RANGER WAS STANDING beside the bed when I opened my eyes.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but the morning is moving on without us. Waggle is talking, and Morelli wants you to hear what he has to say.”

“I haven’t got any clothes.”

“Ella found clothes for you. I put them in my closet. Grab something to eat and meet me in my office. We’ll change your bandage and head out.”

I took a fast shower, got dressed in my new clothes, and went down to the fifth floor. I made a quick trip to the break room for coffee-to-go and a breakfast sandwich, and I walked the short hall to Ranger’s office.

“Did Waggle give up any information about Hal?” I asked.

“No. It doesn’t sound like he was part of that piece of the operation.” Ranger peeled the big bandage off my neck and replaced it with a smaller one. “I told Morelli we’d meet him at the police station.”

I took my sandwich and coffee in the car with me and finished eating seconds before Ranger parked. I took my coffee into the building with me.

Morelli was waiting in the hall for us, and led us into a small interview room. His eyes immediately went to the bandage on my neck.

“It’s fine,” I said. “A little sore to the touch but other than that it’s good. No problems.”

There was a small table with four chairs in the room. Morelli’s laptop was on the table.

“How’s Waggle?” I asked. “His head wound is okay,” Morelli said. “Lula chose a good fry pan. If she’d gone with the cast iron she might have killed him, and then we’d have no one to talk to.”

“She’s not much of a shot with a gun,” I said, “but she’s spot on with a fry pan.”

“Beyond the head wound, the man has serious problems,” Morelli said. “Some of the problems are drug related. We did a  blood test at the hospital, and he’s a walking pharmacy. I don’t  know how he functions at all. Plus, I suspect there’s some  underlying mental illness. Possibly bipolar. Possibly schizophrenia. He has lucid moments where we get snippets of information from him, and then he gets crazy eyes and goes off on a rant that’s unintelligible. I’ve had two sessions with him. One last night when we brought him in, and one this morning. I’m hoping you’ll pick up something I missed.”

Morelli pulled the first session up on his laptop and turned the computer, so Ranger and I could see the screen. There were the usual niceties of “What is your name?” and the waiving of a lawyer. Waggle was sitting slumped in his seat. His head was bandaged. He mumbled his answers and was asked to speak up.

“I want a burrito,” he said. “I’m not going onstage until I get a burrito.”

Morelli carefully explained to him that he was in a police station, and he wouldn’t be going onstage.

“Does that mean I won’t get a burrito?”

Morelli made a sign to someone off camera.

“We’ll try to get you a burrito,” Morelli said.

“Some people do yoga, but I do burrito,” Waggle said.

Morelli nodded. The good cop understanding and sympathizing. “Tell me about Leonard Skoogie,” Morelli said.

There was an instant change in Waggle. If he hadn’t been shackled to the chair he would have been on his feet.

“I hate Leonard Skoogie,” he said. “He was my agent, and he sold me out. I went to his office to kill him. I would have stabbed him and cut him up into tiny pieces until he looked like Skoogie confetti, but he was already dead by the time I got to him. How shitty is that? Nothing ever works out for me. I could hardly get the knife in him. It got stuck in his neck.”

“Do you know who killed him?” Morelli asked.

“No, but I hate the bastard who got to him first. I wanted to kill Skoogie. There’s no justice in this world.”

“Yeah, bummer,” Morelli said.

“He sold me out. I was supposed to star in the show. I was going to be a big television star, and he made the deal without me. He didn’t die of natural causes or anything, did he? I would hate that. I hope he suffered. Did he suffer?”

“I don’t know,” Morelli said. “By the time I got to him he wasn’t talking, and he had your knife sticking out of his neck. Why did you put him in the closet?”

“It seemed boring to leave him on the floor. People would come in and it would just be another dead guy on the floor. Having him pitch himself out of a closet is more memorable. And don’t forget the shoe. Did you like the shoe on the desk? It made you think, right? It added to the plotline and brought it all together.”

“Tell me about the plotline,” Morelli said.

Waggle’s eyes were darting around. “Where’s my burrito? You promised me a burrito.”

Morelli looked to someone off camera. “Do we have the burrito?”

Moments later a uniform came in holding a fast-food bag. He handed the bag to Morelli and left. Morelli opened the bag and passed it over to Waggle.

“This isn’t a breakfast burrito,” Waggle said. “There’s no egg in this. And who made it? Bruce the Bear?”

“It’s two in the morning,” Morelli said. “This was the only burrito we could find.”

Morelli hit the button to end the video.

“It deteriorates fast after this. It’s like once something sets him off he completely loses it. He actually asked for a knife. He said he had to stab something.”

“And the second interview this morning?” Ranger asked.

Morelli pulled the second interview up. Waggle was at the table, and he was jiggling his foot so hard his whole body was vibrating.

“He’s strung out,” I said.

Morelli nodded agreement. “We shipped him off to a state facility after this session.”

“Tell me about the television show,” Morelli said, sitting across the table from Waggle, leaning forward a little. Friendly.

