“I know, so what’s next in their investigation since they let you out? They must have another suspect or something.”
“Well,” Dotty said and just stopped talking. She was walking on a thin rope (one hundred feet in the air) with the cops listening to her every word.
They were heading north on I-76. “Dotty?” His voice was seductive.
“Kill Bill Volume 2. I mean, yes?”
“Tell me what they know about why Frankie was hurt since you said that they know?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, lying. “Cops are worse than doctors telling what they really know.”
“Are you sure? I’ve been fucking you to find out these things for me.”
“Talk dirty to me, Daddy,” she said. “I didn’t ask them too many questions, it was the other way around. Anyway, I’m not looking to collect any more fees right away. I haven’t earned them.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t exactly be a payment. Don’t underestimate yourself. You’re better in bed than most girls in their twenties.”
“Really?”
“Yup, besides with you afterward I can sleep and not worry about being ripped off or having to get it back up too quickly.”
The expressway was a smooth ride and a fast one. Hankie was an erratic driver, but Dotty dosed off. She dreamt of dead clergy and fiery death and strangled death and gunshot murder and heart failure and killers who may or may not be newspaper reporters looking for a copy. They say one could die a million ways and Dotty was a witness of that fact. She awoke with them parked behind an abandoned Tasty Kake factory in North Philadelphia with Hankie removing her blouse.
“Rape!” she said. “Oh, Hankie, it’s you.”
He felt the tape to the wire, and said, “Dotty, are you hurt?”
“No,” she said, pushing his hand away. “Just a small cut from my fall from grace out of the window.”
He ripped the shirt open. “You’ve never been a good liar. That’s a wire.”
His voice was sinister. Dotty was wrapped in shock. She sat up, “You want to know who hurt Frankie, right? I had to wear a wire to help the police find out.”
He tore the wire from her chest and then threw it out of the car’s window.
“You could have asked me to take it off,” she said, rubbing her chest where the tape had burned her skin. She looked over her shoulder through the back window.
“Oh, your cop friends,” he said. “I lost them ten minutes ago in Fairmount Park. And I lied earlier. I did hear your whole interview with the police up until you used the bathroom and removed the wire we had in place.”
His tone was scary. Harsher and deep—not like the fancy college student’s he’d been using. They were in the gut of North Philadelphia and Dotty was frightened when he pulled out a gun and handcuffs. “Cuff your hands to the door handle.”
“You ain’t Frankie’s brother, are you?”
“You’re smarter than I estimated.” He pulled into traffic, headed east on Hunting Park Avenue, after squeezing the handcuffs around her wrists tightly.
27
“My Frankie Robinson lie was easy to craft as I came up here from DC,” he said. “His real brother is in the Philadelphia County morgue with a gunshot wound to the face. No hands. No feet. Hard to identify that way. I was going to take out the man-whore, even before he lost his balls and didn’t kill the nun. She knew all of the secrets.”
“What about Chen and Bishop Sinclair?”
“The numb-nuts, Chen, caught me in your pigsty and then tried to get a cut of the picture proceeds that I planned to get. Little bastard.”
“Did you have to use my ascot?”
“It was the first thing in sight to stop me from using my gun in an apartment complex full of nosy neighbors. The old blind bat was about to get popped too. It would’ve been staged to look like you got rid of her. The more pressure on you, the more havoc I could cause.”
“Sad. You really want me up the river. I did nothing in all of this.”
“You knew too much.”
“That was past tense. I know!”
“Not for long, smartass. I needed the pictures and planned to get intimate enough with you to get you to pillow talk. You never did. Such a waste of my resources.”
“Too bad.”
At a traffic light, he tapped her forehead with the gun. “Don’t be so disrespectful. It’ll get real painful, real quick if you do.”
“I’m not scared of you. Un-handcuff me.”
“Shut up. That’s why the bishop got it,” Hank said.
“Why?”
“Bitch got scared and messed up his own sweet spot. In exchange for cooperating with the Justice Department, the president had made a church/state liaison post just for him, but when the nun died and you tried to shake him down, he lost his balls like Frankie. I tell you, Philadelphia men are as soft as the soft pretzel the city is known for. I knew he’d fold, so I took him out, well, you did.”
“With my gun?”
“Of course. When I took it from your place, I expected it to be useful.” He drove the car one-handed, with the gun in his other hand, trained on Dotty. “Before you wiggled your way out of a trip to State Road for the two murders, I was going to at least let you live. Once I had the pictures, undoubtedly.”
“Too bad. I’m known for spoiling things.”
“You’re quite spoiled.”
“Yes, I was really spoiled when your head was buried between my legs.”
“Never again. I bet you that. That wire has really ruined your chances of living. Especially with them trying to tail you.”
“That wasn’t my idea.”
“So. You know too much and are to close to the track leading to Washington and ultimately me. On the pile of dead bodies you go.”
“Do that and the police get the pics.”
