by Mike Faricy
* * *
Didn’t that just give one pause for thought, Arliss reflected after hanging up the phone. And just where was Mr. Relaxation at seven in the morning? There was bound to be some sort of explanation and Arliss decided that it just might be best to confront Torsten down in the capital and get to the bottom of all this completely childish behavior. The sooner the better. If she left now, she could be down there later this morning.
* * *
“Look, I call the guy at eleven fifteen this morning. He won’t be able to trace a payphone call that’s going to last less than thirty seconds. I’ll use an accent and a cloth over the phone.” Mickey said. He held a thick breakfast sausage in his hand, waved it in Dell’s direction to emphasize his point, then stuffed it into his mouth, licked his fingertips, and talked as he chewed. “Mmm, I figure by mid-afternoon we’ll be in a higher rent district of ‘Easy Street’. I’ll hand the stuff to you, like we planned, you drive up north, bury the stuff, and hightail it back down here. Then, I’ll defuse Janice, and get that mess quieted down.”
Chapter 62
At ten after eleven Mickey placed his call to Torsten Theisen. It hadn’t been the easiest of mornings, Dell, as Tweety Bird, delivered a sheet of written instructions to Nikki who had put up a hell of a fuss about the grey sweat suit she had to wear.
“Maybe some other color would be better for her?” Dell had offered, after emerging from the room in the midst of her tirade.
“This isn’t about style, Dell. This is about not getting caught. She is not calling the shots here, we are. Now, get her taped up, put this pillow case over her head before we start to fall behind schedule. Either she cooperates, or I’ll pick out her outfit, and we both know she’ll be a lot less happy with whatever I choose. Get back in there and tell her that.”
The threat of Mickey choosing her clothes had seemed to be a bit more pressure than even Nikki could stand. After a hasty midmorning snack of a king-sized Butterfinger candy bar, she allowed Dell, or rather Tweety Bird, to tape her wrists, place the pillow case over her head and guide her into the trunk of Mickey’s car.
Dell had placed a pillow in the trunk for her head, carefully taping her feet once she was in the trunk and tossing another Butterfinger in with her for a quick snack once she was released.
Mickey drove off, not as concerned about the exchange as he was relieved to return her to her rightful place next to Torsten, where they could conspire to make someone else miserable.
Now, it only remained to set the final act in motion and Mickey did just that, dialing Torsten Theisen at his town home.
Torsten followed his instructions explicitly, wanting to complete the exchange with as little trouble as possible. He had all the cash in the box this gang of cut throats had provided. He waited at his dining room table and jumped to answer the phone barely halfway through the first ring.
“Yes?”
“Ready?” a voice said.
My God, thought Torsten, I’ll be lucky if they don’t deliver her in pieces. “Yes, yes, I’m ready, let’s just get this whole business completed.”
“Change of plans,” the voice snickered. Place the box in the southeast corner of the top floor of the River Ramp, you know it, this ramp, Señor?”
Señor? Thought Torsten, international kidnappers. “Yes, yes, I know the ramp. I can be there shortly,” he said. It was just a few blocks from his town house and he drove past it daily.
“Just leave the box on the top floor, southeast corner and drive back home. Clear?”
“Yes, yes perfectly.”
Mickey hung up the phone, walked across the street to his car already parked in the ramp. This was where things could get a little dicey, innocently waiting in the ramp, simply minding his own business, a woman bound up in his trunk wearing a grey sweatsuit with a pillow case over her head. Not the easiest set of circumstances to explain your way out of.
Torsten would never be called a drinking man, he was more of a teetotaler. But just now, despite the morning hour, he needed some fortification and he poured himself a swallow, possibly two, of aquavit, for medicinal purposes only. He swallowed it down, let it burn, then picked up his box and left on his appointed delivery.
Mickey waited on the first floor of the parking ramp. Every minute seemed to drag for what seemed like an hour. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. His pulse pounded in his head and throbbed through his smashed nose. Finally, he saw Torsten drive to the upper level, then exit the ramp two or three minutes later.