“It was my idea,” Waggle said. “I had the idea, and I wrote the script. And they stole it. It was a good idea. It was about a deli for cannibals. It started out like an ordinary deli, but they weren’t making any money, so they got the idea to go gourmet niche.”

He’d started out pale and agitated, but he was getting some color back in his cheeks as he talked about the show.

“They would get people to work in the deli, and then they’d capture them and butcher them and serve them to cannibals. Genius, right? And then for future shows they could put the extra captured humans up for auction, like they do in stockyards. And there could be these cannibal deli places all over the world. So, what do you think?”

“Wow,” Morelli said.

“I even wrote a script for the musical,” Waggle said.

The color went out of Waggle’s cheeks, and his eyes lost focus. “I don’t feel good,” he said. “I need my meds.”

“We’re working on it,” Morelli said. “Why did you actually kidnap people if this was just for a television show?”

“We couldn’t sell the show, so we thought we’d do a reality thing and get some publicity. And it worked. Skoogie finally sold it.”

“What about the people you kidnapped? Where are they?”

“I don’t know. I just came in when they needed me to be in a scene. They took them to the stockyard or the slaughterhouse or something.”

Waggle started to shiver, and someone came in and wrapped a blanket around him.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Morelli asked.

“Skoogie, and a couple guys from some South American place, and the sunshine-truck guy.”

“Does the sunshine-truck guy have a name?” Morelli asked. “I don’t know his name, but he’s cool,” Waggle said. He looked around. “Is Jillian here? Jillian was supposed to pick me up.”

“Jillian isn’t here,” Morelli said. “You’re in police custody.” Waggle got crazy eyed. “The bitch said she’d be here.” Morelli stopped the video. “There isn’t anything worth watching after this.”

“This is too weird,” I said. “Five men were kidnapped because someone wanted to sell a television show?”

“Six men,” Morelli said. “One was returned.”

“There’s something missing,” Ranger said. “Skoogie was a major player, but there have to be others. It seems reasonable that Ernie Sitz is involved. Or at least, was involved. Nobody can find him. Who else?”

“The sunshine-truck guy,” I said.

Morelli looked over at me. “Did you get anything out of this? You were working at the deli.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Nothing jumped out at me.”

“One last thing,” Morelli said. “We retrieved Waggle’s backpack from event security. It was mostly dirty laundry, but there was a clipping in it that you’ll want to see. I have a photo of it on my phone. The original is in the evidence room. You can also pull it up online.”

It was a short piece in Variety, dated the day before Skoogie died.

“Holy crap,” I said. “Chris Hemsworth is amazing.”

“He’s also not Victor Waggle,” Morelli said. “Waggle thought Skoogie was in L.A. pitching him.”

“Yes, but Chris Hemsworth is THOR!”

“Put him in a Giants jersey, and I’ll pay attention,” Morelli said.

I left with Ranger. “Now what?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

“I have to pick up my laundry, and I should check in with Connie.”

Ranger drove to my parents’ house and waited in the car while I ran inside. I grabbed my laundry basket, said goodbye to Grandma, and shoved the basket into the back of the Cayenne.

“Next stop is the office,” I said.

Ranger drove out of the Burg and turned onto Hamilton. The office was a block away, and we could see that Darren’s wreck of a burrito truck was parked at the curb. Connie and Lula were on the sidewalk by the truck. Ranger pulled up behind it, and we got out.

“Look at what we got here,” Lula said. “Here’s how you make lemonade out of lemons. Darren struck up a deal with Stretch and Raymond, and they’re taking Breakfast Burritos on the road.”

Stretch was behind the wheel, and Raymond looked out at me through the open window.

“We deliver,” Raymond said. “That is our motto. We are in the true American spirit of chasing the dream. We are becoming big-deal entrepreneurs.”

“I’m surprised the truck is still running after getting tipped over,” I said.

“I guess you just can’t keep a good truck down,” Lula said.

“We must be off now,” Raymond said. “This is prime burrito time. We are going to try our luck at the button factory.”

We waved adios to the burrito truck.

“Did you get a burrito?” I asked Lula.

“Yeah,” Lula said. “It was a pretty damn good burrito.”

“Anything new come in for me?” I asked Connie.

“Nope. Slow morning,” Connie said.

Ranger and I returned to his car, and I asked him to ride past the deli. I was thinking about Hal. I had an unrealistic but hopeful fantasy that we’d drive down the alley behind the deli, and Hal would be standing there looking confused.

Ranger cruised past the front of the deli and went around to the alley. He stopped and idled for a moment by the dumpster and the parking lot. I looked at the lot and the deli’s charred back door, and I had an epiphany.

“Omigod,” I said. “I know the sunshine truck. It’s Central GP. It has a big sun on the side of the truck. The slogan is we sell everything under the sun. And if Vinnie was transported in it, the inside of the truck might have smelled like bananas. Frankie is the snitch who always knew when a manager was hired. He was at the deli every day.”

