“Who’s ‘they’?” Morelli asked.
“Skoogie, and a couple guys from some South American place, and the sunshine-truck guy.”
“Does the sunshine-truck guy have a name?” Morelli asked.
“I don’t know his name, but he’s cool,” Waggle said. He looked around. “Is Jillian here? Jillian was supposed to pick me up.”
“Jillian isn’t here,” Morelli said. “You’re in police custody.”
Waggle got crazy eyed. “The bitch said she’d be here.”
Morelli stopped the video. “There isn’t anything worth watching after this.”
“This is too weird,” I said. “Five men were kidnapped because someone wanted to sell a television show?”
“Six men,” Morelli said. “One was returned.”
“There’s something missing,” Ranger said. “Skoogie was a major player, but there have to be others. It seems reasonable that Ernie Sitz is involved. Or at least, was involved. Nobody can find him. Who else?”
“The sunshine-truck guy,” I said.
Morelli looked over at me. “Did you get anything out of this? You were working at the deli.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Nothing jumped out at me.”
“One last thing,” Morelli said. “We retrieved Waggle’s backpack from event security. It was mostly dirty laundry, but there was a clipping in it that you’ll want to see. I have a photo of it on my phone. The original is in the evidence room. You can also pull it up online.”
It was a short piece in Variety, dated the day before Skoogie died.
In an unprecedented move, Leonard Skoogie brokered a major network deal for The Cannibal Deli, an hour dramedy that was based on an experimental reality-based video. It’s rumored that Chris Hemsworth has been signed to play the series lead.
“Holy crap,” I said. “Chris Hemsworth is amazing.”
“He’s also not Victor Waggle,” Morelli said. “Waggle thought Skoogie was in L.A. pitching him.”
“Yes, but Chris Hemsworth is THOR!”
“Put him in a Giants jersey, and I’ll pay attention,” Morelli said.
* * *
■ ■ ■
I left with Ranger. “Now what?” I asked.
“You tell me.”
“I have to pick up my laundry, and I should check in with Connie.”
Ranger drove to my parents’ house and waited in the car while I ran inside. I grabbed my laundry basket, said goodbye to Grandma, and shoved the basket into the back of the Cayenne.
“Next stop is the office,” I said.
Ranger drove out of the Burg and turned onto Hamilton. The office was a block away, and we could see that Darren’s wreck of a burrito truck was parked at the curb. Connie and Lula were on the sidewalk by the truck. Ranger pulled up behind it, and we got out.
“Look at what we got here,” Lula said. “Here’s how you make lemonade out of lemons. Darren struck up a deal with Stretch and Raymond, and they’re taking Breakfast Burritos on the road.”
Stretch was behind the wheel, and Raymond looked out at me through the open window.
“We deliver,” Raymond said. “That is our motto. We are in the true American spirit of chasing the dream. We are becoming big-deal entrepreneurs.”
“I’m surprised the truck is still running after getting tipped over,” I said.
“I guess you just can’t keep a good truck down,” Lula said.
“We must be off now,” Raymond said. “This is prime burrito time. We are going to try our luck at the button factory.”
We waved adios to the burrito truck.
“Did you get a burrito?” I asked Lula.
“Yeah,” Lula said. “It was a pretty damn good burrito.”
“Anything new come in for me?” I asked Connie.
“Nope. Slow morning,” Connie said.
Ranger and I returned to his car, and I asked him to ride past the deli. I was thinking about Hal. I had an unrealistic but hopeful fantasy that we’d drive down the alley behind the deli, and Hal would be standing there looking confused.
Ranger cruised past the front of the deli and went around to the alley. He stopped and idled for a moment by the dumpster and the parking lot. I looked at the lot and the deli’s charred back door, and I had an epiphany.
“Omigod,” I said. “I know the sunshine truck. It’s Central GP. It has a big sun on the side of the truck. The slogan is WE SELL EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN. And if Vinnie was transported in it, the inside of the truck might have smelled like bananas. Frankie is the snitch who always knew when a manager was hired. He was at the deli every day.”
