office with the casserole and came face-to-face with Joyce Barnhardt.
Joyce had been a pudge when she was a kid, but over the years the fat had shifted to all the right places. Plus, she’d had some sucked out and added some here and there. Truth is, most of the original equipment had been altered one way or another, but even I had to admit the end result was annoyingly spectacular. She had a lot of flame-red hair that she did up in waves and curls. Hard to tell which of it was hers and which was bought. Not that it mattered when she swung her ass down the street in spike-heeled boots, skintight low-rider jeans, and a black satin bustier. She wore more eye makeup than Tammy Faye and had lips that were inflated to bursting.
“Hello, Joyce,” I said. “Long time no see.”
“I guess you could say that to Morelli, too,” Joyce said.
Lula cut her eyes to me. “You want me to shoot her? ’Cause I’d really like to do that. I still got a few bullets left in my gun.”
“Thanks, but not today,” I said to Lula. “Some other time.”
“Just let me know when.”
“So what are you doing here in the slums?” I asked her.
“Ask Connie.”
“Vinnie hired her again,” Connie said. “He decided you weren’t bringing the skips in fast enough, so he brought Joyce in to take up the slack.”
“I don’t take up slack,” Joyce said. “I take the cream off the top.”
From time to time, Joyce had worked for Vinnie, mostly because she was good with a whip and once in a while Vinnie felt like a very bad boy.
“What’s in the casserole?” Joyce asked.
I opened the lid. “It’s barbecue. Grandma Mazur made it for me for dinner. She knows how I love this recipe.”
Joyce spit on the pulled pork. “Just like old times,” she said. “Remember when I used to spit on your lunch in school?”
“How about now?” Lula asked. “Can I shoot her now?”
“No!”
Joyce took the casserole dish from me. “Yum,” she said. “Dinner.” And then she sashayed out of the bonds office, got into her black Mercedes, and roared off down the street with the barbecue.
“I got a dilemma here now,” Lula said. “I don’t know whether I want her to like my barbecue sauce or get the squirts from it.”
Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “Where is she? Did she leave? Christ, she scares the crap out of me. Still, there’s no getting around it. She’s a man-eater. She’ll clean up the list.”
Connie and Lula and I did a collective eye roll because Joyce had tried her hand at bounty hunting before and the only man she ate was Vinnie.
“Am I fired?” I asked Vinnie.
“No. You’re the B team.”
“You can’t have an A team and a B team going after the same skips. It doesn’t work.”
“Make it work,” Vinnie said.
“We should have saved the barbecue for Vinnie,” I said to Lula.
“Wasn’t me that gave Barnhardt the barbecue,” Lula said. “I wanted to shoot her.”
I hiked my bag onto my shoulder. “I’m out of here. I’m going to see if Myron Kaplan is home.”
“I’m with you,” Lula said. “I’m not staying here with this Barnhardt-hiring idiot.”
“What about the filing?” Vinnie yelled at Lula. “There’s stacks of files everywhere.”
“File my ass,” Lula said.
ACCORDING TO THE information Connie had given me, Myron Kaplan was seventy-eight years old, lived alone, was a retired pharmacist, and two months ago, he robbed his dentist at gunpoint. Myron’s booking photo was mostly nose. Several other photos taken when bail was written showed Myron to be slightly stooped, with sparse, wild gray hair.
“There it is,” Lula said, checking house numbers while I crept down Carmichael Street. “That’s his house with the red door.”
Carmichael was a quiet little side street in the center of the city. Residents could walk to shops, restaurants, coffeehouses, corner groceries, and in Myron’s case . . . his dentist. The street was entirely residential, with narrow brick-faced two-story row houses.
I parked at the curb, and Lula and I walked to the small front stoop. I rang the bell, and we both stepped aside in case Myron decided to shoot through his door. He was old, but he was known to be armed, and we’d been shot at a lot lately.
The door opened, and Myron looked at me and then focused on Lula in the yellow stretch suit and black flak vest.
“What the heck?” Myron asked.
“Don’t mess with me,” Lula said. “I’m off doughnuts, and I