by Nick James
He got ready for bed a little after midnight, the procedure amounted to draping his clothes over the back of a chair and climbing into the creaking bed. The SUV was still out on the street although he could swear it had moved about thirty feet. Then again, maybe he was just remembering where it had been parked last night or the night before. He thought about the SUV until he eventually dozed off.
It was the flashing lights bouncing off the ceiling and walls that woke him. He couldn’t recall hearing any sirens although when he looked out the window three squad cars were out on the street with their roof lights flashing. What looked like two more cars, unmarked, sat in the parking lot just below his window with lights flashing on their dashboards.
There was a paramedic unit out on the street with flashing red and white lights that seemed to bounce left to right. The rear doors were pulled open on the paramedic unit and a number of people were standing around an empty gurney, all looking pretty official. Bobby stood in the dark and looked down on all of it for the better part of two hours and learned absolutely nothing. The SUV was nowhere to be seen.
The following morning the activity from the middle of the night had ceased. There were still two squad cars out there, but they appeared to be empty and were parked along the curb with their lights off.
Bobby was reading his stolen copy of the newspaper and sipping from his second cup of coffee when there was a knock on the door. It wasn’t quite seven-thirty.
“Who is it?”
“Police officers, we’ve just a couple of questions.”
Perhaps he should have asked for some sort of identification, a badge number or even exactly what they wanted. Instead, he just opened the door. There were two of them, in uniform, a man and woman.
“Good morning, sir, sorry to bother you so early,” the male officer said.
“We’re wondering if you were aware of any sort of disturbance around your building last night?” the woman asked.
“Disturbance? No, did something happen?” He tried not to sound insincere.
“You weren’t aware of anything happening last night, say around two-thirty, maybe three o’clock?” she asked.
“No, nothing. I’m a pretty sound sleeper to tell you the truth. I’ve got some coffee on, would you like to come in for a cup?” That seemed to smooth over any potential problem.
“No, thank you, we have a number of doors to knock on. If something does jog your memory or if you hear or maybe notice something, anything, please give us a call. No matter how insignificant it might seem,” she said and handed him a card.
“Thank you, I’ll be sure to do that,” he said looking briefly at the card. “What happened anyway?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine. Sorry to interrupt your morning, sir,” the male officer said. They gave him a curt nod in unison and walked down to knock on the next door. He watched them for a moment until the ‘We’re on business here, please move along’ sort of look drove Bobby back into his apartment.
They had worked their way down to the first floor by the time he dropped the newspaper back at the front entry and went out the door. He put ten bucks worth of gas in the Geo at Super America and called Marci from the pay phone mounted on the side of the store to see if she wanted him to attempt to redeliver her subpoenas.
“We contacted both parties, they insisted they were home yesterday, all day,” she said, raising her voice at the end and then letting the silence just hang out there, suggesting he had maybe been trying to pull a fast one, and clever Marci had caught him.
“Then why didn’t they answer? I rang the doorbell and knocked at the one place, called on the lobby phone at the other. Are they elderly?”
Marci ignored the question. “They’ll both be home this morning. The sooner you come in and deliver these, the better.”
“I’ll be there shortly,” he said, then listened as Marci hung up.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Once you have these properly signed I won’t have need of your services for the rest of the day. Maybe just phone in tomorrow and I’ll see if there’s anything we need.” Marci flashed another one of those teeth-baring grins and squinted her eyes for a second or two then returned to her blank face.
Bobby saw no point in trying to explain he’d done his utmost to deliver the things yesterday. Instead he half-whispered a meek, “Thank you,” and departed.
Twenty minutes later he stood on the front stoop and rang the doorbell three times before the door finally opened an inch.
“What is it?” a woman’s voice creaked out from behind the door.
“Hi, just making a delivery, I’m afraid I need a signature.”
There was a pause before the door swung open and a woman stood there, not elderly, but maybe mid-sixties. She had a metal crutch tucked against her right arm with a metal brace around her forearm.
“You were here yesterday. They phoned me earlier this morning.” She spoke in an unpleasant tone like she was accusing him of spray painting the front of her house.
“Yes, ma’am, I stopped by a couple of times yesterday, but…”
“Probably these darn meds I’m on. The fools have me sleeping almost sixteen hours a day, don’t hear a damn thing. Give me that,” she said and snatched the envelope from Bobby’s hand.
“If I can just get you to sign here,” he said and held out the clipboard with the attached pen.
“An awful lot of bother if you ask me,” she replied, then half balanced on the crutch as she dashed off a scrawl three lines high.
“Yes ma’am,” he said and smiled.
“There. Satisfied?” She thrust the clipboard at him in an almost stabbing motion.
“Thank you,” he said and quickly fled her front door.
He was outside the lobby of a senior high-rise waiting for the phone to ring on the other end. He was getting the once-over from two women with matching walkers who had stopped and were staring.
