AN: OMG I'm back! Life in the time of Covid is so weird, and I'm pretty sure when I stress purged my house back in March, I accidentally tossed my muse. With everyone home all of the time there has been zero time or energy for writing. I've decided that has to change so I'm jumping back in by finishing this book. To everyone who has been begging me to come back, thank you. You gave me the kick in the pants to remember that I love writing, and I needed that! I'm going to try to post weekly, but realistically, I am home schooling a pair of kids so I can't make promises. Everything belongs to J/E but the mistakes are all mine.
Here's the deal, I like sports. I watch a lot of them. I watch Baseball, I love hockey, and I like the atmosphere associated with Sunday football. I never bet on sports, but it's a part of the fan culture, so when someone is talking about it, I pretend I understand what the hell they are going on about and then don't say anything until we move onto topics I can speak of with authority. It's not that I don't think I have the intelligence to understand sports betting; it's always been more of a lack of disposable income to put towards sports betting that is the main contributing factor in my disinterest. Hell, I didn't even buy lottery tickets unless the jackpot was crazy high because I felt like it was a waste of money. The only reason I knew I was looking at a Bookie's ledger was that I'd seen them before in my line of work, that, and my dad has a bookie. His name is Monty; he works for the same cab company my dad does, and according to dad, uses the money from bookmaking to pay for his kid's college fund.
As tempting as it might have been to call Monty, I didn't exactly trust that he wouldn't exploit this gap in my knowledge to take advantage of me and lie through his teeth. I could have called my father, but he doesn't answer the phone. Mom wouldn't put dad on, without demanding to know why I wanted to speak to him. She was already punishing dad over forgetting to tell her I was married, I didn't need to throw him under the bus even more by outing him as a gambler. I decided to call Connie instead. When she answered the phone, I momentarily forgot that I was calling her at Rangeman, and not The Bonds Office.
"What?" she barked.
"I need to understand what it means to cover the spread," I said.
"Why?"
"Because I have to speak to Ranger about this later, and I should probably have some idea of what I'm talking about."
"Why don't you just get him to explain it to you?" she said. Connie sounded like she did whenever Vinnie was on her about something, and she was thinking about maiming the next person who bothered her.
"I can't ask Ranger," I said. "I should know this crap, and I know I've pretended to know this crap while in his company, so he probably figures I know this crap. If I ask him now, I'll feel like an idiot."
"You should know this crap," Connie snapped, and I heard her slam something down on her desk. "You deal with every type of crook there is, and if you bothered to understand things about them..."
"Skip the lecture, would you? I know a lot of other things, and if you don't want to tell me, I'll look it up. I just thought you'd be the most efficient means of getting the information."
"I need to talk to Ranger. I called in a favour to get him to fill these sorts of gaps in your education. Seems he was too busy trying to fill.."
"Connie!" I shouted, "Jeeze, what bug crawled up your ass?"
I heard her sigh, and then the distinct sound of a lighter on a cigarette. Whatever it was, was bad. Connie hadn't smoked in a while.
"I'm trying to plan a baby shower for Lula, for this Saturday. Do you have any idea how many baby shower's I've hosted? All of none. That's how many."
"Why the rush?"
"Because between now and when she is due, this is the only weekend Sally doesn't have something scheduled, and he wants to be there."
"Why don't you call my mom?" I said. "She's into this sort of thing."
"Hey, that's a good idea," Connie said. Her tone indicating that she pretty much thought my idea was about as useful as a bag of hair. "Why don't I call your mother to plan the baby shower of a former ho and her drag queen baby daddy."
"Okay, so not mom," I said, "Yikes. What about grandma?"
Connie mulled it over in her head for a minute. "Yeah. That might actually work. I mean, it'll be the first baby shower I've ever heard of with strippers at it, but..."
"You can't have strippers at the baby shower. Remember how Lula went off on Merlin's dance crew?" Merlin was my grandmother's husband for about a minute and the manager of a travelling male strip show. Lula had come with me to question them and gone off on one of the dancers about his lack of self-respect. She basically said she preferred BINGO to the strippers before she puked on one and fainted.
"Good point," Connie said.
"Do you like me now? Can you teach me about covering the spread, or do I need to Google?"
"Yeah yeah," she said. "Okay, here's the quick version. When you're betting on a sports team, and one team is favoured to win over the other by a large margin, everyone will wager on the favourite team, right?"
