Eleven on Top

by Janet Evanovich

  “Not in a million years.”

  “Yeah, but they don't know you. And there's hardly anybody sneakier than you. I'd even cut you in. I'd give you ten bucks if you collected him for me.”

  I did raised eyebrows at Lula. “Ten dollars? I used to pay you fifty and up.”

  “I figure it goes by the pound and a little bitty thing like you isn't worth as much as a full-figured woman like me.” Lula took a couple beats. “Well okay, I guess that don't fly. It was worth a try though, right?”

  “Maybe you should just sit here and wait for him to come out and then you can run over him with your Firebird.”

  “That's sarcasm, isn't it? I know sarcasm when I hear it. And it's not attractive on you. You don't usually do sarcasm. You got some Jersey attitude going, don't you?”

  I slumped lower in my seat. “I'm depressed.”

  “You know what would get you out of that depression? An apprehension. You need to kick some butt. You need to get yourself empowered. I bet you'd feel real good if you snagged yourself an Emanuel Lowe.”

  “Fine. Okay. I'll get Lowe for you. The day's already in the toilet. Might as well finish it off right.” I unbuckled my seat belt. “Give me your gun and your cuffs.”

  “You haven't got your own gun?”

  “I didn't think I needed to carry a gun because I didn't think I was going to be doing this anymore. When I left the house this morning I thought I was going to be working at the dry cleaners.”

  Lula handed me her gun and a pair of cuffs. “You always gotta have a gun. It's like wearing undies. You wouldn't go out of the house without undies, would you? Same thing with a gun. Boy, for being a bounty hunter all that time you sure don't know much.”

  I grabbed the gun from Lula and marched up to Lowe's front door. I knocked twice, Lowe opened the door, and I pointed the gun at him. “On the ground,”

  I said. “Now.”

  Lowe gave a bark of laughter. "You not gonna shoot me.

  I'm an unarmed man. You get twenty years for shooting me."

  I aimed high, squeezed a round off, and took out a ceiling fixture.

  “Crazy bitch,” he said. “This here's public housing. You costing the taxpayer money. I got a mind to report you.”

  “I'm not in a good mood,” I said to Lowe.

  “I can see that. How you like me to improve your mood? Maybe you need a man to make you feel special.”

  Emanuel Lowe was five foot nine and rail thin. He had no ass, no teeth, and I was guessing no deodorant, no shower, no mouthwash. He was wearing a wife-beater T-shirt that had yellowed with age, and baggy homeboy-style brown pants precariously perched on his bony hips. And he was offering himself up to me. This was the state of my life. Maybe I should just shoot myself. I leveled the barrel at his head. “On the floor, on your stomach, hands behind your back.”

  “Tell you what. I'll get on the floor if you show me some pussy. It gotta be good pussy, too. The full show. You aren't bald down there, are you? I don't know what white bitches thinking of, waxing all the bush off. Gives me the willies. It's like bonin' supermarket chicken.”

  So I shot him. I did it for women worldwide. It was a public service.

  “Yow!” he said. “What the fuck you do that for? We just talking, having some fun.”

  “I wasn't having any fun,” I said.

  I'd shot him in the foot, and now he was hopping around, howling, dripping blood. From what I could see, I'd nicked him somewhere in the vicinity of the little toe.

  “If you aren't down on the floor, hands behind your back, in three seconds I'm going to shoot you again,” I said.

  Lowe dropped to the floor. “I'm dying. I'm gonna bleed to death.”

  I cuffed him and stood back. “I just tagged your toe. You'll be fine.”

  Lula poked her head in. “What's going on? Was that gunshot?” She walked over to Lowe and stood hands on hips, staring down at Lowe's foot. “Damn,” Lula said. “I hate when I have to take bleeders in my Firebird. I just got new floor mats, too.”

  “How bad is it?” Lowe wanted to know. “It feels real bad.”

  “She just ripped a chunk out of the side of your foot,” Lula said. “Looks to me like you got all your toes and everything.”

  I ran to the kitchen and got a kitchen towel and a plastic garbage bag. I wrapped Lowe's foot in the towel and pulled the plastic bag over the foot and the towel and tied it at the ankle. “That's the best I can do,” I said to Lula. “You're going to have to deal with it.”

  We got him to the curb, and Lula looked down at Lowe's foot. “Hold on here,” she said. “We ripped a hole in the Baggie when we dragged him out here, and he's bleeding through the towel. He's gonna have to hang his leg out the window.”

  “I'm not hanging my leg outta the window,” Lowe said. “How's that gonna look?”

  “It's gonna look like you're on the way to the hospital,” Lula said. “How else you think you're gonna get to the hospital and get that foot stitched up? You gonna sit here and wait for an ambulance? You think they're gonna rush to come get your sorry behind?”

  “You got a point,” Lowe said. “Just hurry up. I'm not feeling all that good. It wasn't right of her to shoot me. She had no call to do that.”

  “The hell she didn't,” Lula said. “You gotta learn to cooperate with women. My opinion is she should have shot higher and rearranged your nasty.”

