Janet Evanovich - Takedown Twenty

TWENTY-FOUR

LULA RETURNED TO the car with a bag of food.

“They had apple pies in there,” she said. “I thought it would help us pass the time if we had apple pies.”

We ate our apple pies and watched the apartment building. A little after three o’clock Bear came out and walked up the street. Antwan wasn’t with him.

“You got your wish,” Lula said. “It looks to me like Antwan is in there all by himself.”

“We don’t know that,” I told her. “We just know Bear isn’t with him.”

“Yeah, but I got a feeling. I’m having one of those psychic aura moments. I’m like that sometimes. I’m one of those people that gets out-of-body messages.”

“And you think this is a good time to strike?”

Lula closed her eyes. “I see him now. It’s real clear. He’s all by himself, and he’s tired after eating a bunch of burgers. He might even have taken a pill for his ear, and he’s all like Where am I? What’s going on? Like he’s fuzzy, you see what I’m saying?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I’m thinking we gotta go for it. Go get him now when he’s fuzzy.”

Deep inside my brain I knew this was a bad idea, but I needed the money. I wanted to get Antwan behind me, collect my capture fee, and move forward with my life.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

I had cuffs tucked into my back pocket and my stun gun in hand. Lula had a second pair of cuffs, some defense spray, and her gun, which I insisted remain in her purse.

We crept up the stairs, marched to Antwan’s door, and knocked. No answer.

“You see what’s going on?” Lula said. “He’s too fuzzy to answer the door.”

I knocked again, louder. BANG, BANG, BANG .

The door was wrenched open, and Antwan stood there buck naked. His Mr. Happy was very happy, saluting the flag and wearing a raincoat.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“Remember us?” Lula said. “We’re the bounty hunters, and we came to capture you.”

“What?” Antwan said. “Speak up!”

“Bounty hunters!” Lula yelled in the direction of his good ear.

A woman wearing five-inch red satin stilettos and nothing else stomped out of the bedroom. “What’s going on here?”

“Where’d you come from?” Lula said. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”

The woman turned on Antwan. “I told you I don’t put up with this kind of shit. You gonna bang these two, then you not gonna bang Shaneeka. I got my standards. I don’t do no parties, and I don’t put up with my man having some fat ’ho on the side.”

“Excuse me,” Lula said, pitched forward. “Did you just call my friend here a fat ’ho? Because that might be a hurtful statement.”

Shaneeka narrowed her eyes at Lula. “I called you a fat ’ho.”

“Better than being a skinny ’ho,” Lula said.

Shaneeka leaned forward. “Are you implying something?”

“I’m implying nothing,” Lula said. “I’m calling you a skinny ’ ho .”

“Listen up, you bitches,” Antwan said. “I got a headache.”

“First off, I’m not your bitch,” Shaneeka said. “You’re my bitch. And second, you’re in big trouble. You’ve got some explaining to do, you little worm.”

“Shaneeka, honey,” Antwan said.

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me neither,” Shaneeka said. She whirled around and stomped back into the bedroom.

Antwan looked down at himself. Mr. Happy wasn’t all that happy anymore, and the raincoat was wrinkled.

Lula clapped a cuff on him while he was considering the state of the raincoat. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you could do better than her,” Lula said to Antwan. “She’s got a attitude, and I think she might be unstable.”

Shaneeka marched out of the bedroom and she had a gun in her hand. “I heard that, and you better take your hands off my man. He isn’t much, but he’s mine .”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Lula said. “You can have him after he gets out of jail in ten or twenty years.”

Shaneeka squeezed off a shot and took out a lamp.

Everyone froze for a beat.

“Shit,” Antwan said. “The bitch is gonna kill me. She can’t shoot for snot.”

Lula and I jumped to the door and took off down the stairs. We could hear Antwan and Shaneeka yelling at each other back in the apartment, and another gunshot, but we didn’t stop running until we were in Lula’s car.

Lula peeled away from the curb and raced to the corner.

“That didn’t correspond to my vision,” Lula said. “I must have been getting a vision ahead of time. Like it was a vision going on tomorrow.” She stopped for a light and looked over at me. “Any more of those pies left in the bag?”

Lula parked at the corner of Fifteenth and Freeman, and we watched four boys who looked to be nine or ten years old tossing a football in the middle of the street halfway down the Freeman block.

“I’m going to ask them about Kevin,” Lula said.

The kids stopped playing when we approached.

“I’m looking for a giraffe,” Lula said. “I lost him, and I heard he was here in the neighborhood. Any of you kids see a giraffe?”

“What does he look like?” one of the kids asked.

“He looks like a giraffe,” Lula said. “Have you seen him?”

“Maybe, but how do I know it’s yours?”

“You’re not supposed to be saying anything,” a second kid said to the first. “I’m telling Mom on you.”

“Where’s your momma at?” Lula asked.

The kid pointed to one of the row houses. “Second floor.”

I followed Lula into the house and to the second floor, and waited while she knocked.

A woman answered, with a toddler hanging on to her leg and another under her arm. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for my lost giraffe,” Lula said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen him. He’s about eighteen feet tall, and he’s got spots on him.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” the woman said. “And you should leave it alone. Go get a new giraffe.”

“They don’t have any more at the pet store,” Lula said. “It’s not like giraffes grow on trees.”

The woman closed and locked the door.

“I think she knows something about Kevin,” Lula said to me. “I think there’s a conspiracy here.”

“A conspiracy to hide a giraffe?”

“How else do you explain it? It’s not normal to have a giraffe running around a neighborhood and nobody’s seen it. I say these people are all conspiring to hide a giraffe.”

TWENTY-FIVE

LULA’S PHONE RANG just as we reached the Firebird. It was Connie.

“She wants me to bring food,” Lula said, plugging the key into the ignition. “It’s been a real busy day and she couldn’t get out to get lunch.”

We stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket and got a super-sized Clucky Salad with Spicy Clucky Nuggets. There was a disclaimer on the box of nuggets saying they were processed in China.

“Isn’t that special,” Lula said. “These nuggets started out with a chicken in Maryland, went to China, and now here they are in Trenton. It’s like a combination of the Travel Channel and the Food Network all in one.”

Connie was waiting at the door when we rolled in.

“I’m so hungry I could gnaw my own arm off,” she said.

“We got you the salad and the nuggets like you wanted,” Lula said. “And they even gave us extra packets of sauces. There’s soy sauce, and ranch dressing, and special sauce. I don’t know what the special sauce is made of. The lettering’s real small so it’s hard to read. It might be antibiotic in case you get sick from the chicken.”

“Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Connie. “Is he still in hiding from Harry?”