Smokin' Seventeen

  “I could live with that,” Lula said. “What time you want to meet up?”

  “Are you sure you feel okay to do this?”

  “Hell, yeah. I’m almost a hundred percent.”

  This wasn’t something that filled me with confidence. When Lula and I operated at a full hundred percent we weren’t all that great. Almost a hundred percent was getting into Three Stooges territory.

  “You need a different car,” Connie said. “You’ll be noticed in the Shelby. Lula’s Firebird isn’t any better.”

  “I can get a car,” Lula said. “I’ll borrow my cousin Ernie’s car. He’s got a piece of crap SUV. It’ll blend right in on Stark Street.”

  I got into the Shelby, drove to my apartment building, and stopped at the entrance to the lot. I was afraid to park. Regina Bugle could be there. Even worse, Dave could be there. And if they weren’t there now, they might be there when I wanted to leave, and I’d be trapped inside my apartment.

  I turned around and idled on a side street, running through my options. I could drop in on Morelli, but there would be complications. I didn’t want to involve Morelli in this stage of the Nick Alpha saga. And he wouldn’t want me to go to Stark Street. There would also be complications if I dropped in on Ranger. Mostly related to vordo or the lack thereof. The bonds bus felt claustrophobic. The new décor was much better, but it was still Mooner’s bus. And I was afraid to go to the mall for fear of falling under the influence of another red dress. That left my parents’ house.

  I got there early and sat in the kitchen, watching my mother assemble dinner. I always offered to help, and my mother almost always declined. She’d been doing this for a lot of years, and she had her own rhythm. My grandmother was tuned into the rhythm and pitched in as needed.

  “I heard they found Sam Grip,” Grandma said.

  There was no need for a newspaper or the Internet in the Burg. News traveled at the speed of light the old-fashioned way … over the back fence and in line at the deli.

  I got a soda out of the refrigerator. “He was in his car in the Pine Barrens.”

  “I hear Skooter Berkower is real worried. He played poker with those guys sometimes. That whole poker group is getting wiped out. Somebody don’t like poker players. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s someone’s wife doing this. Probably one of those guys lost a lot of money and some wife wigged out.”

  That would be a decent theory except for the two bodies addressed to me.

  “Or maybe it’s Joyce Barnhardt trying to get attention,” Grandma said. “I wouldn’t put it past her. You know how she loves to be in the spotlight.”

  I drank some soda and recapped the bottle. “Killing five people seems extreme, even for Joyce.”

  “I suppose,” Grandma said. “This sure is a mystery.”

  “That’s a lot of potatoes you’re mashing,” I said to my mother.

  My mother added a big glob of butter to the potatoes. “We have a lot of people for dinner. Valerie and Albert are coming with the children.”

  My sister Valerie has two children by her disastrous first marriage, and two with her second husband Albert Klaughn. I love my sister and Albert, and I especially love the kids, but it’s half a bottle of Advil when you get them all into my parents’ small house.

  “We’re gonna need rubber walls if you ever get married and have kids,” Grandma said to me. “I don’t know how we could fit any more people in here, and Dave looks like the kind who’d want a big family.”

  “Dave isn’t in the picture.”

  “I hear different,” Grandma said. “It’s all over town about you and Dave.”

  I traded my soda in for a glass of wine. If I had to deal with Valerie and the kids and talk about Dave, I was going to need alcohol.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “JEEZ,” LULA SAID when I met her by the bonds bus. “You look worse than me, and I just had root canal.”

  “I had dinner with my parents and Valerie and Albert and the kids. The dinner was fine. And it was nice to spend time with Valerie and the girls, but the conversation kept coming back to Dave Brewer and me.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not interested in him. I don’t want to date him. I don’t want him cooking in my kitchen.”

  Lula did a raised eyebrow. “You don’t want him cooking in your kitchen?”

  “Okay, maybe I want him cooking in my kitchen. The problem is he won’t stay in the kitchen. He wanders.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said.

