Smokin Seventeen

SIXTEEN

THE NEXT MORNING I dragged myself into the coffee shop and ordered a grande with extra caffeine. Connie and Lula were already hard at work, settled into the window seating area. Lula was doing the day’s Jumble, and Connie was tweeting on her laptop.

Lula stared up at me. “You look like you been run over by a truck.”

I eased myself down to the couch. “Long night. I couldn’t get Dave Brewer out of my head. It was like he was haunting me.”

“You’re just all clogged up with men,” Lula said. “You got confused hormones.”

“I don’t feel confused. Mostly I feel tired.”

“Hope you’re not too tired,” Connie said. “Ziggy violated his bond last night, and you need to bring him in.”

“What did he do?”

“He attacked Myra Milner at bingo. He said he just wanted to get cozy, but he had his teeth in, and he gave her a couple punctures. I guess he has a thing for the ladies. Anyway, she pressed charges. He was long gone by the time the police got to the bingo hall.”

“Myra Milner is eighty-two years old,” I said to Connie. “What the heck was he thinking?”

Connie gave me the RIGHT TO APPREHEND papers. “Probably he was thinking she was easy. Myra told the police the batteries conked out on her hearing aid, and she didn’t hear him sneaking up on her.”

“I don’t like this,” Lula said. “I had a close call last time, and I still don’t know if I’m outta the woods here. I had a real craving for a Bloody Mary and a rare hamburger last night.”

“There’s no blood in a Bloody Mary,” I told her.

“Yeah, but it’s the idea.”

Mooner’s bus pulled up at the curb, and Mooner and Vinnie got out and came into the coffee shop.

“We got a problem,” Vinnie said. “Genius here was walking Bruce, and Bruce wandered away.”

“He looked like he had to poop,” Mooner said, “but he was having a problem, like finding the right spot, and I thought maybe he needed privacy. I mean, not everyone can poop with an audience, right? So I turned my back for a minute. But then when I looked around he was gone.”

We all went dead still, absorbing the fact that a large bear was loose in the Burg.

“We’ve been riding around, but we can’t find him,” Vinnie said. “You need to help us look.”

A man sitting at a table in the other window area leaned toward us. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I saw a bear walking down Hamilton when I was on my way here. I thought I was seeing things. A white Camry pulled alongside the bear, the driver whistled, and the bear got into the backseat. And then the car drove away.”

“Describe the driver,” Vinnie said.

“He was in the car, so I couldn’t see all of him, but he was Caucasian with brown hair that was kind of long. Middle-aged. I think he had sort of a thin face. And when he talked to the bear it wasn’t in English. I think it might have been Russian.”

“Boris,” Vinnie said. “That’s Boris Belmen, the idiot who owns the bear.”

Connie typed Belmen into her computer and came up with his temporary address in Trenton and his cell phone number.

Vinnie called the cell phone. “I want my bear back,” Vinnie said to Boris.

Even from where I was sitting I could hear Boris yelling at Vinnie, how Vinnie let his prize bear loose to walk around on a busy street, how now he was going to Vegas with Bruce, and Vinnie could go screw himself. And then Boris hung up and wouldn’t answer his phone again.

“Don’t look at me,” Lula said. “I’m not going to get the bear. He growled at me when all I was doing was bringing him chicken. And on top of that he has bad breath.”

I capped my coffee and stood. “Give me the address. I’ll talk to Belmen.”

“I’m not going,” Lula said. “This job gets worse and worse. Vampires and bears and big guys with boners. Okay, so maybe I didn’t mind the big guy with the boner so much.”

Connie wrote Belmen’s address on a note card and handed it to me. “If you want the whole file I have to go into the bus to print it.”

“Not necessary. This is all I need.”

“And when you’re done tracking down my bear you’re gonna need to figure out who’s dumping bodies in my lot,” Vinnie said. “Business was bad before and now it’s nonexistent. It’s like we got death cooties.”

“Morelli’s on the case,” I told him.

“Well tell him to work faster. I’m dying here. We’re going under. Another week of this and Harry’s gonna pull his money and we’ll all be up shit’s creek.”

• • •

Belmen was staying in an inexpensive motel south of town, on the way to Bordentown. I pulled into the lot and parked next to a white Camry that shouted rental car and had bear slobber on the side window. The structure was classic 1970, two-story, pink stucco and white trim. Belmen was in unit 14A. I knocked on the door, and a trim forty-something man who fit Belmen’s description answered. A few feet behind him I could see Bruce sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Where’s the pizza?” Belmen asked, giving me the once-over.

“Excuse me?”

“Aren’t you the pizza delivery lady? I ordered pizzas.”

“Sorry. I work for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds.”

“Vinnie’s a bad man,” Belmen said. He stepped to the side and made a swooping motion to the bear. “Kill!”

Bruce lunged off the bed and rushed at me, mouth open. GROWL!

I jumped back and slammed the door shut.

“Jeez Louise,” I said to Belmen through the door. “I just want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Do I have to yell through the door?”

“Yes.”

I blew out a sigh and counted to five. “I know you’re anxious to get to Vegas, but you need to show up for your court date. If you don’t show up you’ll be considered a felon, and it will be one more charge against you. If you show up and explain what happened you might get off light since it’s your first offense.”

“I don’t think it was my fault,” he said. “I don’t even remember. It happened so fast.”

“The bartender said you were drunk.”

“I’d had a couple drinks. Maybe I was drunk.”

“Promise me you’ll show up for court.”

“All right. I promise, but if I go to jail you have to take care of Bruce.”

“I can’t take care of Bruce. They don’t allow bears in my apartment building.”

“I can’t just abandon him,” Belmen said.

“I’ll figure something out. And just out of morbid curiosity, would he have killed me?”

“No. Bruce is a pussycat. He was just playing with you.”

Yeah, right. I’ve never bought off a judge before but in this case I’d do whatever it took.