Perin angled out of the car, beeped the alarm on, and headed for Mike's.
I looked at Ranger. "Will the alarm be a problem?"
"None at all."
Perin disappeared into the building.
"Okay," Ranger said. "Go get 'em, Slick. I'll give you a five-minute lead, and then I'll call the truck in." He gave me a buzzer. "If something goes wrong, hit the panic button. I'll come get you when the car's cleared the street."
Perin was dressed in a blue pinstripe. He was in his early forties, with thinning sandy blond hair and an athletic build gone soft. I stepped just to the side of the door and waited while my eyes adjusted to the change in light. There were mostly men in the room, but there were a few women, too. The women were in clusters. The men tended to be alone, eyes turned to the TV. Perin was easy to spot. He was at the far end of the polished mahogany bar. The bartender set a drink in front of him. Something clear on the rocks.
There were chairs open on either side of Perin, but I didn't want to sit down and start a conversation. I didn't want him to feel singled out. If he was nervous the direct approach might be too obvious. So I walked toward him, rummaging in my bag, looking absorbed in finding whatever. And just as I reached his stool I faked a stumble. Not enough to go down to the ground, but enough to knock into him, clutching at his sleeve for support.
"Omigod," I said. "I'm so sorry. This is so embarrassing. I wasn't watching where I was going and . . ." I looked down. "It's these shoes! I'm just not a high-heel person."
"What kind of a person are you?" Perin asked.
I gave him the million-dollar smile. "I think maybe I'm a barefoot person." I slid onto the stool next to him and signaled the bartender. "Boy, I really need a drink. It's been one of those days."
"Tell me about it," he said. "What do you do?"
"I'm a lingerie buyer." Used to be, anyway, before I started bounty-huntering.
His eyes dropped to my cleavage. "No shit?"
I hoped they loaded that car on fast. This guy had a head start on the drinky poos, and was going to be on me like white on rice. I could feel it coming.
"My name's Ryan Perin," he said, extending his hand.
"Stephanie."
He kept hold of my hand. "Stephanie the lingerie buyer. That's very sexy."
Yuk. I hate holding hands with strange men. Damn Ranger and his horizons. "Well, you know . . . it's a job."
"I bet you have a lot of great lingerie."
"Sure. I have everything. You name it, I've got it."
The bartender looked at me expectantly.
"I'll have one of those," I said, pointing to Perin's drink. "And could you hurry?"
"So tell me about your lingerie," Perin said. "You have any garter belts?"
"Oh, yeah. I wear garter belts all the time-red, black, purple."
"How about thong panties?"
"Yeah, thong panties." Every time I feel like flossing my ass.
The alarm went off on his watch.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's a reminder to check on my car."
Damn! Don't panic. Don't panic. "What's wrong with your car?"
"This isn't such a great neighborhood at this time of night. I had a radio ripped off last week. So once in a while I just look out and make sure no one's messing with anything."
"Don't you have an alarm system?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then you don't have to worry."
"I guess you're right. Still . . ." He looked toward the door. "Maybe I should check just to be safe."
"You're not one of those obsessive-compulsive types, are you?" I asked. "I don't like those types. They're always so uptight. They never want to try anything new like, um . . . group sex."
That got his attention back.
Some spittle collected at the corner of his mouth. "You like group sex?"
"Well, I don't like to do it with too many men, but I have a couple girlfriends . . ." My drink came. I knocked it back and went into a coughing fit. When I stopped coughing, my eyeballs got hot and watery. "What is this?"
"Bombay Sapphire."
"I'm not much of a drinker."
Perin slid a hand up my leg to just inside my skirt hem. "Tell me more about the group sex."
Stick a fork in me, I thought. Because I'm done. If Ranger didn't get here soon I was gonna be in big trouble. I was unloading everything I had, and I didn't know where to go from here. I didn't have a whole lot of experience at this sort of thing. And what I knew about group sex was zero. Which was already more than I wanted to know. "Thursday is my group sex night," I said. "We do it every Thursday. Unless we can't find a man . . . then we just watch television."
"How about another drink?" Perin asked.
No sooner had he gotten the words out of his mouth than he was off his bar stool, flying through the air. He crash-landed on a table, the table collapsed, and Perin lay still as a stone, spread-eagled on the floor, eyes wide, mouth open, like a big, dead beached fish.
I gasped and turned and was nose-to-nose with Benito Ramirez. "You shouldn't be whoring like this, Stephanie," Ramirez said, soft-voiced and crazy-eyed. "The champ don't like when he sees you with other men. Sees them handling you. You need to save yourself for the champ." He managed a small, sick smile. "The champ's gonna do things to you, Stephanie. Things you've never had done to you before. Did you ask Lula about the things the champ can do?"
"What are you doing here?" I shrieked. I had one eye on Perin, afraid he was going to get to his feet and run for his car. And I had one eye on Ramirez, afraid he was going to draw a knife and carve me up like a Christmas turkey.
"You can't get away from the champ," Ramirez whispered. "The champ sees everything. He sees when you go out for candy bars late at night. What's the matter, Stephanie, having trouble sleeping? The champ could fix that. He knows how to make women sleep."
My stomach clenched, and I broke into an instant cold sweat. I never saw him. He'd been lying in wait for me, following my every move, watching me. And I never saw him. Probably the only reason I was alive was because Ramirez loved the cat-and-mouse game. He loved the smell of another person's fear. Loved to torture, to prolong the pain and terror.
There'd been a black hole in the time continuum when Perin had gone airborne. Everyone in the bar, with the exception of me and Ramirez, had sat frozen in dumbfounded shock. Now everyone in the bar was on their feet.
"What the hell?" the bartender yelled, coming at Ramirez.
Ramirez turned his eyes to the bartender, and the bartender backed off.
"Hey, man," the bartender said. "You gotta take your problems outside."
Perin was standing wobble-legged, glaring at Ramirez. "What are you, nuts? Are you freaking nuts?"
"The champ don't like remarks like that," Ramirez said, his eyes shrinking in his head.
A big, no-neck guy came to Perin's rescue. "Hey, leave the little guy alone," he said to Ramirez.
Ramirez turned on him. "No one tells the champ what to do."
Bam! Ramirez sucker-punched no-neck, and no-neck went down like a house of cards.
Perin pulled his gun and fired one off. The shot went wide of Ramirez, and sent everyone in the bar running for the door. Everyone but Perin and Ramirez and me. The bartender was shouting into the phone for the police to get their asses in gear. And through the open door I caught a glimpse of the flatbed moving down the street with the green Jaguar on board.
"I don't like the police," Ramirez said to the bartender. "You shouldn't have called the police." Ramirez gave me one last look with his nobody's-home eyes and went out the back door.
I hopped off the bar stool. "Nice meeting you," I said to Perin. "I have to go now."
Ranger strolled in, looked around, shook his head, and smiled at me. "You never disappoint," he said.
11
RANGER HAD THE Mercedes double-parked outside Mike's Place. I got in, and we took off before Perin made it through the door to the sidewalk.