Sylvia Mook also had a file filled with requests to transfer. She was working on the floor and wanted an office job. She’d been at the plant for five years.
Maria Ortiz was unhappy with the machines in the break room. She wanted Coke, and only Pepsi was offered. She also didn’t like the brand of toilet paper in the ladies’ room. She thought there should be assigned parking in the lot so you could find your car more easily. She worried about the air quality throughout the plant. And she wanted a transfer from the housekeeping crew to a job on the floor. There were seven requests for transfer. All neatly stamped “Declined.”
I used my phone to check my email. I called Morelli but got his voicemail. I glanced over at the vending machines. Maybe I needed to treat myself to a giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Peanut butter is healthy, right?
I was scrounging in my bag, looking for loose change, when a text message came in from Ranger telling me my snooping days were over. I’d been recognized and reported to Bogart, and Bogart wanted me out of the plant.
Thank God. I wanted to find the man who’d murdered Arnold Zigler and the Bogart Bar. I truly did. And I wanted to do a good job for Ranger. But Jeez Louise I hated working the line and the loading dock.
I shoved the files back into my messenger bag, tossed my trash, said adios to the break room, and headed for my car.
TWELVE
IT WAS ALMOST noon when I walked into the bonds office. Lula was on the fake leather couch with her laptop. No Connie.
“What’s up?” Lula asked.
“I got outted. Someone recognized me, and Bogart gave me the heave-ho.”
“Did you get any ice cream?”
“No.”
“Bummer. Next time you need to negotiate a better deal. You should have had one of them golden umbrellas.”
“I think you mean golden parachute.”
“Say what?”
“A golden parachute lets you gently float down to earth.”
“Mary Poppins could do that with a umbrella,” Lula said. “What about Mary Poppins?”
The thing about Lula is that when she gets things wrong they frequently make sense.
I heard the door open behind me and saw Lula’s eyes go wide. I turned and bumped into Ranger.
“Babe,” he said, his hands at my waist to steady me.
Even if I’d had my eyes closed I would know I was smashed up against Ranger. He always smells great. He uses Bulgari Green shower gel, and the scent clings to him. I’ve used it and it’s gone by the time I’m done toweling off.
His hand moved to my wrist, and he tugged me outside. “I’m on my way to talk to Bogart,” Ranger said, “but I wanted to talk to you first. Did you pick up anything useful while you were at the plant?”
“I didn’t get to talk to a lot of people, but the general attitude is mostly mellow. No one seems to be overly concerned about the freezer meltdown, the tainted ice cream, or the Bogart Bar guy. I read through the five files you gave me, and nothing really jumped out. Three files were thick because of requests to transfer. You might ask Bogart about that. I didn’t see anything in the employment histories as to why the requests were consistently turned down. No reasons were given. It occurred to me that we might want to take a look at new hires. If Mo Morris sent someone into the plant to sabotage stuff it would have been just before all the bad things started to happen.”
“I’ll check on it,” Ranger said. “Anything else?”
“Did you just take a shower?”
“This morning.”
“You smell nice.”
A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He leaned in and kissed me. Our tongues touched, and I curled my fingers into his shirt.
“Criminy,” I said.
He gave me a light parting kiss. “You have my number.”
Oh yeah.
I watched him drive away, and I went back into the office.
“Criminy,” Lula said.
I nodded agreement. “So true. Where’s Connie?”
“Courthouse, covering for Vinnie. I’m babysitting the office but nothing’s going on, so I’m working on my reality show. We’re gonna shoot it tonight. We did some preliminary test runs but this is the real thing. I’m just going over the script one more time.”
“I thought reality shows were unscripted.”
“They’re scripted unscripted. Not a lot of people know that. Just us on the inside,” Lula said. “You want to hear my script?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to have to think about you and Briggs naked.”
“Yeah, I could see where that would be a problem with Briggs. He’s not real attractive once you get his clothes off him. Not a lot to look at, if you know what I mean.”
“Did we get any new FTAs?”
“A shoplifter and a mime.”
“What did the mime do?”
“He pooped in the middle of the street. Right at the corner of Hamilton and Broad.”
“Get out.”
“Cross my heart. You can look on his arrest sheet. Everybody was taking pictures. Traffic was stopped all over the place. He was trending big on YouTube when it happened, but it’s dropped off some now. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.”
“Why did he do you-know-what in the middle of the street?”
“He said it was performance art. He said he was making a statement about our repressive society. Problem was, he repressed traffic because he was posing too long with his art, so he got arrested.”
“What were the charges against him?” I asked Lula.
“Obstruction of something and making a general nuisance of himself. Personally, if it was me, I couldn’t see myself pooping in the middle of the street. Even if I had to go real bad. I’d be afraid I’d get run over. I mean, even dogs know enough not to poop in the middle of the street. You ever see a dog poop in the middle of the street? I bet a turkey wouldn’t poop in the middle of the street, and I hear they’re real dumb.”
I agreed. Turkeys were known to be dumb.
“So, about the reality show,” I said. “Where are you doing this?”
“Mill Street. I got a map worked out. We’re going to start on the second block and work our way up to no-man’s-land.”
“Are you insane? You’ll die.”
Mill Street ran parallel to Stark Street, one block over. It wasn’t as bad as Stark, but it was still pretty bad. Residential in a crack house kind of way for a block or two and then mostly warehouses.
“We got a plan,” Lula said. “We’re shooting two blocks, and then we’re faking the rest. I mean, it’s dark out, right? Nobody’s gonna know where we are. We can just keep running around the same two blocks and do some creative camera work. And the good part is the cops won’t go anywhere near there so we haven’t got no worries about the naked thing. Nobody’s going to care we haven’t got clothes on. All the people wandering around there are hallucinating anyways.”
“Good to see you’ve thought it through.”
“I got a mind for this,” Lula said. “I’m one of those underestimated people.”
“How are you going to film in the dark? Do you have lights?”
“You know Handy Howie, right? He’s the guy sells the handbags out of his Eldorado in the projects? Well, he’s doing the cinematography. He’s got a infrared camera. He’s always wanted to make movies, so we’re gonna give him a film credit and then after we’re done with this he can use it as a demo.”
“Wasn’t he arrested for invasion of privacy?”
“He explained that to me,” Lula said. “He’d just got his first infrared and he was learning how to use it, and he accidentally filmed some people in their bedroom. They were doing the nasty, and Howie said it was a shame the police confiscated that camera on account of it would of made a good documentary.”
“But he got another camera?”
“Yeah. Howie has connections. Handbags are his bread-and-butter business, but sometimes other stuff falls off a truck, if you know what I mean.”
The back door opened and slammed shut, and Connie walked in. She dumped her handbag into her bottom drawer and kicked her five-inch platform stilettos off.