Sizzling Sixteen

TWENTY-FOUR

RANGER’S BEDROOM WAS masculine luxury. Dark woods, ivory walls, tans and browns, king-size bed with expensive Italian linens. There was a large bath en suite and a walk-in dressing room as big as my bedroom. He opened a drawer in the built-in dresser, removed a utility belt, and buckled it on. He selected a gun from another drawer. Handcuffs, stun gun, defense spray. He handed me a penlight and took one for himself. He shrugged into a windbreaker with the Rangeman logo clearly visible. He selected a second Rangeman jacket and handed it to me. “Swap your sweater out for this. If someone sees us, I can say we’re doing a security check.”

We rode the elevator to the garage, where Ranger chose a fleet SUV. The Meagan Building was only blocks away. Easy to find on-street parking at this time of the night. We parked directly in front of the door. Ranger used his fob to enter the building and to diffuse the alarm. No need for the penlight. The lobby was dimly lit, as were the halls and elevator.

“Fifth floor,” I told Ranger.

We entered the elevator, he pushed the button, and he looked over at me. “You’re very calm,” he said.

“It’s easy to be calm when I’m with you. I feel protected.”

“I try,” Ranger said. “You don’t always cooperate.”

The doors opened, and we walked the hall to Wellington’s door. Ranger fobbed it open, we stepped inside and closed the door behind us. The interior room was pitch-black. No path lighting. The outside offices showed ambient light but not enough to guide me. Ranger clicked his penlight on.

“Let’s try to use just the one light,” he said. “Hang on to me if you can’t see.”

I curled my hand into the back of his cargo pants just above his gun belt. “I’m good to go.”

He was still for a beat. “You could have held on to my jacket,” he said.

“Would you rather I do that?”

“No. Not even a little.”

He flicked the light over the cubicles and into the offices. He stopped and opened a file cabinet. Empty.

“You were right,” he said. “None of this is being used. Where’s Drager’s office?”

“There’s a hall at the end of this room. His office is at the end of the hall.”

Ranger flicked the light at the shredder room door. “What’s in here?”

“Paper shredder.”

“And this one?”

“It’s an office. Drager said he had a meeting. He went into this office, and we let ourselves out.”

Ranger opened the door and flashed the light around. It was a boardroom. Large oval table. Chairs pulled up to the table. Unoccupied at the moment.

We continued down the hall to Drager’s office. The door was ajar, and Ranger stopped before entering. He knew what he was going to find inside. I did, too. We could smell it. Decomposing body. It doesn’t take long after death. The body evacuates. Blood pools. The smell is unmistakable.

“Wait here,” Ranger said.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I can deal.”

Drager was on the floor by his desk. Probably fell out of his chair. Bullet to the back of his head. Execution-style. Like Kulik and Dunne. Ranger pulled on disposable gloves and methodically went through the file cabinets.

“I’m not finding anything here,” he said. “This office has been stripped.” He moved to the credenza. “Uh-oh,” he said when he opened the top drawer.

“What uh-oh? I hate uh-oh.”

“Leave the room.”

“Excuse me?”

“Explosives,” Ranger said. “On a timer and a trip wire. If I’d opened the drawer another half inch, your hamster would be an orphan.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Seven minutes.”

“Shit!”

I turned and tripped over Drager’s briefcase.

“Take it,” Ranger said, grabbing my hand, yanking me forward into the hall.

We ran flat out down the hall and through the room with the cubicles. We burst out the door and ran to the elevator. Ranger had it on hold. It was still at our floor. We jumped into the elevator, and Ranger hit the button for the ground floor.

“How much time do we have?” I asked him.

“Four minutes,” he said. “Plenty of time.”

We exited the elevator into the lobby, crossed the lobby, and left the building. Ranger reset the alarm with the fob, and we got into the SUV.

“Two minutes,” Ranger said, pulling away from the curb.

The fifth-floor windows blew out when we reached the corner. Ranger hooked a U-turn and parked so we could watch the building. There was a second explosion, the alarm was wailing away, and fire spilled out the open windows.

Ranger called his control room. “Tell all responders to the Meagan Building alarm to secure the exterior of the building. Under no circumstances are they to go inside until the fire marshall declares the building safe.”

Two Rangeman SUVs arrived and parked half a block from the burning building. A police car was simultaneously on the scene. Ranger made another U-turn and drove back to Rangeman. He parked in the garage and looked over at me.

“You can really haul ass in those heels,” he said. “The memory will give me sleepless nights for a long time.”

That got a smile out of me. “Sorry to interfere with your sleep.”

“There’s a solution to the problem,” Ranger said, getting out of the car. “You can finish your wine upstairs, and we can discuss it.” He opened the passenger-side door, took the briefcase from me, and grinned. “Babe, you have panic written all over your face.”

“You’re a dilemma.”

He ushered me into the elevator. “Good to know.”

We rode in silence to Ranger’s floor, he opened his door, and I went to the kitchen and retrieved my wine.

“I would have liked more time at Wellington,” Ranger said.

He dropped his jacket and gun belt onto the kitchen counter, poured a glass of wine for himself, and refreshed mine.

“They were shredding bags of papers when I was there with Vinnie. Probably, there wasn’t anything left to see.”

Ranger took his wine into the dining room and dumped the contents of Drager’s briefcase onto the table.

“Bank statements,” Ranger said. “And a list of businesses owned by the firm.” He leafed through the bank statements. “Looks like a pattern of outgoing wire transfers to a New Jersey LLC called GBZakhar, and someone has checked them off on the latest statement.”

