22 Caliber - A Stephanie Plum-inspired Story

Chapter One

Sometimes, as a bounty hunter, you feel great about your job. You bring in wife beaters, drug pushers, people threatening kids and old folks. At other times the job sucks. I'm Stephanie Plum and this is one of those times where the job just plain sucks.

"You want me to catch Robin Hood?" I yelled to Vinnie. "No way, no how. He's a modern-day legend. I'll have the whole police force against me. Give him to anyone else. Give him to Joyce Barnhardt. I don't care. Just don't give him to me."

Robin Hood, aka Roberto Mendez, was accused of stealing fifty flak vests. He then gave these stolen vests to the local police department. The police were very appreciative and would likely not have looked very hard for him. Unfortunately for Roberto, however, he was caught on a security camera both when stealing the vests and when leaving them on the stoop of the cop shop.

Most people would rather give him a sainthood than a jail sentence – including me. But now it was my job to bring him in.

"How hard will it be?" asked Lula. Lula was the office file clerk and my sometimes sidekick. She was a plus-size woman in a petite-size wardrobe. A former 'ho, her clothes hadn't kept up with her change in profession. She frequently tested the limits of spandex. She was currently wearing a gold sequined top which struggled to contain her girls with a Day-Glo orange skirt that had a hemline two inches below her doodad and four-inch spike-heeled slut shoes. Her chocolate skin was a perfect foil for her vibrant hair. Currently, her hair was orange to match her skirt. Lula was big in body and even larger in personality. She was a good friend, but I'd learned I shouldn't always listen to her. She was constantly getting me in trouble.

Lula was the direct opposite to me. Half Italian and half Hungarian, my skin was several shades lighter than Lula's. I had shoulder-length brown curly hair and blue eyes and a cute little nose that I considered to be my best feature. I was of average height and weight and I had an average body shape. My daily outfit was a pair of jeans, Converse sneakers, t-shirt and hoody. I was more reserved than Lula, but I still had a history of getting into trouble.

Another of my good friends was Connie Rosolli. Of Italian descent, she looked like Betty Boop on steroids. A couple of inches shorter, a couple of pounds heavier, a couple of cup sizes bigger than me, her connections to the mob and her ability to withstand Vinnie qualified her for the job as office manager. She agreed with Lula. "Any person dumb enough to get caught on camera – twice – while playing Robin Hood shouldn't be too hard to catch."

Vinnie, my sleazy weasel-creep cousin and namesake of the Vincent Plum Bail Bonds office in which I worked, chimed in. "Can't be too hard. The police found it easy to catch him the first time. He was practically waiting with cuffs on. He probably just forgot his court date." And then he delivered the clincher. "If I have to put Joyce on this you'll be fired. I'll take away all your files and give the whole lot to her."

My mind screamed in panic. No files means no job. No job means no rent. No rent means living with my parents and grandmother. And faced with the idea of returning to a house with only one bathroom, I gave in. "Okay, okay. I'll pick him up. How hard can it be?" I comforted myself. I took the file and looked over the particulars. Most I knew already. Lived just outside the Burg, the Italian section of Trenton in which I grew up. Like the Burg, houses in Roberto's neighborhood were modest, residents hard-working and cars were American. Roberto was fifty-three, father to Silvio, Carla, Hector and Amelia. Silvio was a police officer, killed on duty just two months before. Cause of death wasn't attributed to the drug dealer who shot him, but rather to the lack of budget for flak vests. The police force in Trenton was notoriously under-budgeted, understaffed and overworked. Nicknamed "Robin Hood" by the media, Roberto's actions raised awareness for a real problem. I looked at his picture. At 5'6", he was a portly man with a monk's haircut. I thought he looked more like Friar Tuck than Robin Hood.