RANGER TOOK CONNIE and Lula to the office and waited while they got into their cars and drove away. The Rangeman SUV was still behind us, idling at the curb. Ranger called back and had Vinnie transferred up to the Jeep.

“Do I need to know why he’s in his underwear?” Ranger asked me.

“That’s how he was captured.”

Vinnie climbed into the back, chain dangling from his handcuff, and Ranger took a universal handcuff key out of his pocket and handed it to Vinnie.

“I assume the first shot I heard was aimed at that chain,” Ranger said to me.

“I didn’t have a handcuff key.”

“You’re a bounty hunter,” Ranger said. “You always carry handcuffs.”

“I forgot, but I remembered my gun. And I whacked someone in the head with your Maglite.”

Ranger smiled at me. “Babe.”

“I guess I need to go home,” Vinnie said.

“That’s not a good idea,” I told him. “Lucille isn’t happy with you.”

“She’ll get over it,” Vinnie said. “She always does.”

Ranger was waiting for my instructions.

“Take him home,” I said to Ranger.

Vinnie lived in a large yellow-and-white colonial in Pennington. It looked like a house a normal person would own, but it belonged to Vinnie. Go figure. Lucille made sure the lawn was mowed and the flowerbeds were mulched. White shears hung in the windows. It was close to eleven o’clock and lights were off in the house. The sky was overcast, and there was no moon. Some light filtered onto Lucille’s lawn from a streetlight half a block away. It was enough light to see there was debris scattered across the yard.

Ranger pulled into the driveway, and Vinnie jumped out.

“What the heck?” Vinnie said, kicking through the debris. “This is my shirt. And socks.” He walked to the door and rang the bell. He rang a second time. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, Lucille!”

A light flashed on in an upstairs window, the window opened, and Lucille stuck her head out. “Vinnie?”

“Yeah. I’ve been rescued. Let me in. I don’t have my key.”

“Your key won’t do you any good, you jerk. I had the locks changed. Get your perverted butt off my lawn.”

“This is my lawn, too,” Vinnie said.

“The hell it is. My father bought this house for us, and it’s in my name.”

“It’s common property, sweetie pie,” Vinnie said. “And you’ll have to kill me to get my half.”

“No problem,” Lucille said.

She disappeared from the window, and Vinnie started collecting his clothes. “I can’t believe she did this,” he said. “Look at this silk shirt laying here in the mulch. And my hand-painted tie.”

Lucille reappeared in the window with a shotgun, and she blasted one off at Vinnie. “You’re trespassing,” she said.

“What are you gonna do, shoot me and call the police?” Vinnie yelled at her.

“No. I called my father. He’s on his way over.”

“Her father’s dumped so many bodies in the landfill he has his own parking place,” Ranger said.

Lucille squeezed off another shot, and Vinnie scrambled to the Jeep with his arms full of clothes.

Ranger put the Jeep in gear and backed out of the driveway. “Your call,” he said to me.

“Take him to the office.”

THE BLACK SUV was parked in front of the bonds office. There was a big gash in the hood and the roof was smashed in over the cargo area. A second car was parked behind it.

“Probably, we don’t want to stop here,” I said to Ranger.

“Give me a gun. I’ll take care of those assholes,” Vinnie said.

“You’ve caused enough trouble,” I told him. “You’re not getting a gun. And for crying out loud, put some clothes on. I’m going to have to disinfect the seat back there.”

Ranger cut off Hamilton, into the Burg, and stopped at a cross street.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to take him home with you,” I said to Ranger.

Ranger glanced at Vinnie in the rear view mirror. “We could negotiate. The price would be high.”

“Would I have to dress up like a geisha and rub your feet?”

Ranger cut his eyes to me. “It wasn’t what I had in mind, but it would be a place to start.”

“Cripes,” Vinnie said. “You two want to get a room?”

“Tell me again why you rescued him,” Ranger said.

I slid the Maglite back under the driver’s seat. “Grandma Plum and Aunt Mim.”

“Maybe he can stay with them,” Ranger said.

“Unfortunately, that’s not an option,” I said. “He can stay with me tonight.”

I GAVE VINNIE a quilt and a pillow. “You can spend one night here,” I said. “One night. Tomorrow, you have to find a different place to live.”

Vinnie dropped the quilt and pillow onto the couch. “I can’t believe Lucille kicked me out.”

“You were caught with a hooker!”

“I was doing Lucille a favor. She’s a good woman, but she’s picky about a lot of stuff. Don’t do this, and don’t do that. And what about me? I got needs. Okay, so I’m a pervert, but perverts got rights, too. There are places where I’d be considered normal. Borneo, maybe. Atlantic City.”

Good grief. I was going to have to set off a roach bomb in my apartment after he left.

“Anyway, the big problem isn’t Lucille,” Vinnie said. “The big problem is Bobby Sunflower. You whacked one of his guys in the head, and you snatched me out from under him. He’s not gonna like it.”

“Would he have killed you if I hadn’t gotten you out of there?”

“For sure. I was a dead man.”

“All because you made some bad bets.”

Vinnie remoted the television on, flipped through about twenty channels, and gave it up. “Sunflower’s in trouble. He needs money, and he needs respect. He’s in the middle of a war, and he can’t show weakness.”

“What war? Who’s he fighting?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should go into therapy at one of those sex addiction places. Do you think that would get me off the hook?”

“Maybe with Lucille. I don’t think Harry’ll buy it.”

My arm was scraped and the knee was torn out of my jeans from the fall. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t crashed into the SUV. I limped out of the living room, closed the door on Vinnie, started to undress, and noticed I’d missed a call from Morelli on my cell phone.

“Hey,” Morelli said when I called him back.

“Hey, yourself.”

“Just checking to see if you’re home. Shots were fired at Sunflower’s apartment building tonight.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Good point,” Morelli said. “We also got a report of shots being fired from Vinnie’s house. Lucille said she was shooting at a rat.”

“That neighborhood’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

“Should I be worried?” Morelli asked me.

“Hard to say.”

Morelli disconnected, and I limped into the bathroom, where I stood in the shower until all the rust was washed out of my hair. When I was done, I looked at the shampoo bottle. Empty. My refrigerator was also empty. I needed money. I needed to make another capture.

VINNIE WAS BACK to wearing only his underwear. He was in my kitchen, unshaven, his hair spiked up from sleep, his eyes half open.

“Where’s the coffee?” he asked. “Where’s the orange juice?”

“I don’t have any,” I told him. “I need to go shopping.”

“I need coffee. Lucille always had my coffee ready.”

“There’s no Lucille,” I told him. “Get used to it. And after today, there’s no me. You can’t stay here.”

“Where will I go?”

“Stay with one of your friends.”

“I don’t have friends,” Vinnie said. “I have hookers and bookies. And my bookie wants to shoot me.”

“Do you have money?”

Vinnie flapped his arms. “Do I look like I have money? My wallet was left behind with my pants. Maybe we should go back and check out the lawn in front of my house to see if Lucille tossed out cash and credit cards along with my clothes.”

“What about the office? Don’t you keep petty cash? Doesn’t Connie have a corporate credit card?”

“We might have a small cash flow problem,” Vinnie said.