“Hello?” a voice answered just after the second ring.
“Mrs. Johansson, I’ve a notification for you down here in the lobby. I’m afraid I need a signature.”
“Not a problem, they called earlier and said you’d be by. I’ll buzz you in. I’m in seven-twenty, come on up.”
He hung up. The two women followed him over their shoulders as he went through the security door and onto the elevator. Seven-twenty was halfway down the hall on the left-hand side. The door opened as he approached.
“Wonderful, thank you for being so prompt,” the woman said. She smiled a nice smile, signed his clipboard, handed it back to him, took the envelope and closed her door. The entire exchange took less than ten seconds.
He stopped for coffee on the way back, lingered over a second cup and assessed the people around him. The coffee shop seemed to be full of an awful lot of people with very little to do on a workday morning in the middle of the week.
He was standing tall in front of Marci’s receptionist counter before eleven.
“Any problems?” she asked looking halfway surprised.
“No, everything went just fine. The one woman was on a crutch and mentioned her medications so I figure she must have been asleep and unable to hear me yesterday. The other woman, Johansson, couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”
That last bit seemed to make perfect sense to Marci. “Very well, tomorrow I want you to call first. We’ll see if we have need of your services.” Fortunately she didn’t flash her grin, instead she simply stared at Bobby as if to ask, “Anything else.”
“I’ll be sure to check in tomorrow,” he said and walked onto the elevator just as a couple of suits walked off.
He returned home in the early afternoon. The squad cars were gone and the scotch tape on the apartment door was still attached. He spent the afternoon reading and occasionally looking out the window. He never saw the SUV. He made dinner, finished the book later in the evening and went to bed around eleven. He was up once in the middle of the night but still was unable to spot a
trace of the SUV.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Bobby phoned Marci the following morning to see about working.
“Hi Marci, how are you this morning?”
“Fine, thank you.” He could feel the chill coming from the other end of the phone.
“This is Bobby, calling to see if you have anything for me today.”
“Yes, I recognized your voice. No, everything is quite in order. We certainly won’t be needing your services today. Perhaps try again tomorrow. Anything else?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Thank you,” she said attempting to sound cheerful before she abruptly hung up.
He wasn’t all that disappointed.
He received the same response from Marci the following morning and was only too glad to get off the line. The newspaper had a sketchy, vague article about an “incident” at his address but not much else in the way of information.
Wild and crazy guy that he was, he went to the library and picked up another book. He logged onto the library computer to see if he could learn anything else about the incident, but all he found online was a copy of the newspaper article. On the way home he stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few items. The SUV was parked on the street when he turned into his parking lot.
He parked in his usual spot next to the dumpster and quickly entered the building. He noticed the tape detached from the door before he took the key out of his pocket. He cautiously turned the knob and the door swung open.
“Bobby, ‘bout time. What’d you bring us for dinner?”
Kate’s son smiled as he sat in the chair he had pulled away from the window. The chair was angled in such a way that he could keep an eye on the street without really being seen. He watched as Bobby closed the door, then glanced back out onto the street.
“How’d you get in here?”
“What? Didn’t you miss me?”
“I haven’t seen you around the last couple of days, ever since that excitement the other night.”
“What excitement?” he asked, then stared back out the window. Bobby noticed the bulge against his back and assumed he was carrying a gun of some sort.
“Yeah right. Who was it?” Bobby asked.
“Why would you think I know anything about that?”
“The act is getting pretty old. Either you’re a bad liar or you’re too dumb to know. I don’t happen to think you’re too dumb.”
“Arundel.” He answered nonchalantly, like he was listing off which day of the week it was or what he’d eaten for breakfast. He returned to staring out the window.
“Is he going to be okay?”
He turned slowly and looked in Bobby’s direction, but he wasn’t focused, at least not on Bobby. The cockiness left him for a brief moment and he shook his head ever so slightly. “He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“I think that’s what I just said. The man’s dead. Someone took him out, killed him.”
“Who? I mean, why was he…”
“You think I’d be sitting on my ass in this dump if I knew the answer to any of that shit?”
“What was he doing here? In this building?”
“He wasn’t in your building, Bobby.”
“But he was here, in the middle of the night. Right?”
He nodded and went back to looking out the window.
“So what was he doing here? Does he know someone here? Have a girlfriend? What?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“What did I do? I’ve been gone for four-plus years. Except for my ex-wife, who would probably still like to kill me, I’m off everyone’s radar.”
“’Cept those two fucks that murdered my mom.”
“Kate?” Bobby nodded toward the urn on his kitchen counter. “This doesn’t make any sense. I can’t identify anyone. I don’t know who killed her. No one knows for sure if it was even the same two guys who chased us. I never talked to the police, never told anyone about any of that.”
