I'd run over a body. I took that as a good sign. I wheeled backward onto Comstock and screeched to a stop to change gears. Three guys flew off my roof. Two bounced off the right front fender onto the road. And one smacked onto the hood and grabbed hold of a windshield wiper.
'Don't stop now,' Lula yelled. 'And don't worry about the hood ornament. You'll lose him on the next turn.'
I rammed the car into drive and took off. I could hear a lot of noise behind me. A lunatic mix of yelling and gunfire and laughter.
The guy on the hood stared in at me, the pupils of his eyes dilated to the size of nickels.
'Think he got a pharmaceutical problem going,' Lula said.
I leaned on the horn, but the hood rider didn't blink.
'This here's like having an insect stuck on your windshield,' Lula said. 'A big ugly drugged-out praying mantis.'
I hauled the Buick around into a looping left turn onto Seventh, and the insect silently sailed off into space and crashed into a rusted-out van that was parked at the curb. I resumed breathing when I got to Stark.
'See, that worked out okay,' Lula said. 'Too bad we didn't find the devil guy, though.'
I gave her a sideways glance. 'Maybe you want to go back tomorrow and try again?'
'Maybe not tomorrow.'
I called Connie and told her we were on our way back to the office and asked her to run a search for me.
'If I give you some street boundaries can you check our files for guys in that neighborhood?' I asked her.
'I can search by zip code, and I can search by street. As long as the area isn't too big, I can do the by street search.'
I felt a responsibility to Eddie, and I thought chances were decent that the devil guy had a record. I'd declined to go through mug shots at police headquarters. I'd done that drill for other crimes and found it to be spectacularly unhelpful. After looking at a hundred head shots, I tended to forget the face of the perp. A search by neighborhood would produce a much smaller pool of potentials.
Connie was pulling files when Lula and I swung through the front door. 'I got seventeen hits for the boundaries you gave me,' she said. 'None are outstanding. It's not really our neighborhood.'
Lula looked through the pile of files on Connie's desk. 'Hey, this is the guy who was stuck to the hood of your car,' Lula said, holding a photo for me to see.
Connie grabbed a file and closed the drawer with her foot.
'That's Eugene Brown. He's been arrested so many times we have a personal relationship. Never been convicted of an
ything but possession.'
'Looks like we bonded him out for armed robbery and vehicular manslaughter,' Lula said.
'Eyewitnesses have a way of disappearing when Eugene's involved,' Connie said. 'And there's a lot of sworn testimony recanting. What was he doing on the hood of your car?'
'We were sort of cruising up Comstock Street..." Lula said.
Connie's eyes got wide. 'Where on Comstock?'
Third.'
'Do you have a death wish? That's Slayerland.'
'We were just riding through,' Lula said.
The two of you? In what car? The Buick? The powder blue-and-white
Buick? You can't go past Third on Comstock in a powder blue car! That's Cut's colors. You don't go into gang territory with another gang color.'
'Well, yeah, but I didn't think it counted for cars. I just thought it counted for clothes. For, like, do-rags and shirts and shit,' Lula said. 'And it's hard to believe anybody'd take Cut serious with a color like powder blue. Powder blue is a sissy color.'