Morelli said. “I’ve got two paramedics here. I want you to allow them to treat her.”
“Sure. Get her out of the way.”
“This is confusing,” Lula said. “What happens to the reward? How am I gonna get the reward from you if you’re the one I caught?”
“It’s my brother-in-law’s reward. He’s the owner of the company. I’m just a token vice president. He’s the one who was the big Chipotle fan. Put his picture on all the sauce jars. I told him not to do it, but would he listen to me? Hell, no. Now see where that got us.”
“Where’d it get you?” Grandma wanted to know.
“It got us nowhere. Chipotle refused to sign a new contract. He was screwing my brother-in-law’s bimbo gold-digger wife. They were going to start their own company as soon as the divorce went through.” Dudley looked over at Morelli. “Where’s the helicopter?”
“It’s on its way. You should hear it any minute.”
“Some brother-in-law you’ve got,” Connie said. “What did he do, go to the Chicago Mob and hire someone to whack Chipotle? And then send you along to babysit and make sure the job got done?”
“He would have been better to let me do it myself. He had this idea to get rid of Chipotle and turn it into a media frenzy. Get free publicity by chopping his head off. Chipotle never saw it coming. He was still drunk from the night before. Unfortunately, we had a witness who would have been safe, except she entered the contest.”
Al Rochere ran over with his film crew and went in for an interview.
“Get him out of here,” Dudley said. “I’ll shoot her. Swear to God.”
“Wait a minute,” Lula said. “This could be my big break.”
There was the unmistakable wup wup wup of a helicopter, and the medevac chopper flew low over us and landed in an empty area of the field.
Dudley still had the gun to Lula’s head. “I’m taking her with me. I’ll release her when we land.”
“I don’t like this,” Lula said. “I don’t like helicopters. I’m gonna get the runs.”
“Shut up, and get walking.”
“I don’t feel so good,” Lula said. And she farted.
Dudley stepped back and fanned the air with his gun. “Jeez, lady, what have you been eating?”
“Barbecue,” Lula said. And she sucker punched him in the throat.
Dudley gagged and dropped his gun. And Morelli was on him.
“Is there still a reward?” Lula asked. “Does anybody know the ruling on that?”
A bunch of cops and security guards swarmed in, keeping the curious back. Morelli’s partner cuffed Dudley and a couple uniforms moved in to help.
“My hero,” I said to Morelli.
Morelli grinned. “Lula’s the hero. She sucker punched him.”
“And it was a pip of a fart, too,” Grandma said.
I looked over at Joyce. The paramedics had her stable and ready to medevac out.
“How is she?” I asked one of them.
“Lost some blood, but I don’t think anything critical was hit.”
“I need to go downtown with Dudley,” Morelli said to me. “Call me when you get things figured out.”
I walked to our kitchen, where Grandma, Lula, and Connie were standing, staring at the blackened ribs and ashes spread across the ground.
“I don’t suppose we’re gonna win the contest, what with the grill falling apart and the ribs burning up,” Grandma said.
“I’m tired of this whole barbecue thing, anyway,” Connie said. “I could use a calzone.”
“I’m in for a meatball sub,” Lula said.
“And spaghetti,” Grandma said. “Do you think we should stick around to see who wins the contest?”
“I don’t care who wins the contest, since it’s not me,” Lula said.
Connie had her bag hiked up on her shoulder. “We can read about it in the paper tomorrow.”
TWENTY
IT WAS A little after six when I pulled into the Rangeman garage. Marco the Maniac and Zito Dudley were in jail. Joyce was being treated. Lula, Grandma, and Connie were at Pino’s. I parked the cab next to the Buick and took the elevator to the seventh floor.
Ranger had called shortly after four o’clock and asked that I come in when the dust settled on the barbecue fiasco. I entered his apartment and found him in his office, at his computer.
“Come here,” he said. “I want you to see something. This came in at four o’clock.”
I looked over his shoulder at a grainy picture of a wall. A motion detector was fixed at the top of the wall, and alongside the motion detector was a small square box, the same size as the detector. A slim young man dressed