Three To Get Deadly

CHAPTER 12

I directed Lula to the rear of the station so we could unload Elliot in as much privacy as possible. We pulled into the drop-off zone and cut the engine. Morelli parked to the side of the lot. The drop-off is covered by closed-circuit TV, so I knew it was only a matter of minutes before the curious spilled out of the back security door.

Lula and I stood to the front of the Firebird, not wanting to get any closer to Elliot than was absolutely necessary. I was soaked to the skin, and without the car’s heater blasting away at me I was cold clear to the bone.

“Funny how life works,” Lula said. “All this came about because I ate a bad burrito. It’s like God knew what he was doing when he gave me the runs.”

I hugged my arms tight to my chest and clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

“Exactly my thoughts. Now we know Jackie was right about Old Penis Nose being on Montgomery Street. We even did something good for Elliot. Not that he deserves it, but if it wasn’t for us he’d be dumped in the river by now.”

The rear door to the building opened and two uniforms stepped out. I didn’t know their names, but I’d seen them around. Morelli told them he was going to tie up the drop zone for a few minutes. Told them he’d appreciate it if they kept the traffic down.

The Medical Examiner’s pickup arrived and backed in close to the Firebird. It was a dark blue Ford Ranger with a white cap divided into compartments that reminded me of kennels.

The ID detective said a few words to Morelli and then went to work.

Arnie Rupp, the supervisor of the violent crimes squad, came out and stood hands in pockets, watching the action. A man in jeans, black Trenton PD ball cap and red and black plaid wool jacket stood next to him. Rupp asked the man if he’d completed the paperwork on the Runion job. The man said, not yet. He’d finish it up first thing in the morning.

I stared at the man and little alarms went off in my brain.

The man stared back at me. Noncommittal. Cop face. Unyielding.

Morelli moved into my line of vision. “I’m sending you and Lula home. You both look half drowned, and this will take some time.”

“I appreciate it,” Lula said, “because I’ve got an intestinal disturbance.”

Morelli lifted my chin a fraction of an inch with his index finger and studied my face. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Sure. I’m f-f-fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You look like you’re down a couple quarts.”

“Who’s the guy standing next to Arnie Rupp? The guy in the jeans and cop hat and red and black plaid jacket.”

“Mickey Maglio. Major Crimes. Robbery detective.”

“Remember when I was telling you about the men in the ski masks and coveralls? The leader, the one who burned my hand and offered me money, had a smoker’s voice. Jersey City accent. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I swear, Maglio sounds just like him. And he’s the right height and the right build.”

“You never saw his face?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Maglio’s a good cop,” Morelli said. “He’s got three kids and a pregnant wife.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I could be wrong. I’m c-c-cold. Maybe I’m not thinking right.”

Morelli wrapped his arm around me and dragged me toward a waiting squad car. “I’ll look into it. In the meantime let’s keep it to ourselves.”

Lula got dropped off first due to her pressing needs. I rode in silence for the rest of the trip, shivering in the backseat, unable to sort through my thoughts, afraid I’d burst into tears and look like an idiot in front of my cop chauffeur.

I thanked the officer when he pulled up at my door. I scrambled out of the car, ran into the building and took the stairs. The second-floor hall was empty of people but filled with dinner smells. Fried fish from Mrs. Karwatt. Stew from Mr. Wolesky.

My teeth had stopped chattering, but my hands were still shaking, and I had to two-fist the key to get it into the keyhole. I pushed the door open, switched the light on, closed and bolted my door and did a fast security check.

Rex backed out of his soup can and gave me the once-over. He looked startled at my appearance, so I explained my day. When I got to the part about driving Elliot around in Lula’s trunk, I burst out laughing. My God, what had I been thinking! It was an absurd thing to do. I laughed until I cried, and then I realized I was no longer laughing. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I was sobbing. After a while my nose was running, and my mouth was open but the sobs were soundless.

“Shit,” I said to Rex. “This is exhausting.”

I blew my nose, dragged myself into the bathroom, stripped and stood under the shower until my skin was scorched and my mind was empty. I got dressed in sweats and cotton socks and cooked my hair into ten inches of red frizz with the hair dryer. I looked like I’d taken a bath with the toaster, but I was way beyond caring. I collapsed onto the bed and instantly fell asleep.

