by Faricy, Mike
“Are you telling me it was Mister Softee’s body in the trunk of my car?” I still had trouble believing it.
“Yeah, his wife reported him missing the day before. Look, I know you had some sort of dispute with him over money.”
“He said he wouldn’t pay my invoice.”
“And you went over there, right, to his house? Broke in, threatened him, assaulted him, right?”
“Those charges don’t tell the real story. They’re bullshit, I…”
“Dev, I’ve seen the interview tape with Manning. Your face is bruised. You admit you were at the guy’s house. I’ve read the report from the arresting officers, they state you were confused. Thought maybe you’d been drinking or taking drugs.”
“Come on, Aaron, I wasn’t drinking.”
“Yeah, thank god you submitted to the Breathalyzer. But, your state of …”
“Aaron, you ever know me to take drugs? Cut the bullshit,” I yelled.
“Look, this isn’t bullshit, pal. You are in trouble, big trouble. The guy filed charges against you, then turns up dead in the trunk of your car with the shit kicked out of him and a plastic bag wrapped around his head. Hopefully, you can understand our concern and the desire to discuss a few things with you. Now, will you please let me help, Dev? Let me come and get…”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said and hung up.
Chapter Forty-One
Dog hadn’t moved. He was still facedown in bed snoring when I returned. Not a pretty sight. I sat in the recliner and thought for a long time, but didn’t come up with anything new. Dog eventually rolled out of bed in the early afternoon, grunted a greeting, and set about cooking two pounds of bacon in the electric fry pan that served as his stove. I was hoping he might think about a shirt to wear with his boxer shorts while he cooked, but the thought hadn’t seemed to cross his mind.
“Jesus Christ, no offense, man, but you look even worse than last night when you were moaning your ass off around here,” he said.
I was leaning against the plywood counter.
He set a greased soaked paper plate piled high with bacon strips between us, delicately picked up a piece of bacon with his fingertips.
“Fuck, that’s hot, man,” he said, then stuffed the thing in his mouth, sucked in air in an effort to cool it down as he turned his head from side to side.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Look,” he gasped through a mouthful of bacon. “I told you last night we just go get your buddy Softee. You’ll have your answers pretty damn quick, I promise.” He swallowed and quickly crammed two more pieces into his mouth.
“Shit’s good, man, better grab some fore it’s all gone.”
I reached for a piece, held it upright, and took a bite, chewed.
“We can’t talk to Softee.”
“Why the hell not?”
“’Cause it turns out it was his body in the trunk of my car.”
“No shit? Thought you told me you didn’t…”
“I didn’t. I have no idea how in the hell he got in there.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Talked to a cop pal. He says they figure Softee was stuffed in there alive, at least for a while, before he died. Someone wrapped a plastic bag around his head.”
Dog was reading my mind.
“So it looks like you beat the shit out of the guy, stuffed him in your trunk, and he wakes up dead, right?”
I nodded.
“You been set up, man. By someone who is pretty damn good. He have a wife, even with a name like Softee?” Dog chuckled at his joke, then stuffed more bacon in his mouth.
“Yeah, well no, I mean I thought she was his wife. Turns out she’s just the girlfriend, but I don’t have any…”
“She’ll do. Knock off the negative-vibe shit, Dev. She’s the one. Odds are she did it. You should know this stuff, you’re supposed to be the big private eye, aren’t you? Seems pretty obvious to me.”
“Look…”
“Look, nothing. Let me give you the scenario, here. She’s pretty hot, right? The old man has all the dough. She sits around all day in the sun or just goes shopping, probably has a boyfriend on the side. The old man is a pain in her ass so she has the boyfriend take the guy out. Sound about right?”
“No, not really.”
“As far as you know, but that don’t mean shit. No, look at the girlfriend. Now, we just gotta find a way to nail her. Or, blackmail the bitch. Get one of those revenue streams going that rich folks are always talking about.” He stuffed two more pieces of bacon into his mouth. “It’s so obvious, man, think about it,” he said spitting bacon bits across the kitchen.
