by Mike Faricy
“Yeah, I think I can do that. Karla?”
“Yes, Dev.”
“Not to worry, you haven’t wasted five grand.”
“Actually, I know that. It’s just my crazy sense of humor, Sweetheart. When can I expect to see you?”
“I’ll be over in a bit,” I said, hung up and went to grab another shower.
On the way over to see Karla, I made a couple of decisions, one of which was to not tell her about Marsha sort of inserting herself into my investigation. Although, I’d be the first to admit Marsha had been a lot more successful than me at getting one-on-one time with Gaston Driscoll. Amazing. Me or Marsha, me or Marsha? Who would have known he’d think time spent with her just might be more enjoyable.
By early afternoon, the temperature was in the mid-nineties and still climbing, with the humidity not too far behind. Karla’s Karwash was doing a brisk business. Two lines of vehicles, ten deep and growing, slowly made their way into the car wash. More customers were constantly driving in. There wasn’t an open space in the employee lot behind the building, so I had to park on the side street about a block away.
I made a beeline for the staircase leading up to the office level, hoping to avoid that idiot Pauley. With any luck, he’d be too busy cleaning interiors to spot me. Then again, if anyone was liable to hide from doing too much work, it would be Pauley.
Karla was cutting across the small receptionist lobby just as I came up the staircase.
“Oh, hi, Dev. Wow, look at you all showered and nicely shaven. You clean up pretty well. Come on back to my office.”
I followed her down the hall, giving her rear some subtle, positive appraisal as she walked ahead of me. She was wearing wonderfully tight black slacks. Just the hint of a thong outline showed through her slacks, surrounded by the tease of her wonderfully firm flesh.
Her office walls and ceiling were painted in the same off-white. Now that I thought about it, all the walls and ceilings in the entire second floor suite of offices were painted the same off-white.
There were two large framed photos on the walls of her office. I’m talking three feet by five feet. One was a black and white shot of the building exterior with just the sign Karla’s Karwash glowing neon red. The other, just as large, but in color, was a group of people sitting at a bar in some hotel swimming pool. Everyone was wearing large sun glasses, extremely small tops and very recent sunburns. I guessed the shot was taken in Mexico. There was a palm frond sort of roof over the bar and the crowd was drinking from tall glasses with large pieces of fruit and little umbrellas. No doubt just slaving away, getting their daily requirement of vitamin C.
“So,” she said, stepping behind her desk and indicating a chair to sit in. “How’s my ass?”
“What?”
“You are such a predictable pervert, Dev,” she said and shook her head.
“It’s very nice,” I said. I could feel my face redden.
“God, look at you, caught again. I doubt you’ll ever learn. So, fill me in,” she said, sitting down.
“Well, like I said, I’ve learned some more things, or maybe I think I have. But I’m still kind of circling around. Look, before I get to all that, I want to give this back to you,” I said and pulled out my wallet, fished around for her check for five grand, pulled it out and handed it back to her.
“What’s this? You didn’t cash the thing?”
“Obviously not.”
“You’re quitting, not going to pursue this? Why the hell not? Don’t you think Driscoll had something to do with Desi’s murder?” She was increasing her volume and talking just a little faster, eyes beginning to flash.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…”
“I can give you more money, if that’s an issue,” she said, somewhat sharply.
“Karla, slow down. I gave you that check back because I’m not going to accept your money. I’m not going to quit. I’ll find out what happened. I’ll find out who is responsible and deal with things from there. You’re just not going to pay me for it.”
“But, Dev, I’m…I’m not getting this. No offense, but I’m not so sure this is your strong suit.”
“What, doing something nice?” I laughed.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant the financial end of things. You know you’re sort of, or at least can be, sort of careless in that department and maybe you should just hang onto that check and reconsider.”
She opened the folded check and stared at it for a moment. It looked like it had been written a few years back instead of little more than a week ago. The seams where I’d folded it to fit in my wallet were coated with enough dirt and grime to look like I’d drawn two dark lines from top to bottom on the thing. One of the corners on the check had somehow been torn off. She reached across the desk and handed it back to me.
I shook my head.
“What happened?”
“I just can’t get that picture of Desi out of my mind. Watching her become resigned to her fate, sort of giving up and just walking out the door and around the corner because her last chance to get things put right came down to hearing me say “No”. She thought I didn’t care enough or maybe not at all. Me.”
“Little hard on yourself,” she said, setting the check down in front of me.
“Or not hard enough.”
“You are a very sweet and kind man.”
“Well, don’t tell anyone. I’ve got a reputation to uphold. Let me tell you what I’ve run into thus far. The more I look into this, the more there seems to be the semblance of a pattern.” I proceeded to bring her up to date. I didn’t tell her about Marsha inserting herself or the car following her last night. I finished up telling Karla about my phone call to Amanda Richards.
