Lean Mean Thirteen

  “You don't want me to freak over this.”

  “I don't want you to get bogged down in negative emotion. And the truth is, we aren't sure what these toys do. I'm going to take them downstairs and give them to one of my tech guys.”

  “Omigod, I just had a thought. I killed Rufus Caine! If the cough drop is a transmitter, the owner would have known we visited Rufus. He would have known we were at the club. And he would have known we followed Rufus to the apartment.”

  “You didn't kill Rufus. And even if you did, it wouldn't be much of a loss.”

  “Death by flamethrower is gruesome.”

  “That's the appeal. The threat is demoralizing. It instills fear. And fear can be a controlling, paralyzing emotion. There are paramilitary groups that make good use of flamethrowers. It's not an especially effective way to kill a man, but it sends a message.”

  “You think someone is sending a message here?”

  “No. I think this killer is a freak. He has a reason for killing these people, but he's also getting off on the experience. He torches them, and then he sets a fire to hide his thrill kill. Problem is, both times you screwed things up. You saw the torched bodies before the fire. His secret is out.”

  “He might not know that.”

  “If he's the owner of the cough drop, he knows.”

  “What about not wanting to scare me?”

  “You asked,” Ranger said. “Are you scared?”

  “Big time.”

  “You're safe here.”

  “Yes, but I can't stay here forever. In fact, I can't stay here tonight. I think my free pass has expired.”

  “I don't want to force you to leave and put you in harm's way,” Ranger said, “but I have limits.”

  “You need a larger apartment,” I told him. “You need a guest room.”

  “I don't know why I put up with you,” Ranger said. “You're a real pain in the ass.”

  “You put up with me because I'm amusing, and you love me, and I pose no threat to your lifestyle because I'm involved with Morelli.”

  “That's all true,” Ranger said. “But it doesn't make you any less of a pain in the ass.”

  I shoved my stuff back into my bag. “I'm heading out. I need to check on Rex, and then I'm going to the office.”

  “I need to stay here, but I can give you one of my men.”

  “Not necessary. I'm okay.”

  “I thought you were scared.”

  “It's a way of life.”

  “What the heck is this?” Lula asked when I walked into the office. “You're all in RangeMan black. Are you working for RangeMan again?”

  “I ran out of clean clothes, and this was available. I'm going to try to talk to Coglin. Want to ride along?”

  “Sure. Maybe we could stop at the video store. Tanks coming over tonight, and I'm gonna rent a movie. I need something to put him in the mood. I was thinking one of them Lethal Weapon movies. Or maybe Transporter.”

  'What kind of mood were you aiming for?"

  “Man mood. In all my years of being a 'ho, I learned blood is better than sex if you want to get a man stirred up for action. You let a man watch someone getting his face mashed in, and you got a horny guy. Its the beast thing.”

  Something to keep in mind if I ever want to do it with a beast.

  “We have all the Lethal Weapon movies at Morelli's house. You can borrow them if you want.”

  “You sure he won't mind?”

  “He isn't home. He's locked down with a witness. And even if he was home, he wouldn't mind.”

  “That'd be great since I was going to have to kite a check to get movie money.”

  THIRTEEN

  Morelli's HOUSE is officially outside the Burg, but not by much. It was a five-minute drive from the bonds office. I parked the Cayenne and fished Morelli's house key out of my bag.

  “Ill be right out,” I said to Lula. “Stay here.” Morelli lives in a narrow two-story house configured a lot like my parents'. Rooms are shotgunned with living room going to dining room going to kitchen. Front door. Back door. Downstairs powder room. Small, barren backyard leading to an alley. Three small bedrooms and old-fashioned bath upstairs. Morelli inherited the house from his Aunt Rose and little by little has been making it his own. I unlocked the front door and stepped into the short hallway that serves as foyer and also leads to the stairs. I'd expected the house would be silent and empty, but the television was on in the living room. My first reaction was confusion, fast followed by a rush of embarrassment. Someone was living here in Morelli's absence. Maybe an out-of-town relative or a down-onhis-luck cop. And I'd barged in unannounced.

  I was about to quietly sneak out when Dickie Orr walked in from the kitchen. He was eating ice cream out of the tub, his hair was a mess, as if he'd just rolled out of bed, and he was in his underwear-a white undershirt with a chocolate ice cream stain dribbling down the front and baggy striped boxers.

