Janet Evanovich - Twelve Sharp

'I don't need programs. Silvio is sending me information from Miami.'

'How long have you been here?'

'About an hour.' He stood and stretched and headed for the kitchen. He got two mugs out of the cabinet, filled them with coffee, added milk, and gave one to me.

I was wearing short cotton pajama bottoms and a knit tank top, and I could see Ranger was enjoying the tank top.

'I'm feeling self-conscious,' I said to him.

'That's not what I'm feeling.'

No kidding! 'Go back to work,' I told him. 'I'm going to take my coffee into the shower. I'll be ready to go in a half hour.'

Ranger had parked on a side street a block away from my building. He left through the front door and walked to his car. I left through the back door, got into the Mini, and drove around three blocks until I was sure I wasn't being followed. I parked behind Ranger, beeped the Mini locked, and slipped into the green Explorer.

'Now what?' I asked.

Ranger pulled into traffic and went north on Hamilton. 'I want you to canvas a neighborhood for me.'

Ranger isn't an especially talkative guy. He doesn't do small talk, and he doesn't usually initiate conversation, but he'll talk about the job if he feels there's a genuine interest. In this case, I definitely had interest.

'I'd really like to know the history on this,' I said to him. 'I've only got bits and pieces.'

'Two weeks ago someone started using a credit card issued to Rangemanoso Enterprises with my name on it. Silvio found it during a routine scan. Silvio traced down Rangemanoso and to the best of our knowledge this guy appeared in Arlington six months ago and set up shop. I was about to go to Arlington and shut him down when we discovered he'd moved on. And then all of a sudden he started using the card in Miami. We assumed he was there reestablishing himself, but in retrospect, I think he was there to get Julie.'

'So you went to Miami to find this guy and before you got to him he took Julie.'

'Yes. And until you called Tank and told him someone smoked Carmen we had no reason to think he was in Jersey. We thought either he hunkered down somewhere in Florida or else he was in a car moving around. We didn't think he'd be able to get Julie through security and onto a plane. And the FBI was combing passenger lists for Julie Martine and Carlos Manoso and not finding anything.'

'If he stole your identity I guess he could steal others.'

'Two others turned up when Silvio ran through the Rangemanoso credit history. He paid some early bills with cards issued to Steve Scullen and Dale Small. Silvio had been watching passenger lists for both those identities, but nothing there either.'

'No leads in Miami from the crime scene?'

'Miami went cold. Julie got picked up in a stolen car. It was found abandoned two blocks from the pickup point. The police issued a bulletin, and they're doing the follow-up on calls coming in.'

'It was my impression that not many people knew you had a daughter.'

'You and Tank and relatives.'

'And Julie's mother and stepfather.'

'Rachel and Ron are working with the people in Miami, trying to trace down anyone who might have known about me. They didn't hide the fact that Ron was Julie's stepfather, but they didn't tell a lot of people the details. Julie knew. My name is on her birth certificate, but Ron adopted her, and she's always thought of herself as Julie Martine.'

'Is that painful?'

'It might be painful if she wasn't happy, but Rachel and Ron are good parents. Rachel is a nice Catholic girl I took advantage of one night on leave when I was in the military. She got pregnant, and I married her and gave the baby my name and financial support. We divorced after the baby was born. I'm involved only as much as Rachel wants me to be.'

'She didn't want you to stick around and be a permanent husband?'

'That was never an option either of us would have considered.'

We were on Route I, driving north. It was early Sunday morning and traffic was light. I was in my usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt. Ranger was in homeboy clothes.

'From the way you're dressed, I'd guess we were canvassing the ghetto today,' I said to Ranger.

'You'd guess right.'

His jeans were loose-fit but not falling off his ass. 'Think you can pull it off in those jeans?'

'They'll have to do. You can't chase someone down if your pants are around your ankles.'

True enough. I'd actually chased guys who'd literally run out of their pants.

'And I'm a little old for the homey look. I was shooting for Latino Gap,' Ranger said. 'I don't plan to get out of the car, but just in case, I wanted to blend.'

Ranger took the turnpike and got off at the Newark exit. When they nicknamed New Jersey the Garden State they weren't talking about Newark. The neighborhoods we drove through were bleak by anyone's standards. If I'd been with anyone other than Ranger I'd have turned tail and gotten back on the turnpike.

'This is a scary neighborhood,' I said, taking in the graffiti, the occasional condemned building, the sullen faces of the kids hanging on street corners.

'I grew up here,' Ranger said. 'It hasn't changed much in twenty years.'

'Were you one of those guys on the corner?'

Ranger cut his eyes to a group of teens. 'Eventually. When I was a kid, I was little and I didn't fit, so I got beat up a lot. My skin color was too light for the blacks and too dark for the Cubans. And I had straight brown hair that made me look like a girl.'

'How awful.'

Ranger shrugged. 'I found out I could survive a beating. And I learned to be quick, and to watch my back, and to fight dirty.'

'All good skills,' I said.

'For street thugs and bounty hunters.'

'I thought you lived in Miami for a while.'

'When I was fourteen I got arrested for stealing a car and spent some time in juvie. When I got out, my parents sent me to Miami to live with my grandmother. I went to high school in Miami. I moved back to Jersey to take a shot at college, and then I came back when I got out of the army.'

Ranger found a place at the curb in front of a deli. 'My parents live on the next block,' Ranger said. 'This neighborhood we're in right now really isn't so bad. It's actually the Cuban equivalent to the Burg. Problem is, you have to go through the bad neighborhood to get anywhere, including the school.'

Ranger clipped a little gizmo onto my jeans waistband. 'Panic button. If you have a problem, just push it, and I'll come to you. I want you to take the photo you got from my computer and see if someone knows this guy. He has to have some association with me.'

'All the signs are in Spanish. Will I be able to talk to anyone?'

'Everyone speaks English. Except for my Grandma Rosa, and we're going to try hard not to run into her.'

I left Ranger sitting in the SUV and took the picture into the deli. It was a little mom-and-pop business. A butcher in the back behind a glass case filled with sausages and pork roasts and chicken parts. Shelves filled with sacks of rice, spices, cereals, canned goods. Baskets of vegetables. More shelves with breads and packaged cakes and cookies.

A middle-aged woman was at the register. I waited for her to check out a customer before introducing myself.

'I'm looking for this man,' I said, showing her the photo. 'Do you know him?'

'Yes, I know him,' the woman behind the counter said. 'This is Carlos Manoso.'

'No,' I said to her. 'I know Carlos, and this isn't him.'

I showed the picture to the butcher and to a woman waiting to have a pork roast boned and rolled. They both thought it was Carlos Manoso, the man the police were looking for. They said they'd seen his photo on television.

It was close to noon when I returned to the green Explorer. My nose was sunburned, and I had sweat running in a river down my breastbone.