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“Yeah.”
“Nope. You're it, so far as I could tell.” Lula cut her eyes to me. “I don't suppose it was you.”
“No.”
“Okay, so it wasn't you directly, but it might have had something to do with the bugs you put on him.”
“You didn't just say that. And you're never going to say that again,” I said to Lula. “In fact, yesterday you didn't see or hear anything about bugs.”
“I must have hallucinated it.”
“Exactly.”
“My lips are sealed.”
I turned off South Broad and took Route to Groveville Road. I crossed the railroad tracks and started looking for the road that led to Diggery's house.
“This don't look familiar,” Lula said.
“That's because we were here in the summer last time.”
“I think it's 'cause we're in the wrong place. You should have MapQuested this,” Lula said. “I always MapQuest.”
“We're not in the wrong place. We just missed a road.”
“Do you know the name of the road?”
“No.”
“See, you needed to MapQuest.”
A rusted-out pickup blew past us. It had a gun rack across the back window, a Grateful Dead sticker on the bumper, and a rebel flag flying from the antenna. It looked to me like it belonged in Diggery's neighborhood, so I hung a U-turn and kept it in sight, leaving Groveville Road for a winding two-lane road strewn with potholes.
“This looks more like it,” Lula said, watching the countryside fly by. “I remember some of these pathetic excuses for a house.”
We passed a shanty constructed of tar paper and particleboard, eased around a bend in the road, and Diggery's trailer was to the left, set back about fifty feet. I continued driving until I was out of sight of the trailer. I turned around, cruised past Diggery's again, and parked just beyond the bend. If Diggery saw me parking in front of his house, he'd be halfway to Newark by the time I got out of my car.
“I don't think anybody's home,” Lula said. “I did
n't see any cars in the yard.”
“I'm going to snoop around anyway. Are you coming?”
“I suppose, but if I see that snake, I'm outta there. I hate snakes. I don't care if that snake wraps itself around your neck, I'm telling you right now, I'm not staying to help.”
Diggery lived on a sad patch of parched and frozen hardscrabble. His double-wide trailer had rust stains running from top to bottom, with cankerous rot eating at the trailer floor. The piece of junk was set a foot off the ground on cinderblocks and was held together with duct tape. Grave robbing obviously didn't pay all that well. There were hardwoods behind the trailer. No leaves at this time of year, just barren, naked stalks of trees. It was late morning, but there was little light filtering through the thick gray cloud cover.
“There's a back door on the other side,” I said to Lula. “You take the back door, and I'll take the front door.”
“The hell I will,” Lula said. “First off, I don't want no Diggery opening that door and knocking me on my ass trying to get to the woods. And second… well, that's all there is. There's no second. I'm going in behind you, so I can be first out if the snake s there.”
There was no answer when I knocked on the door, but then I hadn't expected an answer. The little Diggery’s were in school. The big Diggery’s were probably picking through Dumpsters, looking for lunch. I pushed the door open and cautiously looked inside. I flipped a switch by the door and a forty-watt bulb blinked on in what might pass for the living room. I stepped in and listened for rustling, slithering sounds.
Lula stuck her head in and sniffed the air. “I smell snake,” she said.
I didn't know what a snake smelled like, but I suspected it was a lot like a Diggery.
“Snoop around and see if you can find something that tells us where Simon is working,” I said to Lula. “A pay stub, a matchbook, a map with a big orange X on it.”
