Three to Get Deadly

  He was now staring at Ranger with the sort of dumbfounded confusion you'd expect of a man whose home had just been firebombed for no good reason.

  Ranger was in his black mode today. Double gold studs in his ears, form-fitting long-sleeved black T pushed up to his elbows, black-banded diver's watch at his wrist, black rapper slacks tucked into black combat boots with enough gold chain around his neck to secure bail for murder one.

  “Have some ham,” Grandma said to Ranger, passing him the plate. “Are you a Negro?” she asked.

  Ranger didn't blink an eye. “Cuban.”

  Grandma looked disappointed. “Too bad,” she said. “It would have been something to tell the girls at the beauty parlor I had dinner with a Negro.”

  Ranger smiled and spooned out potatoes.

  I'd decided at an early age to stop being embarrassed over my family. This is yet another advantage to living in Jersey. In Jersey everyone has the right to embarrass themselves with no reflection on anyone else. In fact, embarrassing yourself periodically is almost required.

  I could see my mother going through mental gymnastics, searching for a safe subject. “Ranger is an unusual name,” she managed. “Is it a nickname?”

  “It's a street name,” Ranger said. “I was a Ranger in the army.”

  “I heard about them Rangers on TV,” Grandma said. “I heard they get dogs pregnant.”

  My father's mouth dropped open and a piece of ham fell out.

  My mother froze, her fork poised in midair.

  “That's sort of a joke,” I told Grandma. “Rangers don't get dogs pregnant in real life.”

  I looked to Ranger for corroboration and got another smile.

  “I'm having a hard time finding Mo,” I told my mother. “You hear anything at the supermarket?”

  My mother sighed. “People don't talk much about Mo. People mostly talk about you.”

  Grandma mashed her peas into her potatoes. “Elsie Farnsworth said she saw Mo at the chicken place getting a bucket of extra spicy. And Mavis Rheinhart said she saw him going into Giovachinni's Market. Binney Rice said she saw Mo looking in her bedroom window the night before last. Course, two weeks ago Binney was telling everyone Donald Trump was looking in her window.”

  Ranger declined the butterscotch pudding, not wanting to disrupt the consistency of his blood sugar level. I had two puddings and coffee, choosing to keep my pancreas at peak performance. Use it or lose it is my philosophy.

  I helped clear the table and was seeing Ranger to the door when his cell phone chirped. The conversation was short.

  “Got a skip in a bar on Stark Street,” Ranger said. “Want to ride shotgun?”

  Half an hour later we had the Bronco parked in front of Ed's Place. Ed's was standard fare for Stark Street. One room with a couple chipped Formica tables in the front and a bar across the back. The air was stale and smoke-choked, smelling like beer and dirty hair and cold French fries. The tables were empty. A knot of men stood at the bar, forsaking the three bar stools. Eyes swiveled in the dark when Ranger and I walked through the door.

  The bartender gave an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes cut to an alcove at one end of the bar. A dented sheet metal sign on the wall by the alcove said GENTS.

  Ranger's voice was low at my ear. “Stay here and cover the door.”

  Cover the door? Moi? Was he kidding? I gave a little finger wave to the men at the bar. No one waved back. I pulled the .38 five-shot out of my pocket and shoved it into the front of my Levi's. This didn't get any waves either.

  Ranger disappeared into the alcove. I heard him knock on a door. He knocked again . . . louder. There was the sound of a doorknob being tried, another knock and then the unmistakable sound of a boot kicking in a door.

  Ranger burst from the hallway on a run. “Went out the window into the alley.”

  I followed Ranger into the street. We stopped for a split second, listening for footfalls, and Ranger took off again, through the alley to the back of the bar. I was skidding on ice, kicking at garbage, and I was breathing hard. I caught my toe on a piece of board and went down to one knee. I pulled myself up and swore while I hopped for a few steps until the pain faded.

  Ranger and I came out of the alley and hit the cross street. A dark figure ran for the front door of a row house halfway down the block, and we pounded after him. Ranger charged through the front door, and I took the alley two houses down to secure the rear exit. I was gasping for air and fumbling for my pepper spray as I came up to the back door. I had my hand in my pocket when the door flew open, and Melvin Morley III crashed into me.

  Morley was as big as a grizzly. He was accused of armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He was drunk as a skunk and didn't smell much better.

  We hit the ground with a solid thud. Him on the bottom. Me on top. My fingers reflexively grabbed at his jacket.

  “Hey, big boy,” I said. Maybe I could distract him with my female charms.

  He gave a grunt and flicked me away like I was lint. I rolled back and grabbed hold of his pants leg.

  “Help!” I yelled. “HELLLLLLP!”

  Morley hauled me up by my armpits and held me at eye level, my feet at least nine inches off the ground. “Dumb white bitch,” he said, giving me a couple vicious shakes that snapped my head back.

