Explosive Eighteen

  “Protection got cut from the budget. Come back tomorrow, same time. I’ll have a forensic artist here. We’ll see if you can give us anything useful.”

  I left the building and found Ranger lounging against my parked car, arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable, his posture relaxed. My messenger bag hung from his shoulder. He had a Band-Aid covering the stitches under his eye. The Band-Aid was a couple shades lighter than his skin. Ranger’s heritage was Cuban and his look was Latino. He was multilingual, ambidextrous, and street-smart. He was formerly Special Forces. He was my age. He was more big jungle cat than golden retriever.

  “You’re driving without a license and probably no money or credit cards,” Ranger said.

  “It seemed like the lesser of two evils.”

  There was the hint of a twitch at the corner of his mouth, as if he might be thinking about smiling. “Are you saying I’m evil?”

  Ranger was playing with me. Hard to tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “I’m saying I don’t know where I’m going with you,” I told him.

  “Would you like me to make some suggestions?”

  “No! You made enough suggestions in Hawaii.”

  “You made some of your own,” he said. His gaze dropped to my hand. “You’re still wearing my mark on your ring finger. Not as legal as a wedding band, but it would qualify you for a good time.”

  “That ring mark got you seven stitches and a broken bone in your hand.”

  “At least Morelli fights clean.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Babe, you stun-gunned me on the back of my neck.”

  “Yeah, and it wasn’t easy with the two of you rolling around on the ground, whaling away at each other.”

  Actually, I had stunned both of them, cuffed them while they were immobilized, and drove them to the emergency room. Then I changed out my plane ticket for an earlier flight, called Lula, and took off before they were finished getting stitched and patched. Not only did I want to put distance between us, but I thought it smart to leave the island before getting charged with illegal use of an illegal stun gun. Sometimes there’s a fine line between a cowardly act and a brilliant decision, and my brilliant decision had been to get out of Honolulu and leave the stun gun behind.

  Ranger transferred the messenger bag from his shoulder to mine, pulled me into him, and kissed me like he meant it. “Let me know if the guys following you in the Lincoln get too bothersome,” he said, opening the door to my car.

  No point asking how Ranger knew about the Lincoln. Ranger pretty much knows everything.

  • • •

  I slid behind the wheel of the RAV, cranked it over, and drove to the coffee shop. Lula and Connie were in the table area by the front window. Connie was working on her laptop, and Lula was drinking coffee, paging through a magazine.

  “Is this the new office?” I asked Connie.

  “Until I come up with something better. DeAngelo says the building will be done in three weeks. Hard to believe.”

  “Did he say that before or after he firebombed the bus?” I asked her.

  “After. I just spoke to him.”

  Lula picked her head up. “You think DeAngelo did the bus?”

  “It’s a theory,” I said.

  I got a Frappuccino and a big cookie, and suggested to Lula that we head over to the junkyard to check out the rumor about Joyce.

  “Hard to believe Joyce is dead,” Lula said. “She’s too mean to die. It’d be like killing the Devil. You see what I’m saying? I bet it’s damn hard to kill the Devil.”

  We piled into the Firebird, and Lula cut through town and motored up Stark Street, past the mom-and-pop chop shops, groceries, bars, and pawnshops. The groceries and pawnshops gave way to crack houses, third-world sanitation, and hollow-eyed stoop sitters. The crack houses gave way to the burned-out, rat-riddled slums of no-man’s-land, where only the crazies and the most desperate existed. And the junkyard rose fortress-like and defiant, a mountain of heavy metal and fiberglass discard, beyond no-man’s-land.

  Lula parked in the junkyard lot and tried to gauge her distance from the big electromagnet that swung the cars into the compactor.

  “They better not get the wrong idea about my Firebird,” she said.

  “You’re good,” I told her. “You’re in the visitor parking area.”

  “Yeah, but if these people were smart, they wouldn’t be working in a junkyard at the end of the world.”

