by Faricy, Mike
“You sure? I mean we were hoping we could sit down with you tonight, go over some stuff. I’m sorry this is all coming so fast.”
“Tonight? I think that could work, I’ll make it work. You tell me where and when, let me make some calls and I’ll get back to you this afternoon if there’s a problem.”
“You sure? I don’t want to…”
“Justine, I’m moving you up to the top of the list. Can I call you back this afternoon?”
“I really appreciate it, thanks Dev,” she said and hung up.
I wandered over to The Spot for a liquid lunch.
Chapter Three
There were five of them sitting around the table when I arrived, teammates from the Bombshells having a beer. Not a Cosmopolitan in sight. Justine introduced them using their Roller Derby names.
“Helen Killer, Maiden Bed, Brandi Manhattan and Cheatin Hart,” she said.
Each woman nodded at me as Justine pointed. They were all attractive, very attractive. I had the feeling I was about to land the cakewalk job of all time.
“Nice to meet you, ladies. Justine, I don’t think you ever told me your Derby name.”
“Spankie,” a chorus trumpeted back.
“Really? Ladies, just call me Dev. So, Justine, I mean Spankie, mentioned you had a need for my services.”
“We’ve got the Hasting Hustlers coming in Thursday and there have been problems wherever they go.”
“Hastings, you mean the town eight miles downriver from St. Paul?” I asked.
“No, not really. More like the town in England, where the Battle of Hastings took place in ten-sixty-six, Harold the Second and William of Normandy. It changed British History, well and the rest of Western Europe.”
I think it was Maiden Bed who just gave me the school lesson, but maybe I was mixing her up with Cheatin Hart. I suddenly couldn’t remember names, well, except for Spankie.
“Define ‘problems wherever they go’,” I said, thinking some sexy creature with a nickname like Nasty Nicki or Lotta Luv and I was going to get paid to watch them while they showered.
“Their big name star is Harlotte Davidson,” Helen Killer said. I remembered her name because she was the first girl introduced to me.
“Big draw,” someone said.
“Huge,” one of the other girls added.
“We’re lucky to get them in here. It’ll just about make our year with this one bout. Anyway, one of the things they require in the contract is security.”
“Security?” I asked, thinking it might make a lot of sense to be with her in the shower room.
“She’s had some sort of stalker after her for almost a year, now.”
“Stalker?” I said.
Nods all around the table.
“What does he do, hang around in the hotel? Try and get into the locker room and leave her love letters or take naked photos?”
“If only,” Justine said.
“Spankie?” I asked.
She shook her head then seemed to shudder almost imperceptibly.
“Well, he mailed a couple of fingers.”
“Fingers?” I half shouted.
“Then you guys remember, he slipped that one under her door?” I think Brandi Manhattan said that.
“That was down in Chicago,” Justine added.
“Has anyone contacted the police?”
“Here?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, we got the usual, we can pay one of their off duty guys to hang around outside the door, that sort of stuff. They said they’ll keep an eye out, but there isn’t much they can do. I mean most of it has come through the mail. Not like there was a return address you could drive over to and ask some jerk what the hell he was thinking.”
“Except for Chicago, when it was slipped under the door.”
“Fingers?” I asked, again.
“Yeah, and always the middle one, like he’s giving her the finger or something.”
“Creepy,” Helen Killer chimed in.
“Does she have security? Someone with the team, that sort of deal.”
“Yeah, but they want us to provide someone local. I mean I get it, it makes sense. Their guy can watch Harlotte, he’ll know the practice routine, the hotel, all that sort of stuff, but he’s not a local guy.”
I was still stuck a few paces back thinking fingers? What the hell?
“Fingers, and always the middle one?”
Nods all around.
“This happened more than twice?”
More nods.
“I think two through the mail, then Chicago,” Justine said.
“So I’d just follow her around, with the Hustlers’ security, that it?”
“Maybe, you tell us, you’re the Private Investigator. What would you normally do?”
“I’d just follow her around, with the Hustlers’ security.” I detected a slight widening of their eyes so I embellished. “Work as the local interface with the police. I know most of the players on the force. Talk to the Hastings Hustler’s security about what they’ve been doing thus far. Find out what they’re worried about, deal with any of their immediate concerns.”
“Worried about? They’re worried about some nut case sending human fingers through the mail and finally getting bold enough to slip one under the door. I mean right under the damn door, that’s what they’re worried about.”
“Yeah, I get that. But are they worried the same guy is going to take a shot at her during the bout. Where do you skate? Are there metal detectors? Is this finger deal just centered on their star attraction, Harlotte? Or, have her teammates received threatening letters or phone calls, too. Look, we can sit here all night and go over what we might do, might not do and at the end of the night we could be completely wrong,” I said.
“So now what?” Justine asked.
“I’d like to contact these people, talk to them before they arrive, maybe get some things lined up in advance. The better prepared we are the better off everyone will be. You got a phone number where I could reach them?”
“I can have that information for you tomorrow morning,” Justine said.
