One for the Money Page 0,30

had my attention he licked my window.

I rooted through my pocketbook until I found my gun and my neuro spray. I laid them both on the dash. People stopped and stared from time to time after that, but they didn't linger.

By five o'clock I was feeling antsy, and my rayon skirt had serious crotch wrinkles. I was looking for Clarence Sampson, but I was thinking about Joe Morelli. He was somewhere close by. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. It was like a low-volt electric charge that hummed against the inside of my spine. In my mind I walked myself through the arrest. The easiest scenario would be for him not to see me at all, for me to come at him from behind and spray him. If that wasn't possible, I'd have to talk to him and wait for the right moment to go for the spray. Once he was on the ground and incapacitated, I could cuff him. After I got him cuffed I'd rest easier.

By six I'd done the mental arrest about forty-two times and was psyched. By six-thirty I was on the down side of the peak, and my left cheek had fallen asleep. I stretched as best I could and tried isometrics. I counted passing cars, mouthed the words to the national anthem, and slowly read the ingredients on a pack of gum I found in my pocketbook. At seven I called time to make sure Morelli's clock was right.

I was berating myself for being the wrong sex and the wrong color to operate effectively in over half the neighborhoods in Trenton when a man fitting Sampson's description reeled out of the Rainbow Room. I looked at the picture on the dash. I looked back at the man. I looked at the picture again. I was 90 percent sure it was Sampson. Big flabby body, mean little head, dark hair and beard, white Caucasian. Looked like Bluto. Had to be Sampson. Let's face it, how many bearded fat white men lived in this neighborhood?

I tucked the gun and the spray into my pocketbook, pulled away from the curb, and drove around two blocks so I could turn down Limeing and put myself between Sampson and his house. I double-parked and got out of the car. A group of teens stood talking on the corner, and two little girls sat on a nearby stoop with their Barbie dolls. Across the street a bedraggled couch, missing its cushions, had been set out on the sidewalk. The Limeing Street version of a porch swing. Two old men sat on the couch, wordlessly staring off into space, their lined faces inanimate.

Sampson was slowly weaving up the street, obviously in the glow. His smile was contagious. I smiled back at him. "Clarence Sampson?"

"Yep," he said. "That's me."

His words were thick, and he smelled stale, like clothes that had been forgotten for weeks in the hamper.

I extended my hand. "I'm Stephanie Plum. I represent your bonding company. You missed a court appearance, and we'd like you to reschedule."

Momentary confusion rippled across his brow, the information was processed, and he smiled again.

"I guess I forgot."

Not what you'd call a type A personality. I didn't think Sampson would ever have to worry about a stress-related heart attack. Sampson would most likely die from inertia.

More smiling on my part. "That's okay. Happens all the time. I have a car here . . . ." I waved in the direction of the Cherokee. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble I'll drive you to the station, and we can take care of the paperwork."

He looked beyond me to his house. "I don't know . . ."

I looped arms with him and nudged him over. Just a friendly ole cowpoke herding a dumber'n cat-shit steer. Git along little doggie. "This won't take long." Three weeks, maybe.

I was oozing well-being and charm, pushing my breast into the side of his fleshy arm as added incentive. I rolled him around the car and opened the passenger side door. "I really appreciate this," I said.

He balked at the door. "All I have to do is set a new court date, right?"

"Yeah. Right." And then hang around in a cell until that court date pops up on the calendar. I had no sympathy for him. He could have killed someone driving while intoxicated.

I coaxed him in and fastened the seat belt. I ran around, jumped in the car, and revved the engine, afraid the light bulb