  I put my hand up. “Let me revise that statement. I don’t even want him in my kitchen. Yes, he makes great food. Is it worth it? No. And I can’t discourage him. He doesn’t take hints. He doesn’t listen. I broke his nose, for crying out loud. And he came back to make breakfast.”

  “How’d you break his nose?”

  “I hit him in the face with a hair dryer.”

  “Good one,” Lula said.

  We were on the sidewalk, standing by an old junker SUV. It looked like it might be black under the grime, and there was some rust creeping up from the undercarriage.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met your cousin Ernie,” I said to Lula.

  “Ernie works for the roads department, patching potholes. It’s not a bad job except he always smells like asphalt, and he got hit a couple times.”

  We saddled up in the SUV, and Lula drove to Stark Street. We cruised past the dry cleaner, turned at the corner, and rolled down the alley. Lula stopped just short of Alpha’s building and killed the engine. Lights were on in the second-floor windows, and there was a dark-colored Mercedes sedan parked next to the dry-cleaning van.

  A little before nine o’clock Alpha’s back door opened, lights were switched off in the apartment, and Alpha walked down the exterior stairs and got into the Mercedes.

  “We’re in business,” Lula said.

  Lula crept along behind Alpha, lights off, until Alpha took the corner and turned onto Stark. She flipped her lights on and followed two cars back. Alpha drove the length of Stark, circled the block to the alley, and pulled into the parking lot to the empty warehouse. Lula cut her lights and idled at the corner. A garage door rolled up and Alpha drove in. We waited a moment, and two more cars appeared and drove into the warehouse.

  “They’re using the warehouse like a parking garage,” I said to Lula. “Pretty clever. This way the cars don’t attract attention, and no one knows an event is going on.”

  “Where are they gonna have the cockfight if they park here? Is there an upstairs?”

  “No. This building is all one level. It’s just a high-ceiling warehouse, but Alpha owns the warehouse across the street. I’m betting these guys are all going across the street.”

  Lula backed out of the alley and hung at the corner of Stark. Alpha and two men walked out of the front door to the parking garage, crossed the street, and disappeared inside the second warehouse.

  “Are we good, or what?” Lula said. “We found the cockfight.”

  “We found something. We don’t actually know if it’s the cockfight.”

  Lula crossed Stark and took the side street but wasn’t able to go down the alley. The entrance to the alley was blocked off by a moving van. We drove around the block and found the other alley entrance was also blocked.

  “I hate this,” Lula said. “This drives me nuts. You know how Grandma Mazur’s gotta look inside the casket? That’s how this is. I drove all the way up Stark Street, and now I can’t get down this stupid alley. They got a lot of nerve blocking the alley off so we can’t go down. How’re we supposed to know if there’s a cockfight going on in there?”

  Lula pulled to the curb and parked. “I’m going down that alley. They can’t keep me out. I got rights.”

  “Wait! It’s not safe.” Crap. Lula was out of the car, huffing her way down the alley. I snatched the keys from the ignition and ran after her.

  The alley was dark. Streetlights got shot out in this part of town and never replaced. What was the point?
Halfway down the block a narrow band of light spilled out of the back of Alpha’s warehouse.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said to Lula. “These people are scary.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s Stark Street!”

  “Yeah, but I want to see what’s going on. It must be something good if they’ve got the alley blocked off.”

  “They’ve got it blocked because they’re doing something illegal. It’s the cockfight, or they’re unloading a hijacked truck, or they’re murdering people.”

  “I bet it’s the cockfight,” Lula said. “I’ve never seen a cockfight. Not that I want to. It sounds disgusting, but it’s like a train wreck. You gotta look, right? Maybe it’s the vampire coming out in me.”

  The bar of light was coming from the open back door to the warehouse. A couple vans were parked in the small adjacent lot. The vans were unoccupied, and no one was lurking by the door. Everyone was inside the warehouse.