"Yes," I said.
"This is bad for bookies. They like to pay the winners out of the losers' pockets instead of their own, so they say that the favourite has to beat the other team by a certain number of points in order for you to win money; this is the spread. So let's say the Patriots are playing the Giants, and the Pats are favoured to win. The bookie might say that the spread is, I dunno, 12.5 points. Then for you to bet on the winner and get any money, they have to win by at least 12.5 points."
"You can't score half a point," I said.
"No, you can't," Connie said, "That half point is the hook; it's there because if you were to say that the Pats are going to win by 12 points, and they win by 12 points, then all bets are cancelled, and everyone gets their money back. So to prevent that, the fraction is put in there."
"So for you to win your bet, they actually have to score 13 points."
"Exactly."
"What happens if they don't beat the spread? Everyone loses?"
"Nope," she said. "Anyone who has bet on the underdog gets paid."
"And if the Underdog wins, do they have to win by that margin for you to get the money?"
"Nope," she said. "If they win by even one point, then anyone who has bet for them wins."
"Okay, I think I've got it."
"Are you going to want the long version later?"
"Probably not," I said. "Thanks."
"Christ, do you think Sally is going to want to put the shower on his YouTube channel? Like are we going to have to get makeovers before we go?"
"I have no idea," I said. "God, I hope not."
"Yeah..." Connie hung up on me, and I called Minnie and asked him to find out if Linton's baseball team had covered the spread in their last few games, and then made my way back to Ranger. He was standing outside of the pool building, looking amused.
"You forgot to ask Connie about the Vig," Ranger said.
"The what?"
"It's what bookies charge for the privilege of placing a bet with them. Also known as the Juice," Ranger said. He pressed the button on my watch and disconnected the transmitter.
"Look, for the record, I knew you were listening."
"Liar," he said. "And for the record, Connie is right about the gaps in your education."
"That I should know more about the seedier side of things so I can do my job better?"
"No, about why I didn't fill them."
I grinned. Ranger's answering smile could have melted an ice cream cone at the North Pole.
"How did you know Greg was a nut?" I asked, changing the subject before I jumped him in the parking lot. He put his hand on my back to lead me back to the car.
"Besides the fact that he lied?" Ranger asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"He recognized you," he said. "And he went a couple of shades paler when he did."
"He was nervous because you were oozing badass testosterone, which is different from regular testosterone and makes everyone want to wet themselves."
"I didn't become imposing until he freaked out about you," he said.
"Ranger, I've witnessed guys get intimidated by you when you're being friendly. He didn't freak out because he recognized me."
"Want to make a bet?"
"Uh depends," I said. "What are the terms?"
"Same as they were before Lester's meltdown," he said.
Honestly, with enough time to think about it, I wasn't sure if I was more pissed at Lester for destroying my car or because I wasn't going to find out what Ranger wanted to do to me without restrictions.
I took a deep breath and said, "I don't do threesomes, and I reserve the right to freak out if I get too far outside of my comfort zone."
"I won't do anything you won't like," he replied.
"Okay," I said. "Deal."
When we got back to the office, Ranger parked underground, and we took the elevator up to the second floor. Ranger stepped out of the elevator, and most casual chatter stopped. I wondered if that ever got old. Like, did he sometimes wish people just acted normally around him or was it a good ego boost to know that he just had to exist to command obedience from his men? I followed him out of the elevator, and all human noise ceased except for the noise that came from my stomach as it rather thoughtfully chose that moment to growl.
"Lunch?" I asked Ranger, and then suddenly, I was holding a cold soda and a candy bar. I mean, it wasn't magic. There were Rangemen involved, but they were quick, and I didn't have a chance to thank them for the treats. I shrugged and took a sip of the soda.
"So I was thinking on the drive here that the reason Dickerson knew the obnoxious van occupants were his bad guys, were because of the Muppet Baby connection. The words they used to taunt Bernadette were variations on the lyrics to the theme song. Which leads me to wonder, did the muppets have something to do with the scandal back in the day, or do you think it was just a way to remind him of what happened to him in his baseball career? And I keep coming back to, why now? What's special about now that's made them come out of the woodwork? Something in Sadie and Dickerson's work, maybe? Or is it just a really slow burn, and they've decided now is a good time for revenge?"
"Whoever sent Sadie that email, pretending to be Dickerson, will be able to tell us," Ranger said. "Hector is tracing it, but I still want someone in that restaurant tonight."
