by Mike Faricy
Felix was knocking at my front door in forty minutes. He was a solid, square built guy, though you’d never think of him as fat. He sported a crew-cut. If I had to guess, I’d put Felix just north of sixty years old. I figured in his younger days he may have played some hockey. The nose had been broken once or twice, some pucker scars ran across his chin suggesting two to three stitches apiece. He had both sets of locks, front and back, replaced within thirty minutes.
“Just toss the check in the mail, Dev,” he said. Then tore off the original copy of the invoice he’d just written up while sitting at my kitchen counter. Sixty bucks a pop for the locks, ninety bucks for the labor. Two-hundred-and-ten-dollars for thirty minutes work and I was thanking him.
“Don’t mention it, Dev, good to see you again.”
“Now the old keys won’t work in these, right?”
Felix looked at me like I was nuts.
“No, it’s the same make as you had in there before, you can insert the old key, but its not gonna unlock your door. Now, here’s your new keys, four of them, why don’t you give me your old ones now, so you don’t mix them up, they all look the same.”
That sounded like a pretty good idea, obviously Felix had seen me in action. I took the old house key off my key ring, took a second one off a hook by the kitchen sink and handed them over.
He chatted for a minute or two about the work he planned to do on his rose bushes when he got home tonight. I had tossed the flag thong on the table in the dining room where it still sat as we passed to the front door. It was sort of crumpled up, but there was no mistaking what it was. Felix glanced at it, but didn’t comment. He shook my hand at the door and thanked me again.
“Maybe be a bit more on the cautious side when handing the keys out to your lady friends,” he followed that advice up with a wink, and then waved over his shoulder as he walked to his van.
I watched him drive off, closed the door and snapped the dead bolt on my new lock into place. I pulled at the door slightly, just to make sure it was secure. My monitor call came through a little after ten. I was in bed, asleep before eleven.
Chapter Fifty
It was dark in the bedroom and my eyes snapped open the instant I heard the rattling. It was subtle, I wondered for half a moment, thinking it might be the wind, then I heard it again. I slid out of bed, grabbed a snub.38 in a web holster I keep in my top dresser drawer. I tip toed toward the stairs, heard the sound again as I moved down the hallway. There was someone at my front door, trying the lock.
I peeked around the corner and looked down the staircase, I didn’t see anyone. I waited for three or four minutes, started to convince myself it really must of have been the wind on this still night when I heard the noise again. This time more distant, but definitely there. I stood in the dark looking down through the large, beveled glass window of my front door. No one was out there, then I heard the rattle again, my back door.
I flew down the staircase, quietly moved toward the rear of the house, heard the noise coming from the back door, this time a little more forcefully. I stepped into the kitchen, but couldn’t see anyone on the back porch. Over the course of the next hour I moved back to the front, then returned to the kitchen, checked the front again. Whoever it was seemed to have left.
My monitor call came through at seven-ten in the morning. Not a problem, I was already up and on my third cup of coffee. I’d never gone back to sleep. It had started to rain around five and the gray morning felt even worse with the steady drizzle coming down. I punched in my code, hopped in the shower and then drove to the office.
I watched the office girls going to work. There were some nice looking women huddled under umbrellas waiting at the bus stop. It was still about forty-five minutes too early for crabby coeds. Occasionally someone drifted into The Spot for a liquid breakfast, no one had left the place, yet. At five-past-nine I phoned Louie’s office.
“Louie Laufen, please.” I was prepared for the ‘he’ll call when able message.’ But to my surprise she said, “One moment please, I’ll connect you with Mister Laufen.”
The phone rang twice, followed by a nasty spat of coughing before I heard, “Yeah. Hello.”
“Louie?”
“Dev?”
“Louie, you just on your way home from last night?”
“I wish, I’m in trial today, thought it might be nice to prepare. What do you need?”
“Any word from Manning on that stuff you sent over?”
