Barnhardt. You gave her Maxine Nowicki. How could you do that? Nowicki is my case."
"You weren't having any luck with it, so I figured what the hell, let Joyce take a shot at it, too."
"I know how Joyce got that case," I said. "And I'm going to tell your wife."
"You tell my wife, and she'll tell her father, and I'll be dead. And then you know where you'll be? Unemployed."
"He got a point there," Lula said. "We all be unemployed."
"I want her off the case. Lula and I had Maxine in custody, and Joyce barged in with the slut troop and screwed everything up."
"Okay, okay," Vinnie said. "I'll talk to her."
"You're going to take Nowicki away from her."
"Yeah."
"Sally called and said he was going to the bar tonight," I told Lula. "Do you want to come, too?"
"Sure, I don't want to miss any of the fun."
"Need a ride?"
"Not me," Lula said. "I got a new car." Her eyes slid past me to the front door. "What I need now is a man to put in it. He got a name on him, too."
Connie and I swiveled to look. It was Ranger, dressed in black, hair slicked into a ponytail, small gold hoop earring shining like the sun.
"Yo," Ranger said. He stared at me for a moment and smiled. He raised his eyebrows. "Morelli?"
"Shit," I said. "This is embarrassing."
"Came by to get the papers on Thompson," Ranger said to Connie.
Connie handed him a folder. "Good luck."
"Who's Thompson?"
"Norvil Thompson," Ranger said. "Stuck up a liquor store. Took four hundred dollars and change and a quart of Wild Turkey. Started celebrating in the parking lot where he parked his car, passed out and was found by a parking attendant who called the police. Didn't show up for his court date."
"Like always," Connie said.
"He's done this before?"
"Twice."
Ranger signed his part of the contract, passed it back to Connie and looked over at me. "Want to help me round up this cowboy?"
"He isn't going to shoot at me, is he?"
"Ah," Ranger said, "if only it was that simple."
Ranger was driving a new black Range Rover. Ranger's cars were always black. They were always new. They were always expensive. And they were always of dubious origin. I never asked Ranger where he got his cars. And he never asked me my weight.
We cut through center city and turned right onto Stark Street. Ranger cruised past the auto body and the gym into a neighborhood of blighted row houses. It was midday, and welfare mothers and kids were on the stoops, looking for relief from the sweltering interiors of their airless rooms.
I leafed through the file to familiarize myself with Thompson. Black male, 5'9", 175 pounds, age sixty-four. Respiratory problems. That meant we couldn't use pepper spray.
Ranger parked in front of a three-story brick building. Gang slogans were spray-painted on the stoop and under the two firstfloor windows. Fast-food flotsam had banked against the curb and crumpled wrappers littered the sidewalk. The entire neighborhood smelled like a big bean burrito.
"This guy isn't as dangerous as he looks on the sheet," Ranger said. "Mostly he's a pain in the ass. He's always drunk, so it doesn't do any good to threaten him with a gun. He's got asthma, so we can't spray him. And he's old, so you look like a fool if you beat him to a pulp. What we want to do is cuff him and carry him out. That's why you're along. Takes two to carry him out."
Wonderful.
Two women were sitting two doors down. "You coming after old Norvil?" the one asked. "He run his bail again?"
Ranger raised his arm in acknowledgment. "Hey, Regina, how's it going?"
"Picking up now that you're here." She swiveled her head to the ground-level open window. "Yo, Deborah," she hollered. "Ranger's here. Gonna give us some entertainment."
Ranger moved into the building and started climbing the stairs. "Third floor," he said.
I was getting an uncomfortable feeling about this apprehension. "What did she mean . . . entertainment?"
Ranger was on the second-floor landing. "There are two tenants on the third floor. Thompson is on the left. One room and bath. Only one way out. He should be at home at this time of day. Regina would have told me if she'd seen him leave."
"I get the feeling there's something else I should know about this guy."
Ranger was halfway up the third flight of stairs. "Only that he's freaking nuts. And if he whips his dick out to take a leak, stand back.