"Yep," I said, "And I'm going to have to figure out who the muppets were when Dickerson was in school."
"I'll do that for you," a new voice said, and I turned to look at a man who I knew worked contract occasionally in Trenton, but I was damned if I could remember his name. "You want me to find them and run a complete deep background on them?"
"Yes, please," I said. Ranger handed him the list of the guys who got expelled.
"Run these men too, give me a preliminary report in an hour, and then get out the shovel. I want everything you can find on them."
"You got it, Boss," he said. "Anyone else?"
"The rest of the baseball team when Dickerson was on it, and if I could get Dickerson's paper, the one that started all of this trouble, that would be awesome," I said.
"You got it, Boss Lady," he said, and he took off. Ranger suppressed a smirk. He crooked his finger, and I followed him into his office. Like the house here, this place was a little different. Yes, it had his bank of Babe TV monitors that tracked my every move, but the desk had no drawers, and he had a docking station for a laptop instead of a desktop computer. Ranger didn't do a lot of office work in Boston.
I tossed my now empty coke into the recycle bin, and one of the guys knocked on the door.
"Did you need another one, or are you good?" He asked.
"I'm good for now," I said. "I think we're going to go out for lunch soon."
"Want me to make a reservation somewhere?"
"No," I said, "I think we'll be fine."
Okay, this was weird. Ranger got up and gently pushed the guy out of the office before closing the door.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"They are afraid of you," he said, "They do not want to piss you off."
"Why?"
"Because you've been inadvertently fucking with Miami for months. The men are waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Miami is convinced you're plotting something huge. I'd tell them that you just forgot about it, but they are exceptionally alert right now."
"Ooooh," I said, "I forgot about that… Damn. I blame you."
"Babe."
"My home life is stable for the first time in years. So when I'm not at work, I'm not lying awake at night thinking about how everything in my life is fucked up."
"I'm not sure I should be apologizing for that," Ranger said.
"Well, it means that I keep forgetting I'm pissed at Miami."
"Are you still pissed off at Miami?"
"Yes!" I shouted. "They put me in a jail cell that didn't have cake in it!"
"Is it that they put you in lock-up or the lack of cake that has you pissed off?"
"I was going to stop and get lunch when I went out, so I was hungry when they put me in there. When I asked them for something to eat, they said they had to ask you first. When I finally whined enough for them to get me food, do you know what they brought me?"
"Something healthier than the burger you were probably planning," Ranger said.
"A kale salad," I said.
"The kale salad is pretty good," Ranger said. "You like it when Ella makes it."
"It was a bunch of chopped up kale, and that's it. There wasn't even dressing. If they were going serve me hipster food, the very least they could have done is give me some avocado with it, but nope. Not even a wedge of lemon to squeeze on the leaves."
"Probably, they were afraid of you using the lemon juice as a weapon."
"I would have," I muttered. "Either that or try to make a battery that would melt the bars."
"What were you and Lester planning?"
"Well, we were going to start by gluing everything to the ceiling. It's a total classic, but that was only phase one."
"There was more?"
"Yeah," I said, "Lester and I were originally thinking we could do a hell week, but then Lester said it would be better if we let the revenge draw out. He said he could probably make it so their television was delayed by a day. Depending on their television history, he could inundate them with spoilers every time they login to their computers. I told him that was too far, but he told me I was being a wuss."
"I'm with you. I think you'd have issues with your karma if you did that," Ranger said.
"Also, some of the stuff he wants to do is really long term. I honestly don't know if I have the energy for that."
"I don't mind you fucking with them for sport, but if you let Lester go total PsyOps on them, they are going to get PTSD."
"Can I mess with the car stereos? I saw this one thing on TV that I think could be brilliant."
"Yep," he said. "Don't maim or poison the men. I do need them to function."
"Done and done," I said. "Can I get Ella involved?"
"Go for it," Ranger said. "She's pretty pissed too."
I didn't want to think about how bad it would be if Ella were pissed at me. I mean, that would be like getting on the wrong side of a saint.
My stomach growled again, and we decided to get some lunch. When Ranger opened the office door, half a dozen Rangemen scurried away, pretending to look busy. Fearful that their eavesdropping would result in a bushel of avocados in our kitchen if we went home for lunch, we decided to grab a bite to eat at a deli not far from the police station.