I came awake slowly, my eyes swollen from crying, my mind gauzy and stupid. The clock at bedside said nine-thirty. Someone was knocking. I shuffled into the hall and opened the door without ceremony.

It was Morelli, holding a pizza box and a six-pack.

“You should always look before you open the door,” he said.

“I did look.”

“You’re lying again.”

He was right. I hadn’t looked. And he was right about being careful.

My eyes locked on the pizza box. “You sure know how to get a person’s attention.”

Morelli smiled. “Hungry?”

“Are you coming in, or what?”

Morelli dumped the pizza and beer on the coffee table and shrugged out of his jacket. “I’d like to go over the day’s events.”

I brought plates and a roll of paper towels to the coffee table and sat beside Morelli on the couch. I wolfed down a piece of pizza and told him everything.

By the time I was done, Morelli was on his second beer. “You have any additional thoughts?”

“Only that Gail probably lied to us, so she wouldn’t get in trouble with her landlady. Elliot had full rigor when we found him, so he’d been dead awhile. My guess is either Gail told Mo where to find Elliot, or else Elliot was in Gail’s room when Mo showed up.”

Morelli nodded affirmation. “You’re watching the right TV shows,” he said. “We ran the plates on the tan car. The car belonged to Elliot Harp.”

“Did you find Mo’s connection to Montgomery Street?”

“Not yet, but we have men in the neighborhood. The garage was used by a lot of people. It’s possible to buy a key card on a monthly basis. No ID necessary. Freedom Church members use the garage. Local merchants use it.”

I ate another slice of pizza. I wanted to bring up the topic of Mickey Maglio, but I didn’t feel secure about the accusation. Besides, I’d mentioned it once. Morelli was too good a cop to let it slide by and be forgotten.

“So now what?” I asked. “You want to watch some TV?”

Morelli looked at his watch. “Think I’ll pass. I should be getting home.” He stood and stretched. “Been a long day.”

I followed him to the door. “Thanks for helping me dispose of Elliot.”

“Hey,” Morelli said, punching me lightly on the arm. “What are friends for?”

I blinked. Friends? Morelli and me? “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

Boy, was that ever the truth. No flirting. No grabbing. Sexist remarks held to a minimum. I narrowed my eyes as I watched him walk to the elevator. There was only one possible explanation. Morelli had a girlfriend. Morelli was enamored with someone else, and I was off the hook.

He disappeared behind the elevator doors, and I retreated into my apartment.

Hooray, I told myself. But I didn’t actually feel like hooray. I felt like someone had thrown a party, and I hadn’t been included on the guest list. I puzzled on this, trying to determine the cause for my discomfort. The obvious reason, of course, was that I was jealous. I didn’t like the obvious reason, so I kept working for another. Finally I gave up in defeat. Truth is, there was unfinished business between Morelli and me. A couple months ago we’d had Buick interruptus, and as much as I hated to admit it, I’d been thinking of him in torrid terms ever since.

And then there was the house move, which seemed so out of character for Morelli the bachelor. But suppose Morelli was thinking of cohabitating? My God, suppose Morelli was thinking of marriage?

I didn’t at all like the idea of Morelli getting married. It would wreck my fantasy life, and it would put added pressure on me. My mother would be saying to me…Look! Even Joe Morelli is married!

I dropped onto the couch and punched up the television, but there wasn’t anything worth seeing. I cleaned the beer cans and pizza off the coffee table. I plugged the telephone back into the wall and reset the answering machine. I tried the television again.

I had a third beer, and when that was done I felt slightly buzzed. Damn Morelli, I thought. He has a lot of nerve getting involved with some other woman.

The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became. Who was this woman, anyway?

I called Sue Ann Grebek and discreetly asked who the hell Morelli was boffing, but Sue Ann didn’t know. I called Mary Lou and my cousin Jeanine, but they didn’t know either.

Well, that settles it, I decided. I’ll find out for myself. After all, I’m some sort of investigator. I’ll simply investigate.

Trouble was, the events of the last two days had me pretty much freaked out. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t in love with it either. Well, okay, I was afraid of the dark. So I called Mary Lou back and asked her if she wanted to spy on Morelli with me.