  No argument there. It wasn’t so much the junkyard as it was the proximity to Hell. Connie’s cousin Manny Rosolli owned the junkyard. I knew him in a remote sort of way, and he seemed like a nice man. And since 80 percent of Connie’s family was mob, this gave Manny a certain amount of security in spite of the precarious location.

  I found the trailer that served as an office and asked for Andy, the son of Grandma’s friend Mrs. Kulicki. I was told he was stacking cars, and I was directed to the part of the lot where cars were stored when they came out of the compactor. Fortunately, the compactor wasn’t currently in use, so I was spared the sound of cars getting crushed to death.

  It was easy to find Andy since he was the only one there. Plus, he was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with his name embroidered in black. He was a gangly tattooed guy with multiple piercings. I was guessing nineteen or twenty years old.

  “You got a ankle bracelet on, too?” Lula asked him.

  “This isn’t prison clothes,” Andy said. “It’s so the crusher guy can see me, so I don’t get a car dropped on me.”

  “I’m looking for Joyce Barnhardt,” I told him.

  “You might have a hard time finding her,” he said. “She could have got compacted. I was cleaning up, and I found her driver’s license on the ground, along with a smashed lady’s high heel shoe and a lipstick. You’d be surprised what gets shook loose after the crusher. There’s all kinds of stuff falling out of these cars when they get picked up and stacked.”

  “Where’s the car now?”

  “Dunno. No way to tell which car it came from.”

  “Did you tell the police?” I asked him.

  “Nope. I told the office. But they said when it comes to suspecting bodies in the crusher, we have a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”

  “What happened to the license and the shoe?”

  “Threw them away. The license was all torn and bent, and the shoe was a mess and it smelled real bad. Anyway, the office said no one ever comes to claim stuff that’s been shook from the crusher.”

  “Probably, the junkyard’s doing big disposal business since they put the surveillance cameras up at the landfill,” Lula said. “I bet you could bring a cadaver dog here, and he wouldn’t know where to go first.”

  SEVEN

  “I’M HUNGRY,” LULA SAID, pulling out of the junkyard. “What would Ranger eat for lunch? I bet he’d be up for a bucket of fried chicken.”

  “He usually grabs a sandwich at Rangeman. Roast beef on multigrain. Or a turkey club.”

  “I could do that. What else does he eat?”

  “An apple sometimes. And water.”

  “Say what? Is that it? How could he live on that? What about chips? What about a root beer float? And how many of those roast beef sandwiches does he eat for lunch?”

  “One sandwich. No chips.”

  “That’s un-American. He’s not stimulating the economy like that. I’d feel it was my patriotic duty to at least have chips.”

  Lula stopped at a deli on the first block of Stark.

  “This looks sketchy,” I said. “The window is dirty, and I just saw a rat run out the front door.”

  “I’ve been here before,” she said. “They give you a half-pound of meat on your sandwich, and they throw in pickles for free. If I’m only gonna have one sandwich, this is the place.”

  It looked to me like they threw in food poisoning for free, too. “I’ll pass.”

  “You have no spirit of culin
ary adventure. You need to be more like that snarky guy on the Travel Channel. He goes all over the world eating kangaroo assholes and snail throw-up. He’d eat anything. He don’t care how sick he gets. He’s another one of my role models, except he needs ironing.” She took her big silver Glock out of her purse and handed it over to me. “You wait here and don’t let anyone take my car.”

  I hefted the Glock, aiming it out the window at an empty street corner. My own gun was smaller, a Smith & Wesson .45 revolver. I’d gotten it from Ranger when I first started doing bond enforcement and Connie had asked him to mentor me. He was scary tough and mysteriously complex back then. He isn’t so different now. He’s abandoned his Special Forces camo fatigues for Rangeman black, he’s dropped the ghetto accent and lost the ponytail as his business needs changed, but he’s still a tough guy with lots of secrets.

  Lula hustled out of the deli with a large plastic food container in one hand, a massive wax paper–wrapped sandwich in the other, and a two-liter bottle of soda under her arm.

  “He put all my free pickles right into the sandwich,” she said, sliding behind the wheel. “And I got some homemade potato salad instead of chips. It was half price.”