  “F-f-fugitive apprehension agent,” I said. “Y-y-you're under arrest.”

  “Nobody's arresting Morley,” he said. “I'll kill anyone who tries.”

  I flailed my arms and swung my legs, and my toe mysteriously connected with Morley's knee.

  “Ouch,” Morley yelled.

  His big ham hands released me, and he buckled over. I staggered back a couple feet when I hit the ground, knocking into Ranger.

  “Hey, big boy?” Ranger said.

  “I thought it might distract him.”

  Morley was curled into a fetal position doing shallow breathing, holding his knee. “She broke my knee,” he said on a gasp. “She broke my fucking knee.”

  “Think it was your boot that distracted him,” Ranger said.

  A happy accident.

  “So if you were standing there the whole time, why didn't you help me?”

  “Didn't look like you needed any help, babe. Why don't you run around and get the car while I baby-sit Mr. Morley. He's going to be slow walking.”

  It was almost ten when Ranger brought me back to my parents' house on High Street. Poochie, Mrs. Crandle's two-hundred-year-old toy poodle, was sitting on the porch across the street, conjuring up one last tinkle before he called it a night. The lights were off next door in Mrs. Ciak's house. Early to bed, early to rise, made old Mrs. Ciak wise. My mother and grandmother obviously didn't t feel like they needed any help from a few extra winks, because they were standing with their noses pressed to the glass pane in the storm door, squinting into the darkness at me.

  “Probably been standing there since you left,” Ranger said.

  “My sister is normal,” I said. “Always has been.”

  Ranger nodded. “Makes it all the more confusing.”

  I waved good-bye to Ranger and headed for the porch.

  “There's still some butterscotch pudding left,” my mother said when I opened the door.

  “Did you shoot anyone?” Grandma wanted to know. “Was there a big to-do?”

  “There was a little to-do,” I told her. “And we didn't shoot anyone. We almost never shoot people.”

  My father leaned forward in his chair in the living room. “What's this about shooting?”

  “Stephanie didn't shoot anyone today,” my mother said.

  My father stared at us all for a moment, looking like he might be contemplating the advantages of a six-month tour on an aircraft carrier, and then he returned his attention to the TV.

  “I can't stay,” I said to my mother. “I just stopped in so you could see everything was okay.”

  “Okay?” my mother shouted. “You go out in the middle of the night, chasing criminals! How
could that possibly be okay? And look at you! What happened to your pants? Your pants have a big hole in them!”

  “I tripped.”

  My mother pressed her lips together. “So do you want pudding, or not?”

  “Of course I want pudding.”

  I opened my eyes to a perfectly black room, and the skin-crawling feeling that I wasn't alone. I had no basis in fact for the feeling. I'd been dragged from sleep by some deep intuition. Possibly the intuition had been triggered by the rustle of clothing or a sweep of air. My heart knocked against my ribs as I waited for movement, for the scent of another person's sweat, for a sign that my fears were true.

  I scanned the room but found only familiar shapes. The digital readout on my clock said five-thirty. My eyes cut to my dresser at the sound of a drawer slamming shut, and finally I picked out the intruder.

  A pair of sweats sailed through the air and hit me in the head.

  “If we're going to work together, you've got to get into shape,” the intruder said.

  “Ranger?”

  “I made you some tea. It's on your nightstand.”

  I switched the light on. Sure enough, there was a cup of tea steaming on my nightstand. So much for the illusion of Stephanie Plum, keen-sensed bounty hunter.

  “I hate tea,” I said, sniffing at the noxious brew. I took a sip. YUK! “What is this?”

  “Ginseng.”

  “It's weird. It tastes awful.”

  “Good for your circulation,” Ranger said. “Helps oxygenate.”

  “What are you doing in my bedroom?” Ordinarily I'd be curious as to the mode of entry. With Ranger it was a pointless question. Ranger had ways.

  “I'm trying to get you out of bed,” Ranger said. “It's late.”

  “It's five-thirty!”

  “I'll be in the living room warming up.”

  I watched his back disappear through the bedroom door. Was he serious? Warm up for what? I pulled the sweats on and padded out to him. He was doing one-armed push-ups.

  “We'll start out with fifty,” he said.

  I got down on the floor and made an attempt at a push-up. After about five minutes Ranger was finished, and I'd almost done one.

  “Okay,” Ranger said, jogging in place. “Let's hit the streets.”

  “I want breakfast.”

  “We'll do a fast five-mile run, and then we'll come back for breakfast.”

  A five-mile run? Was he nuts? It was five-thirty in the morning. It was dark out. It was cold. I peeked out the window. It was fucking snowing!

  “Great,” I said. “Piece of cake.”

