“Snake at home? Are you telling me Snake lives here?”
Lula blinked her big duck-egg eyes at me. “You mean you didn’t understand that?”
“I thought we were visiting his woman’s place.”
“Well, yeah,” Lula said, “but that happen to be Snake’s place too.”
“Oh boy.”
“Don’t worry,” Lula said. “That Snake gives us any trouble I’ll bust a cap up his ass.” She knocked on the door. “I don’t take no hard time from no Snake.”
No one answered, so Lula knocked louder.
“HEY!” she yelled at the door.
We stood for a moment, listening in utter silence, and then from inside the apartment, inches from the closed door, came the unmistakable ratchet of a pump shotgun.
Lula and I locked eyes for a fraction of a second and shared a simultaneous thought, OH SHIT! We spun on our heels, hurled ourselves down the first flight of stairs and skidded across the second-floor landing.
BOOM! A gun blast blew a two-foot hole in Shirlene’s front door, and plaster chunked out of the opposite wall.
“Out of my way!” Lula yelled. “Feet don’t fail me!”
I had a head start on the next set of stairs, but Lula missed the first step, slid three steps on her ass and knocked me over like I was a bowling pin. The two of us rolled the rest of the way to the bottom, screaming and swearing until we landed in a heap on the foyer floor.
We scrambled to our feet and almost ripped the front door off its hinges trying to get out. We ran the two and a half blocks to Lula’s Firebird, and Lula burned rubber from the curb. Neither of us said anything until we were parked in front of Vinnie’s office.
“It wasn’t that I was scared,” Lula said. “It’s just I didn’t want to get blood on this here new sweatsuit. You know how hard it is to get blood out of this stuff.”
“Yeah,” I said, still breathing hard. “Blood is a bitch.”
“Okay, so maybe I was a little scared,” Lula said. “I mean, hell, that motherfucker would of shot us dead! Shit. What was he thinking of? What’s the matter with him?”
“I’ve got to get a new job,” I said to Lula. “I don’t like getting shot at.”
“I tell you, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m starting to get pissed off. Who the hell does that jerk think he is, anyway? I’ve got a mind to call him up and tell him what I think.”
I handed Lula the file folder. “Be my guest. The phone number’s on the first page. And while you’re at it, tell him he’d better get his butt over here, because next time someone raps on his door it’ll be Ranger.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “Ranger’d root that little pecker out. Ranger’d stomp on his miserable ass.”
“Boy, I really hate being shot at,” I said. “I really hate it!”
Lula wrenched her door open. “I’m not taking this shit. I’m not standing still for this kind of treatment.”
“Me either,” I said, getting caught up in the moment. “That creep needs to be locked up.”
“Yeah,” Lula said. “And we’re just the ones to do it!”
I wasn’t sure about that last part, but I let it slide, and Lula and I marched into the office like storm troopers invading Poland.
Connie looked up from her paperwork. “Uh-oh, what’s going on?”
“We’ve just been shot at,” Lula said, lower lip protruding a good two inches. “Can you believe it? I mean, I’ve been caught in drive-bys. I’m used to that shit. This shit was different. This shit was directed at me personally. I didn’t like this shit one bit. This shit was offensive, you know what I’m saying?”
Connie raised her eyebrows. “Leroy Watkins?”
“Shot at us through a closed door,” I said.
Connie nodded her head. “And?”
“And we ran away,” I said. “Lula was worried about bloodstains on her new warm-up suit.”
Lula had the file in one hand and Connie’s phone in the other. “That Leroy Watkins isn’t getting away with this. I’m gonna call up his ass and tell him what I think. I’m gonna tell him I’m not taking this shit.”
Lula punched in some numbers and stood hand on hip.
“I want to talk to Leroy,” she said into the phone.
Someone responded at the other end, and Lula leaned forward. “What do you mean I can’t talk to him? He just almost dropped a cap in me, and now he’s not available to talk to me? I’ll available his ass.”
