“Does it get boring? Do you have to sit here all day?”
“Yeah, I guess sometimes it's a little boring. But everyone's nice to me and I get to do all the things I like. I can play with my action figures and read comics and play games on the computer. It isn't like I'm mentally retarded . . . it's just that I screw up a lot. The truth is, I'm not real interested in making thingamabobs.”
“What would you like to do?”
He shrugged. “I don't know. I guess I'd like to be Spider-?Man.”
Too bad Clyde wasn't older. He'd be perfect for Grandma Mazur.
Lula was sound asleep with the driver's seat tipped back when I returned to the car. I jumped in and locked my door and nudged Lula.
“Hey,” I said. “You're supposed to be on lookout.”
Lula sat up and stretched. “There wasn't anything to see. And I got sleepy after eating all that chicken. I ate the whole thing. I even ate the skin. I love skin. And you know how all other diets tell you not to eat the skin? Well, guess what? I'm doing the skin diet now, girlfriend.”
“That's great. Let's get out of here.”
“Something happen in there to make you in such a rush to take off?”
“Just feeling antsy.”
“Fine by me. Where we going next?”
I didn't know. I was out of leads. Out of ideas. Out of courage. “Let's go back to the office.”
Lula and I saw the black truck simultaneously. It was parked in front of Vinnie's office. It was a new Dodge Ram. It didn't have a speck of dust on it. It had bug lights on the cab, oversize tires, and a license plate that was probably made in someone's basement. Ranger drove a variety of cars. All of them were black. All were new. All were expensive. And all were of dubious origin. The Ram was his favorite.
“Be still my beating heart,” Lula said. “Does my hair look okay? Am I starting to drool?”
I wasn't nearly so excited. I suspected he was waiting for me. And I worried that it wasn't going to be a good conversation.
I followed Lula into the office. Connie was at her desk, head down, furiously shuffling papers. Vinnie's door was closed. Ranger was slouched in a chair, elbows on the arms, fingers steepled in front of him, his eyes dark and intense, watching us.
I smiled at Ranger. “Yo,” I said.
He smiled back but he didn't yo.
“We're just checking in,” I said to Connie, leaning on the front of her desk. “Do you have anything for me?”
“I have slaps piling up on my desk,” Connie said, “but Vinnie doesn't want anyone even looking at them until Singh is found.”
“No calls? No messages?”
Ranger unfolded himself and crossed the room, standing close behind me, sucking me into his force field. “We need to talk.”
A flash of heat rippled through my stomach. Ranger always evoked a mixture of emotion. Usually that mixture was attraction followed by a mental eye roll.
“Sure,” I said.
“Now. Outside.”
Lula scurried behind the file cabinets and Connie bent into the nonsense paper shuffling. No one wanted to get caught in the line of fire when Ranger was in a mood. I followed Ranger out the door to the sidewalk and stood blinking in the sun.
“Get into the truck,” Ranger said. “I feel like driving.”
“I don't think so.”
The line of his mouth tightened.