Smokin Seventeen

Klaughn. I love my sister and Albert, and I especially love the kids, but it’s half a bottle of Advil when you get them all into my parents’ small house.

“We’re gonna need rubber walls if you ever get married and have kids,” Grandma said to me. “I don’t know how we could fit any more people in here, and Dave looks like the kind who’d want a big family.”

“Dave isn’t in the picture.”

“I hear different,” Grandma said. “It’s all over town about you and Dave.”

I traded my soda in for a glass of wine. If I had to deal with Valerie and the kids and talk about Dave, I was going to need alcohol.

THIRTY-SIX

“JEEZ,” LULA SAID when I met her by the bonds bus. “You look worse than me, and I just had root canal.”

“I had dinner with my parents and Valerie and Albert and the kids. The dinner was fine. And it was nice to spend time with Valerie and the girls, but the conversation kept coming back to Dave Brewer and me.”

“And?”

“And I’m not interested in him. I don’t want to date him. I don’t want him cooking in my kitchen.”

Lula did a raised eyebrow. “You don’t want him cooking in your kitchen?”

“Okay, maybe I want him cooking in my kitchen. The problem is he won’t stay in the kitchen. He wanders.”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

I put my hand up. “Let me revise that statement. I don’t even want him in my kitchen. Yes, he makes great food. Is it worth it? No. And I can’t discourage him. He doesn’t take hints. He doesn’t listen. I broke his nose, for crying out loud. And he came back to make breakfast.”

“How’d you break his nose?”

“I hit him in the face with a hair dryer.”

“Good one,” Lula said.

We were on the sidewalk, standing by an old junker SUV. It looked like it might be black under the grime, and there was some rust creeping up from the undercarriage.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met your cousin Ernie,” I said to Lula.

“Ernie works for the roads department, patching potholes. It’s not a bad job except he always smells like asphalt, and he got hit a couple times.”

We saddled up in the SUV, and Lula drove to Stark Street. We cruised past the dry cleaner, turned at the corner, and rolled down the alley. Lula stopped just short of Alpha’s building and killed the engine. Lights were on in the second-floor windows, and there was a dark-colored Mercedes sedan parked next to the dry-cleaning van.

A little before nine o’clock Alpha’s back door opened, lights were switched off in the apartment, and Alpha walked down the exterior stairs and got into the Mercedes.

“We’re in business,” Lula said.

Lula crept along behind Alpha, lights off, until Alpha took the corner and turned onto Stark. She flipped her lights on and followed two cars back. Alpha drove the length of Stark, circled the block to the alley, and pulled into the parking lot to the empty warehouse. Lula cut her lights and idled at the corner. A garage door rolled up and Alpha drove in. We waited a moment, and two more cars appeared and drove into the warehouse.

“They’re using the warehouse like a parking garage,” I said to Lula. “Pretty clever. This way the cars don’t attract attention, and no one knows an event is going on.”

“Where are they gonna have the cockfight if they park here? Is there an upstairs?”

“No. This building is all one level. It’s just a high-ceiling warehouse, but Alpha owns the warehouse across the street. I’m betting these guys are all going across the street.”

Lula backed out of the alley and hung at the corner of Stark. Alpha and two men walked out of the front door to the parking garage, crossed the street, and disappeared inside the second warehouse.

“Are we good, or what?” Lula said. “We found the cockfight.”

“We found something. We don’t actually know if it’s the cockfight.”

Lula crossed Stark and took the side street but wasn’t able to go down the alley. The entrance to the alley was blocked off by a moving van. We drove around the block and found the other alley entrance was also blocked.

“I hate this,” Lula said. “This drives me nuts. You know how Grandma Mazur’s gotta look inside the casket? That’s how this is. I drove all the way up Stark Street, and now I can’t get down this stupid alley. They got a lot of nerve blocking the alley off so we can’t go down. How’re we supposed to know if there’s a cockfight going on in there?”

Lula pulled to the curb and parked. “I’m going down that alley. They can’t keep me out. I got rights.”

“Wait! It’s not safe.” Crap. Lula was out of the car, huffing her way down the alley. I snatched the keys from the ignition and ran after her.

The alley was dark. Streetlights got shot out in this part of town and never replaced. What was the point? Halfway down the block a narrow band of light spilled out of the back of Alpha’s warehouse.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said to Lula. “These people are scary.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s Stark Street!”

“Yeah, but I want to see what’s going on. It must be something good if they’ve got the alley blocked off.”

“They’ve got it blocked because they’re doing something illegal. It’s the cockfight, or they’re unloading a hijacked truck, or they’re murdering people.”

“I bet it’s the cockfight,” Lula said. “I’ve never seen a cockfight. Not that I want to. It sounds disgusting, but it’s like a train wreck. You gotta look, right? Maybe it’s the vampire coming out in me.”

The bar of light was coming from the open back door to the warehouse. A couple vans were parked in the small adjacent lot. The vans were unoccupied, and no one was lurking by the door. Everyone was inside the warehouse.

“I bet if we looked in those vans we’d find feathers,” Lula said. “This here’s V.I.P. parking. And that open door’s practically an invitation for us to go in.”

Male voices rumbled out from the warehouse interior.

“Going in would be a bad idea,” I said to Lula. “There are men with guns and killer birds in there.”

Lula tiptoed up to the door. “We don’t know that for sure. People could be blowing this cockfighting thing way out of proportion.” She peeked inside and sucked in air. “It’s the little red hen! Except I guess it’s a rooster. And there’s a big shiny black rooster. And a bunch of cages I can’t see into.”

“Great. That’s exactly what I need to know. I’m calling this in.”

I stepped away from the warehouse, pressed myself against the side of a building where shadows were deep, and dialed police dispatch. I disconnected and realized Lula was nowhere to be seen.

I heard a scream from inside the building. It was followed by screeching and crowing, and a lot of shouting. And Lula burst out the door. Two roosters half ran, half flew past me and disappeared into the night. A third bird was attached to Lula.

“Vampire rooster!” Lula yelled.

She was batting at the bird, and the bird was squawking and flapping his wings and pecking at Lula. She managed to knock the bird off her head, and the bird turned and attacked the men coming out the door.

There was a lot of cussing and yelling and more squawking, and Lula and I took off at a dead run. We ran down the alley and hooked a left at the side street. We stopped and bent to catch our breath. I didn’t hear footsteps. No one seemed to be running after us. There was a lot of angry shouting back by the warehouse, and someone flicked a flashlight beam across the alley.

Lula straightened up and looked around. “Didn’t we park the car here?”