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“I got a high metabolism. And I gotta keep my strength up in case we get into some dangerous situation. For instance, you need money, and one way you could get it is for us to snag Antwan and haul his butt back to jail. I wouldn’t want to do that on a empty stomach.”
“We didn’t have a whole lot of success at snagging him last time.”
“Yeah, but we got the advantage this time. We could sneak up on him, on account of he’s probably not hearing so good since you blew his ear to kingdom come. And noon is coming up. He’s probably at the basketball court. Even if he don’t feel like playing with just one ear I bet he still goes there. If you’re part of a group like that you gotta show up no matter what or they trash-talk you.”
“I don’t think men do that.”
“Trash-talk don’t have a gender. Whoever’s missing gets talked about. It’s a rule.”
“So if I’m not at the bonds office, you and Connie talk about me?”
“Damn straight we do. Unless Vinnie isn’t there. Then we talk about him.”
“Do you have any idea how we’re going to capture Antwan with all his gang around him?”
“I got it all worked out. We go to the office and get some stuff from the storeroom. You can’t imagine what’s back there. I’m saying we get loaded for bear. We go out there nuclear. There’s rocket launchers and some really nasty-looking automatic weapons. There’s stuff in that storeroom that makes an assault rifle look like a toy.”
“We can’t go onto a public basketball court with a rocket launcher.”
“Sure we can. People do it all the time. Don’t you look at the news?”
“Think of something else.”
“Okay, but that was my best idea. You’ve gotten real picky since you became a butcher.”
“I’m not a butcher. I was never a butcher.”
“Well, you worked for a butcher.”
“I say we go with the original plan of watching him and waiting for him to get separated from his posse.”
“I guess we could do that, but it hasn’t got much bling to it.”
“I don’t care about bling. I want to bring him in with as little violence and bloodshed as possible.”
“If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do, but you’re never gonna sell movie rights that way.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“You got that right. If this was a movie I’d have a rocket launcher.”
We hung out at the basketball court until two o’clock, when the game broke up. Antwan had sat the game out, not saying much, not moving around. His ear was covered with a gigantic white bandage. He left with Bear, walking slowly, heading toward Bear’s apartment.
“Antwan looks like he got a headache,” Lula said. “He should have taken more drugs. I’m sure he got access to a lot.”
We crept along in the Firebird, keeping them in sight, keeping as much distance as possible.
“I don’t suppose you got any bullets in your gun yet,” Lula said.
“I don’t like shooting people.”
“Yeah, but ironic how that works out.”
Bear and Antwan stepped into a fast-food burger place, and we waited a block away. Ten minutes later they came out carrying bags of food and kept walking toward Bear’s apartment.
“They’re going in there and eat lunch and play videogames and take a nap,” Lula said. “They aren’t coming out for a long time, and I gotta go potty.”
“You went to the ladies’ room at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”
