Page 7 of Now or Never

“Just checking in,” he said. “I’m still playing catch-up on paperwork, but I should be done at the end of the day. I thought we could get takeout and you could spend the night.”

“That sounds great, but I told my parents I’d be there for dinner. And then Grandma wanted to go to a viewing at the funeral home. And you know how that ends up. I’ll have a headache from the carnations and lilies. Maybe tomorrow would be better. I’ve gotta go. I have another call coming in.”

“You’re going straight to hell,” Lula said to me. “No doubt about it. That was a monster fib.”

“I fib all the time. It’s part of my job,” I said.

“That don’t make it right,” Lula said.

“Do you fib?” I asked her.

“Hell yeah. I’m a lifelong fibber. One of these days I’m going to confession and get rid of my fibber sins.”

“I thought you weren’t Catholic.”

“Do you have to be Catholic? I’m Catholic by association. I know a lot of Catholics. And I had a bunch of Catholic customers back when I was a ho.”

I grabbed my messenger bag and hung it on my shoulder. “Time to saddle up and move out.”

“Yahoo,” Lula said.

I gave Lula the new file when we were in my Trailblazer.

“Jerry Bottles,” she said. “Sixty-two years old. Not an attractive photo. Bald, big belly, has a nose like Captain Hook inPeter Pan. Says he’s five feet six inches tall and weighs a hundred sixty pounds. Self-employed plumber. Looks like this isn’t his first exposure. His last arrest got him community service, but he exposed himself while he was doing his time, working toclean up the duck pond in Greenwood Park, so he was sent for a psychiatric evaluation. He lives in one of those little row houses on the outskirts of the Burg. Seventy-two Wilmot Street.”

The Burg is a chunk of Trenton on the other side of the railroad tracks from the center of the city. I grew up in the Burg and my parents still live there with my grandma Mazur. Houses are small. Streets follow no rhyme or reason. The bakeries are excellent. The medical center sits on the edge of the Burg. Vincent Plum Bail Bonds is several blocks away and on the opposite side of Hamilton Avenue.

I drove down Hamilton and made a left turn into the Burg before I got to the medical center. I wound my way through the Burg and found Wilmot. There was on-street parking in front of the row houses. I knew there was also parking in the alley that cut the block.

“That’s his house there,” Lula said. “The one with the Christmas wreath on the front door. There’s cars parked at the curb but none of them looks like a plumber’s vehicle.”

“What does a plumber’s vehicle look like?”

“It’s one of those things you know when you see it,” Lula said.

I drove around the block and turned into the alley. Some houses had single-car garages in the alley. Number 72 did not. There was a truck parked in the small backyard.

“You see,” Lula said. “That’s a plumber’s vehicle. I knew as soon as I looked at it.”

“It saysBottles Plumbingon the side panel.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said.

I parked alongside the truck, and Lula and I got out of my Trailblazer and walked to Bottles’s back door.

“We should be nice to him,” Lula said. “You never know when you’ll need a plumber.”

I didn’t think I needed a plumber who displayed his personal plumbing in public, but I would be nice to him anyway.

Bottles answered on the second knock. He was wearing jeans that sat below his belly overhang and a navy collared shirt that hadBottles Plumbingstitched in yellow on the pocket. He had a few greasy strands of hair stretched across his bald head and an outcropping of hair on his large Captain Hook nose. I try not to be judgmental, but by anyone’s standards he was not an attractive man.

“Gerald Bottles?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I represent Vincent Plum Bail Bonds,” I said. “You missed your court date. I need to get you rescheduled.”

“That’s a real pain in the buttocks,” he said. “How about we just forget the whole thing. Nothing ever comes from this court stuff anyway. I’m already doing shrink time, which is a total waste. This shrink guy doesn’t get it. I think he’s got penis envy, but that’s just my opinion.”

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