  Lula rolled the rear side window down, and Lowe got in and hung his legs out the window.

  “I feel like a damn fool,” Lowe said. “And this here's uncomfortable. My foot's throbbing like a bitch.”

  Lula walked around to the driver's side. “I saw a picture of what he did to his girlfriend,” Lula said. “She had a broken nose and two cracked ribs, and she was in the hospital for three days. My thinking is he deserves some pain, so I'm gonna drive real slow, and I might even get lost on the way to the emergency room.”

  “Don't get too lost. Wouldn't want him to bleed to death since I was the one who shot him.”

  “I didn't see you shoot him,” Lula said. “I especially didn't see you shoot him with my gun that might not be registered on account of I got it from a guy on a street corner at one in the morning. Anyways, I figured Lowe was running away and tore himself up on a broken bottle of hooch. You know how these guys always have broken bottles of hooch laying around.” Lula muscled herself behind the wheel. “You coming with me or you staying behind to tidy up?”

  I gave Lula her gun. “I'm staying behind.”

  “Later,” Lula said. And she drove off with Lowe's legs hanging out her rear side window, the plastic bag rattling in the breeze.

  I went into Lowe's apartment and prowled through the kitchen. I found a screwdriver and a mostly empty bottle of Gordons gin. I used the screwdriver to dig the bullet out of Lowe's floor. I pocketed the round and the casing.

  Then I dropped the bottle of gin on the bloodiest part of the floor and smashed it with the screwdriver. I went back to the kitchen and washed the screwdriver, washed my hands, and threw the screwdriver into a pile of garbage that had collected in the corner of the kitchen. Discarded pizza boxes, empty soda bottles, fast-food bags, crumpled beer cans, and stuff I preferred not to identify.

  “I hate this,” I said to the empty apartment. I pulled my cell phone out of my bag and called my dad. A couple years ago my dad retired from his job at the post office, and now he drives a cab part-time.

  “Hey,” I said when he answered. “It's me. I need a cab.”

  I locked the doors and secured the windows while I waited for my dad. Not that there was much to steal from Lowe's apartment. Most of the furniture looked like Lowe had shopped at the local Dumpster. Still, it was his and I felt an obligation to be a professional. Probably should have thought about my professional obligation before shooting Lowe in the foot.

  I called Ranger. “I just shot a guy in the foot,” I told him.

  “Did he deserve it?”

  “That's sort of a toug
h moral question. I thought so at the time, but now I'm not so sure.”

  “Did you destroy the evidence? Were there witnesses? Did you come up with a good lie?”

  “Yes. No. Yes.”

  “Move on,” Ranger said. “Anything else?”

  “No. That's about it.”

  “One last word of advice. Stay away from the doughnuts.” And he disconnected.

  Great.

  Twenty minutes later, my father rolled to a stop at curbside. “I thought you were working at the button factory,” he said.

  My father's body showed up at the dinner table every evening. His mind was usually somewhere else. I suppose that was the secret to my parents' marital success. That plus the deal that my father made money and my mother made meatloaf and the division of labor was clear and never challenged. In some ways, life was simple in the Burg.

  “The button factory job didn't work out,” I told my father. “I helped Lula with an apprehension today and ended up here.”

  “You're like your Uncle Peppy. Went from one job to the next. Wasn't that he was dumb, either. Was just that he didn't have a direction. He didn't have a passion, you know? It didn't look like he had any special talent. Like take me. I was good at sorting mail. Now, I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was something I was good at. Of course, I got replaced by a machine. But that doesn't take away that I was good at something. Your Uncle Peppy was forty-two before he found out he could do latch hook rugs.”

  “Uncle Peppy's doing time at Rahway for arson.”

  “Yeah, but he's doing latch hook there. When he gets out he can make a good living with rugs. You should see some of his rugs. He made a rug that had a tiger head in it. You ask me, he's better hooking rugs than arson. He never got the hang of arson. Okay, so he set a couple good fires, but he didn't have the touch like Sol Razzi. Sol could set a fire and no one ever knew how it started. Now, that's arson.”

  Jerseys one of the few places where arson is a profession.

  “Where are we going?” my father wanted to know.

  “What's Mom making for supper?”

  “Meatballs with spaghetti. And I saw a chocolate cake in the kitchen.”

  “I'll go home with you.”

  There were two cars parked in front of my parents' house. One belonged to my sister. And one belonged to a friend of mine who was helping my mom plan my sisters wedding. My father paused at the driveway entrance and stared at the cars with his eyes narrowed.

  “If you smash into them your insurance will go up,” I said.

  My father gave a sigh, pulled forward, and parked. When my father blew out the candles on his birthday cake I suspect he wished my grandmother would go far away. He'd wish my sister into another state, and my friend Sally Sweet, a.k.a. the Wedding Planner, into another universe. I'm not sure what he wanted to do with me. Maybe ride along on a bust. Don't get me wrong. My dad isn't a mean guy. He wouldn't want my grandmother to suffer, but I think he wouldn't be too upset if she suddenly died in her sleep. Personally, I think Grandmas a hoot. Of course, I don't have to live with her.

