“Superheroes are make-believe.”
“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “What about God?”
“Hmmmm.”
Ranger did a couple more laps and veered from the track.
Lula and I jumped off the bench and followed in his footsteps. We collapsed in a heap two miles later, in front of my building.
“Bet you could run forever,” Lula said to Ranger, gasping and wheezing. “Bet you got muscles that feel like iron.”
“Man of steel,” Ranger said.
Lula sent me a knowing look.
“Well, this has been fun,” I said to everybody. “But I'm out of here.”
“I could use a ride,” Lula said to Ranger. “The police still have my car. Maybe you could give me a ride on your way home. Of course I don't want to inconvenience you. I wouldn't want you to go out of your way.” She took a momentary pause. “Just exactly where do you live?” she asked Ranger.
Ranger pressed his security remote and the doors clicked open on the Bronco. He motioned to Lula. “Get in.”
Ricardo Carlos Manoso. Master of the two-syllable sentence. Superhero at large.
I hooked Lula by the crook of her arm before she took off. “What's your schedule like today?”
“Like any other day.”
“If you get a chance maybe you could check some fastfood restaurants for me. I don't want you to spend all day at it, but if you go out for coffee break or lunch keep your eyes open for Stuart Baggett. He has to be working somewhere in the area. My guess is he'll go to what feels familiar.”
An hour later I was on the road, canvassing eateries, doing my part. I figured Lula would stay close to the office, so I took Hamilton Township. I was on Route 33 when my cell phone chirped.
“I found him!” Lula shouted at me. “I took early lunch, and I went to a couple places on account of everyone in the office wanted something different, and I found him! Mr. Cute-as-abutton is serving up chicken now.”
“Where?”
“The Cluck in a Bucket on Hamilton.”
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“You still there?”
“Hell yes,” Lula said. “And I didn't let him see me either. I'm holed up in a phone booth.”
“Don't move!”
I make lots of mistakes. I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times. This time around, Stuart Baggett would be trussed up like a Christmas goose for his trip to the lockup.
I floored the Buick and roared off for Hamilton Avenue. The money involved in Baggett's capture was now low on my motivating factors list. Baggett had made me look and feel like an idiot. I didn't want revenge. Revenge isn't a productive emotion. I simply wanted to succeed. I wanted to regain some professional pride. Of course, after I restored my professional pride I'd be happy to take the recovery money.
Cluck in a Bucket was a couple blocks past Vinnie's office. It was a brand-new link in a minichain and still in its grand opening stage. I'd driven by and gawked at the big chicken sign but hadn't yet indulged in a bucket of cluck.
I could see the glow from the franchise a block away. The one-story blocky little building had been painted yellow inside and out. At night light spilled from the big plate-glass windows, and a spot played on the seven-foot-tall plastic chicken that was impaled on a rotating pole in the parking lot.
I parked at the back of the Cluck in a Bucket lot and decked myself out in my bounty hunter gear. Cuffs stuffed into one jacket pocket; defense spray in the other. Stun gun clipped to the waistband of my sweats. Smith & Wesson forgotten in the rush, left lying on my bedside table.
Lula was waiting for me just outside the front entrance. “There he is,” she said. “He's the one handing out paper chicken hats to the kiddies.”
It was Stuart Baggett all right . . . dressed up in a big fat chicken suit, wearing a chicken hat. He did a chicken dance for a family, flapping his elbows, wagging his big chicken butt. He made some squawking sounds and gave each of the kids a yellow-and-red cardboard hat.