“I hear scritching sounds,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah, I hear it, too. Kinda squeaky.”

And then a tsunami of rats swept up the stairs and over our feet.

“Rats!” Lula yelled. “Rats!”

I was frozen to the spot, too horrified to move. Lula was dancing, arms in the air, shrieking. The rats were wall to wall, scrambling around in a pack, filling the foyer.

“Kill ’em. Kick ’em,” Lula said. “Help! Police! Call 911.”

I snatched the bakery bag out of her hand and pitched a doughnut out the front door. The rats ran after the doughnut, and I slammed the door shut behind them.

Lula collapsed against the wall. “Do I look like I’m having a heart attack? Did I get bit? Do I have fleas?” She took the bag back from me and looked inside. “At least you didn’t throw the jelly doughnut. I was saving that one for last.”

I closed the cellar door and took to the stairs. There were three doors on the second floor. Two were nailed shut with crisscrossed boards. No sound from inside. The third was open, and the one-room apartment was empty of people and furniture but filled with garbage.

“I’m going home and taking a shower when we’re done here,” Lula said. “I feel like I got cooties.”

The third floor had three doors, and all were closed. “We need a plan,” I said to Lula.

“You mean like I be the Girl Scout cookie girl?”

“Yeah.”

“What if Vinnie’s in there and he’s with some of Sunflower’s stooges? We shoot them, right?”

“Only if we have to.”

Lula took her Glock out of her bag and stuffed it into her pants, snug to her backbone. She looked at me. “Don’t you want to get your gun ready to go?”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“What have you got?”

“Hairspray.”

“Is it firm hold? I might need some when we’re done here, depending on what we do for lunch.”

I crept down a couple stairs and pressed myself against the wall, hairspray at the ready should Lula need backup. Lula knocked on the first door, the door opened, and a fat, sloppy, bleary-eyed guy answered. He was maybe fifty years old, needed a shave, needed a shower, needed less alcohol.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I’m sellin’ Girl Scout cookies,” Lula said, looking past the fat guy into his room.

“Aren’t you sorta old to be a Girl Scout?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m doing this for my niece,” Lula said. “She got a intestinal disturbance and couldn’t make her quota, so I’m helping out.”

“What’s in the bakery bag?”

“That’s none of your business, either. Are you gonna buy cookies, or what?”

The guy snatched Lula’s doughnut bag, slammed the door closed, and locked it.

“Hey!” Lula said. “You give me back my bag.” She put her ear to the door. “I hear the bag rustling! He better not be fingering my doughnut.” Lula pounded on the door. “Give me my doughnut back or else.”

“Too late,” he said through the door. “I ate it.”

“Oh yeah, well, eat this,” Lula said. And she hauled her Glock out and drilled a bunch of rounds into the door.

“Holy crap!” I yelled, rushing at Lula. “Stop shooting. You can’t just shoot up someone’s door over a doughnut. You could kill the guy.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “I’m outta bullets.” She scrounged around in her purse. “I know a got a extra clip in here somewhere.”

The door banged open and the fat guy looked out at us and ratcheted the slide back on a sawed-off shotgun. He took aim, and I blasted him with hairspray.

“Yow!” he hollered, rubbing at his eyes. “Shit, that stings.”

Lula and I flew down the stairs. We took one flight, rounded the corner for the second flight, and crashed into two of Ranger’s men on their way up. We hit them with enough force to knock them off balance, and we all went ass-over-teakettles, rolling in a pack to the foyer floor.

“Jeez,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect anyone to be on the stairs.”

I knew one of the guys. His name was Hal. He was a real sweetie, and he was built like a stegosaurus.

“Ranger sent us to check on you,” Hal said. “We just got here, and we heard shots.”

“Some moron ate my jelly doughnut,” Lula said. “So I shot him.”

Hal cut his eyes to the third floor. “How bad is he? Do you want us to, you know, get rid of anything?”

“Like a body?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Hal said.

“Thanks, but not necessary,” I told him. “Lula shot through the door, and the moron came after us with a sawed-off.”

“Gotcha,” Hal said. “I’ll pass it on to Ranger.”

Hal and his partner got into their shiny black SUV, and Lula and I got into the Firebird, and we all drove off.

“It’s too bad we didn’t get to check out all the apartments,” Lula said, “on account of I had a real feeling about that place. I could see Vinnie getting hid there.”

I thought the apartment building was too obvious. I didn’t know Bobby Sunflower personally, but from everything I’d heard, he didn’t sound like a dope. If Bobby Sunflower was behind this, probably Vinnie wasn’t on one of Sunflower’s properties. People like Sunflower had their fingers in lots of pies, and that’s where I thought Vinnie was being kept… in one of Sunflower’s pies.

“Now what?” Lula wanted to know.

“Drop me at Rangeman.”

THREE

RANGEMAN IS HOUSED in a discreet seven-story building on a quiet side street in Trenton proper. If you didn’t look closely, you wouldn’t notice the small brass plaque by the side of the door that simply states RANGEMAN. No other sign identifies the business. Ranger’s private lair occupies the top floor. Two more floors are dedicated to employee apartments, and the remainder of the building runs the security operation. Rangeman services private residences and commercial properties for clients who need a high level of protection. Plus, Rangeman does the occasional odd job of guarding bodies, finding bodies, and possibly eliminating bodies.

Ranger was my mentor when I first went to work for my cousin Vinnie. I suppose he’s still my mentor, but now he’s also my friend, my protector, from time to time he’s been my employer, and on one spectacularly memorable occasion, he was my lover. I have an electronic key to the underground garage and to Ranger’s private apartment. It also gives me access to the building, but today I let the guy at the first-floor reception desk buzz me in. I took the elevator to the control room and walked past the cubbies and consoles, waving to men I knew.

Ranger’s office was a few steps down the hall. He was on the computer when I walked in, and he smiled when he saw me. A big thing for Ranger, since he doesn’t do a lot of smiling. He was dressed in Rangeman black T-shirt, cargo pants, and running shoes. Everyone in the building was dressed exactly like this, but Ranger’s clothes fit him better. Possibly because Ranger was clearly at the front of the line when God was handing out the good body parts. You could dress Ranger in a black plastic garbage bag, and he’d still look hot.

“I need a tracking lesson,” I said to Ranger. “You know how you always know my location? I want to be able to do that. I want to put one of those gizmos on someone’s car.”

“I can give you the gizmo,” Ranger said. “And I can show you how to install it, but it won’t do you any good if you can’t receive the signals. It would be easier and less expensive if you let me track this person for you.”

“That would be great. I need to know where Mickey Gritch is going. He’s kidnapped Vinnie, and I have to get Vinnie back.”

“Why?”

I blew out a sigh. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Ranger opened his desk drawer, took out a set of keys, and tossed them to me. “You need a car.”

“So you’re giving me one?”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Ranger said.

RANGEMAN KEEPS A fleet of shiny new black cars for employee use. Most are SUVs. There are a couple F150s and a couple vans. And Ranger’s personal car is a Porsche Turbo. The car I drew in the Rangeman lottery was a black Jeep Wrangler.