Like Coffee and Doughnuts

by Ellle Parker

  “Think of something else you want?” I answered, reaching over to turn down the radio.

  “You need to get back here,” he said, sounding edgy. “Someone broke into my apartment.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Oh, that’s rich. Har, har. Get your ass back here.”

  He was not amused, and he hung up on me. I tossed the phone on the dash and whipped a fast U-turn. It was highly unlikely whoever broke in was still there, but the image of Seth hunched on the floor, covered in his own blood, was still fresh in my mind, and I had no desire to see that again anytime soon.

  When I pulled into the garage lot, Seth’s door was wide open. I could hear Seth up in his apartment swearing a blue streak, and I was no longer worried about intruders hurting him. In fact, I really hoped for their sake they were long gone.

  I reached the top of the stairs and poked my head in to see a mess about twice the size it normally was. And that’s saying something. The place was trashed. All the kitchen drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the floor. The cupboards hung open, most of the contents swept out over the counter. The living room furniture had been upended and the undersides slashed, cushions ripped and flung on the floor.

  I followed the streak of violent swearing into the bedroom, where Seth stood in the midst of more of the same devastation. The bed had been tossed, but the mattress looked like it was still intact, which was something. CDs were all over the floor. In fact, they were scattered like someone had flung them across the room, which was the first real sign of purposeless destruction I’d seen. Seth was so angry, I wondered if he’d done it.

  “It was that fucking asshole,” he seethed. “I know it. That fucking rat bastard didn’t think beating the shit out of me was enough, he had to come and fuck up my place too. I should have let you beat the cocksucker’s brains out, Dino.”

  “We don’t know that.” I picked my way along the wall to have a look in the bathroom. It was the same in there, cupboards open and drawers dumped on the floor. The shower curtain hung only from two rings. Some of the other rings had snapped from the pressure of being yanked, and lay in pieces at the bottom of the tub with the soap and shampoo. Another sign of loss of control.

  “What do you mean, we don’t know that? Who the fuck else would come in here and do this? Of course it was that fucker, it’s obvious. He’s not gonna lay off until we really have a showdown, and I tell you what, I’m gonna give him one. If that fucker thinks he can scare me by tearing the shit out of my place, he’s as dumb as he is ugly. We’re going out tonight, and we’re gonna hunt that prick down and settle this once and for all.” He picked up an empty beer bottle and threw it at the wall as hard as he could. It exploded with a heavy crash that sent pieces of glass flying everywhere.

  “Hey, stop that,” I said. “Get a hold of yourself. We’re not doing any such thing.”

  He turned on me with fury in his eyes, and friend or not, I took a fight stance, just in case.

  “The hell we’re not, Dino. You saw what that cocksucker did to me last night, and I’m not letting him get away with it.”

  “We didn’t let him get away with it. We took care of that.”

  “Does this look like it’s taken care of to you?” He gave the bed a ferocious kick and then wheezed with pain, clutching at his side.

  “All right,” I said, going over to help him get steady on his feet and prevent any further violence. “If you’re done playing twelve pounds of fury, here, I’d like to point out a couple things to you.”

  “Fuck off, Dino,” he snapped, giving me a dirty look. “This isn’t funny. He raided the shop too, you know.”

  “I know it’s not funny. You want to listen to me now?”

  “What?”

  “Okay, first of all, if this was someone lookin’ to get even with you over a fight, they would have done a hell of a lot more damage.”

  He got indignant and gave me a shove. “You don’t think they did enough?”

  “Get a grip!” I snapped, glaring at him. He locked eyes with me and silently panted with rage. After a few seconds I saw him get control over his anger and ease off. “You gonna behave yourself now?”

  He scowled, but nodded and looked at me expectantly.

  “What I mean,” I told him, “is this place hasn’t been vandalized, it’s been ransacked. If this was revenge, he’d have smashed your TV and your stereo, broken some windows, maybe spray painted threats on the wall. He’d make damn sure you knew who was here, and why. But this mess? This was made by someone looking for something. You got robbed, Seth, and the only connection it has to last night is that you weren’t here, so they could.”

  “Well, if I got robbed, wouldn’t they have taken my TV and stereo?”

  “Not necessarily. Some guys don’t deal in stuff like that. They take cash, jewelry, and anything they can use for identity theft. Small, portable stuff.”

  Truthfully, that didn’t seem too likely either, because those thieves don’t hit crappy garage apartments, they work the expensive high-end homes in the suburbs. But I’ve seen enough search jobs to know what one looks like.

  Seth looked around slowly, taking in what I’d said, but he was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Dino, I don’t believe in coincidence. That bastard was in here last night, I’m sure of it.”

  “No, you just want someone you can kick the shit out of for this, and he’s convenient. I can pretty much guarantee he wasn’t in any shape to do much of anything last night.”

  That finally got him to calm down and climb off the Kill Rick the Rat Bastard platform. He knew damn well I was right because his own parting shot would have been enough to put the guy out of commission for the night.

  “Well, then who in the hell was it?” he asked, grim faced and still boiling just under the surface.

  “I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out, okay?” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I think we oughta’ report this, though.”

