Janet Evanovich - Takedown Twenty

“So I’m thinking you’re not working as a butcher anymore.”

“That would be good thinking.”

“You got any other places you want to look for Venetian blind cord?”

“Randy stores things in a garage behind his deli. I wouldn’t mind taking a look in the garage.”

I had Lula drive past the front of Berger’s Bits. Lights were on inside, and the OPEN sign was in the door. Either he hadn’t been arrested, or else he was already out on bail. If he was released on bail he hadn’t used Vinnie as his agent.

Lula parked behind the pet groomer two stores down from the deli, and we walked the short distance to the garage.

“Looks sturdy,” Lula said.

Sturdy was an understatement. It was a bomb shelter. Big enough for a single car. Cinderblock construction. No windows. Metal roll-down door secured with a padlock.

“What’s he keep in here?” Lula asked. “This is like Fort Knox. Maybe he’s got gold in here.”

“I don’t suppose you have any bolt cutters with you?” I asked her.

“Darn,” Lula said. “I left them in my other purse. You want me to shoot the lock off?”

“No! I don’t want to attract attention.”

“Well, I don’t see how you’re gonna get in here. I think we need another activity. Like we could go look for Kevin.”

“Or you could drive me to the personal products plant and I could apply for a job there.”

“No way. I’m not taking you there. That’s a terrible idea. What kind of job you looking for?”

“The line. I could run the boxing machine for the sanitary napkins.”

“You’ll rip your arm off. You’re not good with machines. You’ll get your shirt caught in some moving part, and next thing you won’t have one of your arms. And besides, you gotta come back to the bonds office so I don’t have to work with Joyce Barnhardt. If I have to work with Barnhardt, I’ll have to kill her, and then I might go to jail, and a orange jumpsuit isn’t a good look for me.”

“I need a job. I’m down to two dollars and seventy-five cents.”

“That’s enough for a value meal at Cluck-in-a-Bucket. You could get a Clucky Burger and a Coke for that. I bet you didn’t have no breakfast, and that’s why you got that pale desperate look to you.”

“I have that pale desperate look because I have a hangover, and I’m broke, and unemployed.”

“In that case you should add fries. Nothing gets rid of a hangover better than cheap-ass fries and a Coke. What were you drinking to get a hangover?”

“Peach schnapps.”

“Girl, no one should ever drink peach schnapps.”

We returned to Lula’s car and drove to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. I got the value meal with fries, and Lula got everything else on the menu.

“How can you eat all that food?” I asked her. “It’s not even a meal for you. It’s a snack.”

“I got a high metabolism. And I gotta keep my strength up in case we get into some dangerous situation. For instance, you need money, and one way you could get it is for us to snag Antwan and haul his butt back to jail. I wouldn’t want to do that on a empty stomach.”

“We didn’t have a whole lot of success at snagging him last time.”

“Yeah, but we got the advantage this time. We could sneak up on him, on account of he’s probably not hearing so good since you blew his ear to kingdom come. And noon is coming up. He’s probably at the basketball court. Even if he don’t feel like playing with just one ear I bet he still goes there. If you’re part of a group like that you gotta show up no matter what or they trash-talk you.”

“I don’t think men do that.”

“Trash-talk don’t have a gender. Whoever’s missing gets talked about. It’s a rule.”

“So if I’m not at the bonds office, you and Connie talk about me?”

“Damn straight we do. Unless Vinnie isn’t there. Then we talk about him .”

“Do you have any idea how we’re going to capture Antwan with all his gang around him?”

“I got it all worked out. We go to the office and get some stuff from the storeroom. You can’t imagine what’s back there. I’m saying we get loaded for bear. We go out there nuclear. There’s rocket launchers and some really nasty-looking automatic weapons. There’s stuff in that storeroom that makes an assault rifle look like a toy.”

“We can’t go onto a public basketball court with a rocket launcher.”

“Sure we can. People do it all the time. Don’t you look at the news?”

“Think of something else.”

“Okay, but that was my best idea. You’ve gotten real picky since you became a butcher.”

“I’m not a butcher. I was never a butcher.”

“Well, you worked for a butcher.”

“I say we go with the original plan of watching him and waiting for him to get separated from his posse.”

“I guess we could do that, but it hasn’t got much bling to it.”

“I don’t care about bling. I want to bring him in with as little violence and bloodshed as possible.”

“If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do, but you’re never gonna sell movie rights that way.”

“This isn’t a movie.”

“You got that right. If this was a movie I’d have a rocket launcher.”

We hung out at the basketball court until two o’clock, when the game broke up. Antwan had sat the game out, not saying much, not moving around. His ear was covered with a gigantic white bandage. He left with Bear, walking slowly, heading toward Bear’s apartment.

“Antwan looks like he got a headache,” Lula said. “He should have taken more drugs. I’m sure he got access to a lot.”

We crept along in the Firebird, keeping them in sight, keeping as much distance as possible.

“I don’t suppose you got any bullets in your gun yet,” Lula said.

“I don’t like shooting people.”

“Yeah, but ironic how that works out.”

Bear and Antwan stepped into a fast-food burger place, and we waited a block away. Ten minutes later they came out carrying bags of food and kept walking toward Bear’s apartment.

“They’re going in there and eat lunch and play videogames and take a nap,” Lula said. “They aren’t coming out for a long time, and I gotta go potty.”

“You went to the ladies’ room at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”

“Yeah, but I had the extra-large-size soda, and my body processes food real fast.”

“No problem. I’ll get out here and watch the apartment until you get back.”

“Yeah, but you’re not exactly inconspicuous standing here on the corner.”

“I’m fine. I’m in jeans and a T-shirt. I have a broken nose and finger. I look like everyone else.”

“You look like no one else . You’re white .”

“I could be Hispanic.”

“Not on your best day,” Lula said. “Besides, this is the wrong block for Hispanic. Hispanics get killed on this block.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I think we should go shopping. There’s a shoe sale at Macy’s. And I might put one of them Brahmin bags on layaway.”

“This was your idea. Remember how I needed money, and you said we should go after Antwan Brown?”

“I temporarily forgot about that while I was thinking about how fine I’d look with my new handbag.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to go to the mall. It’s just a couple miles away from the personal products plant. You could drop me off there and go shopping while I fill out an application.”

“I got a better idea. You sit in the car, and I’ll run across to the burger place to tinkle.” She took her Glock out of her purse and gave it to me. “If anyone tries to steal my wheel covers you have to shoot them.”