Hard Eight

off the stoop. Inside the house there was pandemonium. Men were scrambling to leave, some of them naked, some of them dressed, all of them waving guns, shouting, “Outta my way, muthafucka!”

Lula was in the middle of it. “Hey,” she was yelling, “this here’s a bond enforcement operation! Everybody stop running!”

Vinnie and I had worked our way into the middle of the room, but we couldn’t find Bender. Too many men in too small a space, all trying to get out of the house. No one cared that Vinnie had his gun drawn. I’m not sure anyone noticed in the mayhem. Vinnie got off a round and a chunk of ceiling fell down. After that, it was quiet because no one was left in the room but Vinnie, Lula, Kloughn, and me.

“What happened?” Lula asked. “What just happened here?”

“I didn’t see Bender,” Vinnie said. “Is this the right house?”

“Vinnie?” A female voice called from the bedroom. “Vinnie, is that you?”

Vinnie’s eyes opened wide. “Candy?”

A naked woman somewhere in age between twenty and fifty bounced out of the bedroom. She had gigantic breasts and her pubic hair cut into the shape of a thunderbolt. She held her arms out to Vinnie. “Long time no see,” she said. “What’s up?”

A second woman straggled from the bedroom. “Is it really Vinnie?” she asked. “What’s he doing here?”

I eased into the bedroom behind the women and looked for Bender. The bedroom was set with lights and a discarded camera. They hadn’t been watching a porno… they’d been making one.

“Bender isn’t in the bedroom or bathroom,” I said to Vinnie. “And that’s the whole house.”

“You looking for Andy?” Candy asked. “He split earlier. He said he had work to do. That’s why we borrowed his place. Nice and private. At least until you showed up.”

“We thought we was getting busted,” the other woman said. “We thought you was the cops.”

Kloughn gave each of the women his card. “Albert Kloughn, attorney at law,” he said. “If you ever need a lawyer.”

AN HOUR LATER, I pulled into my lot with Kloughn yammering away alongside me. I had Godsmack plugged into my CD player, but I couldn’t get the volume loud enough to totally drown out Kloughn.

“Boy, that was something,” Kloughn said. “I’ve never seen a movie star up close before. And especially naked ones. I didn’t look too much, did I? I mean, you couldn’t help looking, right? Even you looked, right?”

Right. But I didn’t get down on my knees to examine the pubic hair thunderbolt. I parked and walked Kloughn to his car, making sure he got safely out of the lot. I turned to go into the building and let out a yelp when I bumped into Ranger. He was standing close, and he was smiling. “Big date?”

“It’s been a strange day.”

“How strange?”

I told him about Vinnie and the porno movie.

Ranger tipped his head back and laughed out loud. Not something I see very often.

“Is this a social visit?” I asked.

“As social as I get. I’m on my way home from a job.”

“Home to the Bat Cave.” No one knew where Ranger lived. The address on his driver’s license was a vacant lot.

“Yeah. The Bat Cave,” Ranger said.

“I’d like to see the Bat Cave sometime.”

Our eyes held.