Ranger called on my cellphone.
“You’ve been sitting in front of the building for twenty minutes. Is there a problem?”
“Yes. It’s my future. It’s murky.”
“Solving murky futures isn’t my strong suit,” Ranger said.
“It has to do with this physical attraction I feel for you. I was thinking you might want to come over tonight, and you could help me figure some things out.”
“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.
I assumed that was a yes, but it was hard to tell with Ranger.
I pulled the new file out of my bag and paged through it. Antwan Brown. AKA “Ants.” Nineteen. Wanted for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Listed his mother as Shoshanna Brown with a New Orleans address. No father. No place of employment. No phone number. Secured his bail bond with a Rolex and a diamond ring. Stolen, no doubt. I studied his photo. The booking mugshot showed two teardrop tattoos on his cheek. That meant he’d killed two people. The full-length candid Vinnie’d taken when he wrote the bond showed a lean guy with some muscle: 5’ 7” and 180 pounds.
I checked my bag for goodies. Self-defense spray. Illegal stun gun. Cuffs. Maglite in case I had to break his knees. I was good to go.
I drove to Stark Street and counted off blocks. The address Ants had given was in the dead zone: a block of burned-out buildings inhabited by crazies and crackheads. It was unlikely he was living in anything on this block. And if he was living here he would go undisturbed because I had no intention of stopping here, much less going in.
I made a U-turn and drove back to the first block of Stark where I felt it was safe to park. I read through the entire file one more time, but I couldn’t find anything helpful. I had no starting point. No relatives. No friends. No work address. I called Morelli and could barely hear him answer over the background noise.
“Hold on,” he shouted into the phone. “I’m going outside.”
A couple beats later the noise went away. “What’s up?” Morelli asked. “Do you want to come back? You didn’t get any wings.”
“I’m working, and I need some help.”
“Anything.”
“Really? Anything?”
“Almost anything,” Morelli said.
“I’m looking for Antwan Brown, and I have nothing on him. No relatives. No friends. No address.”
“Good. Walk away from it. He’s a really bad guy. If you let him hang out long enough one of his friends will kill him, and you can collect the body.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
“The thought of you going after Ants Brown gives me a cramp in my ass.”
“I’ll be careful. I just want to find him, and then I’ll get help with the apprehension.”
“He’s a Stone Dead gang member. He’ll be hanging with other Deads, and the Deads own the fifth block of Stark. Their color is purple. Their name is significant. These losers are dead inside. They’ve grown up with so much violence it’s normal to them. They’re like zombies. They feel no remorse. You do not want to go up against one of them. If you find this guy I want you to call me, and I’ll send out the SWAT team.”
NINETEEN
THE BUILDINGS ON the fifth block of Stark were covered with gang graffiti. It was Sunday, and most of the street-level businesses were closed and shuttered. A convenience store was open and a bar was open. It was a beautiful warm day, but no one was out. No stoop sitters. No strollers. A couple sullen teenagers stood smoking outside the convenience store. Neither of them looked like Ants. Maybe all the gangsta gangbangers were watching the Mets. Maybe they were all inside sharpening their knives and cleaning their guns for a fun night on the town.
I cruised up and down a few side streets in the area, but I didn’t see anyone wearing purple, and I didn’t see Ants Brown. I returned to my parking place on the first block of Stark, and I called Lula.
“I’m on Stark Street, looking for Antwan Brown,” I told her. “I know he’s a Stone Deader, and I know they own the fifth block of Stark, but it’s like a ghost town here. No one’s out on the street. Do you have any idea where these Dead idiots live? They can’t all live on the fifth block.”
“They’re all over the place. Most of them live with their mamas. My friend Shirlene would know. She works a corner on the fourth block, and her little brother is one of those Deaders. At least he used to be. He got shot in the back and got paralyzed. The only thing he can move without help is his tongue. He’s in a county hospital somewhere.”
“How awful.”
“Yeah, it’s been hard on Shirlene. She’s a real nice person too.”
“Is she out working now?”
“We can go see. I’m bored anyways. I was supposed to have a date, but he got arrested. Where are you?”
“I’m parked on the first block of Stark. I’m in front of the used-appliance store.”
“I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”
I checked my phone for email messages. I called my sister to say hello. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Lula parking behind me.
“Why did he get arrested?” I asked Lula as she settled herself into my passenger seat.
“Who?”
“Your date.”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. All I know is I got stood up. And then he had the nerve to ask me to bail him out.”
“Did you?”
“Hell no. I’m not throwing my money away on some loser who gets himself arrested. Been there, done that.”
I drove to Shirlene’s corner, but there was no Shirlene.
“She’s usually out here,” Lula said. “She might be doing business somewhere. We could ride around and come back in a couple minutes. It don’t usually take Shirlene long to do business. She gives people their money’s worth, but she don’t waste time.”
I motored up and down Stark, and on the third pass we saw Shirlene get out of a car. She tugged at a hot-pink spandex skirt that barely covered her ass, adjusted her boobs, and sashayed over to her corner. I pulled up to the curb, and Lula stuck her head out the window.
“Hey, girl,” Lula said. “How’s business?”
