by Faricy, Mike
“You are Mister Devlin Haskell, right?” she smiled.
“What?”
“Are you Mister Devlin Haskell?” As she asked she stepped back and double checked the address numbers next to my front door.
“Yes, yes I’m sorry officer I, well you caught me off guard. Look I’ll be ready in just a minute. I just got the phone call a few minutes ago. Please, please come in?” I stepped back to let her in but decided against asking her upstairs to help me get dressed.
She seemed to consider for a moment, then nodded.
“I guess that would be okay.”
“Can I get you a cup of coffee? I just put some on.”
“That would be fine” she said and followed me into my kitchen. I sensed her looking around checking things out as we walked toward the rear of the house. She stared for a moment at the open space my refrigerator used to inhabit. Maybe she noticed the three or four years worth of dust balls that had accumulated. Maybe it was the three or four tops to old beer bottles or the unset, empty mouse trap. If she did notice she was gracious enough not to say anything.
I pulled a mug out of the cabinet, poured some coffee and handed it to her.
“Thanks.”
“Milk?” I asked, then remembered I didn’t have any.
“No, black is fine.”
“I’ll just get changed upstairs and be back down,” I said, pouring a mug for me.
“Take your time, no rush, I’m on the clock,” she smiled and sipped.
I had another thought about asking her upstairs to help me pick out the right outfit, on second thought decided that might not be the best idea and left to get dressed.
I was back downstairs in under eight minutes. Officer L. Trang was leaning against my kitchen counter, next to her empty coffee cup, smiling. She looked me up and down, if she’d been one of my ex’s I think she might have said something like ‘You’re not going out dressed like that, are you?’ Instead she just leaned against the counter and continued to smile.
“You know the last time a police officer was here I was handcuffed up in my bedroom.”
“Really? Interesting,” she said, sounding not at all surprised. “Ready to go?”
We were outside walking down my front steps. The same large woman from the other day was waddling past with her little white, curly haired dog.
“Humpf,” she sneered then shook her head in disgust and stopped to watch us.
“Same day different shit,” I said, nodding at the bag she carried.
“Mister Haskell,” Officer Trang smiled and stood next to the open rear door of the black and white.
“Shouldn’t he be handcuffed? He’s a menace and a detriment to the entire neighborhood,” Fatty said.
“We did that upstairs, used the hand cuffs,” I said, and winked at her.
“Well, hopefully you’ll loose the key when you lock him up this time.”
“Yes ma-am.” Officer Trang said, then closed the door behind me and walked around to the driver’s side. She was smiling when she got in behind the wheel.
“I’ve already been told I have that affect on women.”
“Menace and detriment?” She said and started the squad car.
We were maybe ten minutes from the police station. Not far in terms of distance, but the start and stop of rush hour on streets in a permanent state of construction did nothing to get you where you wanted to go. We hadn’t said anything since she pulled away from the front of my house.
“What’s the ‘L’ stand for?” I asked.
“The ’L’?”
“Your first name, it’s on your uniform.”
Oh, sorry, it stands of Linh, L-I-N-H,” she spelled it out for me.
“Pretty,” I said.
“It means gentle spirit,” she said.
I waited for her to expound, but nothing else followed. I caught her glancing at me in the rear view mirror a couple of times, probably wracking her brain for ‘Wanted’ posters.
“My instructions are to escort you up to four,” she said, fifteen minutes later. She opened the rear door for me and smiled. We were parked in front of the brick building that served as the police station. We were directly across the street from the dusty, pot holed lot where I’d waited for Louie the other day.
“Do you want to cuff me?” I asked, then held up my writs and smiled.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No, but I was thinking of using the Taser,” she replied, gave me a quick laugh and headed for the front door.
Manning was in a burgundy and beige cubicle, seated behind his desk. The cubicle looked ten years old, the scuffed wooden desk closer to fifty. He was half hidden behind four stacks of thick manila files. The top of his head was a shinny pink outlined by his close cropped red fringe. When he looked up his blue eyes were like lasers beaming in on me.
“Any problems Officer Trang?” he asked, sounding hopeful, then cracked his ever present gum.
“No, he was an absolute model citizen,” she said.
“Surprising. I’ll call you when we’re finished. Sit down, Haskell.” Manning directed, and indicated a chair for me. The chair was tarnished chrome with olive drab highlights and looked to be army surplus.
I sat down, then stared as officer Trang walked back down the hallway in one of the better fitting uniforms I’d seen. I continued to stare then said to Manning, “I’d tell her anything she wanted to hear.”
“Just a word of caution, she’s Midwest regional champ three years running in her weight class for kickboxing.”
“I’m thinking of the possibilities, maybe just a light spanking,” I said.
“You requested a Latte,” Manning said, ignoring my comment. He reached over the stack of files and handed me a barely lukewarm paper cup, the kind dispensed from a machine. The contents consisted of a sort of creamy coffee colored sludge with a definite blue oil scum drifting across the top.
