“Yeah,” Lula said. “I need a grill. Not one of them gas grills, either.”
“I got a good selection of grills,” Pookey said. “Do you need to cook in it?”
“I’m entered in the barbecue contest at the park tomorrow,” Lula said.
“So then you need a barbecuing grill. That narrows the field. How about eating? Are you gonna personally eat any of the barbecue?”
“I don’t think so. I think the judges are eating the barbecue.”
“That gives us more selection,” Pookey said.
By the time Lula was done shopping at C.J. Scrap, she had a grill and a card table loaded into her truck. The plate on the truck was expired, but you could hardly tell for the mud and rust. I followed her down Stark and parked behind her when she stopped at Maynard’s Funeral Home.
“I gotta make a pickup here, too. You stay and guard the truck,” Lula said, sticking her head in the Buick’s window. “Bad as it is, if I leave it alone for ten minutes in this part of town, it’ll be missing wheels when I get back.” She looked at Grandma, sitting next to me. “Do you have your gun?”
“You betcha,” Grandma said. “I got it right here in my purse. Just like always.”
“Shoot whoever comes near,” Lula said to Grandma. “I won’t be long.”
I looked over at Grandma. “If you shoot anyone, I’m telling my mother on you.”
“How about those three guys coming down the street? Can I shoot them?”
“No! They’re just walking down the street.”
“I don’t like the looks of them,” Grandma said. “They look shifty.”
“Everyone looks like that on Stark Street.”
The three guys were in their early to mid-twenties, doing the ghetto strut in their ridiculous oversize pants. They were wearing a lot of gold chains, and one of them had a bottle in a brown paper bag. Always a sign of a classy dude.
I rolled my window up and locked my door, and Grandma did the same.
They got even with the Buick and looked in at me.
“Nice wheels,” one of them said. “Maybe you should get out and let me drive.”
“Ignore them,” I said to Grandma. “They’ll go away.”
The guy with the bottle took a pull on it and tried the door handle. Locked.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to shoot him?” Grandma asked.
“No. No shooting.”
They tried to rock the car, but the Buick was a tank. It would take more than three scrawny homies to rock the Buick. One of them dropped his pants and pressed his bare ass against the driver’s side window.
“You’re gonna have to Windex that window when we get home,” Grandma said.
I was looking at the funeral home, sending mental telepathy to Lula to get herself out to her truck, so we could leave, and I heard the back door to the Buick get wrenched open. I hadn’t thought to lock the back door.
One of the men climbed onto the backseat, and another reached around and unlocked the driver’s door. I reached for the ignition key, but my door was already open, and I was getting pulled out of the car. I hooked my arm through the steering wheel and kicked one of the guys in the face. The guy in the back was grabbing at me, and the third guy had hold of my foot.
“We’re gonna have fun with you and the old lady,” the guy in the backseat said. “We’re gonna do you like you’ve never been done before.”
“Shoot!” I said to Grandma.
“But you said…”
“Just fucking shoot someone!”
Grandma carried a gun like Dirty Harry’s. I caught sight of the massive barrel in my peripheral vision and BANG.
The guy holding my foot jumped back and grabbed the side of his head, blood spurting through his fingers. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Son of a fuckin’ bitch! She shot off my ear.”
I knew what he was saying because it was easy to read his lips, but I wasn’t hearing anything but a high- pitched ringing in my head.
The guy in the backseat scrambled out of the Buick and helped drag the guy with one ear down the street.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Grandma asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
The door to the funeral home opened, and Lula and a mountain of a guy came out carrying a bundle of what looked like aluminum poles partially wrapped in faded green canvas. They threw the bundle into the back of the truck, and the guy returned to the funeral home. Lula said something to Grandma and me, but I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I said.
“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 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-glass 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