Chapter Four
Her condo was on the fourth floor of a five story building. A red brick Victorian sort of thing with gargoyles, black trim, stain glass and gables, built in eighteen-eighty. It was the perfect place for a Halloween party.
“You want a beer or something stronger?” Justine asked.
She kicked off her shoes at the door, tossed her purse on a black leather couch one of two sitting perpendicular to a fireplace, there was a glass topped coffee table between them. The room was long with a three panel bay window at the far end and a stain glass window above that in some kind of flower pattern. The streets light from four stories down cast colored reflections across her living room ceiling.
“Beer’s just fine for me.”
A hallway ran straight ahead along the length of the condo, exposed brick on one side and doors to various rooms on the other. Track lighting along the ceiling lit the hall and highlighted three framed paintings hung on the brick wall. The paintings were roller derby scenes. Girls skating around a banked track wearing hot pants, you could feel a sense of speed and action just by looking at the things, the paintings.
“You do these?” I asked, staring briefly at the paintings before following her into the kitchen at the far back end of the hall.
“No, some California guy. That’s me in them, in the purple jersey. He did ten of the things if you can believe it, gave me a deal. He had a show and everything, I guess it went pretty well.” Her voice was muffled as she bent over and reached into a gigantic refrigerator.
“Here’s to you,” she said a moment later and handed me a bottle.
A few beers later we ended up on one of the couches, legs resting across the coffee table. A couple of table lamps with stain glass dragon flies on the shades dimly lit the room. Light from the lamps reflected off the glazed fireplace tiles.
“You think there’l
l be any trouble?” she asked.
“You mean with Harlotte Davidson and the fingers?”
“No, I mean because I’m almost out of beer, yes with Harlotte and the fingers.”
“I hope not. I don’t think there will be. But, I’ll give you this, it’s pretty strange.”
“Yeah and not the sort of publicity we’re looking for.”
“I don’t know, you could probably get a sellout crowd showing up just to see if anything was going to happen. People dig this weird shit, look at all the folks into the whole vampire thing,” I said, then sipped.
“That is so not the sort of fans we’re looking for. We’ve worked really hard to get beyond the image of strippers on roller skates and then something like this comes along.”
“Maybe it’s someone who gets their kicks getting headlines, you know their fifteen minutes of fame sort of deal. If that doesn’t happen, if you keep it quiet, maybe the guy will just go away.”
“Or get more aggressive,” she said.
“There is that.”
“Who would let some guy cut off their finger?” she said, then shuddered swallowing her beer.
“I’ve been thinking about that. At first I was thinking, it’s him, you know some nut case doing it to himself but there are too many middle fingers for one guy. Then, I thought maybe homeless people, druggies, but that seems sort of far fetched. I’m guessing someone with ready access.”
“Ready access? To fingers? You gotta be kidding. How does that work?”
“Maybe it’s someone who works in a hospital or a morgue or a funeral home, something along those lines.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
“Just thinking out loud.”
“You hear back from Miss Cosmopolitan?” she asked, moving quickly away from the subject of fingers.
“No, not really interested,” I said. I saw no benefit admitting I heard Carol’s stupid French phone message. I could only hope little old Nicholas was just that, little.
“Need a hug?”
“What?”
“Get over here, stupid,” she said and took her glasses off.
Chapter Five
“I wrote the Hustlers’ phone number on the back of my card, here,” Justine said, then pushed her card next to my coffee cup. It was almost six in the morning and if I was going to be up at this hour I was in desperate need of coffee and lots of it.
Justine was already dressed in blue hospital scrubs, doing something to her eyes using a brush and a mirror while she sat at her kitchen counter.
“Jimmy is the manager’s name, if he’s not the guy to talk to he’ll know who is. He’s a little hard to understand, you know, the accent.”
“I’ll give him a call this morning. They flying in tomorrow?”
She glanced over at me.
“No, they’re on a team bus, coming out of Denver. They’re probably west of Omaha right now, somewhere in the middle of Nebraska.”
“Gee, the romance of show biz.”
“Denver’s a nice town.”
“I wasn’t referring to Denver.”
“Oh yeah, that. We should be looking pretty good to them by the time they get up here. I just hope everything goes okay and nothing happens while they’re in town.”
“I’ll make sure nothing happens.”
“Let’s hope,” she said.
It was almost noon before I reached Jimmy McNaughton on his phone. I’d spent the morning forcing myself to work through the stack of job applications. Between Jimmy’s accent and phone coverage in the middle of Nebraska I could only make out about every third word he said. But I got the gist of it. He gave me the name of their hotel. When they expected to arrive and then casually added, “Looking forward to meeting you, mate. Had another little surprise waiting for us last night.”
“A surprise?”
“Taped to the door of the bus. An envelope addressed to Harlotte, another finger inside.”
“She okay?”
“Didn’t want to bother her about it.”
“What’d Denver police say?”