“Sure,” Mary Lou said. “Last time we spied on Morelli we were twelve years old. We’re due.”

I laced up my running shoes, pulled a hooded sweatshirt over the sweatshirt I was wearing and shoved my hair under a black knit cap. I trucked down the hall, down the stairs, and ran into Dillon Ruddick in the lobby. Dillon was the building super and an all-around nice guy.

“I’ll give you five dollars if you’ll walk me to my car,” I said to Dillon.

“I’ll walk you for free,” Dillon said. “I was just taking the garbage out.”

Another advantage to parking by the Dumpster.

Dillon paused at the Buick. “This is a humdinger of a car,” he said.

I couldn’t argue with that.

Mary Lou was waiting at the curb when I pulled up to her house. She was wearing tight black jeans, a black leather motorcycle jacket, black high-heeled ankle boots and big gold hoop earrings. Evening wear for the well-dressed burg peeper.

“You ever tell anybody I did this, and I’ll deny it. And then I’ll hire Manny Russo to shoot you in the knee,” Mary Lou said.

“I just want to see if he has a woman with him.”

“Why?”

I looked over at her.

“Okay,” she said. “I know why.”

Morelli’s car was parked in front. The living room lights were out in his house, but the kitchen light was on, just as it had been earlier in the evening.

A figure moved through the house, up the stairs. A light blinked on in one of the upstairs rooms. The figure returned to the kitchen.

Mary Lou giggled. And then I giggled. Then we slapped ourselves so we’d stop giggling.

“I’m a mother,” Mary Lou said. “I’m not supposed to be doing stuff like this. I’m too old.”

“A woman’s never too old to make an idiot of herself. It goes along with equality of the sexes and potty parity.”

“Suppose we find him in the kitchen with a sock on his dick?”

“In your dreams.”

This drew more giggles.

I drove around the corner to the paved alley road that intersected the block. I slowly rolled down the single lane, cut my lights and paused at Morelli’s backyard. Morelli moved into view through a rear window. At least he was home. He hadn’t gone from my house to some hot babe. I continued to the end of the lane and parked the Buick around the corner, on Arlington Avenue.

“Come on,” I said to Mary Lou. “Let’s take a closer look.”

We crept back to Morelli’s yard and stood outside the weathered picket fence, hidden in shadow.

After a few moments Morelli once again crossed in front of the window. This time he had the phone to his ear, and he was smiling.

“Look at that!” Mary Lou said. “He’s smiling. I bet he’s talking to her!”

We slipped inside the gate and tippytoed to the house. I flattened myself against the siding and held my breath. I inched closer to the window. I could hear him talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

A door opened two houses down, and a big black dog bounded into the small yard. He stopped and stood with ears pricked in our direction.

“WOOF!” the dog said.

“Omigod,” Mary Lou whispered. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Mary Lou wasn’t an animal person.

“WOOF!”

Suddenly this didn’t seem like such a good idea. I didn’t like the prospect of getting torn to shreds by the hound from hell. And even worse, I didn’t want to get caught by Morelli. Mary Lou and I executed a panic-inspired crab scuttle to the back gate and held up just outside Morelli’s broken-down fence. We watched the neighbor’s dog slowly move to the edge of his yard. He didn’t stop. His yard wasn’t fenced. He was on the road now, and he was looking directly at us.

Nice dog, I thought. Probably wanted to play. But just in case…it might be smart to head for the car. I backed up a few paces, and the dog charged. “YIPES!”

We had two house widths on Rover, and we ran flat out for all we were worth. We were twenty feet from Arlington when I felt paws impact on my back, knocking me off my feet. My hands hit first, then my knees. I belly-whopped onto the blacktop and felt the air whoosh from my lungs.

I braced for the kill, but the dog just stood over me, tongue lolling, tail wagging.

“Good dog,” I said.

He licked my face.

I rolled onto my back and assessed the damage. Torn sweats, scraped hands and knees. Large loss of self-esteem. I got to my feet, shooed the dog back home and limped to the car where Mary Lou was waiting.

“You deserted me,” I said to Mary Lou.

