Morelli gave her the photos, and Lula flipped through them.
“This one,” Lula said. “This guy with the bad haircut and a nose like Captain Hook. He’s one of the killers. He’s the one with the meat cleaver.”
“That’s Marco the Maniac,” Morelli said.
“Oh shit,” Lula said. “I got a killer named Maniac. Where’s my helmet? I need my helmet. I think I left it at the office.”
“His profile finally popped out of the system,” Morelli said. “He’s from Chicago. Works as a butcher, but he makes spare change by chopping off fingers and toes of people who annoy the Chicago Mob. Mostly gets off on insufficient evidence, but did some time a couple years ago. I don’t know how he’s connected to Chipotle. I’m assuming it was a contract hit, but we don’t really know.”
“You’re gonna arrest him, right?” Lula said.
“As soon as we find him.”
“Well, what are you doing standing here!” Lula said. “You gotta mobilize or something. Put out one of them APB things. I need all my fingers and toes. I got some Via Spiga sandals that aren’t gonna look right if I only got nine toes. And what about the guy with the gun? Why don’t you got a picture of him?”
“We’re working on it,” Morelli said.
“Working on it, my ass,” Lula said. “I’m gettin’ the runs. I need a doughnut.”
Morelli grabbed my wrist and tugged me to the door. “I need to talk to you alone,” he said, moving me into the hall and down toward the elevator.
“I don’t want to argue about Rangeman,” I told him.
“I don’t care about Rangeman,” Morelli said, his voice cracking with laughter. “I want to know about the guy in the dress. What the heck is that about?”
“Lula exploded the barbecue sauce in my kitchen and didn’t want to clean it up, so she told this cross-dresser he could wear her dress if he scrubbed the sauce off the walls and ceiling.”
“And he spent the night?”
“Lula’s guest.”
“The crime lab got to her apartment first thing this morning. She can change out that door anytime she wants.”
“I’m not sure she’ll go back there. She’s really freaked.”
“From what I can tell, Marco is an animal with a very small brain. He’s dangerous and disgusting but not smart. At the risk of sounding insensitive, Lula is a large target, and anyone else would have killed her by now.”
“So you think she shouldn’t be worried?”
“I think she should be terrified. If this goes on long enough, Marco is going to get lucky, and Lula is going to lose a lot more than a toe.” He punched the elevator button. “Is that Ranger’s Cayenne in your parking lot?”
A small sigh escaped before I could squelch it. “I tried to capture Ernie Dell, but he torched my car and got away. Ranger gave me a loaner.”
The elevator doors opened, and Morelli stepped inside.
“How close are you to catching Marco?” I asked him.
“Not close enough.”
I returned to the apartment and finished my lunch.
“We should have got dessert,” Lula said. “I don’t know what we were thinking about, not getting dessert.”
“You have to stop obsessing about food,” I told her. “You’re going to weigh four hundred pounds.”
“Are you sayin’ I’m fat? Because I think I’m just a big and beautiful woman.”
“You’re still beautiful,” I said. “But I think the big is getting a little bigger.”
“That’s a valid point,” Lula said. She locked on to Larry. “Do you think I’m fat?”
Larry was deer in headlights. He’d already traveled this road. “Well, you’re not too fat,” he said.
“Not too fat for what?” Lula wanted to know.
“For me. For this dress. I’m sure you look much better in this dress than I do.”
“Damn right,” Lula said. “Take that dress off and I’ll show you. This dress fits me perfect.”
Larry stood and reached for the zipper, and I clapped my hands over my eyes.
“It’s okay,” Larry said to me. “I’m wearing boxers. I didn’t have any nice lingerie with me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I don’t want to see Lula, either. Tell me when it’s over.”
“Well, what the heck is wrong with this dress?” Lula said a couple minutes later. “I can’t get this thing together.”
I opened my eyes, and Lula had the dress on, but it wasn’t zipped. There was fat bulging out everywhere, and Larry had his knee against Lula’s back and was two-handing the zipper, trying to pull it up.
“Suck it in,” Larry said. “I have this problem sometimes, too.”
“I’m all sucked,” Lula said. “I can’t suck no more.”
Veins were standing out in Larry’s temples and bulging in his neck. “I’m getting it,” he said. “I can press two hundred pounds, and there’s no reason why I can’t get this zipper closed.”
The heck there wasn’t. The dress wasn’t made out of spandex. And even spandex had limits.
“I’ve almost got it,” Larry said, sweat dripping off his flushed face, running in rivers down his chest. “I’ve got an inch to go. One lousy, motherfucking, cocksucking inch.”
Lula was standing tall, not moving a muscle.
“Yeah, baby!” Larry said. “I got it! Woohoo! Yeah!” He stepped back and pumped his fist and did a white boy shuf; e in his boxers.
Lula still wasn’t moving. Her eyes were all wide and bulging, and she was looking not so brown as usual.
“Can’t breathe,” Lula whispered. “Feel faint.”
And then POW, the zipper let loose, and Lula flopped onto the floor, gasping for air.
Larry and I peered down at her.
“Maybe I could use to lose a pound or two,” Lula said.
We got Lula out of the dress and back into her marigold yellow stretch slacks, matching scoop-neck sweater, and black flak vest. And neither of us mentioned that she looked like a giant bumblebee.
“Are you okay?” Larry asked her.
“Pretty much, but I need a doughnut.”
“No doughnuts!” Larry and I said in unison.
“Oh yeah,” Lula said. “I forgot.”
“I have to get back to work,” I said to Lula. “Are you coming with me?”
“I guess,” Lula said. “But we gotta stop at your mama’s house. Your granny was supposed to cook up a recipe I gave her.”
ELEVEN
MY MOTHER AND Grandma Mazur were in the kitchen. My mother was at the stove, stirring red sauce, and Grandma was at the sink, drying pots stacked in the Rubbermaid dish drainer.
“I made up the recipe just like you said,” Grandma told Lula. “And then I put the sauce on some pulled pork. It’s in the casserole dish in the refrigerator.”
“How does it taste?” Lula asked. “What do you think of it?”
“It tastes okay, but I got the trots as soon as I ate it. I’ve been in the bathroom ever since. I got hemorrhoids on hemorrhoids.”
“Get it out of the refrigerator before your father gets hold of it,” my mother said to me. “Bad enough I’ve got your grandmother running upstairs every ten minutes. I don’t want to have to listen to the two of them fighting over who gets in first.”
I took the casserole dish out of the refrigerator and lifted the lid. It looked good, and it smelled great.
“Do you want to try some?” I asked Lula.
“Ordinarily,” Lula said. “But I’m on a diet. Maybe you should taste it.”
“Not in a hundred years,” I told her.
