Motor Mouth

this time. Maybe only half a box.”
    I fed Beans a couple prunes, and he started to whine and claw at the door.
    “He’s ready!” Felicia said. “Get him out. Get the bags.”
    “He needs grass,” I told them. “He only goes on grass.”
    “Ocean Drive!” Suzanne shouted.
    Rosa had the car in gear. “I’ve got it covered. Hang on. We’re only a couple blocks away.”
    She rocketed down Collins, hung a left onto Ocean, and slid to a stop at the curb. We all got out and ran with Beans to the grassy stretch of park between the road and beach. Beans reached the grass and abruptly stopped and hunched. I had a plastic bag wrapped around my hand. I was set to catch. Felicia had Beans by the leash. Suzanne and Rosa had spare bags.
    “I knew the prunes would work,” Felicia said.
    Beans put his head down, squinched his eyes closed, and a box and a half of prunes and God knows what else exploded from his back end in a gelatinous spray that shot out over a ten-foot radius.
    We all jumped back bug-eyed.
    “Maybe too many prunes,” Rosa said.
    Beans picked his head up and smiled. He was done. He felt fine. He pranced around a little at the end of his leash.
    “Okay,” I said. “Let’s not panic. He’s obviously empty. So the circuit board has to be here somewhere. Everybody look.”
    “It’s too small,” Suzanne said. “It would have been hard to find in…you know, a pile. It’s going to be impossible to find in this grass.”
    “Maybe they’ll only cut a couple fingers off,” Rosa said. “As long as he’s got his thumb, he could be okay.”
    “We have twenty-five minutes,” Felicia said.
    “We’ll have to fake it,” I told them. “Everyone look for dog poop. Lots of people walk their dogs here and not everyone cleans up. We’ll fill a bag with whatever poop we can find. Then we’ll give the bag to Miranda, and we’ll tell him we didn’t have time to look for the circuit board. And the more poop the better, so it takes a long time for Miranda to go through it. We need time to make a getaway with Hooker.”
    “I’m gonna need some Pepto-Bismol when I’m done here,” Rosa said.
    “Sorry,” I said to Suzanne, “you’ll have to replicate the circuit board. But at least your technology won’t get stolen.”
     
    “What’s this?” Simon wanted to know.
    “Dog poop,” I said, handing the bag over to him. “We didn’t have time to look through it for the circuit board, but I’m sure it’s in there. Beans is all cleaned out.”
    “No kidding. This is a gallon bag of dog shit. Jeez, you could at least have double bagged it.”
    “I was in a hurry. I didn’t want Hooker to lose any fingers.” I looked around. “Where’s Hooker?”
    “He’s in the car with Fred. I’m going to have to call Miranda on this. I wasn’t expecting a sack of shit.”
    “It was the best I could do on short notice,” I said.
    Simon and I were standing in the parking lot next to the Royal Palm Deli. Rosa was idling in the slot closest to the driveway. Suzanne and Felicia had Simon in their sights, giving him the squinty-eye, guns in hand, ready to “take him down” should I give the signal. An SUV with tinted windows idled at the other end of the lot. Hard to tell who was inside the SUV.
    Simon studied me behind his dark glasses. “Just between you and me, if I hadn’t left you at the bar last night, would I have gotten to nail you?”
    “You don’t expect me to tell you, do you?”
    He looked at the gallon of dog poop. “I guess I know the answer.”
    Simon put the poop in the back of the SUV and flipped his cell phone open. He held a short conversation with someone at the other end, presumably Miranda, the phone was flipped closed, and Simon walked back to me.
    “Miranda says we bring the bag and Hooker back to the house, and when we find the circuit board we’ll let Hooker go.”
    “The deal was that we’d swap here. I want my poop back.”
    “Lady, I’d love to give you your
poop
back, but no can do. The boss wants the
poop
.”
    I trudged back to the Camry and got in next to Beans. “They’re going to release Hooker when they find the circuit board.”
    The black SUV pulled away, and Rosa cranked the Camry over. “Okay, ladies,” she said. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
    “What does that mean?” I asked Rosa.
    “It means we have to kick some ass and get Hooker out.”
    “That sounds good on paper,” I said to Rosa. “But we’re not exactly a SWAT