  Oh boy. Bargain potato salad from the Rats-R-Us. “The potato salad might not be a good idea,” I said.

  Lula opened the lid and sniffed. “Smells okay.” She dug in with her plastic fork. “Tastes okay. Got a tang to it.” She unwrapped her sandwich, ate half, and washed it down with some soda.

  I tried not to grimace. I didn’t want to ruin her eating experience, but I was getting queasy inhaling the meat and mayo fumes. I had my window down and my head halfway out when the Lincoln pulled up alongside.

  Lancer made a gun with his hand, index finger pointed at me. “Bang,” he said.

  I still had Lula’s Glock in my lap. I raised it and pointed it at Lancer, and he drove away.

  “What was that about?” Lula asked.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m getting real tired of hearing it’s complicated. Would you say something like that to Ranger? I don’t think so. I bet he calls you Babe and you tell him everything he wants to know.”

  I tell Ranger nothing. Ranger isn’t a talker. Ranger reveals very little and doesn’t encourage verbal spewing on the part of others.

  “On the way home from Hawaii, I accidentally picked up a photograph of a man,” I said to Lula. “I didn’t know who he was or how I got the photograph, so I threw it away. Turns out it’s one of a kind, it’s tied to national security somehow, and now I’m the only one who knows what the guy looks like. The FBI is searching for the guy, and the two morons who just drove by are searching for the guy. And it’s possible there are other people searching for the guy.”

  “And you say you’re the only one who knows what he looks like?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know where this guy lives?”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “This makes you real special,” Lula said. “It’s like you’re a reality show, all by yourself.”

  Lula finished her sandwich and her tub of potato salad, and we looked over my list of skips.

  “I’m just not excited about any of this,” Lula said. “Now that I’m gonna be operating at Ranger level, I need more of a challenge. Where’s the killers and the serial rapists? How come we don’t have any of them? The best we got is Joyce, and she’s not looking so difficult. If she’s not dead, she’s out there with only one shoe and no driver’s license.”

  Joyce was weighing on me. She wasn’t my favorite person, but I didn’t like thinking she’d been crushed and discarded. No one should be crushed and discarded. I punched Morelli’s number into my phone.

  Morelli answered with a sigh.

  “Is that you?” I asked him.

  “Yup.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “I’m up to my knees in blood and paperwork. I don’t know which is worse. What did you have in mind?”

  “Have you heard the rumor about Joyce Barnhardt getting compacted?”

  Nothing for a beat. “No.”

  “Well, there’s a rumor. It originated with Andy Kulicki. He works at the junkyard. I was just there, and Andy said the crusher shook loose a woman’s high heel shoe, a lipstick, and Joyce’s driver’s license. You might want to go over there with a cadaver dog.”

  “Boy, I’m really happy to hear that, because I was hoping for another murder.”

  “I thought it was my civic duty to pass it on.”

  “You give me heartburn,” Morelli said. And he disconnected.

  “Well?” Lula’s eyebrow raised.

  “He said I gave him heartburn.”

  “That’s not real romantic.”

  “He has a hard job.”

  “Me, too,” Lula said. “I got heartburn, too.”

  “You have heartburn because you ate at the Rat Café.”

  “You could be right. It tasted okay, but it’s not sitting so good in my stomach. Maybe I just need more soda.” Lula drank more soda and burped. “Oh yeah,” she said, “that’s better.”

  “I’m going to take another shot at Lewis Bugkowski,” I said. “This time, I’ll use my stun gun and Flexi-Cuffs.”

  Actually, stun guns are illegal in New Jersey as well as Hawaii, but like carrying concealed, Trenton is pretty much unofficially exempt.

  “WHAM!” Lula said. “Let’s do it. Where’s he live?”

  “Pulling Street.”

  Lula turned onto Broad, cut across town, and started to sweat.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her. “You’re sweating, and your face isn’t its usual color.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Asparagus.”

  “I might be coming down with the flu.”

  “How about food poisoning?”

