with Ranger.
Ranger’s cell phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. “I have to go,” he said. “Tank and Ramon are expecting you. Ramon will bring you up to speed and then you should be able to take over. You know the drill.” His eyes moved from my face to the towel and then back to my face. “Tempting,” he said. And he left.
TWO
I DRIED MY hair and put on makeup that stopped just short of slut. I dressed in black jeans and one of the black V-neck stretchy girl-type T-shirts I had left from my last stint at Rangeman. I topped the T-shirt with a black Rangeman hooded sweatshirt, grabbed my bag, and headed out.
I stopped at the bonds office on my way to Rangeman. Connie was alone when I walked in.
“Oh crap,” Connie said, eyeballing my outfit. “You aren’t quitting again, are you?”
“No. The Rangeman job is temporary.”
“What about the stack of skips I gave you last week?”
“Ranger is going to help me.”
“My lucky day,” Connie said.
“Have you heard anything from Lula?”
“She called to say she was on her way back to the office, and she had a bucket of chicken.”
That was worth the wait. I could get lunch at Rangeman, but it would be tuna salad on multigrain bread, and it would be made with fat-free mayo. And for dessert, I could score an apple. Ranger encouraged healthy eating. Truth is, Ranger was a tyrant. If you worked at Rangeman, you had to be physically strong, mentally tough, loyal without question, and survive random drug tests. I was exempt from all those things, and that was a good deal, because the only one I could fly through was the drug test.
I saw Morelli’s green SUV pull to the curb and make a Lula drop. Lula slammed the passenger-side door closed and waved Morelli off as best she could considering her arms were filled with fast-food buckets and bags and drink holders. She used her ass to push open the door to the bonds office and crossed to Connie’s desk to dump her food.
“I got that done and over,” Lula said. “And it wasn’t so bad as I expected, on account of while I was there the head came in, so that speeded up a lot of stuff.”
Connie leaned forward a little. “The head came in?”
“Yeah. One of the camera dudes at the television station went outside to smoke, and when he opened the back door, he saw a head sitting by the Dumpster. And here’s the best part. This guy recognized the head right off. Turns out the head belongs to Stanley Chipotle.”
“The celebrity chef?”
“Yep. He’s on The Food Channel all the time. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize him. Guess I’m used to seeing him in his chef’s clothes. You know how he wears that puffy chef hat, and lately, he’s always got on the red apron advertising his barbecue sauce. Anyway, they brought the head in, and I identified it, and then Morelli said I could go home.” Lula opened the bucket of chicken and dug in. “Help yourself,” she said. “There’s plenty.”
Connie poked around in the bucket, looking for a recognizable chicken part. “What was Chipotle doing in Trenton? Did anyone know?”
“The camera dude said Chipotle was supposed to be in a big-deal national barbecue cook-off that’s gonna be held at Gooser Park. He was gonna be talking about it on the station’s cooking show this afternoon, but since only his head showed up, they got someone from Dawn Diner to make rice pudding instead.”
“Chipotle’s famous for his barbecue sauce,” Connie said.
I polished off a mystery chicken part and selected another. I was out of the loop. I never watched The Food Channel, and I didn’t do a lot of cooking. Mostly, I mooched food from my parents.
“What are you doing dressed up like Rangegirl?” Lula asked me.
“I’m temporarily filling in on a desk job.” I glanced at my watch. “I need to run. Ramon is waiting for me.”
Rangeman is housed in a small office building on a side street in center city Trenton. The inside has been renovated into a high-tech, self-contained, secure corporate Batcave that operates 24/7. Ranger’s private apartment occupies the top floor. Ella and Louis live on the sixth floor. The control room, dining area, and assorted offices are located on the fifth floor. And the remaining space is given over to efficiency apartments made available to some of the Rangeman employees, a gym, a gun range, meeting rooms,