by Mike Faricy
“Yes, that was your idea, no? But I think everything you need, at least to start, is already in the envelope,” She took another sip and set the glass aside.
“What’s with the naked photo?” I asked.
“The envelope has her address. A key to her front door. It is a duplex, she has the top one. Her name is on the mailbox. Her last name is Mathias.”
“Kerri. The photo?”
“Ma’am.” The waiter suddenly hovered from out of nowhere, carefully presented Kerri with her menu, then quickly discarded another in my general direction.
“I can get you something not on the menu tonight. We have a wonderful steak, stuffed with smoked oysters and served with a special red wine sauce. Comes with whatever else you’d like.”
Kerri giggled, shrugged her shoulders, smiled sexily and said, “I’m sorry, the smoked oysters, they give me the shits. I think maybe the cheeseburger, with the pepper jack cheese, please. Does that come with French fries?”
“If you want it to.”
“I do.”
“Very well, ma’am,” not even blinking.
“I might try that steak, what was it again?”
“Actually I think there was only one left. I can check and see if someone hasn’t already taken it,” implying it was no longer available.
I stared for a long moment.
“Give me the rib-eye, rare, hash brown potatoes, French dressing with blue cheese on my salad. I’ll take a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. A double.” Then gave him a nod that suggested Got it?
“Very good, sir. More wine, ma’am?”
“That sounds very good, thank you.”
I watched him saunter away, took a deep breath to put him behind me. I didn’t mind him hovering, for a bit, but he was close to becoming a pest, and I was the schmuck who was going to get stuck with the bill in the end.
“Are we not happy after last night?” Kerri’s eyes flashed over her wine glass.
“No, I mean yes, yes, I’m happy. And by the way, thanks, that was very nice,” wishing I could remember more of what had happened as I thanked her.
“Nice had nothing to do with it,” her eyes flashed.
Over the course of dinner and more wine, Kerri effectively dodged my question of the naked photo at least half a dozen times. Nikki didn’t seem to have had any full-time employment. A couple of vague cleaning jobs, some house-painting gigs. She’d been a waitress, a bartender, done childcare.
“Did she file taxes?” I asked.
“Taxes?”
That spoke volumes, about both women actually. As enjoyable to look and leer at, as Kerri was, I felt there was something, or maybe, just something missing.
Chapter 4
Eventually we finished up the small talk. Even optimistic old me caught on that nothing was going to happen tonight beyond dinner. The bill dutifully washed up on my shore, five glasses of wine for Kerri at twelve bucks each.
“You like the wine?”
“It was just okay.”
“Okay?” I tried to maintain my composure at sixty bucks worth of okay. My steak was a bare two dollars more than one of her glasses of wine.
“Well, he was so sweet and I didn’t wish to hurt his feelings,” she said, then drained her glass. The waiter was nowhere to be seen so I signed the tab and pulled Kerri’s chair out all by myself.
“Thank you, Dev. Shall we talk again, maybe in two days time? You should find her by then, no?” She was walking toward the door at this point, half talking to me over her shoulder.
A waiter nodded, then smiled at her from across the room, called out what sounded like genuine thanks. The bartender waved good night to her like Oliver Hardy, a large paw up at shoulder height, fingers wiggling next to his idiotic grin. Other heads turned to appraise her from the rear then nodded approval as she strutted past, heels clicking.
“I’ll see what I can learn. Who knows, maybe she just went to Disney World or something.”
“Do you think, maybe?” she asked, sounding serious, as if she might actually be entertaining the suggestion.
“Well, maybe, but I doubt it. Let’s see what I can come up with.”
Once outside I asked,
“Where are you parked? I’ll walk you to your car.”
A little dark blue sports car, a BMW actually, suddenly pulled to the curb. I had no idea what model it was, other than out of my price range.
“Oh, no need, here is my car,” she nodded at the BMW and walked around the front to the far side just as the driver’s door opened and the hovering waiter jumped out. The car came up to just above his knees.
