What was left was to wait. And waiting wasn’t my strong suit.
I carted my dishes back to the kitchen and thought some more about Uncle Mo. The problem with finding a missing person is that they could be missing very far away. Here I am looking all around Trenton for Moses Bedemier, and he could be in Guadeloupe wearing thick glasses and a fake nose. Truth is, if he was in Guadeloupe I was out of luck, so best not to think about it. Better to assume Mo is close to home, and then I can feel hopeful.
Most of the time people stay close to home anyway. They’d be much better off if they ran far away, but far away doesn’t feel safe. Home feels safe. Sooner or later most FTAs touch base with their relatives, girlfriends, neighborhood cronies. And usually it’s sooner rather than later.
I exchanged my flannel shirt for a Rangers jersey and zapped the television on. Probably I should make more phone calls, but the Rangers were playing and priorities were priorities.
My alarm rang at 7 A.M. I slammed my hand on the off button and peered at the clock, wondering why I had set the thing for such an ungodly hour. There was no sign of the sun anywhere, and rain pinged against my windowpane. Even at the best of times, morning is not my favorite part of day, and this wasn’t nearly the best of times.
The next time I awoke it was eight-thirty. Rain still slashed at my window, but at least the sky had lightened from black to gray. I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom and stood under the shower for a while. I thought about Mel Gibson and Joe Morelli and tried to decide who had the best butt. Then I thought about Mike Richter, the goalie for the Rangers, because he was no slouch either.
By the time I was towel-drying my hair I’d gone from Richter to Uncle Mo. The conclusion I reached about Uncle Mo was that I’d dead-ended. Intuition told me Uncle Mo hadn’t gone far and would eventually surface. Unfortunately, the word “eventually” was not favored in the bounty hunter vocabulary. Eventually did not pay this month’s rent.
I gassed my hair with some maximum-hold hair spray, dressed in my usual uniform of jeans and flannel shirt and snapped my bedroom curtains open.
I chanted Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day. But the rain didn’t go away, so I revisited my dresser and added thick socks and a sweatshirt to my outfit.
For lack of something better to do, I took myself down to the office. On the way, I cruised past Blue Ribbon Used Cars and wistfully glanced over the lot. Every morning I got up and hoped the car fairy had visited me overnight. Every morning I was disappointed. Maybe it was time to take matters into my own hands.
I parked at the curb and squinted through the rain at the lineup of cars. All very boring…except for a little blue Nissan pickup at the end of the lot. The little blue pickup was CUTE. I got out to take a closer look. New paint. Bench seat, slightly worn but not torn. Standard transmission.
A man in a yellow slicker ran over to me. “Want to buy this car?”
“How much?”
“For you? We can make a deal. It’s an eighty-four. Runs like a top.”
I looked in my checkbook. “I probably can’t afford it.”
“Hey,” he said. “Your credit’s good here. We can finance it for you. You’ll hardly notice the payments.”
“I’d have to take it on a test drive.”
“Hold on a minute, and I’ll pop some plates on for you.”
I did a four-block test drive and I was sold. So I’d give up eating oranges. And I’d cut back on movie rentals. The sacrificing would be worth it. I’d have a truck!
Lula glanced up from the files when I slogged through the door, dripping water on the utility-grade carpet. “Hope you didn’t spend a lot of time on your hair this morning,” she said.
I took a swipe at the wet mess with my hand. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Hah,” Lula replied. “If that isn’t some load of cocky doody.”
“Is the man in?” I asked Connie.
“Not yet.”
I slouched back on the brown Naugahyde couch. “I’m not having any luck with Uncle Mo, and I need money. Don’t suppose you’d have any quickies?”
“Only got one Failure to Appear yesterday, and it’s strictly chump change. Stuart Baggett.” She took a manila folder from her “in” box and flipped the file open. “Age twenty-two. White male Caucasian. Five feet six. Went on a drunken late-night joyride three weeks ago with two of his buddies and shot up fourteen parked cars. Did it with an air rifle. Missed his court date and is now a fugitive…not to mention an idiot. Two of the cars he shot up were unoccupied police cars.”
I was surprised anyone noticed the damage on the cop cars. Trenton’s blue-and-whites had not gone gently into the night. Trenton’s blue-and-whites all looked like they’d survived Bosnia.
I took the folder from Connie.
“He lives on Applegate with his parents,” she said. “Works at the hot dog place at the mall. Looks like his mother put up the bond.”
I dialed his home phone and got his mother. I asked if Stuart was working today and was told he was working until four.
“I could use to go to the mall,” Lula said. “I could use to take a break, and then I could watch your bounty huntering technique when you make this apprehension.”
“There won’t be any technique to watch,” I said. “This is just some stupid guy who got drunk and did a stupid stunt. Either he forgot his date, or else he was too embarrassed to show up at court.”
“Yeah, but you’re gonna finesse him, right? You’re gonna pull some bogus shit on him and lure him out to the
