Hard Eight (Stephanie Plum 8)

I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and black Caterpillar boots, and I had a real urge to kick him in the back of his leg with my size-seven CAT.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I promised my parents I'd be home for dinner at six.”

Paulson burst out laughing. “That's pathetic. That's fucking pathetic.” The laughter turned into a coughing fit. Paulson leaned forward, wobbled side to side, and fell over. I reached for him, but it was too late. He was back on his belly, doing his beached whale imitation.

MY PARENTS LIVE in a narrow duplex in a chunk of Trenton called the Burg. If the Burg was a food, it would be pasta-penne rigate, ziti, fettuccine, spaghetti, and elbow macaroni, swimming in marinara, cheese sauce, or mayo. Good, dependable, all-occasion food that puts a smile on your face and fat on your butt. The Burg is a solid neighborhood where people buy houses and live in them until death kicks them out. Backyards are used to run a clothesline, store the garbage can, and give the dog a place to poop. No fancy backyard decks and gazebos for Burgers. Burgers sit on their small front porches and cement stoops. The better to see the world go by.

I rolled in just as my mother was pulling the roast chicken out of the oven. My father was already in his seat at the head of the table. He stared straight ahead, eyes glazed, thoughts in limbo, knife and fork in hand. My sister, Valerie, who had recently moved back home after leaving her husband, was at work whipping potatoes in the kitchen. When we were kids Valerie was the perfect daughter. And I was the daughter who stepped in dog poo, sat on gum, and constantly fell off the garage roof in an attempt to fly. As a last ditch effort to preserve her marriage, Valerie had traded in her Italian-Hungarian genes and turned herself into Meg Ryan. The marriage failed, but the blonde Meg-shag persists.

Valerie's kids were at the table with my dad. The nine-year-old, Angie, was sitting primly with her hands folded, resigned to enduring the meal, an almost perfect clone of Valerie at that age. The seven-year-old, Mary Alice, the kid from hell, had two sticks poked into her brown hair.

“What's with the sticks?” I asked.

“They not sticks. They're antlers. I'm a reindeer.”

This was a surprise because usually she's a horse.

“How was your day?” Grandma asked me, setting a bowl of green beans on the table. “Did you shoot anybody? Did you capture any bad guys?”

Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents shortly after Grandpa Mazur took his fat clogged arteries to the all-you-can-eat buffet in the sky. Grandma's in her midseventies and doesn't look a day over ninety. Her body is aging, but her mind seems to be going in the opposite direction. She was wearing white tennis shoes and a lavender polyester warm-up suit. Her steel gray hair was cut short and permed to within an inch of its life. Her nails were painted lavender to match the suit.

“I didn't shoot anybody today,” I said, “but I brought in a guy wanted for credit card fraud.”

There was a knock at the front door, and Mabel Markowitz stuck her head in and called, “Yoohoo.”

My parents live in a two-family duplex. They own the south half, and Mabel Markowitz owns the north half, the house divided by a common wall and years of disagreement over house paint. Out of necessity, Mabel's made thrift a religious experience, getting by on Social Security and government-surplus peanut butter. Her husband, Izzy, was a good man but

drank himself into an early grave. Mabel's only daughter died of uterine cancer a year ago. The son-in-law died a month later in a car crash.

All forward progress stopped at the table, and everyone looked to the front door, because in all the years Mabel had lived next door, she'd never once yoohooed while we were eating.

“I hate to disturb your meal,” Mabel said. “I just wanted to ask Stephanie if she'd have a minute to stop over, later. I have a question about this bond business. It's for a friend.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'll be over after dinner.” I imagined it would be a short conversation since everything I knew about bond could be said in two sentences.

Mabel left and Grandma leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I bet that's a lot of hooey about wanting advice for a friend. I bet Mabel's been busted.”

Everyone simultaneously rolled their eyes at Grandma.

“Okay then,” she said. “Maybe she wants a job. Maybe she wants to be a bounty hunter. You know how she's always squeaking by.”

My father shoveled food into his mouth, keeping his head down. He reached for the potatoes and spooned seconds onto his plate. “Christ,” he mumbled.

“If there's anyone in that family who would need a bail bond, it would be Mabel's ex-grandson-in-law,” my mother said. “He's mixed up with some bad people these days. Evelyn was smart to divorce him.”

“Yeah, and that divorce was real nasty,” Grandma said to me. “Almost as nasty as yours.”

“I set a high standard.”

“You were a pip,” Grandma said.

My mother did another eye roll. “It was a disgrace.”

MABEL MARKOWITZ LIVES in a museum. She married in 1943 and still has her first table lamp, her first pot, her first chrome-and-Formica kitchen table. Her living room was newly wallpapered in 1957. The flowers have faded but the paste has held. The carpet is dark Oriental. The upholstered pieces sag slightly in the middle, imprinted with asses that have since moved on . . . either to God or Hamilton Township.

Certainly the furniture doesn't bear the imprint of Mabel's ass as Mabel is a walking skeleton who never sits. Mabel bakes and cleans and paces while she talks on the phone. Her eyes are bright, and she laughs easily, slapping her thigh, wiping her hands on her apron. Her hair is thin and gray, cut short and curled. Her face is powdered first thing in the morning to a chalky white. Her lipstick is pink and applied hourly, feathering out into the deep crevices that line her mouth.