Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum 25)

“Yes.”

“Your gun got bullets in it?”

“No. I have to buy bullets.”

“That’s just pathetic that you haven’t got bullets. You’re gonna give the rest of us women a bad reputation. You can’t even protect yourself, much less stop a terror attack. Good thing you got me along.”

“Because you could stop a terror attack?”

“Hell, yeah. I’m ready to take them idiot terrorists down.”

Hard to believe since Lula was the worst shot ever. She was known to miss a target at point-blank range.

“Jersey is full of those idiots,” Lula said. “And we even got out-of-state idiots coming here. We got terrorists coming here from Connecticut and New York. You don’t hear much about it because we got excellent law enforcement and they thwart the attacks.”

“I suppose that’s comforting.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to get too comfortable because those terrorists might be idiots but they’re sneaky idiots. It’s only a matter of time before one of them slips in and rampages Jersey.”

I knew I was going to regret asking, but I couldn’t help myself. “Why Jersey?”

“All us good citizens in Jersey got attitude. We got pride. We got brass balls the size of watermelons. We got rude hand gestures and loaded guns . . . most of us. It’s not like we’re a pushover state like California. If you want to make points and get extra virgins when you blow yourself up, clearly Jersey is the place to accomplish that, you see what I’m saying? It’s not like we’re easy.”

I sucked in a grimace. It was always frightening when Lula made sense saying something stupid.

“And now that I’m thinking about it, that’s probably the same reason the aliens chose a deli in Trenton to suck people up into their spaceship,” Lula said. “Us Trentonians are a challenge. And for the most part we got good taste in shoes.”

I handed the Waggle file to Lula. “I glanced at this briefly when Connie first gave it to me. I think he lives on Stark Street.”

Lula thumbed through the file. “Yeah, but he’s way at the end, just before the junkyard. You want to get bullets for your gun before you go there.”

I cut across the downtown business district and turned right onto Stark.

“Drop me off at the beauty salon on the next block,” Lula said. “I’ll run in and get you some ammo.”

“At the beauty salon?”

“Lateesha sells some merchandise on the side. She’s been around for a long time. I used to shop there when I was a ’ho on account of my corner was only one block away. She’s got a real good nail tech too.”

I double-parked in front of the salon. Lula ran in and came out five minutes later.

“I got your stuff,” Lula said. “And I got a kick-ass nail varnish. It’s midnight blue with silver sparkles. I’m going to look like the night sky. I’m going to be like the Beatles song. Lula in the sky with diamonds.”

Stark Street starts out okay with a couple blocks of legitimate businesses. The third block begins to get dicey, and it goes downhill fast from there. By the time you get to the burned-out, gutted buildings at the end of Stark the only residents are rats and loonies. A very prosperous junkyard sits about a mile beyond the last building.

We were one block from the end, idling in front of a two-story brick building that looked like it used to be a warehouse. It was the only structure still standing. Everything else on the block was rubble.

“This has to be the block,” Lula said. “Hard to believe he’s living here. And if he is living here, I’m not going in t

o root him out. The police won’t even come to this block. There’s gonna be rats and snakes and unfortunate people’s body parts in this building we’re looking at.”

“Body parts?” I asked.

“I’m just supposing.”

I made a U-turn and slowly drove back down Stark, hoping for a Waggle sighting. “What else do we have? Workplace? Relatives? Girlfriend?”

“He’s self-employed,” Lula said, reading through the file. “He gives that building back there as his home and place of business. Looks like his family is all in Wisconsin.”