Chapter Forty-Two
I was still thinking about it later that night. I was stretched out across the seat of Dog’s truck, parked about thirty feet from the cabin when Noleen arrived a little before nine. She pulled up in a rust-flecked Geo Metro, with dents in every quarter panel and a cracked windshield. It had probably been red, originally, but over the ensuing fifteen plus years it had aged to a flat, dark pink. The brakes wheezed and ground the car to a halt.
She stepped out, scratched, exhaled a cloud of smoke then flicked her cigarette against the side of the cabin. She had long hair, too black, colored so that even a guy like me, lying in the front seat at twilight, could spot it from thirty feet as a bad dye job. If she noticed me lying in the truck she didn’t pay any attention.
She wore blue jean cutoffs, unfortunately a couple of sizes too small. A light blue T-shirt rested just a little too high and exposed her midsection. Pale flesh on her substantial belly and love handles jiggled over the waist band. She carried a large brown purse on her right shoulder and a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels in her left hand. She’d been drinking, which seemed to me like a good idea, given what she was headed for. She didn’t knock, just opened the torn screen door and walked in.
They laughed, yelled, screamed, and moaned until sometime after three in the morning. I would wake up periodically, start the truck, let the air conditioner cool things down then drift off to a sweaty, fitful sleep. At least until the heat from the night or noise from the loving couple awoke me again.
I was still asleep about eleven thirty the following morning when Dog suddenly opened the passenger door in the truck, then caught me before I tumbled out backwards.
“Hey, time for me to give Noleen a lift home. I squared it with her so you can use her car for a couple of days,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stood there barefoot, no shirt, waiting for me to get out of the truck.
“You okay to drive?” I asked climbing out. He ignored my question, stumbled around to the driver’s side, and hopped in.
Noleen stood at the back of the truck, holding onto the tailgate. She gave me the semblance of a wave, but I don’t think she really saw anything further than six inches beyond her nose. She had her T-shirt on, minus a bra. Her cutoffs were inside out. She fell down on her first attempt to climb into the cab.
I rushed over to help her up.
“No, no, don’t, get away, I’m okay,” she mumbled, then waved me off before she crawled in and closed the door behind her.
Dog gave me a nod and then spun away churning up dirt and gravel as he drove off.
It was hard to believe the inside of the place could be messier than normal, but it was. The wobbly kitchen table lay at a sharp angle, the two chrome legs at one end had broken off. Noleen’s Jack Daniels bottle was empty, on its side and pushed up against a wall. Beer cans were littered across the floor. An empty plastic vodka bottle sat on the floor next to the recliner. A half-finished bottle of peppermint schnapps lay on its side in a sticky puddle in the middle of the plywood kitchen counter. A thong the size of a water balloon slingshot hung from a closet doorknob. I was afraid to touch anything.
I rescued Noleen’s car keys from the pool of peppermint schnapps and rinsed them off in the sink. Five minutes later the Geo rumbled and groaned to life and I drove off. If I couldn’t get the answers from
Mr. Softee, I figured I would get them from Lola. Much as I hated to admit it, Dog was probably right. Odds were she did it.
Chapter Forty-Three
The police cars were gone from the front of Mr. Softee’s house, but the two attack dogs lounged on the front steps pretending to sleep, probably hoping to lure some innocent through the front gate as a midday snack. Under the circumstances I didn’t think ringing the doorbell would be the best idea. I pulled around the corner, ground the brakes to a stop then settled in to keep an eye on the alley and Mr. Softee’s garage.
While waiting for the next four hours I searched Noleen’s car. Along with bags from a number of fast-food joints and two condom wrappers, I found a little airline bottle of vodka. On the floor of the passenger side was a sales receipt for $49.95, dated yesterday, from a shop called the Love Doctor. On the floor of the back seat there was a tube of prescription cream with directions to “apply four times daily to the infected area until rash no longer exists.” I’d have to let Dog know.
