"If you want to talk to the man, he isn't in," she said.
Lula popped up from behind a bank of file cabinets. "He's doin' a nooner with a goat today. I saw it on his calendar."
"So how's it going?" Connie asked. "Any action on the Nowicki thing?"
I passed a copy of the note to Connie and Lula. "I have a message from her that's written in some kind of code."
"Lose me," Lula said. "Code isn't one of my specialties."
Connie sunk two teeth into a heavily lipsticked lower lip. "Maybe the numbers are really letters."
"I thought of that, but I couldn't get it to work."
We all stared at the note for a while.
"Might not mean anything," Lula finally said. "Might be a joke."
I nodded. Joke note was a possibility.
"I helped Ranger with an apprehension yesterday," I said. "Kenny Martin."
Connie gave a low laugh. "Vito Grizolli's nephew? Bet that was fun."
"There was a woman with him that I can't place. I know I've seen her before, but it keeps slipping away from me."
"What'd she look like?"
"Slim, pretty, short blond hair. He called her Terry."
"Terry Gilman," Connie said. "Used to be Terry Grizolli. Was married to Billy Gilman for about six hours and kept his name."
"Terry Grizolli! That was Terry Grizolli?" Terry Grizolli was two years older than me and had been linked with Joe Morelli all through high school. She'd been voted prom queen and had created a school scandal by choosing Joe as her escort. After graduation, she'd gone on to become a professional cheerleader for the New York Giants. "I haven't seen her in years," I said. "What's she doing now? Is she still a cheerleader?"
"Rumor has it she's working for Vito. She has a lot of money and no discernible job."
"You telling me she's like a wise guy?"
"Affirmative action," Connie said.
The front door opened, and we all turned to look. Lula was the first to find her voice. "Killer earring."
It was a parrot swinging on a gold hoop that was looped through one of Sally's ears.
"Got it at the shore," he said. "You buy a pair of thong briefs and they throw in the earring." He made a grab at his ass and hiked himself up. "Christ, I don't know how they wear these thong things. They're giving me hemorrhoids."
He was minus the Farrah wig, and his own hair was a mess of dark brown corkscrew strands. Sort of Rasta without the dreds. He was wearing cut-off denims, a white T-shirt, red clogs and was freshly manicured with silver polish.
"This is Sally Sweet," I told Connie and Lula.
"I bet," Lula said.
Sally handed me the translation of the coded message and looked around. "I thought there'd be wanted posters on the walls and gun racks filled with shotguns."
"This isn't Dodge City," Lula said. "We got some class here. We keep the guns in the back room with the pervert."
I read the note. " 'One-thirty-two Howser Street. Under the bench.' That's Maxine's mother's address."
Sally slouched onto the couch. "When I was a kid I watched reruns of Steve McQueen. Now he was a bounty hunter."
"Damn skippy," Lula said. "He was the shit."
"So now what?" Sally wanted to know. "We going to Howser Street?"
Foreboding sliced into my stomach. We?
Lula slammed her file drawer shut. "Hold on. You're not going off without me! Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?"
I like Lula a lot, but last time we worked together I gained seven pounds and almost got arrested for shooting a guy who was already dead.
"I'm going to Howser Street," I said. "Only me. One person. Steve McQueen worked alone."
"I don't mean to be insulting," Lula said, "but you ain't no Steve McQueen. And something happens you'll be happy I'm around. Besides, this'll be fun . . . the two of us working on a case together again."
"Three of us," Sally said. "I'm going, too."
"Oh boy," Lula said. "The three muffkateers."
LULA GAVE THE NOWICKI HOUSE the once-over. "Don't appear like Maxine's mama spends much time spiffing up the old homestead."
We were in Lula's Firebird with Sally in the backseat doing air guitar to Lula's rap music. Lula cut the engine, the music stopped, and Sally snapped to attention.
"Looks kind of spooky," Sally said. "You guys have guns, right?"
"Wrong," I said. "We don't need guns to retrieve a clue."
"Well, this is fucking disappointing. I figured you'd kick the door down and blast yourselves into the house. You know, rough up some