by Mike Faricy
They were gone three minutes later. I guessed experience told them I wasn’t going to say anything and they were just wasting their time. The tow truck driver handed me a clip board with a form I had to sign. “You can claim your vehicle at the start of business tomorrow down to the impound lot. Course you ain’t going anywhere’s with no windows. You could have ‘em replace them windows on site, but there’s a crease where that file cabinet hit, so a body shop probably have to take care a that ‘fore they fit a new piece a glass to her. ” He flashed a quick smile then spit a shot of tobacco juice off to the side.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded, tore a pink copy of the form off and handed it to me. “Be seeing ya,” he said then spit once more for effect before climbing into the cab of his tow truck and driving off with what was left of my de Ville.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“I’ll total up the charges and slide the bill under your door sometime tomorrow night,” Oscar said.
He was measuring the window they tossed the two-drawer file cabinet through. It was the window overlooking the street where I leered at all the pretty women. Oscar was our office landlord and not too happy about the state of things right about now.
“Christ, I suppose everyone’ll be wanting new locks and more security. I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to pay for all that.” He shook his head and shot me a look.
“You better get all that glass and shit cleaned up out on the street. Someone gets a flat tire or some little girl cuts herself, you’re the guy who’s liable, Pal. Saw all sorts of papers blowing into folks’ yards down the block. Guessing that’s from your damn file cabinet. Jesus Christ, you’d think at some point you might just catch on. I don’t know what woman did this, but you must have really pissed her off, Dev.”
There was no point in offering a defense. “When do you think you might be able to have the door fixed?” I asked. I was on my hands and knees, sorting through files that had been dumped all over what was left of our office. Sorting was a generous term. Right now I was just stacking things into three separate piles - Louie’s pile, my pile and an ‘I don’t know’ pile.
The door to our office had been forced open and it looked like whoever did it used a sledge hammer. The entire right side of the door was shattered. The trim around the door frame had an almost forty-five degree angle to it where the wood had snapped and would have to be replaced. The benches to Louie’s picnic table looked like a pile of kindling, my desk was turned over and every one of the drawers had been damaged. I figured once they dumped all the files out they took their sweet time kicking in the empty drawers. The coffee maker was shattered and the pot had been thrown against the far wall.
“I called Gary, my fix-it guy. Earliest he can be here is tomorrow morning. He’ll replace the door frame and he can install a new lock. Think I might have a spare door somewhere down in the basement,” Oscar said, sighing like it was one more pain in the butt thing he had to do, which I guess it was.
“Is Gary the guy who’ll paint the wall?” I nodded at the ‘Your next, asshole’, message spray painted in large red letters across the wall.
Oscar sighed again, then said, “You notice they spelled that wrong? Should be you’re, you know, with an apostrophe and then the letters r and e. Might just be a clue.”
“I don’t think these were the kind of people who worry a lot about grammar and punctuation.”
Oscar nodded. “Gary can paint it, but I don’t know if he’ll have time to do it tomorrow,” he said, then wrote something down on the wall next to the broken window and stepped back. “Figures, damn it…hundred and three by eighty-two inches. It’ll take two sheets of plywood and I only got one downstairs in the shop. I suppose I’ll have to go get the damn thing, and figure out how to drag it back up here,” he said and gave me another disparaging look.
“Gee, I wish I could help you out, Oscar, but my car is waiting down at the impound lot for new windows, if you’ll recall.”
“Think you might be better off just totaling that bomb.”
I couldn’t argue with his logic and returned to my sorting.
“I better get going if I want to get this shit installed. I got stuff to do tonight. I gotta life, too, ya know.” Oscar groaned, shaking his head like a father who was very disappointed, but not at all surprised.
“Thanks, Oscar. Sorry for the hassle. Hopefully, the cops will get a handle on whoever did this.”
“Yeah, sure, Dev,” Oscar said as he read the measurements he’d just written on the wall. As he left his lips were silently moving, repeating the dimensions of the window. I heard his voice mumbling something at the bottom of the stairs, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. A moment later Louie stepped in the door.
“What the…? You forget your key? What the hell happened here?”
“I think we had a very unhappy client pay a visit.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t here.”
“You know who did this?” Louie asked just as a sparrow fluttered halfway in where the window used to be, then quickly shot back outside.
“I got a pretty good idea,” I said and went on to retell Louie about Pauley, his pals, what was left of my car and finally I reiterated my suspicions about Gaston Driscoll.
“I’d say this comes awfully close to confirming your suspicions. Seems like you’re getting under someone’s skin. Jesus Christ, how in the hell do you get into these situations?” he asked, shaking his head.
“I just told you. I was minding my own business, just getting my car washed when…”
“I get that part. It’s just all the other stuff. Aren’t the cops supposed to check this stuff out, look for the murderer and shit? You did call them, didn’t you?” Louie asked, indicating the shambles that used to be our office.
“Well, yes and no, not exactly,” I said.
“Oh, God,” he said, shaking his head again.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think I need a beer, probably more than one. I think you better not stay at your place tonight, and I think you are going to need some protection.”