A little after six the garage door opened, and Lola drove out in the black Mercedes CL600. She turned out of the alley and drove right past me. Fortunately she was distracted by her cell-phone conversation and didn’t notice me. I cranked the Geo to life and followed her at a distance.
She drove for about ten minutes over to a building with ‘Mister Softee’ written in pink-and-blue script letters across the front, next to that hung the giant Mister Softee ice-cream logo. She stopped partially across the sidewalk, in front of a garage door until it opened automatically and she drove in.
I drove past, made a U-turn two blocks down, then pulled to the curb and waited. I didn’t wait long. Lola drove out of the garage and back down the street. She didn’t back out, which suggested the garage was fairly large. Coming out of the garage almost immediately behind her was a large, black vehicle. A Hummer, an H3x to be exact. Not a cheap mode of transport. Despite the headrests, I could see three large heads silhouetted as they followed her down the street.
She drove to a bank and parked in the lot, the Hummer pulled alongside, and a guy climbed out. He had a large, round, shaved head with a black mustache. I could just make out his earrings and the splotch of blue tattoo on the back of his hands. I recognized him as the bald jackass who had held the shotgun on me. The same guy working the betting station in the ice-cream truck the night I got sucker-punched. He was still dressed in black. Cowboy boots, trousers, T-shirt, all black over a muscled body.
I wrote down both license plate numbers on a McDonald’s bag.
Baldy walked over to the driver’s side of the Mercedes. Lola lowered the window no more than three or four inches. Just low enough to cram a purple nylon bag into the bald thug’s waiting paws. As soon as he took the bag she raised the window. No words seem to be exchanged.
The moment he placed the bag into the night-deposit drop, she put the Mercedes in gear and drove off. The Hummer waited as he climbed back in, then sped up to follow her home. They all turned down the side street to get to the alley, I continued straight so they wouldn’t spot me, then doubled back. The Geo brakes ground to a noisy stop as I pulled over to watch the alley. I sat there until about ten thirty that night, then left. I decided to drive over to Jill’s house rather than call, but when I arrived there was a car parked in front. I didn’t want to risk running into someone or putting Jill in an uncomfortable position so I left and drove over to Heidi’s.
I noticed the rear kitchen light was on as I drove past. If she was out she always left the front entry light on, just to alert would-be burglars that the house was empty. I parked, walked down the alley and into her backyard. I could see her drinking a glass of wine, sitting at her kitchen counter and watching something that looked like American Idol or Biggest Loser on the flat screen, highbrow stuff. She appeared to be alone.
As I walked toward the back steps a light automatically flashed on. I knocked softly on her back door.
“Who is it?” she called a moment or two later.
“It’s me, Dev, open up,” I said, then glanced around nervously. I was standing directly under the spotlight illuminating her entire yard.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Heidi, damn it, open up, come on!”
I heard the lock snap and she opened the door.
“Can I come in? Christ, I’m getting eaten alive out here.”
She stood to one side so I could enter, then locked the door behind me.
“Just what the hell have you done? And where in the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of days. Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”
It was Heidi at her most dangerous. Eyes tearing up and flashing at the same time, bottom lip quivering and she was standing next to the knife rack.
“I got all that cleared up, don’t worry,” I tried to sound casual.
“Cleared up? Don’t worry? Is that why you’re sneaking around to my back door? What the hell’s going on? The police have been here, twice.”
“Just a little misunderstanding, I…”
“Misunderstanding! Hey, I posted bail for you. You didn’t have any problem calling me that night, did you? I’m on the hook for about five grand here. Misunderstanding! You can’t just blow me off like that, Dev.”
“Okay, okay, could you stop screeching for a minute so I can get a word in edgewise and explain things,” I said, groveling for time, trying to think.
