afternoon looking for a note in a box full of dog poop."
"Do you think Mrs. Nowicki was telling the truth about Atlantic City? She could have been trying to throw us off the trail."
"Only one way to find out."
"We need wheels."
We looked at each other and did a double grimace. We both knew where there was an available car. My father had a powder-blue-and-white '53 Buick sitting in his garage. From time to time I'd been desperate enough to borrow the beast.
"No, no, no," Lula said. "I'm not going down to Atlantic City in that big blue pimpmobile."
"Where's your positive attitude? What about all that cup-is-half-full stuff?"
"Fuck the cup is half full. I can't be cool in that car. And I don't ride in no uncool car. I got a reputation at stake. You see a big black woman sliding across the seat in that car, and you think one thing. Twenty-five dollars for a blow job. I'm telling you, if you aren't Jay Leno you got no business being in that car."
"Okay, let me get this straight. If I decide to go to Atlantic City, and the only car I can come up with is Big Blue . . . you don't want to go with me."
"Well, since you put it that way . . ."
I called Lula a cab, and then I trudged up the stairs to my apartment. I let myself in and went straight to the refrigerator for a beer. "I have to tell you," I said to Rex. "I'm getting discouraged."
I checked my answering machine and received a terse message from Eddie Kuntz. "I got it."
Kuntz didn't sound any happier when I called him back. He read the letters out to me. Fifty-three in all. And he hung up. No inquiring as to my health. No suggestion to have a nice day.
I dialed Sally and transferred the burden onto him. "By the way," I said. "What kind of car do you have?"
"Porsche."
Figures. "Two seater?"
"Is there any other kind?"
Room for me. No room for Lula. She'd understand. After all, this was business, right? And the fact that her car just got blown up, that was business too, right? "It wasn't my fault," I said. "I wasn't the one who tossed the cigarette."
"I must have been beamed up for a minute there," Sally said. "I think I just got a couple sentences from the other side."
I explained about the cars' catching fire and about the lead from Mrs. Nowicki.
"Sounds like we need to go to Atlantic City," Sally said.
"You think we could squash Lula into the Porsche with us?"
"Not even if we greased her."
I gave an internal sigh of regret and told Sally we'd go in my car and I'd pick him up at seven. No way was I going to be able to cut Lula out of this caper.
"OTHER MOTHERS have daughters who get married and have children," my mother said. "I have a daughter who blows up cars. How did this happen? This doesn't come from my side of the family."
We were at the table, eating dinner, and my father had his head bent over his plate, and his shoulders were shaking.
"What?" my mother said to him.
"I don't know. It just struck me funny. Some men could go a lifetime and never have their kid blow up a car, but I have a daughter who's knocked off three cars and burned down a funeral home. Maybe that's some kind of record."
Everyone sat in shocked silence because that was the longest speech my father had made in fifteen years.
"Your Uncle Lou used to blow up cars," my father said to me. "You don't know that, but it's true. When Louie was young he worked for Joey the Squid. Joey owned car lots back then, and he was in a war with the Grinaldi brothers, who also owned car lots. And Joey would pay Louie to blow up Grinaldi cars. Louie got paid by the car. Fifty dollars a car. That was big money in those days."
"You've been to the lodge, drinking," my mother said to my father. "I thought you were supposed to be out with the cab?"
My father forked in some potatoes. "Nobody wanted to take a cab. Slow day."
"Did Uncle Lou ever get caught?"
"Never. Lou was good. The Grinaldi brothers never suspected Lou. They thought Joey was sending out Willy Fuchs. One day they clipped Willy, and then Lou stopped blowing up Grinaldi cars."
"Ommigod."
"Worked out okay," my father said. "Lou went into the wholesale