“All set to go for you, ma’am. I left my card on the console,” he added half under his breath, glanced at me, then said. “In case you need anything or forgot something, ya know.”
“Oh, you are so kind,” she smiled and continued to stand just a little too close. He had to brush against her, heavily, to get out of the way so she could crawl behind the wheel.
“I’ll call you later, Kerri,” I said to her tail lights as she drove off, signaled, and took a quick left around the corner. I repeated her license plate number over and over in my head until I reached my car and wrote it down on the back of a dry-cleaning receipt. I toyed with going down to the Spot, thought better of it, and went home. The last vestige of Kerri’s lingering perfume hit me as I opened the front door.
Chapter 5
The duplex where Nikki lived was located on the East Side in a corner of town dominated by the stark, imposing edifice of St. Simpert’s Catholic Church. Simpert was an eighth-century Benedictine abbot, nephew of Charlemagne and patron saint of Augsburg, Germany. I’m sure he was unaware of the embarrassment his name would bring to generations of American grade-school kids playing on his teams.
A solid blue-collar neighborhood up through Lyndon Johnson’s presidency the East Side had been in a gradual downward spiral for the past fifty plus years. Drafty old, two, and three-story wood-frame homes had been cut up and sectioned into rental units on block after block. A number of the old neighborhood bars still catered to the locals, but the locals had changed and now the bars sported metal detectors, hip hop, and bouncers. In the ecumenical spirit of the times women of all races hustled themselves on street corners. Child thugs in hooded sweatshirts offered a pharmacy of escape options. The police cars traveled in pairs.
Nikki’s duplex was second from the corner and sported shabby, brown asphalt siding that was supposed to look like brick. Eighty years on and in the afternoon drizzle it just looked like shabby asphalt siding. The floor on the wraparound porch had apparently been painted gray years back, but the paint had pretty much peeled off exposing bare wood, which accounted for the buckled floor. A post supporting the leaky roof stood dangerously close to a rotted two-foot hole in the porch floor. A rutted, muddy driveway turned to weeds toward the rear of the house then just disappeared altogether beneath the rusting remains of a green Bonneville. The car, or what was left of it, sat on cinder blocks. The hood and the engine were missing, five year’s worth of dead leaves rotted beneath the thing. Kerri had mentioned that her sister’s car had been parked in the driveway I hoped she wasn’t referring to the Bonneville.
The front door had probably been elegant at one time. The glass, long gone, was replaced with weathered plywood. A jagged hole had been drilled through the plywood, slightly off center, presumably to look from the inside out. Although closed, the door was unlocked. Two black metal mailboxes were mounted just to the left of the front door. The top one had a faded, handwritten piece of cardboard taped to the front. #2 Nikki. No last name.
I pushed the door open and followed the squeak inside. There was a small hallway that led to a grimy door beneath a staircase. The number one had been drawn on the door in black marker. The staircase, sporting a railing of 2x4s painted flat gray ran up the right hand wall to a landing where it turned left and went up another half dozen steps. The wall was stained and dingy from years of grimy hands running up and down. The
2x4 railing wiggled dangerously as I began to climb the stairs. The air held just the slightest hint of mouse.
Nikki’s grimy apartment door sported four panels that had been painted an icy flat white a very long time ago. You’d have to look hard to find an uglier color. On the door a haphazard 2 had been drawn in black marker. The door was locked, although by the look of the frame and the panel next to the doorknob, the door had been kicked in more than once.
Surprisingly the key turned the lock, and I pushed the door open then stood on the small landing with my ears perked. I heard nothing. Eventually I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. The place was soulless nothing on the walls. A single recliner looked orphaned in what served as a living room. No carpet or rugs, just dull, worn wooden flooring. No end tables, no lamps, no television, not so much as a radio or a clock. The kitchen was much the same, an old refrigerator, bare. Empty cabinets, one plate, a coffee mug, no silverware. No pots, no pans, no food, no soap.
Amazingly the bedroom sported a bed and a dresser. The dresser drawers, more empty than not, held a pair of jeans, a T-shirt. In the small closet a cheap, dark blue rayon robe hung alone on a nail. I could still detect faint perfume from the robe.
