"I promise."
I DROVE ACROSS town to Lula's house. She has a second-floor apartment, facing front, and her lights were still on. I didn't have a phone, so I walked up to her door and rang the bell. A window opened above me, and Lula stuck her head out. "What?"
"It's Stephanie."
She dropped a key down, and I let myself in.
Lula met me at the top of the stairs. "Are you spending the night?"
"No. I need some help. You know how I was going to turn Ranger over to Joyce? Well, it didn't exactly work out."
Lula burst out laughing. "Girl, Ranger is the shit. No one's better than Ranger. Not even you." She took in the T-shirt and jeans. "I don't mean to get too personal, but were you wearing a bra when you started the evening, or is this something recent?"
"I started out this way. Dougie and Mooner don't wear my kind of underwear."
"Too bad," Lula said.
It was a two-room apartment. Bedroom with bath attached, and another room that served as living room and dining room and had a small corner kitchen. Lula had placed a little round table and two ladderback chairs at the edge of the kitchen area. I sat on one of the chairs and took a beer from Lula.
"You want a sandwich?" she asked. "I got bologna."
"A sandwich would be great. Dougie just had crab puffs." I took a long pull on the beer. "So this is the problem: what are we going to do about Joyce? I feel responsible for Carol."
"You can't be responsible for someone else's bad judgment," Lula said. "You didn't tell her to tie Joyce to that tree."
True.
"Still," she said, "it'd feel good to screw Joyce over one more time."
"You have any ideas?"
"How well does Joyce know Ranger?"
"She's seen him a couple times."
"Suppose we slip her someone who looks like Ranger, and then we take back the ringer? I know this guy, Morgan, who could pass. Same dark skin. Same build. Maybe not as fine, but he could come close. Especially if it was real dark, and he didn't open his mouth. He got the name Morgan 'cause he's hung like a horse."
"I'd probably need a couple more beers to think it would work."
Lula looked over at the empty beer bottles sitting on her counter. "I got a head start on you. So I'm real optimistic about this plan." She opened a dog-eared address book and thumbed through it. "I know him from my former profession."
"Customer?"
"Pimp. He's a real asshole, but he owes me a favor. And he'd probably get off on passing as Ranger. He probably got a Ranger outfit in his closet, too."
Five minutes later, Morgan answered his page, and Lula and I had ourselves a fake Ranger.
"Here's the plan," Lula said. "We pick the dude up on the corner of Stark and Belmont in a half hour. Only he hasn't got all night, so we gotta get this thing moving."
I called Joyce and told her I had Ranger, and she should meet us in the lot behind the office. It was the darkest spot I could think of.
I finished my sandwich and beer, and Lula and I packed off in the Cherokee. We got to the corner of Stark and Belmont, and I had to do a double-take to make sure the man standing there wasn't Ranger.
When Morgan got closer, the differences were apparent. The skin tone was the same, but his features were more coarse. There was more age around his mouth and eyes, less intelligence in his expression. "Joyce better not look too close," I said to Lula.
"I told you to have another bottle of beer," Lula said. "Anyway, it's real dark behind the office, and if things go right Joyce'll break down before she gets too far."
We cuffed Morgan's hands in front of him, which is a dumb thing to do, but Joyce wasn't a good enough bounty hunter to know it. Then we gave him the key to the cuffs. The deal was that he'd put the key in his mouth when we got to the lot. He'd refuse to talk to Joyce, playing sullen. We'd arrange for her to get a flat, and when she got out to take a look, Morgan would take the cuffs off and escape into the night.
We got to the alley early, so I could drop Lula. We'd decided she would hide behind the small Dumpster that serviced Vinnie and his neighbor, and when Joyce was busy taking Ranger into custody, Lula would drive a spike into Joyce's tire. Déjà vu. I angled the Cherokee so that Joyce would be forced to park next to the Dumpster. Lula jumped out and hid, and almost immediately lights flashed at the corner.
Joyce pulled her SUV in next to me and got out. I got out, too. Morgan was slumped in the backseat, his head down to his chest.
Joyce squinted into the car. "I can't see him. Put your lights on."
"No way," I said. "And you'd be smart to leave yours off, too. He's got a lot of people looking for him."