by Mike Faricy
“Hey, Tub . . . err, ahh, Mr. Gustafson,” I called. “Would it be all right if you maybe gave me a lift back to The Spot. See, I’ve got an important meeting later tonight out in Burnsville and well, my car is still parked down at The Spot.”
Fat Freddy opened the rear door and Tubby climbed in. Once he had settled into the backseat Freddy closed the door then smiled, and gave me a little wave.
“Freddy, you can’t leave me here. It’s like five miles back.”
Freddy ignored me, hurried around to the driver’s side and climbed in. I heard the locks on the doors click a moment later and they drove off with the Escalade following closely behind.
I stepped over to the edge of the cliff, Tubby had been right, it was a long way down. I had five miles to cover before I got back to The Spot so I started walking.
Chapter Two
I woke up early the next morning. Sophie was still asleep. She lay on her side, facing me with her pillow pulled over her head and the sheet tucked under her arm. I stared for a long moment examining the curve of her hip beneath the sheet, weighing the odds of trying to wake her. I decided it probably wasn’t worth the risk. She could have a short fuse from time to time and past experience had taught me that waking her in the early morning was never going to go my way. I quietly slipped out of bed, stepped into my boxers and headed out to her living room. Her dog, Lilly, a chocolate lab, sort of half opened one eye then wiggled down a little further in her bed and went back to sleep.
Sophie lived in the suburb of Burnsville, on Alimagnet lake, about twenty miles outside of Saint Paul. It was a gorgeous area, and a lovely lake. The opposite shore was all park land and at this hour of the day completely quiet. I stared out at the lake through the living room window for a few moments. There was a light fog on the water with the sun just beginning to come over the treetops on the eastern shore. I put the coffee on, then tried to figure out which one of the three remotes turned on the tv. After about ten minutes of pushing different buttons, I gave up, poured myself a mug of coffee and just sat there and stared out the window.
We’d met a few months back in school. Dog obedience school. Sophie’s dog, Lilly, got first in class, but then Sophie was the instructor. Morton, my Golden retriever, earned a five percent discount ticket should we want to enroll in the beginner’s session again. I guess the good news was Sophie and I sort of hit it off. Friends with benefits. We seemed to get together every so often and enjoyed each other’s company. We had an unspoken rule that whoever hosted last time was the guest the next time around.
I settled onto the couch and stared out at the lake, sipping coffee and watching as the fog slowly dissipated. I was obsessing about my upcoming meeting with Tubby’s friend Ozzie Frick. I didn’t know anything about the man other than Tubby Gustafson basically promised to kill me if I didn’t meet with him. Not exactly the best introduction. I figured whatever the guy wanted me to do I would just tell him it was out of my league. Maybe say something like the Feds were taking an interest in whoever hired me and it might be in his best interest to get as far away from me as quickly as possible.
I was on my third cup of coffee when I heard the bathroom door close. Sophie wandered into the living room rubbing the sleep from her eyes a few minutes later. She was dressed in a silk dressing gown, burgundy with white trim. She’d tied her dark hair up in a bun on top of her head and she was barefoot.
“You okay, Dev? How long have you been up?”
I glanced at the clock sitting on her fireplace mantel. It was just a little after seven.
“I guess a couple of hours. You want me to get you a coffee?”
“No, thanks, baby. I can get it. Anything bugging you? You seemed kind of preoccupied, once you finally got here last night.”
“Oh, sorry. I told you about the client I met with last night. I’m not really all that fond of the guy to begin with, he contacted me and wants me to meet with someone he knows. I don’t want—”
“So, tell him no, or tell him you can’t because you’re too busy.”
“Mmm-mmm, no, it’s not really that kind of a deal.”
“Oh, well, if he’s a good customer and he’s sending a lot of business your way maybe you should just do it.” She was at the kitchen counter now, filling her coffee mug. I was still staring out at the lake and heard the refrigerator door open. I waited for what I knew was coming.
“I thought I got two of these. What the . . .? Dev? Did you eat one of these caramel rolls?”
“I was starving and they looked so good.”
“We were going to share them and talk, remember? We agreed to have the conversation about our relationship this morning. Where things are going. God.”
“Well, this way I won’t be starving and I’ll be able to pay more attention to everything you say.”
She gave me a long look, shook her head and muttered something, as she pulled a plate out of a kitchen cabinet and set it on the counter. She placed the caramel roll on the plate then proceeded to cut it in half.
“Get your butt over here.”
Thank God, she didn’t say ‘We need to talk’ because when a guy hears that, he automatically knows things just aren’t going to go his way. I picked up my coffee mug and gave a last look out at the lake. The sun was up over the trees and some sort of yellow bird, I think a gold finch, was out on the deck flitting back and forth between two bird feeders. I gave the thing a longing look before I headed over to the kitchen counter, sat down on one of the wooden stools, took a deep breath and braced myself.
