Not that long ago I needed a safe place to stay and sort of commandeered Ranger's apartment when he was out of town. Ranger had come home and found me sleeping in his bed like Goldilocks. He'd very graciously not thrown me out the seventh-floor window. And in fact he'd allowed me to stay with a minimum of sexual harassment. Okay, maybe minimum isn't entirely accurate. Maybe it was a seven on a scale of ten, but he hadn't forced the issue.
'How did you know I was here?' I asked him.
'I stopped at the bonds office, and Lula told me you were on a doughnut mission.'
'Where are you going?'
'Miami.'
'Is this business or pleasure?'
'It's bad business.'
Marjorie finished with her customer and made her way over to me. 'What'll it be?' she wanted to know.
'A dozen Boston Cream doughnuts.'
'Babe,' Ranger said.
'They're not all for me.'
Ranger doesn't often smile. Mostly he thinks about smiling, and this was one of those thinking smile times. He wrapped his hand around my wrist, pulled me to him and kissed me. The kiss was warm and short. No tongue in front of the bakery lady, thank God. He turned and walked away. Tank was idling at the curb in a black SUV. Ranger got in and they drove off.
Marjorie was behind the counter with a cardboard box in her hand and her mouth dropped open. 'Wow,' she said.
That dragged a sigh out of me because she was right. Ranger was definitely a wow. He stood half a head taller than me. He was perfectly toned muscle, and he had classic Latino good looks. He always smelled great. He dressed only in black. His skin was dark. His eyes were dark. His hair was dark. His life was dark. Ranger had lots of secrets.
'It's a work relationship,' I told Marjorie.
'If he was in here any longer the chocolate would have melted off the eclairs.'
'I don't like this,' Lula said. 'I wanted to go after the pervert. I personally think it's a bad choice to go after the guy who likes guns.'
'He's got the highest bond. The fastest way to dig Vinnie out of the hole is to get the guy with the highest bond.'
We were in Lula's red Firebird, sitting across the street from Lonnie Johnson's last known address. It was a small clapboard bungalow in a depressed neighborhood that backed up to the hockey arena. It was close to noon and not a great time to roust a bad guy. If he's still in bed, it's because he's drunk and mean. If he's not in bed, it's most likely because he's at a bar getting drunk and mean.
'What's the plan?' Lula wanted to know. 'We gonna just bust in like gangsta bounty hunters and kick his ass?'
I looked at Lula. 'Have we ever done that?'
'Don't mean we can't.'
'We'd look like idiots. We're incompetent.'
'That's harsh,' Lula said. 'And I don't think we're completely incompetent. I think we're closer to eighty percent incompetent. Remember the time you wrestled that naked greased-up fat guy? You did a good job with that one.'
'Too early in the day to do the pizza delivery routine,' I said.
'Can't do the flower delivery either. Nobody believe someone sending flowers to this dope.'
'If you hadn't changed clothes you could do the hooker delivery routine,' I said to Lula. 'He would have opened the door to you in that gold thing.'
'Maybe we pretend we're selling cookies. Like Girl Scouts. All we gotta do is go back to the 7-Eleven and get some cookies.'
I looked Johnson's phone number up on the bond sheet and called him from my cell.
'Yeah?' a man said.