  “I feel like my stomach’s getting all swelled up,” Lula said. “It’s not fitting in my pants no more. And it’s doing funny sounds. I might need a bathroom.”

  “Can you make it to the coffee shop?”

  “Yeah, I just have to drive faster. You probably want to close your eyes.”

  Three minutes later, she slid to a stop in front of the coffee shop.

  “I’m gonna make a run for it,” Lula said. “Just stay out of my way, because when I stand up all hell’s liable to break loose.”

  She kicked her door open and took off.

  “Outta my way! Comin’ through!” she yelled.

  She disappeared into the restroom at the back of the coffee shop, and moments later two women ran out.

  I bought a ham-and-cheese sandwich and joined Connie at the table in the window.

  “Lula ate some green roast beef and half-price potato salad,” I said to Connie.

  “You play, you pay,” Connie said. “How’d it go at the junkyard?”

  “Andy found a shoe and Joyce’s driver’s license in the crusher area.”

  “Were you able to trace it back to a car?”

  “No. Turns out your cousin Manny has a loosey-goosey policy about stuff that gets dumped out of the crusher.”

  “It’s junkyard etiquette to never look in the trunk,” Connie said.

  The restroom door crashed open, and Lula staggered out. “I’m dying,” she said. “Do I look like I’m dying?”

  “You’ve looked better,” I told her. “Do you want me to drive you around the block to the emergency room?”

  “Thanks for offering, but I’m taking myself home. And I’m never eating potato salad again. There should be a law against potato salad.”

  I finished my sandwich and stood. “Places to go. People to capture.”

  “If I’m not here, I’ll be on my cell,” Connie said. “I have some short-term offices to look at.”

  • • •

  I left the coffee shop and drove to Buggy’s house. I was better prepared today. I had plastic Flexi-Cuffs in my back pocket and my hand wrapped around my stun gun when I knocked on his front
door.

  “Boy, am I glad to see you,” Buggy said, looking out at me. “I need to borrow your car. I need to go to the drugstore to get a box of Band-Aids.”

  He had a gash on his forehead and a cotton roll stuck up each nostril. I suspected this was damage from his run-in with my RAV4 yesterday.

  “I have a better idea,” I said. “I’ll drive you.”

  “Nuh-ah. I like to drive.”

  I pressed the stun-gun prongs against his chest and pushed the go button. Nothing happened. Low battery.

  Buggy snatched my bag from my shoulder. “Your keys are in here, right?”

  “No! Give it back.”

  He rummaged around in the bag, found the keys, and dropped the bag on the ground.

  “Thanks. I was wondering how I was gonna get a Band-Aid,” he said, knocking me aside, muscling his way to the car and wedging himself behind the wheel.

  I watched Buggy drive away, and I called Ranger. “You’re not going to believe what just happened.”

  “Babe, it’s getting so I’ll believe just about anything.”

  “The big dopey guy took my car again.”

  Silence for a beat. “Maybe it’d be easier if I gave him a car of his own,” Ranger finally said. “Does he have your bag?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll send Hal out to get your car. What about you? Is Lula rescuing you again?”

  “No.”

  Another moment of silence. “Am I?”

  “Would you like to?” I asked him.

  EIGHT

  THE BLACK 911 PORSCHE TURBO eased to a stop in front of Buggy’s house, and I angled into the car. Ranger was wearing the Rangeman uniform of black T-shirt and black cargo pants. He was armed, as usual. And also as usual, there was the subtle, lingering, tantalizing hint of his Bulgari shower gel.

  “As long as we’re together,” I said to him, “would you have time to get me into a locked house in Hamilton Township?”

  “I have a four o’clock meeting. Until then, I’m all yours.”

  I gave him the address and told him about Joyce. Twenty minutes later, Ranger parked next to an electrician’s panel van in front of the Mercado Mews model home, and we walked a block and a half to Joyce’s town house. Best not to have your car sitting in front of a house you’re breaking into. We rang the bell and knocked on the front door. When no one answered, we circled to the back of the house, and Ranger stood hands on hips, looking at the bullet holes in the door to the privacy fence.