'Holy shit,' Lula said, eyes the size of duck eggs. 'Get me the fudge out of here.'
Option number three, I thought. And I mashed the accelerator down to the floorboard. The car sucked gas and roared back like a freight train. I didn't feel any bumps under the tires indicating that I'd run over a body. I took that as a good sign. I wheeled backward onto Comstock and screeched to a stop to change gears. Three guys flew off my roof. Two bounced off the right front fender onto the road. And one smacked onto the hood and grabbed hold of a windshield wiper.
'Don't stop now,' Lula yelled. 'And don't worry about the hood ornament. You'll lose him on the next turn.'
I rammed the car into drive and took off. I could hear a lot of noise behind me. A lunatic mix of yelling and gunfire and laughter.
The guy on the hood stared in at me, the pupils of his eyes dilated to the size of nickels.
'Think he got a pharmaceutical problem going,' Lula said.
I leaned on the horn, but the hood rider didn't blink.
'This here's like having an insect stuck on your windshield,' Lula said. 'A big ugly drugged-out praying mantis.'
I hauled the Buick around into a looping left turn onto Seventh, and the insect silently sailed off into space and crashed into a rusted-out van that was parked at the curb. I resumed breathing when I got to Stark.
'See, that worked out okay,' Lula said. 'Too bad we didn't find the devil guy, though.'
I gave her a sideways glance. 'Maybe you want to go back tomorrow and try again?'
'Maybe not tomorrow.'
I called Connie and told her we were on our way back to the office and asked her to run a search for me.
'If I give you some street boundaries can you check our files for guys in that neighborhood?' I asked her.
'I can search by zip code, and I can search by street. As long as the area isn't too big, I can do the by street search.'
I felt a responsibility to Eddie, and I thought chances were decent that the devil guy had a record. I'd declined to go through mug shots at police headquarters. I'd done that drill for other crimes and found it to be spectacularly unhelpful. After looking at a hundred head shots, I tended to forget the face of the perp. A search by neighborhood would produce a much smaller pool of potentials.
Connie was pulling files when Lula and I swung through the front door. 'I got seventeen hits for the boundaries you gave me,' she said. 'None are outstanding. It's not really our neighborhood.'
Lula looked through the pile of files on Connie's desk. 'Hey, this is the guy who was stuck to the hood of your car,' Lula said, holding a photo for me to see.
Connie grabbed a file and closed the drawer with her foot.
'That's Eugene Brown. He's been arrested so many times we have a personal relationship. Never been convicted of anything but possession.'
'Looks like we bonded him out for armed robbery and vehicular manslaughter,' Lula said.
'Eyewitnesses have a way of disappearing when Eugene's involved,' Connie said. 'And there's a lot of sworn testimony recanting. What was he doing on the hood of your car?'
'We were sort of cruising up Comstock Street…' Lula said.
Connie's eyes got wide. 'Where on Comstock?'
'Third.'
'Do you have a death wish? That's Slayerland.'
'We were just riding through,' Lula said.
'The two of you? In what car? The Buick? The powder blue-and-white Buick? You can't go past Third on Comstock in a powder blue car! That's Cut's colors. You don't go into gang territory with another gang color.'
'Well, yeah, but I didn't think it counted for cars. I just thought it counted for clothes. For, like, do-rags and shirts and shit,' Lula said. 'And it's hard to believe anybody'd take Cut serious with a color like powder blue. Powder blue is a sissy color.'
I took the files from Lula and shuffled through them. No devil guy. Connie handed me the remaining four files. No devil guy there either. This left me with three possibilities. The devil guy didn't have a record. Or the devil guy used a different bond agent.
Les Sebring, maybe. Or the devil guy gave an address outside of Slayerland.
I saw Connie and Lula go still and fix their eyes on the door behind me. Either someone walked in with a gun in his hand or else Ranger was here. Since no one ducked for cover, I was betting it was Ranger.
A warm hand settled at the base of my neck, and I felt Ranger lean into me. 'Babe,' he said, softly, his right arm snaking around me to take the file from my hand. 'Eugene Brown,' he read. 'You might not want to spend a lot of time with Eugene. He's not a fun guy.'
'I sort of bounced him off the hood of the Buick today,' I told Ranger. 'But it wasn't my fault.'
Ranger tightened his hold on my neck. 'You want to be careful with Eugene. He hasn't got much of a sense of humor, Babe.'
'I don't suppose you know the identity of the devil guy who's robbing all the deli-marts?'
'Don't suppose I do,' Ranger said. 'But it's not Eugene. There'd be more bodies on the floor if it was Eugene.'
Vinnie's inner office door opened, and Vinnie stuck his head out.
'What's up?'
'I'm going out of town for a couple weeks,' Ranger said. 'Tank will be on the job, if you need him.' Ranger dropped the Brown file on Connie's desk and turned to me. 'I want to talk to you… outside.'
It was late afternoon and the sky was overcast, but the autumn air was still warm in spite of the gloom. Ranger's customized black Ford F-150 FX4 was parked curbside. A black SUV with tinted windows was parked behind the truck. The SUV had its motor running.
I followed Ranger out of the office, glancing first at the SUV and then at the heavy traffic on Hamilton. Rush hour in Trenton.
'What if I need something?' I asked Ranger, doing a little flirting, feeling brave because I was on a public street. 'Should I call Tank?'
He ran a fingertip along my hairline and tucked a stray curl behind my ear. 'It depends what you need. Did you have anything special in mind?'
Our eyes held, and I felt the first licks of panic. I should know better than to play with Ranger. He never got rattled, and he never backed down. I, on the other hand, frequently got rattled with Ranger and almost always backed down.
'How about if I need a car?' I asked, searching for something legitimate to change the tone. There'd been times past when I'd needed a car, and Ranger had provided one.
Ranger pulled a set of keys from his pocket and dropped them into my hand. 'You can take my truck. I can get a ride back with Tank.'
A narrow alley separated Vinnie's office from the neighboring business. Ranger nudged me into the shadow of the alley, pressed me against the brick wall, and kissed me. When his tongue touched mine my fingers curled into his shirt, and I think I might have momentarily lost consciousness.
'Hey,' I said, when consciousness returned. 'You're poaching.'
'And?'
'Stop it.'
'You don't mean that,' Ranger said, smiling.
He was right. A woman would have to be dead not to want to kiss Ranger. And I wasn't even close to dead.
I gave the keys back to him. 'Nice gesture but I can't take the truck.'
'Call Tank if you change your mind. And be careful. Don't try to play with Eugene.'
And he was gone.
Lula and Connie were shuffling papers, trying to look busy, when I returned to the office.
'Is he gone?' Lula wanted to know.
'Yeah.'
'Lord, he makes me nervous. He is so hot. I got flashes. Look at me. I'm having a flash. I'm not even in menopause, and I'm hot flashing.'