Ranger called his control room and asked for information on Frankie and the location of the Central GP truck.
“Are you going to call Morelli?” I asked.
“Not yet. Morelli’s a good cop, but he’s held back by procedural rules and layers of bureaucracy. I can move faster.”
This was true. It was also true that Ranger frequently operated in the gray zone of not quite legal.
We were about to pull into the Rangeman garage when Ranger’s control room got back to him. Frankie’s full name was Frank Russel Lugano. He lived in a second-floor apartment not far from the deli. His Uncle Constantine owned Central GP. Leonard Skoogie was his cousin on his mother’s side. Frankie’s live-in girlfriend was a waitress at Hooters. And Frankie didn’t report in for work this morning.
“He’s running,” I said. “He’s probably on a flight to Guatemala.”
Ranger cut across town and turned onto Whitson Avenue. He drove two blocks and parked in front of Frankie’s building. It was three stories. Brick. Smushed into the middle of a row of similar Practical Pig sturdy but uninteresting buildings. We took the stairs to the second floor and got there just as Frankie was leaving.
“Back it up,” Ranger said to Frankie. “We’d like to talk to you.”
“I’m in kind of a hurry,” Frankie said.
“This won’t take long,” Ranger said, motioning Frankie back inside.
It was a small, nicely furnished apartment with no girlfriend in sight.
“Tell me about the kidnappings,” Ranger said.
“You know as much as I do,” Frankie said.
“Not true,” Ranger said. “We just finished talking to Victor Waggle.”
Frankie rolled his eyes and dropped the duffel bag he’d been carrying. “Waggle. I had reservations about this gig from the beginning. We all did. We knew sooner or later Waggle was going to screw it up. He’s an incredible talent, and he’s batshit crazy. You give him drugs to try to calm him down, and he gets even crazier. Lenny didn’t want to cut him out. He had no choice.”
“I’m not interested in the details,” Ranger said. “I want to know where the kidnapped victims are being held.”
“That’s a problem,” Frankie said. “I don’t know where they are. I was a minor player in this fiasco. They wanted to use my truck to help make a movie. It sounded like fun. And they were going to pay me. All I had to do was show up, they’d load some guy into the back, and then I’d drive him to a pickup point. The Colombians took over from there. One time they were doing a big scene with a helicopter and I had to borrow a van to transport everyone. They thought a van was a better visual with the helicopter.”
“It was okay with you that you were part of a kidnapping?” I asked.
Frankie shrugged. “Yeah. It didn’t seem so bad. It wasn’t like anybody was going to get hurt. It wasn’t like they were going to ransom them off or anything. They just wanted to make a movie. Lenny figured he could get some publicity with the kidnappings, and he could make this reality show thing, and get people to look at it. And it worked. Was a shame he died just when he should have been celebrating. Or maybe he died because he did too much celebrating.”
“Where do I find the C
olombians?” Ranger asked.
“I don’t know,” Frankie said. “They always found me. I’d meet them in a parking lot somewhere and transfer the body. They only spoke Spanish. I never knew what they were saying.”
“Who was in charge of the Colombians?” Ranger asked.
“Should I have a lawyer or something?” Frankie asked.
“We aren’t police,” Ranger said. “I’m just trying to find Hal.”
“Okay, I get that,” Frankie said. “I’d like to help you, but this started out simple and just got more and more complicated. We were only supposed to take one guy, but Lenny wasn’t getting enough publicity. Nobody was watching the little movie. There’s too much stuff out there on YouTube. So, Lenny kidnapped more guys and kept making bigger and better movies. You gotta give it to Lenny. He wasn’t a quitter.”
“The Colombians,” Ranger said.
“They’re just worker bees. Ernie brought them with him from his place in Bogotá.”
“Ernie Sitz?”
