Ranger beeped the security system off on his Bronco. “Let's move.”
“Me too!” Lula yelled, backing into a parking space, cutting her engine. “Hold on for me.”
We all piled into Ranger's Bronco, and Ranger took off for Sixth Street.
“I bet Old Penis Nose is gonna pop someone,” Lula said. “I bet he's got someone all lined up.”
I told Lula about the four bodies in Mo's basement.
“When a man's got a nose looks like a penis he's likely to do anything,” Lula said. “It's the sort of thing makes serial killers out of otherwise normal people.”
I thought chances were pretty good that Mo was involved in the killing of the men in his cellar. I didn't think his nose had anything to do with it. I thought about Cameron Brown and Leroy Watkins and Ronald Anders. All dead drug dealers. And then I wondered if the men buried in Mo's basement would turn out to be dealers, too. “Maybe Mo's a vigilante,” I said. More to hear it said out loud than anything else. And I was thinking that maybe he wasn't alone in his vigilantism. Maybe there was a whole pack of them, running around in ski masks and coveralls, threatening and killing whoever they deemed to be a danger to society.
Lula repeated the word. “Vigilante.”
“Someone who takes the law into his own hands,” I said.
“Hunh. I guess I know what it means. You're telling me Mo is like Zorro and Robin Hood. Only Old Penis Nose don't just slash a
big Z in a man's shirt. Old Penis Nose scatters brains halfway across a room in his pursuit of justice.” She paused for a moment, thinking it through. “Probably Zorro blew a few heads apart, too. They don't tell you everything in a movie, you know. Probably after Zorro ruined your shirt he cut off your balls. Or maybe he made a Z on your stomach and all your guts fell out. I heard you could cut open a person's stomach, and his guts could all be hanging out onto the floor and he could live for hours like that.”
I was riding shotgun beside Ranger. I slid my eyes in his direction, but he was in his zone, doing eighty between cross streets. Foot to the brake, jerk to a stop, giving the ABS a good test, look both ways. Foot to the floor on the accelerator.
“So what do you think?” Lula asked. “You think Zorro got off on shit like that? Making people look at their guts hanging out?”
My lips parted, but no words came out.
Ranger turned onto Main and then onto Sixth. This was a neighborhood of board and shingle row houses with stoops for porches and sidewalk for front yard. The houses were narrow and dark-sullen patchworks of brown and black and maroon. Originally built for immigrant factory workers, the houses were now predominantly occupied by struggling minorities. Most houses had been converted to rooming houses and apartments.
“Who lives in the house across from you?” Ranger asked Lula.
“A bunch of people,” Lula said. “Mostly they come and go. Vanessa Long lives on the first floor, and you never know which of her kids is needing to stay there. Almost always her daughter, Tootie, and Tootie's three kids. Harold sometimes lives there. Old Mrs. Clayton lives on the other side of the hall. There are three rooms on the second floor. Not sure who's in those rooms. They let out weekly. Used to be Earl Bean lived in one, but I haven seen him lately.”
Ranger parked two houses down. “The third floor?”
“Nothing but an attic up there. Crazy Jim Katts lives in it. My guess is Mo was going to see someone on the second floor. It isn't like it's a crack house or anything over there, but when you rent weekly you never know what you get. You probably want to talk to Vanessa. She collects the rent. She knows everything goes on. Her apartment's on the left side when you walk in the door.”
Ranger scanned the street. “Mo come in a car?”
“You mean the car he stole from you? Nope. I looked, but I didn't see it. I didn't see any strange cars. Only cars I see were ones that belong.”
“You stay here,” Ranger said to Lula. He gave an almost imperceptible nod in my direction. “You come with me.”
He was wearing black sweatpants and a black hooded sweatshirt. So far as I could tell he'd never broken a sweat during the run. I, on the other hand, started sweating at the quarter-mile mark. My clothes were soaked through, my hair was stuck to my face in ringlets and my legs felt rubbery. I angled out of the car and did a little jig on the sidewalk, trying to keep warm.
“We'll talk to Vanessa,” Ranger said. “And we'll look around. You have anything on you?”
I shook my head, no.
“No gun?”
“No gun. Everything's in my pocketbook, and I left my pocketbook at my parents' house.”
Ranger looked grim. “Is the gun loaded?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Your granny'll be doing target practice, shooting the eyes out of the potatoes.”