by Mike Faricy
“Not a problem, I’ll put in a good word,” I said then turned back to Swindle, just as she was handing another empty shot glass back to Crabby.
“Swindle, you were telling me about Lowell Bulski.”
“He’s gonna be with us, too? God, he never pays and I’m not giving both of ya’s freebies,” she said.
“You know him?” I said then saw the bouncer from a moment earlier talking to the other two bouncers, they were shaking their heads and then suddenly all three looked back over in my direction.
“Hunh?”
“I said do you know him? Lowell Bulski?”
“You kiddin’? Bulldog? Everyone knows that prick. He likes it a little rough, but I don’t care he can just…”
The three of them started to move from the edge of the stage and head my way. A table of a half dozen guys in suit coats suddenly started to get up and the three thugs had to wait a half moment. That was all the time I needed to start my traveling music.
I went to grab my money off the bar, there were only three dollar bills sitting there. “Hey,” I said to Crabby. “I had about fifty or sixty bucks sitting on the bar a moment ago.”
“It was sixty, actually. Swindle’s shots are ten bucks each, you owe me another ten,” she said.
The table of bankers had cleared and the bouncers were on the move again. I pulled a folded ten from a wad in Swindle’s garter and tossed it on the bar.
Swindle looked like she might be trying to think of a protest, but her eyes were already glazed over at half mast and she was too far gone. She put her hands on her hips and attempted to strike a pose which caused her to stagger a couple of steps into another table where she knocked over a beer. I didn’t wait to see what happened after that.
I was pulling out of Nasty’s parking lot and glanced in the rearview mirror just as one of those bouncers stepped out the front door and looked around. He did not appear to be happy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was seven-thirty in the morning and I was sitting in Aaron LaZelle’s office, my Lieutenant pal in homicide. I’d brought a couple of caramel rolls from Nina’s just to sweeten the meeting. We were eating them with our fingers, both of us trying to cover the aftertaste from the vending machine coffee.
“So, you were just on your way home from another night of debauchery and decided to stop by?”
I looked around Aaron’s cramped office. The thing was bounded on three sides by windows. One side looked out over the dumpsters behind the building and the other two sides looked into a room full of gray-blue cubicles. All the windows had a four-dollar set of plastic blinds hanging halfway down.
“What the hell do you do if you ever want to be private in here?”
“It’s really complicated, I just pull the blinds. Those babies are down, believe me everyone stays clear.”
I nodded, it seemed to make sense. I’d been on the receiving end of more than one interrogation by Aaron.
“So, is there a purpose to our chance early morning meeting in my office?” he said, and brushed the crumbs off his desk and into his hand, then he tossed them into the wastebasket.
“I’ve been doing some checking around on Dermot Gallagher’s…”
“Damn it, Dev I told you in no uncertain terms not to get involved. Exactly what part of ‘stay the hell away’ don’t you understand? I don’t want you anywhere near…”
“Whoa, will you just calm down. I didn’t do anything other than look at some records.”
“Records?” he asked and the flushed face from a moment before began to return back to normal.
“Yeah, I’m sleeping there, at Casey’s and Dermot’s.”
“Please tell me you two aren’t shacking up.”
“You kidding, give the woman some credit. She’s got a little higher standards than sleeping with someone like me. No, she was just uncomfortable being there and then she was worried about someone casing the place and breaking in so I told her I’d stay there.”
“You actually did something nice?”
“Yeah, I know, even I was kind of surprised.”
“And you were there reviewing records?”
“Yeah, but not there, I went down to PRR to check out their records.”
“And?”
“The name Lowell Bulski ring any bells?”
“The Bulldog? You ran into that ass at PRR?”
“What? No, of course not, but I did find out that he was the guy that sold the house to Casey and Dermot. Let me rephrase that, he was the owner of record, he wasn’t at the closing. He was represented at the closing by an attorney, Jackie Van Dorn.”
“God, that sleaze bag.”
“That seems to be the general consensus. I just thought if you guys weren’t aware of that it certainly seems to be an interesting little bit of trivia. Maybe a direction you might consider looking into if you haven’t already.”
Aaron nodded. “They had been in that place for a couple of years, right?”
“Almost two-and-a-half. It was pretty torn up when Dermot was murdered, some sort of a major project going on in just about every room and they were the worker-bees, if that translates.”
Aaron nodded.
“It’s even crazier now, she’s got to sell the place, can’t make the payments on her own and well, frankly, I think she’s just damn uncomfortable there. She’s staying at one of her brothers’ for the time being. Contractors are in there from seven-thirty in the morning to five at night, banging, sawing, welding, God, I’ve been at the office before nine just about every morning.”
“Gee, starting at nine, you early bird. I’m sure you’re loving that.”
“Not really. Anyway, I was sort of wondering if you’d have anything on your pal Bulldog.”
“Have anything?” Aaron asked then started clicking keys on his computer.
“Yeah, like where he might have been when the sale of that house was going down. Why he wasn’t there.”
Aaron sort of gave a disgusted smirk then nodded and clicked a few more keys. “Here we go, Bulski, yeah, I’m guessing they maybe bought that place in late 2012 or early 2013?”
