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“I pulled the plug on the feed, but he could be watching from a window.” He looked at the suit jacket buttoned over my vastly reduced chest. “You lost some weight.”
“Long story. I’ll tell you in the car.”
Ranger gave me his keys. “Take the car and go home, and feel free to use it until I come for it. I’m going to stay and stake out the building. There’s no rear exit. He has to come out this way.”
“I can stay with you.”
“Not necessary. I’ve already asked Tank to send men. They should be halfway here by now.”
“Vlatko wants to finish the job he started in Korea,” I said. “And I think there’s something else going on. He said the episode at Rangeman was a dry run.”
I borrowed money from Ranger for parking and tolls and drove back to Trenton. Morelli called just as I was approaching my Turnpike exit.
“I’m driving,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be talking on the phone.”
“I grilled hotdogs for dinner, and I don’t know if I should save the leftovers for you or feed them to Bob.”
“Save one for me. I’m about an hour away.”
Rush hour had come and gone, and traffic was light. I reached Morelli’s house in just under an hour and parked Ranger’s Porsche behind a bright blue RAV4.
Briggs was in the living room, holding on to his duffel bag, when I walked in.
“My cousin Eddie said I could stay with him now that no one wants to kill me,” Briggs said.
“Is that your RAV4 at the curb?”
“Yeah. I was afraid to drive it when Poletti was looking for me.”
“Do you have any job prospects?”
“No, but that’s never an issue. I just play my short card and people are afraid I’ll sue them if they don’t hire me.”
Briggs left, and I went into the kitchen in search of my hotdog. I removed my suit jacket, and I heard Morelli suck in some air. I looked down and saw that not only was my shirt slashed open, it was stained with dried blood.
“Psychopath encounter,” I said to Morelli. “I think it’s just a scratch.”
“You don’t know?”
“There was a lot going on.” I checked myself out and verified that it wasn’t serious. I added mustard, ketchup, pickles, and potato chips to my hotdog and took a bite. “I’m starving,” I said with my mouth full of hotdog.
“About this psychopath,” Morelli said.
“I went to New York with Ranger following a lead on the polonium thing. I had a run-in with this crazy guy named Vlatko who planned the poisoning, and he sort of slashed me.”
“Where was Ranger when all this was happening?”
“He was snooping around in the Russian consulate.”
Morelli was looking like his blood pressure was approaching stroke level. “Tell me you weren’t in the consulate with him.”
“It was a party. Technically I was there with a Russian vodka maker.”
“How do you know a Russian vodka maker?”
“I picked him up in a bar.”
“You’ve managed to do a lot in a short amount of time,” Morelli said.
