Notorious Nineteen

it if I use my flashers and run the lights.”
    Connie and Lula were already at the office when I rolled in. The door to Vinnie’s lair was open, and I could smell cigar smoke.
    “Is that her?” Vinnie yelled.
    There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and Vinnie charged out, the cigar clamped between his teeth. Vinnie is slightly taller than me and looks like a weasel. His dark hair is slicked back, his eyes are crafty, his pants are too tight, and his shoes are too pointy. He has an affinity for pain inflicted by women wielding cuffs and paddles, and he’s been rumored to enjoy intimate relationships with barnyard animals. He’s married to a perfectly nice woman named Lucille, who for reasons I’ll never understand has chosen to endure the marriage. And last but not least, probably because he’s such a loser himself, Vincent Plum has a good understanding of the criminal mind, and that makes him an excellent bail bondsman.
    “Where is he?” Vinnie asked me.
    “Where’s who?”
    “That asshole Cubbin. Who else? You got him nailed down, right?”
    “Not exactly.”
    Vinnie had his hands in the air. “What not exactly? What does that mean?”
    “It means I don’t know where he is.”
    “You’re killing me,” Vinnie said. “If this agency tanks, it’s all your fault. It’s on your head. Fatso over there will have to go back to the streets. And Connie’ll be doing wet work.”
    “Excuse me?” Lula said. “Fatso? Did I hear you call me Fatso? Because you better tell me I heard wrong on account of I might have to beat the crap out of you if I heard right.”
    Vinnie clamped down tighter on his cigar and growled. “Just find him,” he said to me. And he retreated into his office and slammed the door shut.
    “Get a grip,” I yelled at him. “He’s not even officially FTA until Monday.”
    “We’ve got donuts,” Connie said, pointing to a box on her desk. “Help yourself.”
    “I’m going to talk to Cubbin’s wife,” I said to Connie. “And then I’m going to take a look at the nursing home. Maybe you could make some phone calls for me and find out if he took a cab somewhere when he checked out of the hospital.”
    Lula was on her feet, her head swiveled around trying to check out her ass. “That’s the second person told me I was fat this week. I don’t feel fat. I just feel like I got a lot of all thegood stuff. What do you think?” she asked Connie and me. “Do you think I’m fat?”
    “Well, you’re not thin ,” Connie said.
    “Some of me’s thin,” Lula said. “I got thin legs. I got Angelina Jolie ankles.”
    Connie and I looked at her ankles. Not fat. Possibly Angelina quality.
    “It’s just between my armpits and my hoo-ha that I’m better than most ladies,” Lula said. “I got stuff a man could hang on to. That’s one of the reasons I was so good as a ’ho.”
    “As long as you’re healthy,” I said to her. “You’re healthy, right?”
    “Yeah, I feel great. And one of these days I’m gonna go get myself checked out to take a look at my cholesterol, my sugar, and my blood pressure.”
    Connie took the box of donuts off her desk and threw it into her wastebasket.
    “So now what?” Lula asked. “We going to see Mrs. Cubbin?”
    I had Cubbin’s file open to his bond sheet. He looked worried in the photo, or maybe he was squinting in the sun.
    “He lives in Hamilton Township, by the high school,” I said.
    “We could sneak around and look in his windows and see if he’s hanging out in his undies, watching television and popping painkillers,” Lula said.
    Twenty minutes later Lula and I pulled up to Cubbin’s house. It was a modest white ranch with black shutters and a forest green front door. A white Camry was parked in the driveway leading to the attached garage. Very Middle America.
    “Which one of us is going to do the sneaking around, and which one the doorbell ringing?” Lula asked.
    “I’m ringing the doorbell,” I told her. “You can do whatever you want.”
    I walked to the small front porch, rang the bell, and Lula skirted the side of the house. The front door opened, and a woman looked out at me.
    “What?” she said.
    She had fried blond hair, an extra forty pounds on her small frame, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, and a spray tan that had turned a toxic shade of orange.
    “Mrs. Susan Cubbin?”
    “Unfortunately.”
    “You don’t like being Mrs. Cubbin?”
    “For eight years I’ve been married