Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues by Steven Womack Page B

me, then motioned me in.
    “And for God’s sake, don’t slam the door,” he whispered.
    Lonnie’s office and sometimes apartment was a clutter of papers, used automobile parts, scattered books, grease, tobacco stains, empty beer bottles. Lonnie was the smartest repo man I’d ever met, but he had strange tastes.
    “What’s going on?” I asked, real low.
    “Shhh,” he hissed. “Experiment.”
    Lonnie was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. In his outstretched hand, he held a few straws plucked from an old broom. He moved slowly toward the massive wooden table that normally served as his desk, but which had been swept clean for the drama du jour.
    I strained in the low light to see what that was. Behind us,from the other room, the air-conditioner chugged away like an old steam locomotive. He padded slowly forward, reached out toward the middle of the table, then turned his head around and blindly moved a little closer. I bent down, looking around him, just as the straws touched a tiny pile of what looked like dirty table salt on the wood.
    There was a terrific boom and a flash of white, followed by an acrid stink that made Mrs. Lee’s Szechuan chicken smell as benign as Cream of Wheat. I jumped back, slamming against the door. I was blinded for a second, then dived on the floor with a yelp.
    “Jesus H. Christ!” Lonnie yelled from the floor next to me. I looked over at his arm to see if I needed to start calling him Stumpy. “It works!”
    His arm was intact, which was more than I could say for my ears. The smoke was dissipating. I stood up. A scorched circle on the wooden table outlined a gouge maybe an inch or so deep and a foot around.
    “You jerk!” I yelled. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
    “Damn, man,” he panted, standing up. “I didn’t know it would be that powerful. I mean, the book—”
    “Damn it, Lonnie” I moaned. “Which one this time?
The Anarchist’s Cookbook?
”
    He looked from the table to me, electric delight on his face. “No, man. I just got a copy of
The Poor Man’s James Bond.
”
    I looked around the room. On the moth-eaten couch, a paperback about the size of a telephone directory lay open. I picked it up.
    “ANTI?” I asked, reading the page.
    “Ammonium Nitrogen Tri-Iodide. Stuff’s a pistol, man. In fact, it’s more a fulminate than an explosive. Easiest junk in the world to make.”
    I scanned the article. “You trying to get yourself killed?” This was not the first time I’d walked into Lonnie’s Playhouse just in time to almost get my head blown off. The last time, he was making ersatz napalm out of gasoline and Styrofoam cups.
    “No, man, this is great! All you do is soak iodine crystals in pure ammonia, then press the goop through a coffee filter. What’s left is ANTI. As long as it’s wet, it’s harmless. But when it dries, it’s the nastiest stuff you’ve ever seen.”
    “Yeah, great,” I said, dropping the book on the couch. “One of these days I’m going to have to come in here and scrape your ass off the walls with a spatula.”
    Lonnie grabbed a greasy rag and wiped his hands. My ears still rang from his little demonstration, and my nostrils were filled with what I now recognized as the stench of ammonia with a faint burning tinge added. Sort of like being at the landfill the day they burn the Pampers.
    Lonnie reached into a dented, thirty-year-old Kelvinator and pulled out a beer. “You going down to Shelby ville with me?”
    “Ain’t got the time this time, bro.”
    “I picked up the early edition of the
Banner
. Saw your name. You sure you don’t want to get out of town for a while?” Lonnie popped the top and passed it over to me. I held out a hand to decline. He shrugged, lifted the can to his lips.
    “Not this time. I mostly came by for information.”
    “Information?”
    “Yeah. About the murder.”
    “You got any sense, you’ll go to Shelby ville with me. Pick up that Trans Am. Drive back with the T-tops off. Have