Stephanie Plum - Finger Lickin' Fifteen Part 26

"HOME!" Grandma yelled.

I followed Lula to my parents' house and dropped Grandma off. I think Grandma said they were going to put the truck in the garage, so no one would steal the grill. Personally, I didn't think she had to worry about anyone wanting the grill.

I drove through town to Rangeman and went straight to Ranger's apartment. I kicked my shoes off and flopped onto his bed. When I woke up, I was covered with a light blanket, and I could see Ranger at his desk in the den. The ringing wasn't nearly so loud in my head. It was down to mosquito level.

I rolled out of bed and went into the den.

"Tough day?" Ranger asked.

"You don't even want to know. How was your day?"

"Interesting. I showed your maintenance man Mike file pictures of all Rangeman employees remotely fitting his description, and he couldn't identify any of them. Our bad guy wears a Rangeman uniform but doesn't work here."

"Could he be a former employee?"

"There were only two possibilities, and I got a negative on them."

"Now what?"

"I have someone checking all the accounts for evidence of touch-pad surveillance. He's also cataloguing Rangeman visits on those accounts."

"It wouldn't be difficult to duplicate a Rangeman uniform. Black cargo pants and a black T-shirt with Rangeman Rangeman embroidered on it." embroidered on it."

"My men all know to show their ID when entering a house, but the accounts are lax at asking. Most people see the uniform and are satisfied."

I was suddenly starving, and there was a wonderful smell drifting in from the kitchen. "What's that smell?"

Ella brought dinner up a half hour ago, but I didn't want to wake you. I think we've got some kind of stew."

We went to the kitchen and dished out the stew.

"I've got a fix on Cameron Manfred," Ranger said. "During the day, he works for a trucking company that's a front for a hijacking operation. It would be awkward to make an apprehension there. Lots of paranoid people with guns. Manfred leaves the trucking company at five, goes to a neighborhood strip bar with his fellow workers until around seven, and then heads for his girl's apartment. He gives his address as the projects, but he's never there. It's actually his mother's address. We're going to have to hit him at the girl's place tonight. If there isn't enough cover to tag him on the street, we'll have to let him settle and then go in after him. I have to take a shift at eleven, but we should have this wrapped up by then."

_______

WE WERE IN a Rangeman-issue black Explorer. Ranger was behind the wheel, and we were parked across from a slum apartment building one block over from Stark Street, where Cameron Manfred was holed up with his girlfriend. It was a little after nine at night, and the street was dark. Businesses were closed, steel grates rolled down over entrances and plate-gla.s.s windows. There was a streetlight overhead, but the bulb had been shot out.

We'd been sitting at the curb for ten minutes, not saying anything, Ranger in hunt mode. He was watching the building and the street, taking the pulse of the area, his own heart rate probably somewhere around reptilian.

He punched a number into his phone. A man answered, and Ranger disconnected. "He's there," Ranger said. "Let's go."

We crossed the street, entered the building, and silently climbed to the third floor. The air was stale. The walls were covered with graffiti. The light was dim. A small rat scuttled across Ranger's foot and disappeared into the shadows. I shuddered and grabbed the back of his shirt.

"Babe," Ranger said, his voice barely audible.

There were two apartments on the third floor. Maureen Gonzales, Manfred's girlfriend, lived in 3A. I stood flat to the wall on one side of her door. Ranger stood on the other side and knocked. His other hand was on his holstered gun.

A pretty Hispanic woman opened the door and smiled at Ranger. She was wearing a man's shirt, unb.u.t.toned, and nothing else. "Yes?" she said.

Ranger smiled back at the woman and looked beyond her, into the room. "I'd like to speak to Cameron."

"Cameron isn't here."

"You don't mind if I look around?"

She held the shirt wide open. "Look all you want."

"Nice," Ranger said, "but I'm looking for Cameron."

"I told you he's not here."

"Bond enforcement," Ranger said. "Step aside."

"Do you have a search warrant?"

There was the sound of a window getting shoved up in the back room. Ranger pushed past Gonzales and ran for the window. I turned and raced down the stairs and out the front door. I saw Manfred burst out of the alley between the buildings and cross the street. I took off after him, having no idea what I'd do if I caught him. My self-defense skills relied heavily on eye-gouging and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e rearrangement. Beyond that, I was at a loss.

I chased Manfred to Stark and saw him turn the corner. I turned a couple beats behind him, and the sidewalk was empty in front of me. No Manfred.

The only possibility was the building on the corner. There was a pizza place on the ground floor and what looked like two floors of apartments above it. The pizza place was closed for the night. The door leading to the apartments was open, the hallway was dark. No light in the stairwell. I stood in the entry and listened for movement.

Ranger came in behind me. "Is he up there?"

"I don't know. I lost him when he turned the corner. I wasn't that far away. I don't think he had time to go farther than this building. Where were you? I thought you'd be on top of him."

"The fire escape rusted out underneath me at the second floor. It took me a minute to regroup." He looked up the stairs. "Do you want to come with me, or do you want to keep watch here?"

"I'll stay here."

Ranger was immediately swallowed up by the dark. He had a flashlight, but he didn't use it. He moved almost without sound, creeping up the stairs, pausing at the second-floor landing to listen before moving on.

