by Faricy, Mike
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me again,” she said, then hung up.
I tried Kristi, but my cell displayed a ‘number blocked’ message.
Naomi’s number had been changed with no further information available.
I left a message for Patti, but she was probably still pissed off about the little cigar burn I left on her great—grandmother’s heirloom dining room table. I didn’t hold out much hope.
I reluctantly phoned Heidi Bauer. I didn’t want to, but I was pretty much out of options.
“Hello,” she sounded happy.
“Hi Heidi, Dev.”
“Yeah,” she said, suddenly cautious.
“Hey, I realize it’s pretty short notice, but I was just checking to see what you’re up to tonight.”
“What I’m up to? Really? You mean you don’t want something, bail money, a ride somewhere?”
“Man, when did you become so cynical?”
“Oh I don’t know, maybe after getting you out of a half dozen different jams, posting bail, retrieving various cars from the impound lot, hiding you from the authorities, sooner or later even I start to catch on,” she said.
“Look I know it’s late, I’ve just been working a lot, had a halfway open night, wondered if you wanted to get together, that’s all. If it’s going to present a problem I can call another time.” I hoped I didn’t sound too desperate.
“I suppose you’d expect a late dinner?” she said, softening.
“Actually, I was thinking I would pick something up, what do you feel like?”
Twenty-five dollars worth of Chinese take-out and four bottles of wine later I pulled up in front of Heidi’s. She opened the front door as I came up the walk.
“Well, at least you parked in front so you’re not hiding, this time.”
“Why do you think there has to be something wrong before I want to come over and see you? Can’t you just accept the fact I enjoy your company? I thought maybe spending an evening listening to your conversation would be reward enough.”
“Yeah, that’s what you’re after, my conversation.”
“That might be part of it, find out what you’ve been up to? Who you’re seeing? When…”
“Just stop. I’ll figure it out sooner or later and you’ll be busted, but for right now come on in. Pork fried rice, right?” She blocked the doorway and nodded at the grocery bag full of little white containers.
“And dim sum,” I added.
“Okay, get your ass in here,” she said, stepping aside.
As was our custom we ate directly out of the containers. Heidi ate all her dim sum then moved on to mine. I made a point of never letting her glass go empty. She had finished the better part of three bottles of wine when she attempted to make grasshoppers for dessert, that didn’t work so well under the circumstances so we moved on to the bedroom course.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Oh God, what kind of cheapo wine was that? My head’s killing me,” Heidi groaned from under her pillow.
“Couldn’t have been the three bottles you had,” I said.
“You were drinking, too.”
“I had a glass to every one of your bottles. That was before you decided to make the grasshoppers.”
“Grasshoppers?”
She lounged in bed groaning for another forty minutes, working up the courage to face the day. I tried to get something romantic happening with the proverbial back rub, but it didn’t work. Eventually we climbed out of bed and wandered out of her bedroom.
My clothes were scattered around the living room. As I pulled on my jeans I heard Heidi in the kitchen.
“God, I don’t remember any of this,” she said. She was standing naked in the middle of the room. You could tell she was running through her memory files and they were all coming up blank. Even hung over she still looked beautiful.
I couldn’t say that much for the kitchen. Almost a dozen little white take-out containers littered the granite counter top. Bits of rice were scattered here and there, a half eaten dim sum. There were two wine glasses, one was still partially full and the other, sporting a half moon of lipstick, had been drained dry. Three empty wine bottles stood on a distant counter next to the refrigerator, a fourth lay on its side and had rolled up against the microwave, barely a swallow left inside. We had left the ice cream out on the kitchen counter, next to her underwear.
Heidi stared at a puddle of melted ice cream that had dripped onto the kitchen floor. The blender had a sort of green glop sitting in it and judging from the spray pattern across the kitchen wall she must have run the thing with the top off.
“Not to worry, you made up for it in the bedroom,” I said.
“Apparently. Want some breakfast?” she said, placing an aspirin bottle on the kitchen counter then filling a glass up at the refrigerator tap.
“What have you got for breakfast?” I asked.
“I don’t know, any of that pork fried rice left?”
Unless we planned on eating puffed rice cakes and melted ice cream, I knew better than to check for any food in her house.
“I’ll go get us something, how’s that sound?”
“And a Latte, a double,” she pleaded.
I was driving back from the coffee shop, armed with four caramel rolls and Heidi’s double Latte when my cell phone rang.
“Haskell In…”
“Where the hell have you been, dipshit?”
“Mom?” I asked.
“I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour and a half,” Louie said.
“Sorry, I was in a meeting.” Thinking I should have checked my phone when I pulled my jeans on.
“Sure you were, listen as your attorney, let me state, I don’t want to know. I spoke with the good Detective Manning about your place.”
“And?”
“And, with any luck they’ll finish up and you can get back in there by the end of the day.”
“Fantastic.”
“Just keep your fingers crossed.”
