Four to Score

He was minus the Farrah wig, and his own hair was a mess of dark brown corkscrew strands. Sort of Rasta without the dreds. He was wearing cut-off denims, a white T-shirt, red clogs and was freshly manicured with silver polish.

'This is Sally Sweet,' I told Connie and Lula.

'I bet,' Lula said.

Sally handed me the translation of the coded message and looked around. 'I thought there'd be wanted posters on the walls and gun racks filled with shotguns.'

'This isn't Dodge City,' Lula said. 'We got some class here. We keep the guns in the back room with the pervert.'

I read the note. ' 'One-thirty-two Howser Street. Under the bench.' That's Maxine's mother's address.'

Sally slouched onto the couch. 'When I was a kid I watched reruns of Steve McQueen. Now he was a bounty hunter.'

'Damn skippy,' Lula said. 'He was the shit.'

'So now what?' Sally wanted to know. 'We going to Howser Street?'

Foreboding sliced into my stomach. We?

Lula slammed her file drawer shut. 'Hold on. You're not going off without me! Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?'

I like Lula a lot, but last time we worked together I gained seven pounds and almost got arrested for shooting a guy who was already dead.

'I'm going to Howser Street,' I said. 'Only me. One person. Steve McQueen worked alone.'

'I don't mean to be insulting,' Lula said, 'but you ain't no Steve McQueen. And something happens you'll be happy I'm around. Besides, this'll be fun . . . the two of us working on a case together again.'

'Three of us,' Sally said. 'I'm going, too.'

'Oh boy,' Lula said. 'The three muffkateers.'

*    *    *    *    *

LULA GAVE THE NOWICKI HOUSE the once-over. 'Don't appear like Maxine's mama spends much time spiffing up the old homestead.'

We were in Lula's Firebird with Sally in the backseat doing air guitar to Lula's rap music. Lula cut the engine, the music stopped, and Sally snapped to attention.

'Looks kind of spooky,' Sally said. 'You guys have guns, right?'

'Wrong,' I said. 'We don't need guns to retrieve a clue.'

'Well, this is fucking disappointing. I figured you'd kick the door down and blast yourselves into the house. You know, rough up some people.'

'You want to cut down on the breakfast drugs,' Lula said to Sally. 'You keep going like this all your nose hairs are gonna fall out.'

I unbuckled my seat belt. 'There's a little wooden bench on the front porch. With any luck, we won't have to go in the house.'

We crossed the patchy lawn, and Lula tested the bottom porch step, pausing when it groaned under her weight. She moved to the next step and picked her way around floorboards that were obviously rotted.

Sally tiptoed behind her. Clonk, clonk, clonk with his clogs. Not exactly the stealth transvestite.

They each took an end of the bench and flipped it over.

No note stuck to the bottom.

'Maybe it blew away,' Lula said.

There wasn't a stray breath of air in all of Jersey, but we checked the surroundings anyway, the three of us fanning out, covering the yard.

No note.

'Hunh,' Lula said. 'We been given the runaround.'

There was a crawl space under the porch, enclosed with wooden lattice. I dropped to hands and knees and squinted through the lattice. 'The note said 'under the bench.' It could have meant under the porch, under the bench.' I jogged to the car and retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment. I returned to the porch, scrunched low and flashed the beam around the dirt floor. Sure enough, there was a glass jar directly under the part of the porch that supported the bench.

Two yellow eyes caught in the light, held for a second, and skittered away.

'Do you see it?' Lula wanted to know.

'Yep.'

'Well?'

'There are eyes under there. Little beady yellow ones. And spiders. Lots of spiders.'

Lula gave an involuntary shiver.