As a short-term fix to my sister's housing dilemma I volunteered the use of my apartment. I was spending most of my nights with Morelli anyway, so it wasn't a total sacrifice on my part. It's now three months down the road and Valerie is still in my apartment, returning to my parents' house every night for dinner. Once in a while something fun happens at dinner… like Grandma setting the tablecloth on fire or Kloughn choking on a chicken bone. But usually it's just flat-out migraine-inducing bedlam.

'Boy, too bad you'll miss the roast chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes,' I told Morelli in a last-ditch effort. 'Probably pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.'

'Not gonna work. You're going to have to come up with something better than roast chicken to get me over to your parents' house tonight.'

'What, like wild gorilla sex?'

'Not even wild gorilla sex. It would have to be an orgy with identical Japanese triplets.'

I gave Morelli an eye roll, and I left for the bond office.

'Your sub's filed under S,' Lula said when I swung through the door. 'I got you capicolla and provolone and turkey and pepperoni with some hot peppers.'

I opened the file and retrieved my sub. There's only half a sandwich here.'

'Well, yeah,' Lula said. Me and Connie decided you wouldn't want to get fat by eating that whole sub all yourself. So we helped you out.'

Vincent Plum Bail Bonds is a small storefront office on Hamilton Avenue. Ordinarily a more lucrative location for a bonds office would be across from the courts or the lockup. Vinnie's office is across from the Burg, and a lot of Vinnie's repeat customers are local. Not that the Burg is a bad neighborhood. Truth is, the Burg is possibly the safest place to live if you have to live in Trenton. There's a lot of low-level mob in the Burg and if you misbehave in the Burg you could quietly disappear for a very long time… like forever.

It's even possible that some of Connie's relatives might assist in the disappearance. Connie is Vinnie's office manager. She's five foot four and looks like Betty Boop with a mustache. Her desk is positioned in front of Vinnie's small inner office, preventing the unsuspecting from walking in on Vinnie while he's on the phone with his bookie, taking a snooze, or having a private conversation with his Johnson. Also behind Connie's desk is a bank of file cabinets. And behind the file cabinets is a small stockroom packed with guns and ammo, office supplies, bathroom supplies, and assorted confiscated booty that mostly runs to computers, fake Rolex watches, and fake Louis Vuitton handbags.

I slouched onto the scarred dung-brown fake leather couch that was positioned against a side wall of the outer office and unwrapped the sub.

'Big day in court yesterday,' Connie said, waving a handful of manila folders at me. 'We had three guys fail to appear. The bad news is they're all chump change. The good news is none of them have killed or raped in the last two years.'

I took the folders from Connie and returned to the couch. 'I suppose you want me to find these guys,' I said to Connie.

'Yeah,' Connie said. 'Finding them would be good. Dragging their asses back to jail would be even better.'

I flipped through the folders. Harold Pancek. Wanted for indecent exposure and destruction of personal property.

'What's the deal on Harold?' I asked Connie.

'He's local. Moved to the Burg three years ago from Newark. Lives in one of the row houses on Canter Street. Got drunk two weeks ago and tried to take a leak on Mrs Gooding's cat, Ben. Ben was a moving target and Pancek mostly got the side of Gooding's house and Gooding's favorite rosebush. Killed the rosebush and took the paint off the house. And Gooding says she washed the cat three times and he still smells like asparagus.'

Lula and I had our faces frozen in curled-lip grimaces.

'He doesn't sound like much of a threat,' Connie said. 'Just make sure you stand back if he whips it out to relieve himself.'

I took a quick look at the two remaining files. Carol Cantell, wanted for holding up a Frito-Lay truck. This brought an instant smile to my face. Carol Cantell was a woman after my own heart.

The smile turned to raised eyebrows when I saw the name on the last file. Salvatore Sweet, charged with assault. 'Omigod,' I said to Connie. 'It's Sally. I haven't seen him in ages.' When I first met Salvatore Sweet he was playing lead guitar for a transvestite rock band. He helped me solve a crime and then disappeared into the night.

'Hey, I remember Sally Sweet,' Lula said. 'He was the shit. What's he doing now besides beating on people?'

'Driving a school bus,' Connie said. 'Guess the rock career didn't work out. He's living on Fenton Street, over by the button factory.'

Sally Sweet was an MTV car crash. He was a nice guy but he couldn't get through a sentence without using the T word fourteen times. The kids on Sally's bus probably had the most inventive vocabularies in the school.

'Have you tried calling him?' I asked Connie.

'Yeah. No answer. And no answering machine.'

'How about Cantell?'

'I talked to her earlier. She said she'd kill herself before she'd go to jail. She said you were going to have to come over there and shoot her and then drag her dead body out of the house.'

'It says here she held up a Frito-Lay truck?'

'Apparently she was on that no-carbohydrate diet, got her period and snapped when she saw the truck parked in front of a convenience store. Just got whacked out at the thought of all those chips. She threatened the driver with a nail file, filled her car with bags of Fritos, and took off, leaving the driver standing there in front of his empty truck. The police asked him why he didn't stop her, and he said she was a woman on the edge. He said his wife got to looking like that sometimes, and he didn't go near her when she was like that, either.'

'I've been on that diet and this crime makes perfect sense to me,' Lula said. 'Especially if she had her period. You don't want to go through your period without Fritos. Where you gonna get your salt from? And what about cramps? What are you supposed to take for cramps?'

'Midol?' Connie said.

'Well, yeah, but you gotta have some Fritos while you're waiting for the Midol to kick in. Fritos have a calming influence on a woman.'

Vinnie stuck his head out the door of his inner office and glared at me. 'What are you sitting around for? We got three FTAs in this morning and you already had one in your possession. Four FTAs!

Christ, I'm not running a charity here.'

Vinnie is my cousin on my fathers side of the family and sole owner of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. He's an oily little guy with slicked-back black hair, pointy-toed shoes, and a bunch of gold chains hanging around his scrawny tanning salon-tanned neck. It's rumored that he once had a romantic relationship with a duck. He drives a Cadillac Seville. And he's married to Harry the Hammer's only daughter. Vinnie's rating as a human being would be in the vicinity of pond slime. His rating as a bonds agent would be considerably higher. Vinnie understood human weakness.

'I haven't got a car,' I told Vinnie. 'My car got firebombed.'

'What's your point? Your cars are always getting firebombed.

Have Lula drive you. She doesn't do anything around here anyway.'

'Your ass,' Lula said.

Vinnie pulled his head back into his office, and he slammed and locked the door.

Connie rolled her eyes. And Lula flipped Vinnie the finger.

'I saw that,' Vinnie yelled from behind his closed door.

'I hate when he's right,' Lula said, 'but there's no reason we can't use my car. I just don't want to pick up the drunken leaker. If he takes paint off a house, I'm not letting him near my upholstery.'

'Try Cantell,' Connie said. 'She should still be at home.'