I looked at the card, a card I’d asked Brody to make for me way back in the day when Indy and I were searching for Rosie.
Mr. Kumar had kept his.
Righteous.
What was not righteous was, as much as I wanted the business, I had to make coffee, continue my stripper education and robberies happened at night, the same time as stripping did. And last, there was only one of me. Brody was strung out finding out about the books and he never worked in the field, unless that work required him to be in a surveillance van. Darius worked for Lee and was on the stripper case with me.
I couldn’t take the case.
And that sucked.
“I’m sorry Mr. Kumar,” I said. “I have another case I have to work at night and I can’t be two places at once.”
His face fell. “But we’ve had nine cars on our streets broken into,” he told me. “Stereos stolen. Glove boxes rifled through. Windows smashed. All this in less than two weeks. People are worried.”
Crap.
“I’m keepin’ my eye on it,” Tex repeated, sounding more than his usual grumpy.
“Tweakers,” I muttered, and Mr. Kumar looked at me.
“I’m sorry?”
“Tweakers,” I repeated. “People who need to steal car stereos and fence them to buy drugs.”
Mr. Kumar nodded.
“No one would hit one neighborhood repeatedly in that time unless they were stupid or desperate, and tweakers are both,” I told him.
Mr. Kumar nodded again.
It was then it occurred to me that no one would hit Tex’s street because he did keep an eye out. He did this by sitting on his porch randomly, but often, with a shotgun across his lap and night vision goggles on his head. The presence of a sleeping cat also in his lap was not unheard of.
This was a weird thing to do, but this was also Tex we were talking about. And except for when Rock Chick business leaked into their ‘hood (because Ava lived with Luke now, but she still owned the pad she used to live in there; not to mention Indy’s business brought us there, repeatedly), crime was nil. Probably because Tex lived there and sat outside in night vision goggles with a shotgun.
Shotguns were definitely deterrents. Wild men wearing night vision goggles having shotguns were much stronger deterrents.
This meant the culprits likely knew this, kept an eye on Tex and when he went off duty, they did the deeds.
In other words, locals.
I looked up at Tex. “You got a house in the ‘hood that’s home to a bunch of meth heads?”
“Only about every other one,” he replied.
Fuck.
Door to door action.
Hector.
Hector said if I had a case he could work with me, he was there.
It would have to be pre- or post-stripping (likely post, which would make it a long night), but we could hit the houses, gain entry cops couldn’t by being badasses (or Hector could be one; I’d pretend to be one), hope they didn’t immediately fence the property they stole and therefore call it into Eddie or Hank so they could get a search warrant and roll in.
“I’ll take the case,” I said to Mr. Kumar.
He grinned.
“I said, I got an eye out!” Tex boomed, and I looked up at him.
“You’re getting married tomorrow,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, and it’s no big deal. A piece of paper. Nance already lives with me and we’re not takin’ a honeymoon for a coupla weeks ‘cause she’s got some cruise she wants to take and they were all booked up for the week we wanted so we had to wait. So I can keep an eye out.”
He said a lot of words, but I was stuck on one thing.
Tex was going on a cruise?
Tex was going to be confined on a cruise ship with hundreds of other passengers?
Tex was going to be lumbering around the decks in his jeans and flannels with his wild-ass beard and hair, frightening unsuspecting vacationers… on a cruise?
I burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?” Tex asked.
“You,” I choked out, “On a cruise.” I looked to Indy and saw her shoulders shaking.
“What’s funny about that?” Tex demanded to know.
“You,” I choked out again. “On a cruise.”
“I know,” Jet said from behind me, having returned from one of her seven hundred daily pregnancy-related bathroom breaks. “I laughed for fifteen minutes when Mom told me.”
“Tex on a cruise!” I cried.
“Shut it, woman,” Tex ordered.
I kept laughing.
“It’s not that funny,” Tex boomed.
It totally was.
I looked to Jet. “You make your mom promise to take pictures. Lots of them.”
Tex growled.
I looked back at him and kept laughing.
His eyes narrowed and he declared, “You’re on this case, I’m workin’ with you.”
I swallowed laughter, wiped a tear of hilarity from my eye and caught his.
“Fine. You make a list of houses we need to hit. I’ll call Hector, who said he’d work a case with me. I’ll get a night when we can hit them before you go on your,” I swallowed again then forced out, “Cruise. Then we go out and hit them. We find stolen property, we call it into the cops. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tex grunted.
“Can I get a coffee?” A man standing behind Mr. Kumar asked.
“Are you blind?” Tex asked back.
“Sorry?” the man queried.
Tex threw out a beefy mitt. “Don’t you see we’re havin’ a meetin’?”
The man looked around. He also looked confused.
He looked back at Tex. “I thought you made coffee.”
“We do. We also fight crime. Don’t you read the papers?” Tex asked, and I heard Jet giggle.
I was right with her.
“Um… yes, but I didn’t know you did it when you were making coffee,” the man replied.
“Crime don’t happen when you want it to,” Tex returned. “You gotta be prepared. You gotta plan. And that’s why we’re havin’ a meetin’. Now shut it and wait until we’re done.”
The man gave big eyes to Jet and I. He also appeared indecisive, like he didn’t know whether to wait as Tex ordered, or take his life in his hands that Tex might not like it and flee.
Obviously not a regular.
“We’ll be right with you,” Indy assured him as she moved to walk around the counter.
“We’re done meeting anyway,” I announced then looked between Tex and Mr. Kumar. “The plan’s in place. I’ll give you both a heads up when we put it in action.”