What looked to be a full roll of toilet paper hung in the bathroom. A white plastic shower curtain was draped across the shower entry. A full container of Soft Soap sat on a corner ledge in the fiberglass shower. No tooth brush, no toothpaste, no makeup. No shampoo or conditioner for a redhead with hair down to her shoulders.
There was no wastebasket to go through. No computer with files to copy. No stacks of mail to sort. No phone with a message light blinking. Nothing. So had Nikki lived here and moved everything out? Recently? I couldn’t imagine someone living like this for very long, say more than an afternoon, and then only if she had a good book and at least a six-pack.
I did a brief walkthrough twice more and came up with even less. There was nothing there. It was like the place was a sleazy hotel room and somebody forgot a couple of things in their haste to just get out. I thought maybe Brad the Cad, the ex-boyfriend/lawyer, might be able to shed some light on things.
Chapter 6
Bradley Cadwell answered on the third ring.
“Hi, Brad,” was actually how he answered.
“Brad Cadwell, please,” I said.
“You got him,” still pleasant but the hint of a question in the tone.
“Mr. Cadwell, my name is Devlin Haskell I’m hoping you might be able to help me with some information. I’m …”
“Concerning?”
“A woman by the name of Nikki Mathias.”
There was a pause in retrospect I think Brad was choosing his words carefully.
“I haven’t seen Nikki for at least a year, more than that actually, much more. No, I doubt I can be of any help to you.”
“I wonder if we could talk, anyway, at a time of your convenience. I’m attempting to locate her and…”
“I told you I haven’t see her in maybe two years, I wouldn’t know where she was, I’m married now. Happily. I really don’t think …”
“Could I just get five minutes of your time, that’s all I ask? Or, I could come to your office?”
Another pause, a little longer.
“Okay, but not here. I could meet you tonight I suppose, but I really have no idea where she is. It’s been over two years since I last saw her.”
“I can appreciate that. I promise I won’t take more than five minutes of your time. You just name the place.”
“A place. Okay, there’s a bar in downtown, you familiar with St. Paul?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“You know where Henry’s is, across from the Hilton?”
“I do. Would six be too early for you?” I asked.
“I’ll make it work. Tell me your name again?”
“Haskell, Devlin Haskell.”
“All right, Mr. Haskell.”
“Thanks, I appreciate your time. Look, you’ll be able to recognize me I’m a dapper guy, stunningly handsome. I’ll be wearing a black leather jacket, St. Paul Saints baseball cap, and blue jeans. I’ll be sitting at the bar in Henry’s at six o’clock, tonight.”
“I’ll find you,” he replied and hung up. If he was smart, I figured he would be checking me out right now.
I phoned Aaron LaZelle, a cop I know, and ended up leaving a message. Then decided to drive to the BMW dealership out on I-94 and look at little sports cars. If the note I wrote on the dry-cleaning receipt could be trusted, Kerri drove a Z4. I looked at one at the dealership. A roadster with a retractable hardtop. Twenty-four miles to the gallon, as it turned out. Three hundred thirty-five horsepower, and I was right it was way out of my price range. They started at sixty-one five and headed north based on extras. I’ve owned houses that hadn’t cost that much.
Chapter 7
I was sitting at the bar in Henry’s fifteen minutes early, nursing a root beer and waiting for Brad the Cad to show up. A few minutes before six two guys entered through the side door, passed eight or ten open stools, sat down beside me and proceeded to work hard to ignore me. They ordered beers, Summit Extra Pale, then embarked on a forced conversation involving what could only be a fictitious office tryst. They had the look of college jocks, former college jocks. The muscle had, if not quite turned to fat, been at least downgraded from prime A category. I waited a few more minutes and at ten past six, Brad the Cad arrived, stylishly late.
He had the former college jock look too, maybe a little less extra weight, say ten to fifteen pounds as opposed to the twenty-five apiece the guys next to me sported. I guessed they had probably all played on the same hockey team. They had that hockey look noses broken at least once, scars along the chin three to five stitches long, skater’s thighs. Being oh so clever, they all made eye contact for a brief nanosecond as Brad walked past and stood next to me.