  “Yeah, fine, whatever.”

  “Listen, why don’t you try to figure out what’s missing. Don’t dick with stuff too much, just have a look around so you know what to tell the cops when they get here.”

  “Where are you gonna be?”

  “My phone is down in the car, and I want to take a look at the shop. I’ll call it in while I do that. Are you calm now? Can I do this and not worry about you goin’ all vigilante on me?”

  He flipped me off, but nodded. “Yeah. I’m good. I think. Shit… What am I gonna do, Dino? I don’t have time for this crap. I have work to do.”

  I looked around. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk to the cops, and then you fix the Chevy and I’ll start cleaning up the mess here. You wouldn’t know how to do it right anyway.”

  “You can’t do this all yourself.”

  “Oh, I don’t plan to,” I said. “But I can get a good head start while you catch up downstairs, then you can help me finish.”

  “Shit, we’ll be up all night…” With his anger wearing off, he sounded weary and annoyed over the whole situation.

  “No, no. We can start in here, and do the kitchen so it’s livable, and tackle the rest later. It’ll be good, you’ll see.”

  He nodded, but didn’t look entirely convinced as he started to poke around. I gave him a pat on the back and went outside to get my phone.

  Chapter 9

  I have a couple of good friends on the force, and we help each other out from time to time. They occasionally have situations where their need to follow the letter of the law hampers them in getting the job done, so I come work the edges for them. Then there’s times when I find a more official approach makes my job run smoother. Generally, it’s a win-win situation, as long as we don’t step on each other’s toes.

  I flipped open my phone and dialed while I crossed the parking lot to have a look in the shop. It was actually in much better shape than I’d been expecting, based on the mess upstairs. Obviously, someone had gone through the whole place, digging in drawers
and shoving stuff around on shelves, but it wasn’t the wholesale sacking the apartment got. My impression was they’d started downstairs and gotten sloppier and more destructive as they’d moved on.

  The phone rang several times, and I was about to hang up and try someone else, when a breathless voice came on the line. “Hello?”

  “Teresa, hi,” I said brightly.

  “Dino? Wow, it’s been a while.”

  “Yeah. Say, did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “I was in the back yard playing football with the boys. I think you did me a favor actually,” she said with a smile in her voice. “I was getting my ass kicked. How are you?”

  “Well, you know, I’ve been better, but I’m getting things straightened out. Listen, I need a favor. Someone broke into Seth’s place last night and I want to report it, but I’d like to keep it low key. Can you come and take the report?”

  Teresa Clyne and I had been friends for almost fifteen years. I met her when she was working as a Service Aide for the police department in the early days of her career, and I could always get her to do a little digging in the police records on the sly for me. If she hadn’t already been married to a construction worker, with two little kids, I might have asked her out.

  “I see,” she said. “And why do we want to keep this low key? What did you do, Dino?”

  “Ah, I can’t really get into specifics, you know how it is, but let’s just say there may be some circumstances involved. I don’t know.”

  She sighed heavily. “Are you asking me to bend the rules, here, or toss the manual right out the window? I do have limits, you know.”

  “Hey, come on, you know me. You know I don’t operate that way. I’d never ask you to do anything seriously illegal.”

  There was a long pause. “Yeah, all right. I can’t promise you carte blanche, though. You know that, right?”

  “I know that,” I said. “You’re a sweetheart. We’re at Ed’s Garage just off the causeway. By the marina.”

  “Sure, I know the area. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

  I thanked her and we hung up. Then I spent a few more minutes checking out the shop. The Chevy was there waiting, an old green thing with rust around the wheel wells. The other slot was empty. In the office, it was clear someone had gone through all the drawers, but these ones hadn’t been dumped. I went over to the filing cabinet where Seth kept the cash box and opened the drawer. The cash box was there and undamaged, but I couldn’t tell from looking at it if it’d been opened.

  Seth appeared in the doorway and ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t come up with anything that’s missing, Dino. I mean, I don’t have a lot of shit anyone would want to steal. Granddad’s pocket watch is still there. It’s really not worth much, but it’s an antique. Petty thieves wouldn’t know any better.”

  “Did you look in here?” I asked, nodding toward the file drawer.

  He looked startled. “Shit, no. I was in too big a hurry to see if they’d been upstairs.”

  I reached in and flicked open the latch as gingerly as I could, but decided either there were prints all over the place or there weren’t any. I lifted the lid. Inside was a small stack of bills, mostly fives and tens, a cup of assorted change and a roll of quarters. I looked at Seth.

  He shook his head. “I just did a deposit on Thursday. I left about a hundred bucks total for petty cash, including the change. I could count it if you want, but it looks like it’s all there.”

  “Yeah, so robbery’s not looking so good anymore.”

  Seth’s expression turned dark again. “You want to take a run down to Henry’s tonight and bust that fucker up?”

  “Jesus, will you cool it, already? When did you start channeling Joe Pesci?”

  “Damn it, Dino, I don’t get why you’re not with me on this.”

  “Because it doesn’t fit, that’s why.”

