“In sweats, too,” he said. “You should see me work my magic in leather.”
“Where is he?” Lula wanted to know when we were all settled in Ranger's Bronco. “Where's Old Penis Nose?”
“Don't know,” I said. “He came here looking for Elliot Harp, but Elliot wasn't at home.”
“Elliot Harp's bad news,” Lula said. “Mean. Middle management. Must have at least ten kids running for him.”
“About that badge you flash,” I said to Ranger.
He pulled away from the curb, flicked me a sideways glance. “You want one?”
“Might come in handy.”
Ranger shot Lula a look in the rearview mirror. “You know where Elliot lives?”
“So far as I know he lives on Stark. Has a woman there. Junkie ho.”
“Gail?”
“Yep. Gail.”
“We just talked to Gail. She said Harp split. Says she doesn't know where he is.”
“That could be,” Lula said. “Lot of that going around.”
“If Mo really wants to find Elliot, where will he look next?” I asked.
Ranger turned at Gainsborough and headed back toward the burg. “He'll go to the street. He'll look for Elliot on the corner. Elliot's running scared, but he still needs to do business.”
“Elliot won't be on the street now,” Lula said. “Maybe around eleven. The corners are always busy after church. After church is time to pick up a ho and get high.”
I returned to my apartment for breakfast and a change of clothes. Lula went shopping for something to settle her stomach. And Ranger went home to the Batcave to eat tofu and tree bark. The plan was to rendezvous again at eleven.
The phone was ringing when I walked in the door, and my message light was blinking. Four new messages.
“Where have you been so early in the morning?” my mother wanted to know when I snatched up the phone. “I called an hour ago and nobody was home.”
“I went out to run.”
“Have you seen the paper?”
“No.”
“They found bodies in Mo's basement! Four bodies. Can you imagine?”
“I have to go,” I said. “I have to get a paper. I'll call back later.”
“You left your pocketbook here.”
“I know. Don't let Grandma play with my gun.”
“Your grandmother is out to church. Says she needs more of a social life. Says she's going to find herself a man.”
I disconnected and played back my messages. My mother, Mary Lou, Connie, Sue Ann Grebek. They were all reporting on the newspaper article. I called next door to Mrs. Karwatt and asked if she had a paper. Yes, she did, she said. And did I hear about the bodies in Mo's basement.
Three minutes later I was back in my kitchen with Mrs. Karwatt's paper, and my phone was ringing again. Lula this time.
“Did you see it?” she shouted. “Old Penis Nose made the paper! Said how he was picked up for carrying and then disappeared, and how he was under suspicion. Newspaper said a source told them the bodies in Mo's cellar could be drug related. Hah!” she said. “You bet your ass.”
I read the article, started coffee brewing, took a shower and unplugged my phone after three more calls. This was the biggest thing to hit the burg since Tony the Vig was found dead in his attic, hanging from a crossbeam with his pants down and his hand wrapped around a record-breaking hard-on. Hell, maybe Mo was even bigger than Tony V's wanger.
And the best part of all of this was that I was finally the good guy. No more bullshit about how Uncle Mo would never do anything wrong. The man had a maggot farm in his cellar.
“Looking good,” I said to Rex.
I laced up my boots, wrapped a scarf around my neck and went with the black leather jacket. I hopped into the Buick and drove over to my parents' house. Grandma Mazur was taking her coat off in the foyer when I arrived.
“Did you hear about the bodies?” she asked.
“Morelli and I made the discovery” I said.
Grandma's eyes opened wide. “No kidding! Were you there when they dug them up? Are you going to be on TV?”
I retrieved my pocketbook from the hall closet and did a fast check of the contents. “I don't think I'll be on TV.”
“Boy,” Grandma said, “I sure would have liked to have been there.”
“How was church?” I asked.
“Boring,” she said. “A big waste of time. We got a bunch of duds in that congregation. Nobody hot to trot. I'm gonna try the bingo hall tonight. I hear they got some live lookers coming to bingo.”
Ranger was already parked when I swung into the municipal lot on Woodley. He was dressed in army fatigues and a khaki flight jacket.
“What's up?” I said, by way of greeting.
“I got word on one of my FTAs. Earl Forster. Robbed a liquor store and shot the clerk in the foot. Jumped on a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bond. Just got a phone call saying Forster's stopped by to see his girlfriend in New Brunswick. I have a man in place, but I need to be there for the takedown. Can you handle the search for Harp by yourself?”
“No problem. Lula knows what he looks like. She knows his corners.”
“Don't get close to him,” Ranger said. “Only use him to get to Mo. If Mo and Harp go off together, let Mo put Harp away before you go in. We think Mo might be killing drug dealers. We know Harp will kill anybody . . . even female bounty hunters.”
