Finger Lickin' Fifteen

  I CAME AWAKE with a start, not knowing where I was for a moment, and then remembering. Ranger’s bed. I looked at the clock. 6:20 A.M. The light was on in the bathroom. Ranger emerged, still dressed in Rangeman tactical gear. He came to his side of the bed and kicked his shoes off.

  “Either get out of the bed or else take your clothes off,” he said. “I’m not in a mood to compromise.”

  “You’ve been working for eighteen hours. You’re supposed to be tired.”

  “I’m not that tired.” He removed his watch and set it on the bedside chest. “I saw Rex in the kitchen. Is this going to be an extended stay?”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “We’d have to negotiate terms.”

  “Rent?”

  ”Sex and closet space,” Ranger said.

  I heaved myself out of bed. “If you sleep on my side, it’s already warm.”

  I took a shower, dried my hair, and tiptoed past Ranger. He looked dangerous even in sleep, with a beard that was eight hours past five o’clock shadow and a shock of silky brown hair falling across his forehead. I dressed in Rangeman black, grabbed a sweatshirt, and went to the kitchen to say hello to Rex.

  “Remember what I said about Ranger,” I told Rex, but I’m not sure Rex cared. Rex was asleep in his soup can.

  I pocketed my Rangeman key fob, hung my bag on my shoulder, and took the stairs to the fifth floor. Hal and Ramon were sitting at a table in the kitchen. Ramon looked fresh as a daisy. Hal looked like he’d just come off a shift. I got coffee and a bagel and joined them.

  “What’s going on?” I asked them.

  “Same ol’, same ol’,” Ramon said.

  Hal didn’t say anything. Hal looked like he was asleep, with a spoon in his hand.

  “Earth to Hal,” I said.

  Ramon cut his eyes to Hal. “Hal’s working a double shift in the car.”

  “It’s killing me,” Hal said. “I don’t know if it’s morning or night anymore.”

  “Big guys like Hal need sleep,” Ramon said. “Wiry little guys like me can do with less. And people who aren’t exactly human, like Ranger, hardly need sleep at all.”

  “When we find out who’s doing these break-ins, I’m going to personally beat the crap out of him,” Hal said. “Then I’m going to sleep for a week.”

  I ate my bagel, and when Hal and Ramon left for parts unknown, I took a second cup of coffee to my desk. Aside from a couple men looking a little bedraggled from double shifts, everything was business as usual. I ran employee background checks for a start-up company in Whitehorse for almost three hours. My ass didn’t cramp in my new chair, but my mind went numb from the tedium of staring at the screen. At ten o’clock, I stopped working for Rangeman and pulled Vinnie’s remaining three current files from my bag.

  Ernie Dell was wanted for setting fire to several abandoned buildings at the bombed-out end of Stark Street. This strip of Stark was so bleak and devoid of anything resembling civilized society that only a whacked-out crazy person like Ernie Dell would set foot there. Ernie was my age, and for as long as I’ve known him, which is pretty much my whole life, Ernie has been handicapped with a shape like a butternut squash. Narrow, gourd-like head, narrow shoulders, huge butt.

  The second guy on my list was Myron Kaplan. Myron was seventy-eight years old, and for reasons not given in my file, Myron had robbed his dentist at gunpoint. At first glance, this would seem like an easy apprehension, but my experience with old people is that they don’t go gently into the night.

  That left Cameron Manfred. If I asked Ranger to help me with an apprehension, this is the one I’d choose. Manfred didn’t look like a nice guy. He was twenty-six years old, and this was his third arrest for armed robbery. He’d been charged with rape two years ago, but the charge didn’t stick. He’d also been accused of assault with a deadly weapon. The victim, who was a rival gang member, lost his hearing and right eye and had almost every bone in his body broken but refused to testify, and the charges were dropped for insufficient evidence. Manfred lived in the projects and worked for a trucking company. His booking photo showed two teardrops tattooed onto his face. Gang members were known to tattoo a teardrop below their eye when they killed someone.

  I left a text message for Ranger that I’d be away from Rangeman. I stuffed myself into my sweatshirt, swiped a couple granola bars from the kitchen, and took the elevator to the garage. Traffic was light at mid-morning. Gray sky. The temperature was in the fifties. It felt cold for September.

  I parked in front of the bonds office behind a truck that was repairing the front window. Connie was inside, and Lula was nowhere to be seen.

  “She called a couple minutes ago,” Connie said. “She said she was having a wardrobe issue, but she’d solved it, and she was coming in to work.”

  The door banged open, and Lula waddled in dressed in a flak vest and riot helmet. “Is it all safe in here?” she asked. “You checked the back room and all, right? I’m not taking no chances until those Chipotle killers are caught.”

  “Did you drive here dressed like that?” I asked her.