Sophie pushed half of the caramel roll in front of me, topped up both our coffee mugs then took a sip. In the few short minutes she’d been in the living room, she had somehow loosened her silk dressing gown so it almost, but never quite revealed some of the attributes that kept me returning.
I took a sip of coffee, then reached for half of the caramel roll and said, “Okay, what’s on your mind?”
“I really think we need to talk,” she said.
Things went downhill from there.
Chapter Three
I somehow managed to escape Sophie’s without being stabbed by a kitchen knife or getting doused with hot coffee. Just now, I was looking out my office window through binoculars, trying to catch sight of one of the women in the third-floor apartment across the street. I was beginning to think no one was home.
I watched as Louie pulled up across the street and waited for a car to park so he could back into the other open space. Louie was driving a blue Volkswagen Jetta, the thing was nothing if not boring, it was also nine years newer and a thousand times better than my 2003 Honda Accord. I already had the brakes replaced not once but twice, along with a new transmission last fall, but I digress.
I watched as Louie waited while the Mercedes backed into the parking spot then pulled ahead just enough to be perfectly positioned exactly in the middle of two parking spaces.
Louie apparently didn’t honk, give the guy the finger or swear out the window like I would. Instead, he drove down to the far end of the block and grabbed a spot, not that the walk back wouldn’t do him good.
I watched as a guy with a shaved head, mirrored sunglasses and a grey strappy t-shirt climbed out of the Mercedes, pressed the lock button on his key fob then hurried across the street and into our building. A moment later, I heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.
“You Haskell?” He said as he stood in the open doorway. He apparently didn’t feel the need to take the sun glasses off. For some reason I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a red cross on the front of his strappy t-shirt and below that the words ‘Orgasm Donor’. Morton got up and headed toward him, tail wagging. The guy shot a disapproving look in his direction causing Morton to stop midway and hurry back to where he’d been sleeping in front of the file cabinet. He curled up on his pillow and sort of hid his face.
“You must be Ozzie Frick,” I said, sounding more like an accusation than a question.
“Tubby filled you in?”
“No, not really, more like he said you had a problem and you’d like me to take a look at it, but he didn’t give me any specifics.”
He sort of nodded and sat down in front of my desk. He pushed the stack of files at the edge of my desk toward the center then tipped the client chair back and placed two cowboy boots on top of my desk. I’d been right all along, I wasn’t going to like this guy.
“So, tell me about your problem.”
“Nosey neighbor,” he said.
“What?”
“Someone poking around into my private business.”
“You talk to them?”
He half scoffed and shook his head. “We had words, didn’t seem to do much good. I need her to back the hell off.”
“What exactly is she doing?”
“Writing down the license numbers of my . . . customers. Anyone who stops in for a moment. She has a bullhorn and she shouts their damn license number out, calls them all sorts of names, and then tells them she’s calling the police.”
“And are they doing anything illegal or maybe the better question is, are you?”
He lowered his head and looked at me over the top of his mirrored sunglasses. “What I’m doing ain’t the point here.”
“It might be if she’s calling the police. What did they say? Have you talked with them?”
“The cops? You gotta be kidding me. You listen to what I just said? She’s taking down their license numbers and—”
“Yeah, I heard that part. Right off the top, it sounds like you’re selling drugs or God knows what and no offense, but you gotta be nuts to think I’d help you with that sort of enterprise.”
“But Tubby said you’d help.”
I couldn’t figure out if this Ozzie was really that stupid or if Tubby was setting me up. I thought about it for a half second then said, “Tell you what, let me check into this. Where’s this woman with the bullhorn live?”
He pulled an envelope from his pocket, unfolded it and tossed the thing in my general direction. An address was scribbled across the back. “Here’s her address, name is Debbie or Doris or something like that, don’t know her last name. A real bitch. I tried to be nice once, but she wasn’t having none of it. You’re my last shot at being a good guy, you don’t work out, all bets are off.”
I could only imagine. Something wasn’t right and my first thought was this woman was probably in more danger than she realized. “I’ll check her out this afternoon. For the time being, stay away from her. Let me check and see what, if anything, she’s reported to the police.”
“You’ll keep me posted?” he said, slowly pulling his cowboy boots off my desk then groaning as he stood up.
I heard the building door close downstairs on the first floor and then a familiar wheeze as Louie slowly made his way up the stairs.
“I need to have this dealt with right quick. Tubby said you’re the man.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, just as red-faced Louie stumbled into the office.
“Appreciate it. By the way, Tubby said this would be a freebie, said you owed him, big time.”
Louie’s eyes grew wide when Ozzie turned, gave him a nod and headed out the door. Ozzie was out of the building and waiting for a bus to pass so he could cross the street before Louie was able to talk.
“That, that’s the bastard that took up two parking places. I had to park about a mile away. I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to make it back to the office.”
