“I got a taser for you,” Luke told me. “Please tel me you got your gun somewhere in those purple pants.” I pul ed it out of my back waistband and showed it to him.
“You need a holster,” he said to me.
I nodded thinking of going shopping at Zip’s tomorrow night. A holster would be dead cool.
“Ike’s on him. Says he went into a house and hasn’t come out. Cal ed backup. Warren’s a mean motherfucker and usual y not far from his gun.”
I nodded again, rethinking my excitement at a ride-along for a takedown.
We stopped in a not-so-good neighborhood. The second Luke cut his lights, my door was thrown open. I jumped and twisted in my seat.
“Calm, Law,” the man said and since Luke didn’t shoot him or anything I figured he was one of the good guys.
He was Vance’s height, bald, lean and wiry and from what I could tel in the dark, black with light skin. He had a kil er tattoo slithering up his neck from the col ar of his black tee.
“I like your tattoo,” I told him.
“You haven’t seen it al yet,” he told me.
He’d said “yet”.
Hmm.
“Do al of you guys flirt rather than just talking like normal people?” I asked who I assumed was Ike.
“Mace doesn’t flirt,” Ike told me, stepping out of my way so I could get down.
“I don’t flirt either,” Luke added coming around the back of the Explorer, attaching a ful y loaded gunbelt to his hips.
I whirled on Luke. “You’re the King of Flirt! You flirt al the time.”
Luke’s eyes sliced to me. I could feel them hot on me in the dark.
“Maybe you wanna cal Warren. Tel him we’re waitin’ out here to take him down. Give him a good chance to load up his gun so he can blow our brains out?” Luke asked after my outburst.
Okay, so maybe I was a bit loud.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
I looked at Ike. Ike was smiling.
Damn.
I was screwing up my first takedown.
“He’s got a couple women in there and Barry White’s playin’. He can’t hear a thing,” Ike informed us.
Ike and Luke looked at each other. Al of a sudden they seemed pleased about something.
Then Luke’s eyes cut back to me. “Keep quiet and stay behind me,” he ordered. I nodded and he handed me a taser. “We try for alive when we’re bringin’ ‘em in. Dead is a last resort,” Luke went on.
Yikes.
I nodded again. Then we moved in.
As we approached a house a couple doors down from where Luke parked, Ike disappeared, vanishing into the night. Luke walked right up to the door, bold as brass and something about the way he did it was way, fucking, cool.
I could hear Barry White crooning inside the house.
Luke shoved me to one side of the door. I had my gun stuck into my waistband at my left hip and the taser in my hand.
Luke pounded on the door and shouted, “Bond enforcement.”
Then after waiting about three seconds, Luke put the sole of a boot to the door by the handle and it popped open. Then he disappeared inside. I fol owed him.
It was dark and I could barely see but Luke moved through the house liked he’d been there hundreds of times before. I kept my eyes on his back and moved behind him.
There was dim light coming from a hal way, the source of Barry White. We went down the hal way and then into a room lit with candles and lamps with scarves over them.
Luke stopped just inside the door silent, stil , watching.
I moved to his left to look.
“Euw! ”
Yes, that was me and I said it loudly. I couldn’t help it. On the bed were two skanky, skinny women, so skinny, their ribs showed. Both needed to shampoo their hair in a major way. They were naked and working on a big, fat, hairy, naked white guy. Hairy as in hairy. He was covered in hair to the point that you could cal it fur.
The inhabitants of the bed ceased their writhing and groaning, sucking and kissing and looked up at us.
“Bond enforcement,” Luke announced but I could tel even though my eyes were riveted to the bed in frozen horror that Luke was laughing.
Before I knew what was happening, the big, hairy, naked white guy moved. He was fast for a big man and he came off the bed like a shot.
At me.
I didn’t have time to blink. I just lifted up my taser and shot him.
He immediately went down with a thud and I was pretty certain most of the furniture in the room jumped when he landed.
Wow.
I added a taser to my mental Zip’s Gun Emporium shopping list.
Breaking into my mental list-making, one of the naked skanks shouted at me, “What the fuck you doin’? You can’t come in here and taser Warren. Who the fuck you think you are?”
Then she came at me, body parts jiggling, lanky hair flying.
My taser prongs were in Warren so I dropped it. She gave me the same opening as Jermaine had done, ready to scratch my eyes out. I grabbed her wrist, flipped her and she landed on her back. I heard her breath escape in a whoosh when she hit the floor.
“Aiiiiyeeeee!” the other skank screamed, coming at me too.