  “Yeah. And it wasn’t easy. I’m sweating like a pig in this. And this helmet is gonna ruin my hairdo, but it’s better than having my head ventilated with bullet holes.”

  “Did you talk to Morelli this morning?”

  “I did. Jeez Louise, he was in a mood. That man needs to get some. He was cranky.”

  I tried not to look too happy about that. “Have they made any progress finding the killers?”

  “He said they had an out-of-town lead.”

  “Are you going to take that helmet off, or are you wearing it all day?” Connie asked.

  “I guess I could take it off in here.”

  “I’m looking for Ernie Dell today,” I said to Lula. “Do you want to ride shotgun?”

  “Is he the firebug?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m in.”

  “I don’t mind if you wear the flak vest,” I told her, “but I’m not riding around with you in the helmet. You look like Darth Vader.”

  “Okay, but I’m gonna hold you responsible if I get killed.”

  Ernie lived alone in a large house on State Street. No one knew how he got the house, since no one could ever remember Ernie having a job. Ernie alternately claimed to be a movie producer, a stockbroker, a racecar driver, and an alien. I thought alien was a good possibility.

  I idled in front of his house, and Lula and I craned our necks and gaped up at it. It was on about a half acre, on a hill high above the street. Shingles had blown off the roof and lay sprinkled across the yard. Window frames were down to bare wood and were splintered and split. The clapboard siding was charcoal gray. I wasn’t sure if it was water stain, battleship paint, or mold.

  “Holy crap,” Lula said. “Are you shitting me? Someone lives in that? It’s falling apart. And there must be a hundred steps to get up the hill. I’ll get shin splints climbing those steps.”

  “There’s an alley behind the house. And there’s a back driveway and a two-car garage.”

  I drove around the block, took the alley, and parked in Ernie’s driveway.

  “What’s the deal with this guy?” Lula asked. “Has he always set fires?”

  I thought back to Ernie as a kid. “I can’t remember him setting fires, but he did a lot of weird things. One time, he entered a talent show and tried to burp “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but he was hauled off the stage halfway through. And then he went through a period where he was sure he could make it rain, and he’d start chanting strange things in the middle of arithmetic. Oowah doowah moo moo hooha.”

  “Did it rain?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What else did he do? I’m starting to like this guy.”

  “He took a goat to the prom. Dressed it up in a pink ballerina outfit. And he went through a fireworks stage. You’d wake up at two in the morning and fireworks would be going off in your front yard.”

  We got out of
the Escort, and I transferred cuffs from my purse to my back pocket for easier access.

  “We don’t want to spook him if he’s home,” I said to Lula. “We’re just going to walk to the back door and be calm and friendly. Let me do the talking.”

  “Why do you get to do the talking?”

  “I’m the apprehension agent.”

  “What am I then?”

  “You’re my assistant.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be the assistant. Maybe I want to be the apprehension agent.”

  “You have to talk to Vinnie about that. Your name has to be on the documentation.”

  “We could write me in. I got a pen.”

  “Good grief.”

  “How about if I just say hello.”

  “Fine. Terrific. Say hello.”

  I knocked on the back door, and Ernie answered in his underwear.

  “Hello,” Lula said.

  Ernie looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. His thinning sandy blond hair was every which way on his head. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “You missed your court date,” I said. “You need to go downtown with me and reschedule.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Wait in the front room while I get dressed.”

  We followed him through the kitchen that was circa 1942, down a hall with peeling, faded wallpaper, and into the living room. The living room floor was bare, scarred wood. The furniture was minimal. A lumpy secondhand couch. Two folding chairs with the funeral home’s name engraved on the back. A rickety end table had been placed between the two folding chairs. No lamps. No television.

  “I’ll be right back,” Ernie said, heading for the stairs. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Lula looked around. “How are we supposed to get comfortable?”

  “You could sit down,” I told her.

  Lula sat on one of the folding chairs, and it collapsed under her weight.

  “Fuck,” she said, spread-eagle on the floor with the chair smashed under her. “I bet I broke a bone.”

  “Which bone did you break?”

  “I don’t know. Pick one. They all feel broke.”

  Lula struggled to her feet and felt around, testing out her bones. Ernie was still upstairs, getting dressed, but I didn’t hear him walking overhead.

  I went to the bottom of the stairs and called. “Ernie?”

  Nothing. I climbed the stairs and called his name again. Silence. Four rooms, plus a bathroom, led off the center hall. One room was empty. One room was filled with bizarre junk. Store mannequins with broken arms, gallon cans of cooking oil, stacks of bundled newspapers, boxes of firecrackers and rockets, gallon cans of red paint, a wooden crate of rusted nails, a birdcage, a bike that looked like it had been run over by a truck, and God only knows what else. The third room housed a sixty-inch plasma television, an elaborate computer station, and a movie house popcorn machine. A new leather La-Z-Boy recliner sat in the middle of the room and faced the television. The fourth room was his bedroom. A sleeping bag and pillow had been thrown onto the floor of the fourth room. Clothes were scattered around in no special order. Some looked clean and some looked like they’d been worn a lot.