We were eating our lunch while I went over my revenge plans with Ranger when he got a text, and his mood changed. He'd been sort of playful after leaving the University, and he was back to business now.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Has something happened?"
"I have a history with the Detective in charge of the case; it could make things awkward."
"History as in he wants you locked up in jail, but he can't get anything to stick?" I asked.
"History as in, I've seen her naked," Ranger said.
And just like that, my appetite died. I'd pretty much taken care of it with a giant smoked meat sandwich and some of the best fries I'd ever eaten, but Ranger had bought me a big wedge of chocolate cake, and I'd not had a chance to eat it yet. I knew I should have started with dessert. When you start with dessert, there's always room for dessert.
"It's history, Babe," he said.
"I know," I said. "I just…how recent is this history?"
"Sometime after you and I slept together the first time, but before Julie went missing."
"I thought you told me that the only person you'd been on dates with since we met was me?" I said.
"You don't have to date someone to fuck them," Ranger said.
"Well, tell me about her," I said. "If I'm going to meet her, I want to be prepared."
"She's a detective with the Boston Police Department. She's tenacious, doesn't take shit from anyone, and she's good at her job."
"I don't care about her resume, Ranger," I said. "I want to know if she's hot or not."
"Babe."
Stupid question. Of course, she was hot. I blew out a sigh.
"I married you," he said.
"Yeah, but she's probably volunteered to take on this case so she could hook up with you again. I don't want to have to deal with all of the flirting."
"You won't have to," Ranger said. "Eat your cake."
"No, I'm full," I said. "Maybe later."
Dessert for me was like sex. I don't mean donuts or cookies that one eats as breakfast or snack. I mean dessert, like cake or pie. Dessert was always a happy food. You sit down, your fork goes through the cake, and there's the anticipation as it presses down on the sponge and slides through the frosting between layers. You pick it up, and you put it in your mouth, and it's really damned hard to feel anything but happy when you eat it. Pie is the same deal, the satisfaction of breaking through a pie crust and getting that combination of slightly salty pastry with the sweet filling on your tongue. You eat dessert and you revere it; even when you know it's bad for you. I went a lot of years without getting sex, and dessert was my release. I either wanted to be seduced by my cake, or I wanted to use it to take out my frustrations. The point was, I needed to get in the mood, and it was hard to get lady wood when faced with the prospect of meeting a woman Ranger had probably thoroughly enjoyed.
The thing I momentarily forgot about Ranger, was that he was really good at putting me in the mood. Especially when it went against my better judgement.
He turned around and took a clean set of cutlery off of the table behind ours, and tore open the paper ring holding the paper napkin and utensils in their neat little roll. Ranger took the spoon from the bundle, and then cut into the slice of cake, and took a bite. He dipped into the cake again, got an extra bit of icing and held the spoon out to me. "It's good."
Only Ranger could take two innocuous words like that and turn them into foreplay. It was working. I took a bite of the cake, and he was right; it was delicious. He took another bite for himself, and I was transfixed by watching him eat it. Yeah, that was working for me. I picked up my own fork, so he didn't have to keep sharing his spoon, but I was grinning when I did.
"I'm a bad influence on you," I teased.
"I'll just work it off later," he said.
"I notice that you didn't say 'we,'" I said.
"What I'm planning for later is going to involve you being very still," he said, "You're going to be tired, but you're not going to be burning a lot of calories."
"Is this part of the bet? Because you haven't won yet."
"Nope," he said. "You're going to have to carb up for that."
I grinned. "You have to win the bet first."
"I will," he said.
We finished the cake and left the diner. We didn't go to the car; instead, he draped his arm around my shoulders, and we walked to the police station. When we arrived and walked up the steps, instead of releasing me completely, he dropped his arm from my shoulders and held my hand. It wasn't the first time he'd held my hand, but it was one of those things that I doubt would ever get old.
He did release me when we went inside, but I was a little less stressed about meeting a former lover of Ranger's. I say a little less stressed because I was pretty sure she was going to be hotter than I was. More desirable, more confident, probably more skilled at the job we more or less shared.
Ranger left me to wait while he went to speak to the desk sergeant. "Carlos Manoso, to see Detective Ross," Ranger said.
"She said you might stop by. She's prepping for an interrogation, but she said to let her know when you got here," The desk sergeant said. "You're going to have to check your weapons before you go through."
