“It would be best if we took care of this today,” I said.
“It would be irresponsible,” Stuart said, starting to look panicky. “I can’t do it now.”
Lula grunted. “It isn’t like you’re doing big business here. We’re in the middle of a slush storm, Stuart. Get real.”
“Does she work for my bond agent too?” Stuart asked.
“You bet your ass I do,” Lula said.
I looked out at the mall, and then I looked at Stuart and his hot dog concession. “She’s right, Stuart,” I said. “This mall is empty.”
“Yeah, but look, I’ve got all these hot dogs on the grill.”
I scrounged in the bottom of my pocketbook and came up with a twenty. “Here’s enough money to cover them. Throw the hot dogs in the trash and close up.”
“I don’t know,” Stuart said. “They’re really good hot dogs. It doesn’t seem right to throw them away.”
I did some mental screaming. “Okay, then wrap them up. We’ll take them with us.”
“I want two chili dogs,” Lula said. “And then I want two with sauerkraut and mustard. And do you have any of them curly fries?”
Stuart looked at me. “How about you? How do you want the rest of the hot dogs?”
“Plain.”
“Hunh-uh,” Lula said. “You better get some chili dogs for Connie. She’s gonna be real disappointed she sees my chili dogs, and she’s left with some plain-ass dog.”
“Okay, okay! Two more chili dogs,” I told Stuart, “and then just put the rest in a bag.”
“How about soda?” Lula asked. “I can’t eat all these hot dogs without soda.”
I ordered three medium fries and three large root beers, and forked over another twenty.
Stuart called his boss and lied his heart out about how he was sick and throwing up all over the place, and that he’d sold all his hot dogs, and no one was in the mall anyway on account of the weather and he was going home.
We pulled the front grate, locked up the concession and left with our bags of food and soda.
The parking lot had some remnants of slush, but the sleet had turned to driving rain. We wedged Stuart and the bags between us and rode in silence back to Trenton. From time to time I checked Stuart’s expression. His face was pale, and I suspected he hadn’t tried very hard to make his trial date. He looked like a person who’d given his best shot to denial and had lost. I guess being short and cute didn’t help all that much when it was time to grow up.
If he hadn’t shot up police cars he probably wouldn’t even have needed bail. And if he’d played by the rules he probably would have gotten away with probation and fine. New Jersey was up to its armpits in criminals. It didn’t have a lot of room in the prison system for amateurs like Stuart.
Lula took a turnoff into center city, stopped for a light and the Nissan stalled out. She started it up again; it ran rough for a few seconds and went into another stall.
“Maybe you’re not doing the clutch right,” I suggested.
“I guess I know how to do a clutch,” Lula said. “Looks to me like you got a lemon car.”
“Let me try it,” I said, opening my door, running to the driver’s side.
Lula stood at roadside and watched. “This car is busted,” she said. “You know what I’m telling you?”
I started it up. The car bucked forward a few feet and died.
“Maybe we should look under the hood,” Lula said. “Maybe you got a cat in your engine. My neighbor, Midgie, once got a cat in his engine. Cat looked like it had been put through a food processor by the time Midgie figured out to check under the hood.”
Stuart made a face that said, Yuk!
“Happens all the time,” Lula said. “They get cold and they go to the warm engine. Then they fall asleep and when you go to start the car…cat stew.”
I popped the hood and Lula and I checked for cats.
“Guess that wasn’t it,” Lula said. “I don’t see any cat guts.”
We slammed the hood down, and Lula got back behind the wheel. “I can do this,” she said. “All I gotta do is race the engine, so it don’t stall.”
We drove two more blocks and cringed when the light turned red ahead. Lula eased up to the last car in line. “No sweat,” she said. “Got this made.” She raced the engine. The truck idled rough and started to stall. Lula raced the engine some more and somehow the truck lurched forward and smashed into the car in front.
“Oops,” Lula said.
We got out to take a look. The car in front had a nasty crumple in its left rear quarter panel. The Nissan had a chunk torn out of its snoot and a deep gash in its bumper.