“I didn’t learn anything talking to her, other than she wasn’t going to talk. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say being drunk at that hour of the day has probably become just an everyday occurrence for her. She maybe hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, but she could probably see it from where she was. Again, it may have nothing to do with Driscoll, but it would fit the pattern of him sending another life into a tailspin and then down the drain.”
Karla sat there and lifted her eyes up to the right, focused on some sort of fancy wooden box on a shelf. I followed her gaze. The box was polished wood, inlaid with some sort of design pattern running along the edge. It was a strange shape for a jewelry box.
“Desi,” she said, half pointing with her chin. “I mean, her ashes.”
“Her ashes?”
“I guess she didn’t have family. At least that we could find. I checked her employment application. She left the next of kin section blank. Anyway, not unusual in this business.” She shrugged, then stared off like she was rummaging through files somewhere in the recesses of her mind.
“So, like I said there seems to be a pattern here…maybe…but nothing that could be proven in a court of law. And if Daphne Cole is any indication, he’s got something to hang over the head of each and every woman he’s done this to. I’m guessing Desi maybe just didn’t have anything else to lose. Well except her life. And maybe it was the same thing for Helen Olsen.”
“The woman who’s car went through the ice?”
I nodded.
“Keep talking,” she said, suddenly sitting up and turning in her chair. She began clicking keys on her computer. “Something’s ringing a bell on that Amanda Richards name, but I can’t place it.”
“You think she maybe worked for you? I mean she went to school up here at the U, before she worked for Driscoll.”
“No, I’d remember that. I don’t know, I’m just checking my files. I’m wondering was she a reference for someone?” She finished typing, then clicked a key, then another, waited, then clicked one more and sat back staring at her screen.
“So?”
“Let me know if you come up with something, no matter how obtuse it might seem.”
“Obtuse, my, my…listen to you using a big college word. Have you been hitting on college students again?”
“No, that’s one of the things they teach them in college. Stay away from guys like me. I was just at a coffee shop reserved for the intelligentsia. Fortunately, I left before I broke out in a rash.”
“I don’t know,” she said, back to clicking keys on her computer. “God, most of my employees give their probation officer as a job reference.”
“How’s that working out?”
“The usual, you just learn to go with the flow. Some are good and some always think they can con you. I have one who just moved out of the half-way house he’s been in. If there’s going to be a problem, this is one of those spots on the time line where they tend to screw up.”
“That wouldn’t be Pauley Kopff, would it?”
Karla looked over at me, surprised. “How’d you know that?”
“Nothing related to Desi. I knew him some time back and saw him working here, awhile ago. Matter of fact, it was the day I ran into Desi. She gave me her phone number that day and then we got together. Pauley had mentioned he just had a few days left and then was going to get his own place. He sounded like he was counting the minutes.”
“Yeah, Pauley. We’ll see. He started just about the same time as Desi, maybe a week or so later. I don’t know, I’ve been at this long enough that you sort of get a sense. I hope it works for him, but I think the other shoe is just about to drop and he’ll do some incredibly stupid thing.”
“That sounds like Pauley,” I said.
“Sounds like a lot of them,” she said. “Matter of fact, he called in today. I think he was going to be late. Apparently his car was stolen last night.”
“Oh?”
“Who knows? It may be true. I mean, he did say he was coming in. He just had to take the bus or something to get here, and you know what that’s like.”
“You believe him?”
“Let’s just say he’s got all the signs of doing something stupid. We have a system that records the reasons. About the third time someone’s grandmother has died you start to get the idea you’re being played.”
I nodded. “That would be Pauley,” I said as I stood up to leave. Karla suddenly came around her desk and gave me a long, lingering hug.
“I don’t care what everyone says.” She laughed. “I think you’re a wonderful man, Dev. I’m hanging onto this check for you. It’s yours whenever you want it, just call me. And Dev?” she said, releasing me and stepping back.
“Yes.”
“You be careful. I mean it.”
“You keep wearing those little thongs, Karla. I mean it.”
“Get the hell out of here.” She laughed.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was funny, but since Pauley wasn’t at Karla’s yet I felt like I had some time to linger. I wondered if he had that effect on everyone who came in contact with him. Not that I wanted to hang around Karla’s Karwash all day, but I felt the urge to buy a large Milky Way and eat it in air-conditioned comfort before rushing out into the oppressive afternoon heat.
“That’ll be one-sixty-nine,” the cashier said.
I wondered how many times a day she heard someone say, “I remember when they were just a dime?” I graciously shut up and paid, then opened the thing and took a bite as I stared through large steamy windows at the crew drying off cars.
The uniform of the day seemed to be a T-shirt, shorts and tattoos, lots of tattoos. Most of the arms were covered from the wrist up to at least under the T-shirt sleeve with non-stop artwork. Many of the legs had a calf hosting a large something or other…one snake wrapped around someone’s leg, while another leg was emblazoned with a flowering vine of some sort. Quite a few names were scrawled on the side of necks. This was what the women looked like. The guys looked to be even more covered, although they also looked to have been inked up on a budget, if not just homemade. I loitered for a few more minutes, looking at the artwork while I finished my Milky Way, then carefully licked my finger tips before I wandered back to my car.