“It looked like it might turn into one of those sexual things. I didn’t want to interfere.”

Fifteen minutes later I was in my apartment, dressed in my nightgown, dabbing antiseptic cream on my skinned knees. And I was feeling much better. Nothing like a totally infantile act to put things into perspective.

I stopped dabbing when the phone rang. Not Morelli, I prayed. I didn’t want to hear that he’d seen me running from his yard.

I answered with a tentative hello.

Pause on the other end.

“Hello,” I repeated.

“I hope that little discussion we had last time meant something to you,” the man said. “Because if I find out you’ve opened your mouth about any of this, I’m going to come get you. And it’s not going to be nice.”

“Maglio?”

The caller hung up.

I checked all my locks, plugged the battery on my cell phone into the recharger, made sure my gun was loaded and at bedside along with the pepper spray. I cringed at the possibility that Maglio might be involved. It wasn’t good to have a cop for an enemy. Cops could be very dangerous people.

The phone rang again. This time I let the machine get it. The call was from Ranger. Just reporting in, he said. Running tomorrow at seven.

I called Lula as promised and registered her for the program.

I was downstairs at seven, but I wasn’t in the finest form. I hadn’t slept well, and I was feeling tapped out.

“How’d it go yesterday?” Ranger asked.

I gave him the unabridged version, excluding my juvenile visit to Morelli’s backyard.

Ranger’s mouth tipped at the corners. “You’re making this up, right?”

“Wrong. That’s what happened. You asked what happened. I told you what happened.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. Elliot Harp flew off Mo’s car, bounced off the Firebird onto the shoulder of Route 1. You picked Elliot up, and put him in the trunk and drove him to the police station.”

“More or less.”

Ranger gave a bark of laughter. “Bet that went over big with the boys in blue.”

A taxi pulled into the lot, not far from where we were standing, and Lula got out. She was dressed in a pink polar fleece sweatsuit and pink furry earmuffs. She looked like the Energizer rabbit on steroids.

“Lula’s going running with us,” I told Ranger. “She wants to get in better shape.”

Ranger gave Lula the once-over. “You don’t keep up, you get left behind.”

“Your ass,” Lula said.

We took off at a pretty good clip. I figured Ranger was testing Lula. She was breathing hard, but she was close on his heels. She managed until we got to the track, and then she found a seat on the sidelines.

“I don’t run in circles,” she said.

I sat beside her. “Works for me.”

Ranger did a lap and jogged by us without acknowledgment of our presence or lack of.

“So why are you really here?” I asked Lula.

Lula’s eyes never left Ranger. “I’m here ’cause he’s the shit.”

“The shit?”

“Yeah, you know…the shit. The king. The cool.”

“Do we know anyone else who’s the shit?”

“John Travolta. He’s the shit, too.”

We watched Ranger some, and I could see her point about Ranger being the shit.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lula said. “Suppose there really were superheroes?”

“Like Batman?”

“That’s it. That’s what I’m saying. It’d be someone who was the shit.”

“Are you telling me you think Ranger’s a superhero?”

“Think about it. We don’t know where he lives. We don’t know anything about him.”

“Superheroes are make-believe.”

“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “What about God?”

“Hmmmm.”

Ranger did a couple more laps and veered from the track.

Lula and I jumped off the bench and followed in his footsteps. We collapsed in a heap two miles later, in front of my building.

“Bet you could run forever,” Lula said to Ranger, gasping and wheezing. “Bet you got muscles that feel like iron.”

“Man of steel,” Ranger said.

Lula sent me a knowing look.

“Well, this has been fun,” I said to everybody. “But I’m out of here.”

“I could use a ride,” Lula said to Ranger. “The police still have my car. Maybe you could give me a ride on your way home. Of course I don’t want to inconvenience you. I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way.” She took a momentary pause. “Just exactly where do you live?” she asked Ranger.

Ranger pressed his security remote and the doors clicked open on the Bronco. He motioned to Lula. “Get in.”

Ricardo Carlos Mañoso. Master of the two-syllable sentence. Superhero at large.

I hooked Lula by the crook of her arm before she took off. “What’s your schedule like today?”

“Like any other day.”

