Three to Get Deadly (21 page)

“It looked like it might turn into one of those sexual things. I didn’t want to interfere.”

Fifteen minutes later I was in my apartment, dressed in my nightgown, dabbing antiseptic cream on my skinned knees. And I was feeling much better. Nothing like a totally infantile act to put things into perspective.

I stopped dabbing when the phone rang. Not Morelli, I prayed. I didn’t want to hear that he’d seen me running from his yard.

I answered with a tentative hello.

Pause on the other end.

“Hello,” I repeated.

“I hope that little discussion we had last time meant something to you,” the man said. “Because if I find out you’ve opened your mouth about any of this, I’m going to come get you. And it’s not going to be nice.”

“Maglio?”

The caller hung up.

I checked all my locks, plugged the battery on my cell phone into the recharger, made sure my gun was loaded and at bedside along with the pepper spray. I cringed at the possibility that Maglio might be involved. It wasn’t good to have a cop for an enemy. Cops could be very dangerous people.

The phone rang again. This time I let the machine get it. The call was from Ranger. Just reporting in, he said. Running tomorrow at seven.

I called Lula as promised and registered her for the program.

I was downstairs at seven, but I wasn’t in the finest form. I hadn’t slept well, and I was feeling tapped out.

“How’d it go yesterday?” Ranger asked.

I gave him the unabridged version, excluding my juvenile visit to Morelli’s backyard.

Ranger’s mouth tipped at the corners. “You’re making this up, right?”

“Wrong. That’s what happened. You asked what happened. I told you what happened.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. Elliot Harp flew off Mo’s car, bounced off the Firebird onto the shoulder of Route 1. You picked Elliot up, and put him in the trunk and drove him to the police station.”

“More or less.”

Ranger gave a bark of laughter. “Bet that went over big with the boys in blue.”

A taxi pulled into the lot, not far from where we were standing, and Lula got out. She was dressed in a pink polar fleece sweatsuit and pink furry earmuffs. She looked like the Energizer rabbit on steroids.

“Lula’s going running with us,” I told Ranger. “She wants to get in better shape.”

Ranger gave Lula the once-over. “You don’t keep up, you get left behind.”

“Your ass,” Lula said.

We took off at a pretty good clip. I figured Ranger was testing Lula. She was breathing hard, but she was close on his heels. She managed until we got to the track, and then she found a seat on the sidelines.

“I don’t run in circles,” she said.

I sat beside her. “Works for me.”

Ranger did a lap and jogged by us without acknowledgment of our presence or lack of.

“So why are you really here?” I asked Lula.

Lula’s eyes never left Ranger. “I’m here ’cause he’s the shit.”

“The shit?”

“Yeah, you know…the shit. The king. The cool.”

“Do we know anyone else who’s the shit?”

“John Travolta. He’s the shit, too.”

We watched Ranger some, and I could see her point about Ranger being the shit.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lula said. “Suppose there really were superheroes?”

“Like Batman?”

“That’s it. That’s what I’m saying. It’d be someone who was the shit.”

“Are you telling me you think Ranger’s a superhero?”

“Think about it. We don’t know where he lives. We don’t know anything about him.”

“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 Mañoso. 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 fast-food 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-a-button is serving up chicken now.”

“Where?”

“The Cluck in a Bucket on Hamilton.”

“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.

“You gotta admit, he makes a cute chicken,” Lula said, watching Stuart strut around on
his big yellow chicken feet. “Too bad we gotta bust his ass.”

Easy for her to say. She didn’t have orange hair. I pushed through the front door and crossed the room. I was about ten feet away when Stuart turned and our eyes locked.

“Hello, Stuart,” I said.

There was a young woman standing next to Stuart. She was wearing a red-and-yellow Cluck in a Bucket uniform, and she was holding a stack of Cluck in a Bucket giveaway hats. She gave me her best “don’t ruin the fun” look and wagged her finger. “His name isn’t Stuart,” she said. “Today his name is Mr. Cluck.”

“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “Well we’re gonna haul Mr. Cluck’s cute little chicken tushy off to jail. What do you think of that?”

“They’re crazy,” Stuart said to the Cluck in a Bucket woman. “They’re stalkers. They won’t leave me alone. They got me fired from my last job because they kept harassing me.”

“That’s a load of horse pucky,” Lula said. “If we were gonna stalk someone it wouldn’t be no chicken impersonator working for minimum wage.”

“Excuse me,” I said, elbowing Lula away from Stuart, turning the force of my most professional smile on the young woman
with the hats. “Mr. Baggett is in violation of a bond agreement and needs to reinstate himself with the court.”

“Harry,” the young woman yelled, waving to a man behind the service counter. “Call the police. We’ve got a situation here.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “I hate when people call the police.”

“You’re ruining everything,” Stuart said to me. “Why can’t you leave me alone? Who’s going to be Mr. Cluck if you take me in?”