He took the statement to the combination office and den attached to his bedroom and typed Zakhar into his computer.

“GBZakhar doesn’t have a Web site,” he said. “Let’s go to the Jersey state business gateway site.”

Ranger worked his way through the site and finally came to a guide for requesting public record information. He gave a credit card number, and information on GBZakhar was displayed on the screen.

“This is interesting,” Ranger said. “Do you recognize the name of the registered agent?”

“Walter Dunne. One of the Wellington lawyers found executed behind the diner.”

“GBZakhar gives a Newark P.O. box as its address. And they list four company officers. Herpes Zoster, Mickey Mouskovitch, Rainbow Trout, and Gregor Bluttovich. I expect the first three names are fake. That leaves Gregor Bluttovich,” Ranger said.

“Blutto! Gritch said he heard Sunflower talk about Blutto. Gritch didn’t know if it was a first name, last name, or nickname.”

I was leaning over the back of Ranger’s chair, reading off the computer screen, trying hard not to kiss his neck. It would be absolutely the wrong thing to do, but it was so tempting. He always smelled great, like his Bulgari Green shower gel. How it stayed with him all day was a mystery. His black T-shirt spanned his biceps. He wore a watch as his only jewelry. His back looked athletic under his shirt. I thought it would look even better without the shirt. All I had to do was touch my lips to his neck, and the shirt would be gone.

“Babe,” Ranger said, “if you don’t back up a couple inches, we’re going to be finding out about Bluttovich in the morning.”

I didn’t move. I was contemplating.

“Babe?”

I stepped away from his chair. “I was reading the screen. Let’s see what you can pull up on Blutto.”

Ranger had state-of-the-art computer programs that left most people with virtually no secrets. He could get medical records, credit histories, shoe size, litigation, you name it.

Ranger plugged Gregor Bluttovich into one of the programs and information scrolled up.

“Fifty-two years old,” Ranger said. “Born in Varna, Bulgaria. Came to this country in ’92. He has four ex-wives and is currently unmarried. He has seven kids distributed among his ex-wives. The oldest is thirty-four. The youngest is six. He was a police officer in Varna for fifteen years. No work history after that. He owns property in Newark and Bucks County. I know the Newark area. It has a large Russian immigrant population. The Bucks County property is in Taylorsville. He’s affiliated with three other holding companies. He had a double bypass two years ago. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon last year, but the charges were dropped.”

“What was the weapon?”

“A chain saw. He cut a guy’s leg off. He claimed it was an accident.”

“This is not a nice man.”

“I have a couple contacts in Newark. See if you can find some crackers and cheese in the kitchen, and I’ll make some phone calls.”

I went to the kitchen and poured myself another glass of wine. I found some brie and something else that was creamy and herby. I’m sure all bought by his housekeeper, Ella. I put the two cheese wedges on a cutting board with water crackers, apple slices, and fresh strawberries and brought them in to Ranger, along with the bottle of wine and our glasses. I set everything on Ranger’s desk, and I spread brie on a cracker for myself.

Ranger took his headset off. “This is nice.”

“I take no responsibility. Ella had everything prepared.”

Ranger sliced off some mystery cheese and ate it with an apple slice. No empty-calories cracker for Ranger. Ranger was into health.

“I talked to two people in Newark,” Ranger said. “The opinion of both is that Gregor Bluttovich is dangerous. Bulgarian mobster. Nicknamed Blutto. Large ego. Terrible temper. Probably criminally insane. Both contacts used the word psycho to describe Bluttovich. He has a mid-size operation, and he’s overextended. Word on the street is that he’s eliminating squeamish business partners.”

“Like Wellington?”

“Yes.”

“Where would Vinnie fit in this?”

“Bluttovich owns Wellington. So Vinnie scammed Bluttovich. And it’s not healthy to scam Bluttovich.”

“How not healthy?”

“As not healthy as you can get.”

“Dead?”

“Very dead,” Ranger said.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Have another glass of wine.”

“And then?”

Ranger’s eyes locked onto mine.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get me drunk,” I said to Ranger.

“Not drunk,” Ranger said. “Just relaxed and naked.”

I was distracted by an icon blinking on his computer screen.

“Why is the little flame flashing?” I asked him.

“I’m hard-wired to the control room. One of our systems just sent in a fire alert.”

He tapped a key and an address appeared.

“Hamilton Avenue,” I said. “Omigod, that’s the bonds office!”

Ranger put his headset on and talked to the control room, verifying the fire. He took his headset off, swiveled away from his desk, and stood.

“I suppose this is the end of our romantic moment,” I said to him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’ll have a lot more opportunities for romantic moments.”

He closed the space between us and kissed me. Our tongues touched, and I pressed against him.

“It’s only a fire,” I whispered.

He paused for a beat. “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” he said. And he stripped my white stretchy shirt off. He kissed me again, and when he broke from the kiss, my eyes inadvertently strayed to the computer screen. “Babe?”

“I can’t help it. All those blinking things on your computer are distracting.”

He reached over, hit a key, and the screen went black.

“I know they’re there,” I said.

Ranger tugged my shirt back over my head and smoothed it down. “I’m good and I’m motivated, but I know enough not to try to please a woman who’s distracted.” He kissed me lightly on the lips and pointed me toward the kitchen. “You owe me.”

I grabbed my purse and black cardigan, and Ranger buckled his gun belt back on. We rode the elevator to the garage and took my Mercedes SUV, with Ranger driving.

“This car smells like fried chicken,” Ranger said. “And something else that isn’t good.”

“Connie’s stink bomb,” I told him.