“Blew up both our cars so we couldn't go off looking for her daughter? You think she's smart enough to think of something like that?”
* * * * *
THE FIRE TRUCKS left first, then the police, then the tow trucks. And now all that was left was a charred, sanded spot on the blacktop.
“Oh well,” Lula said. “Easy come, easy go.”
“You don't seem very upset. I thought you loved that car.”
“Well the radio wasn't working right, and it got a ding on the side of the door at the supermarket. I can go out and get a new one now. Soon as I get the paperwork done I'm going car shopping. Nothing I like better than car shopping.”
Nothing I hated more than car shopping. I'd rather have a mammogram than go car shopping. I never had enough money to get a car I really liked. And then there were the car salesmen . . . second only to dentists in their ability to inflict pain. Ick. An involuntary shiver gripped my spine.
“See, I'm one of those positive type people,” Lula went on. “My glass isn't half empty. Nuh uh. My glass is always half full. That's why I'm making something of myself. And anyway, there's people lots worse off than me. I didn't spend my afternoon looking for a note in a box full of dog poop.”
“Do you think Mrs. Nowicki was telling the truth about Atlantic City? She could have been trying to throw us off the trail.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“We need wheels.”
We looked at each other and did a double grimace. We both knew where there was an available car. My father had a powder-?blue-?and-?white '53 Buick sitting in his garage. From time to time I'd been desperate enough to borrow the beast.
“No, no, no,” Lula said. “I'm not going down to Atlantic City in that big blue pimpmobile.”
“Where's your positive attitude? What about all that cup-?is-?half-?full stuff?”
“Fuck the cup is half full. I can't be cool in that car. And I don't ride in no uncool car. I got a reputation at stake. You see a big black woman sliding across the seat in that car, and you think one thing. Twenty-?five dollars for a blow job. I'm telling you, if you aren't Jay Leno you got no business being in that car.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. If I decide to go to Atlantic City, and the only car I can come up with is Big Blue . . . you don't want to go with me.”
“Well, since you put it that way . . .”
I called Lula a cab, and then I trudged up the stairs to my apartment. I let myself in and went straight to the refrigerator for a beer. “I have to tell you,” I said to Rex. “I'm getting discouraged.”
I checked my answering machine and received a terse message from Eddie Kuntz. “I got it.”
Kuntz didn't sound any happier when I called him back. He read the letters out to me. Fifty-?three in all. And he hung up. No inquiring as to my health. No suggestion to have a nice day.
I dialed Sally and transferred the burden onto him. “By the way,” I said. “What kind of car do you have?”
“Porsche.”
Figures. “Two seater?”
“Is there any other kind?”
Room for me. No room for Lula. She'd understand. After all, this was business, right? And the fact that her car just got blown up, that was business too, right? “It wasn't my fault,” I said. “I wasn't the one who tossed the cigarette.”
“I must have been beamed up for a minute there,” Sally said. “I think I just got a couple sentences from the other side.”
I explained about the cars' catching fire and about the lead from Mrs. Nowicki.
“Sounds like we need to go to Atlantic City,” Sally said.
“You think we could squash Lula into the Porsche with us?”
“Not even if we greased her.”