“Hell yeah,” Lula said. “I‘m not missing that. I was in the car when all the action went down last time.”

I could happily do without that kind of action. Still, we took my Jeep, just in case there was another tomato incident. Lula didn‘t want to veg up her Firebird.

I drove to Greenblat and parked in the lot. I got out of the Jeep and transferred the pepper spray, stun gun, and cuffs from my bag to my jeans for easier access.

“Don‘t you worry,” Lula said. “If he starts something this time, you gonna have Lula there. I‘ll sit on Bowling Ball Head and squash him into a pancake.”

“Fine. Just don‘t shoot him.”

“Did I say I was gonna shoot him? Did you hear me say that?”

“I was only reminding you.”

“You got a thing about shooting people. I bet Diesel shoots lots of people.”

“Diesel doesn‘t carry a gun.”

“Get out of town!”

I entered the office, said hello to the Connie clones, and went straight to the door leading to the ware house. I walked up and down aisles formed by stacks of crates and found Bollo putting little stickers on apples.

“Look who‘s here,” Bollo said, spotting me. “Come back for more tomatoes?”

“You need to come with me to get rescheduled.”

Bollo palmed an apple. “No.”

“If you hit me with that apple, I‘m going to let Lula shoot you,” I said.

Bollo looked past me. “I don‘t see no Lula.”

I turned and scanned the aisle. He was right. No Lula.

“She was here a minute ago,” I said.

“Well, she ain‘t here now.”

I shouted her name, and she rounded a stack of crated oranges at the end of the aisle.

“You looking for me?” Lula said, her arms filled with fruit and vegetables.

“Yes, I‘m looking for you. You‘re supposed to be my backup. What are you doing?”

“I‘m shopping. This place got really good produce. I got some grapefruit and a eggplant, and look at these red pears. And I got a dozen eggs. They even got fresh eggs here.”

“We don’t sell produce here, fatso,” Bollo said. “We only distribute to stores. Put them back.”

Lula’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Did you just call me fatso? Did I hear that right?”

“Yeah,” Bollo said. “What of it?”

“That’s a mean thing to say. And it isn’t even true. I’m just a big and beautiful woman. I got more of all the good stuff than most other women. And people who have heads like bowling balls should watch what they say about other people. You’re lucky I’m not a vicious person, because if I was vicious, I’d call you Coconut Head. Or Gordo Gourdhead.”

And then Lula bounced a grapefruit off Coconut Head’s forehead. And Coconut Head tagged her with the apple he’d been holding. And what happened after that was a blur of flying fruit and eggs. I had my stun gun in my hand, but it was hard to get to Bollo and dodge the fruit at the same time. I finally managed to get the prongs on him, I hit the go button, and nothing happened. No juice.

Bollo shoved me away, and I lost my footing, sliding on fruit slime. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and took him down with me. I was hanging on to him, and he was trying to get away, and Lula fired off a shot to the ceiling.

“Next bullet’s gonna be up your ass,” Lula said to Bollo.

Bollo paused to consider that, and a rat dropped from an overhead rafter and landed inches from Lula in her red patent-leather stilettos.

“Damn rats are all over the place,” Bollo said.

Lula just about went white. “I hate rats,” she said. “I hate rats more than I hate monkeys.”

The rat twitched, its beady black eyes blinked open, and it got to its feet.

“You just stunned him,” Bollo said to Lula. “Shoot him again.”

Lula took aim and the rat charged at her. Personally, I think the rat didn’t know what the heck it was doing, but Lula freaked.

“Eeeeeeee,” Lula shrieked, dancing around in her heels, arms in the air, completely apeshit.

The rat scurried across Lula’s foot and kept going past boxes of potatoes and beans. It took a left and headed for Pennyslvania. Bollo did the same. By the time I got to my feet, and Lula stopped freaking, Bollo was long gone.

A bunch of guys had gathered around us. They were throwing out comments in Spanish and laughing.

“What are they saying?” Lula wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t speak Spanish. The only thing I could pick out was loco.”

“What are you looking at?” Lula said to the men. “Don’t you have anything better to do? This place should be shut down. I’m calling the health inspector. I’m gonna report this place to the fruit police.” Lula turned to me. “And what’s with you and the dud stun gun? Let me take a look at that thing.”

I handed Lula the stun gun, and she tested it out on the guy next to her, who immediately collapsed into a heap on the floor and wet his pants.

“Seems to be working now,” Lula said, handing the stun gun back to me.

I dropped the stun gun into my bag, Lula pocketed her Glock, and we hotfooted it out of there. We chose to leave through the loading dock exit and walk around the building rather than drip egg and melon guts onto the office floor. We wiped off as best we could and climbed into my Jeep.

“You see, this is what Miss Gloria’s talking about,” Lula said. “I got bad juju. How else could you explain it?”

“It’s not our juju,” I told Lula. “It’s our skill level. We’re incompetent.”

“I got a high skill level,” Lula said. “I just shot a rat off a rafter.”

“You weren’t aiming for it.”

“Yeah. My skill level is so high I do things I don’t even try to do.”

NINE

I DROPPED LULA at the office, drove myself home, and dragged myself through my front door. The egg-and-fruit gunk had dried en route and was matted in my hair and plastered to my jeans and T-shirt.

Diesel looked me up and down. “Another issue at the produce ware house?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It involved a rat.”

“What’s in your hair?”

I felt around. “I think it’s mostly egg.”

“Do you need help? Do you want me to hose you off in the parking lot?”

“Jeez Louise,” I said. “I had a really crumby morning and I’ve got egg in my hair. Could I get a little sensitivity here?”

Diesel smiled. “I could take a shot at it.” He gathered me into his arms, held me close, and leaned his head against mine. “You smell nice,” he said. “Like fruit salad.”

AN HOUR LATER, we were all in the Escalade. Carl had pitched a fit about being left alone, so we’d brought him along. He was in the backseat, strapped in by a seat belt, his hands folded in his lap, looking as if at any moment he was going to ask if we were there yet.

“Is it me, or is this whole monkey thing getting a little Twilight Zone?” Diesel asked, checking Carl out in the rearview mirror.

“You think it’s just getting Twilight Zone? You don’t think it’s always been Twilight Zone?”

“Have you heard anything from his mother?”

“No. Not a word.”

“It’s like we’ve adopted a hairy little kid,” Diesel said. “There’s something about him sitting in the backseat that’s friggin’ spooky.”

I looked over my shoulder at Carl, and he sent me a finger wave.

“So if I wasn’t along for the ride, would you just pop yourself over to Philadelphia?” I asked Diesel.

“No. It’s not that easy to get popped someplace.”

“Wulf didn’t seem to have a lot of trouble with it. Is he more powerful than you?”

“No. He’s just different.”

“How so?”

“For starters, he kills people.”

Diesel crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.

“Do you know Wulf?”

“Yes.”

“Have you known him for a long time?”

“I’ve known him forever,” Diesel said. “He’s my cousin.”

That took my breath away. His cousin. He was hunting down a family member!