“These shoes are freakin’ killing me,” she said.
“Your problem is you haven’t got the right balance to your body to wear shoes like that,” Lula said. “You gotta balance out your boobs with your bootie. Like, take me for instance. I got just the right proportion of boob to bootie. I could walk all day in those FMPs and never tip over. You got a imbalance of boob. It’s one of them genetic things. Italians can grow boob, but they’re deficient in bootie. I got a advantage with my African tribal background and taste for macaroni and cheese.”
I wasn’t getting involved in this, but I suspected the tribal background wasn’t the big player in the bootie development. If I ate like Lula I’d have a lot more bootie. Anyone would have more bootie.
Connie swiveled her head to take a look at her ass.
“So you think that’s my problem?” Connie asked.
“Either that or you bought your shoes too small,” Lula said.
Connie took two files off her desk and handed them to me. “These just came in. They’re low bonds, but they shouldn’t be hard to clear out.”
“I already told her about them,” Lula said. “I told her about the performance art guy.”
“He won’t be hard to find,” Connie said. “He does standup at the comedy club on Route 1 at night, and he works as a mime during the day. Usually he’s hanging around the coffee shop by the State House.”
I read through the file. Bernard Smitch. Thirty-four years old. Graduate of UC Berkeley. Address listed as “Under the bridge.” I knew this was bogus because the comedy club on Route 1 operated at a pretty high level. If Smitch lived under the bridge he wouldn’t smell all that good, and he wouldn’t be let into the comedy club. I’d been under the bridge and it wasn’t pretty.
“Where does Smitch really live?” I asked Connie.
“With his mother in Princeton,” Connie said. “His father is a state representative. I think there might be a conflict there.”
“Especially when he pooped in the street,” Lula said. “That’s not politically correct.”
“I’m heading out,” I said. I looked over at Lula. “Do you want to ride along?”
“You going after Smitch?”
“Yep.”
“I’m in,” Lula said. “I’m all about supporting the arts.”
“We aren’t supporting him,” I said. “We’re dragging him back to jail.”
“Yeah, but we might support him at a later date when he gets out. I could go watch him perform.”
I drove down Hamilton to Broad, went north on Broad, and turned onto State Street. The coffee house was on a side street off State. It was a perfect September day, and people were sitting outdoors. The mime was working, but no one was paying attention.
I parked in a metered space across the street, and Lula and I watched the mime. He was dressed in classic mime attire of whiteface, black-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt, and slim black pants. He pretended to walk on a tightrope. He pretended to be stymied by a glass door. He poured himself a drink and pretended to be drunk. He rebooted and went back to the tightrope routine.
“You watch this long enough and you get to wishing he’d take a poop,” Lula said.
We got out of my SUV, and I hung cuffs from my back pocket and stuck a small canister of pepper spray in the other back pocket. Lula was wearing a poison green spandex miniskirt that didn’t have any back pockets, but she had her purse hanging on her shoulder and God-knows-what-all she had in that purse.
I approached the mime and asked him if he was Bernard Smitch. He put his finger to his head and looked like he was thinking. While he was thinking I snapped the cuffs on his right wrist. He looked at the cuffs and mimed with a stiff middle finger.
“Now, that’s not nice,” Lula said to him. “That’s rude miming.”
He turned and mooned Lula and spanked his bare ass. Lula pulled her stun gun out of her purse, pressed the prongs to the mime’s butt, and gave him a couple hundred volts. Zzzzt. The mime went down like a sack of sand.
“Mime that,” Lula said.
There was a smattering of applause, and then everyone went back to drinking coffee and eating their pastries.
We snapped the other cuff on the mime, pulled his pants up, and carted him across the street. We maneuvered him into the backseat, and I drove to the police station.
“That was easy,” Lula said. “Another day and another dollar.”
“It would be best if you don’t mention to anyone that you stun-gunned the mime since that’s a little illegal,” I said.
“Yeah, but he was being disrespectful.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s still illegal.”
I pulled around to the police station back door that led directly to the holding cells and the booking desk. I pressed the intercom button and told them I had a drop-off. Moments later the back door opened, and a guy in uniform came out. I’d seen him around. His name was Gary. I couldn’t remember his last name.
“What have you got?” Gary asked.
“Bernard Smitch,” I said. “He’s FTA.”
I pulled my papers out of my messenger bag and handed them over.
Gary grinned. “I know this guy. He pooped in the middle of Broad Street.”
Lula and I got out and more or less dragged Smitch out of the backseat and propped him up against my SUV.
“Is he okay?” Gary asked.
“He’s a mime,” Lula said. “He’s miming a seizure. It’s one of his most popular routines.”
“Looks to me like he might be miming that he got zapped with a stun gun,” Gary said.
“It’s possible,” Lula said. “There’s a similarity between the two experiences. And you never know with a mime.”
We dragged Smitch into the building and cuffed him to a bench. I got my body receipt, and Lula and I returned to the bond office.
“Done and done,” Lula said to Connie.
“You guys are hot,” Connie said. “You got Virgil, Diggery, and Smitch. Vinnie’s going to be happy.”
Lula looked over at Vinnie’s open door. “Where is the little perv? How come he’s not here?”
“Good question,” Connie said. “Don’t know the answer. He tends to wander into murky waters when Lucille goes out of town.”
“I hope he’s not looking for another duck,” Lula said. “I try to be open-minded about people’s needs, but that was disturbing. I doubt that duck was consensual.”
“Gosh, look at the time,” I said, checking my watch. “I need to get home in case Morelli wants me to make dinner for him.”
“Me too,” Lula said. “I gotta get ready for my filming. I gotta glitter up my eyelids. And I want to go over the script one more time.”
Connie wrote me a check for the mime catch. “What are you making for dinner?” she asked me.
“Hot dogs.”
“Can’t go wrong with hot dogs,” Lula said. “What are you going to serve with them?”
“Beer.”
“That’ll do it,” Lula said.
A text message from Ranger dinged on my cellphone.
“Now what?” Lula asked.
“I’m supposed to meet Ranger at Mo Morris Ice Cream tomorrow at eight o’clock.”
“That’s the good ice cream place,” Lula said. “That’s where they give you free ice cream.”
“Why are you going to Mo Morris?” Connie asked. “I thought you were at Bogart’s solving security issues.”
“Harry Bogart thinks Mo is behind all the disasters at his plant. Ranger’s sending me in to see if I pick up any bad vibes.”
“How’s he going to get you in there?” Lula asked. “I thought it was impossible to get a job at that plant.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s not my problem.”
“Yeah,” Lula said, “your problem is trying to look good in a shower cap and paper onesie.”
I squelched a grimace, took the check from Connie, and headed out. Truth is, I wasn’t going home to get ready to wow Morelli with my culinary skills. I was going home to take a nap and reassess my life.
THIRTEEN