“Explain things, oh please, do go on,” she said, then cocked her hips and crossed her arms, not a good sign.
“Okay look Mister Softee, I told you a little about him. Turns out things got a bit more complicated. Hey, you got any beer in the fridge?”
“Oh god, help yourself. Christ, I’ll need some more of that wine, too. So, Mister Softee, you were saying.”
I went on to tell her most of the facts; Jill’s fire, Jennifer McCauley’s crash, Bernie Sneen’s final train ride, Softee not paying my invoice, assaulting me, and finally his body stuffed and baking in the trunk of my car. I left out the part about Jill spending the night, Lola hitting on me, and the suntan oil.
“Detective Manning failed to mention any of that,” she said. We were sitting on her living room couch by now. I was doing my best to make sure her wine glass was never empty.
“Manning, that guy’s just out to nail me. I don’t know what his problem is,” I said.
“Well, it might have something to do with a body and the fact that the victim filed charges against you just the day or two before. Charges, I might add, that I bailed you…”
“Yeah, I get that, but he’s just not looking at the facts here. For starters,” and then it dawned on me. “For starters, I think I was in police custody when I was supposed to have put Mister Softee in the trunk of my car. I think I may have been locked up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the best thing you might have done for me was continue on with your evening of debauchery while I spent the night locked up in police custody.”
“Oh brother,” she chuckled, but then took another sip and gave me that smile that suggested she was feeling no pain.
Chapter Forty-Four
I felt so guilty at seven the following morning when Heidi kissed me good-bye and tiptoed off to work that I snuggled down and slept for another hour and a half. The place was clean, rodent free, with a full refrigerator and Heidi with benefits. I showered, then sat at her kitchen counter drinking coffee and picking at a Hostess Twinkie, wondering what the hell I was going to do.
An hour later I was still wondering the same thing while I sat parked at the end of Softee’s alley. I was waiting for Lola and her band of scary men to go somewhere so I could follow. And then what?
“Haskell Investigations,” I answered after failing to read Jill’s name on my caller ID.
“Oh god, Dev, finally. Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah sure, how are things going?”
“How are things going? Forget that. What happ
ened? The police have been here a couple of times asking about you. I’m hearing awful reports. What’s going on?”
“Actually, just a little misunderstanding,” I said trying to down play Softee’s murder. The garage door was going up, and Lola drove off down the alley, a moment later the Hummer pulled out and followed her.
I started the Geo, or at least tried to.
“Come on, damn it,” I said by way of encouragement.
“You okay? And what’s that terrible noise?” Jill asked as the car suddenly gasped to life farting a gray cloud of exhaust into the air.
“Oh, sorry, I was walking past a cement mixer and the guy just turned the thing on, I couldn’t hear you at all.”
“Sounded awful,” she said as the Geo lurched down the alley in pursuit.
“Yeah, I can’t imagine putting up with that all day. ‘Course you had those bells,” I added, wishing I could have pulled the words back the moment they crossed my lips.
“Yeah,” she said sadly, then silence.
“So, the police paid you a visit?” I accelerated through a yellow light, then backed off.
“Yeah, they were asking about you. Well, and Mister Softee. I told them I didn’t know anything, which is pretty much the truth. But then I called you a couple of times and never heard anything back.”
“Yeah, I had the phone turned off. You know working with the police trying to get this whole mess sorted out. I just listened to your messages last night, but I thought it might be too late to call,” I lied, not adding, plus I was climbing into Heidi’s orgy-sized bed.
“So then, everything is cleared up?”
“Just about, a couple of loose ends but nothing serious,” I said. Lola and the three goons had pulled over in front of a brick warehouse. She got out of her car once the goons were standing around her. The three of them providing some pretty tight security looking up, down, and across the street, then glancing five stories up toward the rooftop before they made their way to the door, a phalanx, Lola protected in the middle.
