“Are you married?” Lula asked him.
“No,” he said. “Divorced.”
“Do you have a house?”
“Yeah. It’s nice. The bitch wife didn’t want it. She said the bathroom lighting was all wrong. She got the dog, and I got the house. It was a good deal. The dog had an attitude. She was ten pounds, and she barked all day.” Scargucci looked at Bob. “Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs, and you seem like a nice dog. It’s just that dogs decide who they like and who they don’t like, and this dog didn’t like me. Peed on my side of the bed and ate my underwear. I was nice to it too, but it didn’t matter.”
I could see that Bob was considering the part about eating underwear. Eating underwear was one of Bob’s favorite pastimes.
“Can you cook?” Lula asked him.
“I can get by. I don’t have a lot of time to cook what with working at the dealership and hijacking trucks.”
“I hear you,” Lula said. “Cooking takes time. And you gotta have a stove.”
“I like your hair,” Scargucci said to Lula. “If you don’t mind my asking, is it natural?”
“I got it online,” Lula said, “but I got natural hair too.”
“You’re next door to the Dirty Car Wash,” I said to Scargucci. “Is that owned by Ray Geara?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They’re all over the state.”
“Does he buy cars from your dealership?”
“No. He’s a Mercedes guy. Likes them new. Buys them from the Mercedes dealership. Sometimes we get one of his used to sell. One of his VPs buys from us. Frankie Plover. He likes flash but he has limited funds. He’ll come in all excited about a Lamborghini but he’s gotta feed his coke habit. Between you and me, he’s kind of a whack job. I mean, I don’t sell him cars. I just fix them, so what do I care, right?”
Right. But I cared. Frankie Plover had just moved to the top of my list of crazy people who might do anything.
“I could see you’re a mechanic with integrity,” Lula said to Scargucci.
“And you’re a lady with class,” Scargucci said. “When I make bail, we should get together.”
“I’m all about it,” Lula said.
We checked Scargucci in at the police station and called Connie to come bail him out.
“That was easy,” Lula said when we were walking back to the SUV. “He was okay. I figure he might be good as a backup.”
“He hijacks trucks,” I said.
“Eighty percent of all the men I know hijacked a truck at one time or another,” Lula said. “If I had to eliminate men who hijack trucks I’d never get to go out. And it’s not like he deals drugs. We’re talking about toasters and sneakers.”
My phone buzzed and the fire marshal’s name and number appeared on my screen.
“Yo, Jeremy,” I said. “What’s the word?”
“The word is that it’s not as bad as the last time you got firebombed. I assume you already know this since the tape on your door has been disturbed.”
“I took a quick look this morning. Is it officially safe to go in?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have information on the cause?”
“It looks like it was a good old-fashioned Molotov cocktail fired from a can cannon. There were shards of what I’m guessing was a beer bottle and the charred remains of half of a can. From the amount of destruction, I’m thinking there wasn’t a lot of accelerant and you didn’t have a lot of fast-burning material in the room. Your bed and a chest of drawers. Once the fire got to the living room it had more to work with, but you had a citizen go in with a handheld extinguisher and then the fire department arrived.”
“Thanks for the call,” I said.
“Do you ever think about finding a different line of work?”
“Constantly.”
I hung up and called Connie. “Do you have time to make a phone call and get someone in to clean up my fire damage?”
“Absolutely. How soon can you use them?”
“Now.”
“No problem.”
“Do you know how to make a can cannon?” I asked her.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“How easy is it to get parts?”
“Super easy,” Connie said. “You can get a can cannon on Amazon. Thirty-nine dollars. Then you need a launcher. If you have an AR-15 lying around it works great. Or you can get an air gun from Amazon.”
Lula was listening. “You could get the whole setup from Big Dick. He sells out of the back of his van on Saturdays. He parks around the corner from the farmer’s market. If you want extra power, you could get a machine gun from him.”
So, a can cannon is easy to get, but I figured you might have to take some practice shots before you could hit a second-floor window on the first try.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I dropped Lula off at the office and drove to Rangeman. Ranger was finished with his meeting and breaking for lunch when I stepped out of the elevator on the fifth floor. We got sandwiches and drinks and took them down the hall to his office.
“I got a report back from Milos,” Ranger said. “Martin Plover and Geara are partners in the jewelry store. They’ve been partners for ten years.”
“That’s when Martin’s son, Frankie, started working for Geara.”
Ranger nodded. “This partnership is so complicated and crooked that it’s hard to tell who’s bad and who’s good. Probably no one is good. Geara is a career criminal with mob ties. Martin Plover likes his drinks but falls just short of a drunk. He quietly abuses his wife. And he likes to gamble. His son, Frankie, is a creep. Drug addict. Sex addict. Delusions of grandeur. Descriptions of him range from charming to evil. From what I see, Geara keeps him on as his stooge.”
“I have information that backs up your Frankie findings.”
“I have Marcus in custody,” Ranger said. “I thought we should keep him on ice until we need him. We picked him up this morning and he’s very happy, living in one of my safe houses, getting fed and watching TV.”
“Better than the crack house,” I said.
“Apparently. Have you talked to Jeremy Gorden?”
“Yes. It was a Molotov cocktail launched from a can cannon. No structural damage. Connie is arranging for the restoration people to go to work.”
I finished my sandwich and looked down at Bob. He’d finished his sandwich as soon as I gave it to him.
“I’m two men short tonight, so I’ll be patrolling,” Ranger said. “Don’t be alarmed when a naked man gets into bed with you at one in the morning.”
“I always find naked men alarming,” I said.
“With good reason,” Ranger said.
“Sometimes they’re alarming in a good way.”
“Babe,” Ranger said.
I was flirting. Shame on me. I was spending too much time at Rangeman. I was finding it increasingly difficult to remember that I was in a relationship with Morelli. But that wasn’t entirely my fault since Morelli showed no signs of ever coming back from Miami.
I stood and hiked my messenger bag onto my shoulder. “Gotta go. Things to do.”