Ranger called his control room and asked for information on Frankie and the location of the Central GP truck.

“Are you going to call Morelli?” I asked.

“Not yet. Morelli’s a good cop, but he’s held back by procedural rules and layers of bureaucracy. I can move faster.”

This was true. It was also true that Ranger frequently operated in the gray zone of not quite legal.

We were about to pull into the Rangeman garage when Ranger’s control room got back to him. Frankie’s full name was Frank Russel Lugano. He lived in a second-floor apartment not far from the deli. His Uncle Constantine owned Central GP. Leonard Skoogie was his cousin on his mother’s side. Frankie’s live-in girlfriend was a waitress at Hooters. And Frankie didn’t report in for work this morning.

“He’s running,” I said. “He’s probably on a flight to Guatemala.”

Ranger cut across town and turned onto Whitson Avenue. He drove two blocks and parked in front of Frankie’s building. It was three stories. Brick. Smushed into the middle of a row of similar Practical Pig sturdy but uninteresting buildings. We took the stairs to the second floor and got there just as Frankie was leaving.

“Back it up,” Ranger said to Frankie. “We’d like to talk to you.”

“I’m in kind of a hurry,” Frankie said.

“This won’t take long,” Ranger said, motioning Frankie back inside.

It was a small, nicely furnished apartment with no girlfriend in sight.

“Tell me about the kidnappings,” Ranger said.

“You know as much as I do,” Frankie said.

“Not true,” Ranger said. “We just finished talking to Victor Waggle.”

Frankie rolled his eyes and dropped the duffel bag he’d been carrying. “Waggle. I had reservations about this gig from the beginning. We all did. We knew sooner or later Waggle was going to screw it up. He’s an incredible talent, and he’s batshit crazy. You give him drugs to try to calm him down, and he gets even crazier. Lenny didn’t want to cut him out. He had no choice.”

“I’m not interested in the details,” Ranger said. “I want to know where the kidnapped victims are being held.”

“That’s a problem,” Frankie said. “I don’t know where they are. I was a minor player in this fiasco. They wanted to use my truck to help make a movie. It sounded like fun. And they were going to pay me. All I had to do was show up, they’d load some guy into the back, and then I’d drive him to a pickup point. The Colombians took over from there. One time they were doing a big scene with a helicopter and I had to borrow a van to transport everyone. They thought a van was a better visual with the helicopter.”

“It was okay with you that you were part of a kidnapping?” I asked.

Frankie shrugged. “Yeah. It didn’t seem so bad. It wasn’t like anybody was going to get hurt. It wasn’t like they were going to ransom them off or anything. They just wanted to make a movie. Lenny figured he could get some publicity with the kidnappings, and he could make this reality show thing, and get people to look at it. And it worked. Was a shame he died just when he should have been celebrating. Or maybe he died because he did too much celebrating.”

“Where do I find the Colombians?” Ranger asked.

“I don’t know,” Frankie said. “They always found me. I’d meet them in a parking lot somewhere and transfer the body. They only spoke Spanish. I never knew what they were saying.”

“Who was in charge of the Colombians?” Ranger asked.

“Should I have a lawyer or something?” Frankie asked.

“We aren’t police,” Ranger said. “I’m just trying to find Hal.”

“Okay, I get that,” Frankie said. “I’d like to help you, but this started out simple and just got more and more complicated. We were only supposed to take one guy, but Lenny wasn’t getting enough publicity. Nobody was watching the little movie. There’s too much stuff out there on YouTube. So, Lenny kidnapped more guys and kept making bigger and better movies. You gotta give it to Lenny. He wasn’t a quitter.”

“The Colombians,” Ranger said.

“They’re just worker bees. Ernie brought them with him from his place in Bogotá.”

“Ernie Sitz?”

“Yeah. Lenny’s partner. It started out with Lenny and Victor. Then Lenny needed money so he brought his pal Ernie in.”

“Anyone else involved?” Ranger asked.

“Harry. He came in late and funded a production company. I never met Harry, but apparently he doesn’t speak Spanish and the guys from Colombia don’t understand much English, and so one day Harry is on a rant because a bunch of women came to his daughter’s house complaining about her husband. So, these Colombians misunderstand and snatch the husband.”

I glanced over at Ranger and saw his mouth twitch into a hint of a smile.

“Vinnie?” I asked.

“I don’t know the guy’s name, but we had to drug him up and return him.”

“Where do we find Ernie?” Ranger asked.

“He jumped ship when Victor went down. He’s going back to Bogotá. I think he had a flight this morning.”

I looked at the duffel sitting on the floor. “Is that where you’re going?”

“No. I have a ticket for Flight 127 to Hawaii, then maybe I’ll go to El Salvador. I have friends there. Gonna do some fishing.”

“Have a good trip,” Ranger said.

“Thanks,” Frankie said. “I hope you find Hal, and he’s okay. The original plan was to drug the men and send them home, but I don’t know about Harry. I hear he’s mob.”