Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4)

by Faricy, Mike

  I’d been in this position a couple of times before. I knew enough to know I wasn’t going to talk them out of taking me in. It struck me as a wise idea to address both officers as sir.

  “You are Devlin Haskell?”

  “Yes sir. I’ll go with you, could I take a moment and get dressed.”

  They nodded in agreement then followed me inside and upstairs to my bedroom.

  “Mister Haskell, if you could just tell us where your clothes are we’ll retrieve them for you,” Tyler said.

  I nodded across my bed to the closet and my dresser. I was tempted to tell him to go up into the attic and get the Santa Claus suit I wore to The Spot at Christmas, but thought better of the idea.

  “I’ve got jeans right there hanging on the hook. Third drawer down on the dresser is a shirt, top drawer right is socks, top drawer left is boxers.”

  Tyler walked around the bed, retrieved the various items and tossed them my way. I caught a half smile when he handed me my boxers. A yellow sign that looked like it came from the Highway Department imprinted just above the fly stated ‘Open at your own Risk.’

  “Cute,” Baby Face said, but didn’t smile.

  Tyler searched the pockets of my jeans before throwing them across the bed. Baby Face kept a hand close to his Taser. I caught him out of the corner of my eye glancing up at the mirror on my bedroom ceiling. As I buttoned my jeans I said, “It’s been awhile since I had a three way in here,” which got zero reaction from either one.

  “In that closet behind you, there’s a shoe rack,” I nodded to the closet door, “If you could just grab a pair of shoes from there, please.”

  Tyler opened the closet door and tossed a pair of shoes to me. I thought for just a nanosecond about making a joke along the lines of having a butler, but figured it might be better to take the stairs back down rather than being thrown out the window.

  “Could you hand me my wallet and cell phone, there on top of the dresser?”

  “You really think you’ll need them?”

  “Just in case,” I smiled.

  Tyler grunted and tossed them on my bed.

  “Okay, all set I guess,” I said, shoving the wallet and phone in my pockets, attempting to sound agreeable.

  “Not quite, just one more accessory,” Baby Face said, and pulled his handcuffs off his belt.

  “Hey look, guys, that isn’t necessary.”

  “Procedure,” Tyler said, sort of putting an end to any further discussion.

  Baby Face turned me around and pulled my hands behind my back forcefully, but not overly so.

  A minute later we were standing out on my front porch, Tyler, Baby Face and me, my hands cuffed behind my back. Tyler pulled the door closed and locked it with my key. The two patrolmen from the back door were walking down my driveway toward the street. They looked like they lifted weights for a living and being cops was maybe just a side job. I wondered what all these muscled cops meant for the doughnut business in town.

  “Problems?” one asked.

  “No, the picture of respectability,” Baby Face laughed.

  “Sure you got the right guy?”

  Selby Avenue, my street, is busy, lots of traffic. It’s the main route for the 21A Selby to Lake Street bus. But today no one driving past seemed to pay attention to me standing there in handcuffs. Apparently my being arrested had become an everyday occurrence.

  An older neighbor lady I’d seen many times before slowly walked past with her dog, little, with curly white hair, the dog that is. On the other hand, she was rather large, swathed in a sort of paisley tent affair with hair dyed a shade of red not found in nature. Her rouged checks seemed to flush with even more color as she glared at me.

  “Good morning,” I smiled, Tyler and Baby Face were on either side of me, holding my handcuffed arms as we marched down the porch steps.

  “Oh, I’m not surprised in the least,” she growled. As she spoke she shook her plastic bag full of dog shit at me then waddled away.

  “You always have that effect on women?” Officer Tyler asked. Then he casually took a card out of his pocket and began to read me my Miranda rights. “You have the right to remain silent…”

  I couldn’t help but think this total waste of taxpayer money seemed to be an overreaction to the assault charge Emma Bitch had no doubt gone ahead and filed. I thought it best to wait until I was officially charged before I called Louie my lawyer. He’d mention the withdrawal of seventeen witness statements and we’d see where things went from there.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We were seated in interview room number three. A trendy little affair if gray cinderblock walls and damp air conditioning holding just the hint of nervous sweat was your thing.

  I had been left sitting in there for close to two hours, the past thirty minutes with Louie Laufen, my lawyer. I was still handcuffed although the cuffs were no longer behind my back.

  “Oh, God,” Louie half burped, then screwed the top back onto a plastic blue Malox bottle. “I don’t know what I ate last night.”

  “A bottle of Jim Beam from the smell of that burp,” I said. “Louie, can we get back to the matter at hand here, hello,” I said, then raised my handcuffed wrists.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure Dev, just sort of not quite a hundred percent today, that’s all.”

  “Oh great.”

  I had no doubt Manning was probably watching through the two way mirrors on the wall behind Louie. Probably a number of them, all enjoying the little fun-fest they were having at my expense.

  “So tell me again,” he said, burping more bourbon fumes. He looked down at the half page of notes he’d scribbled on the yellow legal pad.

  “It was the halftime, the girls came into the locker room all pissed off, swearing, then Emma…”

  “Real name Felicity Bard, correct?”

