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“Two minutes,” Ranger said, pulling away from the curb.
The fifth-floor windows blew out when we reached the corner. Ranger hooked a U-turn and parked so we could watch the building. There was a second explosion, the alarm was wailing away, and fire spilled out the open windows.
Ranger called his control room. “Tell all responders to the Meagan Building alarm to secure the exterior of the building. Under no circumstances are they to go inside until the fire marshall declares the building safe.”
Two Rangeman SUVs arrived and parked half a block from the burning building. A police car was simultaneously on the scene. Ranger made another U-turn and drove back to Rangeman. He parked in the garage and looked over at me.
“You can really haul ass in those heels,” he said. “The memory will give me sleepless nights for a long time.”
That got a smile out of me. “Sorry to interfere with your sleep.”
“There’s a solution to the problem,” Ranger said, getting out of the car. “You can finish your wine upstairs, and we can discuss it.” He opened the passenger-side door, took the briefcase from me, and grinned. “Babe, you have panic written all over your face.”
“You’re a dilemma.”
He ushered me into the elevator. “Good to know.”
We rode in silence to Ranger’s floor, he opened his door, and I went to the kitchen and retrieved my wine.
“I would have liked more time at Wellington,” Ranger said.
He dropped his jacket and gun belt onto the kitchen counter, poured a glass of wine for himself, and refreshed mine.
“They were shredding bags of papers when I was there with Vinnie. Probably, there wasn’t anything left to see.”
Ranger took his wine into the dining room and dumped the contents of Drager’s briefcase onto the table.
“Bank statements,” Ranger said. “And a list of businesses owned by the firm.” He leafed through the bank statements. “Looks like a pattern of outgoing wire transfers to a New Jersey LLC called GBZakhar, and someone has checked them off on the latest statement.”
He took the statement to the combination office and den attached to his bedroom and typed Zakhar into his computer.
“GBZakhar doesn’t have a Web site,” he said. “Let’s go to the Jersey state business gateway site.”
Ranger worked his way through the site and finally came to a guide for requesting public record information. He gave a credit card number, and information on GBZakhar was displayed on the screen.
“This is interesting,” Ranger said. “Do you recognize the name of the registered agent?”
“Walter Dunne. One of the Wellington lawyers found executed behind the diner.”
“GBZakhar gives a Newark P.O. box as its address. And they list four company officers. Herpes Zoster, Mickey Mouskovitch, Rainbow Trout, and Gregor Bluttovich. I expect the first three names are fake. That leaves Gregor Bluttovich,” Ranger said.
“Blutto! Gritch said he heard Sunflower talk about Blutto. Gritch didn’t know if it was a first name, last name, or nickname.”
I was leaning over the back of Ranger’s chair, reading off the computer screen, trying hard not to kiss his neck. It would be absolutely the wrong thing to do, but it was so tempting. He always smelled great, like his Bulgari Green shower gel. How it stayed with him all day was a mystery. His black T-shirt spanned his biceps. He wore a watch as his only jewelry. His back looked athletic under his shirt. I thought it would look even better without the shirt. All I had to do was touch my lips to his neck, and the shirt would be gone.
“Babe,” Ranger said, “if you don’t back up a couple inches, we’re going to be finding out about Bluttovich in the morning.”
I didn’t move. I was contemplating.
“Babe?”
I stepped away from his chair. “I was reading the screen. Let’s see what you can pull up on Blutto.”
Ranger had state-of-the-art computer programs that left most people with virtually no secrets. He could get medical records, credit histories, shoe size, litigation, you name it.
Ranger plugged Gregor Bluttovich into one of the programs and information scrolled up.
“Fifty-two years old,” Ranger said. “Born in Varna, Bulgaria. Came to this country in ’92. He has four ex-wives and is currently unmarried. He has seven kids distributed among his ex-wives. The oldest is thirty-four. The youngest is six. He was a police officer in Varna for fifteen years. No work history after that. He owns property in Newark and Bucks County. I know the Newark area. It has a large Russian immigrant population. The Bucks County property is in Taylorsville. He’s affiliated with three other holding companies. He had a double bypass two years ago. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon last year, but the charges were dropped.”
