Mr. Softee
Page 10
“I don’t know that I ever was. But I don’t think this was some random hit-and-run, if that’s what you mean. The way she described it to me, someone set out to nail her, and damn near succeeded. If it wasn’t for that railing on the High Bridge, her car would have dropped a hundred and sixty feet to the river below.”
“I don’t know it all seems a little far-fetched to me, I…”
“Far-fetched? Didn’t someone fire-bomb your business?”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m only suggesting that to tie her accident into our fire still seems to be a stretch.”
“Well, I’ll keep my assumptions in the maybe range, but a strong maybe. Look, I’m at my car, so I better go. I’ll call you if something develops.”
“I not holding my breath, bye,” she said and hung up.
I had parked on the street since I didn’t have five bucks for the ramp. The Lincoln shimmered and baked in the afternoon heat. Even though I’d left the windows down it still felt like an oven inside. Some bird had crapped on the inside of the backseat. That same rotted-something odor was in the air and I wondered if maybe it wasn’t coming from the river. I opened the doors to try and get something like a breeze going through. That didn’t work, so I finally drove away hoping to get some air circulating.
I headed down to the police impound lot, the one on Barge Channel Road. As one might expect by the street name, it was close to the Mississippi River. The smell that had been hanging in the air seemed even stronger down here, and I was convinced it had to be something in the river. Whatever it was, it was getting close to nauseating.
For a city that spent a lot of time and effort over the years attempting to be more consumer friendly, the St. Paul Impound Lot had somehow missed the boat. Then again if you were down here to begin with you weren’t going to have a positive experience, so why bother? The entry path wove a fifty-yard zigzag pattern toward the front door. The path was enclosed along both sides with ten-foot-high Cyclone fencing that was topped off with rolls of concertina wire. Razor wire was strung back and forth over the path. It gave one pause, wondering who would ever want to break into the office to begin with.
I entered through the worn, graffiti covered, industrial gray door and then climbed the grimy steps up to the lobby. More graffiti-covered grimy walls and a groaning noise oozing from an inefficient window air conditioner pumped heat into the tiny lobby. The office was really nothing more than a Government Issue desk sitting behind six layers of finger-printed, bullet-proof glass.
A couple stood stooped over, arguing through a metal vent with the bland-faced civil servant on the far side of the grimy glass. They weren’t getting very far. They smelled of cigarette smoke and liquor. After about five minutes of restating their case multiple times they slid a debit card into the depression on the well worn counter. The clerk took his sweet time, examined both sides of the card, carefully entered the payment amount on some sort of device and then waited, and waited. After an hour or two he painstakingly tore the perforated edges off their receipt. He carefully aligned the corners and folded the receipt then ran a finger slowly along the fold to create the perfect crease. He cautiously slid the receipt out to them and flashed just the slightest hint of a smile.
“What an asshole,” the woman said under her breath as she marched back down the stairs.
I stepped into the space they had recently occupied, just a hint of cigarette and alcohol lingered in the air. I stared through the glass at the clerk, his name tag read Loren.
I’d first met Loren Baker while bailing out a car about eighteen years ago. I bought him a beer a few nights later when he’d already had too many. He seemed just as dull now as he did back then. His nickname was “Forlorn”, not that he had many friends who used his nickname. For some reason he seemed to like me, and I’d always felt it could be helpful to have some pull at the impound lot.
“Hey there, Dev, how’s it going? Don’t tell me they dragged another one of your horseshit cars in here?”
“Amazingly, no they didn’t. Nice to see you, Loren. How’s life treating you?” I tried to sound sincere.
“Things are going good, Dev, thanks for asking. We should get together sometime, been awhile,” he said.
“Yeah, it has,” I said, thinking eighteen years wasn’t long enough.
“We could chase some tail,” he said, sounding hopeful.
Not a chance in hell.
“That would be fun,” I smiled.
“So what do you need?”
“Actually Loren, I just wanted to look at a vehicle, or what’s left of it. Get a sense of the damage done. This was a hit-and-run from about three nights back over on the High Bridge. From what I hear there might not be much to look at.”
“Name on the title?” he asked, unwilling to engage in any further small talk.
“McCauley, Jennifer”
“That with one or two L’s?” he asked bending over a laptop. As he typed, the white/blue screen reflected off the coke bottle lenses on his glasses.
“Just one,” I said then spelled Jennifer’s last name for him, got a nod in return. He turned round, pulled a sheet of paper off a printer, and pushed it out through the window well.
“It’s in slot thirty-seven, just junk, not sure why we got it, ‘less they’re holding it for some ongoing investigation. ‘Course then it should be over at BCA. Anyone killed?”
“No, amazingly.”
“That’s why, then. Out the door, show that receipt to Jerry, have him point you in the right direction.”
I thanked “Forlorn”, then thanked god I didn’t work in this miserable place and went out to the lot.
Jerry weighed in at about four hundred pounds and looked like he hadn’t gotten up from behind his desk in the past twenty years. He made no effort to do so when I handed him the receipt. He looked up from his paperback, I noticed it was a romance. He sighed, then said,
“Out the door, first left, three rows back, then left again. Metal tag IDs the slot. Not much left of that one,” he added, and then returned to his romance.
