Explosive Eighteen(5)

“Good,” I said, “because I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

Vinnie yelled at Connie from inside the bus. “The phone’s ringing. Get the friggin’ phone!”

“You get the phone,” Connie yelled back.

“I don’t do phones,” Vinnie said.

Connie made an Italian hand gesture at the bus. “Idiot.”

“I suppose we should do something,” Lula said after Connie left to get the phone. “What else have you got there?”

I shuffled through my stack of skips. “Two armed robberies.”

“Pass on them. They always shoot at us.”

“Domestic violence.”

“Too depressing,” Lula said. “What else you got?”

“A purse snatcher and credit card fraud.”

“I’m liking credit card fraud. They never have a lot of fight in them. They’re always just sneaky little weasels. They just sit in the house all day shopping on the Internet. What’s this moron’s name?”

“Lahonka Goudge.”

“Lahonka Goudge? What kind of name is that? That gotta be wrong. That’s a terrible name.”

“It’s what it says here. She lives in public housing.”

Forty minutes later, we were in Lula’s car, motoring through the projects and searching for Lahonka’s apartment. It was midmorning and the streets were quiet. Kids were in school and day care, hookers were sleeping, and the drug dealers were congregating in parks and playgrounds.

“There it is,” I said to Lula. “She’s in 3145A. It’s the ground-floor apartment with the kids’ toys in the yard.”

Lula parked, and we walked to the door, picking our way around bikes, dolls, soccer balls, and big plastic trucks. I raised my hand to knock, the door opened, and a woman looked out at us. She was my height, shaped like a pear, dressed in tan spandex pants and a poison-green tank top. Her hair was standing straight out from her head like it had been spray-starched and ironed, and she had huge hoop earrings hanging from her earlobes.

“What do you want?” the woman said. “And I don’t need any. Do I look like I need something? I don’t think so. And don’t touch none of my kids’ shit or I’ll turn the dog out on you.”

And she slammed the door shut.

“She got a personality like a Lahonka,” Lula said. “She even looks like a Lahonka.”

I banged on the door, and the door got yanked open.

“What?” the woman said. “I already told you I don’t want nothin’. I got a business goin’ here. I’m a workin’ woman, and I’m not buying any cookies, moisturizer, laundry soap, or jewelry. Maybe if you had some quality weed, but you don’t smell like weed pushers.”

She tried to slam the door shut again, but I had my foot in it. “Lahonka Goudge?” I asked.

“Yeah, so what?”

“Bond enforcement. You missed a court date and we need to reschedule you.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You got the wrong Lahonka. And anyways, even if I was the right Lahonka, I wouldn’t be going with you, on account of I got stuff to do. I got a pack of kids who need new sneakers, and you’re cutting into my prime earning time. I got eBay auctions goin’ on, and I’m making timely purchases elsewhere.”

Lula put her weight against the door and pushed it open. “We don’t got all day,” she said. “We got a whole batch of idiots to bring in, and I got a lunch date with a Deluxe Mr. Clucky Burger.”

“Oh yeah?” Lahonka said. “Well, Clucky Burger this.”

And she gave Lula a two-handed shove that knocked her back two feet into me. I lost my balance, and we both went ass-first to the ground. The front door slammed shut, security bolts slid into place, and Lahonka pulled the shade down on her front window.

“Probably, she’s not gonna open her door to you again,” Lula said.

I agreed. It was unlikely.

Lula hauled herself up and adjusted her girls. “Is it too early for lunch?”

I looked at my watch. “It’s almost one o’clock in Greenland.”

• • •





“That Lahonka took me by surprise,” Lula said, finishing off her second Clucky Burger. “I wasn’t on my game.”

We were eating in Lula’s car because there was a critical time limit to hanging out in Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Minuscule globules of fry fat floated in the air like fairy dust, and exposure lasting longer than six minutes left you smelling like Clucky Extra Crispy all day. It wasn’t an entirely bad smell, but it tended to attract packs of hungry dogs and big beefy men, neither of which I was currently interested in.