“Business sucks,” Shirlene said. “What’s going on?”
“We want to talk to you.”
“It’ll cost you if you want to talk now. This is premium time. Women go to Bible study on Sunday afternoon, and men find Jesus with Shirlene.”
“We don’t want to find Jesus,” Lula said, “but we’ll spot you a pizza.”
“Done deal,” Shirlene said. “What are we talking about?”
“Antwan Brown,” Lula said.
“That’s unhealthy talking,” Shirlene said. “That talking could get you set on fire.”
“Let’s talk in general then,” Lula said. “Do you happen to know where any nineteen-year-old baggy-pants homeless killers live?”
“That covers a lot of ground,” Shirlene said. “And if they’re homeless then they don’t got a home where you could find them.”
“What do these kids do all day?” I asked Shirlene.
“The usual kid stuff. Smoke dope, play videogames, watch SpongeBob and cage fighting on television. The ones who want to get somewhere push drugs. Or if they can read they make drugs. Making drugs is better ’cause you eliminate the middleman. Otherwise they sit around working themselves up over who’s dissin’ them. And they tweet. They do a lot of tweeting.”
“How would I hook up with them?”
“Same way you hook up with anyone,” Shirlene said. “Twitter. Or you could walk down the fifth block wearing red, and then they’d show up and shoot you.”
“Anything else?” Lula asked.
“I hear some of them play basketball on the city courts across from the projects.”
“Do you know when they play?” I asked.
“They don’t play in the morning.”
I gave Shirlene twenty dollars, and Lula and I drove to the basketball courts by the projects. There were kids playing ba
sketball, and some of them looked like killers, but none of them looked like Antwan.
“I don’t know why Vinnie wrote a bond on this loser,” Lula said. “It’s no wonder we can’t find him. We don’t have any information. Who writes a bond on someone without an address or a single relative?”
“The bond was completely secured. Vinnie doesn’t care if we find him.”
“Then why are we looking?”
“I need to find him. I need the recovery money for a new car. Or at least a new muffler.”
“I don’t know why you’re going there. You’ll be rolling in dough when you capture Uncle Sunny.”
“I’m making zero progress with the Sunny capture. I broke my finger, I’ve been condemned to hell, dropped off a bridge, and shot at.”
“Yeah, but you can’t expect everything to go perfect all the time. You just had a few bumps in the road.”
“I need a new job.”
“I don’t think so. What about me if you get a new job? What am I going to do?”
“You’d be the office bounty hunter.”
“That sounds pretty good. That’s an important promotion. I like the way that sounds. Only wait a minute, then I’m gonna be the one getting dropped off the bridge. I’d hate that. It’d ruin my hair. And what happens to my Via Spigas when I go off the bridge?”
I drove through the projects, and then because we were close to Fifteenth I drove through Sunny’s neighborhood. We didn’t see Sunny. We didn’t see Kevin. We didn’t see Antwan. I drove back to the basketball court and the court was empty. I made one last pass down Stark Street and dropped Lula off at her car.
“This was a pretty good day,” Lula said. “We didn’t get shot at even once.”
I let myself into my apartment, slumped into my bedroom, flopped onto the bed, and pulled the pillow over my face. I wallowed in self-pity for a couple minutes, did a couple minutes of berating myself, but ultimately it wasn’t working for me. I got up, had a beer and a peanut butter sandwich, and felt pretty good. It’s hard to feel bad after drinking some beer and eating some worthless white bread and peanut butter.
I went to the computer and logged on to Antwan’s Twitter page. There was a lot of tweeting about music. Some chest beating about how tough he was. He had ham and cheese for lunch. Blah, blah, blah. He trash-talked about a girl he’d messed up. His brain-dead friends tweeted back supportive messages. More blah, blah, blah. He hung out with Big Al after basketball.
Eureka. This was exactly what I was looking for. He played basketball. He wasn’t there yesterday, but he was there sometimes. I kept reading, and there was another mention of his usual noontime basketball game. So maybe I knew where to find Antwan. Now I just had to figure out how to capture him. I wondered if Morelli was serious about the SWAT team.
At nine o’clock I followed Grandma’s instructions and signed on to play Bingo. I read the rules and used my credit card to deposit fifty dollars in my Bingo account. I was able to buy cards with this account, and winnings would be deposited in it. I could withdraw my money at any time so it seemed okay. I gave “Luvbaby” as my screen name, and I bought three Bingo cards. It took three minutes for me to lose. I bought three more cards. Lost. Bought more cards. Won a small jackpot.
Morelli called a little before ten o’clock, and I told him I couldn’t talk. I got back to the game and played until midnight, when I had to quit because I’d maxed out my credit card.
I crashed into bed, chanting Stupid, stupid, stupid to myself. The phone rang after I’d thrashed around for fifteen minutes.
“Babe,” Ranger said, “I’m not going to get to you tonight. I have a client with a major security breach and a missing fifteen-hundred-pound safe.”
“No problem,” I said. “I have my own issues.”
