Janet Evanovich - Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

“Hey,” I said to him, passing the desk on my way to my cubicle. “How’s it going?”

This got me a polite nod. No smile.

I plunked myself into my chair and turned my computer on. I could see Diaz from where I sat. I watched him for twenty minutes, and he never moved or blinked or looked my way. I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t know how to go about it. The man was a robot. For lack of something better to do, I ran one of my assigned security checks. I printed the report and attempted to staple the pages, but the stapler was jammed. I pressed the button that was supposed to release the staples, I poked at it with my nail file, I banged it against the top of my desk. Bang, bang, bang. Nothing. I looked up and found Diaz staring at me.

“Stapler’s jammed,” I said to him.

His attention turned back to his monitors. No change in facial expression. Also no change in my stapler condition, so I hit it against my desktop some more. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Diaz swiveled his head in my direction, and I think he might have sighed a little.

I left my station and took my stapler over to Diaz. “I can’t get it to work,” I told him, handing him the stapler.

Diaz examined the stapler. By now the stapler had a bunch of dents, and the part that holds the staples was all bashed in. Diaz pushed the button that was supposed to release the staples, but of course nothing happened.

“It’s dead,” Diaz said. “You need a new stapler.”

“How do I get a new stapler?”

“Storeroom on the second floor.”

“Will it be open at this time of the night?” I asked him.

“It’s always open.”

This was like talking to a rock. “I don’t suppose I could borrow your stapler?”

Diaz so looked like he wanted me to go away that I almost felt sorry for him.

“I don’t have a stapler,” he said.

“Would you like me to get one for you from the storeroom?”

“No. I don’t need one. I haven’t got anything to staple.”

“Yeah, but what if suddenly you had to staple something and you didn’t have a stapler? Then it would be a stapling emergency.”

“Somebody put you up to this, right? Martin? Ramon?”

“No! Cross my heart and hope to die. I came in to catch up on my work, and I had this stapler issue.”

Diaz looked at me. Not saying anything.

“Jeez,” I said. And I went back to my cubicle.

I fiddled around for ten or fifteen minutes, drawing doodles in the margins of the report I’d just done, and Ranger called.

“This guy isn’t human,” I said to Ranger. “Does he ever talk to anyone?”

“No more than necessary to be a team member.”

“I get the feeling he’s been the brunt of some practical jokes.”

“I’m not supposed to know, but I think there’s a lottery going to see who’s the first to get him to crack a smile.”

“Why did your cousin divorce him?”

“She found someone she liked better.”

“Gee, hard to believe there’s someone better than Mr. Charming here.”

“He’s a good man,” Ranger said. “He’s steady.”

“He’s emotionally closed.”

“There are worse things,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

Truth is, Ranger was every bit as silent and unemotional as Diaz. Always in control. Always on guard. What made the difference was an animal intelligence and sexuality that made Ranger mysterious and compelling, while Diaz was simply annoying.

I ambled down to the second floor and prowled through the stockroom in search of a stapler. I finally found them and selected a small handheld. I took it back to the fifth floor and showed it to Diaz on the way to my desk.

“Got my stapler,” I said. “Thanks.”

Diaz nodded and resumed staring at his collection of monitors. I walked around his desk and looked over his shoulder. He was watching multiple locations in the building. No activity at any of them.

“I thought for sure one of these would be tuned to the Cartoon Network,” I said.

No response.

“What’s this computer?” I asked, referring to the code computer. “Why isn’t there anything on the screen?”

“I don’t need it right now.”

“What happens if you have to go to the bathroom?”

“One of the other men will cover. There’s always an extra man in the control room.”

I stood there for a while, watching Diaz ignore me.

“This is a little boring,” I finally said to him.

“I like it,” Diaz said. “It’s quiet. It lets me think.”

“What do you think about?”

“Nothing.”

I found that easy to believe. I returned to my cubicle and my cell phone buzzed.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Lula said. “Your granny needed a ride to a viewing at the funeral parlor tonight, so after the fire department hosed the tree down, I took her over here to pay respects to some old coot. Anyways, we were just about to leave and who do you think walked in? Junior Turley, your exhibitionist FTA. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was your granny who spotted him. And she said she almost missed him, bein’ he had all his clothes on. She said usually he’s in her backyard waving his winkie at her when she’s at the kitchen window. And she said she wouldn’t mind seeing his winkie up close to make a positive identification, but I thought we should wait until you got here.”

“Good call. I’m about fifteen minutes away.”

I grabbed my purse and took the stairs, deciding they were faster than the elevator. I wanted to capture Turley, but even more I didn’t want Grandma trying to make a citizen’s arrest based on identification of Turley’s winkie. I rolled out of the garage and called Ranger.

“Lula has one of my skips cornered,” I told him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

THE FUNERAL PARLOR is part renovated Victorian and part brick bunker. I found on-street parking and jogged to the front porch. Hours were almost over, but there were still a lot of mourners milling around. A group of men stood to one side on the wraparound porch. They were smoking and laughing, smelling faintly of whiskey. The funeral parlor had several viewing rooms. Two were presently occupied. Knowing Grandma, she probably visited both. Viewings were at the core of Grandma’s social scene. On a slow week, Grandma would go to the viewing of a perfect stranger if nothing better popped up.

I found Grandma and Lula to the back of Slumber Room #3.

“He’s up there at the casket,” Lula said. “He looks like he knows the stiff’s ol’ lady.”

“They’re relations,” Grandma said. “Nothin’ anyone would want to admit to. That whole family is odd. I went to school with Mary Jane Dugan, the wife of the deceased. She was Mary Jane Turley then. Up until fourth grade, she quacked like a duck. Never said a blessed word in school. Just quacked. And then one day she fell off the top of the sliding board in the park and hit her head and she started talking. Never quacked again. Not to this day. Junior’s father, Harry, was Mary Jane’s brother. He electrocuted himself trying to pry a broken plug out of a wall socket with a screwdriver. I remember when it happened. He blew out one of them transformer things, and four houses on that block didn’t have electric for two days. I didn’t see Harry after the accident, but Lorraine Shatz said she heard they had to put him in the meat locker to get him to stop smokin’.”

“Stay here,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to make my way up to the casket. You grab Junior if he bolts and tries to leave by this door.”

“Don’t you worry,” Lula said. “Nobody’s gonna get past me. I’m on the job. He come this way, and I’ll shoot him.”