Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

SIXTEEN

CONNIE DROVE A silver Camry with rosary beads hanging from her rear view mirror and a Smith amp; Wesson stuck under the driver’s seat. No matter what went down, Connie was covered.

I was in the backseat with Grandma, and Lula was next to Connie. We were in the parking lot adjacent to the field where the cook-off was to be held, and we were watching competitors pull in, dragging everything from mobile professional kitchens to U-hauls carrying grills and worktables.

“I didn’t expect this,” Grandma said. “I figured we come with a jar of sauce, and they’d have some chicken for us.”

“We got a grill,” Lula said, getting out of the Camry. “We just didn’t bring it yet.”

“Did you get a set of rules when you registered?” Connie asked Lula.

“No. I did the express register, bein’ that the organizer was under some duress. And on top of that, I didn’t have to pay no registration fee, so he might have been trying to save on paper.”

A registration table had been set up at the edge of the lot. Competitors were signing in, taking a set of instructions, and leaving with a tray.

“What’s with the tray?” Lula asked the guy in line in front of us.

“It’s the official competition tray. You put the food that’s going to be judged on the tray.”

“Imagine that,” Grandma said. “Isn’t that something?”

We got our tray and our rules, and we stepped aside to read through the instructions.

“It says here that we can’t use a gas grill,” Connie said. “We need to cook on wood or charcoal. And we have to pick a category. Ribs, chicken, or brisket.”

“I’m thinking ribs,” Lula said. “Seems to me it’s harder to poison someone with ribs. I guess there’s always that trichinosis thing, but you don’t know about that for years. And I’m gonna have to get a different grill.”

“All these people got tents and tables and signs with their name on it,” Grandma said. “We need some of that stuff. We need a name.”

“How about Vincent Plum Bail Bondettes,” Connie said.

“I’m not being nothin’ associating me with Vincent Plum,” Lula said. “Bad enough I gotta work for the little pervert.”

“I want a sexy name,” Grandma said. “Like Hot Vagina.”

“Flamin’ Assholes would be better,” Lula said. “That’s what happens when you eat our sauce. Can you say Flamin’ Assholes on television?”

“This is big,” I said, looking out over the field. “There are; ags with numbers on them all over the place. Every team is assigned a number.”

“We’re number twenty-seven,” Lula said. “That don’t sound like a good number to me.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s not memorable,” Lula said. “I want to be number nine.”

My eye was starting to twitch, and I had a dull throb at the base of my skull. “Probably, they gave us Chipotle’s number,” I said.

“Do you think?”

“Absolutely. He got decapitated, and you registered late, so you got his number.”

I hoped she bought this baloney, because I didn’t want to hang out while Lula pulled a gun on the registration lady.

“That makes sense,” Lula said. “I guess it’s okay then. Let’s find our spot.”

We walked down rows of flags and finally found twenty-seven. It was a little patch of grass between the red-and-white-striped canopy of Bert’s BBQ and the brown canopy of The Bull Stops Here. Our neighbors had set up shop and taken off. From what I could see, that was the routine. Stake out your territory, get your canopy and table ready to go. Hang your sign. Leave for the day.

“The instructions say we can get back in here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” Connie said. “We can start cooking anytime we want after that. The judging is at six in the evening.”

“We got a lot of stuff to get together,” Lula said. “To start, we gotta find one of them canopies and a grill.”

“Not everybody has a canopy,” Grandma said.

“Yeah, but the canopy is classy, and it keeps the sun off the top of your head, so you don’t get a sunburn,” Lula said.

We all looked at the top of Lula’s head. Not much chance of sunburn there. Not a lot of sunlight reached Lula’s scalp.

“I’ve got a couple hours free this afternoon,” I said to Lula. “We can go around and try to collect some of the essentials. We just have to stop by Rangeman, so I can get the Buick.”

“I’ll go with you,” Grandma said.