The phone was returned to Connie after five more minutes of discussion.
“Snake says he didn’t know it was us,” Lula said. “He said he’d go down to court with us if we come back.”
“Who’d he think he was shooting at?” I asked Lula.
“He said he didn’t know who he was shooting at. He said it just pays to be careful these days.”
“He destroyed his door!”
“Guess a man in Snake’s business got to worry.”
I grabbed my bag and hung it on my shoulder. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
“The filing is starting to get out of hand,” Connie said to Lula. “This won’t take you all day, will it?”
“Hell no,” Lula said. “We’ll be back before lunch.”
I pulled on gloves but thought twice about a hat. You wear a hat in the morning and you look like a fool for the rest of the day. Not that I looked all that wonderful this morning. It was more that I didn’t want to compound the problem. Especially since Morelli was sitting in my parking lot. Just in case the unthinkable happened, and I got arrested…I didn’t want to have hat hair for my mug shot.
We rumbled off to Stark Street, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My thoughts ran mostly to warm beaches and half-naked men serving me long, cool drinks. From the stony expression on Lula’s face I suspected her thoughts ran a lot darker.
Lula pulled up to the curb in front of Shirlene’s apartment building and heaved herself out of the car. We stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the third-floor windows.
“He said he wasn’t going to shoot at us, right?” I asked, just to be sure.
“That’s what he said.”
“You believe him?”
Lula shrugged.
Ranger would go in with gun drawn, but that wasn’t my style. I felt stupid with a gun in my hand. After all, what purpose did it serve? Was I going to shoot Leroy Watkins if he refused to get in the car with me? I don’t think so.
I grimaced at Lula. She grimaced back. We entered the building and slowly climbed the stairs, listening for the shotgun ratchet.
When we got to the third floor, Shirlene was in the dingy hall, staring at her ruined door. Shirlene was medium height, lean and sinewy. Her age would be somewhere between twenty and fifty. She was wearing pink terry cloth bedroom slippers, faded pink warm-up pants that were a size too small and a matching sweatshirt that was dotted with various-hued food stains, none of which looked recent. Her hair was short and chopped. Her mouth turned down at the corners. Her eyes were expressionless. She held a piece of cardboard box in one hand and a hammer in the other.
“Not gonna be able to hammer anything into that cheapskate door,” Lula told her. “You need mollies. Only thing gonna hold that cardboard in place is mollies.”
“Haven’t got any mollies,” Shirlene said.
“Where’s Leroy?” Lula asked. “He isn’t gonna shoot at us again, is he?”
“Leroy’s gone,” Shirlene said.
“Gone? What do you mean gone?”
“Gone is gone,” Shirlene said.
“Where’d he go?”
“Don’t know,” Shirlene said.
“When will he be back?”
“Don’t know that either.”
Lula stuffed her fists onto her hips. “Well, what do you know?”
“I know I gotta get this door fixed,” Shirlene said. “And you’re standing here taking up my time.”
Lula walked into the front room. “You don’t mind if I look around,
do you?”
Shirlene didn’t say anything. We both knew nothing short of that twelve-gauge pump was going to stop Lula from looking around.
Lula disappeared into the back room for a moment. “You’re right,” she said to Shirlene. “He’s gone. He take any clothes with him? He look like he gonna be gone a long time?”
“He took his gym bag, and you know what he got in there.”
I looked over at Lula, eyebrows raised in silent question.
Lula made her hand into a gun shape and aimed it at me.
“Oh,” I said.
“My time is valuable,” Lula said to Shirlene. “What’s the matter with that man, doggin’ me like this? He think I haven’t got anything better to do than to hike up those stairs?”
I gave Shirlene my card, and Lula and I trudged down the stairs with Lula grumbling the whole way.
“Walk up the stairs, walk down the stairs. Walk up the stairs, walk down the stairs,” she said. “Leroy better hope I never catch up with him.”
Now that I was back on the street I wasn’t all that sad not to have made an apprehension. An apprehension would have meant a trip to the police station. And the police station was the last place I wanted to visit right now.