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
“Bulldog was on a sabbatical.”
A sabbatical?”
“Yeah, Lino Lakes, he was doing eighteen months for a possession with intent to distribute charge.”
“Eighteen months seems like kind of a light sentence for him.”
“You can thank the winning combination of our enlightened judiciary and the lawyerly skills of Councilor Van Dorn.”
“So that’s why he wasn’t around?”
“Might also be why he sold.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s locked up for a period of time, even so he’s got some obligations I would guess, on and no doubt, off the books. It may be why Van Dorn was involved although I’d be willing to guess the association with Tubby Gustafson probably had more to do with it. You remember a thug named George Marcela?”
“Yeah, wasn’t he called Georgie Boy?”
“That was his nice side, his other name was ‘Chopper,’ for obvious reasons.”
I gave Aaron a look.
“Lets just say he had a fetish for hands, you crossed him and he’d cut off your hand.”
“Charming.”
Aaron nodded. “Maybe three months before Bulldog gets sentenced Marcela disappears. There’ve been rumors we pick up from time to time that he skipped town and now he’s in Vegas, LA, maybe Miami someplace like that, but we never hear anything concrete. When he supposedly skipped town he apparently took a lot of cash with him, close to half a million dollars.”
“Let me guess, the money belonged to Tubby Gustafson.”
“Right, or that’s at least who we think it belonged to.”
“I got two problems with that, the first is that’s a nice bit of change to you and me, but its chump change for these guys. Five hundred grand? And you’re on the run? Where is he gonna go and be safe, nowhere.
I don’t think a guy like Marcela would do that for ten times the amount, it would be stupid. And then, what does this have to do with Bulldog?”
“Supposedly Marcela was the supplier, it’s how Bulldog actually gets involved with Tubby’s inner circle business. Marcela disappears, Bulldog serves eighteen months because he won’t cop a plea and finger Tubby’s organization, by the way he does the time standing on his head. So, he gets out and immediately steps into Marcela’s old job as enforcer for Tubby Gustafson.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” I said.
“Not really. Just for the record, suppose Bulldog took out Marcela and grabbed Tubby’s five hundred grand. I’m guessing that would put him on some pretty thin ice, probably get him killed.”
“One can only hope they’d give him a long, painful death,” I said.
“Nothing has ever been proven, in fact, a lot of it is just supposition on our part. I mean a flip side of it could be Tubby asked Bulldog to take out Marcela with the promise of making him enforcer and sweetening the pot with the five hundred grand.”
“I’ve never really thought of Tubby as being that generous,” I said.
“Well, there is that. Look, I had better get to work, was there anything else?” Aaron asked.
“No, I’d just encourage you guys to take a long, hard look at Bulldog on this thing and just pursue it until you get whoever the bastard was that killed Dermot.”
“That’s exactly what we’ve been doing, Dev.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“So that’s what they’re going to do, check out Bulldog’s perfect alibi?” Louie had to shout so I could hear him.
We were sitting in a far back booth at The Spot. There was a large crowd of women drinking glasses of white wine or pink and blue drinks and they were all clustered around the bar. Some sort of pre-party to a twenty-year high school reunion. They all looked like they were glad to flee the kids and leave the little darlings with their husbands for the night. The noise level was about ten decibels above permanent deafness.
“There has to be a tie-in somewhere, it’s just too coincidental, Bulldog owning the place they end up buying and then Dermot’s killed,” I said.
“But what would be in it for him?”
“What?”
“What’s in it for him, for Bulldog?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged.
“You think he wanted the house back?”
“I think if he wanted it back he could have made them an offer and they would have at least entertained the idea. Just looking around over there, I’d say they were overwhelmed with major projects throughout the entire house. Probably no time to finish them and even less money.”
“It’s still awfully strange,” Louie said.
“It’s one of those coincidences that I can’t believe is just a coincidence.”
“What?” Louie said.
I just shouted, “Yes” and nodded at the same time.
A few minutes later the crowd began to disperse, heading out the front and side doors on to the next venue wherever that was. It was suddenly blissfully quiet.
“Let’s grab a stool,” Louie said sliding out of the booth. “You better give us another round,” Louie said to Jimmy a moment later.
He just looked at us and smiled.
“Jimmy, Jimmy,” Louie said and snapped his fingers to get Jimmy’s attention.
Jimmy grinned then pulled a pair of yellow foam ear plugs out of his ears. “Thank God,” he said, “I’d be permanently damaged if it wasn’t for these things.”
“Give us a round,” Louie said. We sat and sipped and contemplated some of the finer things in life, like the next round.
The flat screens were on in the two corners above the bar, tuned to the baseball game. The sound had been muted when the loud crowd had been in earlier and Jimmy had never turned it back up. That was okay, the Twins were getting spanked by Chicago. It was bad enough giving the game the occasional glance and catching the score. I didn’t need to hear how bad things were going, too. Mercifully the disaster came to a close and five minutes of commercials started up. The first was for the ten o’clock news.
