Twelve Sharp

Eight

I opened an eye and squinted at my bedside clock. Six-thirty. In the morning! My alarm wasn't set to go off for another hour, but something had dragged me awake. I opened the other eye and did some deep breathing, sucking in the smell of coffee brewing. I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the dining room.

Ranger was at the table, using my laptop.

'Unh,' I said.

'Coffee's in the kitchen.'

'What are you doing here?'

'No computer in the safe house, and I thought this was easier than getting Tank to try to get a laptop to me. I had some things I wanted to run down.'

'I don't have very good programs.'

'I don't need programs. Silvio is sending me information from Miami.'

'How long have you been here?'

'About an hour.' He stood and stretched and headed for the kitchen. He got two mugs out of the cabinet, filled them with coffee, added milk, and gave one to me.

I was wearing short cotton pajama bottoms and a knit tank top, and I could see Ranger was enjoying the tank top.

'I'm feeling self-conscious,' I said to him.

'That's not what I'm feeling.'

No kidding! 'Go back to work,' I told him. 'I'm going to take my coffee into the shower. I'll be ready to go in a half hour.'

Ranger had parked on a side street a block away from my building. He left through the front door and walked to his car. I left through the back door, got into the Mini, and drove around three blocks until I was sure I wasn't being followed. I parked behind Ranger, beeped the Mini locked, and slipped into the green Explorer.

'Now what?' I asked.

Ranger pulled into traffic and went north on Hamilton. 'I want you to canvas a neighborhood for me.'

Ranger isn't an especially talkative guy. He doesn't do small talk, and he doesn't usually initiate conversation, but he'll talk about the job if he feels there's a genuine interest. In this case, I definitely had interest.

'I'd really like to know the history on this,' I said to him. 'I've only got bits and pieces.'

'Two weeks ago someone started using a credit card issued to Rangemanoso Enterprises with my name on it. Silvio found it during a routine scan. Silvio traced down Rangemanoso and to the best of our knowledge this guy appeared in Arlington six months ago and set up shop. I was about to go to Arlington and shut him down when we discovered he'd moved on. And then all of a sudden he started using the card in Miami. We assumed he was there reestablishing himself, but in retrospect, I think he was there to get Julie.'

'So you went to Miami to find this guy and before you got to him he took Julie.'

'Yes. And until you called Tank and told him someone smoked Carmen we had no reason to think he was in Jersey. We thought either he hunkered down somewhere in Florida or else he was in a car moving around. We didn't think he'd be able to get Julie through security and onto a plane. And the FBI was combing passenger lists for Julie Martine and Carlos Manoso and not finding anything.'

'If he stole your identity I guess he could steal others.'

'Two others turned up when Silvio ran through the Rangemanoso credit history. He paid some early bills with cards issued to Steve Scullen and Dale Small. Silvio had been watching passenger lists for both those identities, but nothing there either.'

'No leads in Miami from the crime scene?'

'Miami went cold. Julie got picked up in a stolen car. It was found abandoned two blocks from the pickup point. The police issued a bulletin, and they're doing the follow-up on calls coming in.'

'It was my impression that not many people knew you had a daughter.'

'You and Tank and relatives.'

'And Julie's mother and stepfather.'

'Rachel and Ron are working with the people in Miami, trying to trace down anyone who might have known about me. They didn't hide the fact that Ron was Julie's stepfather, but they didn't tell a lot of people the details. Julie knew. My name is on her birth certificate, but Ron adopted her, and she's always thought of herself as Julie Martine.'

'Is that painful?'

'It might be painful if she wasn't happy, but Rachel and Ron are good parents. Rachel is a nice Catholic girl I took advantage of one night on leave when I was in the military. She got pregnant, and I married her and gave the baby my name and financial support. We divorced after the baby was born. I'm involved only as much as Rachel wants me to be.'

'She didn't want you to stick around and be a permanent husband?'

'That was never an option either of us would have considered.'

We were on Route I, driving north. It was early Sunday morning and traffic was light. I was in my usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt. Ranger was in homeboy clothes.

'From the way you're dressed, I'd guess we were canvassing the ghetto today,' I said to Ranger.

'You'd guess right.'