“I guess we could try some bars,” I said with no enthusiasm.
“Snake’s not gonna be in a bar at this time of day,” Lula said. “Snake’s more likely to be hanging around a schoolyard, checking up on his sales force.”
That gave me some incentive. “Okay. Let’s drive by some schools.”
An hour later we were out of schools and still hadn’t found Snake.
“Any other ideas?” I asked Lula.
“Who’s listed on his bail ticket?”
“Shirlene.”
“No one else? No mama?”
“Nope. Just Shirlene.”
“I don’t know,” Lula said. “Usually a man like Snake is out on the street. Even in weather like this he could be on the street.” She slowly drove down Stark. “Not nobody out here today. Don’t even see anybody we can ask on.”
We drove by Jackie’s corner, and it was empty too.
“Maybe she’s with a client,” I said.
Lula shook her head. “Nuh-uh, she isn’t with no client. She’s in that snooty parking lot, waiting for her man. Bet my life on it.”
Lula cruised the block around my apartment building while I checked for Morelli. I didn’t see his car, or anything that resembled a cop or a copmobile, so I had Lula drop me at the front door. I entered the lobby cautiously, not completely convinced of Morelli’s departure. I did a fast survey and crossed to the stairs. So far, so good. I crept up the stairs, cracked the door at the second floor, peeked out to an empty hallway and sighed in relief. No Morelli.
I couldn’t avoid Morelli forever, but I figured if I avoided him long enough he’d find other leads, and eventually I’d be off the hook.
I unlocked my door and was met with the sound of Rex running on his wheel. I bolted the door behind myself, hung my bag and jacket on one of the four coat hooks I’d installed in my tiny foyer and took a left into the kitchen.
The light was blinking on my answering machine. Four messages.
The first was from Morelli. “Call me.”
I knew it was Morelli because my nipples contracted at the sound of his voice. His tone held a hint of annoyance. No surprise there.
The second message was just as cryptic. “Leave Mo alone. Or else.” A man’s voice, muffled. Unrecognizable. Great. Just what I needed. Anonymous threatening messages.
The third was from the Nissan service center telling me I had new points and plugs. The timing had been reset. And my car was ready to be picked up.
The fourth was from my mother. “Stephanie! Are you there? Are you all right? What’s this I hear about a shooting? Hello? Hello?”
Good news travels fast in the burg. Bad news travels even faster. And if there’s scandal attached, life as we know it comes to a halt until every detail of the tawdry event has been retold, examined, exclaimed over and enhanced.
If I allowed myself to consider what was being said about me at this very moment I’d probably fall over in a faint.
I dialed my parents’ number and got a busy signal. I briefly considered whether this absolved me from the obligatory explanatory phone call and decided it didn’t.
I made myself a tuna fish, potato chip and pickle sandwich and ate it at the kitchen counter.
I tried calling my mother again. Still busy.
I put Rex in the bathtub while I cleaned his cage. Then I cleaned the tub. Then I cleaned the rest of the bathroom. I ran the vacuum. I damp-mopped the kitchen floor. I scoured some of the crud off the top of the stove. Just in case I was arrested, I didn’t want my mother coming into my apartment and finding it dirty.
At three o’clock I gave up with the cleaning and tried another call to my mother. No luck.
I called Sue Ann to get the scoop on myself and to set the record straight. You could always get Sue Ann. Sue Ann had call waiting.
“You ever hear anything about Uncle Mo being…odd?” I asked Sue Ann.
“Odd?”
“Romantically.”
“You know something!” Sue Ann shouted into the phone. “What is it? What is it? What’s the dirt on Uncle Mo? He’s having an affair, right?”
“I don’t know. I was just wondering. Probably you should forget I said anything.”
I disconnected and tried my mother again. Her line was still busy. It was close to four o’clock, and the light was fading. I went to the window and peered down at the parking lot. No sign of Morelli.
