arrived. I saw no sign of Vinnie.
I went straight to the coffeepot and poured out a cup for myself.
'I haven't seen a lot of Vinnie lately,' I said to Connie. 'What's the deal?'
'He's got hemorrhoids. He comes in for an hour to bitch and complain, and then he goes home to sit on his rubber doughnut.'
Connie and I both smiled at this. Vinnie deserved hemorrhoids. Vinnie was a hemorrhoid.
I sipped my coffee. 'So you're the one writing bonds now?'
'I'm doing the low money bonds. Vinnie gets off his doughnut to do guys like Anton Ward.'
'I need a favor.'
'Uh oh,' Connie said. 'I got a bad feeling about this.'
'I want you to help me bond out Anton Ward. I need to talk to him.'
'No way. Un uh. Nope. No can do. Forget it.'
'This was your idea! You were the one who said I had to find out why I was on Junkman's list.'
'And you think Ward is going to tell you out of gratitude?'
'No. I was planning on beating it out of him.'
Connie considered that. 'Beating might work,' she said. 'Who's going to slap him around?'
'Me and Lula. You could do it, too, if you want.'
'So let me get this straight,' Connie said. 'We bond him out. Then we escort him from the jail to the trunk of Lula's Firebird and take him somewhere for further discussion.'
'Yeah. And then when we're done we can revoke his bond.'
'I like it,' Connie said. 'Did you think of this all by yourself?'
'Yep.'
'Think of what all by herself?' Lula said, swinging through the front door. 'Man, it's crappy out there. It's gonna rain cats and dogs all day.'
'Stephanie's got a plan to bond out Anton Ward and beat some information out of him,' Connie said.
Lula's mood changed to smiley face. 'No shit? Are you messin' with me? That's inspired. You aren't gonna leave me out, are you? I'm good at smackin' people around. And I'd just love to smack Anton Ward around.'
'You're in,' I said to Lula. 'We just have to figure some things out first. Like, where are we going to take him for his beating?'
'It has to be someplace isolated, so no one hears him screaming,' Lula said.
'And it has to be cheap,' I said. 'I haven't got any money.'
'I have just the place,' Connie said. 'Vinnie has a house in Point Pleasant. It's right on the beach, and no one's going to be around now. The season's over.'
'That's a great plan,' Lula said. 'The arcade will still be open, and in between beatin' on Anton Ward I can play the claw machine.'
'Do you think we'll have to beat him a lot?' I asked Connie. A bunch of her relatives were mob, and I figured she knew about these things.
'I hope so,' Lula said. 'I hope he don't talk for days. I love Point Pleasant. And I haven't beat on anyone in a while. I'm looking forward to this beating.'
'I've never actually beat anyone,' I said.
'Don't you worry about it,' Lula said. 'You just stand back and leave it to me.'
'We have to do this right,' Connie said. 'We don't want anyone to know we have Ward. We're going to have to make it look like he just disappeared.'
'I've already thought it through,' I said. 'You can call Ward's brother back and tell him we'll bond Ward out if he agrees to wear a personal tracking unit. We just got one in from iSECUREtrac, right?'
'We haven't used it yet,' Connie said. 'Haven't even taken it out of the box.'
'If Ward agrees to the PTU we say we have to have him released into our custody so we can install the unit. Then we tell everybody we have to install the transmitter here, at the office. We tell them after the unit is in place Anton is free to go.
'We cuff Anton on his release and bring him back to the office, but instead of strapping the transmitter on him, we dump him in Lula's trunk. All she has to do is back up to the rear door, and Anton's off to Point Pleasant. Then we pretend Anton escaped. We can say he used the lavatory at the office, and he went out through the window.'
'Brilliant,' Lula said. 'You're a criminal genius.'
'I like it,' Connie said. 'Let's do it.'
We all did a high five.
'It'll take me some time to set this up,' Connie said. 'I'll arrange it for the end of the business day. Then it won't be suspicious if we close the office down and disappear. In the meantime, you two should take a drive to Point Pleasant and make sure it's okay to use the house.' She took a key from a mess of keys she kept in her top drawer. This is the key to the house. He doesn't have a security system. It's just a little bungalow on the beach.' She wrote the address on a sticky note and gave it to me.
Lula and I didn't do a lot of talking on the way to Point Pleasant.
Hard to say why Lula fell into silence. Mine was brought on by a mixture of disbelief and terror. I couldn't believe we were going to do this. It was insane. And it was all my idea.
I was driving Ranger's truck, and Lula was reading the map. We'd reached the ocean, and we were looking for Vinnie's street.
The rain was steady and the little shore houses that seemed cute and colorful in July sunshine looked sad in the dismal gray gloom.
'You turn left onto the next street,' Lula said. 'And you go all the way to the end. It's the last house on the right. Connie says it's painted salmon and turquoise. I'm hoping she's wrong about the paint.'
This is like a ghost town,' I said. 'Not a single house has a light on.'
'Better for us,' Lula said. 'But it feels spooky, don't it? It's like we're in some horror movie. Nightmare in Point Pleasant.'
I got to the last house on the right and darned if it wasn't painted salmon with turquoise trim. It was a small two-story bungalow that faced the ocean. No garage, but there was a driveway separating Vinnie's house and an almost identical bungalow next to him. At this time of year a car parked in the driveway would be reasonably well hidden.
I pulled the truck into the driveway, and I cut the lights. Lula and I squinted through the rain to the bungalow's back door. Above the door was a hand-painted sign that said SEA BREEZE.
'Bet Vinnie had to think a long time to come up with that name,' Lula said.
I put my hood up, and Lula and I sprinted through the rain and huddled together on the small back stoop while I fumbled with the key. I finally got the door open, we both jumped inside, and I slammed the door shut behind us.
Lula shook her corn-rowed head, sending water flying. 'Could we possibly have picked a crappier day to do this?'
'Maybe we should wait a couple days until the weather is better.'
The heartfelt, cold-feet statement of the year.
'I don't want to be no alarmist or nothing, but you wait a couple days and you might not be around to beat on this guy.'
Twelve
The back door to Vinnies beach bungalow opened to the kitchen. The floor was yellow-and-white linoleum that looked relatively new. The counters were red Formica. The cabinets were painted white. The appliances were also white. GE. Midgrade. A small white wood table, covered with a blue-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, sat to one side. There were four chairs at the table.
Beyond the kitchen was a combination living room and dining room. The carpet was gold and showing wear.