  The window was open in the bedroom, and two large hooks wrapped over the windowsill. I crossed the room to the window and looked down. Rope ladder. The sort you might stash in a room as a fire precaution.

  I ran downstairs and headed for the kitchen. “He’s gone.”

  Lula and I reached the back door just as an engine caught in the garage, and a baby diarrhea green VW bug chugged out to the alley. We ran for the Escort, jumped in, and took off. I could see the bug two blocks away. Ernie turned right and I floored it, bouncing along the pot-holed service road. I turned right and caught a flash of green a block away. I was gaining on him.

  “Do you smell something?” Lula asked.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not good.”

  I was concentrating on driving and not on smelling. Ernie was going in circles. He was driving a four-block grid.

  “It’s like a cat was burning,” Lula said. “I never actually smelled a cat burning, but if I did, it would smell like this. And do you think it’s getting smokey in here?”

  “Smokey?”

  “Yow!” Lula said. “Your backseat is on fire. I mean, it’s a inferno. Let me out of this car. Pull over. I wasn’t meant to be extra crispy.”

  I screeched to a stop, and Lula and I scrambled out of the car. The fire raced along the upholstery and shot out the windows. Flames licked from the undercarriage and Vrooosh! The car was a fireball. I looked up the street and saw the pea green VW lurking at the corner. The car idled for a few moments and sedately drove away.

  “How long do you think it’s gonna take the fire trucks to get here?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Not long. I hear sirens.”

  “This is gonna be embarrassing. This is the second thing we burned up this week.”

  I dialed Ranger. “Did I wake you?” I asked.

  “No. I’m up and functioning. I just got a report that the GPS unit we attached to your car stopped working.”

  “You know how when you toast a marshmallow it catches fire and gets all black and melted?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That would be my car.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, but I’m stranded,” I told him.

  “I’ll send Tank.”

  _______

  I WATCHED THE fire truck disappear down the street, followed by the last remaining cop car. What was left of my Escort was on a flatbed.

  “Where do you want me to take this?” the flatbed guy asked me.

  “Dump it in the river.”

  “You got it,” he said. And he climbed into the cab and rumbled away.

  “Guess you gotta be careful when you’re going after someone who likes fire,” Lula said.

  I had a shiny new black Porsche Cayenne waiting for me. Tank had dropped it off, made sure I didn’t need help, and returned to Rangeman. The car was one of several in Ranger’s personal fleet. It was immaculate inside, with no trace of Ranger other than a secret drawer under the driver’s seat. The drawer held a loaded gun. All cars in Ranger’s personal fleet had guns hidden under the seat.

  I remoted the car open, and Lula and I got in.

  “Now what?” Lula said.

  “Lunch.”

  “I like that idea. And I think we should take something to Larry on account of he’s still working on your kitchen.”

  “It sounds like things went okay last night.”

  “One thing you learn when you’re a ’ho is there’s all kinds in this world. Bein’ a ’ho is a broadening experience. It’s not just all hand jobs, you know. It’s listenin’ to people sometimes and tryin’ to figure out how to make them happy. That’s why I was a good ’ho. I didn’t charge by the hour.”

  “And Larry fits in there somewhere.”

  “Yeah. He’s a real interesting person. He was a professional wrestler. His professional name was Lady Death, but he was one of them niche market wrestlers, and his feelings got hurt when the fans didn’t like him in his pink outfits. So he quit, and he got a job as a fireman. Turns out he’s a hottie, too. He likes wearing ladies’ clothes, but he isn’t gay.”

  We decided Larry was probably tired of chicken, so we got ham and cheese and hot pepper subs and brought them back to my apartment.

  “Boy, that’s great of you to bring me lunch,” Larry said. “I’m starving.”

  He was still wearing the Dolly Parton number. It had a fitted bodice with spaghetti straps and a swirly chiffon skirt, and there was a lot of chest hair and back hair sticking out of the top of the dress. There was also a lot of armpit hair, leg hair, and knuckle hair. He’d accessorized the dress with heels and rubber gloves.

  “I know this looks funny,” he said, “but I like to feel pretty when I clean.”

  “Go for it,” I told him. And I meant it. I didn’t care
what he was wearing as long as I was getting barbecue sauce removed from my walls.

  My cell phone buzzed, and I recognized Morelli’s number.

  “I’m trying to find Lula,” he said. “I called the office, and they said she was with you.”

  “Why didn’t you just call her cell?”

  “She’s not answering her cell.”