“THE FIRST THING we gotta do is get us a truck,” Lula said. “This Buick isn’t gonna hold a grill and all. I bet we could borrow a truck from Pookey Brown. He owns that junkyard and used-car lot at the end of Stark Street. He used to be a steady customer of mine when I was a ’ho.”

“Boy,” Grandma said. “You had lots of customers. You know people everywhere.”

“I had a real good corner. And I never had a business manager, so I was able to keep my prices down.”

I didn’t want to drive the length of Stark, so I cut across on Olden and only had to go two blocks down to the junk-yard. The name on the street sign read C.J. SCRAP METAL, but Pookey Brown ran it, and scrap metal was too lofty a description for Pookey’s business. Pookey was a junk collector. He ran a private dump. Pookey had almost two acres of broken, rusted, unwanted crapola. Even Pookey himself looked like he was expired. He was thin as a reed, frizzy haired, gaunt featured, and his skin tone was gray. I had no clue to his age. He could be forty. He could be a hundred and ten. And I couldn’t imagine what Pookey would do with a ’ho.

“There’s my girl,” Pookey said when he saw Lula. “I never get to see you anymore.”

“I keep busy working at the bond office,” Lula told him. “I need a favor. I need to borrow a truck until tomorrow night.”

“Sure,” Pookey said. “Just take yourself over to the truck section and pick one out.”

If you had a junker car or truck, and somehow you could manage to get it to C.J. Scrap, you could park it there and walk away. Some of them even had license plates attached. And every now and then, one got parked with a body in the trunk. There were thirteen cars and three pickup trucks in Pookey’s “used car” lot today.

“Any of these trucks run?” Lula asked.

“The red one got a couple miles left,” Pookey said. “I could put a plate on for you. You need anything else?”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “I need a grill. Not one of them gas grills, either.”

“I got a good selection of grills,” Pookey said. “Do you need to cook in it?”

“I’m entered in the barbecue contest at the park tomorrow,” Lula said.

“So then you need a barbecuing grill. That narrows the field. How about eating? Are you gonna personally eat any of the barbecue?”

“I don’t think so. I think the judges are eating the barbecue.”

“That gives us more selection,” Pookey said.

By the time Lula was done shopping at C.J. Scrap, she had a grill and a card table loaded into her truck. The plate on the truck was expired, but you could hardly tell for the mud and rust. I followed her down Stark and parked behind her when she stopped at Maynard’s Funeral Home.

“I gotta make a pickup here, too. You stay and guard the truck,” Lula said, sticking her head in the Buick’s window. “Bad as it is, if I leave it alone for ten minutes in this part of town, it’ll be missing wheels when I get back.” She looked at Grandma, sitting next to me. “Do you have your gun?”

“You betcha,” Grandma said. “I got it right here in my purse. Just like always.”

“Shoot whoever comes near,” Lula said to Grandma. “I won’t be long.”

I looked over at Grandma. “If you shoot anyone, I’m telling my mother on you.”

“How about those three guys coming down the street? Can I shoot them?”

“No! They’re just walking down the street.”

“I don’t like the looks of them,” Grandma said. “They look shifty.”

“Everyone looks like that on Stark Street.”

The three guys were in their early to mid-twenties, doing the ghetto strut in their ridiculous oversize pants. They were wearing a lot of gold chains, and one of them had a bottle in a brown paper bag. Always a sign of a classy dude.

I rolled my window up and locked my door, and Grandma did the same.

They got even with the Buick and looked in at me.

“Nice wheels,” one of them said. “Maybe you should get out and let me drive.”

“Ignore them,” I said to Grandma. “They’ll go away.”

The guy with the bottle took a pull on it and tried the door handle. Locked.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to shoot him?” Grandma asked.

“No. No shooting.”

They tried to rock the car, but the Buick was a tank. It would take more than three scrawny homies to rock the Buick. One of them dropped his pants and pressed his bare ass against the driver’s side window.

“You’re gonna have to Windex that window when we get home,” Grandma said.

