"Hello, Stephanie," he said. "Nice to see you again. The champ missed you while he was away. He thought about you a lot."
The champ. Better known as Benito Ramirez, who was too crazy to talk about himself in the first person.
"What do you want?"
He smiled his sick smile. "You know what the champ wants."
"How about you tell me."
"He wants to be your friend. He wants to help you find Jesus."
"If you continue to stalk me, I'll get a restraining order."
The smile stayed on his mouth, but his eyes were cold and hard. Steel orbs floating in empty space. "Can't restrain a man of God, Stephanie."
"Move away from my car."
"Where are you going?" Ramirez asked. "Why don't you go with the champ? The champ'll take you for a ride." He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. "He'll take you to see Jesus."
I dug down in my shoulder bag and pulled out my gun. "Get away from me."
Ramirez laughed softly and took a step backward. "When it's your time to see God, there'll be no escape."
I unlocked the driver's side door, slid behind the wheel, and drove away with Ramirez still standing in the lot. I stopped for a light two blocks down Hamilton and realized there were tears on my cheeks. Shit. I swiped the tears away and yelled at myself. "You are not afraid of Benito Ramirez!"
That was a stupid, empty statement, of course. Ramirez was a monster. Anyone with a grain of sense would be afraid of him. And I was beyond afraid. I was terrified to tears.
* * * * *
BY THE TIME I reached the office I was in pretty decent condition. My hands had stopped shaking, and my nose wasn't running. I still had some nausea, but I didn't think I'd throw up. It seemed like a weakness to be so frightened, and I wasn't crazy about the feeling. Especially since I'd chosen to work in a form of law enforcement. Hard to be effective when you're blubbering in fear. My one point of pride was that I hadn't shown my fear to Ramirez.
Connie stroked vermilion nail polish onto her thumbnail. "You calling the hospitals and the morgue about Fred?"
I placed the check facedown on the copier, closed the lid, and pushed the button. "Every morning."
"What's next?" Lula wanted to know.
"I got a picture of Fred from Mabel. I thought I'd flash it around the strip mall and maybe go door-to-door on the streets behind Grand Union." Hard to believe there wasn't someone out there who saw Fred leave the parking lot.
"Don't sound like a lot of fun to me," Lula said.
I took the copy of the check and dropped it into my shoulder bag. Then I made a folder with Fred's name on it, dropped the original check into the folder, and filed it in the office file cabinet under Shutz. It would have been easier to put it in my desk . . . but I didn't have a desk.
"How about Randy Briggs?" Lula said. "Aren't we gonna visit him today?"
Short of burning the building down, I didn't know how to get Randy Briggs out of his apartment.
Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. "I hear somebody say something about Briggs?"
"Not me. I didn't say nothing," Lula said.
"You have one chickenshit case," Vinnie said to me. "Why haven't you brought this guy in?"
"I'm working on it."
"Yeah, and it's not her fault," Lula said, "on account of he's wily."
"You have until eight o'clock Monday morning," Vinnie said. "Briggs' ass isn't in the slammer by Monday morning, I'm giving the case to somebody else."
"Vinnie, you know a bookie named Bunchy?"
"No. And trust me, I know every bookie on the East Coast." He pulled his head back into his office and slammed the door shut.
"Tear gas," Lula said. "That's the way to get him. We just lob a can of tear gas through his dumb-ass window and then wait for him to come running out, gagging and choking. I know where we can get some, too. I bet we could get some from Ranger."
"No! No tear gas," I said.
"Well, what are you gonna do? You gonna let Vinnie give this to Joyce Barnhardt?"
Joyce Barnhardt! Shit. I'd eat dirt before I'd let Joyce Barnhardt bring in Randy Briggs. Joyce Barnhardt is a mutant human being and my arch enemy. Vinnie hired her on as a part-time bounty hunter a couple months ago in exchange for services I didn't want to think about. She'd tried to steal one of my cases back then, and I had no intention of letting that happen again.
I went to school with Joyce, and all through school she'd lied and snitched and was loosey-goosey with other girls' boyfriends. Not to mention, I'd been married for less than a year when I'd caught Joyce woman-superior on my dining room table with my sweating, cheating exhusband.
"I'm going to reason with Briggs," I said.
"Oh boy," Lula said. "This is gonna be good. I gotta see this."
"No. I'm going alone. I can do this by myself."
"Sure," Lula said. "I know that. Only it'd be more fun if I was there."
"No! No, no, no."
"Boy, you sure do got an attitude these days," Lula said. "You were better when you were getting some, you know what I mean? I don't know why you gave Morelli the boot anyway. I don't usually like cops, but that man has one fine ass."
I knew what she meant about my attitude. I was feeling damn cranky. I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. "I'll call if I need help."
"Unh," Lula said.
* * * * *
THINGS WERE QUIET at Cloverleaf Apartments. No traffic in the lot. No traffic in the dingy foyer. I took the stairs and knocked on Briggs' door. No answer. I moved out of sight and dialed his number on my cell phone.
"Hello," Briggs said.
"It's Stephanie. Don't hang up! I have to talk to you."
"There's nothing to talk about. And I'm busy. I have work to do."
"Look, I know this court thing is inconvenient for you. And I know it's unfair because you were unjustly charged. But it's something you have to do."
"No."
"Then do it for me."
"Why should I do it for you?"
"I'm a nice person. And I'm just trying to do my job. And I need the money to pay for a pair of shoes I just bought. And even more, if I don't bring you in, Vinnie is going to give your case to Joyce Barnhardt. And I hate Joyce Barnhardt."
"Why do you hate Joyce Barnhardt?"
"I caught her screwing my husband, who is now my ex-husband, on my dining-room table. Can you imagine? My diningroom table."
"Jeez," Briggs said. "And she's a bounty hunter, too?"
"Well, she used to do makeovers at Macy's, but now she's working for Vinnie."
"Bummer."
"Yeah. So, how about it? Won't you let me bring you in? It won't be so bad. Honest."
"Are you kidding? I'm not letting a loser like you bring me in. How would it look?"
Click. He hung up.
Loser? Excuse me? Loser? Okay, that does it. No more Ms. Nice Person. No more reasoning. This jerk is going down. "Open this door!" I yelled. "Open this goddamn door!"
A woman popped her head out from the apartment across the hall. "If you don't stop this racket I'm going to call the police. We don't put up with this kind of goings-on here."
I turned and looked at her.
"Oh, dear," she said and slammed her door shut.
I gave Briggs' door a couple kicks with my foot and hammered on it with my fists. "Are you coming out?"
"Loser," he said through the door. "You're just a stupid loser, and you can't make me do anything I don't want to do."
I hauled my gun out of my shoulder bag and fired one off at the lock. The round glanced off the metal and lodged in the door frame. Christ. Briggs was right. I was a fucking loser. I didn't even know how to shoot off a lock.
I ran downstairs to the Buick and got a tire iron out of the trunk. I ran back upstairs and started whacking away at the door with the tire iron. I made a couple dents but that was about it. Bashing the door in with the tire iron was going to take a while. My forehead was beaded with sweat, and sweat stained the front of my T-shirt. A small crowd of people had collected at the far end of the hall.