by Mike Faricy
As I pulled away from the curb, the car suddenly rocked and I glanced out the passenger window just as one of Pauley’s gigantic pals kicked the door again. “Get out of your God damned car, stop damn it, stop!” he screamed and began to punch the window with his fist.
I accelerated to get away from him. A second later I heard a loud thump above my head and a baseball sized rock bounced off the roof of the car and across my hood. I rounded the first corner, then zigzagged the next few blocks in case they were following. I hopped onto Interstate 94, heading east toward Wisconsin, the opposite direction from where I wanted to go. I kept checking the rearview mirror every other second, but couldn’t spot anyone following me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
About ten miles out of town I began to think about turning around. I had checked the rearview mirror repeatedly, but never spotted anyone following and began to feel a little more comfortable. I drove to my office and parked in front. Louie was nowhere to be found, so I wandered over to The Spot for a quick beverage just to calm my nerves.
I was on my fourth or was it my fifth calming beer when a guy I recognized and whose name I’d forgotten wandered in.
“That your DeVille they’re towing?”
“Towing? Not likely,” I said, shaking my head.
“Red, with a blue passenger door? I’m guessing you had some windows in there at one time,” he said, nodding as Carrie, the bartender, slid two shots across the bar.
I’d been half lost in some country song coming out of the juke box. “Huh?”
“Looks totaled, Man,” he said, downing a shot and nodding in a nonchalant sort of way, like my car being totaled and towed would be an everyday occurrence.
I looked out the dingy front window through the orange neon ‘OPEN’ sign. My car, or what was left of it, was being pulled onto the bed of a large blue and shiny chrome tow truck. There was a squad car parked in front of the tow truck and the two cops seemed to be having a casual chat as the tow truck driver hooked chains to the under carriage of my car.
I was out the door shouting. “Wait, wait, hold on, that’s my car.”
The three of them turned in unison to watch me running toward them. One of the cops said something I couldn’t hear, but it brought a smirk to their faces.
“This vehicle belongs to you, Sir?” the smaller of the two cops asked once I’d crossed the street.
The tow truck driver suddenly became very involved in raising my car onto the bed of his truck.
“Yeah, it is. Did someone hit it?”
“Not exactly,” the other cop said, looking up to where my office window used to be.
For the first time I became aware of a crunching beneath my feet and noticed glass, lots of glass scattered around the street and sidewalk. Then I noticed there was a beige, two drawer file cabinet that was wedged between my dashboard and the roof of my car where the windshield had once been.
“You want to tell us what happened here?”
“I don’t know. That’s my office up there, and I think that looks like my file cabinet.” I nodded as my car was hoisted up toward the front of the tow truck bed. Both cops glanced up at my car, then looked back at me.
“I, I just went into The Spot for a minute to use their phone,” I said, realizing how stupid that sounded as soon as I said it.
“That’s your office up there?” The shorter cop indicated the broken picture window on the second floor with a nod of his head. “And you don’t know how that file cabinet ended up in your front seat?”
“Well, I’d say someone threw it out the window.” I was picturing the idiot screaming at me and punching my passenger side window back at Pauley’s just a couple of hours ago.
“Any idea who might have done this?” the other cop asked. He sounded calm and he came across as one of those quiet, even keel types. I had the feeling he was finding the whole situation rather interesting.
“No, no idea,” I said.
I was pretty sure everyone knew I was lying.
“Been in an argument or fight with anyone? Maybe an outstanding debt? Road rage incident, something like that?” short cop asked.
“No, no nothing like that.”
“Girlfriend trouble?” calm cop asked.
“No, no girlfriend. Nothing.” I looked up where my office window used to be. I guessed whoever did that had to have kicked in my office door to get to the file cabinet, and probably trashed the place for good measure.
“Well,” short cop said, glancing up at the broken picture window. “Someone doesn’t seem to be too happy with you.”
Another squad car pulled up with just one officer in it. He sat behind the wheel, looking at us for a moment while he had a brief conversation on the radio before he climbed out of his car. I saw sergeant stripes and he sort of looked familiar, although I couldn’t place him. Most of the cops, and especially the younger ones like the two I was talking with, were in good shape. They had physiques on them that suggested they worked out, a lot, and wouldn’t have a problem handling most people if it came to that.
This Sergeant wasn’t like that. I put him at mid to late forties, heavy, but in that farm kid or laborer sort of way. He wasn’t fat, but not a sculpted body builder either, just old fashioned solid, maybe a hockey player. The ‘S’ curve on his nose suggested he may have held some solid opinions on occasion. He gave me a perfunctory nod and directed his question to the two officers.
“What happened?”
“We were just asking this gentleman the same thing,” short cop said, and then looked at a small notebook in his hand before glancing up at me. “Mr. Haskell?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I was in The Spot using the phone.” I indicated over my shoulder where three guys were standing on the sidewalk, smoking and watching. None of them made a move to venture over toward us.
