Notorious Nineteen

“And if you don’t have any priors you might get away with community service.”
    “Uh-oh,” Logan said. “I might have had a few substance indiscretions.”
    “Guess you’re goin’ to the pokey, then,” Lula said.
    His eyes darted from me to Lula and back to me, and he bolted, lunging out of the tent, knocking me over. “No!”
    I scrambled to my feet and ran flat out, but I couldn’t catch him. Logan dodged traffic on Third and disappeared down the street.
    Lula came clattering after me on her four-inch Via Spiga spike heels. “He’s a fast bugger,” she said, bending at the waist, trying to catch her breath. “You should have just shot him.”
    “He’s unarmed.”
    “Yeah, but he dissed you.”
    “I’m going back for the tiki,” I said to Lula. “At least Vinnie will have his collateral.”
    The three men were still standing in the same spot, still smoking, when Lula and I returned to the shantytown.
    “How’d that go?” one of them asked.
    “He got away,” Lula said. “He could really run.”
    “He got motivation,” the man said.
    I crawled into Logan’s tent and took the tiki. “Me too.”
    “Uh-oh,” the man said. “He’s not gonna like you take the tiki. That tiki talks to him.”
    I carted the tiki across the field, put it into the backseat, and clicked a seat belt around it.
    “Good thing your Uncle Sandor had seat belts put into this car,” Lula said. “Otherwise Tiki would be rolling around back there.”
    I got behind the wheel, plugged the key into the ignition, and jumped when someone rapped on my window.
    It was Ranger.
    “You left the contents of your purse in my car last night,” he said, handing me a plastic baggie.
    “Thanks. And I have your gun.” I pulled the Ruger out of my bag and gave it to Ranger.
    He held the gun flat in his hand and looked at it. “It smells like orange blossoms.”
    “I washed it and sprayed it with air freshener.”
    “You washed it?”
    “I wore rubber gloves and scrubbed it with my vegetable brush. It was . . . icky.”
    He yanked open the driver’s side door, pulled me out of the car, and kissed me. The kiss involved tongue and a hand on my ass, and made my nipples tingle.
    “I can always count on you to brighten my day,” Ranger said.
    Ranger drove off, and I got back into the Buick.
    “That was hot,” Lula said. “Imagine what he’d do if you washed his Glock .”
    “I’m a little flustered,” I said. “What was I doing before Ranger knocked on the window?”
    “You were gonna drive somewhere.”
    “Do you know where?”
    “You didn’t say, but we could ride around and look for bad guys.”
    I went back to Broad and took Broad to Stark Street.
    “This here’s a good choice,” Lula said. “There’s always lots of bad guys on Stark Street.”
    I was looking for one in particular. Melvin Barrel. I drove the length of Stark, all the way to the no-man’s-land where the redbrick row houses are covered with gang graffiti, the insides are gutted from crack fires, the rats are as big as barn cats, and the human inhabitants hide in the shadows.
    I made a U-turn and did another pass down Stark. I slowedwhen I got to Barrel’s rooming house, idled in front of the house for a moment, and was about to drive away when I saw Barrel on the next block, walking toward us.
    “Do you see him?” I asked Lula.
    “Yeah, I see him. And he don’t see us. He’s texting on his cellphone, not paying attention.”
    I cut the engine, and Lula and I got out and went to the sidewalk. I tucked cuffs into the waistband of my jeans for easy access, put my illegal stun gun into my back pocket, and got a grip on my pepper spray.
    “What’s the plan?” Lula asked. “How about I distract him by offering him some ’ho services, and then you could sneak up behind him and give him a thousand volts. How’s that sound?”
    “Sounds good. Make sure you turn him around so he doesn’t see me.”
    I slipped into the doorway of a building, Lula headed for Barrel, and Barrel stepped off the curb still texting. A shiny black Mercedes sped down the side street and hit Barrel straight on. Barrel got punted about ten feet, and the Mercedes ran over him. My stomach instantly got sick and my breath caught in my throat.
    “Ow,” Lula said. “That gotta hurt.”
    The Mercedes came to a stop, and two men got out. They were all blinged up in gold chains and flashy running suits, and the one had a lightning bolt cut into his hair.
    Lula and I