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“What kind of deal?”
“How about you buy her a television for her room if she promises not to go off like that ever again.”
“I like that deal,” Grandma said. “I could use a television in my room. I could watch whatever I wanted if I had my own television.”
Everyone has a price.
“I guess that would be okay,” my mother said. “We could get you a little flat screen that would sit on your bureau.”
“I’m having car problems,” I said. “I was wondering if I could borrow Uncle Sandor’s Buick.”
“Sure,” my grandmother said. “Help yourself.”
When my Great-?Uncle Sandor went into the nursing home, he left his 1953 powder-?blue-?and-?white Buick to Grandma Mazur. Grandma Leadfoot had her license revoked and isn’t able to drive the car, but the car lives in my father’s garage for emergency use.
“Sweet Thing, you’ve got a heck of a gene pool,” Diesel said, following me out of the house. “Your grandmother is fearless. She’s not even afraid of your mother.”
“Grandma’s philosophy is now or never.”
I opened the garage door and Diesel’s smile widened. “This is a car.”
Actually, it only looked like a car. It drove like a refrigerator on wheels. I gave Diesel the keys and climbed onto the passenger seat.
Diesel powered the car out of the Burg to Hamilton Avenue, and we cruised by the car wash. Not a lot going on in the rain. No sign of Delvina. We’d watched for him on the way over with Lula and hadn’t seen him then, either.
“What will we do if we find Delvina?” I asked Diesel.
“Good question. If he was a normal person, we could sit on him and get him detoxed. Unfortunately, I don’t think detoxing Delvina will entirely eliminate his desire to kill us.
We parked across the street half a block away, and I called Connie. “Tell me about Delvina’s car wash. What does he do with it? Launder money? Run numbers? Pimp out hookers?”
“All of the above,” Connie said. “I’m not sure about the laundering, but it’s a cash operation, so it stands to reason he washes more than cars.”
“How about employees? Would anyone have access to the safe besides Delvina?”
“So far as I know, he hires a bunch of dumb kids. If anyone else had access to the safe, I’d think it was his stooge, Mickey”
“Okay, here’s what we’ve got,” I said to Diesel. “He kidnapped Grandma and extorted Snuggy. He runs numbers out of the car wash, has a stable of hookers, and probably washes money. Surely we can get him sent away for at least one of those.”
We’d sat there for a half hour and I was getting twitchy. Time was passing and Delvina was out there plotting God-?knew-?what.
My cell phone rang and I snatched it out of my purse.
“Delvina was here,” Connie said. “He burst into the office like a crazy person, ranting and waving a gun around. He said he was looking for you and the a
lien. I’m guessing that would be Diesel. Clearly, neither of you was here, so he took off. He was rambling on about how you vacated your apartment, but he’d track you down. I think he might be going to your parents’ house next. He said he knew where you lived.”
“Stay here in the Buick and watch the car wash,” Diesel said. “I’ll go to your parents’ house. If Delvina shows up, don’t make a move. Just sit tight and call me.”
“Take the Buick. It’ll be faster.”
He was out of the car. “I don’t need the Buick.”
“You aren’t going to steal a car, are you?”
“Close your eyes and count to a hundred.”
I closed my eyes and counted to twenty. I opened my eyes and Diesel was gone. I looked down the street. Was a car missing from the curb?