I was looking at the funeral home, sending mental telepathy to Lula to get herself out to her truck, so we could leave, and I heard the back door to the Buick get wrenched open. I hadn’t thought to lock the back door.

One of the men climbed onto the backseat, and another reached around and unlocked the driver’s door. I reached for the ignition key, but my door was already open, and I was getting pulled out of the car. I hooked my arm through the steering wheel and kicked one of the guys in the face. The guy in the back was grabbing at me, and the third guy had hold of my foot.

“We’re gonna have fun with you and the old lady,” the guy in the backseat said. “We’re gonna do you like you’ve never been done before.”

“Shoot!” I said to Grandma.

“But you said…”

“Just fucking shoot someone!”

Grandma carried a gun like Dirty Harry’s. I caught sight of the massive barrel in my peripheral vision and BANG.

The guy holding my foot jumped back and grabbed the side of his head, blood spurting through his fingers. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Son of a fuckin’ bitch! She shot off my ear.”

I knew what he was saying because it was easy to read his lips, but I wasn’t hearing anything but a high-pitched ringing in my head.

The guy in the backseat scrambled out of the Buick and helped drag the guy with one ear down the street.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Grandma asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

The door to the funeral home opened, and Lula and a mountain of a guy came out carrying a bundle of what looked like aluminum poles partially wrapped in faded green canvas. They threw the bundle into the back of the truck, and the guy returned to the funeral home. Lula said something to Grandma and me, but I couldn’t hear.

“What?” I said.

“HOME!” Grandma yelled.

I followed Lula to my parents’ house and dropped Grandma off. I think Grandma said they were going to put the truck in the garage, so no one would steal the grill. Personally, I didn’t think she had to worry about anyone wanting the grill.

I drove through town to Rangeman and went straight to Ranger’s apartment. I kicked my shoes off and flopped onto his bed. When I woke up, I was covered with a light blanket, and I could see Ranger at his desk in the den. The ringing wasn’t nearly so loud in my head. It was down to mosquito level.

I rolled out of bed and went into the den.

“Tough day?” Ranger asked.

“You don’t even want to know. How was your day?”

“Interesting. I showed your maintenance man Mike file pictures of all Rangeman employees remotely fitting his description, and he couldn’t identify any of them. Our bad guy wears a Rangeman uniform but doesn’t work here.”

“Could he be a former employee?”

“There were only two possibilities, and I got a negative on them.”

“Now what?”

“I have someone checking all the accounts for evidence of touch-pad surveillance. He’s also cataloguing Rangeman visits on those accounts.”

“It wouldn’t be difficult to duplicate a Rangeman uniform. Black cargo pants and a black T-shirt with Rangeman embroidered on it.”

“My men all know to show their ID when entering a house, but the accounts are lax at asking. Most people see the uniform and are satisfied.”

I was suddenly starving, and there was a wonderful smell drifting in from the kitchen. “What’s that smell?”

Ella brought dinner up a half hour ago, but I didn’t want to wake you. I think we’ve got some kind of stew.”

We went to the kitchen and dished out the stew.

“I’ve got a fix on Cameron Manfred,” Ranger said. “During the day, he works for a trucking company that’s a front for a hijacking operation. It would be awkward to make an apprehension there. Lots of paranoid people with guns. Manfred leaves the trucking company at five, goes to a neighborhood strip bar with his fellow workers until around seven, and then heads for his girl’s apartment. He gives his address as the projects, but he’s never there. It’s actually his mother’s address. We’re going to have to hit him at the girl’s place tonight. If there isn’t enough cover to tag him on the street, we’ll have to let him settle and then go in after him. I have to take a shift at eleven, but we should have this wrapped up by then.”

____________________

WE WERE IN a Rangeman-issue black Explorer. Ranger was behind the wheel, and we were parked across from a slum apartment building one block over from Stark Street, where Cameron Manfred was holed up with his girlfriend. It was a little after nine at night, and the street was dark. Businesses were closed, steel grates rolled down over entrances and plate-glass windows. There was a streetlight overhead, but the bulb had been shot out.

