by Unknown
Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “Where are you going? Why are you dressed up in Rangeman stuff? Christ, you’re not moonlighting, are you? You aren’t any good when you’re working for me full-time. Now I’m sharing you with Ranger?”
“I brought two skips in this week.”
“Big deal. What about all the others still in the wind? This isn’t a goddamn charity. I’m not buying these idiots out of jail for my health. And it’s not like you’re the only bounty hunter out there,” Vinnie said. “You could be replaced.”
“Lucille’s been talking redecorating again,” Connie said to me. “Vinnie needs money.”
Lucille was Vinnie’s wife. She tortured Vinnie by constantly redecorating their house and by spending his money faster than he could make it. We figured this was retribution for Vinnie boinking anything that moved. The good part of the deal was that all Vinnie could do was pedal twice as fast, since Lucille’s father, Harry the Hammer, financed the bonds office. If Vinnie left Lucille, not only would he be unemployed, there was a good chance he’d be dining with Stanley Chipotle.
“She’s killing me,” Vinnie said. “I haven’t got money to buy a hot dog for lunch. My bookie took me off his iPhone.”
Actually, it wasn’t a good thing when Vinnie got this broke, because instead of buying favors from professionals on Stark Street, we suspected Vinnie was forced to chase down ducks at the park.
NINE
I LEFT THE bonds office, drove a couple blocks on Hamilton, and took a right into Morelli’s neighborhood. Best not to examine my motives too closely. I was telling myself morbid curiosity was the driving force, but my heart was beating pretty hard for something that benign. I left-turned onto Morelli’s street, cruised half a block, and stopped in front of his house. His SUV was gone, and there was no sign of Joyce’s car. No lights on in the house. No sign of activity. I turned at the next corner and headed for the Burg. I drove past Morelli’s brother’s house. No SUV there, either.
Okay, get a grip, I told myself. No reason to get crazy. Morelli is a free man. He can do whatever the heck he wants. If he wants to act like a jerk and get friendly with Barnhardt, it’s his problem. Anyway, I have to expect that he’ll be seeing other women. That’s what happens when people break up . . . they spend time with other people, right? Just because I don’t want to spend time with other people doesn’t mean Morelli has to feel that way. I’m one of those people who needs space between relationships. I don’t just jump into stuff. And I don’t do one-night stands. Usually. There was that time with Ranger, but you couldn’t really categorize it as a one-night stand. It was more like a onetime-only ticket to WOW.
I turned out of the Burg onto Hamilton, and five minutes later, I pulled into my parking lot. I parked next to Lula’s Firebird and looked up at my windows. No smoke. No sign of fire. No one running screaming out of the building. That was good. Maybe I wasn’t too late. Maybe they hadn’t started cooking yet. Maybe they’d discovered I only had one pot and decided to watch television.
I jogged across the lot, up the stairs, and down the hall to my apartment, reminding myself to stay calm. Lula and Grandma were in my kitchen and my counters were filled with bottles of barbecue sauce, dry rub, vinegar, cooking sherry, a half-empty bottle of rum, lemons, onions, oranges, a keg of ketchup, and a ten-pound can of tomato sauce. Grandma and Lula were in their chef’s clothes, except Lula was missing her hat. My sink was filled with dirty measuring cups, assorted utensils, bowls, and measuring spoons. There was a large pot hissing on the stove.
“What the heck is that?” I asked Lula.
“I got my pressure cooker goin’ here,” Lula said. “I saw it advertised on QVC. It cuts cookin’ time in half. Maybe more. And it preserves all the goodness of the food. It was real expensive on television, but I got this one off of Lenny Skulnik. It’s good quality, too, because it was made in China.”
Lenny Skulnik sold knock-off handbags and kitchen appliances out of the trunk of his car. I went to school with Lenny. He was totally without scruples, and one of the more successful graduates.
“Are you sure it’s supposed to make those noises?” I asked Lula. “And what about all that steam?”
“It’s supposed to steam,” Lula said. “It’s why you call it a pressure cooker. And if you look close, you could see the pressure indicator is all red. That’s the sign of good pressure cookin’. You wouldn’t want no green shit on a pressure-cookin’ indicator.”