  “I bet if we looked in those vans we’d find feathers,” Lula said. “This here’s V.I.P. parking. And that open door’s practically an invitation for us to go in.”

  Male voices rumbled out from the warehouse interior.

  “Going in would be a bad idea,” I said to Lula. “There are men with guns and killer birds in there.”

  Lula tiptoed up to the door. “We don’t know that for sure. People could be blowing this cockfighting thing way out of proportion.” She peeked inside and sucked in air. “It’s the little red hen! Except I guess it’s a rooster. And there’s a big shiny black rooster. And a bunch of cages I can’t see into.”

  “Great. That’s exactly what I need to know. I’m calling this in.”

  I stepped away from the warehouse, pressed myself against the side of a building where shadows were deep, and dialed police dispatch. I disconnected and realized Lula was nowhere to be seen.

  I heard a scream from inside the building. It was followed by screeching and crowing, and a lot of shouting. And Lula burst out the door. Two roosters half ran, half flew past me and disappeared into the night. A third bird was attached to Lula.

  “Vampire rooster!” Lula yelled.

  She was batting at the bird, and the bird was squawking and flapping his wings and pecking at Lula. She managed to knock the bird off her head, and the bird turned and attacked the men coming out the door.

  There was a lot of cussing and yelling and more squawking, and Lula and I took off at a dead run. We ran down the alley and hooked a left at the side street. We stopped and bent to catch our breath. I didn’t hear footsteps. No one seemed to be running after us. There was a lot of angry shouting back by the warehouse, and someone flicked a flashlight beam across the alley.

  Lula straightened up and looked around. “Didn’t we park the car here?”

  The junker SUV was gone. This car stealing stuff was getting old.

  “It’s a wonder anyone is ever able to get home in this neighborhood,” Lula said. “You leave your car for two minutes and the car fairy comes and takes it.”

  Lula’s giant spider hairdo had been rearranged by the rooster and was now more rat’s nest. She was wearing a black leather bustier, a denim skirt that barely covered her ass, and over-the-knee black leather boots with four-inch spike heels. I imagined the outfit came from her S&M ho collection.

  We were standing pretty much on the corner of Stark and Sidney. A red tricked-out Grand Cherokee pulled up to us, the passenger window slid down, and a guy leaned out at us.

  “Hey bitch,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Go away,” Lula said. “We’re busy here.”

  “You don’t look busy. You look like you’re waitin’ to do me.”

  “My cousin Ernie isn’t gonna like this,” Lula said to me. “How’s he gonna get to work tomorrow?”

  The Cherokee doors opened and two scrawny guys in too big clothes got out and strutted over to Lula.

  “You look like a workin’ bitch,” the one guy said. “How come you don’t wanna work me?”

  “I’m retired,” Lula said. “Take a hike.”

  “I’ll hike right up your fat lady ass,” the guy said.

  Lula turned on him, eyes narrowed. “Did you call me fat? ’Cause you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to mess with me. I just lost Ernie’s car. And I just had root canal, and my meds are wearin’ off, and I’m feelin’ mean as a snake. I’m a woman on the edge right now, you punk ass, little pencil dick.”

  “I ain’t no pencil dick. You want to see my dick?”

  He unzipped his big baggy pants, and Lula tagged both of them with her stun gun.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. She looked down at the two guys sprawled on the sidewalk, and then she looked over at their SUV. “I think we just got a car.”

  “No way! That’s grand theft auto.”

  “You want to stay here and wait for a bus?”

  Good point.

  We scrambled into the Cherokee with Lula behind the wheel, and we took off. Two police cars passed us going in the opposite direction. Lights flashing. No siren. Most likely en route to the cockfight.

  “What happened in the warehouse?” I asked Lula.