His jeans were loose-fit but not falling off his ass. 'Think you can pull it off in those jeans?'

'They'll have to do. You can't chase someone down if your pants are around your ankles.'

True enough. I'd actually chased guys who'd literally run out of their pants.

'And I'm a little old for the homey look. I was shooting for Latino Gap,' Ranger said. 'I don't plan to get out of the car, but just in case, I wanted to blend.'

Ranger took the turnpike and got off at the Newark exit. When they nicknamed New Jersey the Garden State they weren't talking about Newark. The neighborhoods we drove through were bleak by anyone's standards. If I'd been with anyone other than Ranger I'd have turned tail and gotten back on the turnpike.

'This is a scary neighborhood,' I said, taking in the graffiti, the occasional condemned building, the sullen faces of the kids hanging on street corners.

'I grew up here,' Ranger said. 'It hasn't changed much in twenty years.'

'Were you one of those guys on the corner?'

Ranger cut his eyes to a group of teens. 'Eventually. When I was a kid, I was little and I didn't fit, so I got beat up a lot. My skin color was too light for the blacks and too dark for the Cubans. And I had straight brown hair that made me look like a girl.'

'How awful.'

Ranger shrugged. 'I found out I could survive a beating. And I learned to be quick, and to watch my back, and to fight dirty.'

'All good skills,' I said.

'For street thugs and bounty hunters.'

'I thought you lived in Miami for a while.'

'When I was fourteen I got arrested for stealing a car and spent some time in juvie. When I got out, my parents sent me to Miami to live with my grandmother. I went to high school in Miami. I moved back to Jersey to take a shot at college, and then I came back when I got out of the army.'

Ranger found a place at the curb in front of a deli. 'My parents live on the next block,' Ranger said. 'This neighborhood we're in right now really isn't so bad. It's actually the Cuban equivalent to the Burg. Problem is, you have to go through the bad neighborhood to get anywhere, including the school.'

Ranger clipped a little gizmo onto my jeans waistband. 'Panic button. If you have a problem, just push it, and I'll come to you. I want you to take the photo you got from my computer and see if someone knows this guy. He has to have some association with me.'

'All the signs are in Spanish. Will I be able to talk to anyone?'

'Everyone speaks English. Except for my Grandma Rosa, and we're going to try hard not to run into her.'

I left Ranger sitting in the SUV and took the picture into the deli. It was a little mom-and-pop business. A butcher in the back behind a glass case filled with sausages and pork roasts and chicken parts. Shelves filled with sacks of rice, spices, cereals, canned goods. Baskets of vegetables. More shelves with breads and packaged cakes and cookies.

A middle-aged woman was at the register. I waited for her to check out a customer before introducing myself.

'I'm looking for this man,' I said, showing her the photo. 'Do you know him?'

'Yes, I know him,' the woman behind the counter said. 'This is Carlos Manoso.'

'No,' I said to her. 'I know Carlos, and this isn't him.'

I showed the picture to the butcher and to a woman waiting to have a pork roast boned and rolled. They both thought it was Carlos Manoso, the man the police were looking for. They said they'd seen his photo on television.

It was close to noon when I returned to the green Explorer. My nose was sunburned, and I had sweat running in a river down my breastbone.

'Nothing,' I said to Ranger. 'Everyone thinks it's you.'

Ranger looked at the picture. 'I need to get back to the gym.'

'It's not the body. It's the clothes and the face. He's spent some time studying you. He's got the clothes down. And he's had his hair cut like yours. Hard to tell from this picture if the skin tone is the same or if he's tanned himself to mimic your coloring.'

'This is the third day, and I still haven't got anything,' Ranger said. 'We worked Miami really hard. Mostly talking to relatives and neighbors, going with the idea that he knew me, that he was close enough to someone in my circle to know about Julie.'

'Is this the first you've started looking in Jersey?'

'We went to relatives and friends right away. This is the first neighborhood search. And this is the only neighborhood where he'd pick up information on Julie. It would have to come from one of my relatives. No one in Trenton knew.'

'Okay, so we seem to be at a dead end on the Ranger connection. Let's go in another direction. He married Carmen Cruz from Springfield, Virginia, and he set up an office in Arlington. Maybe that's where he originates. Not in Arlington but close enough to feel comfortable with the area. Maybe we should talk to Carmen's parents.'

