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“What kind of case is it?” Val asked.
“He's wanted for AR and PT,” Lula said. “That's bounty hunter shorthand for armed robbery and public tinkling. He held up a liquor store and then took a leak in the domestic table wines section. I bet Stephanie here is gonna be so happy I'm helping you that she's gonna ride along and help out with the apprehension.”
“Not likely,” I said. “I have to be at work at three.”
“Yeah, but at the rate you're going, you'll be fired by five,” Lula said. “I just hope you last through dinnertime because I was planning on coming in for a bucket of extra crispy.”
“Is that on my diet?” Val asked.
“Hell no,” Lula said. “Ain't nothing on your diet. You want to lose weight, you gotta starve. You gotta eat a bunch of plain-ass carrots and shit.”
“What about that no-carb diet? I hear you can eat bacon and steak and lobster.”
“You didn't tell me what kind of diet you wanted to do. I just figured you wanted the starvation diet on account of it's the easiest and the most economical. You don't have to weigh anything. And you don't have to cook anything. You just don't eat anything.” Lula motored off to the kitchen.
“Let's check out your cupboards and see if you got good food or bad food.”
Lula poked around. “Uh oh, this don't look like skinny food. You got chips in here. Boy, I sure would like some of these chips. I'm not gonna eat them, though, 'cause I got willpower.”
“Me, too,” Valerie said. “I'm not going to eat them either.”
“I bet you eat them when we leave,” Lula said.
Valerie bit into her lower lip. Of course she'd eat them. She was human, wasn't she? And this was Jersey. And the Burg, for crissake. We ate chips in the Burg. We ate everything.
“Maybe I should take those chips,” Lula said. “It would be okay if I ate the chips later being that I'm currently not in my weight-losing mode. I'm currently in my weight-gaining mode.”
Valerie pulled all the bags of chips out of the cupboard and dumped them into a big black plastic garbage bag. She threw boxes of cookies and bags of candy into the bag. She added the junk-sugar-loaded cereals, the toaster waffles, the salted nuts. She handed the bag over to Lula. “And I'm only going to eat one pork chop tonight. And I'm not going to smother it in gravy.”
“Good for you,” Lula said. “You're gonna be skinny in no time with an attitude like that.”
Valerie turned to me. “Grandma was all excited when she called. She said they just found out you've been playing the cello all these years.”
Lula's eyes bugged out. "Are you shitting me? I didn't know you played a musical instrument. And the cello!
That's real fancy-pants. That's fuckin' classy. How come you never said anything?"
Small tendrils of panic curled through my stomach. This was getting out of control. “It's no big thing,” I said. “I'm not very good. And I hardly ever play. In fact, I can't remember the last time I celloed.”
“I don't ever remember seeing a cello in your apartment,” Valerie said.
“I keep it in the closet,” I told her. I was such a good fibber! It had been my one real usable talent as a bounty hunter. I made a show of checking my watch. “Boy, look at the time. I have to go.”
“Me, too,” Lula said. “I gotta go get that stupid AR.” She wrapped her arms around the bag of junk food and lugged it out to her car. “It would be like old times if you rode with me on this one,” Lula said to me. “It wouldn't take us long to round up Mr. Pisser, and then we could eat all this shit.”
“I have to go home and take a shower and get dressed for work. And I have to feed Rex. And I don't want to do bond enforcement anymore.”
“Okay,” Lula said. “I guess I could understand all that.”
Lula roared off in her Firebird. And I slowly accelerated in the Buick. The Buick was like a freight train. Takes a while to get a full head of steam, but once it gets going it'll plow through anything.
I stopped at Giovichinni's Meat Market on the way home. I idled in front of the store and looked through the large front window. Bonnie Sue Giovichinni was working the register. I dialed Bonnie Sue and asked her if there were any Macaronis in the store.
“Nope,” Bonnie Sue said. “The coast is clear.”
I scurried around, gathering the bare essentials. A loaf of bread, some sliced provolone, a half pound of sliced ham, a small tub of chocolate ice cream, a quart of skim milk, and a handful of fresh green beans for Rex. I added a couple Tastykakes to my basket and lined up behind Mrs. Krepler at the checkout.
“I just talked to Ruby Beck,” Mrs. Krepler said. “Ruby tells me you've left the bonds office so you can play cello with a symphony orchestra. How exciting!”
