Free Beluga by Rick Gavin Page B

off on the cost of insurance for him and his employees and something he’d read about a woman who’d gone in for a nose job and ended up getting a kidney taken out.
    â€œWell, all right,” I told him and tried to climb into my car, but Kalil had another insurance horror story to share with us. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite remember what it was.
    He kept sipping at his go cup and making the odd agitated comment. He was talking to us. He was talking to himself. He didn’t seem to notice that me and Desmond were having a side conversation.
    â€œI’m going to go arm up,” I said. “Meet you at Shawnica’s in about an hour.”
    â€œBring one for me. Momma’s got the PPK. Lent the Steyr to a cousin.”
    â€œSo you’ve got nothing?”
    â€œNothing I’d want to depend on.”
    Kalil had started singing. He was wailing out “Lullaby of Broadway” as we pulled into the street.
    *   *   *
    Pearl had a serving of casserole for me. She came out to the driveway when she heard me pull in. She’d found that casserole in her freezer, back behind the sherbet and underneath a pie crust.
    â€œDidn’t even know it was there,” she said.
    It wasn’t in a proper container, one with a lid, anyway. The plastic wrap was just laying there. The casserole had ice all over it. There was something green in it and something brown in it. Something yellow in it, too.
    â€œJust zap it,” Pearl suggested.
    I gave her my usual “All right” and threw the stuff into the sink as soon as I’d walked in my apartment.
    The more defrosted that casserole got, the less like food it looked. You had to figure the woman in my life who was always giving me dinner would have to be the woman in my life who couldn’t cook a lick.
    My apartment above Pearl’s car shed was just a big room with a full bath off the back. I had a bed and a sofa and a twenty-inch TV, plus a drop-leaf dinette table I could make into something grander if I ever felt the itch to throw a dinner party. Mostly I just piled mail on it. I tended to eat over the sink.
    There was an attic space behind a knee wall on the south end of the building, and I kept most of my weapons back there in a big canvas duffel. I crawled in and pulled that duffel out so I could sort through what I had. I couldn’t quite say how much firepower might be needed for a ninja schoolgirl. The evidence was she liked her instruments blunt. She’d not plugged anybody yet.
    I set aside a couple of pistols and an air-cooled M-4A1 that I’d traded a spanking-new Fryolator for. I had a little Bersa .308 I carried sometimes in an ankle holster, and that seemed like a sensible option given who we were dealing with. It was small caliber but still more firepower than a tattooed girl with a club. By the time I’d packed up what I needed and loaded all the clips I could find, I was beginning to smell Pearl’s casserole. Raccoon, I figured. Or maybe goat.
    Desmond was already parked outside Shawnica’s house when I got there. The front door was shut. The lights were low. There didn’t appear to be anybody home. It was late spring twilight, and the mosquitoes were swarming, so we sat in Desmond’s Escalade with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner running.
    That was one of the leading troubles of the Delta, as far as I could tell. When it was hot, it was too damn hot. When it was cold, it was windy and bitter. When the temperature was tolerable, the bugs made for misery. Lovebugs and mosquitoes mostly, biting flies every now and again, and in such concentrations there wasn’t enough DEET on the globe to keep them away.
    I got in complaining about the mosquitoes. Desmond had heard it all before. He let me talk. He even watched me like he was listening to me. I finished. He gave a little nod and said, “Heard from Kendell.”
    â€œThey catch her?”
    He