“This is what you would find in a rental unit with no one living in it,” Lula said, walking into the bathroom. “There isn’t even a toothbrush here.”
The bedroom also seemed untouched.
“Only one thing here doesn’t make sense,” Lula said, standing by the perfectly made bed. “There’s a stepladder under the trapdoor in the ceiling. I think someone’s going in and out up there. I bet Oswald might even be living there. Who knows what’s in the attic? It could be all fixed up into another apartment. You hold the ladder steady, and I’ll look into this.”
Lula was wearing five-inch spike-heeled sling-backs, a black spandex skirt that barely covered her ass, and a yellow knit tank top with a scoop neck that was low enough to be in nipple territory. She looked like a giant bumble bee with blue hair.
“Are you sure you want to climb the ladder in those shoes?” I asked her.
“Hell yeah. These are good ladder-climbing shoes. And I’m not necessarily going into the attic. I just want to take a peek.”
Lula went up the ladder and examined the latch.
“This isn’t even locked,” she said.
She unlatched the trapdoor and let it swing open. She climbed a couple more steps on the ladder and looked into the attic.
“It’s dark in here,” she said. “There’s no light that I can see.” She pushed the flashlight app on her cell phone and flashed the beam of light around. “Hello?” she shouted. “Anybody home up here?”
Chirping and fluttering sounds carried down to me and in seconds a hundred bats rushed out of the trapdoor and into the bedroom.
“Holy hell!” Lula screamed. “What the fork!”
She came down the ladder in a cloud of bats, missed a rung, and broke the heel off one of her shoes. She hit the floor, shrieking and dancing in place. “Eeeeeee!”
I grabbed Lula by the arm and pulled her into the living room. I slammed the door to the bedroom shut, leaving most of the bats behind.
Lula was bug-eyed, waving her arms, still dancing. “I got bat cooties. I can feel them. They’re crawling all over me. Lordy, Lordy. And I got the rabies. I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. Look at me, I’m drooling. Am I drooling? Am I getting all foamy at the mouth?”
“I don’t see any foam and you’re only drooling a little. You haven’t got rabies. You have to get bitten by an infected bat to get rabies.”
“They looked real infected to me,” Lula said.
Her hair wasn’t a perfect puffball anymore but aside from that she looked okay. “I don’t see any bite marks on you,” I said.
“Yeah, but I got that kind of skin that would make it hard to see a bat bite mark. It would be just two little fang marks and it could look like enlarged pores. I got some of them.”
“I think the bats were mostly trying to get away from you.”
I opened the front door to leave and bumped into Diesel.
“You’re late for the party,” I said to Diesel.
“I had to wait for my fixer to deliver wheels,” Diesel said.
“You have a fixer?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” He looked around. “What’s happening?”
“Lula decided to investigate the attic and had a Born Free moment with a swarm of bats.”
“It was terrible,” Lula said. “They were bumping into me and chirping. I can still hear them. It’s like they’re in my head and won’t go away.
“I can hear the chirping,” Diesel said. “It’s coming from you.” He leaned in and studied Lula’s hair. “You’ve got a bat stuck in there.”
“What? For real?”
“It’s looking at me,” Diesel said. “I can see its beady little eyes.”
“Eeeeeeee,” Lula said. “Get it out. Get it out.”
She jumped up and down and flapped her hands and the bat flew out.
“Problem solved,” Diesel said.
“A lot you know,” Lula said. “I got a broken shoe and bat hair. I probably got lice. And the stupid bat could have pooped, and now I’ve got bat poop in my hair. I gotta go. I need a hair salon. I need a cheeseburger and fries. I haven’t got my car here.” She looked at me. “You gotta take me back to the office so I can get my car.”
I understood her dilemma. I wouldn’t want to walk around with bat hair, either, but I didn’t want to take off and drive to the office. This was Diesel’s first stop. He’d look around, reach the conclusion that Oswald wasn’t here, and Diesel would continue tracking. And knowing Diesel, he’d have some success. He had background information on Oswald that I didn’t have. The horrible fact of life was that my best shot at catching Oswald was to stick close to Diesel.