He chuckled. It didn’t sound pleasant. “Let me tell you what your collection of photos tell the police. Sister Tudor was fucked to death by Frankie Robinson with the twelve-inch sausage he walks around within his pants. You took pictures, got into a beef with the he-bitch, burned him, tried to extort the bishop, but couldn’t so you killed him. Nice neat little bow around your neck and I put it there. Of course, the sleazy landlord tried to get in on the action and you answered by strangling him.”
“Then I kill myself. You’re a dumb ass. No one will believe that I killed myself.”
“Are you high? Plenty of people will. Despite your denial, you know that. You’re just an idiot. Why wouldn’t you kill yourself after all of your crimes? The state would anyway.”
“You’re missing one detail. Lynch.”
“Lynch. Who do you speaketh of?” He looked concerned. “Is that Sinclair’s fuck-boy that looks like he has AIDS?”
“He’s a reporter from D.C. He told me about Loretta Scalia.”
“You know about Scalia?”
“We all know. Police too.” She pressed her luck. “You may as well just let me go and trot your hot ass back to Washington, get a job in the CIA and kill legitimately. You’ll never be found out if you head to Russia right away. Let me off at the next light: Hunting Park and Erie Avenues, please.” She shook the handcuffs and smiled at him condescendingly.
He jabbed the gun into her love handle. “Where’s Lynch?”
“I’ll never tell.”
He fired. Dotty yelled for bloody murder. The car seat between her legs had a searing hole in it. She gave him Lynch’s cell phone number.
“This is for your own good, Dot-ster.” Hankie snarled. “Know that, Lynch is next.” He aimed at her chest.
Dotty lunged for the steering wheel. A shot rang out and the bullet shot the front windshield out. Pain shot through her ears from the ringing caused by the explosion. She thought that her scalp was on fire. Dotty bit into his thigh and he dropped the gun.
The car slammed into the Thirty-Ninth Police District. The world became a white blur and she heard shattering and tearing before everything disappeared. Despite t
hat, another blissful thought of her in bed with Hankie consumed her, before losing her consciousness.
“DOTTY?” SHE WAS TAPPED on her shoulder.
“Do it harder, baby,” Dotty said.
“Wake up, Dotty! What the fuck. It’s Lynch.”
“I’m not ready, yet. Keep going. Don’t you stop you son-of-a-bitch
“Come out of there.”
She felt herself being snatched out of the car and pulled to her feet. The first thing that she noticed was Hankie’s face-of-death staring up at her. Next, she saw what looked like the whole police force staring at them.
“What the hell happened,” Dotty asked. Shaking off the fog, she asked, “Am I on the set of Law and Order Philadelphia?”
“You better pull yourself together. And fast.”
Dotty looked around trying to pull herself together. The sea of blue by way of officer’s uniforms and flashing lights helped her get it together. So much so, she became fully aware of a hissing sound coming from the car’s engine area.
“I knew something was fishy with this guy when I noticed his sudden interest in you.”
“Are you saying that I am not pretty enough to pull a stud like Hankie?”
“No, not at all but I knew he had a motive.”
She stepped back. “Are you working with him?”
“Hell no.”
“Well, how could you know his motive or intent, if he just told me? Riddle me that, Mr. Reporter. If you’re really a reporter.”
“Where’s the envelope of money?” he asked, pulling his cell phone from his pocket, calling up an app.
“You isn’t getting my money.”
“See, Hankie may have lost the police, but not me. In the envelope’s corner a transmitter is implanted. It’s quite effective, although tiny. I tracked your movements from a much further distance than the police. They need an eye visual, not me. I have been following your every move and heard every word in the police station and the car with Hankie.”
“No way.”
“Yes, I really did. The police need to step up their game here in Philadelphia. They have nothing on our political news outlet.” He pressed the play button on his cell phone and turned up the volume.
I knew he’d fold, so I took him out, well, you did. Hankie’s voice sounded Gothic, but cocky coming from the cell phone’s speakers. Lynch closed the app and pocketed the phone.
Dotty stared at Hankie who hung out of the car’s door with a gash on his head.
Dotty touched her scalp and felt a pulpy mass near her ear where the bullet had grazed her.
“Is he going to live?”
“Long enough to see the gas chamber, I presume.”
“Such a waste. He was so great in bed.”
28
Yes, refer to her as Dotty.
But please don’t even think about it before five o’clock after she’d spent all night and most of the day answering questions from a homicide defective. If one did, she’d likely answer on the nineteenth ring with, “I don’t know who you are, but I suggest you hang up or I’ll find out where you live and shit in your gas tank.”
“Dotty, this is Frankie.”
“And who the hell is Frankie?”
“Your neighbor, the sex god. I’m calling from the hospital for Pete’s sake. I’m up and doing well. Are you drinking?”
She had rolled over and groaned from the pain in her hip from the accident. She grabbed the nastiest thing with a cap on it: a bottle of Wild Irish Rose for her nasty mood. She swallowed the last two drops.
“No, I’m not,” she said and dropped the bottle to the floor.
