Smokin Seventeen

“Thank God for small favors. Are you wearing another pair of those giant underpants?”

“No. I’m wearing a red lace thong.”

“Are you sure that’s the best thing for a bladder infection?”

“I feel okay this morning. I think the infection went away.”

“One less thing to worry about,” Morelli said.

“How’s Bob?”

“He’s fine. He gakked the pants up at 2 a.m. Do you want them back?”

• • •

I hurried out to my car, drove to the bonds office empty lot, and parked behind Mooner’s bus. Connie, Lula, and Vinnie were already there, parked farther up the street. There were no crime scene vans, no cop cars, no coroner’s meat wagon, no satellite television trucks. Woohoo, a day without a murder. I was hugely relieved.

The door to the bus was open, shades were up, and light poured out. I stuck my head in and looked around. “What’s going on?”

“I’m taking charge,” Connie said. “The womb decor isn’t working. I’ve got Uncle Jimmy and two cousins coming today. We’re going to rip out everything black and replace it with something that doesn’t make me want to kill myself.”

Mooner was texting on his phone.

“Hey,” I said to him.

“Peace,” Mooner said.

Vinnie was in a chair, hunched over his computer. “This business is crappin’ out. Nobody’s calling. We’re not getting any bonds. It’s like we don’t exist anymore.”

“Maybe you gotta move away from this lot,” Lula said. “It’s probably leaking death cooties and ruining our usual good juju.”

“Harry wants us here. He doesn’t want to have to change our address in his iPhone. So I got an idea. I figure it’s that we have to advertise. People see the empty lot they think we closed up shop.”

“What kind of advertising you gonna do?” Lula asked.

“Signs and stuff. Last week I got in touch with a company that specializes in promoting brands. They’re making me a jingle so I can advertise on the radio. And they’re going to put a sign on the bus today.”

“A sign for the bus is a good idea,” Lula said. “That’s a step in the right direction.”

“Yeah, and I had some flyers made up. You girls can put them up all over town. Especially in the high-crime areas, like Stark Street.”

“Who all’s included in you girls?” Lula asked. “Because I don’t get paid for littering public property with shit.” She took one of the flyers from him and looked at it. “Wait, this here’s a picture of me.”

“Yeah, the branding company made them up. They thought we needed the personal touch, so they used pictures of you and Stephanie in the ad.”

“That’s a whole different thing then,” Lula said. “This is a real flattering picture. I’m wearing one of my favorite outfits. I’d be happy to staple myself around town. I might even get some modeling jobs from this. This is a good showcase for my talents.”

I snatched the flyer out of her hand. It was Lula and me all right. She was wearing a super low-cut gold sequin tank top showing a lot of squished-together boob, a short poison green skirt, and five-inch gold platform heels. I was wearing the exact same outfit. The headline read: If You’re Bad We’ll Send our Girls out to Get You.

I was speechless. My mouth was open but only little squeaks were coming out.

“You didn’t look that good in any of your pictures,” Vinnie said. “So they did some digital enhancement. They gave you new clothes and bigger hooters.”

I shook my head. “No, no, no, no.”

“My way or the highway,” Vinnie said. “If we don’t get a rush of phone calls from locked-up losers soon, you’re gonna be panhandling for gas money.”

He was right. This was one of the many problems with my job. I don’t get a salary. I make money by capturing skips. If there are no skips to catch, my paycheck is zero. Currently my only outstanding skip was Ziggy, and he wasn’t exactly a big-ticket item.

I grabbed a staple gun off the table and rammed it into my bag. “Fine. Great. Give me a stack of the stupid flyers.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

BANG! BANG! LULA STAPLED a flyer to a telephone pole on lower Stark Street, and I pulled out a black Magic Marker and colored my face in.

“Vinnie’s not gonna like that,” Lula said. “You should at least put a happy face on it.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Boy, you sure are in a cranky mood. I bet it’s the granny panties. You didn’t get any last night, right? And now you’re all cranky.”

“The granny panties didn’t work. Morelli ripped them off, and the dog ate them.”

BANG! BANG! Lula put up another flyer. “I guess granny panties are no match for the vordo. That’s a powerful spell you got put on you.”

I colored my face in. “The truth is I don’t believe in spells, and yet her spells seem to be working.”

“Maybe you just got a high rate of coincidence. Like you got coincidence mojo.”

We were standing in front of a small grocery store. The door crashed open, and a skinny guy in baggy clothes and too big shoes burst out and smashed into Lula. He had a gun in one hand and a fistful of money in the other. He knocked into her square in the chest, and BANG! she stapled him. He shrieked, spun around, ran into the street, and got hit by an Escalade. The Escalade punted the guy to the curb, and kept rolling down the street as if nothing unusual had happened.

“What the hell,” Lula said.

Some street people and wasted kids scurried out of the shadows like roaches when the lights go off, and in the blink of an eye the money and the gun had new homes. Lula handed everyone a flyer and the street people and kids disappeared back into the shadows.

An old man ran out of the grocery store. “I called the police,” he said, waving his cell phone. “I’ve been held up four times this week.” He looked at the guy lying in the road. “What happened?”

“He got hit by a Escalade,” Lula said. “Then he got robbed.”

The old man walked over to the guy in the road and gave him a good hard kick. “Dog turd,” the old man said. He turned and stomped back into his store, and on the way Lula handed him a flyer.

Lula and I went over to the guy in the road.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He opened his eyes. “Do I look okay, bitch?”

“Sorry about the staple,” Lula said. “It was one of them reflex things.”

A Trenton police car rolled to a stop and two uniforms got out and looked down at the guy in the road.

“Hey Eddie,” one of the cops said. “How’s it going?”

“I got robbed. This neighborhood is a crap hole.”

The old man reappeared. “He got robbed of my money. This is the fourth time this week. I hate this man. He’s a dog turd.”

Lula gave Eddie a flyer. “Call Vinnie and he’ll have you out in no time. And if you save your flyer I’ll autograph it for you.”

We covered two more blocks with flyers and returned to my car. It still had wheels, but someone had spray painted DIE BITCH on it. I looked across the street, and saw Nick Alpha standing in a doorway. He was staring at