The man driving the car in front of us wasn’t happy. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” he yelled at Lula. “Why don’t you learn how to drive?”
“Don’t you yell at me,” Lula told him. “I don’t take no yelling at. And on top of that I can drive just fine. It happens that my vehicle wasn’t working properly.”
“You got insurance?” the man wanted to know.
“Damn skippy I got insurance,” Lula said. “Not only do I have insurance, but I’m filling out a police report. And on that police report I’m telling them about your brake lights all covered with dirt and ice, which were a contributing factor.”
I exchanged information with the man, and Lula and I turned back to the Nissan.
“Uh-oh,” Lula said, opening the driver’s side door. “I don’t see Stuart Baggett in here. Stuart Baggett’s done the good-bye thing.”
Cars were lined up behind us, straggling around the accident one at a time. I climbed into the truck bed to get some height and looked in all directions, up and down the road, but Stuart was nowhere to be seen. I thunked my head with the heel of my hand. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I hadn’t even cuffed him.
“He didn’t look smart enough to run off,” Lula said.
“Deceptively cute.”
“Yeah, that was it. Deceptively cute.”
“I suppose we should go to the police station and file an accident report,” I said.
“Yeah, and we don’t want to forget about the dirty taillights. Insurance companies love that shit.”
I piled in next to Lula, and we kept our eyes open for Stuart as we drove, but Stuart was long gone.
Lula looked nervous when we finally chugged into the lot for the municipal building that housed the courts and the police station. “I’d appreciate it if you’d run in and fill out the form,” Lula said. “Wouldn’t want anybody to get the wrong idea about me being at the police station. Think they see me sitting on the bench they might take away my shoelaces.”
I had my hand on the door handle. “You aren’t going to leave me stranded again, are you?”
“Who me?”
It took me a half hour to complete the paperwork. When I exited the building there was no blue Nissan parked in the lot and no blue Nissan parked on the street. I wasn’t surprised. I went back into the station and called the office.
“I’m stranded again,” I said to Connie.
I could hear wrappers rustling, and I could hear Connie swallow.
“What is that?” I demanded. “Are you eating hot dogs? Let me talk to Lula.”
“’Lo,” Lula said. “What’s up?”
“I’m wet and cold and stranded…that’s what’s up. And I’m hungry. You better not have eaten all those hot dogs.”
“We would have waited for you, but didn’t seem right to let the food set around.”
There was a pause, and I could hear her sipping soda.
“You want a ride?” she finally said. “I could come get you.”
“That would be nice.”
A half hour later we were back at the office. Lula’s hooker friend Jackie was there, and she was eating a hot dog.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Lula shouted to Jackie. “You come to see me?”
“Nope,” Jackie said. “Came to see Stephanie.”
Connie handed me a co
ld hot dog. “Jackie’s got man problems.”
“Yeah,” Jackie said. “Missing man problems.”
Lula leaned forward. “You telling me your old man took off?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Jackie said. “I’ve been standing out on that corner in the freezing cold, doing my thing, supporting that loser in fine style, and this is the thanks I get. No note. No good-bye. No nothin’. And that isn’t even the worst of it. That no good jerk-off took my car.”
Lula looked appalled. “He took the Chrysler?”
“That’s it, woman. He took the Chrysler. I still have ten payments on that car.”
I finished my hot dog and handed the little nail polish bag to Connie. “Vinnie ever show?”
“No. He hasn’t come in yet.”
“Bet he be doing a nooner somewhere,” Lula said. “That man got a ’tosterone problem. He’s one of those do it with barnyard animals.”
“Anyway, I came to you for help on account of you’re good at finding missing shit,” Jackie said to me. “I got money. I can pay you.”
“She’s the best,” Lula said. “Stephanie here can find any shit you want. You want her to find your old man, it’s a done deal.”
“Hell, I don’t give a flip about that worthless piece of trash. I want her to find my car,” Jackie said. “How am I supposed to get around without a car? I had to take a cab over here today. And how am I supposed to ply my trade in weather like this without no backseat? You think all johns got their own backseat? No way. My business is hurting because of this.”
