22 Tricky Twenty-Two Read Free

and a big pimple on your chin.”
    “I broke up with Morelli last night.” I put my finger to the pimple. It felt like Mount Rainier. “I think this is a candy pimple. I went through a lot of Snickers last night. And then I had a bag of Oreos for breakfast.”
    Lula was on the couch. “Oreos don’t work for breakfast,” Lula said. “You need something like a Almond Joy so you get the protein in the nut. You eat Oreos and you just get Oreo poop.”
    Lula was wearing ankle boots with studs and five-inch spike heels, a black spandex skirt that barely covered her butt, a poison green tank top that was stretched to its limit over her big boobs, and a sparkly, fluffy, pink angora cardigan. Every time she moved, some of the angora floated off the sweater and swirled in the air.
    “So what’s the deal with Morelli?” Lula asked. “He’s a hottie. You sure you want to break up with him?”
    “He broke up with me. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “It was before the pimple though, right?” Lula asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, then, we can rule that out.”
    The door to Vinnie’s inner office banged open and Vinnie stuck his head out.
    “What’s going on out here?” Vinnie said. “I’m not paying you to stand around flapping your lips.” He leaned forward and squinted at me. “What the hell is that thing on your chin?”
    “It’s a pimple,” Lula said. “She got some stress in her life.”
    “Cripes,” Vinnie said. “It’s a freakin’ nightmare. It looks like Vesuvius is gonna erupt.” And he pulled back into his office, closed and locked his door.
    “I had a new FTA come in late yesterday afternoon,” Connie said. “A kid who didn’t show for his court date. I made some phone calls, and he’s definitely in the wind.” She handed the file over to me. “Ken Globovic, aka Gobbles. Twenty-one years old. College guy. Breaking and entering and aggravated assault.”
    Lula looked over my shoulder as I paged through the file.
    “It says here this moron attacked the dean of students,” Lula said. “I imagine this cut his college career short. I’m no college graduate, but I know you’re not supposed to try to kill the dean of students.”
    I looked at his picture. Sandy blond hair, fair skin, a little pudgy. Kind of cute in an albino chipmunk sort of way.
    “He don’t look like no killer,” Lula said. “He looks like he wears Winnie-the-Pooh jammies to bed at night.”
    “He’s a Zeta,” Connie said. “So you might want to start at the Zeta house.”
    “
Zeta house.
That sounds like a nice place,” Lula said.
    “It’s either the best or the worst fraternity on campus, depending on your point of view. The Zeta house is better known as
the zoo,
” Connie said. “Draw your own conclusions. And Ken Globovic holds the title of
the Supreme Exalted Zookeeper.
Last month the Zetas dumped a load of Alka-Seltzer into a rival fraternity’s water system and all their toilets exploded. They said it was a chemistry experiment and inspired by the movie
Animal House
.”
    “I bet they got a A on that one,” Lula said. “I would have given them a A.”
    I shoved the file into my messenger bag. “Anything else come in?”
    “No, but Billy Brown is still out there, and he’s a medium bond. It would be good to get that money back.”
    Billy Brown, now known far and wide as Billy Bacon, made national news when he greased himself up with bacon fat and broke into a multimillion-dollar home by sliding down the chimney. He set the alarm off on his way out and was attacked by a bacon-loving pack of dogs before he was able to get to his car. When the police rescued him they found $10,000 in jewelry and $5,000 in cash stuffed into his various pockets. Vinnie was dumb enough to bond him out, and no one’s seen Billy Bacon since.
    “I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said. “I’ll do another drive through his neighborhood.”
    “I’ll go with you,” Lula said. “As I remember he lived on K Street,