“In that case you should add fries. Nothing gets rid of a hangover better than cheap-ass fries and a Coke. What were you drinking to get a hangover?”
“Peach schnapps.”
“Girl, no one should ever drink peach schnapps.”
We returned to Lula’s car and drove to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. I got the value meal with fries, and Lula got everything else on the menu.
“How can you eat all that food?” I asked her. “It’s not even a meal for you. It’s a snack.”
“I got a high metabolism. And I gotta keep my strength up in case we get into some dangerous situation. For instance, you need money, and one way you could get it is for us to snag Antwan and haul his butt back to jail. I wouldn’t want to do that on a empty stomach.”
“We didn’t have a whole lot of success at snagging him last time.”
“Yeah, but we got the advantage this time. We could sneak up on him, on account of he’s probably not hearing so good since you blew his ear to kingdom come. And noon is coming up. He’s probably at the basketball court. Even if he don’t feel like playing with just one ear I bet he still goes there. If you’re part of a group like that you gotta show up no matter what or they trash-talk you.”
“I don’t think men do that.”
“Trash-talk don’t have a gender. Whoever’s missing gets talked about. It’s a rule.”
“So if I’m not at the bonds office, you and Connie talk about me?”
“Damn straight we do. Unless Vinnie isn’t there. Then we talk about him.”
“Do you have any idea how we’re going to capture Antwan with all his gang around him?”
“I got it all worked out. We go to the office and get some stuff from the storeroom. You can’t imagine what’s back there. I’m saying we get loaded for bear. We go out there nuclear. There’s rocket launchers and some really nasty-looking automatic weapons. There’s stuff in that storeroom that makes an assault rifle look like a toy.”
“We can’t go onto a public basketball court with a rocket launcher.”
“Sure we can. People do it all the time. Don’t you look at the news?”
“Think of something else.”
“Okay, but that was my best idea. You’ve gotten real picky since you became a butcher.”
“I’m not a butcher. I was never a butcher.”
“Well, you worked for a butcher.”
“I say we go with the original plan of watching him and waiting for him to get separated from his posse.”
“I guess we could do that, but it hasn’t got much bling to it.”
“I don’t care about bling. I want to bring him in with as little violence and bloodshed as possible.”
“If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do, but you’re never gonna sell movie rights that way.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“You got that right. If this was a movie I’d have a rocket launcher.”
We hung out at the basketball court until two o’clock, when the game broke up. Antwan had sat the game out, not saying much, not moving around. His ear was covered with a gigantic white bandage. He left with Bear, walking slowly, heading toward Bear’s apartment.
“Antwan looks like he got a headache,” Lula said. “He should have taken more drugs. I’m sure he got access to a lot.”
We crept along in the Firebird, keeping them in sight, keeping as much distance as possible.
“I don’t suppose you got any bullets in your gun yet,” Lula said.
“I don’t like shooting people.”
“Yeah, but ironic how that works out.”
Bear and Antwan stepped into a fast-food burger place, and we waited a block away. Ten minutes later they came out carrying bags of food and kept walking toward Bear’s apartment.
“They’re going in there and eat lunch and play videogames and take a nap,” Lula said. “They aren’t coming out for a long time, and I gotta go potty.”
“You went to the ladies’ room at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”
“Yeah, but I had the extra-large-size soda, and my body processes food real fast.”
“No problem. I’ll get out here and watch the apartment until you get back.”
“Yeah, but you’re not exactly inconspicuous standing here on the corner.”
“I’m fine. I’m in jeans and a T-shirt. I have a broken nose and finger. I look like everyone else.”
“You look like no one else. You’re white.”
“I could be Hispanic.”
“Not on your best day,” Lula said. “Besides, this is the wrong block for Hispanic. Hispanics get killed on this block.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I think we should go shopping. There’s a shoe sale at Macy’s. And I might put one of them Brahmin bags on layaway.”
“This was your idea. Remember how I needed money, and you said we should go after Antwan Brown?”
“I temporarily forgot about that while I was thinking about how fine I’d look with my new handbag.”
“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to go to the mall. It’s just a couple miles away from the personal products plant. You could drop me off there and go shopping while I fill out an application.”
“I got a better idea. You sit in the car, and I’ll run across to the burger place to tinkle.” She took her Glock out of her purse and gave it to me. “If anyone tries to steal my wheel covers you have to shoot them.”
TWENTY-FOUR
LULA RETURNED TO the car with a bag of food.
“They had apple pies in there,” she said. “I thought it would help us pass the time if we had apple pies.”
We ate our apple pies and watched the apartment building. A little after three o’clock Bear came out and walked up the street. Antwan wasn’t with him.
“You got your wish,” Lula said. “It looks to me like Antwan is in there all by himself.”
“We don’t know that,” I told her. “We just know Bear isn’t with him.”
“Yeah, but I got a feeling. I’m having one of those psychic aura moments. I’m like that sometimes. I’m one of those people that gets out-of-body messages.”
“And you think this is a good time to strike?”