“Are you sure? Did you read the instructions?”
“This one didn’t come with no instructions. This was the economy model.”
I kept Rex’s cage on the kitchen counter. It was lost behind the bottles and cans, but I could see Rex running on his wheel for all he was worth, every now and then sneaking a peek at the pot on the stove.
The pot had gone beyond hissing and was now whistling a high keening wail. We-e-e-e-e-e-e-e Red sauce was sputtering out of the steam hole and the pot was vibrating.
“Don’t worry,” Lula said. “It’s just workin’ itself up to maximum pressurizin’.”
“It’s a modern miracle,” Grandma said.
I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I always worried when the little bulb at the top of anything went red. And I recognized the sound the pot was making. I felt like that sometimes, and it never ended well.
“Maybe you should turn the heat down a little,” I said to Lula.
“I guess I could do that,” Lula said. “It must almost be done. We’ve been cooking it for over an hour.”
Lula reached for the knob on the stove and at that exact moment there was a popping sound and the two latches flew off the lid.
“Holy cats,” Lula said.
“She’s gonna blow!” Grandma yelled. “Run for your life!”
Rex darted into his soup can. Lula and Grandma and I turned tail and bolted. And the lid exploded off the pot. BANG! The lid hit the ceiling like it had been launched from a rocket, and barbecue sauce was thrown onto every exposed surface. There was a hole in the ceiling where the lid had impacted, and sauce dripped from the ceiling and slimed down cabinets.
“Guess we aren’t having barbecue for dinner tonight,” Grandma said, creeping back to the stove to look in the pot.
Lula swiped at some of the sauce on the counter and tasted it. “Not exactly right yet, anyways.”
A splotch of sauce dripped off the ceiling onto Grandma’s head, and she retreated out of the kitchen.
“I feel like getting some of that Cluck-in-a-Bucket chicken,” Grandma said. “I wouldn’t mind the Clucky Dinner Tray with the extra-crispy chicken and mashed potatoes.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lula said. “I could use some chicken, and I got a coupon for the Clucky Dinner Tray.”
“What about my kitchen?” I asked Lula.
“What about it?”
“It’s a mess!”
Lula glanced at the kitchen. “Yeah, it don’t look too good. You’re gonna have to use one of them degreasers on it.”
“I’m not cleaning this kitchen.”
“Well, somebody gotta do it,” Lula said.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “That would be you.”
“Hunh,” Lula said. “In my opinion, that pot manufacturer should be responsible for the cleanup. I got a faulty pot.”
“The manufacturer in China?” I asked her.
“Yeah. That’s the one. I’m gonna tell Lenny Skulnik he needs to get in touch with them.”
“And you think they’re going to send someone from China to clean my kitchen?”
“I see your point,” Lula said. “I guess I could do some cleaning, but I’d need a stepladder. Or else I’d need a big strong fireman to help me out.”
“I thought you pulled a gun on him.”
“Yeah, but he might be persuaded to overlook that if I let him wear my dress again.”
Twenty minutes later, Lula rolled her Firebird into the Cluck-in-a-Bucket parking lot. Cluck-in-a-Bucket is a fast-f
ood hot spot in Trenton. The food is surprisingly good, if you like nice greasy chicken, heavily salted gelatinous potatoes, and gravy so thick you could walk across a vat of it. Lula, Grandma, and I gave it five stars. And the very best part of Cluck-in-a Bucket is the giant red, yellow, and white chicken impaled on a thirty-foot candy-striped pole that rotates high above the red-roofed building 24/7. Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Empire State Building, and Trenton has the revolving chicken.
On weekends and during the dinner rush, there was always some poor sap dressed up in a Mister Clucky chicken suit. He clucked at kids, and he danced around and annoyed the heck out of everyone. The guy who owned Cluck-in-a-Bucket thought the dancing chicken was great, but the truth was everyone would have been happy to pay more for the chicken if Mister Clucky never clucked again.
Lula was one of three people out of ten thousand who liked Mr. Clucky.
