Martha didn't look happy. “We really should see the canceled check.”
“For goodness' sakes,” Lipinski said to Martha, “the man disappeared in the middle of his errands. He probably had the check on him. How do you expect them to show you the check?”
“Supposedly the Shutzes have been customers for years. They must have canceled checks from previous quarters,” she said.
“I don't believe this,” Lipinski said. “Give it a rest. It's the computer. Remember last month? We had the same problem.”
“It isn't the computer.”
“It is.”
“Isn't.”
“Is.”
I backed out of the office and slipped out the door. I didn't want to be around for the bitch-?slapping and hair-?pulling. If Fred was going to “make out in spades,” it seemed unlikely he'd make his killing with these two.
Half an hour later I was back at Vinnie's. His door was shut and there were no bond seekers at Connie's desk. Lula and Connie were discussing meatloaf.
“That's disgusting,” Lula said, eyeballing Connie's sandwich. “Whoever heard of mayonnaise on meatloaf ? Everybody knows you gotta put ketchup on meatloaf. You can't put no dumb-?ass mayonnaise on it. What is that, some Italian thing?”
Connie gave Lula a stiff middle finger. “This is an Italian thing,” she said.
I snitched a corn chip from the bag on Connie's desk. “So what happened?” I asked Lula. “You and Bunchy going steady now?”
“He's not such a bad kisser,” Lula said. “He had a hard time giving it his full attention at first, but after a while I think he was into it.”
“I'm going after Briggs,” I said. “You want to ride shotgun?”
“Sure,” Lula said, pulling a sweatshirt over her head. “Better than sitting around here. It's damn boring in here today.” She had keys in her hand. “And I'm driving. You have a pipsqueak sound system in that Buick, and I need Dolby. I need mood music. I gotta get myself ready to kick some butt.”
“We're not kicking butt. We're finessing.”
“I could do that, too,” Lula said.
I follo
wed Lula out the door to her car. We buckled ourselves in, the CD player clicked on, and the bass almost lifted us off the ground.
“So what's the plan?” Lula asked, pulling into Briggs' parking lot. “We need a plan.”
“The plan is that we knock on his door and lie.”
“I could get into that,” Lula said. “I like to lie. I could lie your ass off.”
We crossed the lot and took the stairs. The hall was empty, and there was no noise coming from Briggs' apartment.
I flattened against the wall, out of sight, and Lula knocked twice on Briggs' door.
“How's this?” she asked. “I look okay? This here's my nonthreatening look. This look says, Come on, motherfucker, open your door.”
If I saw Lula on the other side of my apartment door, wearing her nonthreatening look, I'd hide under my bed. But hey, that's me.
The door opened with the security chain in place and Briggs peeked out at Lula.
“Howdy,” Lula said. “I'm from downstairs, and I got a petition for you to sign on account of they're gonna raise our rent.”
“I didn't hear anything about a rent raise,” Briggs said. “I didn't get any notice.”