“Hunh,” Lula said.

Vinnie yelled at Connie from inside the bus. “The phone’s ringing. Get the friggin’ phone!”

“You get the phone,” Connie yelled back.

“I don’t do phones,” Vinnie said.

Connie made an Italian hand gesture at the bus. “Idiot.”

“I suppose we should do something,” Lula said after Connie left to get the phone. “What else have you got there?”

I shuffled through my stack of skips. “Two armed robberies.”

“Pass on them. They always shoot at us.”

“Domestic violence.”

“Too depressing,” Lula said. “What else you got?”

“A purse snatcher and credit card fraud.”

“I’m liking credit card fraud. They never have a lot of fight in them. They’re always just sneaky little weasels. They just sit in the house all day shopping on the Internet. What’s this moron’s name?”

“Lahonka Goudge.”

“Lahonka Goudge? What kind of name is that? That gotta be wrong. That’s a terrible name.”

“It’s what it says here. She lives in public housing.”

Forty minutes later, we were in Lula’s car, motoring through the projects and searching for Lahonka’s apartment. It was midmorning and the streets were quiet. Kids were in school and day care, hookers were sleeping, and the drug dealers were congregating in parks and playgrounds.

“There it is,” I said to Lula. “She’s in 3145A. It’s the ground-floor apartment with the kids’ toys in the yard.”

Lula parked, and we walked to the door, picking our way around bikes, dolls, soccer balls, and big plastic trucks. I raised my hand to knock, the door opened, and a woman looked out at us. She was my height, shaped like a pear, dressed in tan spandex pants and a poison-green tank top. Her hair was standing straight out from her head like it had been spray-starched and ironed, and she had huge hoop earrings hanging from her earlobes.

“What do you want?” the woman said. “And I don’t need any. Do I look like I need something? I don’t think so. And don’t touch none of my kids’ shit or I’ll turn the dog out on you.”