s gonna know where we are. We can just keep running around the same two blocks and do some creative camera work. And the good part is the cops won’t go anywhere near there so we haven’t got no worries about the naked thing. Nobody’s going to care we haven’t got clothes on. All the people wandering around there are hallucinating anyways.”
“Good to see you’ve thought it through.”
“I got a mind for this,” Lula said. “I’m one of those underestimated people.”
“How are you going to film in the dark? Do you have lights?”
“You know Handy Howie, right? He’s the guy sells the handbags out of his Eldorado in the projects? Well, he’s doing the cinematography. He’s got a infrared camera. He’s always wanted to make movies, so we’re gonna give him a film credit and then after we’re done with this he can use it as a demo.”
“Wasn’t he arrested for invasion of privacy?”
“He explained that to me,” Lula said. “He’d just got his first infrared and he was learning how to use it, and he accidentally filmed some people in their bedroom. They were doing the nasty, and Howie said it was a shame the police confiscated that camera on account of it would of made a good documentary.”
“But he got another camera?”
“Yeah. Howie has connections. Handbags are his bread-and-butter business, but sometimes other stuff falls off a truck, if you know what I mean.”
The back door opened and slammed shut, and Connie walked in. She dumped her handbag into her bottom drawer and kicked her five-inch platform stilettos off.
“These shoes are freakin’ killing me,” she said.
“Your problem is you haven’t got the right balance to your body to wear shoes like that,” Lula said. “You gotta balance out your boobs with your bootie. Like, take me for instance. I got just the right proportion of boob to bootie. I could walk all day in those FMPs and never tip over. You got a imbalance of boob. It’s one of them genetic things. Italians can grow boob, but they’re deficient in bootie. I got a advantage with my African tribal background and taste for macaroni and cheese.”
I wasn’t getting involved in this, but I suspected the tribal background wasn’t the big player in the bootie development. If I ate like Lula I’d have a lot more bootie. Anyone would have more bootie.
Connie swiveled her head to take a look at her ass.
“So you think that’s my problem?” Connie asked.
“Either that or you bought your shoes too small,” Lula said.
Connie took two files off her desk and handed them to me. “These just came in. They’re low bonds, but they shouldn’t be hard to clear out.”
“I already told her about them,” Lula said. “I told her about the performance art guy.”
“He won’t be hard to find,” Connie said. “He does standup at the comedy club on Route 1 at night, and he works as a mime during the day. Usually he’s hanging around the coffee shop by the State House.”
I read through the file. Bernard Smitch. Thirty-four years old. Graduate of UC Berkeley. Address listed as “Under the bridge.” I knew this was bogus because the comedy club on Route 1 operated at a pretty high level. If Smitch lived under the bridge he wouldn’t smell all that good, and he wouldn’t be let into the comedy club. I’d been under the bridge and it wasn’t pretty.
“Where does Smitch really live?” I asked Connie.
“With his mother in Princeton,” Connie said. “His father is a state representative. I think there might be a conflict there.”
“Especially when he pooped in the street,” Lula said. “That’s not politically correct.”
“I’m heading out,” I said. I looked over at Lula. “Do you want to ride along?”
“You going after Smitch?”
“Yep.”
“I’m in,” Lula said. “I’m all about supporting the arts.”
“We aren’t supporting him,” I said. “We’re dragging him back to jail.”
“Yeah, but we might support him at a later date when he gets out. I could go watch him perform.”
• • •
I drove down Hamilton to Broad, went north on Broad, and turned onto State Street. The coffee house was on a side street off State. It was a perfect September day, and people were sitting outdoors. The mime was working, but no one was paying attention.
I parked in a metered space across the street, and Lula and I watched the mime. He was dressed in classic mime attire of whiteface, black-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt, and slim black pants. He pretended to walk on a tightrope. He pretended to be stymied by a glass door. He poured himself a drink and pretended to be drunk. He rebooted and went back to the tightrope routine.
“You watch this
long enough and you get to wishing he’d take a poop,” Lula said.
We got out of my SUV, and I hung cuffs from my back pocket and stuck a small canister of pepper spray in the other back pocket. Lula was wearing a poison green spandex miniskirt that didn’t have any back pockets, but she had her purse hanging on her shoulder and God-knows-what-all she had in that purse.