“Have you seen the news or read the papers?”
“I don’t read that crap. I am the news.”
“You’re on all of the channels and the front page of the Daily News. Not a flattering photo but you’re there. Not many people alive can say that.”
She pulled out her cell phone and brought up the Daily News website. US ATTORNEY GENERAL ARRESTED FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER, read the frontpage banner. On the side was an article headed, LOCAL PI UNCOVERS MURDEROUS PLOT. The article included a picture from her first PI license, a particularly hideous one that she was drunk in. Her closed right eye looks like a liquor bottle cap in the photo.
“I look just fine.”
“Liar. Cops want my statement.”
“You better give it to them straight or you’re going to jail faster than all of the times they took me in for no reason.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Question: How’d you get Sister Tudor up to your apartment? I mean, you’re cut up and all, but you weigh roughly one-hundred-fifty-five pounds. It took two of us to get her down.”
“She walked up on her own.”
“What the...she wasn’t placed in your bed dead already?”
“She was with the man posing as my brother. He made an appointment for her and said she confided in him that she wanted to get laid for the first time and wanted to pay for a no-strings-attached session. When they arrived he asked to be left alone with her and then he left. It was hardly her first time having sex, but about ten minutes in, she croaked beneath me.”
“Hankie, that bastard.”
“His name isn’t no damn Hankie. His real name, as the police have figured out, is Larry Wallace, age forty-two, wanted in connection with a series of murders dating back to nineties. His main occupation was assassin for the attorney general. She’s also arrested and being held without bail. She did all of this for political advancement.”
“I’m pretty sure that she did,” Dotty said. “This has all been fascinating to me. A few private investigation boutique firms in D.C. and New York have been calling me.”
“Wow. I get a dead nun in my bed and lose my record being free of arrests, no easy feat for a young black man, while you may get a new job out of all of this.”
“Yup. Sad, I know. And sorry about your real brother.”
“Don’t be. I haven’t spoken to him in years. We may as well have been strangers.” He took a deep breath. “I just wanted to touch base with you and say thank you.”
“Indeed. Well deserved.”
It was her turn to take a deep breath. “No one has ever thanked me for a job well done. Well, except Hankie, and you see how that ended up.”
“Well, now, someone has. Don’t know when I will see you, on account of them wanting me to stay here at the hospital under further observation, and then the cops will probably arrest me.”
“OK, sorry about all of this.”
They hung up.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang.
“No matter who this is, you’re a dead person,” Dotty said.
“Dotty, it’s Swayze.”
“Then, you, are dead too. You’re not special. I’ve just went to sleep at three. It’s five-twenty.”
“Thanks. You see the news and papers?”
“I did.” She didn’t see the news and didn’t care about their third-party account of the events that held her captive the past week.
“Funny, nothing in the news about my cut.”
“Well, what had happened was...”
“Here comes the bullshit.”
“The number you have reached has been disconnected. There, you’ve been cut.” She hung up the phone.
Life was getting worse by the second for Dotty, as soon as she placed the phone down it rang again. “AIDS Crisis Center,” she said, half groaning.
“Dotty?”
The voice belonged to a man.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“This is Luscious Goldberg. Have you seen the news at five a.m.?”
“Yes, now go away.”
“Quite an investigation you’ve sunk your teeth into. I guess, I am calling to congratulate you.”
“Must be painful.” Dotty sat up. This was almost as bad as getting worked over by Lynch who felt Dotty owed him for saving her and took back the five-thousand-dollars he had given he
r. She accepted two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollars from Politico for the nudes of the Sister, though; so, she had made out. “I guess you called to offer my job back after I quit. I won’t hold you up. I want a thirty-dollar an hour raise and a comfy office right next to yours.”
“Your sense of humor is insane, in fact, Viking-esque. I can deal with it now that you’re not an employee here.”
“Must not have openings, I can dig it.”
“Oh, there is an opening. I fired Naim Butler this morning.”
“Such a nice kid with a bright future. You let go a good student, why?” Dotty asked.
“Funny you’d ask that, since he pulled a Dotty coming in here an hour late and drunk, screaming something about shitting out cheap suits. It made no sense.”
“Wow, which suit are you wearing today?”
“Why?”
“Nothing. My mind wandered.”
“Never let that happen again. Your mind is not big enough to cross the street alone.”
“You’re not going to be on my phone calling me names. I have you know, I’m worth more than you now.”
“Good for you. I bet you’ll drink it all up,” he said. “I called, actually, because when you left you took the file room key and I want it back.”
“When your dick un-thaws, Goosey Loosey.” She hung up the phone with a bang.
She had sat up for a second staring at the ceiling. The next time the phone rang, she had nodded off sitting up.
“Hell-fucking-lo,” she said, musically.
“Dotty Davis?”
This time a dame.
“The one and only at your service,” Dotty said.
“This is Susan, my father, Chen, was your landlord.”
The Drunk Detective Page 14