We’d been sitting at the curb for ten minutes, not saying anything, Ranger in hunt mode. He was watching the building and the street, taking the pulse of the area, his own heart rate probably somewhere around reptilian.

He punched a number into his phone. A man answered, and Ranger disconnected. “He’s there,” Ranger said. “Let’s go.”

We crossed the street, entered the building, and silently climbed to the third floor. The air was stale. The walls were covered with graffiti. The light was dim. A small rat scuttled across Ranger’s foot and disappeared into the shadows. I shuddered and grabbed the back of his shirt.

“Babe,” Ranger said, his voice barely audible.

There were two apartments on the third floor. Maureen Gonzales, Manfred’s girlfriend, lived in 3A. I stood flat to the wall on one side of her door. Ranger stood on the other side and knocked. His other hand was on his holstered gun.

A pretty Hispanic woman opened the door and smiled at Ranger. She was wearing a man’s shirt, unbuttoned, and nothing else. “Yes?” she said.

Ranger smiled back at the woman and looked beyond her, into the room. “I’d like to speak to Cameron.”

“Cameron isn’t here.”

“You don’t mind if I look around?”

She held the shirt wide open. “Look all you want.”

“Nice,” Ranger said, “but I’m looking for Cameron.”

“I told you he’s not here.”

“Bond enforcement,” Ranger said. “Step aside.”

“Do you have a search warrant?”

There was the sound of a window getting shoved up in the back room. Ranger pushed past Gonzales and ran for the window. I turned and raced down the stairs and out the front door. I saw Manfred burst out of the alley between the buildings and cross the street. I took off after him, having no idea what I’d do if I caught him. My self-defense skills relied heavily on eye-gouging and testicle rearrangement. Beyond that, I was at a loss.

I chased Manfred to Stark and saw him turn the corner. I turned a couple beats behind him, and the sidewalk was empty in front of me. No Manfred.

The only possibility was the building on the corner. There was a pizza place on the ground floor and what looked like two floors of apartments above it. The pizza place was closed for the night. The door leading to the apartments was open, the hallway was dark. No light in the stairwell. I stood in the entry and listened for movement.

Ranger came in behind me. “Is he up there?”

“I don’t know. I lost him when he turned the corner. I wasn’t that far away. I don’t think he had time to go farther than this building. Where were you? I thought you’d be on top of him.”

“The fire escape rusted out underneath me at the second floor. It took me a minute to regroup.” He looked up the stairs. “Do you want to come with me, or do you want to keep watch here?”

“I’ll stay here.”

Ranger was immediately swallowed up by the dark. He had a flashlight, but he didn’t use it. He moved almost without sound, creeping up the stairs, pausing at the second-floor landing to listen before moving on.

I hid in the shadows, not wanting to be seen from the street. God knows who was walking the street. Probably, I should carry a gun, but guns scared the heck out of me. I had pepper spray in my purse. And a large can of hair spray, which in my experience is almost as effective as the pepper spray.

I was concentrating on listening for Ranger and keeping watch on the street, and was completely taken by surprise when a door to the rear of the ground-floor hallway opened and Manfred stepped out. He froze when he saw me, obviously just as shocked to find me standing there as I was to see him. He whirled around and retreated through the door. I yelled for Ranger and ran after Manfred.

The door opened to a flight of stairs that led to the cellar. I got to the bottom of the stairs and realized this was a storeroom for the pizza place. Stainless-steel rolling shelves marched in rows across the room. Bags of flour, cans of tomato sauce, and gallon cans of olive oil were stacked on the shelves. A dim bulb burned overhead. I didn’t see Manfred. Fine by me. Probably the only reason I wasn’t already dead was that he’d left his girl’s house in such a rush, he’d gone out unarmed.

I cautiously approached one of the shelves, and Manfred stepped out and grabbed me.

