stood up on my arms.
His partner was trying to sight his gun on Lula. “For crying out loud, get out of the way and let me shoot her. Big deal, you’re a butcher. Get over it.”
The guy with the cleaver swung out at Lula, giggling the whole time. Lula ducked, and the cleaver got stuck in the wall.
Lula scrambled hands and knees under a table, around an overstuffed chair, out her door, and thundered down the stairs.
The killers ran after Lula, not even noticing Grandma and me standing with our eyes bugged out and our mouths open.
“Don’t that beat all,” Grandma said.
She hauled her.45 long-barrel out of her big black patent-leather purse, stepped into the hall, planted her feet, and squeezed off a couple shots at the two guys running down the stairs.
The gorilla guys disappeared out the front door, into the night. There was the sound of car doors opening and slamming shut. An engine caught, and I heard the car drive away. A moment later, Lula appeared at the front door. She had a bunch of leaves stuck in her hair and a big dirt smudge on her wraparound blouse.
“What happened?” she said. “I don’t hardly remember anything except I fell in a big bush.”
“It was the killers,” Grandma said. “We kicked their asses.”
“Oh yeah. Now it’s all coming back to me.” Lula climbed the stairs and sleepwalked through her door. “It’s a nightmare,” she said. “It’s a friggin’ nightmare.”
Grandma rooted through Lula’s cabinets in the little kitchenette area of the room and came up with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She took a pull from the bottle and handed it over to Lula. “This’ll fix you up,” Grandma said. “Take a snort of this.”
Lula chugged some Jack Daniel’s and looked a little better. “This is bullshit,” she said. “This gotta end.”
TEN
I TOOK GRANDMA home, and then I drove to my apartment building and walked Lula into the apartment.
“Smells like barbecue in here,” Lula said.
It looked like barbecue.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked Lula.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m gonna hang my Dolly Parton dress and sweater up and get to work. I want to be working when Larry gets here.”
“You should call Morelli.”
“I guess, but I don’t see where it does any good.”
“He’s working on finding these guys, and it gives him a more complete picture.” And most important, it probably annoys the hell out of him and interrupts whatever he’s doing.
“What’s with you two?” Lula said. “Are you really calling it quits?”
“Hard to say. Every time we see each other we get into an argument. We don’t agree on anything.”
“Sounds to me like you’re talkin’ about the wrong things. Why don’t you talk about other things? Like you could make a list of things you won’t fight over and then you only talk about those things.”
“I think he might be seeing Joyce Barnhardt.”
“What?” Lula’s eyes almost popped out of her head. “I hate Joyce Barnhardt. She’s Devil Woman. And she’s a skank. Men have relations with her and their dicks fall off. If I was you, and I found out Morelli was foolin’ around with Joyce Barnhardt, I’d drop-kick his ass clear across the state.”
I wrapped my arms around the hamster cage. “I’m taking Rex to Rangeman while you clean the kitchen.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lula said. “We don’t want to traumatize him with cleaning fumes. And he might not want to see a giant hairy man in a turquoise cocktail dress. I’m not sure I even want to see it.”
I SET REX’S cage on the counter in Ranger’s kitchen and scrubbed the barbecue sauce off the glass sides.
“This is temporary,” I said to Rex. “Don’t get attached to Ranger. I know he’s strong and sexy. And I know he smells nice, and he has good food, and his apartment is always the right temperature. Problem is, he’s got secrets. And he’s not in the market for a wife. Okay, so the wife thing might not be a deal breaker since I’m having commitment issues anyway, but the secrets he carries are troublesome.”
I gave Rex fresh water and a chunk of bread, and I poured myself a glass of red wine. I took the wine into Ranger’s small den, got comfy on the couch, and clicked the television on. I watched an hour-long show on Spain on the Travel Channel, and after that I couldn’t find anything of interest. I dropped one of Ranger’s T-shirts over my head by way of pajamas, crawled between his orgasmic sheets, and couldn’t decide if I wanted him to come home early or stay away until morning.
I CAME AWAKE with a start, not knowing where I was for a moment, and then remembering. Ranger’s bed. I looked at the clock. 6:20 A.M. The light was on in the bathroom. Ranger emerged, still dressed in Rangeman tactical gear. He came to his side of the bed and kicked his shoes off.
“Either get out of the bed or else take your clothes off,” he said. “I’m not in a mood to compromise.”
“You’ve been working for eighteen hours. You’re supposed to be tired.”
“I’m not that tired.” He removed his watch and set it on the bedside chest. “I saw Rex in the kitchen. Is this going to be an extended stay?”
“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