TWENTY
I LOOKED AT my reflection in the bathroom mirror at eight A.M. and couldn’t believe what I saw. A Bingo addict was holding my toothbrush. I’d maxed out my credit card playing a game I didn’t even like. What the heck was I thinking?
I rolled into the office a little before nine. Vinnie’s car wasn’t parked behind the office, and his door was closed. Connie was busy on her computer. Lula’s car was parked outside, but she wasn’t in the office.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“First thing this morning Vinnie got a threatening message from Harry about Sunucchi,” Connie told me. “Harry’s accountant was going over the books, and he wasn’t happy. So Vinnie took a mental health day and went underground.”
“Where’s Lula?”
“She’s taking inventory in the storeroom.”
“Have you ever played Bingo online?”
“No, but I know lots of people who do. I’m more into poker.”
“What happens if you gamble more money than you have?” I asked Connie. “Would the site put you into collection?”
“I guess they could, but I don’t think that happens. Your credit card would just get declined.”
I called Morelli at work.
“The women who were murdered and tossed into the Dumpsters,” I said to Morelli. “Their bank accounts were cleaned out, right?”
“Right.”
“Are we talking about a lot of money?”
“It ranged from fifteen hundred dollars to just under thirty thousand.”
“Do you suppose they could have been paying off gambling debts?”
“Why were they killed if they were paying off debts? Usually you get killed if you don’t pay off.”
“I haven’t got that part figured out.”
“Do you want to do something tonight?” Morelli asked.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Depends. Do we need to have the aborted relationship discussion?”
“No. I had the discussion all by myself and got it all straight.”
“Did you reach any conclusions I should know about?”
“Nope. It’s all good.”
“So I should stop at the drugstore on the way over?”
“Sure, and pick up some ice cream.”
“Should I also pick up dinner?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
I hung up, took a deep breath, and told myself it would all work out. Somewhere, out there in the cosmos, there was a plan for me. Someday I’d get my life under control. My fear was that it might not be someday soon.
Lula came out of the storeroom. “Did I hear you talking to Morelli? Are you seeing him tonight? Because I was hoping we could go out under cover of darkness tonight and look for Kevin.”
“Maybe Connie will go out with you.”
“Pass,” Connie said. “I’m taking my mother to a baby shower for Ann Marie Scarelli.”
Connie comes from a big Italian family that has a baby shower or wedding shower every week. And on the odd occasion that there’s not a wedding shower or baby shower, there’s a jewelry party, makeup party, Botox party, or potluck dinner.
“I’m worried about Kevin,” Lula said. “What if he’s laying in the middle of the road starving? I haven’t been leaving him lettuce.”
“I think someone would notice a giraffe in the middle of the road,” I said.
“Yeah, but what if he’s a magic giraffe, and we’re the only ones can see him?”
I didn’t want to consider that possibility. That might indicate insanity. Fortunately Ranger had also seen Kevin, so I would at least have a boyfriend in the loony bin with me.
“We can look for Kevin this morning,” I said to Lula. “I should do a drive-by on Sunny’s properties anyway.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be seen someplace where people wanted to shoot you?”
“That was yesterday.”
“Maybe we should go in disguise,” Lula said. “I was just taking inventory, and we got some wigs back there from when Vinnie bonded out that drag queen what was robbing banks. He’s doing ten to twenty and he never came back for his wigs. The wigs are pretty good, and we sprayed them for cooties whe
n they came in, so they’re even sanitary.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Connie said. “It wouldn’t hurt to look at them.”
Lula went to the storeroom and came back with a box filled with wigs. Blond wigs, red wigs, pink wigs, black wigs, brown wigs. Some were curly, and some were straight, in a variety of lengths.
“I even know which one I want already,” Lula said. “I’m taking the Marilyn wig. It’s just like her hair in The Seven Year Itch. Remember when the air from the subway grate blew her skirt up? It’s what you call a iconic wig.”
I went with a short red wig that had spiky curls and bangs. I tucked my ponytail under the wig and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I was kind of cute.
“You don’t look like yourself at all,” Lula said to me. “You look like you’d be a lot of fun.”
I cut across town, and stopped at a light on Fifteenth.
“Have you noticed people are looking at us?” Lula said. “I wouldn’t think we be attracting this much attention in this little SUV. It’s a normal car compared to my red Firebird or your big blue Buick.”
“I’m going out on a limb here and suggesting they’re looking at the black woman in the platinum Marilyn wig.”
“Do you think?” Lula flipped the visor down and looked at herself in the mirror. “I am spectacular. I guess I’d have to take a second look at me too. Probably people are wondering if I’m a supermodel or movie star.”
I drove two more blocks and parked at the corner of Fifteenth and Freeman.
“I thought we were riding around,” Lula said. “How come we’re parked?”
“We can see more on foot. And I maxed out my credit card, so I’m watching my gas consumption.”
“How about your life-or-death consumption? I bet you don’t even have a gun.”
“Wrong. I have my gun with me.”
“Do you have bullets in it?”
“No. I haven’t gotten around to buying bullets. It would be a lot easier if more places sold bullets.”
“You mean like 7-Eleven and Cluck-in-a-Bucket? And why do you have your gun if you don’t have bullets in it?”