I pulled the cuffs out of my pocket. “Don’t give me a hard time, Stuart.”

“You can’t put cuffs on Mr. Cluck!” Stuart said. “What will all these kids think?”

“Wouldn’t get my hopes up that they’d give a hello,” Lula said. “Isn’t like you’re Santa Claus. Truth is, you’re just some whiny little guy dressed up in a bad suit.”

“This isn’t a big deal,” I said to Stuart as calmly as possible. “I’m going to cuff you and walk you out the door, and if we do it quickly and quietly no one will notice.”

I reached out to snap the cuffs on Stuart, and he batted me away with his chicken wing. “Leave me alone,” Stuart said, knocking the cuffs out of my hand, sending them sailing across the room. “I’m not going to
jail!” He grabbed the mustard and the special-sauce squirters off the condiments counter. “Stand back!” he said.

I had pepper spray and a stun gun, but it seemed like excessive force to use them against a chicken armed with special sauce.

“I haven’t got all day,” Lula said to Stuart. “I want to get some chicken and go back to work, and you’re holding me up. Put those stupid squirters down.”

“Don’t underestimate these squirters,” Stuart said. “I could do a lot of damage with these squirters.” He held the red squirter up. “See this? This isn’t just any old special sauce. This is extra spicy.”

“Oh boy,” Lula said. “Think he’s been sniffing aerosol from the roach spray.”

Lula took a step toward Stuart, and SQUISH, Stuart gave Lula a blast of mustard to the chest.

Lula stopped in her tracks. “What the…”

SPLOT! Special sauce on top of the mustard.

“Did you see that?” Lula said, her voice pitched so high she sounded like Minnie Mouse. “He squirted me with special sauce! I’m gonna have to get this jacket dry-cleaned.”

“It was your own fault, Fatty,” Stuart said. “You made me do it.”

“That’s it,” Lula said. “Out of my way. I’m gonna kill him.” She lunged forward, hands reaching for Stuart’s chicken neck, slipped on some mustard that had leaked out of Stuart’s squirter and went down on her ass.

Stuart took off, shoving his way around tables and customers. I took off after him and caught him with a flying tackle. We both crashed to the floor in a flurry of chicken feathers, Stuart squirting his squirters, and me swearing and grabbing. We rolled around like this for what seemed like an eternity, until I finally got hold of something that wasn’t a fake chicken part.

I was breast to breast, on top of Mr. Cluck, twisting his nose in a damn good impression of Moe and Curly, when I felt hands forcefully lifting me off, disengaging my nose hold.

One set of hands belonged to Carl Costanza. The other set of hands belonged to a cop I’d seen around but didn’t know on a first-name basis. Both cops were smiling, rocking back on their heels, thumbs stuck into their gun belts.

“I heard about your cousin Vinnie and what he did to that duck,” Carl said to me. “Still, I’m surprised to find you on top of a chicken. I always thought you were more like the Mazur side of the family.”

I swiped at the gunk on my face. I was covered with mustard, and I had special sauce in my hair. “Very funny. This guy is FTA.”

“You got papers?” Carl asked.

I scrounged in my shoulder bag and came up with the bond agreement and the contract to pursue that Vinnie had issued.

“Good enough,” Carl said. “Congratulations, you caught yourself a chicken.”

I could see the other cop was trying hard not to laugh out loud.

“So what’s your problem?” I asked him, feeling sort of aggravated that maybe he was laughing at me.

He held up two hands. “Hey lady, I haven’t got a problem. Good bust. Not everyone could have taken that chicken down.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Costanza, but Costanza wasn’t entirely successful at controlling his amusement either.

“Good thing we got here before the animal rights people,” Costanza said to me. “They wouldn’t have been as understanding as us.”

I retrieved my cuffs from the other side of the room and clicked them onto Baggett’s wrists. Lula had disappeared, of course. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t expect Lula to share airspace with cops.

“Do you need any help?” Costanza wanted to know.

I shook my head, no. “I can manage. Thanks.”

Half an hour later I left the station with my body receipt, happy to escape the cracks about smelling like a barbecue. Not to mention the abuse I took for bringing in a chicken.

A person can take only so much cop humor.

Rex was nosing around in his food cup when I got home, so I gave him a grape and told him about Stuart Baggett. How Stuart had been dressed up in a chicken suit, and how I’d bravely captured him and brought him to justice. Rex listened while he ate the grape, and I think Rex might have smiled when I got to the part about tackling Mr. Cluck, but it’s hard to tell about these things with a hamster.

I love Rex a lot, and he has a lot of redeeming qualities, like cheap food and small poop, but the truth is sometimes I pretend he’s a golden retriever. I’d never tell this to Rex, of course. Rex has very sensitive feelings. Still, sometimes I long for a big floppy-eared dog.