Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum 23)

“I already told her about them,” Lula said. “I told her about the performance art guy.”

“He won’t be hard to find,” Connie said. “He does standup at the comedy club on Route 1 at night, and he works as a mime during the day. Usually he’s hanging around the coffee shop by the State House.”

I read through the file. Bernard Smitch. Thirty-four years old. Graduate of UC Berkeley. Address listed as “Under the bridge.” I knew this was bogus because the comedy club on Route 1 operated at a pretty high level. If Smitch lived under the bridge he wouldn’t smell all that good, and he wouldn’t be let into the comedy club. I’d been under the bridge and it wasn’t pretty.

“Where does Smitch really live?” I asked Connie.

“With his mother in Princeton,” Connie said. “His father is a state representative. I think there might be a conflict there.”

“Especially when he pooped in the street,” Lula said. “That’s not politically correct.”

“I’m heading out,” I said. I looked over at Lula. “Do you want to ride along?”

“You going after Smitch?”

“Yep.”

“I’m in,” Lula said. “I’m all about supporting the arts.”

“We aren’t supporting him,” I said. “We’re dragging him back to jail.”

“Yeah, but we might support him at a later date when he gets out. I could go watch him perform.”

• • •

I drove down Hamilton to Broad, went north on Broad, and turned onto State Street. The coffee house was on a side street off State. It was a perfect September day, and people were sitting outdoors. The mime was working, but no one was paying attention.

I parked in a metered space across the street, and Lula and I watched the mime. He was dressed in classic mime attire of whiteface, black-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt, and slim black pants. He pretended to walk on a tightrope. He pretended to be stymied by a glass door. He poured himself a drink and pretended to be drunk. He rebooted and went back to the tightrope routine.

“You watch this

long enough and you get to wishing he’d take a poop,” Lula said.

We got out of my SUV, and I hung cuffs from my back pocket and stuck a small canister of pepper spray in the other back pocket. Lula was wearing a poison green spandex miniskirt that didn’t have any back pockets, but she had her purse hanging on her shoulder and God-knows-what-all she had in that purse.

I approached the mime and asked him if he was Bernard Smitch. He put his finger to his head and looked like he was thinking. While he was thinking I snapped the cuffs on his right wrist. He looked at the cuffs and mimed with a stiff middle finger.

“Now, that’s not nice,” Lula said to him. “That’s rude miming.”

He turned and mooned Lula and spanked his bare ass. Lula pulled her stun gun out of her purse, pressed the prongs to the mime’s butt, and gave him a couple hundred volts. Zzzzt. The mime went down like a sack of sand.

“Mime that,” Lula said.

There was a smattering of applause, and then everyone went back to drinking coffee and eating their pastries.

We snapped the other cuff on the mime, pulled his pants up, and carted him across the street. We maneuvered him into the backseat, and I drove to the police station.

“That was easy,” Lula said. “Another day and another dollar.”

“It would be best if you don’t mention to anyone that you stun-gunned the mime since that’s a little illegal,” I said.

“Yeah, but he was being disrespectful.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s still illegal.”

I pulled around to the police station back door that led directly to the holding cells and the booking desk. I pressed the intercom button and told them I had a drop-off. Moments later the back door opened, and a guy in uniform came out. I’d seen him around. His name was Gary. I couldn’t remember his last name.

“What have you got?” Gary asked.