Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

I looked at my watch. “Let’s give them a half hour, and see if they come out. If they don’t come out we’ll go in and quietly snoop around a little.”

A half hour passed, and the rain picked up.

“You’re going to have to get closer if we’re going in that building,” Lula said. “I don’t want to ruin my Marilyn hair. And I don’t know what rain’s gonna do to my sequins.”

There weren’t a lot of cars parked on the street. Probably because anything parked longer than ten minutes got stolen. I pulled up to the front of the building, and Lula and I dashed across the sidewalk and into the small, dark foyer. Twelve mailboxes were set in the wall. None had names. No elevator. No pine-scented air freshener plugged into an outlet. Two apartments on the ground floor. We stood and listened. No sound coming from either apartment. We crept up the stairs to the second floor. Kids were shrieking in one of the apartments. It was happy shrieking. They were playing. The apartment across the hall was oozing cooking smells. Curry. Probably not Antwan or Dancing Bear. The third floor was quiet.

The fourth floor had a wall pockmarked with bullet holes. I took this as a good sign. We listened at the door of 4A and heard what sounded like Grand Theft Auto. Jackpot. I put my ear to the door across the hall and heard nothing.

Lula was rooting through her Brakmin. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I might not have my gun. It might be in my other purse.”

The door to 4A opened and Antwan looked out at us. “What’s going on out here?”

“We’re party girls looking for Jimbo,” Lula said.

“There’s no Jimbo here,” Antwan said.

“Well, then, who are you? You want to party?”

“Hell no,” Antwan said. “I don’t party with old bitches like you.”

Lula narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me? ‘Old bitches’? Did you call me a old bitch?”

“Yeah,” Antwan said. “You a fat old bitch. And you got on a ’ho wig. I don’t party with bitches what wear wigs.”

“This here’s a Marilyn wig,” Lula said. “You know nothing. You’re nothing but a skank-ass, pencil-dick hemorrhoid. And you smell like anal leakage.”

“Say what?”

“Anal leakage. It’s when your anal leaks. And it don’t smell good.”

The bear shuffled over. “Am I missing something?”

“You ever heard of anal leakage?” Antwan asked him.

“I think it’s when you squeeze a dog’s butt and juice shoots out.”

“This fat old ’ho told me I smelled like anal leakage,” Antwan said.

The big guy looked down at him. “I never noticed.”

“You need to stop calling me old and fat,” Lula said. “It could get me mad, and then I’d have to put you in a lot of pain.”

Antwan pulled a massive gun out of his baggy pants. It was nickel-plated and had a snake inscribed on the barrel. “Maybe I’ll put you in a lot of dead.”

“What the heck is that?” Lula said, staring at the gun. “It looks like something you got in the claw machine at Seaside Heights.”

“I don’t like people insulting my gun,” Antwan said.

He fired off a round and got Lula in the Brakmin.

“You shot my Brakmin!” Lula yelped. “What the heck’s the matter with you? This here bag’s almost a Brahmin. And look what you did to one of my Swarovski crystals. You’re gonna have to pay for this.”

He raised the gun to fire again, and Lula clocked him on the side of his head with her bag. His eyes sort of rolled around in their sockets, he dropped to his knees, and the huge silver gun slipped from his fingers.

I had cuffs in one hand and my stun gun in the other.

“Hey,” Bear said. “What’s going on?”