“If you get a chance maybe you could check some fast-food restaurants for me. I don’t want you to spend all day at it, but if you go out for coffee break or lunch keep your eyes open for Stuart Baggett. He has to be working somewhere in the area. My guess is he’ll go to what feels familiar.”

An hour later I was on the road, canvassing eateries, doing my part. I figured Lula would stay close to the office, so I took Hamilton Township. I was on Route 33 when my cell phone chirped.

“I found him!” Lula shouted at me. “I took early lunch, and I went to a couple places on account of everyone in the office wanted something different, and I found him! Mr. Cute-as-a-button is serving up chicken now.”

“Where?”

“The Cluck in a Bucket on Hamilton.”

“You still there?”

“Hell yes,” Lula said. “And I didn’t let him see me either. I’m holed up in a phone booth.”

“Don’t move!”

I make lots of mistakes. I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times. This time around, Stuart Baggett would be trussed up like a Christmas goose for his trip to the lockup.

I floored the Buick and roared off for Hamilton Avenue. The money involved in Baggett’s capture was now low on my motivating factors list. Baggett had made me look and feel like an idiot. I didn’t want revenge. Revenge isn’t a productive emotion. I simply wanted to succeed. I wanted to regain some professional pride. Of course, after I restored my professional pride I’d be happy to take the recovery money.

Cluck in a Bucket was a couple blocks past Vinnie’s office. It was a brand-new link in a minichain and still in its grand opening stage. I’d driven by and gawked at the big chicken sign but hadn’t yet indulged in a bucket of cluck.

I could see the glow from the franchise a block away. The one-story blocky little building had been painted yellow inside and out. At night light spilled from the big plate-glass windows, and a spot played on the seven-foot-tall plastic chicken that was impaled on a rotating pole in the parking lot.

I parked at the back of the Cluck in a Bucket lot and decked myself out in my bounty hunter gear. Cuffs stuffed into one jacket pocket; defense spray in the other. Stun gun clipped to the waistband of my sweats. Smith & Wesson forgotten in the rush, left lying on my bedside table.

Lula was waiting for me just outside the front entrance. “There he is,” she said. “He’s the one handing out paper chicken hats to the kiddies.”

It was Stuart Baggett all right…dressed up in a big fat chicken suit, wearing a chicken hat. He did a chicken dance for a family, flapping his elbows, wagging his big chicken butt. He made some squawking sounds and gave each of the kids a yellow-and-red cardboard hat.

“You gotta admit, he makes a cute chicken,” Lula said, watching Stuart strut around on his big yellow chicken feet. “Too bad we gotta bust his ass.”

Easy for her to say. She didn’t have orange hair. I pushed through the front door and crossed the room. I was about ten feet away when Stuart turned and our eyes locked.

“Hello, Stuart,” I said.

There was a young woman standing next to Stuart. She was wearing a red-and-yellow Cluck in a Bucket uniform, and she was holding a stack of Cluck in a Bucket giveaway hats. She gave me her best “don’t ruin the fun” look and wagged her finger. “His name isn’t Stuart,” she said. “Today his name is Mr. Cluck.”

“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “Well we’re gonna haul Mr. Cluck’s cute little chicken tushy off to jail. What do you think of that?”

“They’re crazy,” Stuart said to the Cluck in a Bucket woman. “They’re stalkers. They won’t leave me alone. They got me fired from my last job because they kept harassing me.”

“That’s a load of horse pucky,” Lula said. “If we were gonna stalk someone it wouldn’t be no chicken impersonator working for minimum wage.”

“Excuse me,” I said, elbowing Lula away from Stuart, turning the force of my most professional smile on the young woman with the hats. “Mr. Baggett is in violation of a bond agreement and needs to reinstate himself with the court.”

“Harry,” the young woman yelled, waving to a man behind the service counter. “Call the police. We’ve got a situation here.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “I hate when people call the police.”

“You’re ruining everything,” Stuart said to me. “Why can’t you leave me alone? Who’s going to be Mr. Cluck if you take me in?”

I pulled the cuffs out of my pocket. “Don’t give me a hard time, Stuart.”

“You can’t put cuffs on Mr. Cluck!” Stuart said. “What will all these kids think?”