Lula closed her eyes. “I see him now. It’s real clear. He’s all by himself, and he’s tired after eating a bunch of burgers. He might even have taken a pill for his ear, and he’s all like Where am I? What’s going on? Like he’s fuzzy, you see what I’m saying?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I’m thinking we gotta go for it. Go get him now when he’s fuzzy.”
Deep inside my brain I knew this was a bad idea, but I needed the money. I wanted to get Antwan behind me, collect my capture fee, and move forward with my life.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
I had cuffs tucked into my back pocket and my stun gun in hand. Lula had a second pair of cuffs, some defense spray, and her gun, which I insisted remain in her purse.
We crept up the stairs, marched to Antwan’s door, and knocked. No answer.
“You see what’s going on?” Lula said. “He’s too fuzzy to answer the door.”
I knocked again, louder. BANG, BANG, BANG.
The door was wrenched open, and Antwan stood there buck naked. His Mr. Happy was very happy, saluting the flag and wearing a raincoat.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
“Remember us?” Lula said. “We’re the bounty hunters, and we came to capture you.”
“What?” Antwan said. “Speak up!”
“Bounty hunters!” Lula yelled in the direction of his good ear.
A woman wearing five-inch red satin stilettos and nothing else stomped out of the bedroom. “What’s going on here?”
“Where’d you come from?” Lula said. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”
The woman turned on Antwan. “I told you I don’t put up with this kind of shit. You gonna bang these two, then you not gonna bang Shaneeka. I got my standards.
I don’t do no parties, and I don’t put up with my man having some fat ’ho on the side.”
“Excuse me,” Lula said, pitched forward. “Did you just call my friend here a fat ’ho? Because that might be a hurtful statement.”
Shaneeka narrowed her eyes at Lula. “I called you a fat ’ho.”
“Better than being a skinny ’ho,” Lula said.
Shaneeka leaned forward. “Are you implying something?”
“I’m implying nothing,” Lula said. “I’m calling you a skinny ’ho.”
“Listen up, you bitches,” Antwan said. “I got a headache.”
“First off, I’m not your bitch,” Shaneeka said. “You’re my bitch. And second, you’re in big trouble. You’ve got some explaining to do, you little worm.”
“Shaneeka, honey,” Antwan said.
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me neither,” Shaneeka said. She whirled around and stomped back into the bedroom.
Antwan looked down at himself. Mr. Happy wasn’t all that happy anymore, and the raincoat was wrinkled.
Lula clapped a cuff on him while he was considering the state of the raincoat. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you could do better than her,” Lula said to Antwan. “She’s got a attitude, and I think she might be unstable.”
Shaneeka marched out of the bedroom and she had a gun in her hand. “I heard that, and you better take your hands off my man. He isn’t much, but he’s mine.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Lula said. “You can have him after he gets out of jail in ten or twenty years.”
Shaneeka squeezed off a shot and took out a lamp.
Everyone froze for a beat.
“Shit,” Antwan said. “The bitch is gonna kill me. She can’t shoot for snot.”
Lula and I jumped to the door and took off down the stairs. We could hear Antwan and Shaneeka yelling at each other back in the apartment, and another gunshot, but we didn’t stop running until we were in Lula’s car.
Lula peeled away from the curb and raced to the corner.
“That didn’t correspond to my vision,” Lula said. “I must have been getting a vision ahead of time. Like it was a vision going on tomorrow.” She stopped for a light and looked over at me. “Any more of those pies left in the bag?”
Lula parked at the corner of Fifteenth and Freeman, and we watched four boys who looked to be nine or ten years old tossing a football in the middle of the street halfway down the Freeman block.
“I’m going to ask them about Kevin,” Lula said.
The kids stopped playing when we approached.
“I’m looking for a giraffe,” Lula said. “I lost him, and I heard he was here in the neighborhood. Any of you kids see a giraffe?”
“What does he look like?” one of the kids asked.
“He looks like a giraffe,” Lula said. “Have you seen him?”
“Maybe, but how do I know it’s yours?”
“You’re not supposed to be saying anything,” a second kid said to the first. “I’m telling Mom on you.”
“Where’s your momma at?” Lula asked.
The kid pointed to one of the row houses. “Second floor.”
I followed Lula into the house and to the second floor, and waited while she knocked.
A woman answered, with a toddler hanging on to her leg and another under her arm. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for my lost giraffe,” Lula said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen him. He’s about eighteen feet tall, and he’s got spots on him.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the woman said. “And you should leave it alone. Go get a new giraffe.”
“They don’t have any more at the pet store,” Lula said. “It’s not like giraffes grow on trees.”
The woman closed and locked the door.
“I think she knows something about Kevin,” Lula said to me. “I think there’s a conspiracy here.”
“A conspiracy to hide a giraffe?”
“How else do you explain it? It’s not normal to have a giraffe running around a neighborhood and nobody’s seen it. I say these people are all conspiring to hide a giraffe.”
TWENTY-FIVE
LULA’S PHONE RANG just as we reached the Firebird. It was Connie.
“She wants me to bring food,” Lula said, plugging the key into the ignition. “It’s been a real busy day and she couldn’t get out to get lunch.”
We stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket and got a super-sized Clucky Salad with Spicy Clucky Nuggets. There was a disclaimer on the box of nuggets saying they were processed in China.