“And this just happened? No fight, no argument, no sort of incident?” the Sergeant asked.
“No, nothing like that. Someone said they were towing my car and I looked out the window and, well, here I am.”
He nodded like he’d been here before. I wasn’t going to give him anything and he had more things on his plate than wasting time with me. He turned to the two officers. “You check upstairs?”
“Door kicked in, place trashed, the window obviously,” short cop said. “Mr. Haskell, you better check things out up there. Look for items missing, maybe files. I don’t know if you kept valuables or cash up there. Maybe there was a safe.” He rattled this last bit off like a memorized line. He sounded like he wouldn’t just be surprised, he’d be positively shocked if there had been anything remotely of value in my office.
Then he suddenly produced a sheet of paper from out of nowhere. “This has contact information. That’s my card attached at the top along with a case number you can reference. You can file your report online. Please feel free to contact us should you have any information. Obviously, we’d like to get the person or persons who were involved, but it becomes difficult if not next to impossible without any cooperation from you, Sir.” He smiled then handed me the form.
They were gone three minutes later. I guessed experience told them I wasn’t going to say anything and they were just wasting their time. The tow truck driver handed me a clip board with a form I had to sign. “You can claim your vehicle at the start of business tomorrow down to the impound lot. Course you ain’t going anywhere’s with no windows. You could have ‘em replace them widows on site, but there’s a crease where that file cabinet hit, so a body shop probably have to take care a that ‘fore they fit a new piece a glass to her. ” He flashed a quick smile, then spit a shot of tobacco juice off to the side.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded, tore a pink copy of the form off and handed it to me. “Be seeing ya,” he said, then spit once more for effect before climbing i
nto the cab of his tow truck and driving off with what was left of my de Ville.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“I’ll total up the charges and slide the bill under your door sometime tomorrow night,” Oscar said. He was measuring the window they tossed the two-drawer file cabinet through. It was the window overlooking the street where I leered at all the pretty women. Oscar was our office landlord and not too happy about the state of things right about now.
“Christ, I suppose everyone’ll be wanting new locks and more security. How the hell I’m supposed to pay for that I don’t know.” He shook his head, then shot me a look. “You better get all that glass and shit cleaned up out on the street. Someone gets a flat tire or some little girl cuts herself, you’re the guy who’s liable, Pal. Saw all sorts of papers blowing into folks’ yards down the block. Guessing that’s from your damn file cabinet. Jesus Christ, you’d think at some point you might just catch on. I don’t know what woman did this, but you must have really pissed this one off, Dev.”
There was no point in offering a defense. “When do you think you might be able to have the door fixed?” I asked. I was on my hands and knees, sorting through files that had been dumped all over what was left of our office. Sorting was a generous term. Right now I was just stacking things into three separate piles - Louie’s pile, my pile and an ‘I don’t know’ pile.
The door to our office had been forced open and it looked like whoever did it used a sledge hammer. The entire right side of the door was shattered. The trim around the door frame had an almost forty-five degree angle to it where the wood had snapped and would have to be replaced. Louie’s picnic table looked like a pile of kindling, my desk was turned over and every one of the drawers had been damaged. I figured once they dumped all the files out they took their sweet time kicking in the empty drawers. The coffee maker was shattered and the pot had been thrown against the far wall.
“I called Gary, my fix-it guy. Earliest he can be here is tomorrow morning. He’ll replace the door frame and he can install a new lock. Think I might have a spare door somewhere down in the basement,” Oscar said, sighing like it was one more pain in the butt thing he had to do, which I guess it was.
“Is Gary the guy who’ll paint the wall?” I nodded at the ‘Your next, asshole’, message spray painted in large red letters across the wall.
Oscar sighed again, then said, “You notice they spelled that wrong? Should be you’re, you know, with an apostrophe and then the letters r and e. Might just be a clue.”
“I don’t think these were the kind of people who worry a lot about grammar and punctuation.”
Oscar nodded. “Gary can paint it, but I don’t know if he’ll have time to do it tomorrow,” he said, then wrote something down on the wall next to the broken window and stepped back. “Figures, damn it…hundred and three by eighty-two inches. It’ll take two sheets of plywood and I only got one downstairs in the shop. I suppose I’ll have to go get the damn thing, and figure out how to drag it back up here,” he said and gave me another disparaging look.
“Gee, I wish I could help you out, Oscar, but my car is waiting down at the impound lot for new windows, if you’ll recall.”
“Think you might be better off just totaling that bomb.”
I couldn’t argue with his logic and returned to my sorting.
“I better get going if I want to get this shit installed. I got stuff to do tonight. I gotta life too, ya know.” Oscar groaned, shaking his head like a father who was very disappointed, but not at all surprised.
“Thanks, Oscar. Sorry for the hassle. Hopefully, the cops will get a handle on whoever did this.”
“Yeah, sure, Dev,” Oscar said, read the measurements he’d just written on the wall, then left. His lips were silently moving, repeating the dimensions of the window. I heard his voice mumbling something at the bottom of the stairs, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. A moment later Louie stepped in the door.