“Yeah, I know I was watching it out the window,” I said and picked up the binoculars. I focused on Ozzie’s license plate. It was from Illinois, and I wrote down the number. “If you hurry you can see him getting back into that Mercedes. That space is going to be open, you could get back in your car and grab it.”
Louie flopped into the chair behind the picnic table he used as a desk and loosened his tie. “If I never saw that parking hog again it would be too soon. What was he doing up here?”
“Tubby Gustafson sent him.”
“Tubby? Since when has anything he’s been involved with ever worked out well for you?”
“Believe me, don’t I know, and Tubby told him I’d help for free. God. That jerk. His name’s Ozzie Frick, has a beef with a neighbor who’s taking down license numbers and yelling over a bull horn at the people that are coming to see him.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She sounds like an irate neighbor whose probably not too happy with that jackass selling drugs near her home.”
“Figures he’d be involved in something like that. Gee, imagine. What do they hope to get from you?”
“That’s the part that isn’t making any sense. I’m going to go see her and if nothing else warn her and suggest she might want to be in touch with the police, if she hasn’t been already. It sounds like the screwiest damn thing, I can’t quite figure out what Tubby’s angle is in this.”
Chapter Four
The address was over on the east side of town. An area that had experienced more than it’s fair share of problems over the past fifty years. Like so many sections of town, there was a steady decline as manufacturing pulled out, housing prices fell. What had once been a strong working-class area was gradually carved up and whittled away. Shops along the main arteries began to close, single family homes were broken up into multiple units and opportunity seemed to disappear.
The address Ozzie had given me was on a dead end street, six doors from a railroad line that, for all practical purposes, was now dormant. The factories the area had once served had already been gone for more than a quarter of a century.
The homes along the street were probably a century old, built just before or after the First World War. I guessed at least half of them were multiple units, everything from a duplex to five or six small efficiencies based on the mail boxes attached to the front of the houses. The address I’d been given appeared to still be a single-family home. The grass was cut and a hedge along the front porch appeared neatly trimmed. The house looked freshly painted. The lapped wood siding was green with cream colored trim and sort of a dark red accent color. The double front doors were painted black and each had a panel of beveled glass. Three wooden steps led up to the front porch. A porch swing hung on the far end of the porch and a woman who looked to be maybe sixtyish was sitting on the swing. I pulled over and parked.
My Honda Accord sort of groaned and sputtered for about ten seconds before shutting down completely. As I climbed out, I was aware she was watching me. I smiled and nodded as I stepped onto the sidewalk, but the moment I began to head onto her property a vicious, deep-throated growl erupted from the porch and some sort of wild eyed animal was suddenly straining at a chain in an effort to get to me.
“I’d say you’ve gone just about far enough. What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Debbie or Doris, not sure which it is.”
“It’s Daisy and this is my house so what do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you if I could,” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the continuous barking and growling.
“I ain’t the least bit interested in whatever it is you’re selling, if that’s what this is all about.”
“No ma’am, nothing like that. I, ummm, understand you might be dealing with a problem at the end of your block.” I nodded toward the dead end.
She seemed to eye me cautiously for a moment then said, “Axel, enough,” and the dog immediately stopped barking. “Who told you that?”
“Neighborhood gossip. I just wanted to warn you, I don’t think you’re dealing with some very nice people.”
“You threatening me?” Suddenly there was an edge to her voice. Axel the dog raised his head and seemed to take a renewed interest in me.
“No ma’am, I would just suggest that you be careful, maybe contact the police if you haven’t yet. If you’re taking down makes of cars, license numbers, and maybe the times those cars are here, you should give the cops that information. Sometimes it takes a while, but if you
can establish a pattern it can help them in shutting things down.”
“What’s your name?”
“Haskell, Dev Haskell. Actually, I’m a private investigator so I deal with the police a good bit of the time.”
“Maybe you’d like to come up on the porch so we’re not having to yell back and forth.”
“Is your dog going to be okay with that?”
“Axel? He’ll get used to you, just don’t move too fast and you should be okay. His bark is worse than his bite.”
Not exactly encouraging. I took two or three tentative steps toward the porch and heard the links on Axel’s chain suddenly drag across the wooden porch floor. He waited at the top step, eyes flared, and teeth showing. He growled and dared me to step onto the front porch.
“That’s just his way of saying hello,” she said. “Now Axel, you be nice don’t bite. You know I don’t like that.”
Axel took a step toward me, bared his teeth again and barked some more.
“Maybe if I just stayed down here we could talk.”
“Don’t be silly, he just wants to let you know he’s doing his job.”
“Yeah, not to worry, I got that message loud and clear.”
“Axel, get back here,” she said and yanked on the heavy chain connected to his choke collar. “Come on, come on, Axel, you get back here.”
He seemed to grudgingly give way, as I cautiously climbed up the front steps.