“Have you reported the theft to the police?” I asked.
Jackie shifted her weight, one hand on hip. “Say what?”
“Maybe your car’s been impounded,” I suggested.
“I already checked impound,” Connie said. “They don’t have it.”
“Was a ninety-two Chrysler LeBaron. Dark blue. Got it used six months ago,” Jackie said. She handed me a file card. “Here’s the license number. Last I saw it was two days ago.”
“Anything else missing? Money? Clothes? This guy pack a bag when he leave?” I asked.
“Only thing missing is his worthless body and my car.”
“Maybe he just out drunk somewhere,” Lula said. “Maybe he just ho’in’ around.”
“Nuh-uh. I would of known. He’s gone, I’m telling you.”
Lula and I exchanged glances, and I suspected Jackie was right about the worthless body part.
“Why don’t we take Jackie home,” Lula said to me. “And then we could kind of cruise around and see what we can see.”
The tone surprised me. Soft and serious. Not the Lula who played bounty hunter at the mall.
“We could do that,” I said. “We might find something.”
All of us watching Jackie. Jackie not showing much but anger at losing her car. That was Jackie’s way.
Lula had her hat on her head and her duster buckled up. “I’ll be back later to do the filing,” she told Connie.
“Just don’t go into any banks in that getup,” Connie said.
Jackie rented a two-room apartment three blocks from Uncle Mo’s. Since we were in the neighborhood, we made a short detour to Ferris Street and looked things over.
“Nothing new here,” Lula said, letting her Firebird idle in the middle of the empty street. “No lights, no nothing.”
We drove down King and turned into the alley behind Mo’s store. I hopped out and peeked into the garage. No car. No lights on in the back of the upstairs apartment.
“There’s something going on here,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Lula slowly made her way to Jackie’s rooming house, taking a street for four blocks and then doubling back one street over, the three of us on the lookout for Jackie’s car. We’d covered a sizable chunk of neighborhood by the time we reached Jackie’s house, but nothing turned up.
“Don’t you worry,” Lula said to Jackie. “We’ll find your car. You go on in and watch some TV. Only thing good to do on a day like this is watch TV. Go check out the bitches on them daytime shows.”
Jackie disappeared behind a screen of rain, into the maroon-shingled two-story row house. The street was lined with cars. None of them Jackie’s Chrysler.
“What’s he like?” I asked Lula.
“Jackie’s old man? Nothing special. Comes and goes. Sells some.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cameron Brown. Street name is Maggot. Guess that tell you something.”
“Would he take off with Jackie’s car?”
“In a heartbeat.” Lula pulled away from the curb. “You’re the expert finder here. What we do next?”
“Let’s do more of the same,” I said. “Let’s keep driving. Canvass the places Brown would ordinarily hang at.”
Two hours later Lula missed a street in the rain, and before we could make a correction we were down by the river, weaving our way through a complex of high-rises.
“This is getting old,” Lula said. “Bad enough straining my eyeballs looking for some dumb car, but now I’m lost.”
“We’re not lost,” I told her. “We’re in Trenton.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never been in this part of Trenton before. I don’t feel comfortable driving around buildings that haven’t got gang slogans sprayed on them. Look at this place. No boarded-up windows. No garbage in the gutter. No brothers selling goods on the street. Don’t know how people can live like this.” She squinted into the gray rain and eased the car into a parking lot. “I’m turning around,” she said. “I’m taking us back to the office, and I’m gonna nuke up some of them leftover hot dogs and then I’m gonna do my filing.”
It was okay by me because riding around in the pouring rain in slum neighborhoods wasn’t my favorite thing to do anyway.
Lula swung down a line of cars and there in front of us was the Chrysler.
We both sat dumbstruck, barely believing our eyes. We’d painstakingly covered every likely street and alley, and here was the car, parked in a most unlikely place.
“Sonovabitch,” Lula said.
