“I have wheels turning. I'll need to move when I get a call. Until then, I'm all yours.”
Connie called back. “I've got the paperwork in motion. I'm going to pick it up now, and I'll meet you at the booking desk in a half hour. I'm assuming Lula and Tank are being held at the station.”
“Yep. Ten-four.” I turned to Diesel. “This is going to take some time. Would you mind picking Bob up at my parents' house and bringing him home for me?”
“No problem. Call me if you run into trouble.”
The Trenton police are housed in a redbrick bunker in a part of town that knows a lot about crime firsthand, mandating that police cars be locked in a lot surrounded by razor wire. Unfortunately, Connie and I didn't qualify for the razor-wire lot and were forced to park on the street, which was more or less a supermarket for chop-shop scouts. Connie drove over in a crapola Beetle she kept for just such an occasion. I got two fake antennae and a big fake diamond-encrusted cross out of my console. I hung the cross on my mirror, and I stuck the antennae to the roof rack. If you didn't look too close you'd think I was a dealer and would most likely kill you if I caught you messing with my car.
It was after normal business hours, so we had to get ourselves buzzed in. Connie was already processing the release when I arrived. There wasn't a lot going on. Too late for rush-hour road rage and too early for drunken domestic violence. A lone sad-sack gangbanger sat chained to a chair that was bolted to the floor. The amount of snot on his shirt suggested he'd been pepper-sprayed.
My buddy Eddie Gazarra was on duty behind the desk. “Sorry about Lula and Tank,” he said. “I wasn't here when they came in, or I would have called you right away. Some numbskull rookie dragged their asses in here, and there wasn't anything we could do once they were booked.”
“It's okay,” I said. “We'll get them bonded out.”
Gazarra went back to the holding cell and got Lula and Tank.
“There's no justice to this world,” Lula said. “I get taken to jail, and the meany that called me a fat 'ho isn't even here.”
“He's at the hospital getting his nuts extracted from his nose,” Gazarra said. “He'll get charged as soon as he can walk without spitting up blood.”
“How about me?” Lula said. “I got a scratch on my arm, and I'm gonna get a bruise, too. And this here's a new sweater that someone grabbed hold of and tore a hole in.”
Tank wasn't saying anything. He took his belt and shoelaces and pocketed the plastic bag with his incidentals… wallet, keys, loose change.
“More bad news,” Gazarra said. “They towed and impounded a red Firebird that was parked illegally in a handicap space in front of the bar.”
“That's my baby!” Lula said. “And it wasn't parked illegal. It had two inches sticking over the line. There was only two inches in the dumbass handicap spot.”
Gazarra passed me a piece of paper. “Here's the address for the impound lot and the citation for the car. My advice is to pick it up tomorrow, because your girlfriend here is probably blowing over the alcohol limit, and with the kind of luck she's having, she'll be brought back here for DUI.”
We all trudged out of the station, happy to find both cars still at the curb, unmolested. Connie zipped away, hoping to catch her television show, and I loaded Tank and Lula into my Escape.
“How about you?” I said to Tank. “Did you drive to the bar?”
Tank just looked at me.
I couldn't hold the smile back. “You drove there in a Rangeman vehicle, didn't you?”
Tank nodded. “Ranger's gonna kill me.”
“Ranger doesn't have to know.”
“Ranger knows everything,” Tank said. His eyes held mine. “Everything.”
Oh boy.
“What bar did you two trash?”
“Sly Dog,” Tank said. “The car's in the lot alongside the bar.”
Sly Dog was a watering hole for people coming to and going from events at the Sovereign Bank Arena. The complexion of the bar changed according to the event, and I wasn't sure what was going on tonight. Could have been a rock concert or a hockey game or monster trucks. It sat just outside the Burg, and was maybe a half mile from Lula's apartment.
I took Perry Street to Broad Street and sailed through the center of the city, coming up behind the arena and the bar. I pulled into the lot and parked behind the black Rangeman SUV.
Lula was in the seat beside me, and Tank was in the back. I slid a look at Lula. “Is there a plan?”
“Hey, Shrek,” Lula yelled back to Tank. “You got a plan?”