“Excuse me, Devlin Haskell?”
I was the only guy in the place wearing a black leather jacket and a St. Paul Saints baseball cap, so it wasn’t really rocket science. Brad the Cad stood about five foot eleven, short cropped blond hair, blue eyes, nice-looking guy about thirty-three, thirty-five tops. As he held out his hand to shake mine he smiled.
“Brad? Thanks for coming. Hey, please call me Dev. Very nice to meet you.”
He had a solid grip, but he wasn’t giving me the I’m a real man squeeze. He looked me in the eye, confident but not cocky.
“Yeah, well like I said, I’m not sure I’ll be of any help.”
“You never know. Look I promised just five minutes of your time. Would you feel more comfortable if we got a table?” I asked.
“No, here will be just fine.” He didn’t look at them, but he’d included the two ex-jocks in his comment, whether he knew it or not.
“We can get a table for four if you’d prefer,” I said.
“Hunh?”
“Your pals, not a problem with me.” I nodded in the direction of the two. The larger one slid off his stool, about six four, chin jutted out a bit. He glanced at Brad.
“Hey, did I see you skate somewhere? Not Minnesota,” I asked, making it up as I went along.
“Fighting Sioux,” he answered before he caught himself.
Every once in a while I guess blindly and it pans out.
“Yeah, North Dakota,” his pal added almost simultaneously.
“We all played together up there,” Brad replied. “Look, Dev, like I said I haven’t seen Nikki for almost, well, for a very long time. And, I’ll be honest, you probably already know the last time we parted it wasn’t on the best of terms.”
“Actually, no, I know no such thing. In fact, I’ll be perfectly honest, I know absolutely nothing. Except that she’s supposedly missing and her sister wants me to find her.”
“Her sister?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know she had one,” Brad said.
“You dated her, I mean Nikki, awhile back?”
“D
ated? Yeah sort of, look here’s the deal. We met her, we all did, she was the entertainment for a bachelor party we attended. I called her on a couple of occasions, maybe a month, six weeks apart. But that was before I was married,” he added hastily.
“Me too.”
“Me three,” the pal on the stool added with half a chuckle.
“So this was a professional arrangement?”
“Initially,” Brad frowned and nodded. The two friends nodded as well.
“Any of you seen her in the past year?”
They all shook their heads the one who’d stood initially reached for his beer, took a long sip, then set the beer down. We were just guys talking now.
“So how’d you leave it with her? Did you just not call?”
They looked from one to the other, and Brad answered.
“That was sort of the deal breaker. See, I met her to sort of end things. She had started contacting me, and I didn’t need any trouble. She went ballistic, crying, screaming how could I do this to her? Not fun. And I purposely set our meeting up in a public place. Mears Park, about three o’clock on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I thought it would be safer. God, el wrongo! People were grabbing their kids and hustling out of the park. She was swearing, she even took a swing at me. Jesus, I’d just passed the bar exam, I was about to be engaged not the sort of attention I wanted or needed.”
“When I heard that, shit, I just never called her again,” this from the pal still sitting.
“Me neither. She was fun but who needs it, plus the whole hooker thing. I mean I got a kid,” the pal standing took another sip, a long one.
“She phoned me about a week later,” Brad said, “and threatened to post pictures on the Internet, tell my girlfriend, all sorts of threats, wanted ten grand. I mean she was blackmailing me, or trying to. I just let her rant and then told her I’d taped the call.”
“Did you?”
“No, but she’d left a message on my phone earlier that day a couple of minutes of her screaming about the same sort of shit, you know, posting pictures, but she never mentioned any money in the message. Anyway, I told her I taped the call and I’d send her a sample. I sent her the phone message she’d left, and that was the last I heard from her, ever. So anyway that’s why Barry and Greg are here, I or we thought maybe this was a setup to, you know, blackmail me or us, again.”