I studied the building at the edge of the lot. Eight stories high. A big cube of uninspired brick and low-energy window glass. “Looks like apartments.”
Lula nodded, and we returned our attention to the Chrysler. Not especially anxious to investigate.
“I guess we should take a look,” Lula finally said.
We both heaved a sigh and got out of the Firebird. The rain had tapered to a drizzle, and the temperature was dropping. The cold seeped through my skin, straight to my bones, and the possibility of finding Cameron Brown dead in the trunk of Jackie’s car did nothing to warm me from the inside out.
We gingerly looked in the windows and tried the doors. The doors were locked. The interior of the car was empty. No Cameron Brown. No obvious clues…like notes detailing Brown’s recent life history or maps with a bright orange X to mark the spot. We stood side by side, looking at the trunk.
“Don’t see no blood dripping out,” Lula said. “That’s a good sign.” She went to her own trunk and returned with a crowbar. She slipped it under the Chrysler’s trunk lid and popped the lid open.
Spare tire, dirty yellow blanket, a couple grimy towels. No Cameron Brown.
Lula and I expelled air in a simultaneous whoosh.
“How long has Jackie been seeing this guy?” I asked.
“About six months. Jackie doesn’t have good luck with men. Doesn’t want to see what’s real.”
Lula tossed the crowbar onto her backseat and we both got back into the Firebird.
“So what’s real this time around?” I asked.
“This Maggot’s a user from the word go. He pimping Jackie and then using her car to deal. He could of got a car of his own, but he uses Jackie’s because everybody knows she a ho, and if the cops stop him and there’s stuff in the trunk he just say he don’t know how it got there. He say he just borrowed the car from his ho girlfriend. And everybody knows
Jackie do some drugs. Only reason anybody be a ho is ’cause they do drugs.”
“Think Brown was selling drugs here?”
Lula shook her head, no. “He don’t sell drugs to this kind of folks. He pushes to the kiddies.”
“Then maybe he has a girlfriend upstairs.”
Lula rolled the engine over and pulled out of the lot. “Maybe, but it looks kind of high-class for Cameron Brown.”
By the time I dragged into my apartment at five o’clock I was thoroughly depressed. I was back to driving the Buick. My pickup was at a Nissan service center awaiting repairs after Blue Ribbon Used Cars refused responsibility, citing a clause on my sales receipt that said I’d bought the car “as is.” No returns. No guarantees.
My shoes were soaked through, my nose was running and I couldn’t stop thinking about Jackie. Finding her car seemed totally inadequate. I wanted to improve her life. I wanted to get her off drugs, and I wanted to change her profession. Hell, she wasn’t so dumb. She could probably be a brain surgeon if she just had a decent haircut.
I left my shoes in the hall and dropped the rest of my clothes on the bathroom floor. I stood in the shower until I was defrosted. I toweled my hair dry and ran my fingers through it by way of styling. I dressed in thick white socks, sweatpants and sweatshirt.
I took a soda from the fridge, snatched a pad and pen from the kitchen counter and settled myself at the dining table. I wanted to review my ideas on Mo Bedemier, and I wanted to figure out what I was missing.
I awoke at nine o’clock with the spiral binding of the steno pad imprinted on the left side of my face and my notebook pages as blank as my mind. I shoved the hair out of my eyes, punched 4 on my speed dial and ordered a pizza to be delivered—extra cheese, black olives, peppers and onions.
I took hold of the pen and drew a line on the empty page. I drew a happy face. I drew a grumpy face. I drew a heart with my initials in it, but then I didn’t have anyone else’s initials to write next to mine, so I went back to thinking about Mo.
Where would Mo go? He left most of his clothes behind. His drawers were filled with socks and underwear. His toiletries were intact. Toothbrush, razor, deodorant in the medicine chest over the bathroom sink. That had to mean something, right? The logical conclusion was that he had another apartment where he kept a spare toothbrush. Trouble was…life wasn’t always logical. The utilities check hadn’t turned up anything. Of course that only meant that if Mo had a second house or apartment, it wasn’t registered under his name.
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