I was actually parked on a dead end side street in a forgotten one-block stretch just off of downtown. The street was named Islay, and you’d have to actually know it was here, and even then it would still be hard to find. Two boarded-up frame structures covered with graffiti and housing a few dozen pigeons stood silently on the street overlooking the remnants of a once vibrant railroad switching yard. Sweat was running down my back and seeping through my shirt by the time I arrived at my car. A newspaper and a plastic bag had blown up against one of my rear tires and as I bent down to pull them off, I glanced toward the parking lot across the street.
The lot was large, devoid of any pretense of shade and looked like it could house a few hundred cars. It provided parking for one of three undistinguishable state office buildings. The lot was innocuous enough that a normal person would have found the litter on their car more interesting. Yet, there was something. I watched a vehicle slip into a parking place. Pretty sure I’d seen it once before. A late model Buick LeSabre, light green in color and very clean. I was willing to bet I’d almost shot the idiot behind the wheel just last night.
I probably should have, once I saw who climbed out of the driver’s side with his ridiculously spiked hair. An image flashed in my mind, the dot of my center fire laser coming to rest just about on the tip of his nose. The nanosecond of that stupid look plastered on his face before he screeched away in reverse, slammed into that van and then raced up the hill going the wrong way. I’d had a sickening feeling I’d recognized him last night. I must have tried to blank it out, because the mere thought was so unpleasant… Pauley Kopff.
He was dressed in cut-off jeans, unlaced work boots and an olive drab T-shirt with red lettering that said ‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’. He looked around cautiously once he climbed out of the LeSabre, took a quick gulp from a half-pint bottle, then lit a cigarette and cut across the boulevard lawn past the sign that said ‘Please Keep Off’. He crossed the street at an angle, causing traffic to slow and swerve. One car honked and Pauley absently gave it the finger while taking another drag on his cigarette, multi-tasking. He stood outside the door marked ‘Employees Only’, apparently in no hurry to finish his cigarette. Eventually, he extinguished the remnants of his cancer stick, leaving a blackened smudge across the white door in the process. He dropped the butt on the ground, gave a quick glance around and then went in. I waited a couple of minutes while the sweat dripped into my eyes. I pulled the note off my dashboard with the license number I’d written last night and crossed over to the parking lot.
There was no mistaking the car. The left side tail light was still wrapped with red tape, although maybe half the tape had come loose and fluttered in the slight breeze. The left rear corner on the car was scraped and dented. Remnants of dark blue paint ran along the side of the LeSabre and seemed to match my memory of the woman’s van. By the looks of Pauley’s car, I’d say the van got the worst of it.
I opened up the note. The license number didn’t match. Hell, it wasn’t even the same state. Pauley’s LeSabre was sporting a South Dakota plate with an image of Mount Rushmore, although it was fastened in the same frame that read ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ around all four sides. After a little closer examination I noticed there were clean areas around the four screws that held the plate in place. The plate had been recently installed. If I had to hazard a guess, very recently.
I figured maybe earlier this morning clever Pauley thought he’d pulled a fast one. He’d changed the plates, maybe even report
ed his car as stolen. He’d probably lined up an alibi as well. I wrote down the number of the South Dakota plate.
Unfortunately for me, he’d had the momentary common sense to lock all four doors on the vehicle. I was tempted to go back to Karla’s and talk to him. You’d think they’d have the proper equipment on hand at a car wash to water-board someone like Pauley. Upon further reflection, I thought it made more sense to just let the air out of one of his tires. So I did, flattening the tire on the front passenger side.
I walked back to my car, drove around the block and across the street into the state parking lot. I parked at the far end of the lot from Pauley’s car and waited.
Now the question was, how did a low dripper like Pauley Kopff link up with someone like Gaston Driscoll?
While I waited slouched down in my front seat with all the windows open and drowning in sweat, I phoned my favorite person down at the DMV.
“Good afternoon, Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles. This is Donna. How may I help you?” She sounded cheery, pleasant, exactly what you’d want in an employee dealing with the public. I knew how to change that.
“Hi, Donna, thanks for taking my call. Dev Haskell.”
“Shit,” she said, making no attempt to disguise her disappointment.
“I know the feeling, believe me. Hey, listen, could you look up a license number for me? It’s Minnesota plate, V-J-Y…”
“I can’t continue doing this for you just because you happened to be present the night I made one tiny mistake. I’ve half a mind to tell you ‘no’, and then…”
“And then with the other half of your mind you could start writing letters to appeal your conviction for sexual assault on a minor. How old was that kid? Fifteen?”
“No, he was a summer intern and he was an adult.”
“Sure he was. I’m sure the taxpayers would be pleased to know they were funding a little boy-toy exchange for state work…”