Room for me. No room for Lula. She'd understand. After all, this was business, right? And the fact that her car just got blown up, that was business too, right? "It wasn't my fault," I said. "I wasn't the one who tossed the cigarette."

"I must have been beamed up for a minute there," Sally said. "I think I just got a couple sentences from the other side."

I explained about the cars' catching fire and about the lead from Mrs. Nowicki.

"Sounds like we need to go to Atlantic City," Sally said.

"You think we could squash Lula into the Porsche with us?"

"Not even if we greased her."

I gave an internal sigh of regret and told Sally we'd go in my car and I'd pick him up at seven. No way was I going to be able to cut Lula out of this caper.

7

"OTHER MOTHERS have daughters who get married and have children," my mother said. "I have a daughter who blows up cars. How did this happen? This doesn't come from my side of the family."

We were at the table, eating dinner, and my father had his head bent over his plate, and his shoulders were shaking.

"What?" my mother said to him.

"I don't know. It just struck me funny. Some men could go a lifetime and never have their kid blow up a car, but I have a daughter who's knocked off three cars and burned down a funeral home. Maybe that's some kind of record."

Everyone sat in shocked silence because that was the longest speech my father had made in fifteen years.

"Your Uncle Lou used to blow up cars," my father said to me. "You don't know that, but it's true. When Louie was young he worked for Joey the Squid. Joey owned car lots back then, and he was in a war with the Grinaldi brothers, who also owned car lots. And Joey would pay Louie to blow up Grinaldi cars. Louie got paid by the car. Fifty dollars a car. That was big money in those days."

"You've been to the lodge, drinking," my mother said to my father. "I thought you were supposed to be out with the cab?"

My father forked in some potatoes. "Nobody wanted to take a cab. Slow day."

"Did Uncle Lou ever get caught?"

"Never. Lou was good. The Grinaldi brothers never suspected Lou. They thought Joey was sending out Willy Fuchs. One day they clipped Willy, and then Lou stopped blowing up Grinaldi cars."

"Ommigod."

"Worked out okay," my father said. "Lou went into the wholesale fruit business after that and did pretty good."

"Funky bracelet you got on your arm," Grandma said. "Is it new?"