“I think we need to visit Ronald DeChooch.”
I cranked the bike over, Lula climbed on, and we tore through the garage like judgment day and headed for Ace Pavers.
“We're pretty lucky we got good jobs,” Lula said when I pulled up to Ronald DeChooch's brick office building. “We could be working at a place like this, smelling tar all day, always having chunks of black stuff stuck to the bottom of our shoes.”
I got off the bike and removed my helmet. The smell of hot asphalt lay heavy in the air, and beyond the locked gate the blackened rollers and pitch trucks gave off shimmering waves of heat. There were no men in sight, but clearly the equipment had just come off a job.
“We're going to be professional but assertive,” I said to Lula.
“You mean we're not taking any crap from that roody-poo jabroni Ronald DeChooch.”
“You've been watching wrestling again,” I said to Lula.
“I've got it on tape so I can do reruns of The Rock,” Lula said.
Lula and I puffed ourselves up and marched in without knocking. We weren't going to be put off by a bunch of card-playing jerks. We were going to get answers. We were going to get respect.
We barreled through the small entrance hall and again without knocking went straight to the inside office. We whipped the doors open and came face-to-face with Ronald DeChooch playing hide-the-salami with the clerical help. Actually it wasn't face-to-face because DeChooch had his back to us. More correctly, he had his big hairy ass to us because he was doing the poor woman doggy-style. His pants were around his ankles and the woman was bent over the card table, holding on for all she was worth.
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Lula started laughing.
“You should think about having your ass waxed,” Lula said to DeChooch. “That is one ugly butt.”
“Christ,” DeChooch said, pulling his pants up. “A man can't even have relations in his own office.”
The woman jumped up and adjusted her skirt and tried to stuff her boobs back into her bra. She scuttled away, looking mortally embarrassed, with her panties in her hand. I hoped she was being well compensated.
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“Now what?” DeChooch said. “You have something special in mind, or you just come to see a show?”
“Your uncle kidnapped my grandmother.”
“What?”
“He took her yesterday. He wants to ransom her for the heart.”
The surprise in his eyes ratcheted up a notch. “You know about the heart?”
Lula and I exchanged glances.
“I . . . um, have the heart,” I said.
“Jesus Christ. How the fuck did you get the heart?”
“It don't matter how she got it,” Lula said.
“Right,” I said. “What matters is that we get this all settled. First off, I want my grandmother back home. And then I want Mooner and Dougie.”
“Your grandmother I might be able to arrange,” Ronald said. “I don't know where my Uncle Eddie's hiding out, but I talk to him once in a while. He's got a cell phone. Those other two are something different. I don't know anything about them. So far as I can tell nobody knows anything about them.”
“Eddie is supposed to call me tonight at seven. I don't want anything to go wrong. I'm going to give him the heart, and I want my grandmother back. If anything bad happens to my grandmother or she doesn't get swapped for the heart tonight, it's going to be ugly.”
“I hear you.”
Lula and I left. We closed two doors behind us, straddled the Harley, and took off. Two blocks later I had to pull over because we were laughing so hard I was afraid we were going to fall off the bike.
“That was the best,” Lula said. “You want to get a man to pay attention, you just get him with his pants down.”