“Wouldn’t get my hopes up that they’d give a hello,” Lula said. “Isn’t like you’re Santa Claus. Truth is, you’re just some whiny little guy dressed up in a bad suit.”

“This isn’t a big deal,” I said to Stuart as calmly as possible. “I’m going to cuff you and walk you out the door, and if we do it quickly and quietly no one will notice.”

I reached out to snap the cuffs on Stuart, and he batted me away with his chicken wing. “Leave me alone,” Stuart said, knocking the cuffs out of my hand, sending them sailing across the room. “I’m not going to jail!” He grabbed the mustard and the special-sauce squirters off the condiments counter. “Stand back!” he said.

I had pepper spray and a stun gun, but it seemed like excessive force to use them against a chicken armed with special sauce.

“I haven’t got all day,” Lula said to Stuart. “I want to get some chicken and go back to work, and you’re holding me up. Put those stupid squirters down.”

“Don’t underestimate these squirters,” Stuart said. “I could do a lot of damage with these squirters.” He held the red squirter up. “See this? This isn’t just any old special sauce. This is extra spicy.”

“Oh boy,” Lula said. “Think he’s been sniffing aerosol from the roach spray.”

Lula took a step toward Stuart, and SQUISH, Stuart gave Lula a blast of mustard to the chest.

Lula stopped in her tracks. “What the…”

SPLOT! Special sauce on top of the mustard.

“Did you see that?” Lula said, her voice pitched so high she sounded like Minnie Mouse. “He squirted me with special sauce! I’m gonna have to get this jacket dry-cleaned.”

“It was your own fault, Fatty,” Stuart said. “You made me do it.”

“That’s it,” Lula said. “Out of my way. I’m gonna kill him.” She lunged forward, hands reaching for Stuart’s chicken neck, slipped on some mustard that had leaked out of Stuart’s squirter and went down on her ass.

Stuart took off, shoving his way around tables and customers. I took off after him and caught him with a flying tackle. We both crashed to the floor in a flurry of chicken feathers, Stuart squirting his squirters, and me swearing and grabbing. We rolled around like this for what seemed like an eternity, until I finally got hold of something that wasn’t a fake chicken part.

I was breast to breast, on top of Mr. Cluck, twisting his nose in a damn good impression of Moe and Curly, when I felt hands forcefully lifting me off, disengaging my nose hold.

One set of hands belonged to Carl Costanza. The other set of hands belonged to a cop I’d seen around but didn’t know on a first-name basis. Both cops were smiling, rocking back on their heels, thumbs stuck into their gun belts.

“I heard about your cousin Vinnie and what he did to that duck,” Carl said to me. “Still, I’m surprised to find you on top of a chicken. I always thought you were more like the Mazur side of the family.”

I swiped at the gunk on my face. I was covered with mustard, and I had special sauce in my hair. “Very funny. This guy is FTA.”

“You got papers?” Carl asked.

I scrounged in my shoulder bag and came up with the bond agreement and the contract to pursue that Vinnie had issued.

“Good enough,” Carl said. “Congratulations, you caught yourself a chicken.”

I could see the other cop was trying hard not to laugh out loud.

“So what’s your problem?” I asked him, feeling sort of aggravated that maybe he was laughing at me.

He held up two hands. “Hey lady, I haven’t got a problem. Good bust. Not everyone could have taken that chicken down.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Costanza, but Costanza wasn’t entirely successful at controlling his amusement either.

“Good thing we got here before the animal rights people,” Costanza said to me. “They wouldn’t have been as understanding as us.”

I retrieved my cuffs from the other side of the room and clicked them onto Baggett’s wrists. Lula had disappeared, of course. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t expect Lula to share airspace with cops.

“Do you need any help?” Costanza wanted to know.

I shook my head, no. “I can manage. Thanks.”

Half an hour later I left the station with my body receipt, happy to escape the cracks about smelling like a barbecue. Not to mention the abuse I took for bringing in a chicken.

A person can take only so much cop humor.

Rex was nosing around in his food cup when I got home, so I gave him a grape and told him about Stuart Baggett. How Stuart had been dressed up in a chicken suit, and how I’d bravely captured him and brought him to justice. Rex listened while he ate the grape, and I think Rex might have smiled when I got to the part about tackling Mr. Cluck, but it’s hard to tell about these things with a hamster.