When I returned Heidi had progressed to one of the couches in her living room. She lay curled up on her living room couch wearing a pair of sunglasses with a white terrycloth robe wrapped around her.
“Did you remember my Latte?” she groaned from the couch.
“Yeah, a double, and some caramel rolls.”
“Mmm-mmm give me,” she pleaded.
I set the Latte in front of her and went out to the kitchen for some plates, nothing had changed except a half glass of water sat on the counter next to the ice cream container and the open aspirin bottle. Melted ice cream was still pooled on the floor. Her thong from last night rested next to the toaster. I put two caramel rolls on a plate and brought them out to her, then ventured back into the kitchen and started to clean things up.
It took the better part of an hour, but everything was pretty much back to normal, well, except for the green blender spray across the kitchen wall. That would have to be repainted. I grabbed a shower, then peaked back into the living room. Heidi was asleep on the couch, snoring softly still wearing her sun glasses. Latte was dribbled down the front of her robe and only a few caramel crumbs remained on her plate. I knew better than to disturb her and tiptoed out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I drove past my house taking a round about way to the office, just to see if I could learn anything. I didn’t. A few miles worth of yellow crime scene tape was still wrapped around my house and garage. The place looked like the site of some demented high school prank. There was a white Crime Scene van parked in my driveway with a city logo on the door, but I didn’t see anyone outside. With any luck they’d already finished and were relaxing down the block having coffee at Nina’s. I figured it was the wise move to just keep heading toward the office.
It was later that afternoon, I was eating a platter of Bar-B-Q ribs at a place called Fat Daddy’s, right around the corner. The tiny room had three small card tables and maybe a dozen folding chairs with ‘First Baptist Church
’ stenciled across the back. There was an aged poster of Little Anthony and the Imperials held to one of the walls with yellowed tape. A more recent Otis Redding poster, maybe just thirty years old, was taped above the order counter. The air conditioner was either broken or turned off and the place smelled of my sweat and sweet, tangy Bar-B-Q grease.
With the exception of Fat Daddy, all four-hundred-and–fifty-pounds of him sweating behind the cash register, I was the only person in the place. Fat Daddy was sipping something from a travel mug, I guessed it wasn’t a Diet-Coke. I could hear the ice cubes rattle whenever he sipped. He hadn’t said much more than ‘What’ll you have?’ since I’d entered the place twenty minutes earlier.
My cell phone rang.
“Haskell…”
“Where are you?” Louie interrupted.
“My office. You hear anything from Manning yet?”
“Where exactly are you?”
“Exactly? Okay, I’m grabbing some ribs just around the corner at Fat Daddy’s. Why is there a problem?”
“If they’re not there yet, some of the city’s finest are on their way to pay you a personal visit.”
“Now what?”
“I haven’t been informed. My guess? They found something during their search of your place.”
“There was nothing to find.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Louie, honest there was nothing. Look, they come up with drugs or something, it’s a plant. I’m not kidding. They find any money they have to split it with me.”
Louie didn’t react to my joke.
“Think you can get to your car?”
I looked out through the second ‘B’ in Fat Daddy’s three foot high, hand painted B-B-Q letters running across his front window. My car sat across the street, parked at the curb, minding its own business maybe thirty feet from the corner.
“Yeah, I can see my car from here.”
“You should be on your feet and moving now, you got two, maybe three minutes tops. I want you to meet me downtown at the police station.”
“What?”
“We’re going to turn you in, do the upstanding citizen thing, answer whatever questions they have and hopefully move on. You’re sure there’s nothing there, at your place?”
“Yeah I’m sure, there’s absolutely nothing there, unless they’re looking for laundry.”
“Unregistered guns, drugs, kiddie porn?”
“No nothing, honest, maybe some vacation photos of naked women, but…”
“Are they over eighteen?”
“Yes, they’re over eighteen.”
“Good, meet me at the cop shop, you know that parking lot, across the street?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t screw around, Dev. I’m talking a couple of minutes here, that’s all you got.”
I pushed back from the card table and walked out the door.
“Gotta run, Fatty,” I called over my shoulder
“You coming back, Dev?” Fat Daddy called after me as I crossed the street to my car. He never left his stool behind the cash register.
I got in, turned the key in the ignition and took a right at the corner. I hadn’t driven more than thirty seconds when I saw a flashing light turn onto Randolph maybe three blocks further down coming toward me, fast. I pulled to the side, gave the car plenty of room. It was a dark blue Crown Victoria, with a removable light flashing on top, no siren, just like on TV. Franco was driving, Manning sat in the passenger seat, I could tell he was chewing gum. They shot past me and I watched them in my rear view mirror. A black and white came off a side street and pulled in behind them. They parked going against traffic, right in front of the stairs leading up to my office. They jumped out of the cars and left the lights flashing. That was enough for me, I pulled away from the curb and went to meet Louie.