  Time stood still. The earth stopped rotating. My heart stuttered in my chest. “Wha…” I said. “Wha…”

  Dickie rolled his eyes and shoved his spoon into the ice cream. “Joe'” he yelled. "You've got

  company."

  I could hear Morellis sneakered feet on the stairs and then he was in the room. “Oh, shit,” Morelli said when he saw me.

  I gave him a little finger wave. “Hi.”

  I was feeling awkward. Embarrassed that I had stumbled into this, and angry that it had

  been kept from me.

  “I can explain,” Morelli said.

  “Uh-hunh.”

  “Good luck on that one,” Dickie said. "There's no explaining to her. You make one slipup

  and that's it. Sayonara."

  “Shut up, Dick breath,” I said. "And anyway, it wasn't one slipup. In the fifteen minutes we

  were married, you screwed half the women in Trenton."

  “I have a high libido,” Dickie said to Morelli.

  "It had nothing to do with your libido. It had to do with the fact that you're a pathological

  liar and a worm.“ ”You have control issues,“ Dickie said. ”Men aren't designed for

  monogamy, and you can't handle that."

  I narrowed my eyes at Morelli. “Hit him.”

  “I can't hit him,” Morelli said. “He's in my protective custody.”

  “And you!” I said to Morelli.

  “I had no choice,” Morelli said. "He had to get squirreled away somewhere, and I had the

  house, so he got dropped in my lap."

  “You could have told me!”

  “I couldn't tell you. You would have acted differently.”

  “I thought I was going to jail for murder!”

  “I told you not to worry,” Morelli said.

  “How was I supposed to know that actually meant something? People say that all the time.” “What about me?” Morelli said. 'Where's the sympathy for me? I've been trapped in my

  house with this idiot."

  “Boy, that hurts,” Dickie said. “I thought we were bonding.”

  “What about the shooting at your house the night you disappeared?” I asked Dickie. "And

  what about the blood on your floor?"

  Morelli was hands in pockets, rocked back on his heels. "Dickie shot one of the hired help

  in the knee. And then he ran like hell out his back door, right Dickie?"

  “I ran like the wind.”

  “And why is Dickie here in protective custody?”

  "They wanted him on ice while they investigated the law firm's client list. The original

  thought was we needed him to testify against his partners, but his partners have disappeared in

  one way or another. One is confirmed dead and another presumed dead. And the third

  dropped off the face of the earth when Dickie went missing."

  “You can't find Petiak?”

  "Vanished. We know he's still around because from time to time one of his goon squad

  surfaces
."

  “So I'm off the hook.”

  “Yep,” Morelli said.

  “What about Gorvich? I thought I was a suspect there.”

  “I wanted you to dredge up an alibi in case the press came to you.” His attention fixed on

  my RangeMan jacket. "What are you doing in RangeMan clothes? You were head-to-toe

  RangeMan this morning."

  “I ran out of clean clothes and these were available.”

  “Available? Where were they available?”

  “In Ranger's closet.”

  "Are you fucking kidding me? I'm holed up here with the witness from hell and you've

  moved in with Ranger?"

  “You told him to take care of me.”

  “Not that way!”

  "There's no that way going on. It's no different from what you've got here. You've got

  Dick-head in protective custody. Does that mean you're sleeping with him?“ The color was rising in Morelli s face. ”I'll kill him."

  “You will not kill him. Read my lips… nothing has happened between us.” At least, not the

  main event. I chose to believe the prelims didn't count in this case. "And I'm not moved in

  with him. I'm going home and I'm going to get on with my life now that I know I'm not a

  murder suspect."

  “Maybe you should move in here,” Morelli said. "There's a lunatic out there with a

  flamethrower, and you're mixed up in it somehow."

  “No thanks. I already did time with Dickie. I'll take my chances with the flamethrower.” I

  went to the television and looked through the DVDs stacked alongside. "I just stopped around

  to borrow the Lethal Weapon collection." I found the boxed set and looked over at Morelli.

  “You don't mind?”

  “What's mine is yours,” Morelli said.

  I let myself out and jogged to the Porsche.

  “I thought you decided to take a nap in there,” Lula said.

  I handed the DVDs over to her and pulled the car out of Morelli s driveway. "It took a

  while to find them."

  In a half hour, we were in front of Coglin's house. I paged through his file, found his phone

  number, and called him.