Ranger put the SUV in gear and called Tank. 'Run Carmen Cruz in Springfield, Virginia, and get Stephanie and me on a train out of Newark going to northern Virginia. I'll be traveling as Marc Pardo.'

'Stolen identity?' I asked him.

'No. It's all mine.'

'Wouldn't it be faster to fly?'

'I can't take a gun on a plane.'

Ranger left the green SUV in the train station parking lot. Good luck with that one. One of his guys was supposed to pick it up, but I was giving it a half hour tops before it was on the way to a chop shop.

I was sitting next to Ranger, I had a box of food in front of me from the café car, and the rocking of the train was hypnotic and soothing and exciting all at the same time. We were rolling through the country's backyards, seeing America with its pants down.

Ranger was on the phone with Tank, taking down information on Carmen Cruz and arranging for a rental car.

'About the cell phone,' I said, when Ranger disconnected. 'Why is it okay to talk to Tank when you couldn't call me?'

'Tank has a secure phone.'

'Like it's scrambled?'

'No. They're just phones under different names. It's a way to make sure no one's listening. If someone's trying to get a line on me, they're not going to tap Larry Bakers phone.'

'Spending time with you is always a learning experience.'

'There are other things I could teach you,' Ranger said.

It was four o'clock by the time we picked up the rental car and rolled out of Union Station. Ranger had the GPS gadget set to take us to the Cruz house in Springfield, and it was talking us through downtown Washington.

'Turn left in twenty feet,' the mechanical voice told us. 'Move to the left lane. Take a right at the bottom of the off-ramp. Merge into traffic.'

'This thing's giving me an eye twitch,' Ranger said. 'Can you get the sound off?'

I started pressing buttons and the screen went blank.

'How's that?' I asked.

'Babe, you shut the system down.'

'Yes, but the sound is off.'

'Reprogram it.'

'No need to get testy,' I told him.

'I don't know where I'm going.'

'I have a map. You just get on I-95 south and take the Springfield exit.'

'And then what?'

'Then you'll have to pull over and reprogram the GPS.'

Ranger cut his eyes to me and there was the tiniest of smiles on his mouth. I was amusing him.

'You're a very strange man,' I told him.

'Yeah,' he said. 'That's what I hear.'

I had my cell phone clipped to my waist, and I could feel it buzzing. I looked at the screen. Morelli.

'Howdy,' I said to Morelli.

'Can I buy you dinner and a movie and a room at Hotel Morelli?'

'Sounds good but I'm working.'

'After work.'

'After work will be late,' I said.

'How late?'

'Monday or Tuesday.'

'Where are you?' Morelli wanted to know.

'I can't tell you that,' I said.

'Goddamn it, you're with Ranger, aren't you? I should have known. He's up to his armpits in murder and kidnapping, and he's going to drag you into it with him.'

Ranger reached over, grabbed my phone, and shut it down.

'Hey!' I said. 'That was Morelli.'

'If you stay on too long it can be traced down. I'm sure he understands.'

'Yeah, he understands. If he knew where we were you'd be seeing his Kojak light in your rearview mirror.'

'Then I'm glad he doesn't know where we are because I wouldn't want to have to square off with Morelli. It wouldn't end well for either of us.'

We moved onto I-95 south, and I tightened my seat belt. Driving out of DC into northern Virginia is like NASCAR on a flat straight track, racing bumper-to-bumper six wide, twenty miles deep. And attached to that is another identical race going six wide in the opposite direction. Two-story-high sound barriers rise out of the breakdown lanes, and form a cement canyon filled with wall-to-wall noise and insanity. We hurtled forward to the appropriate exit, catapulted ourselves down the chute, and peeled off toward Springfield.

Ranger pulled onto the shoulder and reprogrammed the GPS system.

'Lucky for you, you look good in a T-shirt,' Ranger said.

'Lucky for you I don't have a gun on me.'

Ranger turned to me. His voice was low and even, but there was a whisper of incredulous disbelief. 'You're not carrying a gun?'

'Didn't seem necessary for us both to have one.'