Ten Big Ones (Stephanie Plum 10)

I crumpled my wrappers and shoved them into the doughnut bag.

'Do you know anything about the Slayers?' I asked Lula.

'I know they're bad news. There's a whole bunch of gangs in

Trenton. The Comstock Street Slayers and the Bad Killer Cuts are the two big ones. Used to be you only heard about Slayers on the

West Coast, but they're everywhere now. Kids join up in prison, and then they bring it back to the street. Comstock Street is gangland these days.'

I talked to Morelli a while ago. He said the Slayers are bragging about shooting Eddie Gazarra.'

'Bummer. You better watch out on account of you disrespected

Red Devil, and he was hanging with those guys. You don't want to get on the bad side of a Slayer. I'd be real careful of that if I was you.'

'You're the one who shot up the devil guys tire!'

`Yeah, but he didn't know it was me. He probably thought it was you. You're the big-deal bounty hunter. I'm just a file clerk.'

'Speaking of file clerk, I should get you back to the office so you can do some filing.'

'Yeah, but who's gonna watch out for your ass then? Who's gonna help catch the bad guys? You know what we should do? We should go take a look around Comstock Street. Maybe we could get the

Red Devil.'

'I don't want to get the Red Devil. He shoots at people. He's a police problem.'

'Boy, what's with you? Everything's a police problem these days.'

'I enforce bail-bond requirements. That's the extent of my authority.'

"Well, we don't have to actually get him. We could just do some investigating. You know, like we could ride around in the neighborhood.

Maybe talk to a couple people. I bet we could find out who the devil guy is. You're the only one who knows what he looks like.'

Lucky me. 'To begin with, I don't know where the devil guy lives, so it would be hard to ride around in his neighborhood. And if that isn't enough, even if we found his neighborhood and went asking questions, no one would talk to me.'

'Yeah, but they'd talk to me. Everyone talks to me. I got a winning personality. And I look like I belong in a gang-infested neighborhood.' Lula scrounged in her big black leather purse, found her cell phone, and punched in a number.

'Hey,' she said when the connection was made. It's Lula, and I need some information.' Pause. Tour ass,' she said. `I'm not doing that no more.' Another pause. `I'm not doing that either. And I'm especially not doing that last thing. That's disgusting. Are you gonna listen to me, or what?'

There were about three more minutes of conversation, and Lula dropped her phone back into her bag.

'Okay, I got some gang boundaries now. The Slayers are between

Third and Eighth Streets on Comstock. And Comstock's one block over from Stark,' Lula said. 'I used to work part of that area. My corner was on Stark, but I got a lot of customers from the south side. It wasn't so bad back then. That was before the gangs moved in. I figure we just mosey on over there and take a look around.'

'I don't think that's a good idea.'

'How bad could it be? We're in a car. We're just driving through.

It's not like we're in Baghdad, or something. And anyway, the gangs aren't out during the day. They're like vampires. They only come out at night. So during the day the streets are real safe.'

That's not true.'

'Are you calling me a fibber?'

'Yeah.'