'I don't know what you're selling, but I might be willing to buy it,' Willie said.
'Boy, that's real original,' I said, walking into his apartment. 'I bet you had a hard time coming up with that one.'
'Wadda ya mean?'
I turned to face him. Was he really that dumb? I looked into his eyes and decided the answer was yes. And the frightening part is that he outsmarted Lula last time she tried to snag him. Best not to dwell on that realization. The door was still open, and I could see Lula creeping forward behind Willie Martin.
She had pepper spray in one hand and the taser in the other.
'I was actually looking for Andy Bartok,' I said to Martin. 'This is his apartment, right?'
'This is my apartment. There's no Andy here. Do you know who I am? You follow football?'
'No,' I said, putting the couch between me and Martin. 'I don't like violent sports.'
'I like violent sports,' Lula said. 'I like the sport called kick Willie Martin in his big ugly blubber butt.'
Martin turned to Lula. 'You! Guess you didn't get enough of Will Martin, hunh? Guess you came back for more. And look at this here present you brought me ... a candy-ass white woman.'
'The only thing I brought you is a ticket to the lockup,' Lula said. 'I'm hauling your nasty blubber butt off to jail.'
'I haven't got no blubber butt,' Martin said. He turned again so he could moon Lula, and he dropped his drawers to prove his point.
I was standing in front of him so I got the pole-vaulting demonstration.
Lula got the rear view, and whether it was intentional or just a jerk-action reflex was hard to say, but Lula shot Martin in the ass with the taser.
Martin went down with his pants at half-mast and flopped around on the floor, twitching on the taser line like a fresh-caught fish.
'Get your finger off the button,' I yelled to Lula. 'You're going to kill him!'
'Oops,' Lula said. 'Guess I should have read the instruction book.'
Martin was facedown, doing shallow breathing. He was about six foot five and close to three hundred pounds. I had no idea how we were going to get him to the Firebird.
'I'll cuff him, and you pull his pants up,' Lula said.
'Good try, but this is your party. I'm not doing pants wrangling.'
'The bounty hunter assistant is supposed to take orders,' Lula said.
I cut my eyes to her.
'Of course, that don't count for you,' she said. 'On account of you're not an official assistant. You're the...'
'The friend of the bounty hunter,' I said.
'Yeah, that's it. The friend of the bounty hunter. How about you cuff him, and I'll get his pants up.'
I took the cuffs from Lula. 'Works for me.'
I cuffed Martins hands behind his back and stepped away, and Lula straddled him and yanked the taser leads off. By the time she got his pants up, she was sweating.
'Usually I'm taking pants off a man,' Lula said. 'It's a lot more work getting them up than down.'
Especially when you're wrestling them up the equivalent of a 280-pound sandbag.
Willie had one eye open, and he was making some low-level gurgling sounds.
'He's gonna be pissed off when he comes around,' Lula said. 'I'm thinking we want to get him into the car before that happens.'
'I'd feel a lot better about this if you had ankle shackles,' I said.
'I forgot ankle shackles.'
I grabbed a foot and Lula grabbed a foot, and we threw our weight into dragging Martin to the door. We got him through the door and onto the cement landing and realized we were going to have to use the rickety freight elevator.
'It's probably okay,' Lula said, pushing the button.
I closed and locked Martin's door. I repeated Lula's words. It's probably okay. It's probably okay. The elevator made a lot of grinding, clanking noises, and we could see it shudder as it rose from the bottom floor.
'It's just three floors,' Lula said, more to herself than to me. 'Three floors isn't a whole lot, right? Probably you could jump from three floors if you had to. Remember when you fell off that fire escape? That was three floors, right?'
'Two floors by the time I actually started free falling.' And it knocked me out and hurt like hell.
The open-air car came to a lurching stop three inches below floor level.
Lula struggled with the grate and finally got it half open.
'You got the least weight,' Lula said. 'You go in first and see if it holds you.'