The screen was filled with the photo of a heavyset guy with a blond Mohawk. He was leaning against a picnic table and appeared to be shouting and waving what looked like a large turkey drumstick. The caption across the bottom of the screen read ‘Assault Victim.’ The photo looked an awful lot like Fat Freddy.
“Jimmy, turn up the sound will ya, I think I know that guy,” I said.
“Let me just find where I left that damn remote, Dev,” he said walking down the length of the bar looking from left to right. He eventually found it next to the pull-tab box and turned up the sound just as the news broadcast began.
“Police tonight are looking for four men involved in the vicious daylight assault that occurred about three-thirty this afternoon in the parking lot of Nasty’s. Apparently the victim, thirty-one year old Fredrick Zimmerman was assaulted while on the way to his car. Zimmerman, an employee of Nasty’s is listed in stable condition tonight at Regions Hospital. Police are asking anyone with information to please contact them.”
“In other news the Twins suffered yet another defeat…”
“Is that…?”
“…Fat Freddy,” I answered. “I was just with him a couple of days ago. Jesus Christ.”
“Someone beat him up in the middle of the afternoon in Nasty’s parking lot?” Louie said.
“Yeah, and I’m willing to bet I know exactly who had a hand in it if he didn’t attack him outright.”
“Who?”
“Bulldog.”
“Hey, look, Dev. I know you were kind of warming to Fat Freddy and you are no fan of Bulldog’s. By the way, neither am I, but it might be a little farfetched to pin this on him.”
“Not a fan? No, I’ll lay you odds on it, he’s responsible. I just know it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because it’s my fault.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was at Nasty’s the other night. I went in there to talk to Fat Freddy, to see if he could tell me who Lowell Bulski is.”
“That name you got off the property records at PRR? I checked online and couldn’t find anything. Remember?”
“Yeah, but just ‘cause it’s not online doesn’t mean there aren’t other sources.”
“Now Fat Freddy is a source?”
“I had a hunch, Bulski, Bulldog, get it?”
“No.”
“Bulski, the last name, it’s why that bastard Bulldog is called Bulldog, well, that and the fact the guy is such an asshole.”
“And Freddy told you this?”
“No, as a matter of fact I never even talked to Freddy, never saw him, he’d already left. The place was jammed with all sorts of upstanding citizens and ‘swells’ getting their fill. Then this chick came on the stage, they hyped her as the nastiest woman Nasty’s has ever had or something like that. She was clearly the reason all the suits were there. Anyway, she does a couple of half-ass numbers then is out fleecing the crowd for lap dances. Can you believe she get’s forty bucks?”
“So who was she?”
“I’m getting to that. I can’t get near her for a couple of hours. They got these big, thuggy bouncers literally guarding her ass. She’s out there doing lap dances and shit, she’s on some guy and at the same time signaling me that I’m next. You know who it was?”
“I got no idea.”
“The name Swindle Lawless ring any bells?”
“You are kidding me, Swindle Lawless? That porn star slut who was with Tommy and Gino D’Angelo until they got sent to prison? Do you mean to tell me she hasn’t died from some sort of overdose or been run over by a group of enraged wives? God, the female version of Keith Richards and she’s still out there proving everyone wrong. I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. She tossed down seven or eight shots while I tried to talk to her. Ten buck
s a crack.”
“That’s what she charges?”
“No, that’s what the shots cost.”
“God. So what does any of this have to do with your husky friend Freddy being put in the hospital?”
“Oh yeah, so I’m trying to talk with her, asking if she knows who Lowell Bulski is? I’m thinking she may have lived at Casey’s when it was cut into sleazy apartments. One of the neighbors I talked to described a woman who lived there as strange and unbalanced.”
“That could be just about any woman who would go out with you.”
“I’m asking old Swindle if she knows Lowell and she’s kind of drunk and sort of staggers. I had to grab her by the shoulders so she wouldn’t fall. Next thing I know some bouncer wants to throw me out. So, I told him Tubby and Bulldog sent me over to watch Swindle and they had told Fat Freddy to pass on the info to the rest of the bouncers. Anyway, that bouncer checks with his pals, they start to come after me and that’s when I just got the hell out of there. Long way around the barn, but I think that’s why Freddy was attacked and I’d be willing to bet Bulldog had something major to do with it.”
“So now what?”
“I think I’ll finish this beer and head back to Casey’s place. Maybe go see Freddy in the hospital tomorrow morning.”
“You think that’s wise?”
“I doubt Tubby or Bulldog will be there at his bedside. I just might cheer him up, you never know.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Regions Hospital is located on the northern edge of downtown Saint Paul just across from the Minnesota State Capitol complex. The facility covers two blocks and rises up nine stories. I stopped at the information desk in the front lobby to get directions up to Fat Freddy’s room.
“Are you with the newspaper?” the woman asked. Her volunteer nametag said ‘Eleanor’ and she flashed me the briefest of smiles that disappeared almost before it began.
“No, just a friend,” I replied.
“Mmm-mmm,” she murmured suggesting I was a disappointment and held no further interest then she gazed past me into the lobby indicating I was dismissed.
