“This is Jersey,” Connie said. “Everyone‘s got a gun… except you.”

We left the bonds office, and Lula stood looking at my car.

“I forgot you got this dumb Jeep,” Lula said. “I can‘t get in the back of this thing. Only Romanian acrobats could get in the back of this. I guess the monkey‘s gotta ride in back, but I swear he makes a move on me, and I‘m gonna shoot him.”

I slid behind the wheel, Lula wedged herself into the passenger-side seat, and Carl hopped into the back. I adjusted my rearview mirror, locked onto Carl, and I swear it looked to me like Carl was making faces at Lula and giving her the finger.

“What?” Lula said to me. “You got a strange look on you.”

“It‘s nothing,” I said. “I just thought Carl was… never mind.”

I drove across town, parked in front of Munch‘s house on Crocker Street, and we all piled out of the Jeep.

“This here‘s a boring-ass house,” Lula said. “It looks like every other house on the street. If I came home after having two cosmopolitans, I wouldn‘t know which house was mine. Look at them. They‘re all redbrick. They all have the same stupid black door and black window trim. They don‘t even have no front yard. Just a stoop. And they all got the same stupid stoop.”

I glanced at Lula. “Are you okay? That‘s a lot of hostility for a poor row house.”

“It‘s the monkey. Monkeys give me the willies. And I might have a headache from all that medicinal whiskey.”

I rang Munch‘s doorbell and looked through sheers that screened the front window. Beyond the sheers, the house was dark and still.

“I bet he‘s in there,” Lula said. “I bet he‘s hiding under the bed. I think we should go around to the back and look.”

There were fifteen row houses in all. All shared common walls, and Munch‘s was almost dead middle. We returned to the Jeep, I rolled down the street, turned left at the corner, and took the alley that cut the block. I parked, and we all got out and walked through Munch‘s postage-stamp backyard. The rear of the house was similar to the front. A door and two windows. The door had a small swinging trapdoor at the bottom for a pet, and Carl instantly scurried inside.