  “Yeah, correct. Then Emma begins slamming her helmet against one of the lockers, again and again. She seems to be the most pissed off, says something about kicking a redheaded American bitch’s ass.”

  “Typical locker room stuff,” Louie said.

  “Pretty much, she, Emma that is, just seems the most pissed off, is my point.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Jimmy, their security guy, calls me out into the hall, the girls come out maybe ten minutes later, Emma goes nuts on me. I defend myself, they keep her overnight for observation in Regions Hospital. At the request of my contact…”

  “This Justine woman?”

  “Yeah. She asks me to call Jimmy McNaughton, arrange to meet and try and smooth things over with Emma.”

  “Now as far as you know, at this point all the statements regarding the incident in the hallway have been withdrawn?”

  “Yeah, well accept for Emma’s. So, I apologize to her, then as I’m leaving she yells she still might file charges, and here I am.”

  “Sounds like the proverbial slam dunk,” Louie said.

  “I can only hope.”

  With that the door opened. At no surprise Detective Norris Manning came in, bald head shining pink. He attacked the proverbial piece of gum with his front teeth, cracking it as he approached. There were two other people behind him. One I sort of recognized, guy about forty, curly salt and pepper hair, wearing a sport coat and loose tie. He had one of those five-o’clock shadows some guys permanently have and dark bags beneath his eyes. I couldn’t put a name to him.

  The other individual was a woman, attractive in a tough looking way, not beat up, but more sort of, no nonsense. She wore black slacks and an off white blouse. She was blonde, with a tight jaw line, a nice figure. She had very dark eyebrows and brown eyes that seemed to bore into me. I guess it was a nervous sort of reaction, but I couldn’t help but think the drapes didn’t match the rug.

  “Mister Haskell, Mister Laufen,” Manning said sitting down, laying a file on the table in front of him.

  I nodded.

  “Detective Manning,” Louie answered.

  “This is Detectiv
e Franco, Detective Schumacher,” Manning introduced his accomplices.

  Franco rang a bell, that was the name. I’d worked with him on a lottery scam a couple years back, met for all of twenty minutes. Schumacher, the woman, I’d never seen before. Both nodded as Manning said their name but remained leaning against the wall.

  “Where to begin, where to begin,” Manning said, making a dramatic act out of opening the file and then giving a long sigh.

  “Maybe you could begin with the charge against my client,” Louie said.

  “Or the withdrawal of seventeen sworn statements,” I added.

  Louie gave me a look suggesting I should just be quiet, but I knew better and decided I was going to enjoy this.

  “You know as well as I do that this is bullshit, Manning.”

  “Dev,” Louie cautioned.

  “Ask any of those English girls.”

  “Dev.”

  “Ask their security guy Jimmy McNaughton. Ask any of the Bombshells.”

  “Dev stop it.”

  “Go ahead, ask Fiona Simmons, the one they call Harlotte Davidson, she’ll tell you that I…”

  “God damn it, Dev, shut up,” Louie yelled.

  “Yeah, if I could get a word in edgewise here. I mean we’re all interested in what you have to say Mister Haskell. No really we are, it’s just that, well, in order to check with Miss Simmons, well I’d love to, but someone fire bombed her hotel room and she’s in the hospital right now.”

  “Hospital?” Louie and I said in unison, then stared wide eyed at Manning.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Well hard as it may seem to believe this, I’m still having a problem with your story.” Manning said to me.

  We’d been a number of hours in the interview room, but it felt like weeks. Franco and Schumacher hadn’t done so much as blink. In fact they’d done nothing other than lean against the wall and occasionally adjust positions.

  That was okay with me, Manning had been piling it on just fine without help from anyone.

  “So let me get this straight, you told Miss Justine Dahl that you intended to light a fire under that bitch’s ass, referring to Miss Bard. Is that correct? Are those your words? Light a fire under that bitch’s ass?”

  “Well, yeah, I may have said something like that, sort of, but it was just a phrase.”

  “And during the same phone conversation you suggested to Justine Dahl that Felicity Bard was in your words a real bitch? Is that correct?”

  “No, not exactly, see Miss Bard’s roller Derby name is Emma Babe, E-M-M-A,” I spelled it out. “I was just doing a little play on words suggesting it should be Emma Bitch, see? Sort of making a little joke.”

  “A little joke?” Manning asked.

  “Well, maybe more to make a point,” I said, before Louie could stop me.

  I think I was the only one in the room who got the play on words.

  “So then to add to the joke, to make your point, you fire bombed the hotel room of Fiona Simmons and Felicity Bard.”

  “No.”

  “Miss Simmons is hospitalized and Miss Bard has been released and is recovering, again. A hundred and fifty hotel guests were evacuated, just to make your point, as you say.”

  “Look, I said the things you have there in your file. But it’s a huge jump to go from that,” I nodded at his file, “to fire bombing a hotel room. Don’t you think?”

  “No, not really Mister Haskell, not really.”

  “I didn’t do this,” I said.

  “And you commented to Mister James McNaughton that you noticed there was no security present at the hotel room, is that correct?”