“Lookit here,” Lula said. “It’s the dancin’ chicken. I love that chicken. I like his red hat and his big chicken feet. I bet there’s a real cute guy inside that chicken suit. You’d have to be cute to get a job as Mister Clucky.”
I was betting there was a scrawny kid with a bad complexion inside the suit.
Lula got out of the car and went up to Mister Clucky. “You’re a big Mister Clucky,” Lula said. “You must be new. I got a bet with my friend that you’re a real cutie-pie. How’d you like to give us a look?”
“How’d you like my beak up your ass?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Fuck off, fatso.”
“Fatso? Did I hear you call me fatso? Because I better be mistaken.”
“Fatso. Fatso. Fatty fatty fatso.”
Lula took a closer look at Mister Clucky. “Hold on here. I recognize your voice.”
“No you don’t,” Mister Clucky said.
“Larry? Is that you?”
“Maybe.”
Lula turned to Grandma and me. “This is Larry, the fireman I was telling you about.”
“The one who wears dresses?” Grandma asked.
“Yep. That’s the one,” Lula said.
“Lots of men wear dresses,” Mister Clucky said. “It’s not against the law.”
“That’s real true,” Lula said. “And I’ve been reviewing our unfortunate date, and I decided you didn’t look all that bad in that turquoise cocktail dress. Now that I’m thinking about it, that gown might have brought out the color of your eyes.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yeah. That gown was made for you,” Lula said. “In fact, if you want to let bygones be bygones I might let you try it on again.”
“I saw you had a beaded sweater that looked like it might match,” Mister Clucky said.
“Yeah, you can wear the sweater, too.”
He adjusted his clucky head and hiked up his privates. “I have to work until nine.”
“That’s fine,” Lula said. “Only thing is, I’m staying someplace else. I’ll get my food and come back with my new address.”
We put our orders in and moved to the pickup station.
“He seemed like a real nice chicken,” Grandma said.
“Yeah,” Lula said. “I guess he’s not so bad. And he’s a real good dancer in his chicken suit. And on top of that, I bet he could get me a discount on chicken. He just took me by surprise the other night, causing me to overreact about the dress.”
We all had the Clucky Dinner Tray, plus Lula supplemented hers with a side of biscuits and a bucket of barbecue chicken, which she said was research. She wrote my address on a napkin and handed it to Mister Clucky when we left.
“It must be fun to be Mister Clucky,” Lula said to him.
“Yeah, the suit is pretty cool, and I get to dance around. Mostly, I do it for spending money, though. I do okay as a fireman, but nice handbags don’t come cheap.”
We all piled into the Firebird, and Lula drove a couple blocks to the supermarket.
“I’ll be right back,” Lula said. “I just gotta get some cleaning products.”
“I’ll go with you,” Grandma said. “We could take another look at the barbecue aids.”
I stayed in the car and called Ranger. “Just checking in,” I said. “Anything interesting going on?”
“Nada. And you?”
“Lula and Grandma exploded a pot of barbecue sauce in my kitchen, Lula has a date later tonight with Mister Clucky, and it looks like I’ll be spending the night in your apartment again.”
“Something to look forward to,” Ranger said. “Do you have any thoughts on my accounts?”
“Yes. I picked out several that I think have break-in potential.” I gave him the addresses and told him Vinnie was having a cow over my open files. “I’m going to need some time off tomorrow to look for one of these guys,” I said.
“Done,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.
Lula swung her ass out of the supermarket and Grandma trotted behind her. They hustled across the lot to the car, Lula rammed herself behind the wheel, and in moments we were back on the road.
“Next stop is my house,” Lula said. “I gotta get clothes for Larry.”
Grandma leaned forward from the backseat. “What if the killers are waiting for you?”
“That would be good luck,” Lula said. “We could take them down and get the reward. I’d shoot the heck out of them, and then we’d drag their carcasses to the police station.”
“We’d kick their asses,” Grandma said.
“Damn skippy,” Lula said.
