11 Eleven On Top by Janet Evanovich Page A

said. “Now.”
    Lowe gave a bark of laughter. "You not gonna shoot me.
    I'm a unarmed man. You get twenty years for shooting me."
    I aimed high, squeezed a round off, and took out a ceiling fixture.
    “Crazy bitch,” he said. “This here's public housing. You costing the taxpayer money. I got a mind to report you.”
    “I'm not in a good mood,” I said to Lowe.
    “I can see that. How you like me to improve your mood? Maybe you need a man to make you feel special.”
    Emanuel Lowe was five foot nine and rail thin. He had no ass, no teeth, and I was guessing no deodorant, no shower, no mouthwash. He was wearing a wife-beater T-shirt that had yellowed with age, and baggy homeboy-style brown pants precariously perched on his bony hips. And he was offering himself up to me. This was the state of my life. Maybe I should just shoot myself.
    I leveled the barrel at his head. “On the floor, on your stomach, hands behind your back.”
    “Tell you what. I'll get on the floor if you show me some pussy. It gotta be good pussy, too. The full show. You aren't bald down there, are you? I don't know what white bitches thinking of, waxing all the bush off. Gives me the willies. It's like bonin' supermarket chicken.”
    So I shot him. I did it for women worldwide. It was a public service.
    “Yow!” he said. “What the fuck you do that for? We just talking, having some fun.”
    “7 wasn't having any fun,” I said.
    I'd shot him in the foot, and now he was hopping around, howling, dripping blood. From what I could see, I'd nicked him somewhere in the vicinity of the little toe.
    “If you aren't down on the floor, hands behind your back, in three seconds I'm going to shoot you again,” I said.
    Lowe dropped to the floor. “I'm dying. I'm gonna bleed to death.”
    I cuffed him and stood back. “I just tagged your toe. You'll be fine.”
    Lula poked her head in. “What's going on? Was that gunshot?” She walked over to Lowe and stood hands on hips, staring down at Lowe's foot. “Damn,” Lula said. “I hate when I have to take bleeders in my Firebird. I just got new floor mats, too.”
    “How bad is it?” Lowe wanted to know. “It feels real bad.”
    “She just ripped a chunk out of the side of your foot,” Lula said. “Looks to me like you got all your toes and everything.”
    I ran to the kitchen and got a kitchen towel and a plastic garbage bag. I wrapped Lowe's foot in the towel and pulled the plastic bag over the foot and the towel and tied it at the ankle. “That's the best I can do,” I said to Lula. “You're going to have to deal with it.”
    We got him to the curb, and Lula looked down at Lowe's foot. “Hold on here,” she said. “We ripped a hole in the Baggie when we dragged him out here, and he's bleeding through the towel. He's gonna have to hang his leg out the window.”
    “I'm not hanging my leg outta the window,” Lowe said. “How's that gonna look?”
    “It's gonna look like you're on the way to the hospital,” Lula said. "How else you think you're gonna get to the hospital and get that foot stitched up?
    You gonna sit here and wait for an ambulance? You think they're gonna rush to come get your sorry behind?"
    “You got a point,” Lowe said. “Just hurry up. I'm not feeling all that good. It wasn't right of her to shoot me. She had no call to do that.”
    “The hell she didn't,” Lula said. “You gotta learn to cooperate with women. My opinion is she should have shot higher and rearranged your nasty.”
    Lula rolled the rear side window down, and Lowe got in and hung his legs out the window.
    “I feel like a damn fool,” Lowe said. “And this here's uncomfortable. My foot's throbbing like a bitch.”
    Lula walked around to the driver's side. “I saw a picture of what he did to his girlfriend,” Lula said. “She had a broken nose and two cracked ribs, and she was in the hospital for three days. My thinking is he deserves some pain, so I'm gonna drive real slow, and I might even