“Yeah. Lenny’s partner. It started out with Lenny and Victor. Then Lenny needed money so he brought his pal Ernie in.”
“Anyone else involved?” Ranger asked.
“Harry. He came in late and funded a production company. I never met Harry, but apparently he doesn’t speak Spanish and the guys from Colombia don’t understand much English, and so one day Harry is on a rant because a bunch of women came to his daughter’s house complaining about her husband. So, these Colombians misunderstand and snatch the husband.”
I glanced over at Ranger and saw his mouth twitch into a hint of a smile.
“Vinnie?” I asked.
“I don’t know the guy’s name, but we had to drug him up and return him.”
“Where do we find Ernie?” Ranger asked.
“He jumped ship when Victor went down. He’s going back to Bogotá. I think he had a flight this morning.”
I looked at the duffel sitting on the floor. “Is that where you’re going?”
“No. I have a ticket for Flight 127 to Hawaii, then maybe I’ll go to El Salvador. I have friends there. Gonna do some fishing.”
“Have a good trip,” Ranger said.
“Thanks,” Frankie said. “I hope you find Hal, and he’s okay. The original plan was to drug the men and send them home, but I don’t know about Harry. I hear he’s mob.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“HOW ABOUT NOW?” I asked when we were in the car. “Do we bring Morelli in now?”
“No, but I’ll have him keep Ernie off the plane.”
“Are you going to let Frankie go fishing?”
“No. I’ll have Morelli detain him.”
Ranger drove the short distance back to Rangeman and went directly to his office. He sent Morelli a text about Ernie and Frankie, and he accessed a program on his computer that listed all assets for Ernie Sitz and Harry Hammerstein.
“Omigod,” I said. “Harry’s last name is Hammerstein? I never knew. I just knew him as Harry the Hammer.”
Ranger limited the assets to properties within a hundred miles. Sitz had seven, and Harry had sixteen. I looked over Ranger’s shoulder at the list.
“This one,” I said, pointing to a building on Harry’s list. “The warehouse in Cherry Hill. It was owned by Sitz and went up for auction a year ago.”
Ranger went to Google maps and looked at the satellite view of the property.
“It’s in an industrial park that’s mostly abandoned,” Ranger said. “The warehouse is off on its own. Good location to hold someone hostage. Smart. You don’t want to kidnap someone and cross state lines. I think it’s worth looking at.”
Ranger called Tank and told him he needed two cars and four men in ten minutes.
“I’ll be traveling with Stephanie,” he said. “We’ll need full security. Vests and belts. And I’ll need a thermal drone.”
Ranger and I went in his Porsche Cayenne. The other two cars were fleet SUVs. Tank was driving one of them. We took I-295 south and reached Cherry Hill midafternoon. The entrance to the industrial park wasn’t gated. The warehouse Harry owned was toward the back end not quite a quarter mile down the road. Tank and the other Rangeman SUV hung back, and Ranger and I drove past the warehouse. No cars parked in the adjoining lot. No lights shining from the office windows in the front of the building. No visible activity. We parked alongside the other two Rangeman vehicles and got out.
“I want to know what’s inside the warehouse on the next block,” Ranger said. “Send the drone up.”
One of the men opened his laptop and another removed the drone from a box in the back of the SUV. He set the drone on the ground and in minutes it was in the air, humming its way across the parking lot. It hovered over the warehouse and sent back thermal images.
“Five men in a large room and four more in a smaller room,” the guy with the laptop said.
Everyone crowded around to look at the screen.
“I’ll take point,” Ranger said. “Tank will watch Stephanie’s back. We’ll worry about the four men in the smaller room. I’m hoping the five men in the large room are our hostages. We’re not sure this break-in is justified, so use restraint.”
The drone returned and everyone suited up in body armor and gun belts. Tank handed me my vest and utility belt.
“Are you sure you want me along on this?” I asked Ranger.
