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Step, stomp, step, stomp, step, stomp.
“Whoops,” Grandma said. And she face-planted on the grass.
Lula and I jumped out of the Jeep and rushed over.
“It’s the dang boot,” Grandma said. “It’s got me all lopsided.”
CONNIE WAS AT her desk when we walked into the bonds office.
“We would have been here sooner,” Lula said, “but we had to go on a mission of mercy. Grandma Mazur broke her foot dancing to an exercise video, and we had to get her fixed up.”
“Is she okay?” Connie asked.
I took my usual seat in front of the desk. “Yes. They put her in an orthopedic boot and sent her home.”
“And we got more news,” Lula said. “We got good news, and we got bad news, and it’s all the same news. We found Vinnie.”
Connie’s eyebrows rose a couple inches. “Are you serious?”
“They’ve got him in a back apartment in Sunflower’s building on Stark Street,” I said. “Lula heard him through the door. They’ve got a guy in there with him, and there’s a guy at the entrance downstairs. There aren’t any bars on the back windows, and there’s a rusted fire escape, but you’d die trying to get Vinnie out that way.”
“Do you have any ideas?” Connie asked me.
“No. None. And I don’t think the stink bomb will work. They’ll haul Vinnie out of the building under armed guard, and they won’t let go of him.”
“We need a diversion,” Lula said. “We need to get the guard out of the apartment. Then someone can go in and drag Vinnie’s worthless ass out of there.”
“A diversion’s a good idea,” I said, “but how are we going to get Vinnie down the stairs and out the door past the door guard?”
“We could disguise him,” Lula said. “Put him in a wig and a dress or something.”
I looked at Connie. “Do you think that’ll fly?”
“Maybe if we have a diversion at the front door, too,” Connie said.
“I can divert the guy at the front door,” Lula said. “He likes me.”
“I’ll be the second diverter,” Connie said. “That leaves Stephanie to get Vinnie out.”
“How are you going to divert him enough for me to get Vinnie down the stairs? I don’t think a wig’s going to do it. And suppose you divert him out of the apartment, but he locks the door behind him? What then?”
“See, that’s the problem with you,” Lula said. “You’re bein’ a glass-is-half-empty person. One of my outstanding qualities is my positive personality. You’ve just gotta take precautions, like you need to bring a gun with bullets in it.”
I PULLED TO the curb in front of the bonds office at precisely nine o’clock. Connie was already there, and Lula slid to a stop behind me. I was dressed in black. I had a loaded gun pressed against my backbone, stuck into the back of my jeans. I had pepper spray in my pocket. I had my cell phone clipped to my jeans waistband, set to dial Rangeman. I had a stun gun also clipped to my jeans waistband. And I had premonitions of disaster. I had no confidence in the mission. Truth is, we sucked at this stuff. We were like the Three Stooges at Camp Commando. The only reason I was attempting it was because I knew Chet would spot me on Stark Street and send out a back up Rangeman car.
We assembled in front of the office to review the plan. Connie was wearing wedge heels, a short, tight skirt, and a sweater that showed about a quarter mile of cleavage. Ditto Lula, substitute thigh-high hooker boots for the wedge heels.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said. “Our best shot at this is to get the back door open.” I looked over at Lula. “If you can open the door for Connie and me, we can slip upstairs easier. And then we can bring Vinnie out that way.”
“You can count on me,” Lula said. “What about cars?”
“We’ll take the Jeep,” I told her. “I’ll drop you off on Stark Street, and then I’ll park in the alley behind the building. After we escape with Vinnie, I’ll swing around and pick you up.”
“Okeydokey,” Lula said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
We all piled into the Jeep, and by the time we got to Stark Street, my stomach was sick and I had a grapefruit-size lump of panic sitting in the middle of my throat. Lula got out at the corner and walked half a block to the apartment building. There was still a guard out front, but it was a different guy. I circled around and parked in the alley as planned.
“This is going to work, right?” I said to Connie. “We won’t get caught, or killed, or anything?”