I love Rex a lot, and he has a lot of redeeming qualities, like cheap food and small poop, but the truth is sometimes I pretend he’s a golden retriever. I’d never tell this to Rex, of course. Rex has very sensitive feelings. Still, sometimes I long for a big floppy-eared dog.

I fell asleep on the couch, watching Rex run on the wheel. I was awakened by the phone ringing.

“Got a call about my car,” Ranger said. “Want to ride along?”

“Sure.”

There was a moment of silence. “Were you sleeping?” he asked.

“Nope. Not me. I was just going out the door to look for Mo.” Okay, so it was a fib. Better than looking like a slug. Or even worse, better than admitting to the truth, because the truth was that I was becoming emotionally dysfunctional. I was unable to fall asleep in the dark. And if I did fall asleep, it would be only to doze and to wake up to bad dreams. So I was starting to sleep during daytime hours when I had the chance.

My incentive for finding Mo had changed in the last couple of days. I wanted to find Mo so the killing would stop. I couldn’t stand seeing any more blown-apart bodies.

I rolled off the couch and into the shower. While in the shower I noticed blisters on my heels as big as quarters. Thank God. I finally had a legitimate excuse to stop running. Eight minutes later, I was dressed and in the hall, with my apartment locked up behind me.

As soon as I climbed into the Bronco I knew this was serious because Ranger was wearing no-nonsense army fatigues and gold post earrings. Also the tear gas gun and the smoke grenades in the backseat were a tip-off.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“Very straightforward. I got a call from Moses Bedemier. He apologized for borrowing my car. Said it was parked in his garage, and that his neighbor, Mrs. Steeger, had the keys.”

I shuddered at the mention of Mrs. Steeger.

“What’s that about?” Ranger asked.

“Mrs. Steeger is the Antichrist.”

“Damn,” Ranger said. “I left my Antichrist gun at home.”

“Looks like you brought everything else.”

“Never know when you’ll need some tear gas.”

“If we have to gas Mrs. Steeger, it’ll probably ruin my chances of being Miss Burg in the Mayflower Parade.”

Ranger turned into the alley from King and stopped at Mo’s garage. He got out and tried the door. The door was locked. He walked to the side window and peered in.

“Well?” I asked.

“It’s there.”

A back curtain was whisked aside and Mrs. Steeger glared out at us from her house.

“Is that her?” Ranger wanted to know.

“Yup.”

“One of us should talk to her.”

“That would be you,” I said.

“Okay, Tex. I don’t think Mo’s here, but you cover the back just in case. I’ll have a word with Mrs. Steeger.”

After ten minutes I was stomping my feet to keep warm and beginning to worry about Ranger. I hadn’t heard any shots, so that was a good sign. There’d been no screams, no police sirens, no glass breaking.

Ranger appeared at the back door, smiling. He crossed the yard to me. “Did you really tell fibs when you were a kid?”

“Only when it involved matters of life or death.”

“Proud of you, babe.”

“Has she got the key?”

“Yeah. She’s getting her coat on. Taking this key thing very seriously. Says it’s the least she could do for Mo.”

“The least she could do?”

“Have you read the paper today?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“It turns out that all these murders are having a significant impact on crime. Drug sales are way down. Pharmaceutical representatives are booking flights for obscure southern towns.”

“Are you telling me Mo is a hero?”

“Let’s just say, he isn’t despised.”

Mrs. Steeger materialized at the back door wearing a coat and hat. She huffed down the porch stairs and across her yard. “Hmmph,” she said to me. “Still snooping, I see.”

My left eye started to twitch. I put my finger to my eyelid and sank my teeth into my lower lip.

Ranger grinned.

The superhero wasn’t afraid of the Antichrist. The superhero thought an eye twitch was funny.

Mrs. Steeger opened the door and stepped back, arms folded over her chest. “I’ll lock up when you get your car out,” she said to Ranger.

Guess she was worried we’d snitch some jugs of used motor oil.

Ranger handed me the keys to the Bronco. “I’ll drive the BMW, and you can follow.”

