20 Takedown Twenty (25 page)

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.”

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?”