“It ticked? Bombs don’t tick anymore. Where did they get their material, WWI surplus?”
“Maybe it was something rubbing against a moving part. I don’t know anything about this stuff. It was making a noise that sounded like ticking. Anyway, these guys aren’t smart.”
“I noticed. It makes it all the more annoying that we can’t catch them.”
“How’s Bob?” I asked.
“Bob is fine. His intestines are squeaky clean.”
“How are you?”
“I’m clean, too.”
And then I couldn’t help myself. The bitch part of me sneaked out. “How’s Joyce?”
“Joyce is Joyce,” Morelli said.
Lula hauled herself to her feet. “I’m in a bad mood,” she said. “I’m in a mood to get me some Marco the Maniac. I’ve had it with this shit. It’s one thing to kill me, but blowin’ up my Firebird is goin’ too far.” She looked at her watch. “We gotta get to the park. We gotta sign in.”
“We haven’t got a car. The Buick is parked at Rangeman.”
“I’ll call Connie. She can take us.”
SIXTEEN
CONNIE DROVE A silver Camry with rosary beads hanging from her rear view mirror and a Smith amp; Wesson stuck under the driver’s seat. No matter what went down, Connie was covered.
I was in the backseat with Grandma, and Lula was next to Connie. We were in the parking lot adjacent to the field where the cook-off was to be held, and we were watching competitors pull in, dragging everything from mobile professional kitchens to U-hauls carrying grills and worktables.
“I didn’t expect this,” Grandma said. “I figured we come with a jar of sauce, and they’d have some chicken for us.”
“We got a grill,” Lula said, getting out of the Camry. “We just didn’t bring it yet.”
“Did you get a set of rules when you registered?” Connie asked Lula.
“No. I did the express register, bein’ that the organizer was under some duress. And on top of that, I didn’t have to pay no registration fee, so he might have been trying to save on paper.”
A registration table had been set up at the edge of the lot. Competitors were signing in, taking a set of instructions, and leaving with a tray.
“What’s with the tray?” Lula asked the guy in line in front of us.
“It’s the official competition tray. You put the food that’s going to be judged on the tray.”
“Imagine that,” Grandma said. “Isn’t that something?”
We got our tray and our rules, and we stepped aside to read through the instructions.
“It says here that we can’t use a gas grill,” Connie said. “We need to cook on wood or charcoal. And we have to pick a category. Ribs, chicken, or brisket.”
“I’m thinking ribs,” Lula said. “Seems to me it’s harder to poison someone with ribs. I guess there’s always that trichinosis thing, but you don’t know about that for years. And I’m gonna have to get a different grill.”
“All these people got tents and tables and signs with their name on it,” Grandma said. “We need some of that stuff. We need a name.”
“How about Vincent Plum Bail Bondettes,” Connie said.
“I’m not being nothin’ associating me with Vincent Plum,” Lula said. “Bad enough I gotta work for the little pervert.”
“I want a sexy name,” Grandma said. “Like Hot Vagina.”
“Flamin’ Assholes would be better,” Lula said. “That’s what happens when you eat our sauce. Can you say Flamin’ Assholes on television?”
“This is big,” I said, looking out over the field. “There are; ags with numbers on them all over the place. Every team is assigned a number.”
“We’re number twenty-seven,” Lula said. “That don’t sound like a good number to me.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not memorable,” Lula said. “I want to be number nine.”
My eye was starting to twitch, and I had a dull throb at the base of my skull. “Probably, they gave us Chipotle’s number,” I said.
“Do you think?”
“Absolutely. He got decapitated, and you registered late, so you got his number.”
I hoped she bought this baloney, because I didn’t want to hang out while Lula pulled a gun on the registration lady.
“That makes sense,” Lula said. “I guess it’s okay then. Let’s find our spot.”
We walked down rows of flags and finally found twenty-seven. It was a little patch of grass between the red- and-white-striped canopy of Bert’s BBQ and the brown canopy of The Bull Stops Here. Our neighbors had set up shop and taken off. From what I could see, that was the routine. Stake out your territory, get your canopy and table ready to go. Hang your sign. Leave for the day.
“The instructions say we can get back in here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” Connie said. “We can start cooking anytime we want after that. The judging is at six in the evening.”
“We got a lot of stuff to get together,” Lula said. “To start, we gotta find one of them canopies and a grill.”
“Not everybody has a canopy,” Grandma said.
“Yeah, but the canopy is classy, and it keeps the sun off the top of your head, so you don’t get a sunburn,” Lula said.
We all looked at the top of Lula’s head. Not much chance of sunburn there. Not a lot of sunlight reached Lula’s scalp.
“I’ve got a couple hours free this afternoon,” I said to Lula. “We can go around and try to collect some of the essentials. We just have to stop by Rangeman, so I can get the Buick.”
“I’ll go with you,” Grandma said.
“THE FIRST THING we gotta do is get us a truck,” Lula said. “This Buick isn’t gonna hold a grill and all. I bet we could borrow a truck from Pookey Brown. He owns that junkyard and used-car lot at the end of Stark Street. He used to be a steady customer of mine when I was a ’ho.”
“Boy,” Grandma said. “You had lots of customers. You know people everywhere.”
“I had a real good corner. And I never had a business manager, so I was able to keep my prices down.”
I didn’t want to drive the length of Stark, so I cut across on Olden and only had to go two blocks down to the junk-yard. The name on the street sign read C.J. SCRAP METAL, but Pookey Brown ran it, and scrap metal was too lofty a description for Pookey’s business. Pookey was a junk collector. He ran a private dump. Pookey had almost two acres of broken, rusted, unwanted crapola. Even Pookey himself looked like he was expired. He was thin as a reed, frizzy haired, gaunt featured, and his skin tone was gray. I had no clue to his age. He could be forty. He could be a hundred and ten. And I couldn’t imagine what Pookey would do with a ’ho.
“There’s my girl,” Pookey said when he saw Lula. “I never get to see you anymore.”
“I keep busy working at the bond office,” Lula told him. “I need a favor. I need to borrow a truck until tomorrow night.”
“Sure,” Pookey said. “Just take yourself over to the truck section and pick one out.”
If you had a junker car or truck, and somehow you could manage to get it to C.J. Scrap, you could park it there and walk away. Some of them even had license plates attached. And every now and then, one got parked with a body in the trunk. There were thirteen cars and three pickup trucks in Pookey’s “used car” lot today.
“Any of these trucks run?” Lula asked.
“The red one got a couple miles left,” Pookey said. “I could put a plate on for you. You need anything else?”