  “Yes, yeah I said that. But, only because Jimmy had told me they were going to hire hotel staff to remain round the clock outside that hotel room. When I saw no one was posted outside the room I questioned it. I didn’t think that was a good idea.”

  “Questioned it in order to see just how that might work for your benefit?”

  “No, I questioned it because he had told me differently, that’s all. I felt they should have security posted outside the room.”

  “Did you view that as a lost business opportunity, Mister Haskell?”

  “Lost business opportunity?”

  “That’s what I said. Guarding the room, wasn’t that a lost opportunity for you. Work you apparently missed out on.”

  “No, no, I didn’t think anything like that.”

  “You weren’t upset they hadn’t hired you to provide security at the hotel?”

  “No, I just told you, I wondered why they had removed their security. Jimmy said it was because of budgetary cutbacks.”

  “Yeah, their budget sort of went to hell after you assaulted Miss Bard, didn’t it?”

  “Sharp observation, except I didn’t assault her. But, their budget was getting pretty tight, I gathered, so anyway it was an expense they apparently decided to do without.”

  “Yeah, apparently, too bad, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I was prepared to spend the night in a cell. But, somehow Louie convinced them I wasn’t a flight risk and besides, Manning didn’t charge me. It was after seven when we got out of the interview room. We were standing outside on Kellogg Boulevard, which, even after rush hour traffic was still backed up, déjà vu all over again.

  “Let me drop you off at home,” Louie said.

  “Thanks, I could use a shower and I’d just like to forget the day.”

  “Yeah, you aren’t kidding.”

  “Hey, you’re getting paid to be in there, how tough can it be?” I asked.

  “No, I meant you could use a shower.”

  Louie gave me a lift home in his rust accented blue Nissan Sentra. In case I thought the holding cell and the interview room had been bad, Louie’s car put all that to shame. I had my window down in an attempt to get some air moving over the trash and debris fluttering around the inside of his car.

  “No offense, Louie, but your car could use a shoveling out and then a pretty aggressive decontamination.”

  “Hunh?”

  “You kidding? You’ve got Big Mac wrappers back there with Christmas wreaths printed on them and its summer. I’m sure I wouldn’t have to search very hard to find a couple of empty bottles under the seat. I see at least three Domino’s boxes, I didn’t know they even delivered to cars. All the unopened mail back there, this one’s from the power company.”

  I pulled a brown envelope edged in red from a random pile. Red block letters above the address window read ‘Open Immediately’.

  “What’s that?” Louie asked.

  “I’ve gotten these myself from time to time, it’s a shut off notice form Xcel Energy.”

  “Not to worry, I paid that one months ago,” he said.

  “Great, but that doesn’t make your car less of a rolling dumpster. God forbid you ever have the opportunity to chauffer around someone worthwhile…”

  “You mean as opposed to you?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  We were heading up Kellogg, turning left at the History Center at the top of the hill, then right at the Cathedral continuing West down Selby with the sun in our eyes. I’d be home in three blocks. After my day being interrogated and now Louie’s car I was debating if I should toss my clothes in the trash or just burn them as hazardous waste.

  “Oh, oh,” Louie said pulling up in front of my place. He ground a good quarter inch off the side of his tires rolling against the curb before he came to a stop.

  Crime scene tape crisscrossed the front door, yellow tape, maybe four inches wide with large black letters, all capitols, CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. There was a red notice taped to the inside of the glass on my front door. I could read the heading from the street, No Admittance By order of the Saint Paul Police Department “Are you kidding me?” I said.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s kidding.”

  “That God damn Manning, he knew about this,” I said. “This is his idea of a joke.”

>   “I’d say he’s got a pretty lousy sense of humor. What’d you ever do to him?”

  “I’ve no idea, believe me.”

  Crime scene tape crisscrossed my double garage and there were two more red notices taped to the garage door just in case I missed one.

  Fortunately, I’d been deliberately over—served the night before and rather than thread a path up my driveway I’d parked at the curb across the street.

  “You need a place to land, tonight?” Louie asked, “I got a recliner,” he said, still staring at the yellow tape fluttering against my front door.

  “Thanks, but I’ll be okay.” I’d spent a night or two in Louie’s recliner, before I ever did that again I’d stake out a park bench.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, see what we can do to get this place opened up for you,” Louie said.

  “Yeah, you bet,” I didn’t sound all that sure.

  “Come on, it won’t be that bad, we’ll get it worked out. Sure you don’t need a place to land tonight?”

  I nodded, then groaned as I crawled out of Louie’s passenger door. I stuck my head back in the window.

  “Thanks for the help, today, Louie. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Take care man,” Louie said, then accelerated down the street, a bluish cloud of exhaust roiled up around me and drifted down the street in the wake of his Sentra as he drove off into the setting sun.

  I decided there was no point wasting time calling Justine. So I phoned Carol hoping that French guy had dumped her by now and I could scam a place with benefits to stay for the night. She answered almost immediately; “Oui,” she said, sounding just a little too cheery.

  “Hi Carol, Dev Haskell.”

  “Oh,” she suddenly sounded decidedly colder and followed up with a long pause. I blinked first.

  “Just checking in, wondered if you were doing anything tonight.”