Mickey slumped down almost below the dash and prayed fervently that no one would spot him. Prayed that all four of his possible exits weren’t blocked by the police, that snipers weren’t stationed on the surrounding roof tops, or a helicopter wasn’t hovering overhead.
He eventually climbed out of his car and walked up to the deserted top level. He grabbed the box and hurried back to his car. Thinking as he walked that if it was filled with cut newspaper he was probably nailed anyway and if it was full of cash he had a pretty good chance of pulling the whole thing off. Either way, the dye was cast.
He gingerly helped Nikki Devereaux out of his trunk, cringing with the memory of his previous close encounter with her. He half hoisted, half pulled her out of the trunk, thinking she hadn’t seemed this heavy just three days ago. He loosened her wrists just enough so she could eventually free herself, but giving him a generous three or four minutes to drive out of the ramp.
He thought about saying something clever, thought about maybe kicking her for beating him up. In the end, he just said, “Mademoiselle,” in his best Canadian hockey accent, “count to one hundred very, very slowly.”
He jumped behind the wheel and drove off as quickly as prudently possible, desperately searching for squad cars and laughing out loud when he didn’t see any.
It took Nikki no more than two minutes to unwrap the tape, pull the pillow case off her head and start walking. She got her bearings immediately, realizing she was just short blocks from Torsten’s townhouse, feeling ridiculous in heels and a grey sweatsuit, but taking comfort in the large Butterfinger candy bar.
What she wanted right now was a shower, a decent outfit and a couple of weeks at a spa.
Chapter 63
Torsten Theisen hadn’t been home for two minutes, and was wondering what he should do now. Did he wait? Go to his office? Drive as quickly as possible up to Glacial Springs? He couldn’t decide what to do and was deep in thought, pondering, when an intense pounding on his front door answered all his questions.
Amazing, Nikki was back that fast. “It worked, it worked,” he half shouted, hurried to the door, and tore it open. “Darling.”
“Don’t you darling me. I’m in no mood for any of your fiddle faddle, Torsten,” Arliss barked, and brushed past him into the living room. She turned and waved a finger in his face.“I’m in absolutely no mood for any ‘business of the people’ nonsense. I’ve a good mind to just . . .” She stopped in mid-sentence, spying the bottle of aquavit next to the empty glass on the dining room table. She walked over, examined the glass, immediately detected Torsten’s earlier use. She checked her watch to confirm the morning hour before slowly straightening herself. A black patent leather purse hung from a meaty forearm. Her arms were crossed, and her grey hair was permed tightly against her skull.
“Perhaps, you would care to explain yourself,” she said, a demand rather than a question posed to the cornered Torsten.
She took a step closer, realized his clothes were wrinkled, that he was in need of a shave, bleary eyed and yes, smelled of aquavit.
“Torsten, what on earth could you possibly be thinking, carrying on this way? Disgraceful, that’s what this is, positively disgraceful and disreputable.” She pointed to the bottle of aquavit sitting on the dining room table. If this is your idea of relaxation I find it completely unacceptable. You will cease this sort of behavior immediately, do you hear me? Immediately. You’re carrying on like some sort of stumblebum and that behavior wil
l not last one moment longer. Is that clear? When I think of all that I have . . . What was that?” she asked, interrupting herself.
“Huh?” Torsten barely managed to grunt out, completely stupefied. He was still in the process of recovering from the shock of Arliss pounding on his front door in the middle of possibly the most important and desperate transaction of his life.
“Don’t you huh me. I thought I heard something out in the kitchen,” she said turning on her heel and gaining speed as she burst through the swinging kitchen door.