I approached the mime and asked him if he was Bernard Smitch. He put his finger to his head and looked like he was thinking. While he was thinking I snapped the cuffs on his right wrist. He looked at the cuffs and mimed with a stiff middle finger.
“Now, that’s not nice,” Lula said to him. “That’s rude miming.”
He turned and mooned Lula and spanked his bare ass. Lula pulled her stun gun out of her purse, pressed the prongs to the mime’s butt, and gave him a couple hundred volts. Zzzzt. The mime went down like a sack of sand.
“Mime that,” Lula said.
There was a smattering of applause, and then everyone went back to drinking coffee and eating their pastries.
We snapped the other cuff on the mime, pulled his pants up, and carted him across the street. We maneuvered him into the backseat, and I drove to the police station.
“That was easy,” Lula said. “Another day and another dollar.”
“It would be best if you don’t mention to anyone that you stun-gunned the mime since that’s a little illegal,” I said.
“Yeah, but he was being disrespectful.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s still illegal.”
I pulled around to the police station back door that led directly to the holding cells and the booking desk. I pressed the intercom button and told them I had a drop-off. Moments later the back door opened, and a guy in uniform came out. I’d seen him around. His name was Gary. I couldn’t remember his last name.
“What have you got?” Gary asked.
“Bernard Smitch,” I said. “He’s FTA.”
I pulled my papers out of my messenger bag and handed them over.
Gary grinned. “I know this guy. He pooped in the middle of Broad Street.”
Lula and I got out and more or less dragged Smitch out of the backseat and propped him up against my SUV.
“Is he okay?” Gary asked.
“He’s a mime,” Lula said. “He’s miming a seizure. It’s one of his most popular routines.”
“Looks to me like he might be miming that he got zapped with a stun gun,” Gary said.
“It’s possible,” Lula said. “There’s a similarity between the two experiences. And you never know with a mime.”
We dragged Smitch into the building and cuffed him to a bench. I got my body receipt, and Lula and I returned to the bond office.
“Done and done,” Lula said to Connie.
“You guys are hot,” Connie said. “You got Virgil, Diggery, and Smitch. Vinnie’s going to be happy.”
Lula looked over at Vinnie’s open door. “Where is the little perv? How come he’s not here?”
“Good question,” Connie said. “Don’t know the answer. He tends to wander into murky waters when Lucille goes out of town.”
“I hope he’s not looking for another duck,” Lula said. “I try to be open-minded about people’s needs, but that was disturbing. I doubt that duck was consensual.”
“Gosh, look at the time,” I said, checking my watch. “I need to get home in case Morelli wants me to make dinner for him.”
“Me too,” Lula said. “I gotta get ready for my filming. I gotta glitter up my eyelids. And I want to go over the script one more time.”
Connie wrote me a check for the mime catch. “What are you making for dinner?” she asked me.
“Hot dogs.”
“Can’t go wrong with hot dogs,” Lula said. “What are you going to serve with them?”
“Beer.”
“That’ll do it,” Lula said.
A text message from Ranger dinged on my cellphone.
“Now what?” Lula asked.
“I’m supposed to meet Ranger at Mo Morris Ice Cream tomorrow at eight o’clock.”
“That’s the good ice cream place,” Lula said. “That’s where they give you free ice cream.”
“Why are you going to Mo Morris?” Connie asked. “I thought you were at Bogart’s solving security issues.”
“Harry Bogart thinks Mo is behind all the disasters at his plant. Ranger’s sending me in to see if I pick up any bad vibes.”
“How’s he going to get you in there?” Lula asked. “I thought it was impossible to get a job at that plant.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s not my problem.”
“Yeah,” Lula said, “your problem is trying to look good in a shower cap and paper onesie.”
I squelched a grimace, took the check from Connie, and headed out. Truth is, I wasn’t going home to get ready to wow Morelli with my culinary skills. I was going home to take a nap and reassess my life.