  “There wasn’t anybody in the back room, so I went in to look at the chickens, and right off one of them was acting real friendly. He was looking at me with his head sort of tilted, and he was making clucking sounds like the Little Red Hen would make. And I figured he wanted me to pet him, so I opened the door to his cage just a little to get my hand in, and next thing he busted out and attacked me. It was Ziggy all over again. And then when I was trying to get him off my head, I knocked into a stack of cages, and they fell over and broke apart, and the chickens all came rushing out. There was demon chickens all over the place, squawkin’ and clawin’ at each other. It was a chicken nightmare. I won’t be able to sleep tonight thinkin’ about them chickens. And now they’re runnin’ around loose, peckin’ the eyes out of people. ’Course it’s Stark Street so those chickens are gonna have to duke it out with the drugged-up nutcases and hungry people lookin’ for chicken parts.”

  We rode in silence after that, thinking our own thoughts about the Stark Street chickens. Lula drove through the center of the city, turned onto Hamilton, and parked behind my Shelby.

  “What are you going to do with this SUV?” I asked her.

  “I’m gonna give it to Ernie. Seems only fair he gets this car since someone stole his.”

  “But this is a stolen car. We stole it!”

  “And?”

  There comes a point in conversation with Lula where it’s best to drop back and punt.

  “Okay then,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Hope your tooth feels better.”

  “Yep. Happy trails,” Lula said.

  I drove home on autopilot, talking to myself, my mind alternating between numb mush and episodes of panic.

  “I hate when people want to kill me,” I said out loud to myself. “It makes my stomach feel weird. And I worry about Rex. Who would take care of him if I got murdered? I don’t even have a will. And do you know why I haven’t got a will? It’s because I don’t have anything to leave anyone. How pathetic is that?”

  I pulled into the lot to my apartment building and parked next to Mr. Molnar’s blue Accord. I was halfway to the building’s back door, worrying about a Dave Brewer appearance, when I heard someone behind me gun a car engine. Regina! I jumped to safety, and she roared past me, sideswiping a beater Dodge that belonged to Mrs. Gonzoles’s loser son. One more dent in the Dodge wasn’t going to get noticed. I sprinted to the building while Regina circled, and I made it inside before she reached me on the second pass.

  I took a deep breath and told myself things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Regina would get tired of trying to run me over, Nick Alpha would get arrested, Dave would eventually move on, and one of these days my reproductive system would get back to normal. I took the stairs and thought about Ranger naked, but I wasn’t in a swoon by the time I reached the se
cond floor, so clearly I had a way to go on the path to sexual recovery. At least Dave wasn’t lurking in the hall when I peeked out from the stairwell.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  MY CELL PHONE woke me up from a restless sleep.

  “I’m at your door. I forgot my key.” Morelli said. “I’ve been knocking and ringing your doorbell. Where are you?”

  “I’m here. Hang on.” I dragged myself out of bed and let Morelli in. “What time is it?” I asked him.

  “It’s eight o’clock.” He set a bag and a container of coffee on my kitchen counter. “I brought you breakfast. I’m taking off for south Jersey. I want to see the crime scene before it gets dismantled. I’ll probably be gone for most of the day. I was hoping you could walk Bob around noon.”

  “Sure.”

  He gave me something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “You look like you had a rough night.”

  “I had a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep. And when I did fall asleep I had awful dreams.”

  “Let me take a guess. The dreams were about chickens.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Did Alpha get arrested?”

  Morelli opened my coffee for me. “No. By the time the police got to the warehouse the evidence was scattered over a ten-mile radius.”

  I looked in the bag and pulled out a container of orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. “Thanks for bringing me breakfast. This was really nice of you.”

  “Yeah, I’m a nice guy.”

  He hooked his finger into the neckline of my cotton knit pajama top, looked inside at my breasts, and gave a small sigh.

  “So near and yet so far,” he said.

  He kissed me and left.

  I dropped a chunk of bagel into Rex’s cage, and I ate the rest. I drank the orange juice and took the coffee into my bedroom to drink while I dressed.

  A half hour later I was at the bonds bus.

  “Where’s Lula?” I asked Connie.

  “She said she’d be in late. Something about her hair.”