22 Tricky Twenty-Two Read Online Free PDF

illegal immigrants, human traffickers, and runaway kids. Billy Bacon fit somewhere between a decent citizen and a mutant rat. He was six foot three inches tall and weighed upwards of 250 pounds. How he’d managed to get down a chimney, even with the bacon grease, was a miracle. The fact that he’d made it half a block with his pockets jammed full of money and jewelry and his clothes soaked in bacon grease put him in the realm of folk hero on K Street. He was forty-three years old, single, and according to his bond agreement he lived with his mother, Eula.
    “His mistake was using bacon grease,” Lula said. “First off, it’s a waste of good grease when there’s other things not so tasty. If he’d greased himself up with motor oil, the dogs wouldn’t have tracked him down. ’Course the grease was there for the taking on account of he worked the grill at Mike’s Burger Place on K and Main. They collect bacon grease by the barrel from their bacon burgers.”
    Lula cruised down K Street and idled across from the three-story redbrick graffiti-riddled building where Billy and his mother lived. We’d been here before, looking for Billy, with no luck.
    “Problem is, he’s a popular guy,” Lula said. “He fried up a good burger, and he was taking care of his momma. I knew his momma from years ago when she was a prime ’ho. Everybody knew she gave one of the best BJs around, but then she got some lip fungus on all her lips, if you know what I mean, and her business kind of fell apart. She was down to doing hand jobs and then she got the arthritis. I hear just about the only thing she can do with her hand now is lift a liquor bottle. Billy said he turned to stealing so he could afford the meds for his momma’s fungus. It’s kind of noble when you think about it.”
    “It wasn’t noble. It was stupid. Now he’s going to jail and his mother will have no one. Not to mention I have serious doubts he was stealing to pay for meds. Last time he got busted he said he’d hijacked twenty cases of Jack Daniel’s because he needed to cauterize a bite he got from a rabid dog.”
    “Twenty cases sounds excessive,” Lula said.
    The front door to the brick building opened, and Billy Bacon walked out.
    “Holy cats,” Lula said. “That’s Billy Bacon. It’s like he was waiting for us to come along and arrest him.”
    Billy Bacon spotted us in the car and took off at a run up the sidewalk.
    “He moves pretty good for a big man,” Lula said, “but he don’t move as fast as my Firebird.”
    She gave the Firebird some gas, and just as the car jumped forward Billy Bacon attempted to cross the street.
Whump!
Lula punted Billy Bacon about twenty feet.
    “Oops,” Lula said.
    We got out and looked down at Billy Bacon.
    “Are you okay?” Lula asked him.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I feel dazed. You hit me with your car.”
    “You were born dazed,” Lula said. “And you better hope you didn’t put a scratch in my Firebird. I just had it detailed.”
    Billy Bacon lurched to his feet and looked himself over. “I might have a skinned knee or something. You got insurance?”
    “What we got is a pair of handcuffs,” Lula said.
    I went to cuff him, and he swatted me away. “I don’t want to go to jail. I got things to do.”
    “Like what?” Lula asked him.
    “Like lunch.”
    “We’re going for lunch soon as we get you trussed up,” Lula said. “We’re going for egg salad.”
    “I might go with you if you buy me a sandwich,” Bacon said. “I want ham and cheese. And I want a bag of chips. And not the little bag neither.”
    I cuffed him and got him settled into the backseat, and Lula drove us the two blocks to the deli.
    “I want a egg salad sandwich on worthless white bread,” Lula said. “Make sure they pile on lots of egg salad. And then I want a tub of their potato salad, and a tub of their macaroni salad. And I’ll take a large Diet Coke.”
    I left Lula parked at the curb, ran into the deli, and