  I zipped myself into a down ski jacket, filled the pockets with tissues and lip balm, pulled on a knit cap, wrapped a scarf around my neck, stuffed my hands into big wool mittens and followed Ranger down the stairs.

  Ranger ran effortlessly for several blocks. His stride was steady and measured. His attention directed inward. I struggled beside him . . . nose running, breathing labored, attention directed to surviving the next moment.

  We slipped through the gate to the playing field behind the high school and swung onto the track. I dropped back to a walk and applied some lip balm. Ranger lapped me, and I picked it up to a jog. Ranger lapped me a few more times, and then he nudged me off the track, back through the gate to the street.

  The sun wasn't yet on the horizon, but the sky had begun to lighten under the snow and the cloud cover. I could see the sheen on Ranger's face, see the sweat soaking through his shirt. His face still bore the same meditative expression. His breathing was even once again, now that he had slowed his pace to mine.

  We ran in silence back to my apartment, entering the front door, jogging through the lobby. He took the stairs, and I took the elevator.

  He was waiting for me when the doors opened.

  “I thought you were behind me,” he said.

  “I was. Way behind.”

  “It's all in the attitude,” Ranger said. “You want to be tough, you have to live healthy.”

  “To begin with, I don't want to be tough. I want to be . . . adequate.”

  Ranger stripped off his sweatshirt. “Adequate is being able to run five miles. How are you going to catch the bad guys if you can't outrun them?”

  “Connie gives the bad guys who can run to you. I get the fat, out-of-shape bad guys.”

  Ranger took a bag out of my refrigerator and dumped a load of stuff from the bag into my blender. He flipped the blender switch and the stuff in the jar turned pink.

  “What are you making?” I wanted to know.

  “A smoothie.” He poured half the smoothie into a big glass and handed it to me.

  I took a sip. Not bad. If it was in a much smaller glass and sitting alongside a huge stack of hotcakes drenched in maple syrup, it would be just about tolerable.

  “It needs something,” I said. “It needs . . . chocolate.”

  Ranger drank the remaining smoothie. “I'm going home to take a shower and make some phone calls. I'll be back in an hour.”

  To celebrate our partnership I dressed up like Ranger. Black boots, black jeans, black turtleneck, small silver hoop earrings.

  He gave me the once-over when I opened the door to him.

  “Smart ass,” he said.

  I sent him what I hoped was an enigmatic smile.

  He was wearing a black leather jacket with fringe running the length of each sleeve. Little blue and black beads were hooked three-quarters down the fringe.

  I didn't have any fringe on my black leather jacket. And I didn't have any beads. I had more zippers than Ranger, so I guess it all evened out. I slipped the jacket on and clapped a black Metallica ball cap over my freshly washed hair.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now we look for Mo.”

  It was still snowing, but it was cozy in Ranger's Bronco. We cruised the streets, looking for the Batmobile in parking lots and middle-class neighborhoods. At my suggestion we visited some photo stores. Two of the merchants said they recognized Mo but hadn't seen him lately. The snow was still coming down, and traffic was crawling around cars that couldn't make grades.

  “Mo's not going to be out in this,” Ranger said. “We might as well close up shop for the day.”

  I wasn't going to argue. It was lunchtime. I was starving, and I didn't want to graze on sprouts and bean curd.

  Ranger dropped me at the front door to my building and motored off in four-wheel drive. I took the stairs two at a time, practically ran down the hall and unlocked my door. Everything was quiet and peaceful inside. Rex was sleeping. The refrigerator hummed softly. The snow clacked on the windows. I kicked my shoes off, shuffled out of the black jeans and carted an armload of food into my bedroom. I switched the television on and crawled into bed with the channel changer.

  Do I know how to have a good time, or what?

  At six-thirty I was coming off a two-hour MTV stint and was approaching a vegetative state. I was trying to choose between a Turner classic and the news when a thought straggled into the front of my brain.

  Mo had a lawyer.

  Since when? The paperwork I'd been given said he'd waived an attorney. The only one I could think to ask was Joe Morelli.

  “Yeah?” Morelli said when he answered the phone.

  Just yeah. No hello. “You have a bad day?”

  “I didn't have a good day.”

  “Do you know who Mo is using for a lawyer?”

  “Mo waived counsel.”

  “I ran into him, and he said he had a lawyer.”

  There was a pause at the other end. “You ran into Mo?”

  “He was at the candy store.”

  “And?”

  “And he got away.”

  “I hear they're hiring at the button factory.”

  “At least I know he has a lawyer. That's more than you know.”

  “You got me there,” Morelli said. “I'll check with the court tomorrow, but to the best of my knowledge, we haven't been informed of counsel.”
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  A new question to add to the list. Why would Mo get a lawyer? Mo would get a lawyer if he was thinking of turning himself in. Probably there were other reasons, too, but I couldn't think of them.