Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

“I have never poisoned you with my food.”

“Only because you don’t cook.”

I blew out a sigh because he was right, and this was going to lead to another contentious topic. Cooking. I’m not sure why I don’t cook. In my mind, I cooked a lot. I made whole mental turkey dinners, baked pies, roasted tenderloins, and whipped up rice pudding. I even owned a mental waffle maker. So to some extent, I understood Lula’s delusional belief that she could barbecue. The difference between Lula and me being that I knew fact from fiction. I knew I was no kind of cook.

The waitress came back with a couple plastic take-out boxes and the check.

“Well?” Morelli asked me.

“Well what?”

“Are we eating here or are we taking these subs back to my house?”

“I’d rather eat here. I have to go back to work tonight, and this is closer to Rangeman.”

“So you’re choosing Ranger over me?”

“Rangeman. Not Ranger. I have a project I can only do in the evening. You should understand that. You choose your job over me all the time.”

“I’m a cop.”

“And?”

“And that’s different,” Morelli said. “I’m serving the public, investigating murders, and you’re working for . . . Batman.”

“Gotham City would have been a mess without Batman.”

“Batman was a nutcase. He was a vigilante.”

“Well, Ranger isn’t a nutcase. He’s a legitimate businessman.”

“He’s a loose cannon hiding behind a veneer of legitimacy.”

We’d had this conversation about a hundred times before, and it never had a happy ending. Problem was, there was an element of truth to what Morelli said. Ranger played by his own rules.

“I don’t want to get into a shouting match,” I said to Morelli. “I’m going to pack up this sandwich and go back to work. We can try this again when I’m done working for Ranger.”

THE RHYTHM OF Rangeman was always the same. As a security facility, it worked around the clock. The fifth-floor control room, the dining area, and most of the satellite offices were interior to the building and without windows. If you worked in these areas, it was difficult to tell if it was night or day.

The evening shift was in place when I came on the floor. Sybo Diaz was kicked back in his chair, watching several monitors. The code computer was to his right; the screen was blank. I’d never spoken to Diaz, but I’d seen him around. He wasn’t the friendliest guy in the building. Mostly, he stayed to himself, eating alone, not making eye contact that would encourage conversation. According to his work profile, he was five foot nine inches tall and thirty-six years old. His complexion was dark. His face was scarred from acne he probably had as a teenager. He was built chunky, but he didn’t look like he had an ounce of fat. He walked like his shorts were starched.

“Hey,” I said to him, passing the desk on my way to my cubicle. “How’s it going?”

This got me a polite nod. No smile.

I plunked myself into my chair and turned my computer on. I could see Diaz from where I sat. I watched him for twenty minutes, and he never moved or blinked or looked my way. I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t know how to go about it. The man was a robot. For lack of something better to do, I ran one of my assigned security checks. I printed the report and attempted to staple the pages, but the stapler was jammed. I pressed the button that was supposed to release the staples, I poked at it with my nail file, I banged it against the top of my desk. Bang, bang, bang. Nothing. I looked up and found Diaz staring at me.

“Stapler’s jammed,” I said to him.

His attention turned back to his monitors. No change in facial expression. Also no change in my stapler condition, so I hit it against my desktop some more. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Diaz swiveled his head in my direction, and I think he might have sighed a little.

I left my station and took my stapler over to Diaz. “I can’t get it to work,” I told him, handing him the stapler.

Diaz examined the stapler. By now the stapler had a bunch of dents, and the part that holds the staples was all bashed in. Diaz pushed the button that was supposed to release the staples, but of course nothing happened.

“It’s dead,” Diaz said. “You need a new stapler.”

“How do I get a new stapler?”