“How small?”

“We might be a million in the red, give or take a couple bucks.”

“What?”

“It’s complicated,” Vinnie said. “Bookeeping issues. We have too many outstanding skips.”

“I have a stack of skips in my bag that I’m working on, but I don’t think they add up to a million. And what about the bankers who underwrite you?”

“They aren’t answering their phones.”

Oh boy.

“You’ve got three minutes to get dressed,” I said to Vinnie. “I’m taking you to my parents’ house. When they get fed up with you, I’ll think of something else. At least you can get coffee there before my mother kicks you out.”

I debated calling ahead but decided against it. If I dumped him on my mother’s doorstep and drove away real fast, she’d have to take him in, at least for a while. If I called, she could say no.

Twenty minutes later, I idled in front of my parents’ house while Vinnie walked to the front door. On the rare possibility that no one was home, I didn’t want to just drive off. He didn’t have a cell phone to call me to come back. I saw the front door open and I laid rubber.

I drove by the office twice before I parked. I didn’t see the bashed-in SUV, and I didn’t see any angry-looking guys hanging out with guns drawn, so I figured things were quiet this morning. Connie was at her desk. Lula hadn’t arrived.

“You didn’t bring Vinnie with you, did you?” Connie asked. “I already had a visit from Bobby Sunflower this morning.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee. “He gets up early.”

“I guess he was motivated. He wants his money or he wants Vinnie. He said if he didn’t get either of those things by Friday he was going to eliminate the office.”

“Eliminate it?”

“Like from the face of the earth.”

“Could be worse,” I said. “According to Vinnie, this office is about a million in the red.”

Connie froze for a beat. “Vinnie said that?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”

“I don’t do the books. Vinnie has an accountant for that.”

“Maybe we should talk to the accountant.”

“The accountant’s dead. He got run over by a truck last week. Twice.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” Connie said. “It’s really not good.”

“Does Sunflower know we were the ones to spring Vinnie?”

“Yeah, but I think it’s too embarrassing to let go public. And I think he’d rather have the money than to see us shot full of holes.”

I drank some coffee and took a doughnut from the box on Connie’s desk. “So we need to raise money.”

“It’s up to a million two.”

“Chopper is a pretty high-bond. The toilet paper guy isn’t worth much, but he might be easy to capture.”

“Butch Goodey is worth something,” Connie said. “I thought he skipped to Mexico.”

“I heard he got back last week, and he’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

Butch Goodey is 6′6″ tall and weighs about three hundred pounds. He’s wanted for exposing himself to thirteen women over a period of two days. He said they were lucky to get to see Mr. Magic, and he blamed it on a sex-enhancement drug that gave him a thirty-two-hour erection. The judge who set Goodey’s bond asked for the name of the drug, wrote it on a piece of paper, and slipped the paper into his pocket.

“I’ll put Goodey at the head of the list,” I said.

Lula swung into the office. “At the head of what list?”

“The catch ’em list,” I told her. “We need to make money today.”

“So we’re going after Butch Goodey? I thought he was in Mexico.”

“He’s back. He’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

“I hate that place,” Lula said. “It gives me the creeps. You drive by with your windows open, and you can hear cows mooing. You’re only supposed to hear stuff like that on a farm. I mean, what the heck’s the world coming to when you can hear cows mooing in Trenton? And who the heck would work at a meatpacking plant anyway?”

“Butch Goodey,” I said.

The meatpacking plant was down by the river, south of town, on the edge of a residential area that was blue-collar or no-collar. It took up half a block, with some of that space devoted to holding pens, where the cattle went in, and some to loading docks, where the hamburger meat came out.

At nine-thirty in the morning, the plant was in full swing. It was going to be a glorious, sunny, warm day and the area around the plant smelled faintly of cow.

“You know what this makes me think about?” Lula said, jumping down from the Jeep, standing in the parking lot. “It makes me think I could use a new leather handbag. If we get done early today, we should go to the mall.”

I didn’t think we were going to get done early. I expected this was going to be a very long day. It was Thursday, and there was no way we could get all of the money by bringing in a few skips. If we didn’t come up with over a million dollars by tomorrow, Grandma Plum and Aunt Mim were going to be wearing black.

THIRTEEN

LULA AND I entered a small reception area and approached the woman at the front desk. I gave her my business card and told her I wanted to speak to Butch Goodey. The woman ran her finger down a roster of names attached to a clipboard and located Goodey.

“He’s helping unload cattle right now,” she said. “The easiest way to find him would be to go around the building from the outside. Just go out the door, turn left, and keep walking. You’ll see an area around the corner where trucks are off-loading, and Butch should be there.”

“I’m glad we didn’t have to go through the building,” Lula said, “because I don’t want to see them chopping up cows. I like thinking meat grows in the supermarket.”

We turned the corner and came to an area where cattle were milling around in a pen.

“What kind of cows do you suppose these are?” Lula asked. “Are these hamburger cows or steak cows?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “All cows pretty much look the same to me.”

“Yeah, but some are bigger than others and some got horns. These cows are hefty black cows. I guess they’re my kind of cow,” Lula said.

I had a photo of Butch. I’d tried to find him before he skipped to Mexico, so I had some idea of what I was looking for, and at 6′6″ and three hundred pounds, he shouldn’t be that hard to spot. I scanned the holding area and picked him out, standing a foot taller than everyone else. He was watching over a gate that fed the cattle from a pen to a ramp that led into the building.

I had cuffs tucked into the back of my jeans, but I wasn’t sure they were big enough to fit around Butch’s wrists. I had Flexi Cuffs hooked onto a belt loop, but it was hard to be sneaky with Flexi Cuffs. My hope was that I could talk him into going downtown with me to re-up for his court hearing.

“Stay here by the cattle truck,” I said to Lula. “I don’t want to spook Butch by having both of us come at him. I’m going to circle around and try to talk to him.”

“Sure,” Lula said. “What do you want me to do if he bolts and runs?”

“Tackle him and cuff him,” I said.

“Okeydokey.”

Butch was feeding the cattle one by one onto the ramp, concentrating on his job. I skirted the holding pen, moving behind an empty cattle truck, and I came up behind him. I had my cuff in my hand, taking measure of his gargantuan wrist, when he turned and saw me.

“You!” he said. “I know you. You’re the bounty hunter.”

“Yes, but…”

“I’m not going to jail. You can’t make me. It wasn’t my fault.”

Butch jumped into the pen with the stupefied cows and ran for the gate by the truck. Lula saw him coming at her, opened the gate to tackle him, and the rest was the stuff nightmares are made of. When the gate creaked open, every cow picked its head up and sniffed freedom. Butch went through the gate first, knocking Lula on her ass against the fence. Butch was followed by a cow stampede. The cows galloped out of the pen, into the parking lot, and scattered. In a matter of seconds, not a single cow could be seen.