Ten Big Ones

As a short-term fix to my sister's housing dilemma I volunteered the use of my apartment. I was spending most of my nights with Morelli anyway, so it wasn't a total sacrifice on my part. It's now three months down the road and Valerie is still in my apartment, returning to my parents' house every night for di

'Boy, too bad you'll miss the roast chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes,' I told Morelli in a last-ditch effort. 'Probably pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.'

'Not go

'What, like wild gorilla sex?'

'Not even wild gorilla sex. It would have to be an orgy with identical Japanese triplets.'

I gave Morelli an eye roll, and I left for the bond office.

'Your sub's filed under S,' Lula said when I swung through the door. 'I got you capicolla and provolone and turkey and pepperoni with some hot peppers.'

I opened the file and retrieved my sub. There's only half a sandwich here.'

'Well, yeah,' Lula said. Me and Co

Vincent Plum Bail Bonds is a small storefront office on Hamilton Avenue. Ordinarily a more lucrative location for a bonds office would be across from the courts or the lockup. Vi

It's even possible that some of Co

I slouched onto the scarred dung-brown fake leather couch that was positioned against a side wall of the outer office and unwrapped the sub.

'Big day in court yesterday,' Co

I took the folders from Co

'Yeah,' Co

I flipped through the folders. Harold Pancek. Wanted for indecent exposure and destruction of personal property.

'What's the deal on Harold?' I asked Co

'He's local. Moved to the Burg three years ago from Newark. Lives in one of the row houses on Canter Street. Got drunk two weeks ago and tried to take a leak on Mrs Gooding's cat, Ben. Ben was a moving target and Pancek mostly got the side of Gooding's house and Gooding's favorite rosebush. Killed the rosebush and took the paint off the house. And Gooding says she washed the cat three times and he still smells like asparagus.'

Lula and I had our faces frozen in curled-lip grimaces.

'He doesn't sound like much of a threat,' Co

I took a quick look at the two remaining files. Carol Cantell, wanted for holding up a Frito-Lay truck. This brought an instant smile to my face. Carol Cantell was a woman after my own heart.

The smile turned to raised eyebrows when I saw the name on the last file. Salvatore Sweet, charged with assault. 'Omigod,' I said to Co

'Hey, I remember Sally Sweet,' Lula said. 'He was the shit. What's he doing now besides beating on people?'

'Driving a school bus,' Co

Sally Sweet was an MTV car crash. He was a nice guy but he couldn't get through a sentence without using the T word fourteen times. The kids on Sally's bus probably had the most inventive vocabularies in the school.

'Have you tried calling him?' I asked Co

'Yeah. No answer. And no answering machine.'

'How about Cantell?'

'I talked to her earlier. She said she'd kill herself before she'd go to jail. She said you were going to have to come over there and shoot her and then drag her dead body out of the house.'

'It says here she held up a Frito-Lay truck?'

'Apparently she was on that no-carbohydrate diet, got her period and snapped when she saw the truck parked in front of a convenience store. Just got whacked out at the thought of all those chips. She threatened the driver with a nail file, filled her car with bags of Fritos, and took off, leaving the driver standing there in front of his empty truck. The police asked him why he didn't stop her, and he said she was a woman on the edge. He said his wife got to looking like that sometimes, and he didn't go near her when she was like that, either.'

'I've been on that diet and this crime makes perfect sense to me,' Lula said. 'Especially if she had her period. You don't want to go through your period without Fritos. Where you go

'Midol?' Co

'Well, yeah, but you gotta have some Fritos while you're waiting for the Midol to kick in. Fritos have a calming influence on a woman.'

Vi

Christ, I'm not ru

Vi

'I haven't got a car,' I told Vi

'What's your point? Your cars are always getting firebombed.

Have Lula drive you. She doesn't do anything around here anyway.'

'Your ass,' Lula said.

Vi

Co

'I saw that,' Vi

'I hate when he's right,' Lula said, 'but there's no reason we can't use my car. I just don't want to pick up the drunken leaker. If he takes paint off a house, I'm not letting him near my upholstery.'

'Try Cantell,' Co