High Five

Lula marched into the office, and I slid behind the wheel and reread the Briggs file. Randy Briggs had given the same address for home and work. Cloverleaf Apartments on Grand Avenue. It wasn't far from the office. Maybe a mile. I pulled into traffic, made an illegal U-turn at the intersection, and followed Hamilton to Grand.

The Cloverleaf Apartments building was two blocks down Grand. It was redbrick-faced and strictly utilitarian. Three stories. A front and a back entrance. Small lot to the rear. No ornamentation. Aluminum-framed windows that were popular in the fifties and looked cheesy now.

I parked in the lot and walked into the small lobby. There was an elevator to one side and stairs to the other. The elevator looked claustrophobic and unreliable, so I took the stairs to the second floor. Briggs was 2B. I stood outside his door for a moment, listening. Nothing drifted out. No television. No talking. I pressed the doorbell and stood to the side, so I wasn't visible through the security peephole.

Randy Briggs opened his door and stuck his head out. 'Yeah?'

He looked exactly like his photo, with sandy blond hair that was neatly combed, cut short. He was unbearded, unblemished. Dressed in clean khakis and a button-down shirt. Just like I'd expected from his file . . . except he was only three feet tall. Randy Briggs was vertically challenged.

'Oh, shit,' I said, looking down at him.

'What's the matter?' he said. 'You never see a short person before?'

'Only on television.'

'Guess this is your lucky day.'

I handed him my business card. 'I represent Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. You've missed your court date, and we'd appreciate it if you'd reschedule.'

'No,' Briggs said.

'Excuse me?'

'No. I'm not going to reschedule. No. I'm not going to court. It was a bogus arrest.'

'The way our system works is that you're supposed to tell that to the judge.'

'Fine. Go get the judge.'

'The judge doesn't do house calls.'

'Listen, I got a lot of work to do,' Briggs said, closing his door. 'I gotta go.'

'Hold it!' I said. 'You can't just ignore an order to appear in court.'

'Watch me.'

'You don't understand. I'm appointed by the court and Vincent Plum to bring you in.'

'Oh, yeah? How do you expect to do that? You going to shoot me? You can't shoot an unarmed man.' He stuck his hands out. 'You gonna cuff me? You think you can drag me out of my apartment and down the hall without looking like an idiot? Big bad bounty hunter picking on a little person. And that's what we're called, Toots. Not midget, not dwarf, not a freaking Munchkin. Little person. Get it?'

My pager went off at my waist. I looked down to check the read-out and slam. Briggs closed and locked his door.

'Loser,' he called from inside.

Well, that didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped. I had a choice now. I could break down his door and beat the bejeezus out of him, or I could answer my mother's page. Neither was especially appealing, but I decided on my mother.

My parents live in a residential pocket of Trenton nicknamed the Burg. No one ever really leaves the Burg. You can relocate in Antarctica, but if you were born and raised in the Burg you're a Burger for life. Houses are small and obsessively neat. Televisions are large and loud. Lots are narrow. Families are extended. There are no pooper- scooper laws in the Burg. If your dog does his business on someone else's lawn, the next morning the doodoo will be on your front porch. Life is simple in the Burg.

I put the Buick into gear, rolled out of the apartment building lot, headed for Hamilton, and followed Hamilton to St.FrancisHospital. My parents live a couple blocks behind St. Francis on Roosevelt Street. Their house is a duplex built at a time when families needed only one bathroom and dishes were washed by hand.

My mother was at the door when I pulled to the curb. My grandmother Mazur stood elbow to elbow with my mother. They were short, slim women with facial features that suggested Mongol ancestors . . . probably in the form of crazed marauders.

'Thank goodness you're here,' my mother said, eyeing me as I got out of the car and walked toward her. 'What are those shoes? They look like work boots.'

'Betty Szajak and Emma Getz and me went to that male dancer place last week,' Grandma said, 'and they had some men parading around, looking like construction workers, wearing boots just like those. Then next thing you knew they ripped their clothes off and all they had left was those boots and these little silky black baggie things that their dingdongs jiggled around in.'

My mother pressed her lips together and made the sign of the cross. 'You didn't tell me about this,' she said to my grandmother.

'Guess it slipped my mind. Betty and Emma and me were going to bingo at the church, but it turned out there wasn't any bingo on account of the Knights of Columbus was holding some to-do there. So we decided to check out the men at that new club downtown.' Grandma gave me an elbow. 'I put a fiver right in one of those baggies!'

'Jesus H. Christ,' my father said, rattling his paper in the living room.

Grandma Mazur came to live with my parents several years ago when my grandpa Mazur went to the big poker