There was a part of me that wanted to ask him when the last time was he had a date? Touched his toes? Hell, even saw his toes? Instead I smiled, said,
“Thank you for your help,” and walked back out into the oppressive heat.
Jennifer, “Forlorn”, and Jerry weren’t kidding, there wasn’t much left. Jennifer McCauley was a very lucky young lady and damn lucky to even be alive let alone not in critical condition. Her Camry had been assaulted from all angles, rammed and pounded into about a third of its original size. The damaged areas all had one thing in common, streaks and chips of a sort of cream-colored paint.
I reached in my back pocket, took out the envelope from Mr. Softee, the one he had used to return my invoice. Using a thumbnail I managed to scrape some decent sized paint chips off the Camry and get them into the envelope. I had a sneaking suspicion the chips would match a certain Escalade. I decided to pay another visit to Mr. Softee.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The smell was even stronger when I got back to my car. It just sort of hung in the air. I couldn’t understand how anyone could work down in this area. You’d never get the smell out of your clothes.
Based on the throbbing from my forehead, not to mention the charges I was facing, I had second thoughts and figured it might make sense to stay away from Mr. Softee for the moment. Instead, I drove out I-94 to a Cadillac dealership for some in-depth evidence analysis.
The dealership sat in the middle of four acres of gleaming automobiles. It was a one-story glass and white enamel building with large signs running the length of the windows proclaiming “Immediate Financing available!” I parked the Lincoln next to the entry and walked in.
I wasn’t more than three steps in the door when an elegant, blond sales rep appeared out of nowhere and swooped down.
“Hi, help you?” she asked. She was gorgeous and stared at my forehead, probably wondering why I was growing a second head.
“Just wanted to take a look around,” I said.
She blinked her gorgeous green eyes away from my forehead.
“What did you have in mind?”
Like every other idiot I thought nothing on the showroom floor. She wore a small gold cross around her neck. Christ hanging there all day, just staring into her cleavage, lucky guy. I caught the subtle scent of her perfume, a pleasant change from the rotten river I’d been sniffing fifteen minutes earlier.
“Sir?”
“Oh, sorry, was just remembering a meeting I’ve got, but maybe, if you had a minute or two, you could show me around.” I glanced down at the cross for another brief moment.
She must have been a fairly experienced salesperson. She smiled seductively, sized me up as a complete waste of time, then pointed around the showroom and said,
“Tell you what, all of our models are out on the floor here, stickers on the windows will tell you the price. Feel free to look around and then let me know if you have any specific questions.” With that she turned on her heel and walked back to a small office probably thinking she’d have better luck calling random people out of the phone book than wasting time talking to me.
I strolled around for three minutes, trying to pretend I was a qualified buyer. Some sweaty guy I guessed from the repair shop strolled in the front door. He wore a uniform of blue pants and a blue shirt. The shirt had a white name tag that read Gary in red letters sewn just above the pocket. He had his nose wrinkled and sort of shuddered to himself as he walked back to what I guessed was the lounge area. It was decorated with brown vinyl couches, dog-eared magazines, and the scent of coffee that had been on the burner for about six hours.
“Jesus, you get a whiff of outside? Smells like a fart contest, man alive.”
I knew what he was talking about, I’d been smelling it all day long. Whatever was in the air, it had carried all the way out here. I grabbed a brochure on the Escalade line, complete with color options and walked out. He was right, that same rotted smell just seemed to hang in the heavy air.
I drove home, tossed down a couple more Tylenol, then sat at my dining-room table prepared to do careful scientific analysis while I sipped a Leinenkugel. I opened the Escalade brochure, took the paint chips I scraped off Jennifer’s wreck, and laid them on the brochure color chart. I came up with an exact color match, white diamond tri-coat. Mr. Softee and his thugs.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I was about to get another beer when the phone rang.
“Haskell Investigations.”
“Hi Dev, Jill. Just checking to see how you’re doing. How’s the head?”
“It’ll be okay,” I said, not adding “after this beer.”
“Look, I’m running around but I was thinking maybe I could bring you over some dinner, if I wasn’t imposing or anything.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said, managing to add just a hint of desperation in my tone to suggest it would be a very good idea.
“Yeah, I know I don’t have to, but if I wasn’t imposing, I’d like to, unless you’ve got other plans.”
“No, no other plans. I would like that. What time were you thinking?”
“Six okay?”
“Six works for me see you then.”
I had ice cream and gin in the freezer, cranberry juice and beer in the fridge. I was set, other than clean sheets and hiding the stack of unpaid bills and final-notice warnings.
Jill arrived at six on the dot.
I opened the front door, and she said by way of greeting,
“God, it smells awful around here,” then gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“It’s been like that all day, you get it over by you? I think it’s coming off the river, with all the heat and everything.”
“No, it’s really stinky though. How’s that forehead?” she asked as she brushed past.