I remembered my Ruger was safely tucked under the front seat of my car which was now resting down at the city impound lot. “I got a piece stashed at home I can get. Ahhh, I’m sort of without wheels at the moment. Think you could give me a lift?”
“Yeah, but you’re buying the beverages and a piece isn’t going to do it.”
“Huh?”
“You need a bodyguard, someone with some real muscle. Whoever did this…” He looked around. “Right now it’s a pretty safe bet they’re thinking you’re a pushover. They’re gonna come back for you, Dev, and it ain’t gonna be pretty,” he said staring at the spray painted message on our wall.
Chapter Forty
The name that came immediately to mind was Tony Colli, the Dog. He’d watched my back when I got mixed up with Mr. Swirlee a couple of years ago. I hadn’t heard from him in maybe over a year, but I knew how to reach him, eventually.
“Yeah.” It was a three-pack-a-day rasp that answered the phone, followed by an audible drag on her cigarette. I could see her sitting at the card table set up in her living room, watching some dreadful midday game show while she chain smoked the day away.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Colli, this is Dev Haskell. I’m trying to get in touch with The Dog. I, I mean Anthony,” I said into the phone.
Louie was seated on the stool next to me, signaling Jimmy, the bartender, to give us another round.
Rasp, cough, cough. “Why, Devlin, how nice to hear from you. How are things?”
“Couldn’t be better, Mrs. Colli,” I lied. “I was looking for some help on a work project I have going on and I thought of Anthony. He wouldn’t be around, would he?” I didn’t add, as opposed to being locked up in some correctional institution.
“No, I’m afraid he’s unavailable, as a matter of fact.” She lowered her voice as if someone next to her in the l
iving room was attempting to listen. “He’s been out of the country on a business trip.”
“A business trip? Really? Do you expect him back anytime soon?”
“I’m not too sure. He’s been down in Mexico for a few months, attempting to get some sort of work organized,” she said, displaying the sort of naïveté mothers around the world seemed to be capable of. I figured if The Dog was in Mexico, it wasn’t to build schools or improve water quality in a village.
“If he returns anytime soon would you please have him give me a call?”
“I will, Devlin, but you know Anthony. He can be so busy, so…” Cough, cough, cough. “…unpredictable.”
So criminal, I thought. “Yes, he’s quite the entrepreneur. Well, thank you, Mrs. Colli. You sound great.” I said.
She never wasted time saying good-bye so she did her usual and just hung up.
“Well?” Louie said. He was already halfway through our next round.
“He’s out of town…Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
“Business,” I said, but the word could not possibly explain whatever The Dog was involved in.
“Well, you’re still gonna need someone, unless you maybe want to leave town and hope things ultimately quiet down.”
“Can’t, man. I got Marsha out there flirting with this Driscoll creep. Karla, Catherine Lindquist, Daphne Cole and, well, what I let happen to Desi.”
“I think you’ve probably beat yourself up enough on that gig, Dev. It’s not nice, but sometimes shit happens. You didn’t do anything. You…”
“That’s just it, Louie, I didn’t do anything. I was her last shot and I told her to take a hike, I couldn’t be bothered. She got jacked around, set up, sent up and the final straw was me and I just blew her off. Then, someone decided she deserved to die. Why? I want to get whoever did that, man. I have to, just to keep my own sanity.”
“Look, I don’t like it any more than you, but we’ll get the office put back together. You can get your car repaired. We can…”
“I’m not sweating any of that shit, Louie. Were you listening? I’m talking about that pompous dickhead Gaston Driscoll, that slime ball Pauley and his muscle bound idiot pals. I want them, bad.”
“You’re heading for trouble is what you’re doing, Dev.”
“Probably.”
Chapter Forty-One
Sometimes my best ideas are beverage fueled. It was a little after eleven, a little after the take out pizza and somewhere in the middle of the twelve-pack we picked up on the way home from The Spot. I was sitting in Louie’s ratty recliner, watching a rerun of the Blackhawks playing the Bruins in game three of the Stanley cup. Louie was snoring on the couch.
She answered on the third ring, sounding surprised she was even getting a phone call. Maybe it was the hour or maybe she had caller ID and just panicked when she saw it was me. “Hello?”
“Hey, Annie, Dev Haskell.”
“Ooh, bad time, Baby, very bad,” she whispered.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure, but I mean us…you and me,” I could barely hear her, she was talking so softly. “You probably shouldn’t call me. At least for a bit,” she whispered.
“You with Lydell?”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Actually, that’s why I called. I wanted to talk to him, if it’s okay.”
“What about?” She was back to a normal tone and there was a sudden edge to her voice.
“Nothing about you and me. Actually, I wanted to hire him, if he’s available.”
I was aware of a male voice in the background, but couldn’t make out what was being said. It sounded like Annie had covered the phone and I could only pick up about every fifth word. Eventually a soft spoken male voice came on the line.
“Yeah?”
“Hi, is this Lydell?”
“Yeah.”
