“He forgot his court date. I represent his bail bondsman, and I need to get him rescheduled.”
“I guess it could be worse,” she said.
“Oh boy,” Lula said to me. “This guy‘s in deep doo-?doo when he got worse visitors than us.”
“He‘s in the back,” the woman said. “Go through this door behind me. He‘s probably sorting tomatoes.”
Lula and I entered the ware house, and I showed her a photo of Gordo.
“He looks real familiar,” Lula said. “I know him from somewhere. Maybe I knew him in a professional manner from when I was a ‘ho. No wait, that‘s not it. Now, that‘s gonna drive me nuts. I hate when this happens. Okay, I got it. He looks like
Curly from the Three Stooges. Same bowling ball head and everything. No wonder his wife divorced him. Who‘d want to be married to a man with a head like a bowling ball?”
“Have you been taking cold medicine?”
“Maybe I had a couple hits this morning for medicinal purposes,” Lula said.
“I think you should wait in the car.”
“What? I‘m not waiting in no car. I want to see the guy with the bowling ball head.”
“Fine, but don‘t say anything.”
“My lips are sealed. See what I‘m doing? I‘m zipping them and locking them. And look at this. I‘m throwing away the key.”
Lula sneezed and farted.
“Oops, excuse me,” Lula said. “I thought I was done sneezing. Good thing we‘re in this big ware house with all this rotting fruit.”
I took a giant step away from Lula and scanned the room. I walked down an aisle formed from crates of iceberg lettuce, turned the corner, and found Bollo off-?loading a pallet of tomatoes.
“Gordo Bollo?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“We want to know,” Lula said. “Who the heck do you think?”
I gave Bollo my card. “I represent your bail bondsman,” I told him. “You missed your court date, and you need to reschedule.”
“The whole thing is bogus,” he said. “My foot got stuck on the accelerator.”
“You run over that guy twice,” Lula said.
“Yeah, my foot got stuck twice. It was an accident.”
“It really doesn‘t matter,” I said to him. “You‘ll have a chance to explain all that if you‘ll just come with me to get a new date.”
“I can‘t go now. I‘m working.”
“These look like real nice tomatoes,” Lula said.
And then she sneezed and farted again.
“Cripes, lady,” Bollo said. “You just cut the cheese on the tomatoes.”
“I didn‘t do no such thing,” Lula said. “I was facing the other direction.” She turned and looked behind her. “I laid one on these grapefruits from Guatemala. And anyways, it‘s not my fault. I got bad juju going. I‘m waitin‘ on a call from Miss Gloria.”
“This won‘t take long,” I said to Bollo.