“I’ve tried talking to these people,” Nutsy said. “They don’t give up anything, and some of them are unhinged.”
“Yeah, but that’s because you’re you. I’m Lula. Leave this to me,” Lula said, adjusting her girls, giving them some fresh air to the point where her too-tight shocking-pink scoop-neck sweater barely covered her huge protruding nipples.
Here’s the thing. We all have skills, and we have an obligation to use them to the best of our ability. Some people are whizzes with math. Some people are musical prodigies. Some people can bake cakes. Some people can change a tire. Lula has breasts.
Nutsy watched Lula sashay over to the group of men. “Does she know what she’s doing?”
“Yep,” I said. “Stand down.”
Ten minutes later, Lula returned. She had a ham and cheese sandwich on wheat and tomato soup in a cardboard cup.
“His name is Marcus Ulman,” she said. “He smokes a lot of dope and drinks whatever he can get his hands on, but he doesn’t do anything hard. He’s been on the street for at least ten years. Lost his job when the condom factory closed. Wife left him. Has kids but doesn’t know where they are. Used to hang with Stump but nobody’s seen Stump and Marcus isn’t talking about it. Sometimes he crashes in a crack house on the next block. Apparently, he has friends there. Third floor.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take a look at the crack house.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Nutsy asked.
“Not usually,” I said. “Mostly it’s just sad.”
We found the house and I didn’t want to involve Bob, so I left him on the sidewalk with Lula. Nutsy and I walked three flights up and knocked on the only door.
A wasted woman with straw hair and acne-pocked skin answered the door.
“Yuh,” she said.
“Is Marcus here?” I asked.
She made a motion with her head that said to come in.
The truth is that I was flying on bravado here, and I was terrified. I was usually tagging along behind Ranger on this sort of mission. Once Lula and I had stumbled into an apartment guarded by an alligator, but that wasn’t a normal happening.
I stepped in and looked around. There were mattresses and quilts and sleeping bags on the floor. All soiled and haphazardly placed. All dumpster rescues. The smell was a mixture of stale French fries and human suffering. We stepped around the mattresses and found Marcus at a table in what might have been the dining room. He had a bottle of beer in front of him and he was eating his sandwich.
“Hi, Marcus,” I said. “Remember me?”
“And me,” Nutsy said.
He looked at me and then at Nutsy. “What do you want?”
“Information,” I said.
“I haven’t got any,” Marcus said.
“Maybe we should have brought Lula,” Nutsy said.
“I bet you’d like something better than that beer,” I said to Marcus. I pulled a twenty out of my messenger bag and held it out to him. “I want to know about Stump.”
“I don’t know anybody named Stump,” he said.
He reached for the twenty, and I pulled it away. “Tell me about Stump.”
“Fuck you,” he said.
It smelled really bad in the apartment, Nutsy looked like he was going to lose the Taylor pork roll he’d had for dinner, Lula and Bob were waiting on the sidewalk, and I was expecting a call from Morelli.
“I apologize ahead of time,” I said to Marcus, “but it’s turning into a very long day, and if I lose this opportunity, I might not be able to find you again.”
“Fuck you and fuck him too,” Marcus said.
I took my stun gun out of my back pocket and gave Marcus a bunch of volts. Marcus face-planted into his sandwich and slumped out of his chair.
“We need to get him out of here. Which end do you want?” I asked Nutsy.
“Holy crap,” Nutsy said.
I grabbed Marcus by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the door. There were seven other people in the crack house and none of them paid any attention to me dragging Marcus. I got him into the hall and looked at the three flights of stairs.
“Are you going to help, or what?” I asked Nutsy.
“What should I do?”
“Grab his feet and don’t let go. We have to wrangle him down these stairs.”
I was in a full-on sweat by the time we reached the street, and Marcus was coming around.
“Cuffs!” I yelled at Lula.
“I got them in my bag,” Lula said, searching through her faux–Louis Vuitton tote. “They’re in here somewhere. Here’s my gun.”
“I don’t want to shoot him,” I said. “I want to cuff him!”
Marcus had passed the twitching stage and was flailing his arms.
“I found them,” Lula said. “Hold him still.”
Nutsy grabbed an arm, I grabbed the other arm, and we managed to cuff Marcus.
“Now what?” Lula said.
“Get him in the car and help me strap him in.”
“Being that he isn’t a felon or anything, this might be construed as kidnapping,” Lula said. “Not that I’m worried or anything.”
“My story is that he’s drunk and high and we’re doing an intervention,” I said.
“That’s just what I was thinking,” Lula said. “He’ll be thanking us later.”
Nutsy went into the back, next to Marcus. We tried to get Bob into the cargo area behind the rear seats, but he wanted none of it, so he sat up front on Lula’s lap.
“Usually, we take people in cuffs to the police station,” Lula said. “Where are we taking this guy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t totally think this through. I guess we take him to my apartment.”
“He’s not sitting on the couch,” Lula said. “I got new throw pillows on the couch.”
“We’ll only keep him long enough to talk to him about Stump. Then we can take him back to his crack house.”
“Okay,” Lula said. “I guess I can live with that.”
“He’s drooling,” Nutsy said.
“They do that sometimes after they’ve been zapped,” I told him. “It’s no big deal.”
Morelli called and I put in an earbud so he wouldn’t broadcast to everyone in the SUV.
“I miss you,” he said. “This is turning out to be longer than I expected. How’s Bob?”
“Bob is great,” I said.
“How are you?”
“I’m good. My nose is feeling better, and the swelling and bruising is almost gone from my eyes. I kidnapped a guy just now and I’m taking him to my apartment. Then I’m heading to Rangeman for the night.”
There was a moment of silence. “Do you want to have phone sex?” he asked.
“It would be awkward,” I said. “I’m in Ranger’s car with Lula, Bob, Nutsy, and the guy I kidnapped.”
“Okay, well maybe later.”
I hung up and Lula looked over at me. “I didn’t hear it all, but I’m thinking he didn’t believe a word you said.”
“Not a word,” I said.
“I’m here in the middle of it, and I don’t believe it,” Lula said.
I checked Marcus out in my rearview mirror. He was looking much more alert.
“I didn’t do it,” Marcus said.
“What didn’t you do?” I asked him.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Whatever you think I did… I didn’t do it.”
“We know what you did,” I told him. “And we don’t care.”
He looked at Nutsy. “I know you. You’re the doorman at Plover’s.”