"Because I don't believe you. I think you're just trying to be nice to me."

"Look, Bernie, I want some information on Nowicki."

"Not until I see your girlfriend."

This was ridiculous. "She's shy."

"Okay, I'll go out there."

"No! I'll go get her." Jesus!

I jogged out to the parking lot and leaned in the window at Lula. "I'm in kind of a bind here. I need you to help me out. I need a lesbian girlfriend."

"You want me to find you one? Or you want me to be one?" I explained the situation to her, and we hoofed it back to Bernie, who was rearranging his grapefruits.

"Hey, little dude," Lula said. "What's the word?"

Bernie looked up from the grapefruits and almost jumped out of his shoes. "Whoa!"

Guess Bernie hadn't expect my girlfriend to be a two-hundred-pound black woman wearing pink spandex.

"Jeez!" Bernie said. "Jeez!"

"So Stephanie tells me you know old lady Nowicki."

Bernie vigorously nodded his head. "Yeah."

"You see her lately?"

Bernie just stared at Lula.

"Earth to Bernie," Lula said.

"Unh?"

"You see old lady Nowicki lately?"

"Yesterday. She came in to get some, you know, fruit."

"How often does she like to buy fruit?"

Bernie chewed on his lower lip. "Hard to say. She's not regular."

Lula draped an arm around Bernie and almost smothered him in her right breast. "See, the thing is, Bern, we'd like to talk to Nowicki, but we're having a hard time finding her on account of she's not staying in her house. Now if you could help us out here, we'd be grateful. Real grateful."

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of Bernie's face, from his bald dome to in front of his ear. "Oh crap," he said. And I could tell from the way he said it that he wanted to help us out.

Lula gave him another squeeze. "Well?"

"I dunno. I dunno. She never says much."

"She always come in alone?"

"Yeah."

I gave him my card. "If you remember something, or if you see Nowicki, you give me a call right away."

"Sure. Don't worry."

We got to the car, and I had another one of those weird thoughts. "Wait here," I said to Lula. "I'll be right back."

Bernie had been standing in the front of the store, watching us through the glass. "Now what?" he said. "You forget something?"

"When Nowicki bought her fruit from you, did she pay you with a twenty?"

He sounded surprised at the question. "Yeah."

"You still have it?"

He stared at me blank-faced for a minute. "I guess . . ." He took his wallet from his back pocket and looked inside. "Here it is. It's the only twenty I got. It must be it."

I rooted around in my shoulder bag and found some money. I counted out two tens. "I'll trade you."

"Is that it?" he asked.

I gave him a sly smile. "For now."