THIRTEEN
REX WAS IN his soup can when I walked into my kitchen. I tapped on the cage and said hello. Nothing. I dropped a peanut into his cage, he rushed out of the can, stuffed the peanut into his cheek, and rushed back into his can. Okay, that was fun. I ate some olives and a couple handfuls of Froot Loops. I lifted the lid on my brown bear cookie jar and looked in at my gun. Probably Briggs was right. I should get rid of the gun and buy some cookies. I wasn’t opposed to gun ownership. I just didn’t feel comfortable shooting people. And it would be nice to have cookies.
Morelli showed up at four-thirty with Bob. We took Bob for a walk, came home and fried up the hot dogs, and downloaded a movie. Domestic bliss. At nine-thirty we were about to migrate to the bedroom and take the bliss up a notch when my mother called.
“Is your grandmother with you?” she asked.
“No. Is she supposed to be with me?”
“I was brushing my teeth, and I heard the front door open and close. I looked out the window and saw your grandmother get into a red car that looks like the one Lula drives.”
Oh boy.
“I hope she’s not going to another one of those Chippendales shows with Lula,” my mother said. “She almost got arrested last time when she got up onstage to dance with them.”
“I don’t think the Chippendales are in town.”
“Well, you need to go find your grandmother and bring her home before she gets into trouble.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll track her down.”
Morelli looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Lula is shooting her reality demo tonight, and I think Grandma has volunteered to be part of the production team. My mother said Grandma just got into a red car that looked like Lula’s Firebird.”
“Is that so bad?”
“They’re doing a demo for Naked and Afraid…the Trenton version.”
Morelli cracked a smile. “You’re kidding. Who’s going to be naked?”
“Lula and Randy Briggs.”
“Whoa!”
I got my messenger bag from the kitchen, and Morelli followed me.
“I’ll ride along with you,” Morelli said.
“No way. You’re a cop. You’d have to arrest Lula for being naked.”
“Where are they shooting this?”
“Across town,” I said. “Don’t worry. I won’t be long. I’ll go get Grandma, bring her home, and be back in a jiffy.”
I took the stairs and ran to my car. I wanted to get to Mill Street before they started filming. Not only didn’t I want Grandma near Stark Street, I was afraid Grandma would be the second naked woman. There was minimal traffic, but I hit every light going across town. By the time I got to Mill Street I was white-knuckle on the steering wheel. I’d tried calling Lula, but she wasn’t picking up.
It was a cloudless sky with a sliver of a moon. Not a lot of light on Mill. Streetlights had been shot out long ago, and most of the buildings were shuttered at night. There were rooming houses on the lower b
locks, but eventually they gave way to commercial-use warehouse-type structures. Lula had said they’d be filming on the edge of the residential area. I found them on the third block. They were huddled beside a van. Lula’s Firebird and a silver Honda Civic were also parked there. They were in front of a graffiti-spattered three-story building that had at one time been apartments but was now boarded up.
I parked in front of the Civic and walked back to the van. Howie was there with a handheld camera. A large woman with cornrows and braids halfway down her back stood next to Howie. She was wearing an apron with a lot of pockets. When I got closer I saw that they were stuffed with makeup brushes and assorted cosmetics. One of the pockets held a large can of hairspray. Another pocket held a large nickel-plated semiautomatic. The gun caught the moonlight and sparkled like a piece of jewelry.
Grandma, wearing black Pilates pants, a black sweatshirt, and a fanny pack, was holding a flashlight and standing next to the makeup woman. The barrel of Grandma’s .45 stuck out of one end of her fanny pack.
Lula and Briggs were naked. They were listening intently to Howie.
“This is the big opening scene,” Howie said. “You’re going to stand on the stoop of this apartment building, and you’re going to look excited, anxious to start your adventure. Grandma’s going to highlight you with the flashlight, and I’ll pan in for a close-up.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “My mother sent me to get Grandma.”
“Good thing you’re here,” Lula said. “Laurene didn’t show up, and we need someone to work the clacker.”
“What’s a ‘clacker’?”
Howie handed me a small chalkboard. “It’s this thing,” he said. “You write the number of the scene on it, and then you say ‘Scene one, take one,’ and you clack the wooden frame down.”
“It’s a real important job,” Lula said. “It keeps everything in order.”
“I’m not staying,” I said. “I just came to get Grandma.”
“I can’t go,” Grandma said. “I have to shine the flashlight during close-ups.”