“You mean that stuff where your pal Farrell married his sister in Vegas?”
“Yeah, although she’s not actually his sister, that’s just how they presented her to me,” I couldn’t believe I was defending Farrell and Kiki.
“Well to answer your question, no.” Louie cleared his throat into the phone.
I desperately wanted to ask about Doctor Death.
“Not unusual,” Louie continued, “I’d give them a week to check things out, they’ll take their sweet time, but eventually they’ll realize you’re the wrong guy.”
“You sound a hell of a lot more optimistic than I feel.”
“I may have an inside track, nothing concrete, but I’m picking up some rumblings.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing solid, yet. Lets just say rumors are your buddies at K-R-A-Z maybe aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, things seem to be going in a couple different directions right now. Listen, Dev, your job is still the same, pretend to be an upstanding citizen, okay?”
“Can you tell me anything besides you heard a rumor there might be rumors?”
“No, that’s about as good as it gets, for now. Listen, I gotta run, anything else that can’t wait?”
“You can’t tell me anything? Maybe just give me a…”
“No, like I said, nothing to tell. Peace, love, dove, brother,” he said and hung up.
Chapter Fifty-One
I’d like to say I spent the night scrolling through boring cable channels, but in actuality I slipped onto an Internet porn site around eight-thirty, promising myself it would be no more than fifteen minutes. Sunnie’s laptop seemed to be working a little slower tonight so I didn’t get to bed until a little after one. I woke at about two-forty-five. I thought I’d heard a car in my driveway, but then drifted back to a fitful sleep. I was finishing my coffee at the kitchen counter the following morning when the monitor call came through. I punched in the code, then drove to KRAZ and nibbled blueberry muffins sitting behind the steering wheel in the far corner of the lot. It was a gorgeous morning, sunny but not beastly hot, very pleasant. Despite the trash around the place I almost thought I could pick up the scent of flowers or perfume. Farrell’s BMW was already parked in its usual spot when I arrived, pretty early in the morning for old Farrell.
A sleek silver Audi pulled in next to Farrell’s car a little before ten and a gorgeous brunette climbed out, Kiki. She nibbled an apple, dressed in tight fitting jeans, heels and a sort of slinky top with spaghetti straps. Even from this distance she looked delicious as she made her way to the front door. Her entire appearance lasted less than thirty seconds, she never glanced in my direction. That was a good thing since just my watching from this distance violated her bogus restraining order.
Another car pulled in, some nondescript SUV, nothing too fancy. The guy got out, stood for a moment and gave my car a long glance before he walked toward the building. That was enough attention for me and as soon as he stepped inside I left.
As I drove to the office Farrell’s voice droned on the radio. I had learned absolutely nothing, other than Kiki, crazy as she was, still looked great.
I was at my desk a little before noon, reading through my mail, which consisted of a grocery store circular featuring a special on brussels sprouts, chick peas and beets. I wondered what sort of clientele they were attempting to reach.
There was some high pitched, feminine screeching coming from in front of my building, nothing desperate, just loud and obnoxious. I looked out the window and saw
the three coeds lumbering across Randolph toward a waiting bus, giggling, screaming and in general disturbing everyone’s peace. Once the bus pulled away I continued to watch as it disappeared up the street.
My car was parked at the curb, just a few spaces from my office door. I looked at it out the window, something wasn’t right. The headlight seemed to be broken on the passenger side. The bumper looked dented and was hanging at an odd angle.
I was swearing and grumbling as I raced down the stairs and outside to inspect the damage. Some idiot must have backed into me the other night at the grocery store and took off, I’d never even noticed.
It got worse as I walked closer. The head light was broken. The front of the car dented, the grill damaged, down along the edge of the bumper there looked to be rust. I scraped at it with my thumb nail, hoping. Unfortunately, it wasn’t rust, it was dried blood, I knew as soon as it flaked off. I could only hope a dog had been hit, closer examination suggested that wasn’t the case. There was a bit of hair around the outside edge of the headlight, threads snagged on the underside of the dented bumper. Someone had really been nailed. I hadn’t had a drop to drink for so long I’d lost an inch around the waist, it hadn’t been me behind the wheel, but that didn’t change the facts.