Cheery thought for the day.
“If it looks like you can do a takedown, but you need extra help, get me on the cell phone or the pager,” Ranger said.
“Be careful,” I said to the back of his car as he drove away. No point saying it to his face.
Lula barreled into the lot ten minutes later. “Sorry I'm late,” she said. “I got this intestinal problem, you know.” She looked around. “Where's Ranger?”
“Had business elsewhere. We're on our own.”
If I was doing a serious stakeout with another person, I'd use two cars or have one person on foot with a second car in backup. I suspected this would be more of a ride around and look for a man who didn't show up. And since I had no idea what Harp looked like, I elected to ride with Lula.
It was another gray day with a light rain beginning to fall. Temperatures were in the forties, so nothing was freezing. Lula motored the Firebird out of the lot and headed for Stark Street. We kept our eyes open for the Batmobile, Elliot Harp and bad guys in general. We worked our way down Stark, hit the end of the business district, turned and retraced our route. Lula wove her way through the projects, cruised center city and crossed over to King. When she reached Ferris she drove by Mo's. The store was padlocked and sealed with crime scene tape. We did this circuit two more times. It was raining. Not many people out on the street.
“I'm starving to death,” Lula said. “I need a burger. I need fries.”
I could see the glow of a fast-food drive-through shining red and yellow through the misting rain. I could feel the force field sucking us forward to the speaker box.
“I want a triple-decker burger,” Lula yelled at the box. “I want bacon and cheese and special sauce. I want a large fries, and I want lots of them little ketchup packets. And I want a large chocolate milkshake.” She turned to me. “You want something?”
“I'll have the same.”
“Double that order,” Lula shouted. “And don't forget about the ketchup.”
We took the bags of food and parked on Stark Street where we could watch the action. Trouble was, there wasn't much action to watch.
“You ever wonder about him?” Lula asked.
“Who?”
“Ranger.”
“What's to wonder?”
“I bet you don't know anything about him,” Lula said. “Nobody knows anything about him. I bet you don't even know where he lives.”
“I know his address.”
“Hah! That vacant lot.”
I sipped at my milkshake, and Lula finished up her fries.
“I thi
nk we should do some detecting on Ranger,” Lula said. “I think someday we should follow his ass.”
“Hmm,” I said, not feeling especially qualified to follow Ranger's ass.
“In fact, I might follow it tomorrow morning. You run with him every day?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Well if you run with him tomorrow, you call me. I could use some exercise.”
After an hour of sitting, I was ready to move on. “This isn't working,” I said to Lula. “Just for fun, let's drive over to Montgomery.”
Lula drove the length of Stark, looped through the projects one last time and cut across town. We drove back and forth on Montgomery and parked two doors down from Sal's Cafe.
“Bet they've got doughnuts in there,” Lula said.
“What about your intestinal problem? Maybe you want to wait and see how it goes with the burger and fries.”
“I suppose you're right, but I sure would like to have some doughnuts.”
I had to admit, doughnuts seemed like a pretty good idea on a drizzly day.
“Course there's some advantage to having an intestinal disturbance,” Lula said. “Those doughnuts probably wouldn't stay with me long enough to find a home on my ass.”
“Better take advantage of the opportunity.”
Lula had her purse in her hand. “That's exactly what I'm thinking.”
I stayed in the car and watched through the window as Lula picked out a dozen doughnuts.
She handed the doughnuts and the coffees off to me and settled behind the wheel. I chose a Bavarian cream and took a chomp. Lula did the same. She took a second doughnut.
“Have you seen Jackie?” I asked Lula. “Is she still with the program?”
“She's going to the clinic. Problem is, you can make a person do the program, but you can't make them take it serious. Jackie don't believe in herself enough to take the program serious.”
“Maybe that will change.”
“I sure hope so. I'm lucky because I was born with a positive personality. Even when things aren't looking too good, I don't let myself get beaten down. I just start pushing and shoving. Pretty soon I'm so loud and full of bullshit I just forget about being scared. Jackie wasn't born with such a positive personality. Jackie's more a negative person. She pulls all inside herself.”
“Not always,” I said. “She was pretty extroverted when it came to drilling holes in Cameron Brown.”
Lula gazed into the doughnut box, thinking ahead to doughnut number three. "Yeah. She had a good time on that one. I know it wasn't right what she did to the dead, but I gotta admit, I sort of liked seeing her make old Cameron jump around. She's gotta learn to take charge more like that.
"See, Jackie and me, we've both been beat on a lot. That's the way it is when you haven't got a daddy, and your mama's a crackhead. There's always lots of uncles coming and going and getting high. And when they get high they beat on you.