Ranger motioned for me to come forward, and we filled out a couple of forms for visitors badges and turned in our guns. We'd just finished when a woman came through the doors, chatting with a uniformed officer, and I immediately knew that she was Detective Ross. Not only because she lit up and blushed a little when she saw Ranger, but because of how she looked.
She was 5'7" with a mass of curly brown hair that she kept in a ponytail and she was wearing jeans and a fitted t-shirt. Either Ranger had a type, or this woman was a Stephanie substitute with brown eyes.
"Hey, Ranger," she said. "Long time, no see."
The tone wasn't particularly flirtatious, more along the lines of trying to be friendly, but when she shook hands with him, she looked down at them and blushed, like she remembered what those hands were capable of doing.
"We're here to talk to you about Greg Neudendorf," Ranger said.
"He's bawling his eyes out in interrogation," she said. "I'm sure once he's gotten a grip, he's going to call for a lawyer. He actually hurt you? Aren't you invincible or something?"
"He tried to lock my wife in a cage, and he tried to bite me," Ranger said. "It's assault and attempted kidnapping, and I'm pressing charges."
"You don't look hurt," she said. "Wait…wife?"
She looked at me for the first time, and I stuck out my hand, pretending to be oblivious to their past, "Stephanie Plum," I said.
She ignored my proffered right hand and looked at my left hand instead, trying to process the rings. "I mean Manoso. Sorry, it's new, and I'm still getting used to the name change."
I figured she might want to know that she hadn't been the other woman. She finally shook my hand and looked at Ranger, visibly trying to pull herself together. She hadn't seen him in two years, and I doubted she had been pining for that long. Probably she was just out of cake.
"Uh hi," she said and gave her head a slight shake. "Yeah, so why was he trying to hurt you?"
"Not sure," I said, "We're investigating a missing person that TPD is getting nowhere with."
"Well, I'm sure they're doing what they can," she said stiffly.
"The man's wife has a debilitating illness, and the strain of not knowing what's happened to him is only exacerbating the situation. We're just trying to help," I said.
"Yes, well, we don't need amateurs getting in the way of…"
"Stephanie is my best private investigator," Ranger said. "She's not an amateur."
"Thanks," I said to him.
"What the hell do you want with Neudendorf?" Ross asked me. "The guy was probably voted least likely to do anything interesting, in high school. He has zero record, and has lived at the University for a million years. Hell I'd be surprised if he left campus once a year."
"Linton's Muppet Costumes," I said.
"You're a pain in the ass," she said.
"I haven't done anything!" I said. "All I did was ask if I could see the costumes and he went bananas. I wasn't even mean about it."
Why does everyone automatically assume that I'm actively trying to be a pain in the ass? The only people I ever want to inconvenience are my skips, and I don't even care about that anymore because I've stopped skip tracing in favour of private investigations.
"You're going to ask me about them, and I'm going to have to go down to records and pull up the crates of bullshit associated with them," Ross said.
"Crates?" I said. I looked to Ranger. Seriously, nothing had turned up regarding the muppets in Boston when I ran the search. Not since the 80s and the parade.
"Yeah," she said. We walked through the Bullpen of the station to the observation area outside of interrogation. "Every year during Rush week, the fraternities at Linton compete for the key to the locker that holds the fucking Muppet Costumes. The winners go on a fucking prank spree throughout Boston. We catch them, we confiscate the costumes, press charges where necessary, and then some wealthy alumni get together and speak to whichever mayor is in office, and the costumes get released back to the University. They promise not to use the costumes again, and then the next year, we're out arresting muppets, looking like assholes for wrestling baby Kermit to the ground."
"I feel that way whenever I have a skip who's over the age of sixty," I said.
"You're a Bounty Hunter?" She said incredulously.
"It's how we met," Ranger said.
"Huh," she said. She looked at me again, sizing me up.
"Well, would you like me better if I told you that the Feds have taken the muppets into custody on suspected kidnapping and potential homicide charges?" Once again, this case had me uttering a sentence that I probably would never have to speak again.
"Do you want a list of people who have worn the Muppet costumes?" She asked.
"Yes," I said, "It would be helpful. We were told the Muppets were a sort of unofficial mascot. Neudendorf never said anything about them being used during Rush week."