I decided I’d better get the car washed, so I hopped in, there was that smell again, subtle, but none the less there, flowers, perfume? I had a pair of shoes on the back floor I used for softball, that wasn’t it. On the way to the car wash I thought it might be a better idea to see Louie first.
Chapter Fifty-Two
I’d never been to Louie’s office, but I knew where it was located. The building was just across Fourth Street from the Ramsey County Courthouse, in the City Hall Annex. Another former commercial building the city took over as business receded and the downtown area went on life support. The Annex sat next door to the former Lowry Hotel, another Real Estate scam some developer had been milking for the past fifteen years and the city would ultimately pay a high price for their naivete.
Whoever did the layout for the Annex didn’t have romance as a strong suit. The walls were painted a sort of puke green, it might have been government olive drab at one time, now thinned out to stretch coverage and look even more unattractive. Louie’s office was up on the sixth floor, behind an eighties style glass door labeled 613. The numbers were rectangles, black with a silver background. The kind of peel and stick address numbers that used to be popular in hardware stores until the buying public judged them as too ugly. At which point the city apparently loaded up.
There was a small lobby just inside the office door. Mismatched plastic chairs against two bare walls, two black women sat on one side, a fat white girl with a swollen eye madly texting on her cell sat across from them.
A heavy set woman with dyed black hair, a bouffant hairdo and bad skin sat hidden behind a computer screen at the receptionist counter. I approached the counter and waited politely until she had finished typing, only she never finished, she just kept typing.
Eventually I said, “I’d like to see Mister Laufen, please,” I had aged just standing there.
She typed just long enough to where I thought she might be deaf then glanced up at me.
“And you are?”
She turned away, answered the phone, forwarded a call to some place, probably the wrong place. As she spoke on the phone I recognized her voice. I’d left probably a half dozen messages with her over the past two weeks. She hung up the phone, glanced at me again and looked surprised.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to see Mister Laufen, I’m a client of his, Devlin Haskell.”
If she picked up on my name she was doing a good job of hiding the fact. She returned to the phone, punched in four numbers, waited, presumably listening to it ring for a good long while, then hung up.
“Do you have an appointment?” she seemed to be staring about a foot to my right at the wall behind me.
“No, I don’t, but he’s representing me on a matter and I…”
“He’s not here.”
My tax dollars at work. If this is what they offered as a first impression of the place, rumpled, bourbon soaked Louie was beginning to look stellar.
“Do you know when he might be back?”
She shook her head, still seeming to stare just to my right. I moved a half step in that direction.
“Could I leave a message for him? Have him call me when he returns?”
She suddenly shrugged her shoulders, not in an ‘I don’t care’ sort of way, more like a nervous twitch. She returned to her computer, clicked through a half dozen screens, then waited, hands poised for the attack just above the keyboard.
“Could I leave a message?” I spoke slowly, deliberately.
“Yes.”
I guessed that was my cue. “Please have Mister Laufen call me.”
“Name?”
“Devlin, D-E-V–L-I-N. Haskell, H-A-S-K-E-L–L.” I spelled it out carefully, slowly.
“Message.”
“Please. Have, Mister. Laufen. Call. Me. It. Is. Important.” I paused between each word.
Her fingers raced across the keys, she paused a second, then hit the enter key, then returned to her typing, apparently I was finished.
The fat girl was still texting, frantically, I smiled at the two black women, “Good luck,” I said and left.