He shrugged into his vest. “I didn’t think you would want to miss it. And more important, I need you to justify the break-in. You have the papers that allow you to go after Ernie Sitz. Stay close to Tank. We’re going in looking like the RoboCop SWAT team. I’m hoping we look serious enough to make this a nonevent.”
I stuffed myself into the vest and buckled the utility belt on. It contained a flashlight, a knife, a stun gun, pepper spray, and a couple extra clips for the Glock I had strapped to my leg. It probably contained other stuff too, but I didn’t look all that close.
I glanced down at the belt. “I don’t see any granola bars,” I said to Ranger. “And where’s the kitchen sink?”
“Babe,” Ranger said.
We drove across the street and parked close to the back door to the warehouse. Ranger unlocked the door, and we went in, moving quickly through the building. Ranger at point, motioning clear, the rest of us following. No one speaking. We reached a door at the end of a corridor, and we all stopped and watched Ranger. He tested the door. Not locked. He opened it and we all rushed in, guns drawn. Okay, my gun wasn’t drawn, but I rushed in with everyone else.
Four men were playing cards at a small table. They all jumped up when we came in. One of them pulled a gun and immediately thought better of it, dropping the gun on the floor.
“Do you speak English?” Ranger asked.
“A little,” one said with a heavy accent.
Ranger switched to Spanish. The four Rangeman guys looked like they understood everything. I understood nothing. One of the card players pointed to the door at the far side of the room. It was steel with multiple locks.
Ranger’s men cuffed the card players and sat them on the floor. Ranger removed a key ring from one of them, crossed to the door, and unlocked it.
I’m not sure what I expected to see. Five emaciated men, crying with joy at being rescued. Maybe in cages. Maybe shackled.
Ranger pushed the door open, and I followed him in. The room was half the size of a basketball court. Cement floor. High ceiling. Brightly lit. Five cots with sleeping bags and pillows. A card table with four chairs. Wastebasket next to it filled with Dunkin’ Donuts and Mike’s Burger Place bags. Games were stacked up by the table. Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Candy Land, Axis & Allies, checkers. Large flat-screen television in front of a big leather couch. A basketball hoop had been screwed into the wall opposite the television.
Three men were watching television and two we
re shooting hoops. All of the men were naked. I didn’t know three of the men, but Hal and Wayne Kulicki looked like they’d each gained about twenty pounds.
Hal was one of the basketball players. He cupped his hands around his privates when he saw me, and his face got red.
“This looks like Club Med for hostages,” Ranger said. “All it needs is a pool and a hot tub.”
“It’s not that good,” Hal said. “They cheaped out on the sports package for the television.”
“Are you going to call Morelli now?” I asked Ranger.
“Yep,” Ranger said. “Time to call Morelli.”
“This is more secure than it looks,” Hal said. “There’s only one door. It’s always locked and the men never come in alone. Always four of them with guns. We have nothing to use as a weapon. No knives or forks. They feed us burgers and donuts. There aren’t any windows. The walls are concrete. We have one bathroom with a shower. No towels or toothbrushes. Makes you wonder what was originally stored here.”
“Are there more guards than those four?” Ranger asked.
“There used to be eight in total,” Hal said. “They would work in shifts. Three of us speak Spanish and from what we could hear through the door, four of them left to go back to Colombia yesterday. The four out there now were leaving tonight. I didn’t take that as a good omen for my future.”
“Do you know who’s in charge of the Colombians?” Ranger asked.
“Ernie Sitz is involved. I don’t know beyond him.”
Ranger gave me a corporate credit card. “We passed a Target when we got off the highway. Find some clothes for the men. Pajamas, shorts, anything. Tank will drive you.”
I returned forty minutes later. Local police were already at the warehouse. Morelli pulled in behind me.
“You went shopping?” Morelli asked, looking at my Target bags.
“The kidnap victims are naked. I went out to get them some clothes.”
“Makes me happy,” Morelli said.
I led the way to the basketball court and handed the bags over to the men. Underwear, T-shirts, sweatpants, and flip-flops.
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