“What’s this?”
“It passes for a Latte down here, or coffee with extra cream and sugar, depending.”
“Gee thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Manning said.
“You having anything?”
“You kidding? I wouldn’t touch that stuff,” he seemed surprised I even asked.
“So, you wanted to chat, just the two of us,” I said, setting the Latte or whatever it was on the edge of his desk.
“That’s right.”
“About?”
“Have you had any contact with the Hastings Hustlers since we last chatted?”
“Last chatted? You’ve got to be kidding? You can’t possibly be referring to the hours of interrogation where you grilled me and my attorney in that stuffy, depressing little room the other day?”
“That might be a little harsh.”
“I don’t think so, look, do I have to have him here, my attorney? If I’m going to be charged I want my attorney present.”
“No, I’ll level with you. Much as I’d like to nail you, I don’t think you did anything, at least not in relation to the Hustlers, those fingers or that fire bombing.”
“You’re kidding?” I was genuinely surprised, shocked might be a better word.
“No, believe me, no one is more disappointed than me, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have anything to do with this, other than your usual wrong place at the wrong time which seems to be a pretty standard routine of yours.”
“You’re saying you believe me when I tell you I’m not involved.”
“At least as far as I can determine at this point.”
“Well then, can I have my refrigerator back?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said and wrote something down on a piece of paper.
We sat quietly for a moment, studying the competition across the desk from one another. I finally broke the ice.
“What’s going on here, Manning?”
He seemed to size me up, aggressively cracking gum with his front teeth as he did so.
“Fiona Simmons, Harlotte
Davidson, she was murdered last night,” he said, and then stared at me.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I think I should have my attorney present,” I said, and felt the color draining from my face.
“You’re not being charged, you’re not even a suspect. Jesus Christ, we’ve had you under surveillance for the past two days,” he said, then threw his pen on the desk.
“Under surveillance?”
“Once again you haven’t failed to disappoint.”
“Oh gee, sorry. Why would you think I had anything to do with this bullshit? She’s dead? How? What? She’s dead? But she’s so nice, I mean…”
“Her roommate found her earlier this morning.”
“Earlier?”
“A little after one.”
“What was she doing, the roommate, Felicity…”
“Felicity Bard, she was out with a few of the other girls listening to music at some club. Nothing wild or crazy. The Simmons woman was in the hotel after the women left for the club. A number of people saw her. At least four women were with Miss Bard the entire evening.”
“She’s involved, Emma Babe, the Bard woman, she’s involved somehow.”
“And you make your living as an investigator? Did you happen to hear anything I just said?”
“Let me guess, after all that’s gone on they didn’t have security outside the door of the room did they?”
“Apparently not.”
“Apparently? For God’s sake, they got severed fingers being mailed to them across the country, some maniac fire bombed their hotel room. Why in the hell would they possibly pull their security at the… It’s because you had me under surveillance isn’t it.
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“Jesus Christ you told them, didn’t you. You said I was under surveillance so they figured it was all over, they were safe. Right?”
“I didn’t tell them.”
“No? Well someone did and they figured they didn’t have to worry because the prime suspect, namely me, was essentially under lockdown at home. Right?”
Manning didn’t say anything, but his ears looked red and the top of his head was quickly growing a hotter pink.
“How do you know I didn’t sneak out a back window?”
Manning glanced down at the open file in front of him.
“Let’s see you made a phone call a little after nine. You were online from about nine-thirty until one-fifteen in the morning. A number of different porn and escort sites. What? Did the word finally get out about you and now you have to pay for it?” he laughed at his little joke.
“You’re paying for it, too, Manning, you just don’t know it yet.”
“Drunken Mommies, Girls Gone Wild, Back Page, Date Night…”
“Okay, okay, I was just looking, which isn’t a crime, at least as far as I know.”
“Much as I’d like to tie you into this, unless you flew up your chimney, over to that hotel on a broomstick and then back, it doesn’t work for me.”
“How was she killed?”
“Throat slit.”
“That’s up close and personal, someone she knew, maybe.”
“Gee thanks, Sherlock.”
“Signs of a struggle?”
“How ‘bout we handle the investigation end of things for right now. I need your help in that area, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”
“So what do you want from me?”
The color seemed to drain from Manning’s face. He actually looked pained, swallowed, and in almost a whisper he said, “I could probably use your help, maybe.”
A lesser man would have said no. Would have made him crawl, or stood up and walked out. I sat there staring into the paper cup at the baby-shit—brown Latte, too shocked, too stunned to do anything. After a long moment I looked up.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Look, you don’t want to help and give this jerk a chance to slip away, there’s nothing I can do about that. Not that I’m surprised. I thought you might want to help us out with something that can quickly turn into an ugly international incident here, but if…”
“I’ll help.” I said.
“You want to walk away that’s…”
“I said I’ll help, Manning. Stop beating me over the head and just tell me what you want me to do.”
