Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(25)

“Did you just take a shower?”

“This morning.”

“You smell nice.”

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He leaned in and kissed me. Our tongues touched, and I curled my fingers into his shirt.

“Criminy,” I said.

He gave me a light parting kiss. “You have my number.”

Oh yeah.

I watched him drive away, and I went back into the office.

“Criminy,” Lula said.

I nodded agreement. “So true. Where’s Connie?”

“Courthouse, covering for Vinnie. I’m babysitting the office but nothing’s going on, so I’m working on my reality show. We’re gonna shoot it tonight. We did some preliminary test runs but this is the real thing. I’m just going over the script one more time.”

“I thought reality shows were unscripted.”

“They’re scripted unscripted. Not a lot of people know that. Just us on the inside,” Lula said. “You want to hear my script?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to have to think about you and Briggs naked.”

“Yeah, I could see where that would be a problem with Briggs. He’s not real attractive once you get his clothes off him. Not a lot to look at, if you know what I mean.”

“Did we get any new FTAs?”

“A shoplifter and a mime.”

“What did the mime do?”

“He pooped in the middle of the street. Right at the corner of Hamilton and Broad.”

“Get out.”

“Cross my heart. You can look on his arrest sheet. Everybody was taking pictures. Traffic was stopped all over the place. He was trending big on YouTube when it happened, but it’s dropped off some now. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.”

“Why did he do you-know-what in the middle of the street?”

“He said it was performance art. He said he was making a statement about our repressive society. Problem was, he repressed traffic because he was posing too long with his art, so he got arrested.”

“What were the charges against him?” I asked Lula.

“Obstruction of something and making a general nuisance of himself. Personally, if it was me, I couldn’t see myself pooping in the middle of the street. Even if I had to go real bad. I’d be afraid I’d get run over. I mean, even dogs know enough not to poop in the middle of the street. You ever see a dog poop in the middle of the street? I bet a turkey wouldn’t poop in the middle of the street, and I hear they’re real dumb.”

I agreed. Turkeys were known to be dumb.

“So, about the reality show,” I said. “Where are you doing this?”

“Mill Street. I got a map worked out. We’re going to start on the second block and work our way up to no-man’s-land.”

“Are you insane? You’ll die.”

Mill Street ran parallel to Stark Street, one block over. It wasn’t as bad as Stark, but it was still pretty bad. Residential in a crack house kind of way for a block or two and then mostly warehouses.

“We got a plan,” Lula said. “We’re shooting two blocks, and then we’re faking the rest. I mean, it’s dark out, right? Nobody’s gonna know where we are. We can just keep running around the same two blocks and do some creative camera work. And the good part is the cops won’t go anywhere near there so we haven’t got no worries about the naked thing. Nobody’s going to care we haven’t got clothes on. All the people wandering around there are hallucinating anyways.”

“Good to see you’ve thought it through.”

“I got a mind for this,” Lula said. “I’m one of those underestimated people.”

“How are you going to film in the dark? Do you have lights?”

“You know Handy Howie, right? He’s the guy sells the handbags out of his Eldorado in the projects? Well, he’s doing the cinematography. He’s got a infrared camera. He’s always wanted to make movies, so we’re gonna give him a film credit and then after we’re done with this he can use it as a demo.”

“Wasn’t he arrested for invasion of privacy?”

“He explained that to me,” Lula said. “He’d just got his first infrared and he was learning how to use it, and he accidentally filmed some people in their bedroom. They were doing the nasty, and Howie said it was a shame the police confiscated that camera on account of it would of made a good documentary.”

“But he got another camera?”

“Yeah. Howie has connections. Handbags are his bread-and-butter business, but sometimes other stuff falls off a truck, if you know what I mean.”

The back door opened and slammed shut, and Connie walked in. She dumped her handbag into her bottom drawer and kicked her five-inch platform stilettos off.

“These shoes are freakin’ killing me,” she said.

“Your problem is you haven’t got the right balance to your body to wear shoes like that,” Lula said. “You gotta balance out your boobs with your bootie. Like, take me for instance. I got just the right proportion of boob to bootie. I could walk all day in those FMPs and never tip over. You got a imbalance of boob. It’s one of them genetic things. Italians can grow boob, but they’re deficient in bootie. I got a advantage with my African tribal background and taste for macaroni and cheese.”