"The costumes are beloved around here, and there's an annual thing in the paper about how the police should learn to take a joke and leave the Muppets alone. Traditions shouldn't be messed with, blah blah blah. Tell that to the broke musician who can't afford insurance, who's just had thousands of dollars worth of drum equipment destroyed by a drunken, sledgehammer wielding frat boy in an Animal costume. Or the little old lady who went down to the kitchen to find a guy wearing nothing by a Fozzy bear head, sitting at her kitchen table eating her cereal. They don't think it's just a prank."
She stalked out of the room and slammed the interrogation room door open.
"How come none of these things showed up when I did my search for crimes involving muppets?" I asked Ranger.
"Did you include Boston in your search area?" Ranger asked.
"I thought I did a nationwide search, but maybe I didn't," I said. "I was pretty tired when I ran it. Maybe I stuck to New Jersey and New York?"
I looked through the one-way glass at Neudendorf. He had calmed down, but I was pretty sure it was from the shock of Detective Ross's entrance into the interrogation room and that his grip on his nerves was one little piggy away from letting go.
"Are you an idiot?" Ross snapped.
"What?" Neudendorf squeaked.
"He packs like fifteen guns on his person at any given time, and he's built like the bastard child of Chuck Norris and a Challenger 2 tank. Why the hell would you think you could take him?" I cut my eyes to Ranger to see how he was taking the compliment. I would have been flattered, but he didn't seem to care. Maybe it was one he'd heard before.
"I was desperate!" Neudendorf cried.
"The costumes weren't worth it," she said, "I know they are an institution at Linton College, but you're lucky all he did was defend himself. He's not the kind of guy who would take kindly to someone hurting one of his men; I can't even imagine what he'd do to someone who hurt his wife."
"That's going to depend a lot on the circumstances of my injury," I said to Ranger. "You're either going to fuck them up or laugh at me."
"Babe," Ranger said.
"It's not about the costumes," Neudendorf said, "It's her! His wife! Do you know who she is?"
"A private investigator and a bounty hunter."
"She kills people!" He said.
"It's part of the job," Ross said. "Sometimes, people get shot."
"She cut off some guys head!" He shouted.
"Oh shit," I said.
"Yep," Ranger said. "Let's go."
I stayed put. "Are you sure we're talking about the same person? A hedgehog looks more capable of decapitating a person than Stephanie Manoso does."
"Oh come on!" I said. "You get to be Chuck Norris and I get to be less threatening than a hedgehog?" I didn't care that it was an accurate comparison of our abilities, but she didn't have to point it out.
"A friend of mine called me," Neudendorf said. "He said that he was being followed by this crazy chick, only he said her name was Plum, not Manoso. He paid some street punks to jack the wheels off of her ride so that he could get away from her, and he asked me to pick him up in this warehouse in Trenton, New Jersey. When I got there, she was standing over him with a knife, and he was tied to this machine. I had a gun that I borrowed from a student, and I fired off a few warning shots to get her to leave him alone, and the next thing I knew, she's throwing a fucking severed head at me! When she showed up at my work, I panicked. I thought if I could just lock her up in the supply room, I could get the police there."
"Awe man!" I whined, "This is such bullshit! Doesn't he realize that he's placed himself at the scene of the murder and…"
"You can bitch in the car," Ranger said, "Let's go."
We were at the door when I caught something else Neudendorf was saying, "I had someone I know look into her after I got away from her that night. She worked for that company, E.E. Martin. You know the one that was involved in all of that Mob stuff a while back?"
"Yeah," she said, "So? A lot of people worked for them."
"Yeah, but the police never questioned her. Not once. Nobody looked at her. They questioned everyone but not her. She got 'laid off' before the police made any arrests. She was the only one. And then she immediately gets hired on by a company owned by Harry the Hammer. And then the first thing she does, is she gets her boyfriend out of a murder charge, by pinning it on another guy. He can't say anything about it, because she killed him before the evidence getting her boyfriend off, miraculously appears."
"What the hell?" I said. I guess a lot of that was true, but he was leaving out a lot of crucial information.
"We're talking Trenton New Jersey," Ross said. "Everyone has mob connections, but that doesn't mean they are connected."
"Her old boyfriend is," Neudendorf said. "Remember that sting you guys did, that was in all the papers, where you arrested all those guys for drug trafficking?"
"Yeah," Ross said.
"He's one of the guys you busted."
Ranger took my elbow and propelled me out of the observation room, and straight out of the station, without even pausing to collect our weapons. Where the hell had Neudendorf gotten his information?