Lula eased the Firebird to the curb in front of her house, and we all piled out. Lula lived in an emerging neighborhood of hardworking people. Homes were small, yards were postage stamp size, and aspirations were modest. Lula rented half of the second floor of a two-story Victorian house that had been painted lavender with pink gingerbread trim. It was possibly the most inappropriate house in the entire universe for Lula. It was too small, too dainty, and too lavender. Every time I saw her walk through the front door, I had the feeling she was going through a portal into another dimension . . . like Harry Potter at the train station.
We got to the top of the stairs and gaped at Lula’s bullet-hole-riddled door. Yellow-and-black crime scene tape had been plastered over the door, but it hadn’t been applied in such a way that it prevented the door from being used.
“Cheap-ass plywood hollow-core door,” Lula said. “Bird shot would go through this crap-ass door.”
Grandma and I followed Lula into the one-room apartment and waited by the door while she went to her giant closet.
“This won’t take long,” Lula said. “I got everything organized in here by collection, so depending who I want to be, it’s easy to find.”
Lula opened her closet door and two men jumped out at her.
One had a gun and the other had a cleaver, and they were both wearing gorilla masks.
“It’s the killers! It’s the killers!” Lula shrieked.
“Grab her,” the cleaver guy said. “Hold her still so I can chop off her head.” And then he giggled and all the hair stood up on my arms.
His partner was trying to sight his gun on Lula. “For crying out loud, get out of the way and let me shoot her. Big deal, you’re a butcher. Get over it.”
The guy with the cleaver swung out at Lula, giggling the whole time. Lula ducked, and the cleaver got stuck in the wall.
Lula scrambled hands and knees under a table, around an overstuffed chair, out her door, and thundered down the stairs.
The killers ran after Lula, not even noticing Grandma and me standing with our eyes bugged out and our mouths open.
“Don’t that beat all,” Grandma said.
She hauled her .45 long-barrel out of her big black patent-leather purse, stepped into the hall, planted her feet, and squeezed off a couple shots at the two guys running down the stairs.
The gorilla guys disappeared out the front door, into the night. There was the sound of car doors opening and slamming shut. An
engine caught, and I heard the car drive away. A moment later, Lula appeared at the front door. She had a bunch of leaves stuck in her hair and a big dirt smudge on her wraparound blouse.
“What happened?” she said. “I don’t hardly remember anything except I fell in a big bush.”
“It was the killers,” Grandma said. “We kicked their asses.”
“Oh yeah. Now it’s all coming back to me.” Lula climbed the stairs and sleepwalked through her door. “It’s a nightmare,” she said. “It’s a friggin’ nightmare.”
Grandma rooted through Lula’s cabinets in the little kitchenette area of the room and came up with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She took a pull from the bottle and handed it over to Lula. “This’ll fix you up,” Grandma said. “Take a snort of this.”
Lula chugged some Jack Daniel’s and looked a little better. “This is bullshit,” she said. “This gotta end.”
TEN
I TOOK GRANDMA home, and then I drove to my apartment building and walked Lula into the apartment.
“Smells like barbecue in here,” Lula said.
It looked like barbecue.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked Lula.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m gonna hang my Dolly Parton dress and sweater up and get to work. I want to be working when Larry gets here.”
“You should call Morelli.”
“I guess, but I don’t see where it does any good.”
“He’s working on finding these guys, and it gives him a more complete picture.” And most important, it probably annoys the hell out of him and interrupts whatever he’s doing.
“What’s with you two?” Lula said. “Are you really calling it quits?”
“Hard to say. Every time we see each other we get into an argument. We don’t agree on anything.”
“Sounds to me like you’re talkin’ about the wrong things. Why don’t you talk about other things? Like you could make a list of things you won’t fight over and then you only talk about those things.”
“I think he might be seeing Joyce Barnhardt.”
“What?” Lula’s eyes almost popped out of her head. “I hate Joyce Barnhardt. She’s Devil Woman. And she’s a skank. Men have relations with her and their dicks fall off. If I was you, and I found out Morelli was foolin’ around with Joyce Barnhardt, I’d drop-kick his ass clear across the state.”