“So what do you think?” I asked Rex. “Should I keep trying the phone or should I just take a ride over?”
Rex telepathically suggested that communicating with my mother in person would have the added advantage of being able to scrounge dinner.
I thought this was pretty clever considering Rex had a brain the size of a dried pea.
I grabbed my shoulder bag and my jacket and squinted into the security peephole on my front door. No one in view. I cracked the door and looked out at the hall. Clear. I took the stairs, crossed the small lobby and exited through the rear door to the lot.
The seniors always snapped up all the good slots close to the back entrance, so my Buick was parked at the outer edge, next to the Dumpster.
I could hear a steady drone of cars on St. James, and streetlights had just blinked on. I had almost reached the Buick when a black Jeep Cherokee suddenly wheeled into the lot and rolled to a stop.
The tinted driver’s side window slid down and a man wearing a ski mask looked out at me, leveled a .45 and squeezed off two rounds that zinged into the blacktop about six inches from my foot. I stood rooted to the spot, paralyzed by fear and astonishment.
“This is a warning,” the man said. “Stop looking for Mo. Next time these bullets will be in your brain.” He discharged three rounds into the heavy iron side of the Dumpster. I dove for cover. A fourth round whistled overhead.
The window rolled up, and the car sped out of the lot.
CHAPTER 6
When my heart resumed beating I got to my feet and cautiously looked over the edge of the Dumpster. Mrs. Karwatt was coming toward me, halfway across the lot, picking her way around icy spots on the macadam, clutching a small plastic bag of garbage to her chest.
“Did you see that?” I asked, my voice approaching a level audible only to canines.
“What?”
“That man in the car. He shot at me!”
“No!”
“Didn’t you hear it?”
“For goodness’ sakes,” she said. “Isn’t that terrible. I thought it was a backfire. I had my eyes fixed on the ice. Gotta be careful, you know. My sister slipped and broke her hip last winter. Had to put her in a home. Never did recover right. It’s not so bad, though. She gets green Jell-O for dessert twice a week at lunchtime.”
I ran a shaky finger over the holes in the
Dumpster where the bullets had impacted. “This is the second time today someone’s shot at me!”
“Getting so a body can’t go out of the house,” Mrs. Karwatt said. “What with the ice and the shooting. Ever since we put a man on the moon the whole planet’s gone to heck in a handbasket.”
I was looking for someone to nail for my sorry life, but I didn’t think it was fair to lay it all on Neil Armstrong.
Mrs. Karwatt pitched her bag into the Dumpster and headed back to the building. I sort of wanted to go with her, but my knees were shaky, and my feet weren’t moving.
I wrenched the door open on the Buick and collapsed onto the seat, hands clutching the wheel. Okay, I said to myself. Get a grip. These were two freak incidents. The first shooting was mistaken identity. And the second shooting was…what? A death threat.
SHIT.
I pulled the cell phone out of my shoulder bag and dialed up Morelli.
“Someone just shot at me!” I yelled into the phone at him. “I was getting into my car in my parking lot, and this guy in a ski mask drove up and told me to lay off looking for Mo. And then he shot at me. Warning shots, he said. And then he drove away.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you in immediate danger?”
“No.”
“Did you make a mess in your pants?”
“Came damn close.”
We were silent for a couple beats while we digested all this.
“Did you get his plate number?” Morelli asked. “Can you give me a description of the guy?”
“I was too rattled to think to get the plate. The guy was average build. White. That’s all I’ve got.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded my head in the car. “I feel better now. I just…I had to tell somebody.”
“While I have you on the phone…” Morelli said.
Damn! I forgot I was avoiding Morelli! I snapped the cell phone closed. No sweat, I told myself. No harm done. But probably it’s not a good idea to hang out in the lot. That left me with two choices. I could go with my plan to visit my parents, or I could return to my apartment and hide in my coat closet. The coat closet held a lot of appeal short-term, but at some point I’d have to venture out, and by that time I’d most likely have missed dinner.
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