11 Eleven On Top by Janet Evanovich Page B

get lost on the way to the emergency room.”
    “Don't get too lost. Wouldn't want him to bleed to death since I was the one who shot him.”
    “I didn't see you shoot him,” Lula said. “I especially didn't see you shoot him with my gun that might not be registered on account of I got it from a guy on a street corner at one in the morning. Anyways, I figured Lowe was running away and tore himself up on a broken bottle of hooch. You know how these guys always have broken bottles of hooch laying around.” Lula muscled herself behind the wheel. “You coming with me or you staying behind to tidy up?”
    I gave Lula her gun. “I'm staying behind.”
    “Later,” Lula said. And she drove off with Lowe's legs hanging out her rear side window, the plastic bag rattling in the breeze.
    I went into Lowe's apartment and prowled through the kitchen. I found a screwdriver and a mostly empty bottle of Gordons gin. I used the screwdriver to dig the bullet out of Lowe's floor. I pocketed the round and the casing. Then I dropped the bottle of gin on the bloodiest part of the floor and smashed it with the screwdriver. I went back to the kitchen and washed the screwdriver, washed my hands, and threw the screwdriver into a pile of garbage that had collected in the corner of the kitchen. Discarded pizza boxes, empty soda bottles, fast-food bags, crumpled beer cans, and stuff I preferred not to identify.
    “I hate this,” I said to the empty apartment. I pulled my cell phone out of my bag and called my dad. A couple years ago my dad retired from his job at the post office, and now he drives a cab part-time.
    “Hey,” I said when he answered. “It's me. I need a cab.”
    I locked the doors and secured the windows while I waited for my dad. Not that there was much to steal from Lowe's apartment. Most of the furniture looked like Lowe had shopped at the local Dumpster. Still, it was his and I felt an obligation to be a professional. Probably should have thought about my professional obligation before shooting Lowe in the foot.
    I called Ranger. “I just shot a guy in the foot,” I told him.
    “Did he deserve it?”
    “That's sort of a tough moral question. I thought so at the time, but now I'm not so sure.”
    “Did you destroy the evidence? Were there witnesses? Did you come up with a good lie?”
    “Yes. No. Yes.”
    “Move on,” Ranger said. “Anything else?”
    “No. That's about it.”
    “One last word of advice. Stay away from the doughnuts.” And he disconnected.
    Great.
    Twenty minutes later, my father rolled to a stop at curbside. “I thought you were working at the button factory,” he said.
    My father's body showed up at the dinner table every evening. His mind was usually somewhere else. I suppose that was the secret to my parents' marital success. That plus the deal that my father made money and my mother made meatloaf and the division of labor was clear and never challenged. In some ways, life was simple in the Burg.
    “The button factory job didn't work out,” I told my father. “I helped Lula with an apprehension today and ended up here.”
    “You're like your Uncle Peppy. Went from one job to the next. Wasn't that he was dumb, either. Was just that he didn't have a direction. He didn't have a passion, you know? It didn't look like he had any special talent. Like take me. I was good at sorting mail. Now, I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was something I was good at. Of course, I got replaced by a machine. But that doesn't take away that I was good at something. Your Uncle Peppy was forty-two before he found out he could do latch hook rugs.”
    “Uncle Peppy's doing time at Rahway for arson.”
    “Yeah, but he's doing latch hook there. When he gets out he can make a good living with rugs. You should see some of his rugs. He made a rug that had a tiger head in it. You ask me, he's better hooking rugs than arson. He never got the hang of arson. Okay, so he set a couple good fires, but he