Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(10)

“I’ll stay here,” Lula said. “I got a new copy of Star magazine that I gotta read. It’s got a article that Jennifer Aniston might get a tattoo of a unicorn.”

Connie took her purse out of her bottom drawer and stood. “What about you?” she asked me. “Are you going after Winkle?”

“Eventually. Not alone. And probably not today. I’m still looking for Larry Virgil.”

“Stephanie could stay here,” Lula said. “Just in case we get a rush of desperados.”

I cut my eyes to Lula. “ ‘Desperados’?”

“It could happen,” Lula said.

Connie looked over at me. “Good idea. Stay here and keep Lula from shooting the desperados if they show up. I won’t be long. Court’s in session. I should be back in an hour.”

Connie and Vinnie always park in the small lot at the back of the building. The lot had parking for four cars and opened to a narrow alley that bisected the block. It was hidey-hole parking for Vinnie, and it allowed Connie to sneak cigarettes.

Connie left through the back door, and Lula turned to me. “I bet she’s out there sneaking a smoke first. That alleyway and parking lot are like the safety zone for smoking without stinking up your personal environment.”

“Seems like it would be easier to just quit smoking.”

“You say that on account of you never smoked. Sure, it could shorten your life and give you lung cancer and heart disease and ruin your skin, but you ever see the look on someone’s face when they take that first drag? It’s like when you feel a orgasm coming on. Like you’ve been workin’ and workin’ at it and finally you know you nailed it and zow! you got yourself a orgasm.”

“Were you a smoker?”

“Hell, yeah. I was a big smoker, but I’m not stupid. I got this beautiful chocolate skin and I’m not going all crone with it because of smoking.”

“How did you quit?”

“I traded in my cigarettes for a vibrator. I got a dandy little battery job that I carry in my purse, and when I feel the urge to light up I just stick this thing against my lady parts and buzz myself into relaxation and happiness. Personally I don’t get the whole e-cigarette thing. I mean, if you’re going mechanical wouldn’t you rather put those batteries to work on your pleasure bean?”

I was speechless. I was raised Catholic, and this was way outside my comfort zone. Okay, so I know about the pleasure bean, but the last thing I wanted to think about was Lula’s pleasure bean. It was probably the size of a duck egg. I tried to shake the image out of my head, but it was stuck there. I was going to have to go home and pour bleach into my brain.

“So anyways,” Lula said. “Do you think Jennifer Aniston should get a unicorn tattoo?”

I didn’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I personally had never been a big unicorn person, but who am I to impose my views on Jennifer Aniston?

I settled into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in front of Connie’s desk and looked over Larry Virgil’s file. Nothing new jumped out at me, and the questions that arose weren’t about Larry Virgil. They were about the truck and the frozen man. Surely by now the truck driver had been questioned. Was he a suspect? Had he known there was a dead guy in his truck? How the heck could this have happened?

“You look like you got a lot of thinking going on,” Lula said. “You must care a lot about Jennifer Aniston.”

“I was thinking about the frozen man. It really bothers me that he was dressed up like a Bogart Bar. I know this is weird, but it feels like a personal insult. Like someone disrespected the Bogart Bar.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Lula said. “Maybe it was a homage to a Bogart Bar. Maybe the killer liked this man and wanted to make him look like his childhood favorite memory.”

“The killer killed him! That’s not something you do to someone you like.”

“I see what you’re saying, but maybe being turned into a Bogart Bar is one of the hazards of working in a ice cream factory. Not that I’d let it stop me on account of ice cream factory employment’s on my bucket list.”

“I didn’t know you liked ice cream that much. I always thought of you as fried chicken and donuts.”

“I’m a complex person,” Lula said. “I got a lot of stuff going on. You haven’t even seen the tip of my iceberg yet. One of my goals is to be a TV star.”

“I thought you wanted to be a supermodel.”

“Yeah, but that’s all yesterday. It’s about being a reality TV star now. It’s only a matter of time before I have my own show. I got two ideas, and we’re about to start shooting some demo reels. That’s how you get on these shows. You gotta shoot a demo reel.”

“What show do you want to be on?”

“Well, one is my own original idea and the other one is Naked and Afraid. I’m hookin’ up with Randy Briggs.”

Randy Briggs is thirty-six inches tall and has the personality of a junkyard dog.

“You hate Randy Briggs,” I told Lula.

“Exactly. That’s what makes it so good. There’s instant drama, you see what I’m sayin’? We got the idea from Saturday Night Live. The sexy little guy from Game of Thrones did this Naked and Afraid skit with Leslie Jones, and it was dope.”