  “I'm in front of your house,” I said. "I want to talk to you, and I don't want to end up with

  squirrel guts in my hair. Can we call a truce for ten minutes?"

  “Yeah, I guess that would be okay,” Coglin said. "If you promise you won't try to take me

  in now."

  “Promise.”

  Lula followed me to the door. "He better not go back on his word. I don't want to smell like

  rodent when Tank comes over tonight."

  I opened the door and took a step back. “Is it okay to come in?” I yelled into the house. Coglin appeared in the hall. “I disconnected the booby trap. Its safe to come in.” “Someday you're gonna hurt someone with those beaver bombs,” Lula said. “I only use stuffing that's soft,” Coglin said.

  "Yeah, but what about them button eyes? Suppose you got hit with one of them eyes? That

  would leave a bruise."

  Coglin had an apron on. “I'm kind of busy,” he said. “What did you want?” “Are you stuffing up some roadkill?” Lula asked.

  “No. I'm making a meatloaf for supper.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about your court appearance,” I said to Coglin. "When you didn't

  show up, you became a felon. And the original charge didn't look that bad. Destruction of

  property. The details aren't on the bond application. What sort of property did you destroy?“ ”I went nuts and exploded an opossum in a cable company truck."

  “Uh oh,” Lula said. “The cable police will get you for that one.”

  Coglin turned white. “Omigod, there are cable police?”

  “She's kidding,” I told him. “You're kidding, right?” I said to Lula.

  “Probably,” Lula said.

  “It all started when the city put in new water pipes,” Coglin said. "They cut through my

  cable line when they dug a trench through my front yard to lay the new pipe. So I called the cable company and left my name, but they never called me back.“ ”Those fuckers,“ Lula said. ”They never call anyone back."

  "I called them and left my name every day for three weeks, and no one ever called me back.

  Then after three weeks someone actually answered a phone at the cable company. A real

  person."

  “Get out,” Lula said. “They don't have real people working there. Everyone knows that.” "No. I swear, its true. Someone answered the phone. So after they had me on hold for an

  hour, I explained the problem and they said they would send someone out in two weeks, and

  they gave me the day. So I stayed home all that day, and the next day, and the next day. And

  on the third day, someone came to fix my cable problem. Except they were told the problem

  was inside my house, and it was really outside, so they couldn't fix it.

  "It's not like I just have television, you know. I sell my animals on the Internet, and I didn't

  have any Internet connection all this time. So I gave the guy twenty dollars, and he ran a line

  from the junction box across the street to my house. Only it's like a plastic cable kind of thing,

  so right away, with all the cars rolling over it, the cable started breaking. So I wrapped it in

  electricians tape. And I do that twice a day to hold the cable together."

  “How long you been doing this?” Lula asked.

  "Three months. I keep calling them back and telling them, and they keep saying they're

  going to send the first available crew out to me, but I have to be home or I'll get put at the end

  of the line. So that's why I can't go downtown with you. I never leave for more than five

  minutes unless it's real late at night. Even when it looks like my car is gone and I'm not in the

  house, I'm watching from somewhere. I can't take a chance on missing the cable repairman.“ ”And the opossum in the truck?"

  "The cable repairman stopped at my neighbor's house three weeks ago and swapped out his

  broken box, and I went postal and threw a performance piece through the driver's side

  window."

  “And you think they're still gonna give you cable service after you bombed their truck?” "They send me a bill every month, and I always pay on time. I figure that means something.

  And twice I got an automated message that said a crew was scheduled, but they never showed

  up."

  'Well, I can understand why you can't go to the police station and get rebonded," Lula said.

  “There's extenuating circumstances.”

  “They might never show up,” I told Coglin.

  "My friend Marty lives on the next block, and he had the exact same thing happen, and they

  showed up one day and fixed his cable."

  “How long did he wait?”

  “It was almost five months.”

  “And he stayed home for five months?” I asked Coglin.

  “Yes, you have to. It's the rule. He lost his job, but he got his cable fixed.” “I hate those fuckers,” Lula said.

  “So as soon as the cable guy shows up and fixes your cable, you'll call me?” “Yes.”

  Lula and I walked back to the Cayenne and stopped to look at the cable running across the

  road. It was thick with electrician's tape, and in places had been wrapped in foam and then

  over wrapped with the tape."

  “So what's going on with you and Tank?” I asked Lula. “Is it serious?”