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And Lula pulled a 40-caliber Glock out of her purse.
1 don't mind using it either. I'm good with a gun. I got an eye for it. Watch me hit that bottle next to the bike.'
Someone had leaned a fancy red mountain bike against the big plate glass window in the front of the deli-mart. There was a quart bottle next to the bike. The bottle had a rag stuffed into it.
'No,' I said. 'No shooting!'
Too late. Lula squeezed off a shot, missed the bottle, and destroyed the bike's rear tire.
'Oops,' Lula said, doing a grimace and immediately returning the gun to her purse.
A moment later, a guy ran out of the store. He was wearing a mechanic's jumpsuit and a red devil mask. He had a small backpack slung over one shoulder and he had a gun in his right hand. His skin tone was darker than mine but lighter than Lula's. He grabbed the bottle off the ground, lit the rag with a flick of his Bic, and threw the bottle into the store. He turned to get onto the bike and realized his tire was blown to smithereens.
`Fuck,' the guy said. 'FUCK!'
'I didn't do it,' Lula said. 'Wasn't me. Someone came along and shot up your tire. You must not be popular.'
There was a lot of shouting inside the store, the guy in the devil mask turned to flee, and Victor, the Pakistani day manager, rushed out the door. 'I am done! Do you hear me?' Victor yelled. This is the fourth robbery this month and I won't stand for any more.
You are dog excrement!' he shouted at the guy in the mask. 'Dog excrement.'
Lula had her hand back in her purse. 'Hold on. I got a gun!' she said. 'Where the hell is it? Why can't you ever find the damn gun when you need it?'
Victor threw the still lit but clearly unbroken bottle at the guy in the devil mask, hitting him in the back of the head. The bottle bounced off the devil's head and smashed against my driver's side door. The devil staggered, and instinctively pulled the mask off.
Maybe he couldn't breathe, or maybe he went to feel for blood, or maybe he just wasn't thinking. Whatever the reason, the mask was only off for a second, before being yanked back over the guy's head.
He turned and looked directly at me, and then he ran across the street and disappeared into the alley between two buildings.
The bottle instantly ignited when it hit my car, and flames raced along the side and the undercarriage of the Escape.
'Holy crap,' Lula said, looking up from her purse. 'Damn.'
'Why me?' I shrieked. 'Why does this always happen to me? I can't believe this car is on fire. My cars are always getting exploded.
How many cars have I lost like this since you've known me?'
'A lot,' Lula said.
'It's embarrassing. What am I going to tell my insurance company?'
'It wasn't your fault,' Lula said.
'It's never my fault. Do they care? I don't think they care!'
'You got bad car karma,' Lula said. 'But at least you're lucky at love.'
For the last couple months I've been living with Joe Morelli.
Morelli's a very sexy, very handsome Trenton cop. Morelli and I have a long history and possibly a long future. Mostly we take it day by day, neither of us feeling the need for documented commitment right now. The good thing about living with a cop is that you never have to call home when disaster strikes. As you might suspect, that's also the bad part. Seconds after the emergency call goes in on the robbery and car fire, describing my yellow Escape, at least forty different cops, EMTs, and fire fighters will track Morelli down and tell him his girlfriend's done it again.
Lula and I moved farther from the fire, knowing from experience that an explosion was a possibility. We stood patiently waiting, listening to the sirens whining in the distance, getting closer by the second. Morelli's unmarked cop car would be minutes behind the sirens. And somewhere in the mix of emergency vehicles my professional mentor and man of mystery, Ranger, would slide in to check things out.
'Maybe I should
leave,' Lula said. There's all that filing back at the office. And cops give me the runs.'
Not to mention she was illegally carrying a concealed weapon that was instrumental in this whole fiasco.
