Ranger shrugged. 'I found out I could survive a beating. And I learned to be quick, and to watch my back, and to fight dirty.'
'All good skills,' I said.
'For street thugs and bounty hunters.'
'I thought you lived in Miami for a while.'
'When I was fourteen I got arrested for stealing a car and spent some time in juvie. When I got out, my parents sent me to Miami to live with my grandmother. I went to high school in Miami. I moved back to Jersey to take a shot at college, and then I came back when I got out of the army.'
Ranger found a place at the curb in front of a deli. 'My parents live on the next block,' Ranger said. 'This neighborhood we're in right now really isn't so bad. It's actually the Cuban equivalent to the Burg. Problem is, you have to go through the bad neighborhood to get anywhere, including the school.'
Ranger clipped a little gizmo onto my jeans waistband. 'Panic button. If you have a problem, just push it, and I'll come to you. I want you to take the photo you got from my computer and see if someone knows this guy. He has to have some association with me.'
'All the signs are in Spanish. Will I be able to talk to anyone?'
'Everyone speaks English. Except for my Grandma Rosa, and we're going to try hard not to run into her.'
I left Ranger sitting in the SUV and took the pic
ture into the deli. It was a little mom-and-pop business. A butcher in the back behind a glass case filled with sausages and pork roasts and chicken parts. Shelves filled with sacks of rice, spices, cereals, canned goods. Baskets of vegetables. More shelves with breads and packaged cakes and cookies.
A middle-aged woman was at the register. I waited for her to check out a customer before introducing myself.
'I'm looking for this man,' I said, showing her the photo. 'Do you know him?'
'Yes, I know him,' the woman behind the counter said. 'This is Carlos Manoso.'
'No,' I said to her. 'I know Carlos, and this isn't him.'
I showed the picture to the butcher and to a woman waiting to have a pork roast boned and rolled. They both thought it was Carlos Manoso, the man the police were looking for. They said they'd seen his photo on television.
It was close to noon when I returned to the green Explorer. My nose was sunburned, and I had sweat running in a river down my breastbone.
'Nothing,' I said to Ranger. 'Everyone thinks it's you.'
Ranger looked at the picture. 'I need to get back to the gym.'
'It's not the body. It's the clothes and the face. He's spent some time studying you. He's got the clothes down. And he's had his hair cut like yours. Hard to tell from this picture if the skin tone is the same or if he's tanned himself to mimic your coloring.'
'This is the third day, and I still haven't got anything,' Ranger said. 'We worked Miami really hard. Mostly talking to relatives and neighbors, going with the idea that he knew me, that he was close enough to someone in my circle to know about Julie.'
'Is this the first you've started looking in Jersey?'
'We went to relatives and friends right away. This is the first neighborhood search. And this is the only neighborhood where he'd pick up information on Julie. It would have to come from one of my relatives. No one in Trenton knew.'
'Okay, so we seem to be at a dead end on the Ranger connection. Let's go in another direction. He married Carmen Cruz from Springfield, Virginia, and he set up an office in Arlington. Maybe that's where he originates. Not in Arlington but close enough to feel comfortable with the area. Maybe we should talk to Carmen's parents.'
Ranger put the SUV in gear and called Tank. 'Run Carmen Cruz in Springfield, Virginia, and get Stephanie and me on a train out of Newark going to northern Virginia. I'll be traveling as Marc Pardo.'
'Stolen identity?' I asked him.
'No. It's all mine.'
'Wouldn't it be faster to fly?'
'I can't take a gun on a plane.'
Ranger left the green SUV in the train station parking lot. Good luck with that one. One of his guys was supposed to pick it up, but I was giving it a half hour tops before it was on the way to a chop shop.