“Give me your gun,” he said.

My heart skipped a beat and went into terror tempo. Bang, bang, bang, bang, knocking against my rib cage.

“I don’t have a gun,” I said.

And then, without any help from my brain, my knee suddenly connected with Manfred’s gonads.

Manfred doubled over, and I hit him on the head with a bag of flour. He staggered forward a little, but he didn’t go down, so I hit him again. The bag broke, and flour went everywhere. I was momentarily blinded, but I reached back to the shelf, grabbed a gallon can of oil, and swung blind. I connected with something that got a grunt out of Manfred.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” Manfred said.

I hauled back to swing again, and Ranger lifted the can from my hand.

“I’m on it,” Ranger said, cuffing Manfred.

“Jail’s better than another three minutes with her,” Manfred said. “She’s a fuckin’ animal. I’m lucky if I can ever use my nuts again. Keep her away from me.”

“I didn’t see you come down the stairs,” I said to Ranger. “It was a whiteout.”

“Any special reason you grabbed the flour?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

Manfred and I were head-to-toe flour. The flour sifted off us when we moved and floated in the air like pixie dust. Ranger hadn’t so much as a smudge. By the time we got to the Rangeman SUV, some of the flour had been left behind as ghostly white footprints, but a lot of it remained.

“I honestly don’t know how you manage to do this,” Ranger said. “Paint, barbecue sauce, flour. It boggles the mind.”

“This was all your fault,” I said.

Ranger glanced over at me and his eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch.

“You could have taken him down in the apartment if you hadn’t spent so much time staring at his naked girlfriend.”

Ranger grinned. “She wasn’t naked. She was wearing a shirt.”

“You deserved to fall off that fire escape.”

“That’s harsh,” Ranger said.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked him.

“Do you care?”

“No,” I said.

“Liar,” Ranger said. He ruffled my hair and flour sprang out in all directions.

Manfred said something to Ranger in Spanish. Ranger answered him as he assisted him into the backseat of the Explorer.

“What did he say?” I asked Ranger. “He said if I let him go, I could have his girl.”

“And your answer?”

“I declined.”

“You’ll probably regret that as the night goes on,” I said to him.

“No doubt,” Ranger said.

RANGER AND I had Manfred in front of the docket lieutenant. It was a little after ten, and things were heating up. Drunk drivers, abusive drunk husbands, and a couple drug busts were making their way through the system. I was waiting for my body receipt when Morelli walked in. He nodded to Ranger and grinned at me in my whiteness.

“I was at my desk, and Mickey told me I had to come out to take a look,” Morelli said.

“It’s flour,” I told him.

“I can see that. If we add some milk and eggs, we can turn you into a cake.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you were off nights.”

“I came in to cover a shooting. Fred was supposed to be on, but he got overexcited at his kid’s ball game and pulled a groin muscle. I was just finishing up some paperwork.”

Mickey Bolan joined us. Bolan worked Crimes Against Persons with Morelli. He was ten years older than Morelli and counting down to his pension.

“I wasn’t exaggerating, right?” Bolan said to Morelli. “They’re both covered with flour.”

“I’d tell you about it,” I said to Bolan, “but it’s not as good as it looks.”

“That’s okay,” Bolan said. “I got something better, anyway. The rest of Stanley Chipotle just turned up at the funeral home on Hamilton.”

We all stood there for a couple beats, trying to pro cess what we’d just heard.

“He turned up?” Morelli finally said.

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “Someone apparently dumped him on the doorstep. So I guess someone should talk to the funeral guy.”

“I guess that someone would be me,” Morelli said. He looked at his watch. “What the hell, the game’s over now, anyway.”

“I need to get back to Rangeman,” Ranger said to me. “If you have an interest in Chipotle, I can send someone with a car for you.”

“Thanks. I don’t usually get excited about seeing headless dead men, but I wouldn’t mind knowing more.”

“I can give her a ride,” Morelli said. “I don’t imagine this will take long.”