Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

“Not everyone,” Ramon said.

I cut my eyes to him.

“You were on the job last night,” he said to me. “I’m sure you know the problem. Everyone in the building knows the problem.”

“Then why isn’t the problem solved?” I asked him.

Ramon did palms-up. “Good question. If I knew, I would tell immediately. And so would Hal. And before this happened, I would say every man in the building would tell and would lay down their life for Ranger.”

“Maybe it’s not in the building,” I said to Ramon.

“I would like to believe that.”

I glanced at Hal. “What do you think?”

Hal shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. It used to be we were a team here, and now we’re all pulled up inside ourselves. It’s creepy working with people who are looking at you fu

I stood and gathered my trash off the table. “I’m sure Ranger has it under control. He doesn’t seem overly worried.”

“I saw Ranger jump off a bridge into the Delaware River in January once. He was going after a skip, and he didn’t seem overly worried,” Ramon said. “He handed me his gun, and he did about a sixty-foot free fall into black water.”

“Did he get the skip?” I asked him.

“Yeah. He dragged the guy out and cuffed him.”

“So he was right not to be worried.”

“Anyone else would have fuckin’ died. Excuse the language.”

I wandered out of the kitchen, walked past my cubicle and down the hall to Ranger’s office.

“Knock, knock,” I said at his open door.

He looked up from his computer. “Babe.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“I’ve got as much time as you need.”

I knew he wasn’t just talking about conversation, and there was a quality to his voice that gave me a rush. And then, for some inexplicable reason, I thought about Morelli. Morelli didn’t flirt like Ranger. Morelli would say sure and then he’d look down my shirt to try to see some boob. It was actually very playful, and it felt affectionate when Morelli did it.

Ranger relaxed back in his chair. “I’m pretty sure I lost you for a couple beats.”

“My mind wandered.”

“As long as it always comes back.”

I repeated my conversation with Hal and Ramon.

“This business runs on trust,” Ranger said. “Ninety-five percent of the time, the work is mundane. When it rolls over into the other five percent, you need total confidence that the man watching your back is on the job. Knowing there’s an unidentified weak link in the organization puts stress on everyone.”

I left Ranger and walked through the building. I couldn’t listen at doors or rifle through files, because I was always on camera. I peeked into the conference rooms and strolled halls. I stuck my head into the gym but stayed away from the locker room. The garage, the practice range, some high-security holding rooms were below ground, and I didn’t go there. The men I encountered gave me a courteous nod and returned to work. No invitations to stay and chat.

I returned to Ranger. “You have a well-oiled machine,” I told him. “Everything looks neat and clean and secure.”

He almost raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“How much am I paying you?”

“Not enough.”

“If you want more money, you’re going to have to perform more services,” he said.

“Are you flirting with me again?”

“No. I’m trying to bribe you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Would you like to think about it over di

“No can do,” I said. “I promised Lula I’d test-drive some barbecue sauce with her.”

FIVE

I DROPPED INTO the office a little after five. Co

“Where’s Lula? I thought we were supposed to eat barbecue tonight?”

“Turns out, Lula only has a hot plate in her apartment, and she couldn’t get the ribs to fit on it, so she had to find someplace else to cook.”

“She could have used my kitchen.”

“Yeah, she considered that, but we didn’t have a key. And we thought you might not have a lot of equipment.”

“I have a pot and a fry pan. Is she at your house?”

“Are you insane? No way would I let her into my kitchen. I won’t even let her work the office coffeemaker.”

“So where is she?”

“She’s at your parents’ house. She’s been there all afternoon, cooking with your grandmother.”

Oh boy. My father is Italian descent and my mother is Hungarian. From the day I was born to this moment, I can’t remember ever seeing anything remotely resembling barbecue sauce in my parents’ house. My parents don’t even have a grill. My mom fries hot dogs and what would pass for a hamburger.

“I guess I’ll head over there and see how it’s going,” I said to Co

“Not even a little.”

MY PARENTS AND my Grandma Mazur live in a narrow two-story house that shares a common wall with another narrow two-story house. The three-hundred-year-old woman living in the attached house painted her half lime green because the paint was on sale. My parents’ half is painted mustard yellow and brown. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Neither house is going to make Architectural Digest, but they feel right for the neighborhood and they look like home.

I parked at the curb, behind Lula’s Firebird, and I let myself into the house. Ordinarily, my grandmother or mother would be waiting for me at the door, driven there by some mystical maternal instinct that alerts them to my approach. Today they were occupied in the kitchen.

My father was hunkered down in his favorite chair in front of the television. He’s retired from the post office and now drives a cab part-time. He picks up a few people early morning to take to the train station, but mostly the cab is parked in our driveway or at the lodge, where my father plays cards and shoots the baloney with other guys his age looking to get out of the house. I shouted hello, and he grunted a response.

I shoved through the swinging door that separated kitchen from dining room and sucked in some air. There were racks of ribs laid out on baking sheets on the counter, pots and bowls of red stuff, brown stuff, maroon stuff on the small kitchen table, shakers of caye

“Hey, girlfriend,” Lula said. “Hope you’re hungry, on account of we got whup-ass shit here.”

Grandma and Lula looked like Jack Sprat and his wife. Lula was all swollen up and voluptuous, busting out of her clothes, and Grandma was more of a deflated balloon. Gravity hadn’t been kind to Grandma, but what Grandma lacked in collagen she made up for with attitude and bright pink lipstick. She’d come to live with my parents when my Grandfather Mazur went in search of life everlasting at the all-you-can-eat heavenly breakfast buffet.

“This here’s a humdinger di

“Your gra

“We’re go

“Not me,” Lula said. “I’m not working in no restaurant. After I win the contest, I’m go

“Maybe I could help you with that on my day off,” Grandma said. “I always wanted to be on television.”