“Well, they came here looking for you,” he said almost in a whisper.
“The killers? But, how would they even know who I was? How would they know anything about me, let alone where to find me? Like I said, I’m not on anyone’s radar.”
“We might have put the word out, sort of, maybe.”
“You what?”
“Well, yeah. See we knew who it was soon as you described them, one’s got reddish hair, the other’s is dark and curly with that pig nose.”
“Pug,” Bobby corrected.
“Whatever. We let the word out, Arundel and me. Figured they might come looking for you. Guessed they wouldn’t expect to find us, well except they did. They caught Arundel out back in the parking lot. Spotted him standing by that piece of shit you’re driving. Just sort of came outta nowhere, like.”
“But the cops, they knocked on my door the other morning. I told them I didn’t hear anything, no shots, nothing.”
“They slit his throat, then left him by the back door. Make it look like he was maybe trying to get in here. ‘Course it don’t really make no difference now, does it?”
“Did you tell the police? I got a number here you should call. They’ll want to talk to you. In fact, they’ll need to talk to you and find out what the hell you know. I’m sure they’ve got an ongoing investigation….”
“Shut the hell up, will you? Not you, not me, no one is gonna be calling the cops, Bobby. That ain’t happening. Understand?”
“This isn’t some game you’re playing, here. This is the real deal. Now a man’s lost his life. A man has been murdered and he was your friend. You’ve got information that….”
“Shut up, damn it. Jesus Christ, I gotta tell you? For someone who’s supposed to have pulled four years you sure as hell didn’t learn much in there.”
“Didn’t learn much? Listen here you swaggering little street thug. Let me tell you what I learned. I don’t know what exactly happened to your mother over there on my kitchen counter, but the bottom line is she was murdered. Based on what you just told me I’m guessing the same two guys who took her life murdered your pal Arundel the other night. They murdered him out there in the parking lot because you two dipshits were using me as bait. Weren’t you?”
His look gave him away and suddenly Bobby knew all he needed to know.
“Yeah, perfect. You two were going to surprise them, right? Extract your own warped little version of vengeance, like this is some sort of B-grade movie. Of course you happened to be parked out on the street in that one of a kind pimped-out ride of yours that can be spotted from a hundred yards off.”
He stared back out the window and didn’t say anything.
“Perfect, how very professional. I suppose the two of you planned to settle this in your own little tough guy hoodlum way. Sneak up behind them and shoot them a half-dozen times in the back. Let me take a wild guess, the dome light goes on inside the car when you open the door. Right? So you can announce to everyone when you’re going to begin sneaking around. God, other than shooting them and then doing your celebration dance, did you even have a plan? And thanks, by the way for using me as bait. You know maybe if you’d kept me informed, told me your name or some of the other secret shit that seems to not be going your way, maybe things could have worked out differently. At least they may have worked out differently for your hapless dead pal, Arundel.”
“Precious.”
“What?”
“Precious. My name, you’re standing there bitching that you wanted to know, so I’m telling you. It’s Precious.”
“Precious?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“No, no problem. That’s what everyone calls you? Precious?”
He looked back out the window. “They call me Prez.”
“Precious, Prez?”
“It’s what they call me, man.”
“Okay, I’m cool with that, I get it. So, what do you plan to do, Pre
z? I’m guessing what happened to Arundel just made whoever slit his throat that much bolder. And you think it might be the two guys who killed Kate?”
“There’s no think about it.”
“Well no offense, but I’d like to have a little stronger confirmation than your hunch that the same….”
“Dubuque and Mobile,” he said staring out the window.
“What?”
“Dubuque and Mobile, that’s their names. They’re brothers. The ones that killed Kate and then they killed Arundel the other night.”
“It sounds like something off a rightwing propaganda sheet. Dubuque and Mobile, like the towns? And you know this how?”
“I know it. You described them. We knew who they were right away. They killed some guy a few weeks back, name of O’Brien. Contract sort of thing. Arundel was going to wait for them inside, except they jumped…”
“You saw this happen, didn’t you? You actually saw them murder Arundel. Have you told any of this to the cops? Oh, God, why do I even bother to ask? Of course you haven’t. Because you have some master plan, right? A master plan which so far seems to be that first Kate and now Arundel get murdered by these two assholes.”
Prez gave a small shrug and continued to stare out the window.
“So, I’m guessing you’re between a rock and a hard place here. You know who did this, but if you go to the police that opens the door to all sorts of other activity, correct?”
He gave the slightest of shrugs in response.
“And they’re going to be out there, somewhere, looking for me because you put the word out that I know who they are. Didn’t you?”
He nodded slightly, but kept staring out the window.
“Jesus Christ. Okay, look, you’re staying for dinner. I hope you like chicken thighs and roasted potatoes. You want some Doritos?”
