by Unknown
“So if an alarm went off, what would you do?”
“I’d call the client and ask if they were okay, and then I’d ask for their password.”
“How do you know if they give you the right password?”
“I have the information in an off-line computer.”
I looked at the computer sitting to his right. “I guess it has to be off-line for security purposes.”
He shrugged. “More that there’s no reason for it to be on-line.”
I returned to my desk and packed up. I had seven messages on my phone. All were from Lula, starting at three this afternoon. All the messages were pretty much the same.
“You gotta be on time for supper at your mama’s house tonight,” Lula said. “Your granny and me got a big surprise.”
Thoughts of the big surprise had me rolling my eyes and grimacing.
Ranger appeared in my doorway. “Babe, you look like you want to jump off a bridge.”
“I’m expected for dinner at my parents’ house again. Grandma and Lula are taking another crack at barbecue.”
“Has Lula had any more contact with the Chipotle hitmen?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t mention anything in her messages.”
“Keep your eyes open when you’re with her.”
MY FATHER WAS slouched in his chair in front of the television when I walked in.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He cut his eyes to me, murmured something that sounded like just shoot me now, and refocused on the screen.
My mother was alone in the kitchen, alternately pacing and chopping. Everywhere I looked there were pots of chopped-up green beans, carrots, celery, potatoes, turnips, yellow squash, and tomatoes. Usually when my mother was stressed, she ironed. Today she seemed to be chopping.
“Run out of ironing?” I asked her.
“I ironed everything yesterday. I have nothing left.”
“Where’s Lula and Grandma?”
“They’re out back.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know,” my mother said. “I’m afraid to look.”
I pushed through the back door and almost stepped on a tray of chicken parts.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Lula said. “Look at us. Are we chefs, or what?”
Grandma and Lula were dressed in white chef’s jackets. Grandma was wearing a black cap that made her look like a little old Chinese man, and Lula was wearing a puffy white chef’s hat like the Pillsbury Doughboy. They were standing in front of a propane grill.
“Where’d you get the grill?” I asked.
“I borrowed it from Bobby Booker. He brought it over in his truck on the promise he was gonna get some of our award-winning barbecue chicken someday. Now that we got this here grill, my barbecue is gonna turn out perfect. Only thing is, I can’t get it to work. He said there was lots of propane in the tank. And my understanding is, all I have to do is turn the knob.”
“I got some matches,” Grandma said. “Maybe it’s got one of them pilot lights that went out.”
Lula took the matches, bent over the grill, and Phunnf! Flames shot four feet into the air and set her chef’s hat on fire.
“That did it,” Lula said, stepping back, hat blazing. “It’s cookin’ now.”
Grandma and I had a split second of paralysis, mouths open, eyes bugged out, staring at the flaming hat.
“What?” Lula said.
“Your hat’s on fire,” Grandma told her. “You look like one of them cookout marshmallows.”
Lula rolled her eyes upward and shrieked. “Yow! My hat’s on fire! My hat’s on fire!”
I tried to knock the hat off her head, but Lula was running around in a panic.
“Hold still!” I yelled. “Get the hat off your head!”
“Somebody do something!” she shouted, wild-eyed, arms waving. “Call the fire department!”
“Take the damn hat off,” I said to her, lunging for her and missing.
“I’m on fire! I’m on fire!” Lula yelled, running into the grill, knocking it over. Her hat fell off her head onto the ground and ribbons of fire ran raced in all directions across my parents’ yard.
Growing grass was never a priority for my father. His contention was if you grew the grass, you had to cut the grass. And what was the point to that? The result was that most of our backyard was dirt, with the occasional sad sprinkling of crab grass. In seconds, the fire burned up the crabgrass and played itself out, with the exception of a half-dead maple tree at the back of the yard. The tree went up like Vesuvius.
I could hear fire trucks whining in the distance. A car pulled into the driveway, a car door opened and closed, and Morelli strolled into the yard. Lula’s hat was a lump of black ash on the ground. The tree was a torch in the dusky sky.