I hid in the shadows, not wanting to be seen from the street. G.o.d knows who was walking the street. Probably, I should carry a gun, but guns scared the heck out of me. I had pepper spray in my purse. And a large can of hair spray, which in my experience is almost as effective as the pepper spray.

I was concentrating on listening for Ranger and keeping watch on the street, and was completely taken by surprise when a door to the rear of the ground-floor hallway opened and Manfred stepped out. He froze when he saw me, obviously just as shocked to find me standing there as I was to see him. He whirled around and retreated through the door. I yelled for Ranger and ran after Manfred.

The door opened to a flight of stairs that led to the cellar. I got to the bottom of the stairs and realized this was a storeroom for the pizza place. Stainless-steel rolling shelves marched in rows across the room. Bags of flour, cans of tomato sauce, and gallon cans of olive oil were stacked on the shelves. A dim bulb burned overhead. I didn't see Manfred. Fine by me. Probably the only reason I wasn't already dead was that he'd left his girl's house in such a rush, he'd gone out unarmed.

I cautiously approached one of the shelves, and Manfred stepped out and grabbed me.

"Give me your gun," he said.

My heart skipped a beat and went into terror tempo. Bang, bang, bang, bang Bang, bang, bang, bang, knocking against my rib cage.

"I don't have a gun," I said.

And then, without any help from my brain, my knee suddenly connected with Manfred's gonads.

Manfred doubled over, and I hit him on the head with a bag of flour. He staggered forward a little, but he didn't go down, so I hit him again. The bag broke, and flour went everywhere. I was momentarily blinded, but I reached back to the shelf, grabbed a gallon can of oil, and swung blind. I connected with something that got a grunt out of Manfred.

"f.u.c.kin' b.i.t.c.h," Manfred said.

I hauled back to swing again, and Ranger lifted the can from my hand.

"I'm on it," Ranger said, cuffing Manfred.

"Jail's better than another three minutes with her," Manfred said. "She's a f.u.c.kin' animal. I'm lucky if I can ever use my nuts again. Keep her away from me."

"I didn't see you come down the stairs," I said to Ranger. "It was a whiteout."

"Any special reason you grabbed the flour?"

"I wasn't thinking."

Manfred and I were head-to-toe flour. The flour sifted off us when we moved and floated in the air like pixie dust. Ranger hadn't so much as a smudge. By the time we got to the Rangeman SUV, some of the flour had been left behind as ghostly white footprints, but a lot of it remained.

"I honestly don't know how you manage to do this," Ranger said. "Paint, barbecue sauce, flour. It boggles the mind."

"This was all your fault," I said.

Ranger glanced over at me and his eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch.

"You could have taken him down in the apartment if you hadn't spent so much time staring at his naked girlfriend."

Ranger grinned. "She wasn't naked. She was wearing a shirt."

"You deserved to fall off that fire escape."

"That's harsh," Ranger said.

"Did you hurt yourself?" I asked him.

"Do you care?"

"No," I said.

"Liar," Ranger said. He ruffled my hair and flour sprang out in all directions.

Manfred said something to Ranger in Spanish. Ranger answered him as he a.s.sisted him into the backseat of the Explorer.

"What did he say?" I asked Ranger. "He said if I let him go, I could have his girl."

"And your answer?"

"I declined."

"You'll probably regret that as the night goes on," I said to him.

"No doubt," Ranger said.

RANGER AND I had Manfred in front of the docket lieutenant. It was a little after ten, and things were heating up. Drunk drivers, abusive drunk husbands, and a couple drug busts were making their way through the system. I was waiting for my body receipt when Morelli walked in. He nodded to Ranger and grinned at me in my whiteness.

"I was at my desk, and Mickey told me I had to come out to take a look," Morelli said.

"It's flour," I told him.

"I can see that. If we add some milk and eggs, we can turn you into a cake."

"What are you doing here? I thought you were off nights."

"I came in to cover a shooting. Fred was supposed to be on, but he got overexcited at his kid's ball game and pulled a groin muscle. I was just finishing up some paperwork."

Mickey Bolan joined us. Bolan worked Crimes Against Persons with Morelli. He was ten years older than Morelli and counting down to his pension.

"I wasn't exaggerating, right?" Bolan said to Morelli. "They're both covered with flour."

"I'd tell you about it," I said to Bolan, "but it's not as good as it looks."

"That's okay," Bolan said. "I got something better, anyway. The rest of Stanley Chipotle just turned up at the funeral home on Hamilton."

We all stood there for a couple beats, trying to pro cess what we'd just heard.

"He turned up?" Morelli finally said.

"Yeah," Bolan said. "Someone apparently dumped him on the doorstep. So I guess someone should talk to the funeral guy."

"I guess that someone would be me," Morelli said. He looked at his watch. "What the h.e.l.l, the game's over now, anyway."

"I need to get back to Rangeman," Ranger said to me. "If you have an interest in Chipotle, I can send someone with a car for you."

"Thanks. I don't usually get excited about seeing headless dead men, but I wouldn't mind knowing more."

"I can give her a ride," Morelli said. "I don't imagine this will take long."

SEVENTEEN