“This isn’t no ordinary car,” Lula said. “This is my baby. I don’t want to see no scratches on it when you’re done.”

“You be nice to me and my boys, and we’ll wash your baby by hand.”

“How nice do I gotta be?” Lula asked.

“Real nice,” he said, smiling wide so we could see he had industrial-grade diamonds embedded in his decayed teeth.

“That’s disgusting,” Lula said. “You need to show some respect and act like professional car washers. And get your head out of my window.”

“I think me and my boys need to show you what we got and maybe we teach you some respect.”

Lula pulled her Glock out of her purse and stuck it in his face.

“You got ten seconds before I blow your nose off,” Lula said.

“Yow, momma!” the guy said.

They all turned and ran, and Lula squeezed off six rounds, managing to miss all of the car washers at pretty much point-blank range.

“Hunh,” Lula said, rolling her window up and driving out of the lot. “They don’t make these guns like they used to. I can’t believe I didn’t hit a single one of those fools.”

Next stop was the pawnshop. Lula parked on the street, and we got out and looked around. There was an apartment above the shop, but so far as we knew, it wasn’t owned by Sunflower. A consignment store was to one side of the pawnshop and a pizza place was to the other side.

“This doesn’t look promising,” I said to Lula, “but I’m going to go in and scope it out.”

“Who am I?” Lula wanted to know. “Am I good cop or bad cop?”

“You’re nothing. There’s no cop. We’re just browsing and leaving.”

“No problemo. I can do that. I’m a excellent browser.”

We went inside the pawnshop, Lula walked up to the counter, looked in the display case, and called the pawnshop guy over.

“It’s not like I need the money or anything, but I was wondering how much I could get for this ring I got on,” Lula said. “As you could see, it’s got a ruby in the middle with some diamond chips around the edge. And it’s in a genuine gold setting.”