“I saw the fire on my way home from work,” Morelli said. “I stopped by to help, but it looks like you have everything under control.”
“Yep,” I said. “We’re just waiting for the tree to burn itself out.”
He looked at the grill and the chicken. “Barbecuing tonight?”
A pack of dogs rounded the corner of the house, ran yapping up to the chicken, and carried it off.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Want to go for pizza?”
“Sure,” he said.
We each took our own cars, sneaking out between the fire trucks that were angling into the curb. I followed Morelli to Pino’s, parked next to his SUV in Pino’s lot, and we pushed through the restaurant’s scarred oak front door into the heat and noise of dinner hour. At this time of day, the majority of tables were filled with families. At ten in the evening, Pino’s would be crammed with nurses and cops unwinding off the second shift. We were able to snag a small table in the corner. We didn’t have to read the menu. We knew it by heart. Pino’s menu never changes.
Morelli ordered beer and a meatball sub. I got the same.
“Looks like you’re working for Rangeman,” Morelli said, taking in my black T-shirt and sweatshirt with the Rangeman logo on the left front. “What’s that about?”
“It’s temporary. He needed someone to fill in on the search desk, and I needed the money.”
Back when we were a couple, Morelli hated when I associated with Ranger. He thought Ranger was a dangerous guy from multiple points of view, and of course Morelli was right. From the set of his jaw, I suspected he still hated that I was associating with Ranger.
“What have you got on your desk these days?” I asked him, thinking it best to get off the Ranger topic.
“A couple gang slayings and the Chipotle thing.”
“Are you making any progress with Chipotle?”
We paused while the waitress set two glasses of beer on the table.
Morelli sipped his beer. “Originally, I thought it felt like a couple professionals had come in from out of town, but that didn’t make sense after they went for Lula. These guys are afraid Lula will finger them.”
“She gave you a description. Have you had any luck with that?”
“Lula’s description fit half the men in this country. Average height, one shorter than the other, brown hair, average build, late forties to early fifties, she wasn’t close enough to see eye color. No distinguishing features, and she said they dressed like white men. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“So you have nothing?”
“Worse than that, we have more than we can manage. The million-dollar reward brought out every crackpot in the state. We had to pull Margie Slater off traffic duty and sit her in a room with a phone so she could field the calls coming in. They were clogging the system.”
“Lula’s convinced Chipotle was killed over barbecue sauce, and she figures the killers will be at the cook-off. She’s entered the contest so she’ll have the inside track at identifying them.”
“That’ll make sense if she lives that long.”
“Do you have someone watching her house?”
“That kind of
surveillance only happens in the movies. We’re so underbudgeted we’re one step away from holding bake sales to pay for toilet paper.”
“Have you considered the barbecue sauce connection?”
“I’ve considered a lot of connections. Chipotle had so much bad juju going it’s a wonder he wasn’t killed sooner. He has three ex-wives who hated him. Everyone on his television show hated him. His sister hated him. He was suing his manager. And the tenants in his New York co-op signed a petition to get him evicted.”
“Who would have thought? He was all smiley on the jar of barbecue sauce.”
“It’s not that easy to slice off someone’s head,” Morelli said.
“The way Lula tells it, there wasn’t any struggle.”
“Yeah. That bothers me. Would you stand there and let someone decapitate you? And what about the guy who did it? Why would he choose decapitation? There are so many easier, cleaner ways to kill someone. And this was done in broad daylight in front of the Sunshine Hotel. It was almost like it wasn’t planned.”
“A spontaneous decapitation?”
Morelli grinned. “Yeah.”
“And he just happened to be carrying a meat cleaver around with him?”
“Maybe he was a butcher.”
“So all we have to do is look for an impulsive butcher.”
Morelli signaled for another beer. “I’m having fun.”
“Me, too.”
“Do you want to go home and go to bed?”
“Jeez,” I said. “Is that all you ever think about?”
“No, but I think about it a lot. Especially when I’m with you.”