Normally a person would take his cars home. Since Ranger wasn’t normal I wasn’t sure where we were headed.

I held the tail through center city. Traffic was heavy and people walked head down into the wind on the sidewalks. Ranger turned off State onto Cameron and pulled into a small, attended parking lot. We were behind the state buildings, two blocks from Stark, in an area of quasi-government office buildings. Definitely not residential.

Ranger got out of his car and spoke to the attendant. The attendant smiled and nodded. Friendly. They knew each other.

I parked behind the Beemer and walked over to Ranger. “Are we leaving the cars here?”

“Benny will take care of them while I pick up my mail.”

I looked around. “You live here?”

“Office,” Ranger said, gesturing to a four-story brick building next to the lot.

“You have an office?”

“Nothing fancy. It helps to keep the businesses straight.”

I followed Ranger through the double glass doors into the vestibule. There were two elevators to our left. A tenant directory hung on the wall beside the elevators. I scanned the directory and could find no mention of Ranger.

“You’re not listed,” I said.

Ranger moved past the elevators to the stairs. “Don’t need to be.”

I trotted after him. “What businesses are we talking about?”

“Mostly security related. Bodyguard, debris removal, security consultation. Fugitive apprehension, of course.”

We rounded the first floor and were working our way up to two. “What’s debris removal?”

“Sometimes a landlord wants to clean up his property. I can put together a team to do the job.”

“You mean like throwing crack dealers out the window?”

Ranger passed the second floor and kept going. He shook his head. “Only on the lower floors. You throw them out the upper-story windows and it makes too much of a mess on the sidewalk.”

He opened the fire door to the third floor, and I followed him down the hall to number 311. He slid a key card into the magnetic slot, pushed the door open and switched the light on.

It was a one-room office with two windows and a small powder room. Beige carpet, cream-colored walls, miniblinds at the windows. Furniture consisted of a large cherry desk with a black leather executive chair behind the desk and two client chairs to the front of the desk. No gun turrets at the windows. No government-issue rockets stacked in the corners. A Mac laptop with a separate Bernoulli drive was plugged in on the desk. Its modem was hooked to the phone line. There was also a multiline phone and answering machine on the desk. Everything was neat. No dust. No empty soda cans. No empty pizza boxes. Thankfully, no dead bodies.

Ranger stooped to pick up the mail that had been delivered through the mail slot. He came up with a handful of envelopes and a couple flyers. He divided the mail into two stacks: garbage and later. He threw the garbage into the wastebasket. The later could wait until later. I guess there hadn’t been any now! mail.

The red light on the answering machine was going ballistic with blinking. Ranger lifted the lid and popped the incoming tape. He put it in his shirt pocket and replaced the tape with a new one from the top drawer of the desk. No now! messages there either, I suppose.

I took a peek at the lavatory. Very clean. Soap. Paper towels. Box of tissues. Nothing personal. “You spend much time here?” I asked Ranger.

“No more than is necessary.”

I waited for some elaboration but none was forthcoming. I wondered if Ranger was still interested in Mo now that he had his BMW back.

“Are you feeling vengeful?” I asked Ranger. “Does justice need to be served?”

“He’s back on your slate, if that’s what you’re asking.” He killed the light and opened the door to leave.

“Did Mrs. Steeger say anything that might be helpful?”

“She said Mo showed up around nine. Mo told her he’d borrowed a car from someone, and that he’d left the car in his garage for safekeeping until the owner came to retrieve it. Then he gave her the key.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Maybe I should have a chat with Mrs. Steeger.” I knew it was a long shot, but Mo might come back for his key. Or at least call to see if everything worked out. I wasn’t looking forward to spending time with Mrs. Steeger, but if I could get her to arrange a meeting or a phone call between Mo and me it would be worth it.

Ranger checked his door to make sure it was locked. “Gonna explain to her how Mo’s crime career is in the toilet, and she should pass him your personal number? The one that guarantees him safe passage to the state spa?”

“Thought it was worth a shot.”

“Absolutely,” Ranger said. “He didn’t want to talk to me about it, but you might have more luck. Are you running tomorrow morning?”

“Gee, I’d love to, but I have blisters.”

Ranger looked relieved.