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“You’ve been very annoying,” Frankie said to me. “You’ve caused my father a lot of anxiety.”
“Holy cats,” Lula said. “I just got it. Your daddy owns Plover’s.”
“When do you sleep?” he asked me. “Are you a vampire? Do you haunt at night? You were supposed to be in bed when I sent you that present. How about if you walk outside with me and we go for a ride. I have a nice car. I have a Maserati. You ever ride in a Maserati?”
“Does your daddy know you’re here?” I asked him.
“He’s working at the store,” Frankie said. “He does all the tedious stuff, and I get to do the security-related operations. I try to put a creative spin on them.”
“Like car bombs and shooting bottle rockets out of can cannons?”
“I like things that goboom.”
“Did Geara send you here?” I asked him.
“Nobody sends me anywhere,” he said. “I don’t take orders. I give them.”
“That’s not what I hear,” I said. “I hear that you’re Geara’s stooge.”
I heard Lula ease Connie’s bottom drawer open, getting ready to go for the gun, just in case.
“That’s not nice,” Frankie said. “You should have better manners. Especially since I offered to treat you to a ride in my Maserati.”
“Why do you want to take me for a ride?”
“I thought we could talk about things. I’m a businessperson and you’re a businessperson. We might have some things in common.”
“We can talk here,” I said.
Frankie cut his eyes to Lula. “In front of chubs?”
Lula leaned forward a little. “Excuse me? Were you referring to me? Did you use that word in a derogatory fashion?”
“You’re fat,” Frankie said. “Own it.”
“I’ll own your ass after I stick my foot up it,” Lula said.
“That’s just great,” Frankie said. “A fat girl with an attitude.”
“I’m not no fat girl,” Lula said. “I’m Lula.”
Frankie gave a bark of laughter. “You’re Lula? You’re the one who lives in the pink and purple house on Micklin Street?”
“What of it?” Lula said.
“I told my moron assistant to get me the address of Vinnie’s bounty hunter and she gave me yours. I didn’t find out she gave me the wrong address until the following morning. Pretty funny, right?”
Lula’s eyes almost popped out of her head, and I thought her hair might spontaneously burst into flames.
“You punk-ass piece of duck doody,” she said. “Son of a gun. Son of a bitch. Son of a peach basket.”
“I can see this isn’t going down in a friendly fashion, so I’m just going to off both of you,” Frankie said.
He reached under his blazer and pulled a gun. Lula bent down and came up with Connie’s gun. The front door opened and a large, hairy man holding two black plastic garbage bags walked in.
“It’s Grendel!” Lula shrieked. “Holy hell! It’s Grendel. He’s come to get me.”
Lula fired off a shot that went wide of everything and put a hole and a spiderweb in the front window. Frankie put a bullet in Connie’s desk, and Grendel whacked Frankie in the head with a garbage bag.
