Plum Boxed Set 1, Books 1-3 Stephanie Plum Novels) by Janet Evanovich

family. We’re so close, so warm, so polite to each other. “I want an advance on my fee. I have expenses associated with the job.”
    “An advance? Are you kidding me? You’re joking, right?”
    “I’m not joking. I’m going to get $10,000 when I bring Morelli in. I want a $2,000 advance.”
    “When hell freezes over. And don’t think you can pull more of that blackmail crap on me. You blab to my wife, and I’ll be as good as dead. See if you can squeeze a job out of a dead man, smartass.”
    He had a point. “Okay, so blackmail won’t work. How about greed? You give me the $2,000 now, and I won’t take my full 10 percent.”
    “What if you don’t get Morelli? You ever think of that?”
    Only every waking minute of my life. “I’ll get Morelli.”
    “Un huh. Excuse me if I don’t share your positive attitude. And remember I only agreed to this lunacy for a week. You’ve got four days left. If you haven’t brought Morelli in by next Monday, I’m giving him to somebody else.”
    Connie came into the office. “What’s the problem here? Stephanie needs money? Why don’t you give her Clarence Sampson?”
    “Who’s Clarence Sampson?” I asked.
    “He’s one of our family of drunks. Usually, he’s perfectly peaceful. Every now and then he does something stupid.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as try to drive with a 150-proof blood alcohol level. On this particular occasion he had the misfortune to total a police cruiser.”
    “He ran into a cruiser?”
    “Not exactly,” Connie said. “He was attempting to drive the cruiser. He ran into a liquor store on State Street.”
    “Do you have a picture of this guy?”
    “I have a two-inch file with pictures spanning two decades. We’ve posted bail on Sampson so many times I know his social security number by heart.”
    I followed her to the outer office and waited while she sorted through a stack of manila folders.
    “Most of our recovery agents work a bunch of cases simultaneously,” Connie said. “It’s more efficient that way.” She handed me a dozen folders. “These are the FTAs Morty Beyers was handling for us. He’s gonna be out for a while longer, so you might as well take a crack at them. Some are easier than others. Memorize the names and addresses and hook them up to the photographs. You never know when you’ll get lucky. Last week Andy Zabotsky was standing in line for a bucket of fried chicken and recognized the guy in front of him as a skip. It was a good find, too. A dealer. We would have been out $30,000.”
    “I didn’t know you posted bond for drug dealers,” I said. “I always thought you did mostly low-key stuff.”
    “Drug dealers are good,” Connie said. “They don’t like to leave the area. They’ve got clients. They’re making good money. If they skip you can usually count on them to resurface.”
    I tucked the files under my arm, promising to make copies and return the originals to Connie. The chicken story had been inspiring. If Andy Zabotsky could catch a crook in a chicken franchise, just think of my own personal potential. I ate that crappy food all the time. I even liked it. Maybe this bounty hunter business would work out. Once I became financially solvent, I could support myself by collecting people like Sampson and making an occasional fast-food bust.
    I pushed through the front door and caught my breath at the sudden absence of air-conditioning. The day had gone from hot to blistering. The air was thick and muggy, the sky hazy. The sun prickled on exposed skin, and I looked up, shielding my eyes, half expecting to see the ozone hole gaping over me like a big cyclops eye shooting out lethal rays of radioactive whatever. I know the hole is supposedly hanging out over Antarctica, but it seemed logical to me that sooner or later it would slide on up to Jersey. Jersey produced urea formaldehyde and collected New York’s garbage offshore. I thought it only fitting that it have the ozone hole as well.
    I unlocked