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“Good news,” Lula said. “You’re up for armed robbery. By the time you get out of the pokey, your lease will be up.”
This got another giant sob.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those cannoli left,” Lula said.
“I ate them,” Gloria said. “All of them. I was depressed.”
“I saw the report, and that was a lot of cannoli,” Lula said.
Gloria looked down at her nightgown. “Tell me about it. This is the only thing that fits.”
“We need to take you downtown to get you rebooked and rebonded out,” I said to Gloria. “It would be good if you could find something else to wear.”
“Maybe you got some big-ass sweatpants or something,” Lula said.
Gloria shuffled off to her bedroom and came back minutes later in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans were only zipped halfway.
“That’s got a advantage,” Lula said, “being that you won’t have to give them your belt.”
“I forgot something,” Gloria said.
She turned, went back into her bedroom, and Bang! Lula and I went dead still.
“Oh crap,” Lula said.
Bang, bang, bang!
We ran to the bedroom and found Gloria pumping half a clip into a picture of her ex-husband.
She dropped the gun onto the floor, turned, and mooned the picture and farted.
Lula and I took a step back.
“Sorry,” Gloria said. “I get gas when I eat too much sugar.”
We loaded Gloria into the Buick, and I called Connie on our way to the municipal building so she could rebond Gloria. An hour later we were all back at the office. Connie was at her computer. Lula was on the couch reading Star magazine. I was looking at used cars on Craigslist.
The door crashed open and Briggs staggered in, dragging his duffel bag. His hair was sticking out every which way, his eyes were bugged out, and he had black sooty smudges all over his face and clothes.
“Someone blew up my car,” he said. “Lucky I wasn’t in it. I have one of those remote starters so I can get the air-conditioning going if I want. I pushed the starter when I came out of my cousin’s house and kaboom. It knocked me on my ass.”
“Your ass is pretty close to the ground anyways,” Lula said.
“It was a big fireball,” Briggs said. “If I was any closer I’d be a cinder now.”
“So how come you got your duffel bag with you?” Lula asked.
“It’s my clothes. My cousin kicked me out of his house, being that someone still wants to kill me.”
“Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no, no.”
“You gotta help me out,” Briggs said. “It must not have been Poletti. I need a safe place to live.”
“How about Florida?” I said. “You could rent a condo somewhere on a bus line so you don’t need a car.”
“I don’t want to live in Florida. It’s too hot. And they have big bugs and alligators.”
“You want to see a big bug, you should go into the storeroom here,” Lula said. “There’s the roach that ate Tokyo back there.”
