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'A couple hundred.'
Lula slanted a look at me. 'And you want a guarantee for that kind of money?'
She was right. A guarantee was unrealistic. In fact, it was unrealistic to think I could find a car that actually ran for that kind of money.
Lula hauled out her cell phone, scrolled through the phone book, and dialed a number. 'I have a friend who needs a car,' she said when the phone connected. 'Un hunh,' she said. 'Un hunh, un hunh, un hunh.' She turned to me. 'Do you need a registration?'
'Yes!'
'Yeah,' Lula said into the phone. 'She'd like one of those.'
Isn't this fun,' Grandma Mazur said from the back seat. 'I can't wait to see your new car.'
Lula disconnected, turned out of the Burg, an
d headed across town. When we got to Stark Street Lula hit the automatic door locks.
'Don't worry,' Lula said. `I'm just locking the doors for good measure. We aren't going into the bad part of town. Well, okay, maybe it's a bad part of town, but it's not the worst part of town.
We're not going into gangland. This here is the part of town where the unorganized criminals live.'
Grandma had her nose pressed to the glass. 'I've never seen anything like this,' she said. 'Everything's got writing on it. And there's a building that's been all burned out and now it's boarded up. Are we still in Trenton? Does the mayor know about this? How about Joe Juniak? Now that he's a congressman he should be looking into these things.'
'I used to work on this street when I was a 'ho,' Lula said.
'No kidding?' Grandma said. 'Isn't that something. Are there any working ladies out now? I sure would like to see one.'
We kept a look out for working ladies but none turned up.
'Slow time of the day,' Lula said.
Lula made a right onto Fisher, went one block, and parked in front of a narrow two-story house that looked like it was decaying from the bottom up. Clearly it had once been part of a row of attached houses, but the houses on either side had disappeared and only their connecting walls remained. The lots had been mostly cleared of debris, but the landscaping was war zone. An occasional piece of pipe remained, mixed into smatterings of crushed rubble that hadn't made the last truck out. A nine-foot-high razor wire fence had been erected around each of the lots. Refrigerators, washing machines, gas grills, lawn furniture, and a couple ATVs, all with varying degrees of rust, were displayed in the one lot. The second lot was filled with cars.
These lots are owned by a guy named Hog,' Lula said. 'Besides the lots he's got a garage on the next block. He buys junker cars at auction, fixes them up enough to get them running, and then sells them to dummies like us. Sometimes he gets cars from other sources, but we don't want to talk about that.'
Those would be the cars without registration?' I asked.
'Hog can get a registration for any car you want,' Lula said. It's just you gotta pay extra for it.'
Grandma was out of the Firebird. Those lawn chairs with the yellow cushions look pretty nice,' she said. 'I might have to take a look at them.'
I jumped out after her and grabbed her by the purse strap.
'Don't leave my side. Don't wander off. Don't talk to anyone.'
A large guy with skin the color of hot chocolate and a body like a cement truck strolled over to us. 'Lula tells me somebody wants to buy a car,' he said. 'You be happy to know you came to the right place because we got some fine cars here.'
'We don't want too fine a car,' Lula said. 'We're sort of shopping for a bargain.'
'How much of a bargain?
'Two hundred dollars and that includes plates and registration.'
'That don't even cover my overhead. I got expenses. I got middlemen.'
'Your middlemen are all in jail,' Lula said. 'The only expenses you got is filling your car with gas so you can drive over to the workhouse to pick up your sorry-ass relatives.'
'Ouch,' Hog said. That's nasty. You're getting me all excited.'