  I was saved from further argument by the sound of a car pulling into the lot and shutting off. Seth and I walked through the garage and reached the door in time to see Teresa climb out of her SUV. Teresa is a reasonably attractive woman in her late thirties with shoulder length brown hair and practical cop clothes. She’s down to earth and has a warm smile I like.

  “Hey, Dino,” she said, giving me that exact smile as she came up to us, opening a small notebook and taking out a pen. “Aside from the circumstances, it’s good to see you.”

  “Good to see you too. You know Seth, right?”

  “We’ve met a couple of times.” She looked Seth over, then me, then crossed her arms and stared pointedly at the bruise around my eye. “Okay, what happened to you two?”

  “I fell down the stairs.”

  “I ran into a wall.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, sucking her teeth. “That’s how you’re playing this?”

  “Dino told you about the breakin, right?” Seth asked, hedging toward the stairs. “That is what you’re here for?”

  “Yep, it is, lead the way,” she said, giving us both a dubious look.

  Teresa followed Seth up to the apartment and I went after her. She did the usual, checking the door for signs of forced entry, which there were, and making notes about the events of the last twelve hours as she questioned Seth.

  She stood in the middle of the living room, looking around, and asked, “Have you been able to come up with a list of what’s missing?”

  “That’s the thing,” Seth said, studiously ignoring me “There’s nothing missing. I think this was a personal attack. They didn’t even take the cash box. This was just to scare me or get revenge or something.”

  “Someone was getting even with you?” Teresa asked, raising an eyebrow.

  I groaned inwardly.

  “Well, look around at this mess,” Seth said, getting testy. “They didn’t take anything, so what do you think?”

  She poked a pizza box with her toe and flipped it up to reveal a handful of crusts and two slices of pizza dried into stiff curls. “And these vengeful thugs brought rotting pizza and dirty socks with them to really do the job right?”

  Seth gaped at her and then looked to me. “This is your idea of help?”

  Teresa looked at me too, grinning. “How much of this mess is vandals?”

  “Half,” I told her. “Maybe a third.”

  “That’s great,” said Seth, stomping around. “Make jokes. That’s real nice. Both of you can just suck my left—”

  “Hey!” I barked, glaring a warning at him. I turned to Teresa. “You saw the door. Someone was definitely here.”

  “Oh yeah, I can see that,” she said with a nod. “They did a hell of a job too. Lucky thing you weren’t here at the time.”

  “Exactly,” said Seth, “and what’s to say he’s not going to come back and finish the job?”

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,” Teresa said, looking smug. “Who’s he?”

  It finally occurred to Seth to shut his mouth, but of course it was a little too late for that. It didn’t matter much anyway, the idea Rick the Rat might come back to finish the job was exactly why I wanted to file a report in the first place. I still wasn’t convinced it was him, but if it was and he was going to keep going after Seth, I wanted something on record. I just had to be careful about it.

  “Come on, boys,” she said in the exact same tone I’d heard her use with her sons. “Who wants to go first? Red? What happened to your face? That’s not even a day old.”

  Seth sighed and gave her a brief account of our tangles with Rick, starting with hitting on the girlfriend, and ending with Rick taking a swing at me in the bar. In his version, that’s where it ended. I didn’t say anything.

  “Sounds pretty cut and dried,” Teresa said. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Dino?”

  “Yes?” I tried to look innocent, but she wasn’t buying it and continued to regard us both suspiciously.

  “What? That attack in the bar was totally unprovoked,” Seth said. “There were about thirty witnesses who saw him jump me
.”

  I gave up. “Yeah, and those same thirty witnesses saw me herd the guy out the door at gunpoint, Seth.”

  “No, I am not hearing this…” Teresa said, holding up her hands. “I’m not hearing this, don’t say another word.”

  “Now you understand why I wanted to keep it low key?”

  “You didn’t shoot him, did you?” she asked.

  “I did not shoot him, I swear,” I told her. She seemed significantly relieved and I said, “What kind of a thug do you think I am?”

  “It’s only because I actually do know what kind of a thug you are, and are not, that I’m not hearing any of this.” She stuffed her notebook in the back pocket of her jeans. “I’ll file a very carefully worded report which will get conveniently lost on my desk. If you have any more trouble with this guy, it’ll be on record. But I am telling you both…do not have any more trouble with this guy, you hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Trust me, we don’t plan to. Personally, I don’t think it was the guy.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  Seth looked mutinous, but I could worry about that later. “It’s not right for a revenge or a scare tactic. The place was methodically searched, not outright vandalized. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Teresa said thoughtfully as she studied the scene again.

  “But what in the hell would anyone be looking for?” Seth said, throwing his hands in the air.

  Then it hit me. Of course. I knew exactly what someone might be looking for, and I had a pretty good idea who it probably was. Mentally, I gave myself a good, swift kick in the ass. How could I have been so stupid?

  “Ah, yeah, you’re probably right,” I told Seth, patting him on the back. I turned to Teresa and said, “Well, we’ve kept you away from the kids long enough. Thanks for stopping by. If you need a favor just give me a call.”

  I ushered her toward the door, but she resisted, looking highly skeptical. “You sure changed your tune in a hell of a hurry.”

  “Yeah, you didn’t hear that either.”

  “Dino…” she said reproachfully.