Nikki had found the key under the flower pot where Torsten always left it for her. They had the understanding that it would be best if she quietly entered from the back door, no point in getting the neighbors talking about her comings and goings. Just now, she was focused on a very long, very hot bath before climbing into some different clothes and calling Torsten at his office to come pick her up and take her home. She was not in the best of moods after being forced to traipse four blocks along a busy commercial street dressed in this ridiculous outfit like some common tramp. Hair an absolute mess, three broken nails, ruined heels and jiggling what felt like twenty or thirty extra pounds. Add to all that the fact that she had been ransomed at a bargain basement discount price of a hundred thousand dollars. If word of this ever got out she would be an absolute laughing stock.
She thought she heard something, then thought, hmm-mmm, not like Torsten to watch TV, let alone leave it on and she started for the living room to investigate. They met in mid-door swing, Arliss bursting through the door, catching Nikki not quite fully on the chin. The blow was enough to momentarily stun, sending Nikki reeling backward. She didn’t fall, unfortunately, for if she had it may have provided her the moment or two needed to collect her senses. Instead, she reverted to her hallway battle with Mickey just a few nights earlier, thinking I’ll be damned if he gets away with this again. She kicked out blindly, finding her intended target. She kicked again and followed up with a smashing blow to the back of the neck that sent the permed hair object of her aggression crashing to the floor. She was ready to deliver more, but there were a couple of things not quite right. The first was the grey-haired woman with the five-dollar perm lying on the floor, and then there was Torsten, screaming incoherently.
“Ahh-hhh, stop it, stop it. My God, stop it, are you crazy?”
Nikki had just about had it with the whole sordid mess. Her nails, her food cravings, the added weight, this stupid unattractive outfit, grey was one of the worst colors on her, for God’s sake. Now, following the complete mortification of being ransomed at a discount, Torsten was screaming because his mother had attacked her. Well, that was just about enough.
“Oh, just bite me, Torsten,” she shouted back and stormed into the dining room, poured an extremely healthy amount of aquavit into the glass and drank it down. “I need a ride home, now,” she said in a raspy voice. Then shuddered as the burning liquid seared its way through her chest.
Chapter 64
Over the course of the next couple of weeks Mickey’s nose healed. Along with giving him a new look, it gave Janice an incentive to suggest to him the benefits of reconstructive surgery. “Even if it was a hit and run, shouldn’t your insurance policy pick up the cost to get that repaired. I mean, honey, did you contact them about it?”
It was Saturday night, and Janice had told him in no uncertain terms he was taking her out to dinner and that no, they were not going to sit in the War Bonnet Lounge all night and drink. So, they were sitting in a booth at Potty’s, a trendy place with a trendier name. Janice was on her third twelve-dollar cosmopolitan and Mickey was trying to figure out why it was different if you got drunk on twelve-dollar drinks here instead of the two-dollar drinks at the War Bonnet?
She had been going on for the past fifteen minutes about calling an attorney to sue his insurance company and getting his nose reconstructed. “You could pick one out, a nose I mean, maybe one like a movie star, Tom Cruise or someone like that.”
“Maybe Sammy Davis Junior,” he interjected.
“No, not his, but they have these books so you can choose one, I mean it’s not like you’d be losing anything, and it still looks like it really hurts. Now, what you need to do . . .”
What he needed to do, thought Mickey, was get on with another project. The past few weeks had put some distance between the Nikki Devereaux deal and his current idea. Actually, it had been something Janice had said, early on, harping about a lawyer and that got Mickey thinking that the last time he had used a lawyer was when Jack Kelley had charged him cash in advance to be sentenced to sixteen months in Lino Lakes on the receiving stolen property charge.
Getting a hundred grand from Jack Kelley would be a nice little payback after having to cool his heels locked up with criminals for sixteen months. He shook his head just thinking about it.
“What do you mean no, Mickey? Are you even listening to anything I’ve said?”
“Yeah, Janice, I heard it all.” He didn’t add, before.
