or casual. I went with casual and gathered together the same outfit he was wearing when he walked in.
There was a time a while ago when I searched for underwear in Ranger’s dressing room and found just one pair of silky black boxers. Today, he had a drawer full of underwear. Boxers, bikini briefs, and boxer briefs. I closed my eyes and grabbed and came up with boxer briefs.
I brought the clothes to the open bathroom door in time to see Ranger strip off the last of his wet clothes.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you.”
“Babe, you’ve seen it all before.”
“Yeah, but not lately.”
“So far as I know, nothing has changed.” He pulled the briefs on and arranged himself. “If I had more time, I’d let you figure that out for yourself.” He removed his watch and tossed it to me. “Set this out to dry and get me a new one. Top drawer in the chest in my dressing room.”
I brought him the exact duplicate of the watch he’d discarded, plus I handed him socks and shoes.
“On my desk in the den I have a list of items taken from all the break-ins. I’d like you to take a look at it. Plus, I have a map with the houses marked. I haven’t been able to find anything significant, but maybe something will jump out at you.” He finished lacing his shoes and stood. “I also have a list of every man in the building, his position, and his background. I’d like you to read through it.”
I followed him to the door and watched him take his keys from the sideboard and pocket them. He pushed me to the wall, leaned in to me, and kissed me. “Later,” he said, his lips brushing against mine. And he left.
It was a really great kiss, and if he’d said now, I might have been in trouble, but after a couple beats, when my heart had stopped jumping around in my chest and I wasn’t pressed up against Ranger, I decided later was a scary idea.
I took the break-in and employee information down to the fifth floor, grabbed a sandwich from the kitchen, and went to my cubby. After a couple minutes, I realized my cubby didn’t give me the privacy I needed, so I commandeered Ranger’s office. The items taken were similar in all the houses. Jewelry, cash, iPods, laptop computers, handheld electronic games. The map showed the houses in three different neighborhoods. I saw nothing to tie them together. I was about a third of the way through the men’s employment files when Ranger came in.
“I expected you’d stay in my apartment,” Ranger said.
“I was worried about the later thing.”
“And you think moving from my apartment to my office will save you?”
“I’m doing good so far.”
Ranger slouched into a chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Is this move into my office permanent?”
“Is that a possibility?”
“No.”
I looked around. “It’s a really nice office. It has a window.”
The corners of Ranger’s mouth curved into the beginnings of a smile. “Would you like to negotiate for this office?”
“No, but I’d like to stay here until I finish reading. I have no privacy in my cubicle.”
“Deal,” Ranger said. “When you’re done reading, I’d like you to find a way to talk to the four men who have access to the computer that holds the codes. Roger King, Martin Romeo, Chester Deuce, and Sybo Diaz. I don’t want you to interrogate them. I just want you to make a fast character assessment. Chester Deuce is on the desk until six o’clock. Sybo Diaz will take the next six-hour shift. Romeo goes on at midnight. You should be able to catch him in the kitchen early afternoon. He occupies one of the Rangeman apartments and prefers Ella’s cooking to his own.”
“Okeydokey,” I said. “I’m on it.”
It was almost four when I finished reading. Ranger’s men were a motley group, chosen for specific skills and strength of character over other more mundane attributes such as lack of a criminal record. From what I could tell, Ranger employed safecrackers, pickpockets, computer hackers, linebackers, and a bunch of vets who’d served overseas. He also had on his payroll a second-story burglar who the papers compared to Spider-Man, and a guy whose murder conviction was overturned on a technicality. I wouldn’t want to be caught in a blind alley with any of these guys, but Ranger found something in each of them that inspired his trust. At least until a couple weeks ago.
I pulled two men out of the group for a closer look. One of them was Sybo Diaz, the evening monitor for the code computer. He was with Special Forces in Afghanistan and took a job as a rent-a-cop in a mall when he got out. His wife divorced him two months later. His wife’s maiden name was Marion Manoso. She was Ranger’s cousin. I didn’t know the details of the divorce, but I thought there was the potential for some bad feelings. The other file I pulled was Vince Gomez. Vince wasn’t one of the men with code computer access, but he caught my attention. He was a slim little guy with the flexibility of a Romanian acrobat. The inside joke was that he could crawl through a keyhole. He did system installation and troubleshooting for Ranger. I flagged him because he lived beyond his means. I’d seen him around, and I knew he drove an expensive car, and when he wasn’t working he wore expensive jewelry and designer clothes. And he liked the ladies, a lot.
I left the paperwork in Ranger’s office and returned to my desk. I worked at my computer for a half hour and wandered out to the kitchen. No one there, so I stopped in at the monitoring station and smiled at Chester Deuce.
“I’ve always wondered what you guys did out here,” I said to him.
“There are always three of us on duty,” he said. “Someone monitors the cars and responds to the men off-site. Someone watches the in-house video and is responsible for maintaining building integrity. And I watch the remote locations and respond to emergency calls and alarms.”
“So if an alarm went off, what would you do?”
“I’d call the client and ask if they were okay, and then I’d ask for their password.”
“How do you know if they give you the right password?”
“I have the information in an off-line computer.”
I looked at the computer sitting to his right. “I guess it has to be off-line for security purposes.”
He shrugged. “More that there’s no reason for it to be on-line.”
I returned to my desk and packed up. I had seven messages on my phone. All were from Lula, starting at three this afternoon. All the messages were pretty much the same.
“You gotta be on time for supper at your mama’s house tonight,” Lula said. “Your granny and me got a big surprise.”
Thoughts of the big surprise had me rolling my eyes and grimacing.
Ranger appeared in my doorway. “Babe, you look like you want to jump off a bridge.”
“I’m expected for dinner at my parents’ house again. Grandma and Lula are taking another crack at barbecue.”
“Has Lula had any more contact with the Chipotle hitmen?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t mention anything in her messages.”
“Keep your eyes open when you’re with her.”
MY FATHER WAS slouched in his chair in front of the television when I walked in.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He cut his eyes to me, murmured something that sounded like just shoot me now, and refocused on the screen.
My mother was alone in the kitchen, alternately pacing and chopping. Everywhere I looked there were pots of chopped-up green beans, carrots, celery, potatoes, turnips, yellow squash, and tomatoes. Usually when my mother was stressed, she ironed. Today she seemed to be chopping.
“Run out of ironing?” I asked her.
“I ironed everything yesterday. I have nothing left.”
“Where’s Lula and Grandma?”
“They’re out back.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know,” my mother said. “I’m afraid to look.”