“Lydell, my name is Dev Haskell. I know Annie through a mutual friend.”
“Who’s that?”
That caught me off guard. “Oh, I’m blanking on her name just now. But, I wanted to talk to you about a little side job, if you’re interested.”
“I don’t do contracts or loan collections anymore,” he said.
“I don’t think this would be like that. This is more…just sort of having a presence. You’d just be keeping me safe while I go about my investigation business.”
“Investigation?”
“Just looking up records, mostly…things like that. It would probably be pretty boring. I don’t anticipate any trouble. I’m just playing it safe.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m wondering if you could meet me tomorrow morning at my office. We could talk a little further, see if it’s something you’d be interested in.”
“I suppose I could do that.”
“Great. Would 10:30 work for you?”
It did. I gave him the address and directions to my office and fell asleep in the recliner with Boston up one zip.
Chapter Forty-Two
Lydell washed up on shore around eleven-fifteen, about forty-five minutes late. Not that it mattered. I was still in the cleaning mode, putting things in piles to be hauled out to the trash. What was left of my desk was out on the sidewalk along with the remnants of Louie’s picnic table benches. I ran out of paint covering up the red threat spray painted across the wall, so you could still read ‘sshole’ and easily jump to a pretty logical conclusion.
Gary, the fix-it guy, was working on the door frame, actually replacing the entire thing, cutting the new pieces with a table saw set up out on the sidewalk. He was one of those guys who seemed to operate with a lot of tools and little wasted motion.
Oscar had boarded up the front window with plywood the night before. Oscar’s mood hadn’t seemed to improve when he informed me he was charging me for the special order glass. I was going to argue with him, but figured on second thought it might be better to just apologize, yet again, and then shut up.
I was on my knees, sorting through my stack of files. Over the past couple hours about all I’d been able to accomplish was to turn the one large pile of my stuff into twenty-seven smaller piles and I still had the better part of a file drawer to go.
“I’m looking for Mr. Hacksell,” a soft voice said.
I’d only seen him once before and that had been at night from the back when I was fleeing the scene. He appeared a lot larger close up, but it was definitely Lydell. A nose with a large bump along the bridge, scar tissue around the eyes, a line running maybe five stitches long across the base of his chin and, of course, the shaved head. His black T-shirt was stretched taut over a muscled, ‘V’-shaped upper body with bulging biceps and a flattened six pack for a stomach. I’d missed the tribal tattoos across his massive shoulders and biceps that night, but then again I was moving pretty fast. He looked like a muscular stick of dynamite just waiting for an excuse to explode.
“Lydell?” I said, kneeling back and looking up.
He nodded.
I groaned as I got to my feet then extended my hand. “Dev Haskell. Come on, we’ll wheel these office chairs out the door. We can talk in private in the hallway while Gary’s working here.”
Gary gave a half-hearted wave as we wheeled two office chairs out into the hall and down by the door to the ladies room.
Lydell spun his chair around then sat down backwards on the thing, facing me with his massive arms resting across the back of his chair. He had large hands with thick fingers. His brown eyes were dark and piercing and his gaze seemed unblinking.
“You said you were looking for protection? Someone upset with you?” He indicated the office door behind me where Gary was busy replacing the door frame. Our new door from the basement was leaning against the hallway wall and was stenciled with the words “Fire-Exit” in red letters.
I nodded and gave a brief explanation. “I’m working a case…some rich guy is involved and he’s got a couple of thugs who broke in and trashed the place, smashed all our fu
rniture. They tossed a file cabinet through the office window onto my car out on the street and knocked all the windows out of my car.”
“Yeah, I saw all that junk piled up on the sidewalk. You call the cops?”
“No, they were actually here when I discovered the damage.”
“So you know who did this.”
I nodded, thinking for a minute. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure, but I can’t prove anything. Let’s just say it fits in pretty neatly with a case I’m working on. I’ll be honest. I think they murdered a woman. Someone I should have helped and didn’t. I know they’re into moving some stolen goods, flat screens, computers, iPhones, stuff like that. One of them is on probation and just out of a half-way house. They’re stupid, vicious and I suspect they’ll try something again. I also think they’re bullies and a broken jaw or a little rest time in traction would probably go a long way in adjusting their attitude.”
Lydell nodded, apparently seeing the sense of my argument and then asked the sixty-thousand dollar question, “You going to go looking for them?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m going to continue my investigation. I’m guessing they’ll try something stupid again, maybe come looking for me. I’d just like to be prepared if they do.”
“How many we talking?”
“I’m aware of three guys. One of them is no problem, little twerp with spiked hair named Pauley Kopff. The other two are big guys, maybe body builders. They seemed to have some knowledge of martial arts. I don’t know who they are and I don’t know anything about them.”
Lydell nodded while he seemed to think everything over then gave a shrug. “I don’t know, it sounds simple enough. You want me around just in case, right? You’re not going to go looking for these guys?”
“I’m not going to go looking for these guys or, if I do, you don’t have to come along.”
“Sounds fair enough,” he said.
“What’s this gonna cost me?” I asked.