“Didn’t care to wait, to tell you the truth. The girls have a schedule to keep. We’d lose a day waiting for them to tell us I was right, it was a finger. You’d think your man would be running out of mates at this point.”
“How many does that make?”
“Four, that we know of.”
“All the middle finger?”
“Right.”
“You said four you know of, you think there may be more than that?”
“I’m not sure what to think.”
“Let me do some checking on this end, I’ll be waiting for you at the hotel.”
“Cheers,” Jimmy said and hung up.
“Homicide” the voice answered three minutes later.
“Detective Manning,” I said, against my better judgment.
“Who’s calling?”
“Devlin Haskell,” knowing this was bound to slow things up.
“Just a minute.”
I knew it wouldn’t be a minute, or two or even three. I waited for close to ten, was just about to hang up when he graced me with his voice.
“Manning.”
“Detective Manning, Devlin Haskell.”
“Oh, damn it, it’s you calling. I thought they said someone was calling you in DOA. My mistake,” he said, then cracked the ever present piece of gum into the phone.
“Sorry to ruin your day, Detective.”
“I’m used to it,” he said, not joking.
“Say, I just wanted to touch base with you. I’m providing security for an individual and she…”
“Security? You? She must be nuts.”
I ignored his comment.
“She’s been receiving threats for some time. The thing’s escalated to some nut case mailing her human fingers. She started receiving…”
“This that English Roller Derby broad, Harlotte Davidson?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact.”
“They’re heading our way from Denver?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re aware of it.”
“What are you doing about it?”
“Doing about it?”
“Yeah, is there a plan, are you putting extra people on?”
“Extra people? Have you read the damn newspapers or turned off the cartoons and watched the news the last couple years? We’re down by almost fifteen percent. Put some people on, gee, why didn’t I think of that? Tell you what, I’ll just walk over to the squad room, you know find a-half-dozen guys who are sitting around eating doughnuts and tell them to stand by. In fact, good thing you called, now you can tell them, here hang on a minute, just let me put you on speaker phone.”
“I’ll take that as a no, there isn’t a plan.”
“A plan, yeah I got a plan. We’re watching every post office, one of those envelopes comes in with no return address we’ll be the first to let you know.”
“They weren’t all mailed, the fingers.”
“You must be referring to Chicago where the guy slipped it under the door of the hotel room?”
“Not just Chicago, Detective.”
“You mean the envelope taped to the door of the bus in Denver last night? Checked out like all the others.”
“Have you guys thought of maybe running the fingerprint on the thing. I mean, does it strike you as strange you got four people missing a finger and no one has reported an assault or a body or a missing person or anything?”
“Wow, Sherlock, amazing you aren’t a cop with all those great ideas you have. Yeah, I think the various departments thought about running the fingerprint, just one problem, there isn’t one.”
“Isn’t one?”
“The finger print, it’s missing. Whoever’s doing this cuts off the finger tip. Anything else you care to add? Pardon the pun,” Manning chuckled at his humor.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked again, not sounding too sure.
“A plan? Yeah, I got a plan. Hop
e nothing happens here and that they’re all out of our jurisdiction sooner rather than later. How’s that sound to you, Haskell?”
“Sounds like a plan detective.”
“Always a pleasure,” he said, and hung up.
Chapter Six
Jimmy McNaughton and the Hastings Hustlers arrived about seven that night. They looked like you’d expect after riding on a bus for a thousand hours from Denver up to St. Paul, tired and cranky.
“Right, the girls will check in, meet in the lobby in an hour or so. I’d say that gives us just enough time to get acquainted over a pint. Lead on, mate,” Jimmy said, fleeing the checkin scene in the lobby and sounding like he could use a break from the ladies.
I had a feeling we were going to get along just fine.
“Two more, please,” Jimmy signaled to the bartender twenty minutes later, then followed her with his eyes as she walked down the bar toward the beer taps.
“You were telling me about your plans, what you’ve been doing with Harlotte.”
“What we’ve been doing,” he said, turning back to me and running a hand over his shaved head, “is just running a bit of interference. Bout all we can do, we’ve got her ring fenced. There’s another girl shares the room with her, a black belt in karate. We check the mail. We’ll post someone from the hotel staff outside her door the entire time we’re here. I’ll escort her to and from the track. If she does an interview, I’ll be there standing next to her. We scrutinize everyone who’s going to be near her, hell, we’ll even check her meals before they’re placed in front of her.”
“How’s she holding up?”
“Harlotte? Pretty well. Don’t let the name fool you, she’s the strong silent type.”
I grinned.
“No really, she is. The girls go out, Harlottes’ the one in the corner drinking a coke. She might order a white wine if she was really going to celebrate, but it would take her all night to finish a glass. She calls home every night, talks to the kids and her husband for ten minutes.”
“We talking about the same Harlotte Davidson?”
“Husband’s a primary school teacher. That’s showbiz,” Jimmy said.
He wasn’t kidding, another pint later and we were joined by Harlotte and a raven haired beauty introduced as Emma Babe. Emma was Harlotte’s black belt roommate.
