The junker SUV was gone. This car stealing stuff was getting old.
“It’s a wonder anyone is ever able to get home in this neighborhood,” Lula said. “You leave your car for two minutes and the car fairy comes and takes it.”
Lula’s giant spider hairdo had been rearranged by the rooster and was now more rat’s nest. She was wearing a black leather bustier, a denim skirt that barely covered her ass, and over-the-knee black leather boots with four- inch spike heels. I imagined the outfit came from her S&M ho collection.
We were standing pretty much on the corner of Stark and Sidney. A red tricked-out Grand Cherokee pulled up to us, the passenger window slid down, and a guy leaned out at us.
“Hey bitch,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Go away,” Lula said. “We’re busy here.”
“You don’t look busy. You look like you’re waitin’ to do me.”
“My cousin Ernie isn’t gonna like this,” Lula said to me. “How’s he gonna get to work tomorrow?”
The Cherokee doors opened and two scrawny guys in too big clothes got out and strutted over to Lula.
“You look like a workin’ bitch,” the one guy said. “How come you don’t wanna work me?”
“I’m retired,” Lula said. “Take a hike.”
“I’ll hike right up your fat lady ass,” the guy said.
Lula turned on him, eyes narrowed. “Did you call me fat? ’Cause you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to mess with me. I just lost Ernie’s car. And I just had root canal, and my meds are wearin’ off, and I’m feelin’ mean as a snake. I’m a woman on the edge right now, you punk ass, little pencil dick.”
“I ain’t no pencil dick. You want to see my dick?”
He unzipped his big baggy pants, and Lula tagged both of them with her stun gun.
“Hunh,” Lula said. She looked down at the two guys sprawled on the sidewalk, and then she looked over at their SUV. “I think we just got a car.”
“No way! That’s grand theft auto.”
“You want to stay here and wait for a bus?”
Good point.
We scrambled into the Cherokee with Lula behind the wheel, and we took off. Two police cars passed us going in the opposite direction. Lights flashing. No siren. Most likely en route to the cockfight.
“What happened in the warehouse?” I asked Lula.
“There wasn’t anybody in the back room, so I went in to look at the chickens, and right off one of them was acting real friendly. He was looking at me with his head sort of tilted, and he was making clucking sounds like the Little Red Hen would make. And I figured he wanted me to pet him, so I opened the door to his cage just a little to get my hand in, and next thing he busted out and attacked me. It was Ziggy all over again. And then when I was trying to get him off my head, I knocked into a stack of cages, and they fell over and broke apart, and the chickens all came rushing out. There was demon chickens all over the place, squawkin’ and clawin’ at each other. It was a chicken nightmare. I won’t be able to sleep tonight thinkin’ about them chickens. And now they’re runnin’ around loose, peckin’ the eyes out of people. ’Course it’s Stark Street so those chickens are gonna have to duke it out with the drugged-up nutcases and hungry people lookin’ for chicken parts.”
We rode in silence after that, thinking our own thoughts about the Stark Street chickens. Lula drove through the center of the city, turned onto Hamilton, and parked behind my Shelby.
“What are you going to do with this SUV?” I asked her.
“I’m gonna give it to Ernie. Seems only fair he gets this car since someone stole his.”
“But
“And?”
There comes a point in conversation with Lula where it’s best to drop back and punt.
“Okay then,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Hope your tooth feels better.”
“Yep. Happy trails,” Lula said.
I drove home on autopilot, talking to myself, my mind alternating between numb mush and episodes of panic.
“I hate when people want to kill me,” I said out loud to myself. “It makes my stomach feel weird. And I worry about Rex. Who would take care of him if I got murdered? I don’t even have a will. And do you know why I haven’t got a will? It’s because I don’t have anything to leave anyone. How pathetic is that?”
I pulled into the lot to my apartment building and parked next to Mr. Molnar’s blue Accord. I was halfway to the building’s back door, worrying about a Dave Brewer appearance, when I heard someone behind me gun a car engine. Regina! I jumped to safety, and she roared past me, sideswiping a beater Dodge that belonged to Mrs. Gonzoles’s loser son. One more dent in the Dodge wasn’t going to get noticed. I sprinted to the building while Regina circled, and I made it inside before she reached me on the second pass.
I took a deep breath and told myself things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Regina would get tired of trying to run me over, Nick Alpha would get arrested, Dave would eventually move on, and one of these days my reproductive system would get back to normal. I took the stairs and thought about Ranger naked, but I wasn’t in a swoon by the time I reached the second floor, so clearly I had a way to go on the path to sexual recovery. At least Dave wasn’t lurking in the hall when I peeked out from the stairwell.
THIRTY-SEVEN
MY CELL PHONE woke me up from a restless sleep.
“I’m at your door. I forgot my key.” Morelli said. “I’ve been knocking and ringing your doorbell. Where are you?”
“I’m here. Hang on.” I dragged myself out of bed and let Morelli in. “What time is it?” I asked him.
“It’s eight o’clock.” He set a bag and a container of coffee on my kitchen counter. “I brought you breakfast. I’m taking off for south Jersey. I want to see the crime scene before it gets dismantled. I’ll probably be gone for most of the day. I was hoping you could walk Bob around noon.”
“Sure.”
He gave me something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “You look like you had a rough night.”
“I had a
“Let me take a guess. The dreams were about chickens.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Did Alpha get arrested?”
Morelli opened my coffee for me. “No. By the time the police got to the warehouse the evidence was scattered over a ten-mile radius.”
I looked in the bag and pulled out a container of orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. “Thanks for bringing me breakfast. This was really nice of you.”
“Yeah, I’m a nice guy.”
He hooked his finger into the neckline of my cotton knit pajama top, looked inside at my breasts, and gave a small sigh.
“So near and yet so far,” he said.
He kissed me and left.
I dropped a chunk of bagel into Rex’s cage, and I ate the rest. I drank the orange juice and took the coffee into my bedroom to drink while I dressed.
A half hour later I was at the bonds bus.
“Where’s Lula?” I asked Connie.
“She said she’d be in late. Something about her hair.”
“It looks like the cockfighting isn’t going to get Alpha off the street. I’m going to need another angle.”
“I’m sure he’s involved in a lot of bad stuff, but the only other thing I know for sure is the security racket.”
“Do you have store owners’ names?”