“Trouble now is that Jackie's still letting people beat on her. She doesn't know she can make it stop. I try to tell her. I tell her to look at me. Nobody's gonna beat on me ever again. I've got self-respect. I'm gonna do something with my life. I might even go to college someday.”
“You could do it. Lots of people return to school.”
“Fuckin' A,” Lula said.
I drank my coffee and looked out the rain-streaked window. Cars drove by in abstract motion. Blurry images and smeary flashes of bright red taillights.
A car pulled out of the underground parking garage across the street. It was a tan sedan with something long and black strapped to the roof. I cracked my window for a better look. Rug, I thought. All rolled up and covered with a plastic tarp.
The driver reached a hand out, checking to see if his cargo was secure. The door opened, and the driver stepped out to make an adjustment.
Suddenly I was at the edge of my seat. “Look at that car with the rug on top!” I hollered, grabbing Lula by the jacket sleeve to get her attention.
“The car at the parking garage?” She put the wipers on and leaned forward to see better. “Holy cow! It's him! It's Old Penis Nose!”
Lula jumped out of the car and took off across the street after Mo. She had a half-eaten Boston creme in her hand, and she was getting pelted with rain and she was yelling, “Stop! Stop in the name of the law!”
Mo's mouth dropped open. A mixture of disbelief and horror registered on his face. He snapped his mouth shut, jumped into his car and took off, burning rubber.
“Get back here!” I hollered at Lula. “He's getting away!”
Lula pulled up and ran back to the Firebird. “Did you see that? He didn't pay no attention to me! I should of shot him. I should of dropped a cap in that old coot.”
Hard to do when you're packing a doughnut.
She threw the car into gear, put her foot to the floor and rocketed off after Mo . . . through the intersection, through a red light.
“I see him!” she shouted, giving the wheel a thump with the heel of her hand. “And that isn't no rug on the top of the car. That's something lumpy wrapped in garbage bags. I'm not even gonna tell you what I think is on top of that car.”
I'd had the same thought, and the possibility that Elliot Harp was going for his last ride evoked a desire to drive in the opposite direction. I didn't want to find any more dead people. My emotional stability was approaching meltdown. I was doing a pretty good job of denying the attack in the candy store. I was having less success with flashbacks of murdered men.
Mo turned at Slater, and Lula took the corner with two tires touching pavement.
I had my foot braced against the dash. “Slow down! You're going to kill us.”
“Don't worry,” Lula said. “I know what I'm doing. I've got perfect reflexes. I'm like a cat.”
Mo was coming up to Wells Avenue, and I knew where he was going. He was heading for Route 1. No problem, I thought. He can't outrun us with whatever he has on top of his car. Although probably he didn't care much about his cargo by now.
Lula followed Mo onto the ramp, momentarily fell behind when Mo merged into traffic. We caught him easily enough and stuck to his tail.
The dark green plastic was furiously flapping in the wind. Mo had bound the package to the roof of the car by lacing what looked like clothesline through the windows. He changed lanes and the long lumpy object swung side to side under the ropes.
“He don't watch out, he's gonna lose that sucker,” Lula said. She beeped her horn at him. “Pull over, Peckernose!” She gave the Firebird some gas and tapped Mo's rear bumper.
I was braced against the dash, and I'd begun chanting under my breath. Holy Mary, mother of God . . . please don't let me die on Route 1 with my hair looking like this.
Lula gave Mo's back bumper another whack. The impact snapped my head and caused Mo to fishtail out of control. He swerved in front of us, a cord snapped loose and a garbage bag whipped off and sailed over our car.
Lula moved in one more time, but before she could make contact the second cord broke, another garbage bag flew away and a body catapulted off Mo's roof and onto the hood of Lula's Firebird, landing with a loud WUMP!
“EEEEEeeeeeh!” Lula and I screamed in unison.
The body bounced once on the hood, and then smacked into the windshield and stuck like a squashed bug, staring in at us, mouth agape, eyes unseeing.
“I got a body stuck to my windshield!” Lula yelled. “I can't drive like this! I can't get my wipers to work. How am I supposed to drive with a dead guy on my wipers?”
The car rocked from lane to lane; the body vaulted off the hood, did a half flip and landed faceup at the side of the road. Lula stomped on the brake and skidded to a stop on the shoulder. We sat there for a moment, hands to our hearts, unable to talk. We turned and looked out the back window.
“Dang,” Lula said.
I thought that summed it up.
We looked at each other and did a double grimace. Lula put the Firebird in reverse and cautio
usly inched back, staying to the shoulder, out of the traffic lane. She stopped and parked a couple feet from the body. We got out of the car and crept closer.
“At least he's got clothes on,” Lula said.
“Is it Harp?”
“That would be my guess. Hard to tell with that big hole where his nose used to be.”