Outside on the street I phoned Louie, his message center was full. I was positive I’d have a coronary if I phoned his office. Instead, I drove to a self-car-wash down on West Seventh Street that featured high pressure hoses. I washed my car three times over the course of forty-five minutes. I crammed the nozzle behind the dented bumper, shoved it inside the broken headlight, along the grill, spent a lot of time washing under the wheel wells. I knocked a good deal of rust off the frame and hopefully any traces of whoever had been hit.
I remembered waking up last night, thinking I’d heard a car in my driveway. Had it been mine? The night before, someone trying to get in, the thong on my front doorknob. I was thinking Kiki. If she had drugged me, tied me to the bed, it seemed reasonable she could have made a copy of my keys. I just couldn’t figure out why?
I drove back to my office, but kept going when I saw two squad cars from a couple of blocks away. They were parked at an angle, almost in front of the door, one facing against traffic. As I passed the building there was another squad down a ways on Victoria Street, a cop standing near the fire escape at the end of my building. It looked like they had me surrounded, except I wasn’t there. I kept going, no point in heading home.
I swung by an Ace hardware store, the one down on lower Grand Avenue.
“Can I help you?” a guy asked, he was in a red polo shirt, Ace Hardware monogrammed on the left breast. I was maybe four feet inside the door.
“No I know what I need, thanks.”
He nodded, then directed his attention to the woman behind me who said she was looking for bird seed for songbirds.
I walked down the aisle, took a left just before the last nail and screw section. Tools hung on racks, pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers. At the far end of the aisle were three different sized bolt cutters. I chose the medium size, raised the leg of my jeans and snapped off my monitor bracelet. I returned the bolt cutter to its hook and left.
I took Kellogg Boulevard through downtown, turned to cross the river on the Wabasha bridge. About halfway across I tossed the monitor bracelet out the window and over the railing into the Mississippi river. I briefly wondered how much stuff was down there on the bottom of the river, guns, knives, a car or two and now my monitor.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“What the hell are you doing here?” Heidi asked, she was halfway up her front walk.
It was about seven-thirty and the bottles of chilled wine I’d picked up a couple of hours ago were now lukewarm, at best. The condensation from the bottles had made the paper bag useless, so I had lined them up against her front door in the evening shade.
“Nice
way to talk to someone who shows up with a peace offering.”
“Yeah, why are you suddenly acting so nice?”
“I can’t do something nice without being hassled, how’s that work?”
“It’s just that it’s so unlike you, you caught me a little off guard.”
“Look, I thought you might like a glass of wine, maybe some laughs. I wanted to get that spot you mentioned in your bedroom taken care of, you know, by the outlet cover.”
“Really?”
“Hey, I can take off if you got something going, I didn’t mean to barge in on your night.” I stood to leave.
“No, no, that’s okay, yeah come on in, I can use the company. Been a brutal couple of days.”
We were in her kitchen, sitting at the counter. It had taken me longer to wash the paint brush than it did to touch up around the outlet cover. She seemed to be relaxing after the second glass. She’d kicked her shoes off, dialed in some nice music, laughed a couple of times.
“So, ever find out who left their underwear on your door?”
“I got a couple of ideas,” I said.
“I can’t believe you blamed me.”
“I didn’t blame you, I was just hoping, that’s all.”
“You’re so full of it.”
“Not kidding.”
“Really?”
She got up, went to the refrigerator for another wine bottle. It was sometime after midnight when we staggered into bed.
“Gotta run, meeting,” Heidi whispered in my ear the following morning. “Help yourself to breakfast and lock the door on your way out.”
She was dressed, just putting on earrings and then she was gone. I drifted back to sleep for a few more hours When I woke I lounged in bed for a long moment smacking my teeth and assessing the extent of my hangover. I got dressed, wandered into the kitchen, I should have known better than to look for food. There was a half package of cream cheese in the back corner of the refrigerator. On the bottom shelf something in a white Styrofoam container was growing a fuzzy science experiment. I wasn’t hungry enough to risk it. I took four aspirin from the bottle she’d left on the counter, then locked up on my way out.