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I took Grandma home and then went to the office.
“Have you heard anything from Connie?” I asked Lula.
“No,” she said. “I called all the hospitals, and I called her mama. It’s like she vanished.”
“How’s her mother doing?”
“She didn’t sound all that worried. She’s not used to seeing Connie all day like we are. She doesn’t have a sense that this isn’t normal Connie behavior.”
“Maybe we’re overreacting. Maybe Connie needed to get away. Have a moment. She carries a lot of responsibility between her mother and her job.”
“I guess that could be it,” Lula said. “Sometimes I feel like I want to get away from my responsibilities. Not to do with my mama, though, on account of she’s real independent. A bunch of years ago she retired and went to live with my Aunt Sue in Georgia. They’ve got a dog-sitting business there and Aunt Sue works part-time at a nail salon. She specializes in acrylics. My responsibilities are to do with my appearance. I have high standards. I gotta keep my wardrobe organized and make sure I’m accessorized properly. And hair and nails like I got don’t just happen. It’s all responsibility, you see what I’m saying? What about you?”
The first thing that came to mind was my job. I barely madeenough money to pay my rent and buy food. I spent a lot of time in smelly, bad neighborhoods chasing down smelly, bad people. And there was no prestige attached to it. Bail bond enforcement was on a level with cesspool maintenance and grave robbing when it came to public opinion.
“Don’t you ever want to run away?” Lula repeated.
“Yeah. All the time, but only for a couple minutes and then I get over it.”
“I hear you. That’s my problem too. I looked it up one time. It’s that we have too much inertia because we only got short-term dissatisfaction. It’s on account of we’re too well adjusted. We got self-esteem and it’s what’s keeping us from being supermodels or entrepreneurial billionaires. You gotta have some deep-seated feelings of inferiority to be a real big success. Like it helps if you have a little dick. Going with that line of reasoning, we should have been the ones to invent Google bein’ that we got no dick at all, only it don’t work like that since we got balls. If you got balls, you don’t necessarily feel inferior even if you haven’t got a dick. Course I’m speaking metaphorically.”
I thought Lula was right about the inertia, but I suspected my disinclination to flee had less to do with my self-esteem and more to do with a lack of lofty aspiration. Somewhere in my preteen years it became apparent that I was not destined to be an Avenger, and it was all downhill after that. Everything else seemed lackluster. So, I aimlessly drifted through college and ended up in retail selling bargain-basement ladies’ undies. And now I’m a bounty hunter and I still haven’t found a lofty aspiration. So, what’s the point of running away if you have nowhere you want to go?
Or here’s a scary thought—maybe I’ve come to like being a bounty hunter. Omigod!
“What is it?” Lula asked. “You look like you just found Jesus, only he turned out to be Donald Duck.”
I waved it away. “I was just thinking about my job… and about Connie.”
“Yeah, thinking about Connie could give you the grimaces. I’m staying here until four o’clock and then I’m going home and watch some happy movies and eat a couple pizzas so I can get rid of this scary feeling. This is like when you’re walking down a dark street at night and you get the feeling someone’s waiting ahead, behind a bush, and he’s gonna jump out and stab you forty-five times with a butcher knife. And you can’t get rid of the feeling and you have to keep walking ’cause that’s the only way to get home.”
I was walking down that same street right now, with the same horrible sense of foreboding. Connie and Lula and I had been through a lot together, and it was understood that we would always be there for each other. It was unthinkable that Connie would be out of our lives for a day or, God forbid, forever. I hiked my messenger bag higher up on my shoulder. “I’m going to ride around and look for Connie’s car. I’ll call you if I find anything.”
I cruised all of Connie’s haunts. Her neighborhood, including all the back alleys. Her favorite restaurants. Her nail salon and hair salon. Food stores, delis, the liquor store, and the train station. I checked out mall parking lots and the chop shop on Stark Street. I drove past the bail bonds office one last time and continued on to Pino’s Italian Bar and Grille to pick up dinner.
Connie’s car was parked in Pino’s lot. It was at the far side by the dumpster. I parked on the opposite side of the lot and walked to the car. No one inside. Not locked. No bloodstains. No bullet holes. I popped the hatch. No one in there. I felt the hood. Cold. The car had been sitting there for a while. I went inside Pino’s and looked around. No Connie. Morelli and I ate here a lot. We knew everyone. Ditto for Connie. I found the manager, Carl Carolli, and asked if he’d seen Connie.
“Not in a couple days,” he said. “She comes here on Thursdays with her mama sometimes. It’s after bingo. They get calamari with marinara.”
“Is there anyone here that’s new? That you don’t know?”
“There’s always people I don’t know.” He looked around. “The family in the corner booth. I don’t know them.”
I looked at the family. Mother, father, two kids. Didn’t look like kidnappers.
“I have your order ready,” Carl said. “You must be taking it to Morelli. Meatball sandwiches, extra pickles, fries, and the twelve-layer chocolate cake. I’m guessing one of you had a bad day.”
“This morning he had to jump into the river to drag a crazy lady out. It wasn’t pretty.”
Carl grinned. “He’s a good cop.”
I took my bag of food and walked around the parking lot, looking for signs of a struggle, looking for Connie or something that might belong to her. I didn’t see any feet sticking out from under a car. I didn’t hear anyone yelling from inside a trunk. I returned to my Honda, got behind the wheel, and locked the doors. My heart was bouncing around inside my chest. I called Morelli and gave him the short version.
“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours,” Morelli said.
“I know Connie’s in trouble,” I said. “I absolutely know it.”
“I’ll make some phone calls. I can’t do anything officially, but I can put the word out to keep an eye on the car and to look for Connie.”