“I thought we were supposed to be mad at each other.”
Morelli shrugged. “I don’t feel mad anymore. I can’t even remember what we were fighting about.”
“Peanut butter.”
“It was about more than peanut butter.”
“So you do remember?”
“You called me an insensitive clod,” Morelli said.
“And?”
“I’m not a clod.”
“But you admit to being insensitive?”
“I’m a guy. I’m supposed to be insensitive. It’s my birthright.”
I was pretty sure he was kidding. But then, maybe not. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take half of it back. You’re not a clod.”
The waitress brought our food and Morelli took out his credit card. “We’ll take the check now, and we’d like a to-go box.”
“Since when?” I said.
“I thought we decided to go home.”
“I can’t go home. I have to go back to work.”
“Doing what?”
“Doing what I do. I’m working at Rangeman.”
“At night?”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I bet.”
I felt my eyebrows squinch together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t trust him. He’s a total loose cannon. And he looks at you like you’re lunch.”
“It’s a job. I need the money.”
“You could move in with me,” Morelli said. “You wouldn’t have to pay rent.”
“Living with you doesn’t work. Last time we tried to cohabitate, you threw my peanut butter away.”
“It was disgusting. It had grape jelly and potato chips in it. And something green.”
“Olives. It was just a little cross-contamination. Sometimes I’m in a hurry and stuff gets mixed into the peanut butter. Anyway, when did you get so fussy?”
“I’m not fussy,” Morelli said. “I just try to avoid food poisoning.”
“I have never poisoned you with my food.”
“Only because you don’t cook.”
I blew out a sigh because he was right, and this was going to lead to another contentious topic. Cooking. I’m not sure why I don’t cook. In my mind, I cooked a lot. I made whole mental turkey dinners, baked pies, roasted tenderloins, and whipped up rice pudding. I even owned a mental waffle maker. So to some extent, I understood Lula’s delusional belief that she could barbecue. The difference between Lula and me being that I knew fact from fiction. I knew I was no kind of cook.
The waitress came back with a couple plastic take-out boxes and the check.
“Well?” Morelli asked me.
“Well what?”
“Are we eating here or are we taking these subs back to my house?”
“I’d rather eat here. I have to go back to work tonight, and this is closer to Rangeman.”
“So you’re choosing Ranger over me?”
“Rangeman. Not Ranger. I have a project I can only do in the evening. You should understand that. You choose your job over me all the time.”
“I’m a cop.”
“And?”
“And that’s different,” Morelli said. “I’m serving the public, investigating murders, and you’re working for . . . Batman.”
“Gotham City would have been a mess without Batman.”
“Batman was a nutcase. He was a vigilante.”
“Well, Ranger isn’t a nutcase. He’s a legitimate businessman.”
“He’s a loose cannon hiding behind a veneer of legitimacy.”
We’d had this conversation about a hundred times before, and it never had a happy ending. Problem was, there was an element of truth to what Morelli said. Ranger played by his own rules.
“I don’t want to get into a shouting match,” I said to Morelli. “I’m going to pack up this sandwich and go back to work. We can try this again when I’m done working for Ranger.”
THE RHYTHM OF Rangeman was always the same. As a security facility, it worked around the clock. The fifth-floor control room, the dining area, and most of the satellite offices were interior to the building and without windows. If you worked in these areas, it was difficult to tell if it was night or day.
The evening shift was in place when I came on the floor. Sybo Diaz was kicked back in his chair, watching several monitors. The code computer was to his right; the screen was blank. I’d never spoken to Diaz, but I’d seen him around. He wasn’t the friendliest guy in the building. Mostly, he stayed to himself, eating alone, not making eye contact that would encourage conversation. According to his work profile, he was five foot nine inches tall and thirty-six years old. His complexion was dark. His face was scarred from acne he probably had as a teenager. He was built chunky, but he didn’t look like he had an ounce of fat. He walked like his shorts were starched.
“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?”
“Storero
om 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.”