  All through school my sister, Valerie, looked like the Virgin Mary. Brown hair simply styled, skin like alabaster, beatific smile. And she had a personality to match. Serene. Smooth. Little Miss Perfect. The exact opposite of her sister, Stephanie, who was Miss Disaster. Valerie graduated college in the top percent of her class and married a perfectly nice guy. They followed his job to L.A. They had two girls. Valerie morphed into Meg Ryan. And one day the perfectly nice guy ran off to Tahiti with the babysitter. No reflection on Meg. It was just that time in his life. So Valerie moved back home with her girls. Angie is the firstborn and a near perfect clone of Valerie the Virgin. Mary Alice is two years behind Angie.

  And Mary Alice thinks she's a horse.

  It's a little over a year now since Valerie returned, and she's since gained sixty pounds, had a baby out of wedlock, and gotten engaged to her boss, Albert Kloughn, who also happens to be the baby's father. The baby's name is Lisa, but most often she's called The Baby. We're not sure who The Baby is yet, but from the amount of gas she produces I think she's got a lot of Kloughn in her.

  Valerie and Sally were huddled at the dining room table, studying the seating chart for the wedding reception.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” Sally said to me. “Long time no see.”

  Sally drove a school bus during the week, and weekends he played in a band in full drag. He was six foot five inches tall, had roses tattooed on his biceps, hair everywhere, a large hook nose, and he was lanky in a guitar-playing-maniac kind of way. Today Sally was wearing a big wooden cross on a chain and six strands of love beads over a black Metallica T-shirt, black hightop Chucks, and washed-out baggy jeans-Okay, not your average wedding planner, but he'd sort of adopted us, and he was free. He'd become one of the family with my mom and grandma and they endured his eccentricities with the same eyerolling tolerance that they endured mine. I guess a pothead wedding planner seems respectable when you have a daughter who shoots people.

  Angie was doing her homework across from Valerie. The Baby was in a sling attached to Valerie's chest, and Mary Alice was galloping around the table, whinnying.

  My father went straight to his chair in the living room and remoted the television. I went to the kitchen.

  My mother was at the stove, stirring the red sauce. “Emily Restler's daughter got a pin for ten years' service at the bank,” my mother said. “Ten years and she was never once in a shootout. I have a daughter who works one day at a dry cleaners and turns it into the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. And on a Sunday, too. The Lords Day.”

  “It wasn't me. I didn't even have a gun. It was Mama Macaroni. And she wouldn't give Lula her dry cleaning.”

  Grandma was at the small kitchen table. “I hate to think you couldn't take down Mama Macaroni. If I'd been there you would have got the dry cleaning. In fact, I got a mind to go over there and get it for you.”

  “No,” my mother and I said in unison.

  I got a soda from the fridge and eyed the cake on the counter.

  “It's for supper,” my mother said. “No snitching. It's got to be nice. The wedding planner is eating with us.”

  Sally is one of my favorite people, but Sally didn't care a lot about what went in his mouth unless it was inhaled from a bong or rolled in wacky tobacky paper.

  “Sally wouldn't notice if there were roaches in the icing,” I told my mom.

  “It has nothing to do with Sally,” my mom said. “My water glasses don't have spots. There's no dust on the furniture. And I don't serve guests half-eaten cake at my dinner table.”

  I didn't serve guests half-eaten cake either. To begin with, I never had guests, unless it was Joe or Ranger. And neither of them was interested in my cake.

  Okay, maybe Joe would want cake . . . but it wouldn't be the first thing on his mind, and he wouldn't care if it was half-eaten.

  I grated parmesan for my mother, and I sliced some cucumbers and tomatoes.

  In the dining room, Valerie and Sally were yelling at each other, competing with the television and the galloping horse.

  “Is there any news about Michael Barroni?” I asked.

  “Still missing,” Grandma said. “And they haven't found his car, either. I hear he only had it for a day. It was brand-new right out of the showroom.”

  “I saw Anthony yesterday. He was driving a Corvette that looked new.”

  Grandma got dishes from the cupboard. “Mabel Such says Anthony's spending money like water. She don't know where he's getting it from. She says he doesn't make all that much at the store. She says he was on a salary just like everybody else. Michael Barroni came up the hard way, and he wasn't a man to give money away. Not even to his sons.”

  I got silverware and napkins, and Grandma and I set the table around Valerie and Sally and Angie.

  “You can stare at that seating chart all you want,” Grandma said to Valerie.

  “It's never gonna get perfe
ct. Nobody wants to sit next to Biddie Schmidt. Everybody wants to sit next to Peggy Linehart. And nobody's going to be happy sitting at table number six, next to the restrooms.”

  My mother brought the meatballs and sauce to the table and went back for the spaghetti. My father moved from his living room chair to his dining room chair and helped himself to the first meatball. Everyone sat except Mary Alice. Mary Alice was still galloping.

  “Horses got to eat,” Grandma said. “You better sit down.”