“I hear you tried to kill Eddie Gazarra,” she said to me. “I think that’s terrible.”
“I didn’t try to kill him,” I said. “Lula accidentally hit his cop car. Eddie wasn’t anywhere near it.”
“Such a nice young man,” Mrs. Morganstern said. “I hope they give him another car.”
I carted my stuff back to my SUV and drove home. It was late afternoon, and the old folks who lived in my apartment building had taken all the good spots close to the back door. A lot of the spots were designated handicapped. Getting a handicapped card in Jersey is a badge of honor. You get to screw the system because you aren’t really all that handicapped and at the same time you get a good parking place.
My hamster, Rex, was asleep in his soup can when I put the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. I tapped on his cage and told him I got Froot Loops, but he didn’t come out.
“Your loss, Mister,” I said.
Rex knew it wasn’t a loss. Rex knew he’d get the Froot Loops on his terms. This was pretty much true for all the males in my life . . . rodents and otherwise.
I put the stuff away, and someone knocked on my door. I looked out the peephole and didn’t see anyone. More knocking. I looked down and saw Randy Briggs.
Damn.
“I know you’re in there,” Briggs yelled. “I can hear you breathing.”
I opened the door and looked out at him. “Now what?” I asked.
“You gonna let me in?”
I stepped back. “I suppose.”
“Boy, that’s generous. I come to visit you, and you got all this enthusiasm. I’m fuckin’ overwhelmed.”
“I’m sort of busy.”
“Oh yeah? Doing what?” He looked around. “I don’t see anything going on here.”
“Is there an actual reason for this visit?”
“I’m getting to it,” Briggs said. “I was just opening up the visit with some polite chitchat. How do you like the weather we’re having? Blah, blah, blah.”
I stared down at him. “And?”
“And I’m doing this project with Lula. We’re auditioning for some television shows. Shooting some reels.”
“I heard.”
“Did you also hear that they’re crap? She overacts on everything. And she’s a screen hog. All you see is Lula, Lula, Lula. And between you and me, when you get the clothes off her she’s not a pretty sight. You ever seen her naked?” He shook his head. “Not good.”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“I thought you could talk to her. Explain to her that no one wants to see her fatness all over the screen. People are going to want to see me. I’m hot. And I’m little. Everyone wants to see hot little guys.”
“I don’t.”
“And the other thing is I thought of a good angle. Every week it’s the same thing on Naked and Afraid. It’s a guy and some girl, right? So I’m thinking it would be more interesting if it was a guy and two girls. Get a little action going. Girl on girl and two girls on the guy.”
“That would be the porno version of the show.”
“Not necessarily. They always fuzzy out the private parts of the girl and the guy, so it’s not like you’d see any of the good stuff.”
“Have you talked to Lula about this?”
“No. I wanted to run it by you first. Give you first crack at it since you and Lula are so tight. And you’re not real fat, so you wouldn’t take up the whole frame.”
“You want me to be the second naked woman?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
Briggs looked shocked. “What do you mean, no? It’s the chance of a lifetime. It could make you into a big TV star.”
“No. Not going to happen. No way. No how. Never.”
“You’re going to pass up a chance to get naked with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Briggs asked.
“You’re cranky and disgusting.”
“Okay, but besides that.”
I pointed to the open door. “Go!”
“Aren’t you going to offer me something to drink?”
“No.”
“You got a lot to learn about hospitality,” Briggs said.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and handed it to him.
“No wine?” he asked.
“You do realize that I have a loaded gun in this kitchen?”
“Your gun is never loaded,” Briggs said. “You never even have any bullets. You keep the stupid thing in the cookie jar. You’d do better to throw your gun away and fill the jar with Oreos. At least you could offer your guests a cookie.”
I gave him my squinty eye. “Don’t push it.”
He returned the squinty eye and left.
The lights from Ranger’s black Porsche 911 Turbo swung into my parking lot precisely at 11:30 P.M. I was waiting in the lobby and, as always, I got a small rush when I caught sight of the car.
The car and the driver were perfectly matched. Lots of power and agility. Wicked fast. Dark. Sexy. Totally desirable and unobtainable. At least they were unobtainable for me. I couldn’t afford a Porsche, and hitching my life to Ranger would also come with a high price.
I left the building, got into the car, and Ranger silently drove out of the lot and headed for north Trenton.
“Do you have any new information on the Bogart Bar man?” I asked.
“Arnold Zigler. Forty-two years old. Divorced. No kids. A sister in Scranton. Parents are deceased. Most of his co-workers seemed to like him. He’d been with the company for ten years as head of human resources.”
“And the co-workers who didn’t like him?”
“Nothing serious. No death threats. Mostly indifference. I haven’t talked to any of them personally. This information has all come from Harry Bogart. You’ll have a chance to find out more tomorrow when you mingle.”
“I have to mingle?”
“Babe, I’m not putting you in there because you’re good at making ice cream.”
“I’m not sure I’m a good mingler.”
“How much am I paying you?”
“You don’t know?”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
It was past my bedtime, and I wasn’t in the best of moods. I wasn’t looking forward to being a snitch at the ice cream factory.
“Well, maybe I don’t even want this stupid job,” I said. “Maybe I’m doing this as a favor to you.”
Ranger stopped at a light and looked over at me.
“I don’t usually pay for favors, but if we’re going in that direction I wouldn’t mind turning this car around and taking you back to Rangeman for the night.”
Yikes. Tempting but at the same time frightening. And then there was Joe Morelli. And the Catholic Church. And my mother.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m thinking.”
“Think faster, babe. The light just changed.”
“Ice cream factory.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Ranger said.
I blew out a sigh. I knew this was true.
SEVEN
THE BOGART ICE Creamery was in a light industrial complex that had never developed beyond the ice cream plant. There were curbs and roads and empty lots, but no buildings other than Bogart’s. The employee parking area was deserted. Streetlamps dropped pools of white light onto the blacktop. The big two-story warehouse-type building was dark with the exception of exterior lighting on the six-bay loading dock, and lights were blazing inside the small guardhouse.
Ranger parked by the loading dock, and we left the car and approached the guardhouse. There were two men on duty. One was in a green Harry Bogart uniform, and the other was in Rangeman black fatigues. Ranger nodded to both men and continued on to the back door. He tapped a code into the door lock, we entered the factory, and Ranger threw the main light switch.
Lights flooded the building, and it looked to me like the entire manufacturing process was essentially in one huge two-story room. Conveyor belts and stainless steel tubes snaked around the room entering and exiting large stainless steel boxes that performed who-knows-what. Heavy-duty refrigerator-type double doors were built into a far wall. I imagined the doors opened to a freezer. A series of small offices lined the wall on the opposite side of the room. The offices all had large fixed-frame windows that looked out at the line workers.