“You gonna leave the body all by itself?”
“I suppose one of us should stay.”
“That would be you,” Lula said.
An eighteen-wheeler roared by, almost sideswiping us.
“Ditch staying,” I told her.
Lula cut her eyes back to Harp. “We could take him with us. We could ram him into the trunk. And then we could drive him to a funeral parlor or something. You know, do a drop-off.”
“That would be altering the crime scene.”
“Altering, hell. This dead motherfucker fell out of the sky onto the hood of my car! And anyway, he could get run over by a truck if he stays here.”
She had a point. Elliot Harp had been in transit when he bounced off the Firebird. And he wouldn't look good with tire tracks across his chest.
“Okay,” I said. “We'll take him with us.”
We looked down at Elliot. Both of us swallowing hard.
“Guess you should put him in the trunk,” Lula said.
“Me?”
“You don't expect me to do it, do you? I'm not touching no dead man. I've still got the creeps from Leroy Watkins.”
“He's big. I can't get him in the trunk all by myself.”
“This whole thing is giving me the runs,” Lula said. “I vote we pretend this never happened, and we get our butts out of here.”
“It won't be so bad,” I said to her, making an effort at convincing myself. “How about your blanket? We could wrap him in the blanket. Then we could pick him up without actually touching him.”
“I suppose that'd be all right,” Lula said. “We could give it a try”
I spread the blanket on the ground beside Elliot Harp, took a deep breath, hooked my fingers around his belt and rolled him onto the blanket. I jumped back, squeezed my eyes closed tight and exhaled. No matter how much violent death I saw, I would never get used to it.
“I'm gonna definitely have the runs,” Lula said. “I can feel it coming on.”
“Forget about the runs and help me with this body!”
Lula grabbed hold of the head end of the blanket, and I grabbed hold of the foot end. Harp had full rigor and wouldn't bend, so we put him in the trunk headfirst with his legs sticking out. We carefully closed the lid on Harp's knees and secured the lid with a piece of rope Lula had in her trunk.
“Hold on,” Lula said, pulling a red flowered scarf from her coat pocket, tying the scarf on Harp's foot like a flag. “Don't want to get a ticket. I hear the police are real picky about having things sticking out of your trunk.”
Especially dead guys.
We pulled into traffic and had gone about a half mile, looking for a place to turn, when I got to worrying about Harp. I wasn't sure how it would go over with the Trenton police if we drove up to the station with a dead drug dealer hanging out of Lula's trunk. They might not understand the decision-making process that led to moving him off the side of the road.
Lula took a jug handle off Route 1 and stopped for a light. “Where're we going?” she wanted to know.
“To the burg. I need to talk to Eddie Gazarra.”
Gazarra was a friend first, cop second. Gazarra could be trusted to give me honest advice on the best method of dead body transfer.
A car pulled up behind us at the light. Almost immediately the car went into reverse, backing away from us at high speed. Lula and I stopped watching the rearview mirror and exchanged glances.
“Maybe we should have done a better job of wrapping the blanket around old Elliot's feet,” Lula said.