He studied me for a moment, his jaw sawed back and forth on his hapless piece of gum. The blue eyes were back to looking like lasers, and they zeroed in on me.
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” he said, sounding a hundred percent genuine. “Here’s what we’re thinking. Someone fingered you, pardon the pun, tried to set you up. I’d like to play that card, make it look like you’re our guy. See if that takes us anywhere.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Well hang on, what this means is we may release your name to the media.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, we’ll play like we normally would. You’re brought in for questioning, as a suspect…”
“I know how that part works,” I said.
Manning gave me a genuine smile.
“We’ll send you home then pick you up tomorrow, make an arrest we’ll release your name, say you’re being held as a suspect.”
“And?”
“And then we wait and see, we’re looking at someone, we’ll see if they make a move.”
“Make a move?”
“Make a move,” Manning said and didn’t add anything.
“I’m glad to help, but I want my attorney in on this and Aaron LaZelle, too.”
“LaZelle, your buddy over in vice?”
“Yeah, no offense but if Louie and Aaron give the nod I’m on board. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I really have to be sure, okay?” I extended my hand over the desk.
“Not a problem, under the circumstances I’d do the same thing,” he said and then shook my hand. “Haskell, for the record, thanks.”
“For the record, Manning, if anyone can do it you can, so get this bastard.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Louie and Aaron gave their approval just before the noon hour in a conference room down the hall. Louie drew up the paper work. Some guy named Captain Elkers who Manning and most of the department seemed to report to signed off on it, literally.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way gentlemen, but my client, Mister Haskell, has had a bit of a checkered history in some, shall we say, gray areas and I’d just like to be sure here. Once you sign this, absolving Mister Haskell of any complacency we can move ahead.”
“Damn unorthodox,” Captain Crabby grumbled, but signed then quickly left the conference room.
Aaron looked serious, but winked at me as he signed.
Manning signed and looked relieved.
“Thanks Louie, I owe you dinner,” I said.
“You’ll owe me a lot more than that,” he said. Then looked over at Manning, “What’s the next step?”
“We release Mister Haskell and then we’ll make a very public arrest later tomorrow, in time for the six o’clock news. Your choice, where,” Manning said, turning to me, home or the office.
“I think I’d prefer home, the office would be bad publicity.”
Manning nodded, you need a lift home.
“I can give you one,” Louie said.
“Me too,” Aaron said.
“Is Officer Trang available?” I asked Manning.
“Yeah, I’ll make sure she is.”
“Nothing personal, guys,” I said.
“You’re sure getting the special treatment,” Officer Trang said. It was close to one-thirty by the time she was driving me home. As she spoke she looked at me in her rear view mirror, viewing me through the heavy mesh screen.
“What can I say, I have that effect on folks.”
“Gee, who knew? And all this while I was thinking that woman was right.”
“Woman?” I asked.
“Menace and detriment are two of the words that spring to mind.
I’m sure she has plenty of others.”
“I’m sure she does. So, who did you piss off to get the short straw and draw this gig.”
“Driving you around?”
“Yeah.”
“I was involved in an incident, standard procedure, you’re off the street for a few days.”
“Here I was thinking you were trying to get on Manning’s good side.”
“That would suggest he has one.”
“You got me there. An incident, it wasn’t that shooting? The one over on the East side, two or three nights ago?”
“Yeah,” she answered, but with a tone that suggested she didn’t care to go any further.
“Sorry, been there. So, you got time for a late lunch?”
Her eyes flashed in the rear view mirror, but I could detect a smile.
“Thanks, but no. How ‘bout a rain check after hours sometime?”
“For sure, I’ve got a busy next few days, but maybe if you gave me your number and…”
She had just pulled to a stop in front of my house; amazingly the old bat with the little dog wasn’t in sight to tell everyone what a low life I was. She didn’t tell me her number, but climbed out, then opened the rear door for me.
“Here’s my card,” she said, smiling as she handed me the card, “give me a call when things lighten up. I’d like that.”
“You can count on it. Thanks, a real pleasure meeting you,” I said, then held out my hand.
She took it, gave me a double squeeze, maybe just the hint of a lingering look. Then climbed back behind the wheel and drove off.
I felt my heart thumping, slowly calming down as she turned at the corner. Now all I had to do was wait around until I got arrested.
It was a little after four the following afternoon, I’d just taken a couple of burrito’s out of the microwave, popped open a can of Dr. Pepper and strolled into the living room to turn on the television. I glanced out the front window, noticed a Channel Four News van up the street with a black and white parked behind it. I looked down the street in the opposite direction a black and white was parked on the far corner. I guessed there would be one or two uniforms in my back yard shortly if they weren’t there already. They had really set the stage. I quickly gulped down my burrito, drank some of the Dr. Pepper and thought I better use the bathroom and put on a clean shirt for the cameras before they walked over and knocked on the door.