“What the…? You forget your key? What the hell happened here?”
“I think we had a very unhappy customer pay a visit.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t here.”
“You know who did this?” Louie asked just as a sparrow fluttered halfway in where the window used to be, then quickly shot back outside.
“I got a pretty good idea,” I said and went on to retell Louie about Desi Quinn. I went back over my meeting her at Karla’s carwash, about Marsha, Catherine Lindquist, Daphne Cole, Pauley, his pals, what was left of my car and finally I reiterated my suspicions about Gaston Driscoll.
“I’d say this comes awfully close to confirming your suspicions. Seems like you’re getting under someone’s skin. Jesus Christ, how in the hell do you get into these situations?” he asked, shaking his head.
“I just told you. I was minding my own business, just getting my car washed when…”
“I get that part. It’s just all the other stuff. Aren’t the cops supposed to check this stuff out, look for the murderer and shit? You did call them, didn’t you?” Louie asked, indicating the shambles that used to be our office.
“Well, yes and no, not exactly,” I said.
“Oh, God,” he said, shaking his head again.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think I need a beer, probably more than one. I think you better not stay at your place tonight, and I think you are going to need some protection.”
I remembered my Ruger was safely tucked under the front seat of my car which was now resting down at the city impound lot. “I got a piece stashed at home I can get. Ahhh, I’m sort of without wheels at the moment. Think you could give me a lift?”
“Yeah, but you’re buying the beverages and a piece isn’t going to do it.”
“Huh?”
“You need a bodyguard, someone with some real muscle. Whoever did this…” He looked around. “Right now it’s a pretty safe bet they’re thinking you’re a pushover. They’re gonna come back for you, Dev, and it ain’t gonna be pretty,” he said, looking at the spray painted message on our wall.
Chapter Forty
The name that came immediately to mind was Tony Colli, the Dog. He’d watched my back when I got mixed up with Mr. Softee a couple of years ago. I hadn’t heard from him in maybe over a year, but I knew how to reach him, eventually.
“Yeah.” It was a three-pack-a-day rasp that answered the phone, followed by an audible drag on her cigarette. I could see her sitting at the card table set up in her living room, watching some dreadful midday game show while she chain smoked the day away.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Colli, this is Dev Haskell. I’m trying to get in touch with The Dog. I, I mean Anthony,” I said into the phone.
Louie was seated on the stool next to me, signaling Jimmy, the bartender, to give us another round.
Rasp, cough, cough. “Why, Devlin, how nice to hear from you. How are things?”
“Couldn’t be better, Mrs. Colli,” I lied. “I was looking for some help on a work project I have going on and I thought of Anthony. He wouldn’t be around, would he?” I didn’t add, as opposed to being locked up in some correctional institution.
“No, I’m afraid he’s unavailable, as a matter of fact.” She lowered her voice as if someone next to her in the living room was attempting to listen. “He’s been out of the country on a business trip.”
“A business trip? Really? Do you expect him back anytime soon?”
“I’m not too sure. He’s been down in Mexico for a few months, attempting to get some sort of work organized,” she said, displaying the sort of naïveté mothers around the world seemed to be capable of. I figured if The Dog was in Mexico, it wasn’t to build schools or improve water quality in a village.
“If he returns anytime soon would you please have him give me a call
?”
“I will, Devlin, but you know Anthony. He can be so busy, so…” Cough, cough, cough. “…unpredictable.”
So criminal, I thought. “Yes, he’s quite the entrepreneur. Well, thank you, Mrs. Colli. You sound great.” I said.
She never wasted time saying good-bye, she did her usual and just hung up.
“So?” Louie said. He was already halfway through our next round.
“He’s out of town…Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
“Business,” I said, but the word could not possibly explain whatever The Dog was involved in.
“Well, you’re still gonna need someone, unless you maybe want to leave town and hope things ultimately quiet down.”
“Can’t, man. I got Marsha out there flirting with this Driscoll creep. Karla, Catherine Lindquist, Daphne Cole and, well, what I let happen to Desi.”
“I think you’ve probably beat yourself up enough on that gig, Dev. It’s not nice, but sometimes shit happens. You didn’t do anything. You…”
“That’s just it, Louie, I didn’t do anything. I was her last shot and I told her to take a hike, I couldn’t be bothered. She got jacked around, set up, sent up and the final straw was me and I just blew her off. Then, someone decided she deserved to die. Why? I want to get whoever did that, man. I have to, just to keep my own sanity.”
“Look, I don’t like it any more than you, but we’ll get the office put back together. You can get your car repaired. We can…”
“I’m not sweating any of that shit, Louie. Were you listening? I’m talking about that pompous dickhead Gaston Driscoll, that slime ball Pauley and his muscle bound idiot pals. I want them, bad.”
“You’re heading for trouble is what you’re doing, Dev.”
“Probably.”
Chapter Forty-One