“Isn’t that special,” Lula said. “These nuggets started out with a chicken in Maryland, went to China, and now here they are in Trenton. It’s like a combination of the Travel Channel and the Food Network all in one.”
Connie was waiting at the door when we rolled in.
“I’m so hungry I could gnaw my own arm off,” she said.
“We got you the salad and the nuggets like you wanted,” Lula said. “And they even gave us extra packets of sauces. There’s soy sauce, and ranch dressing, and special sauce. I don’t know what the special sauce is made of. The lettering’s real small so it’s hard to read. It might be antibiotic in case you get sick from the chicken.”
“Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Connie. “Is he still in hiding from Harry?”
“Vinnie had to go downtown to bond out Randy Berger. Turns out he was caught with a truckload of hijacked hooch.”
Randy Berger was in jail! That meant his garage was unguarded. “When did Vinnie leave?”
“A couple minutes ago.”
“Quick,” I said to Lula. “Get bolt cutters.”
Ten minutes later Lula and I were parked in the alley behind Berger’s Bits, at work with the bolt cutters on the garage padlock. The lock snapped off and we rolled the door back enough to squeeze under.
“Holy crap!” Lula said. “Will you look at this! I feel faint.”
I’d been hoping to find evidence that Randy was the old lady killer. What I found was more evidence that he was hijacking trucks. The garage was filled with boxes stacked floor to ceiling. A large percentage of the boxes contained computers. And there was a corner devoted to boxes stamped “Brahmin.”
“I died and I’m in heaven,” Lula said, caressing one of the Brahmin boxes. “I don’t even know what bag’s in here, and I love it already.”
“This is all stolen merchandise,” I told her. “You don’t need a Brahmin bag this bad.”
“It feels like I do.”
We crawled back out, and I rolled the door down and secured it as best I could.
I ran across the alley and tried the deli’s back door. It was locked, but I knew the four-digit thumb code to unlock it.
“What are we doing now?” Lula asked. “Are we going to look for Venetian blind cord in there?”
“No. I need pork chops.”
“You’re gonna rob a butcher shop of pork chops? Don’t that sound like the pot calling the kettle black when you wouldn’t let me take one of them handbags?”
“I worked two days and didn’t get paid. I’m taking my paycheck in pork chops.”
“I like your style. You got to admire a woman who takes her pay in pork chops.”
I opened the door and the alarm went off.
“Jeez Louise,” Lula said. “That’s loud.”
I rushed to the meat case, grabbed six pork chops, and stuffed them into a plastic bag. I dropped the pork chops into my messenger bag, and Lula and I ran out the back door and took off in the Firebird.
“Seems like you could have taken more than six,” Lula said.
“I only need six. I owe them to Victor at the hardware store. It would be great if you could drive me over there.”
We turned a corner and passed a cop car on its way to the deli.
“It’s your friend Carl Costanza in that cop car,” Lula said. “I bet by the time he leaves there’s gonna be no pork chops left. And he’ll probabl
y help himself to a handbag, too.”
When we got to Victory Hardware, Lula idled at the curb while I ran in and gave Victor his pork chops.
“I’ll fry them up tonight,” Victor said. “I might even share them with my lady.”
Lula dropped me off at my parents’ house.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go out looking for Uncle Sunny one more time?” she asked me. “I got a feeling about it.”
“I’m done with Uncle Sunny. I’m going to get the key to Big Blue, and I’m going to try to get to the personal products plant before the end of the day.”
Lula motored off, and I went inside. I left my bag on the little table in the foyer and found my mother in the kitchen, ironing.
“Now what?” I asked her.
“It’s your grandmother. Honestly, the woman is turning my hair gray. I went to the store to get soup meat, and when I got back she was gone. It’s like she’s fourteen years old.” My mother pointed her finger at me. “It’s like living with you all over again. You were impossible. Your sister was an angel, but you were always sneaking out, getting into trouble. And I blame it on Joe Morelli. He was the scourge of Trenton. He was a bad influence on you.”
“He’s better now,” I said. “He’s very responsible. He’s got his own house, and a toaster.”
And he eats tongue casserole, I thought. And he hoses down his nephew, and has a grandmother that makes mine look like chopped liver. True, he’s still friggin’ sexy. And I enjoy being with him. And I like his dog. But the whole big-Italian-family-cooking-tongue thing was giving me stomach cramps.
I went to the kitchen drawer where the extra keys were kept but couldn’t find the key to the Buick.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” my mother said. “Your grandmother has the Buick.”
“She doesn’t have a license.”
“She’s a lunatic. She’s going to get arrested and sent to jail. I’ll have to visit her in prison. Do you have any idea what the neighbors will say? I won’t be able to shop at Giovichinni’s.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. She had a date. Big secret.”
“With Gordon?”
“I don’t think so. She said Gordon was a dud, and she had someone new on the hook. This morning there was a single sunflower on the doorstep, and it had your grandmother’s name on it. You mark my words, she’s fooling around with a married man. It’s that Internet. She’s on it all the time. I went upstairs and looked, and her laptop is missing from her room.”