Smokin' Seventeen (24 page)

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 second 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.”

“It looks like the cockfighting isn’t going to get Alpha off the street. I’m going to need another angle.”

“I’m sure he’s involved in a lot of bad stuff, but the only other thing I know for sure is the security racket.”

“Do you have store owners’ names?”

“The first three blocks of Stark Street are controlled by Alpha. If a store is open and operating they’re paying for protection. If it’s burned to the ground, they aren’t.”

“That’s pretty straightforward. Would I have any luck if I approached the people who had their store torched?”

“If you could find them … and they were alive and functioning beyond a vegetative state.”

“Jeez.”

Mooner was on the couch, doing the Jumble. “Uncle Black,” he said.

I turned toward him. “Who’s Uncle Black?”

“He owns a comic book store on the second block of Stark. Uncle Black’s Books. He had to raise his prices to cover his payments, but then like the
payments
got raised. It’s a vicious cycle, dude. Uncle Black’s an unhappy man.”

“I need to talk to Uncle Black,” I said.

“You gotta be comic book worthy, or Uncle Black won’t talk to you. He’s focused. He’s got like comic book laserness. He’s like the comic book
guru.
”

“Wonderful. I’m the no-talent guru who’s going to get him off the hook to Nick Alpha. Let’s go.”

There wasn’t a lot of traffic on Stark at this time of the morning, and I was able to park in front of Uncle Black’s Books. I locked the Shelby, set the alarm, and followed Mooner into the store. Black’s Books was a small, dusty space, crammed with tables holding thousands of collectible comics in boards
and plastic bags. The comics were in alphabetical order according to category. Lots of Spider-Man, Superman, X-men. Not so many Betty and Veronica and Casper. Lots of comics I’d never seen.

“Whoa,” Mooner said, obviously gobstruck by a comic in a special display. “ ‘The Creeper versus the Human Firefly.’ Awesome, dude. Fucking awesome.”

“Maybe we should buy that one,” I said to him. “Would that break the ice with Uncle Black? How much is it?”

“Forty-five dollars.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s a comic book! I’ve bought cars for forty-five dollars.”

“But dude, it’s The Creeper.”

I looked around. “Is that Uncle Black behind the counter?”

“Affirmative.”

Uncle Black was white. Really white. As if he hadn’t been out from under the fluorescent lights in a long, long time. He was slim and maybe 5′5″. In his early forties. Mousey brown hair that needed a cutting. Dressed in vintage clothes from the fifties. I suspected the vintage look wasn’t intentional.

“Moonman,” he said. “Wassup?”

“I brought the dudette,” Mooner said. “She’s like cool. She’s Bus Girl.”

“She doesn’t look like Bus Girl. Bus Girl has big hooters and golden clothes. She needs to come back when she looks like Bus Girl, and maybe Uncle Black will talk to her.”

I gave Uncle Black my card. “I need to talk to you about the protection you’re paying.”

Uncle Black tore the card up and threw it into the air like confetti. “Uncle Black will not pay one more penny to protection. And Uncle Black will only talk to Bus Girl when she’s appropriately dressed.”

“Bus Girl is a digital creation of her sick cousin,” I said to Uncle Black.

Uncle Black’s eyes narrowed and his upper lip curled back. “Uncle Black hates digital. Digital is the work of the devil.” He bent below the counter and came up with a shotgun. “Get out of my store you spawn of Satan!”

Mooner and I scurried out of the store and ran halfway down the street before we remembered the Shelby sitting in front of Black’s Books.

I was at the corner, wondering if it was safe to sneak back and retrieve the car, and a black sedan slid to a stop and double-parked beside the Shelby. Two guys who looked like bad business got out of the car and walked into the comic book store. There was a shotgun blast, and the two guys ran out of the store. One of them stumbled and was scooped up and stuffed into the black sedan by the second guy. The second guy sighted what looked like a missile launcher on the roof of the Shelby and
phooonf
, he fired something off into Black’s.