Janet Evanovich - Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

“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?”