“Well, I was just saying, that it would seem to me you would want to avail yourself of the services of a good attorney. I mean, a jury would take one look at you and award you whatever it took to get that nose fixed. And, did I mention they have these books and you can pick out a nose from the book, or one from a movie star, say like Tom Cruise? Now Tom Cruise . . .”
Yeah, Jack Kelley.
Chapter 65
“Can you imagine, the two of us,” Mickey had said putting his arm around Dell. “Sitting on that kind of dough? All those working stiffs with they’re regular pain-in-the-ass jobs, pensions and fancy little vacations. We by-passed all of em, just using the old noggin’.”
“And this is perfect, Jack Kelley, he’s a shyster. Exactly the sort of guy who won’t go to the cops because he’s always doing something crooked. Like the time he nicked me for seventy-five hundred dollars, so I could sit on my ass up in Lino lakes, looking out at the world, locked up with real criminals for a year and a half.”
Mickey found, during the course of his late night office research, that Jack Kelley had since moved on to fleecing elderly clients and mismanaging trust accounts. At least that’s what he had been doing up to the time of his disbarment. Kelley had two properties listed in his portfolio and didn’t owe a dime on either of them. A home in St. Paul and a lake place up north, both of them completely free and clear. To Mickey’s way of thinking, that made things pretty easy, snatch the wife, stick with the hundred-grand game plan and let things take their natural course.
He’d gotten Kelley’s address off the internet and had been following his wife, Bunny, off and on for the past week. A little blonde with a very surly attitude. Favorite weapon, her tongue, which she apparently kept honed to a razors edge.
It served old Jack right, thought Mickey. She had a frown etched on her face that two face lifts had been unable to erase. It might be more of a payback if he didn’t grab her, just leave her out there, making every day miserable for Kelley.
She was nothing if not routine, leaving the house everyday around nine in the morning for a workout. Tuesday and Friday were her hair days, blonde, blonde and more blonde. Then shopping everyday for a bit before a late lunch where the little darling pounded down brandy manhattans like they were going out of style, home usually by four o’clock. They never seemed to go out at night and she made a run to the liquor store every other day.
Actually, he had never seen Kelley, but figured he was either up and out early or left later while Mickey was following Bunny around town. Probably just as well he didn’t see him, why run the risk of being recognized. Jack might be a disbarred old scammer, but he wasn’t stupid, and the prisons were full of guys who had underestimated someone. Mickey knew that for a fact.
After reviewing a number of different options, he settled on quietly grabbing Bunny from the house when she came home in the afternoon. She was a little thing, but then so was Nikki and she had nearly killed him. He was thinking he would toss something over her, a
sheet or coat, wrap her up, throw her over his shoulder and dump her in the back seat. Hopefully she’d be tired from a combination of shopping and brandy manhattans and wouldn’t give him any trouble. He just had to figure out a few of the finer details, like getting into her house, grabbing her, getting her into his car, not being spotted by neighbors and oh yeah, avoiding arrest.
Chapter 66
A walk around her back yard one sunny afternoon convinced him he could slip in the house through a large basement window conveniently covered by one of those fancy bushes that turned red in the fall. Sneak in, wait patiently, grab her from behind, and carry her out in a drop cloth.
He wore a painting outfit for the occasion. New white pants with the loops for brushes, a paint splattered t-shirt from an ill-fated attempt to paint Janice’s living room, a baseball cap and sun glasses.
The day was cloudy, slate grey with a light but continuous rain, almost a mist but not quite. The clouds made his sunglasses appear silly, but he wore them in case some nosey neighbor spotted him.
The basement window he had chosen was hidden behind a large bush which turned out to be rather thorny, more like ornamental razor wire than a leafy thing. He was able to quickly undo the window, pushing it in and popping it, unfortunately a little too quickly. The window dropped out of the frame, Mickey bobbled it for a second before it crashed to the floor sending shards of broken glass in every direction. He stared at the empty opening for a moment, tossed a drop cloth down onto the floor and wiggled as quickly as possible into the basement.