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“You know what we should do?” Lula said. “We should open our own bail bonds agency. We could call it Big and Beautiful Bail Bonds.”
“You need start-up money to do that,” Vinnie said. “You need money to rent an office. Security deposits. Advance money for the lease. We’d have to buy computers and software, file cabinets, staplers.”
“We could get a loan,” Lula said. “Who’s got credit?”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m a month behind on my rent. I can’t get a loan to buy a new car.”
“Not me,” Vinnie said. “I don’t even have credit with my bookie.”
“Hell,” Lula said. “That’s the understatement of the year. Your bookie wants to kill you.”
“I could go to my family,” Connie said.
We all declined on that one. If we took money from Connie’s family, we’d be owned by the Mob.
“What about you?” Vinnie asked Lula.
“I’m in collection,” Lula said. “I overextended a little. I’m worried someone’s gonna come repossess my shoes.”
The Meagan Building was a block away, and my stomach was in a knot. I stopped for a light, and it was obvious traffic was slow ahead. Only one lane was open. The other was barricaded. The light changed, and I crept up to the Meagan Building. Yellow crime-scene tape blocked off the sidewalk. A fire truck and the fire marshall’s SUV was parked nearby. There was a lot of charred debris on the sidewalk in front of the building, and four guys in hard hats stood talking. They were standing in th
e road, looking up at the Meagan Building. The windows on the fifth floor were completely blown out. Black soot covered the exterior of the top floors, and the lower floors were grime-streaked.
“What floor was The Wellington Company on?” Lula asked.
“The fifth floor,” I told her.
“Guess we know why they aren’t answering their phone,” Lula said.
Connie looked out her window. “Someone was really busy last night.”
“This is crazy,” Vinnie said. “Even the Mob knows enough not to blow up two businesses in one night. Who the heck’s doing this?”
“I don’t know,” Lula said, “but I need chicken. I need doughnuts. I need one of them extra-greasy breakfast muffins with ham and eggs and shit.”
TWENTY-SIX
I STOPPED AT three different drive-through windows, and by the time we got back to the office, we were all feeling sick, not just from the freakish turn our lives had taken, but also from the food we’d managed to snarf down en route.
“I don’t feel so good,” Lula said. “I think I must have got a bad egg. I need a Rolaid.”
“You know what I need?” Vinnie said. “Lucille. I know this is stupid, but I miss Lucille. I never thought I’d say that. She was such a pain in the ass. How can you miss someone that’s a pain in the ass?”
“My ex-husband was a pain in the ass,” Connie said, “and I don’t miss him at all.”
“Ditto for me,” I said.
My marriage lasted about fifteen minutes. I caught my ex-husband naked on my dining room table with Joyce Barnhardt riding him like she was in the Kentucky Derby going for the win.
“Your problem is you’re a jerk,” Lula said to Vinnie. “You got all normal feelings. Like, you love Lucille. But you can’t help from being a jerk. I mean, what kind of a man has a romantic relationship with a duck?”
“I don’t know,” Vinnie said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You see?” Lula said. “It’s always a good idea at the time. But you don’t connect the dots between the good idea and the bad ever after. You got no sense of consequences. I learned all about this in my deviant behavior class at the community college.”
“I didn’t know you were going to college,” Vinnie said.
“Of course you didn’t, on account of you don’t listen. You’re not a listener like me. You’d be a better person if you were a listener.”