I was expecting a pizza and maybe a six-pack, instead she carried two grocery bags with a lot of little white containers and two bottles of chilled wine. I remembered her mind set the last time she drank two bottles of wine. Things were looking up.
“I hope you like Thai food? There’s a great takeout over on University,” she said walking into my kitchen.
“I love it,” I replied unaware of ever eating any before.
“What is that thing?” she asked looking at my stuffed Muskie hanging on the kitchen wall.
“I caught that a couple of years back,” I said.
“A Muskie, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered, surprised she knew.
“Barely large enough to keep, fact it might be undersized, barely legal. You must not do a lot of fishing, at least not a lot of Muskie fishing,”
“Hey, how about a Cosmo, just to get you started?” I asked, quickly changing the subject then cautioned myself about over-serving.
“I better just stick with the wine, if it’s all the same, thanks,” she said, taking a final look at my Muskie, shaking her head, and then getting to work on our meal.
Over dinner I showed her the paint chips and the Escalade brochure. Explained how I thought it had been Mr. Softee’s goons that rammed Jennifer McCauley on the High Bridge. Then I told her about Bernie Sneen, the night I tried to place a bet at the ice-cream truck and the cream-colored Escalade with the two thugs.
“I’m starting to believe you, Dev. So, just for the sake of discussion, let’s say you’re right. The question still remains, why? I can’t for the life of me think that we offered any competition to him. But, let’s say in some warped way we did. We certainly don’t anymore, not since the fire. So why ram that Jennifer girl’s car? And why tape some guy to the train tracks, that’s just bizarre?” she said, and then held out her glass as I drained the remainder of the first bottle into it.
“It’s not the ice cream. It’s the operation, Mister Softee, his gambling operation.”
She took a sip of wine, then swirled her finger in the peanut sauce and licked it off her finger, seductively.
“Okay. I’m still back to the same question, what does that have to do with anything we know about? It just doesn’t make sense, that’s all I’m saying.”
I couldn’t disagree. I had all sorts of random ideas, but they all seemed to get more and more disconnected the closer I got to Mr. Softee. He was the key, Softee, it had to be.
Awhile later, after I’d cleared the kitchen counter of little white takeout containers, paint chips, and Escalade brochures, I was refilling Jill’s glass, again.
“I’m not so sure you should drive,” I said trying to sound innocent and sincere all the while calculating her drinks consumed to frisky ratio.
“If I couldn’t before, I certainly won’t be able to after this,” she said very matter of fact. She nodded a moment then looked up at me, smiled and sipped.
She left sometime after four thirty in the morning. It was still dark, or the last bit of dark, maybe just a pencil line of gray on the eastern horizon. I pulled my jeans on and walked her out to where her car was parked in front. We had a couple of long passionate kisses in the empty street, a bit of a grope session before she climbed in and drove off.
There is something about the beginning of a relationship, when the only time you want to let go is to get a bigger handful of each other. Of course, you could probably say the same thing about a fight.
The temperature and humidity had dropped at least for the moment, but that smell was still in the air. I decided it might be a good idea to get back to sleep before my hangover had a chance to kick in. I swallowed two Tylenol tablets before I climbed back into bed. I slept where Jill had been, the bed still warm from her body, the covers frantic from our combined assaults, the pillow smelling of her perfume. I drifted off hoping for more sex in my dreams.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I could tell by the way the sun was frying the far side of the window shade that it was going to be another beastly day. I lay in bed and revisited my torrid late night with Jill. I rolled out of bed around noon and noticed her gold hoop earrings on the nightstand. Good, that meant she’d have to come back and get them.
I showered the last of her perfume off, dressed, made coffee, gazed out the front window sipping my first cup still thinking about last night. Not just the sex, but Mr. Softee as well. I had to find a way to get to him.
I half paid attention as a squad car pulled up across the street and parked. They’d glanced at my place. I didn’t think much of it at first, but a minute or two later a second squad car arrived and parked directly in front of my house. One of the officers walked across the street and chatted with the guys in the first car. He looked back over at my place a couple of times as they talked. Something was up, and I didn’t like it. I set my coffee down, grabbed my wallet, and walked out the back door.
That same smell was in the air, and a lot of flies. I wondered if I’d stepped in dog shit or something. I went over my back fence, walked across Mrs. Muller’s yard and then down the street. By the time I’d reached the corner there was a squad car parked in front of the Muller house, two uniforms walking up the driveway. I turned right and walked back on Arundel, looked to my right once I reached Selby. I was just three doors from my house.
There were four squad cars parked in front. Two uniforms stood on the porch at my front door. They were pounding loud enough that I could hear them as I stood on the corner. The rest, five officers, were gathered in the driveway, standing around my car.
I crossed Selby Avenue, then stopped and leaned against the corner of La Grolla, the restaurant directly across the street from my house. Hoped I looked like an innocent bystander. The officers were discussing something, or a number of things. One of them, a sergeant, was continually talking on a radio. About ten minutes later a van arrived, white, City of St. Paul, Crime Scene Investigation Unit stenciled on the sides. On its heels came a hearse with a chrome plate in the side window that read Medical Examiner.