I had been baking in the parking lot for close to an hour, watching as the heat shimmered off the hood of my car. The lot was two acres of weeds and graveled pot holes completely devoid of shade. Every time a car drove through another layer of choking yellow dust sifted down on the parked vehicles fading beneath the unrelenting sun.
Louie’s Sentra finally scraped up the entry and across the sidewalk then wheezed into a spot next to the sign that warned drivers ‘Do not leave your vehicle unattended’. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the police station across the street.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked, drifting through a cloud of blue exhaust. Louie had shut his car off but it continued to rattle and shudder for another fifteen seconds, before finally shutting down altogether in a mild explosion.
“Trying to figure out what they’ve got cooked up for us,” he groaned as he climbed out from behind the wheel.
He wore what used to be a light blue suit. The trousers looked permanently wrinkled, there was some sort of brownish sauce dribbled down the right hand side of his coat. He attempted to straighten his tie, but only managed to position it slightly more off center. The top button of his shirt was undone, but chins managed to hide the fact. Darker sweat stains began to seep through the underarms of his suit coat.
“Might as well see what they’ve got on you,” he said, heading across the street in the direction of the police station. He was wheezing heavily before he made it to the far curb.
I watched for a moment, then hurried to catch up in the event he needed help crossing the street.
“Maybe you should find out, then let me know, rather than bringing me in there and…”
“Let’s just go in there and let them know you’ve got nothing to hide. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for whatever it is they found.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“For the thousandth time I’m telling you I have no idea how in the hell that thing got in my garage. I sure as hell didn’t put it there.”
I was moving up in the world, this time we were in Interview Room Number One. Its décor remarkably similar to the previous interview room, charmless grey cinder block walls with a video camera hanging in one corner. The green light was on, indicating I was being filmed. The back wall had two—way mirrors mounted the entire length, I gathered we were playing to an audience. There was a scent in the room mixed with the damp air conditioning and most likely emanating from me. Fear, desperation, panic?
Detectives Manning and Franco were in the room with us, sitting across from Louie and me, at a grey Formica table whose only feature was a couple of cigarette burns snaking their way toward the chipped edge.
There were a dozen different photos strewn across the table in front of us. Each one a slightly different image of a finger they’d found while searching my garage. It was a severed middle finger, with the finger tip hacked off.
The thing had been wrapped in a plastic bag and placed in a small refrigerator that stood in the back of my garage. Based on the photos I guessed the thing was decomposed. Substantially decomposed.
“Dev, do you mean you forgot you left that finger in your garage?” Franco asked. He’d been the good cop for the past hour, or was it two hours.
“No. I’m saying I’ve never seen that thing before. I never put it in my garage.”
“Why did you keep the finger in that refrigerator?” Manning asked.
“So I could give you one, the finger that is.”
“Dev,” Louie cautioned.
“Look, I don’t know how the thing got there, okay. If I was storing a bunch of fingers would I put them in a refrigerator that hasn’t worked in over two years? If you guys bothered to check you would have noticed the thing was unplugged. It’s been unplugged for a couple of years. Someone is setting me up here.”
“So you admit you were storing a number of fingers. Was this the last one?”
“I don’t admit anything of the sort. I just told you, the refrigerator didn’t work. It’s been broken for a couple of years. If it did work I would have had beer in it.”
“Lets go back to the night you fire bombed the hotel room,” Manning sa
id.
“I didn’t fire bomb anything.”
Manning was walking back and forth across the room, playing to the audience behind the mirrors. As he walked he absently stretched and twisted the rubber band that had held the photos of the fingers.
“So you go to the hotel and…”
“I didn’t fire bomb any hotel room.”
“You stated you were intoxicated that night.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I said I was very intoxicated that night. So much so that I parked on the street, because I didn’t want to attempt driving down my narrow driveway and into my garage.”
“And you left The Spot bar sometime after two that morning.”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“So you drove to the hotel, fire bombed the hotel room of Felicity Bard and Fiona Simmons, then drove home and decided to park on the street?”
“No, I left The Spot. I drove home. I parked on the street and then went to bed.”
“To sleep?”
“Okay, have it your way, I decided to read for a few hours. No, like I’ve been telling you, I more or less passed out. And, I did not fire bomb any hotel room.”
“You phoned a number of different departments impersonating a police officer from Saint Paul, didn’t you Mister Haskell?”
“No. I phoned a number of different police departments. When they asked me if you were as big an asshole as you seemed I said, yes. If that makes it sound like I’m a member of the Saint Paul department there really isn’t much I can do about that.”
Manning had walked to the far end of the room and snapped the rubber band he’d been stretching, turned and looked at me.
“You did call a number of different departments, did you not?”
“I did, four to be exact, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City. At no time did I tell anyone I was a member of the Saint Paul Police Department. If the individuals I spoke with arrived at that conclusion it was on their own.”
“Why did you call?”
“I’ve told you, Jimmy McNaughton had hired me to help with security. I was attempting to learn anything we could about the fingers that had been sent to the Hastings Hustlers.”
