Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum #25)(43)

“Yes. He said you had an adversarial history with him.”

“We’ve crossed paths,” Ranger said.

“Are you going to pull back on the surveillance?”

“No.”

“Am I taking the garbage out tonight?”

“No. I’m taking it out tonight,” Ranger said.

He pulled up to the deli. A Rangeman guy came out of the shadows and took Ranger’s place behind the wheel.

“Valet parking?” I said to Ranger.

“Sometimes it’s good to be me,” Ranger said.

It was Sunday, and the area around the train station was quiet. There was only sporadic traffic on the road in front of the deli, and no pedestrian traffic. Raymond and Stretch weren’t waiting at the door, and I had a stab of panic that they weren’t going to show up for work.

I unlocked the deli, and Ranger and I went in. The room smelled like fry grease and dill pickle and felt lonely without Raymond and Stretch.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Ranger. “There’s something making scratching sounds.”

“Mice in the walls,” Ranger said. “You can’t hear them when the fan is going over the fry station.”

“This place should be demolished.”

“Not until we find Hal,” Ranger said. “And it’s not that bad. Stretch makes an effort to keep things clean, but it’s an old building in a rat-infested neighborhood.”

I switched all the lights on, and Raymond walked in.

“I would not be here on a Sunday if I could find someone to sell me a green card,” Raymond said. “I would find work at a superior establishment.”

“I thought you had a green card, but you lost it,” I said.

“Yes. That is what I meant. I lost my green card and I cannot find someone to sell me another. Soon I fear I will not even be able to buy the recreational drugs that are flowing freely from Mexico. I will pay much more for them when they must come from Colorado.”

Stretch ambled through the door. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had a hard time convincing myself to come to work.”

“That is exactly my point of view,” Raymond said.

A little before five Lula and Ella arrived.

“I was torn between being an Internet sensation and taking a day off from the limelight today,” Lula said. “Being a celebrity has its downsides. I can’t be a bitch without it showing up on somebody’s Twitter feed. What’s with that? Maybe I was tired of standing in line at the checkout while some moron couldn’t figure out how to find a barcode.”

“So, you decided to be an Internet sensation anyway?” I said.

“Hell, no. I’m in my looking-normal clothes.”

“They have a lot of sequins, and your hair is purple and green,” I said.

“Yeah, but the sequins are on a tank top. That’s like dressing down. It’s not even like I’m wearing my going-to-church clothes.”

“You go to church?”

“Hell, yes. You go to hell if you don’t go to church. Everybody knows that. I’ve been born again a bunch of times. I don’t take no chances. I believe in getting saved. I’m like a big Jesus fan.”

“I’m sort of a Catholic.”

“That’s okay,” Lula said. “It’s not as good as being a Baptist, but it’s better than nothing. Us Baptists got better music. We got a relationship with Jesus on account of he gets down with us.”

“I have heard this,” Raymond said. “I personally am Hindu on occasion, but I have heard Jesus is a cool dude.”

Customers began straggling in around six o’clock. Not the numbers we’d seen for the last two days, but the tables and booths were filled. We’d recorded a message that the deli was no longer taking phone orders, so Lula was able to help wait tables.

“I got a number eighteen up,” Stretch yelled.

“Not me,” I said.

“Not me neither,” Lula said.

Stretch leaned out, over the counter. “This looks like Lula writing.”

“Yeah, but I don’t need a number eighteen,” Lula said. “I need a number sixteen.”

“You wrote eighteen,” Stretch said.

“I wrote sixteen,” Lula said. “You need glasses.”

“You need to learn to write,” Stretch said.

Lula snatched the eighteen from the service counter and held it out to the room. “Who wants this number eighteen, half price?”

A hand went up at one of the front tables.

“Sold to the bald idiot with big ears,” Lula said.

By nine o’clock it had become obvious that Lula and I were even worse at waiting tables than we were at being bounty hunters.

“This has been a demoralizing experience,” Lula said. “Tomorrow I’m going back to making sandwiches, where I know I excel. Ella can be the waitress. And while we’re discussing tomorrow . . . how many tomorrows are we going to have to work here? I got an image to uphold as a bounty hunter. And I don’t want my bounty hunter skills to go rusty.”

I wasn’t worried about my image or my skills. I knew they both sucked.

We did the evening cleanup and Ranger took the garbage to the dumpster while I watched on the monitor. He walked out, threw the bag in, and took a moment to check his iPhone. He looked around and returned to the deli.