* * * * *
I made my way to Whippy’s office, which was located just to the east of Charlotte, in Gaston county. The office was a sprawling one-story brick affair with a large warehouse and loading bay located next to it.
According to the package Milton gave me, the warehouse was one of their regional distribution centers, while the office was the corporate HQ for their entire company.
Whippy usually arrived at work at eight o’clock, driving a steel gray Lincoln Continental. He kept strict hours, always leaving work precisely at five. Most days, he’d spend all his time in his office, venturing out only for the occasional business or bank meeting. At least once every two weeks or so, he’d leave the office at mid-morning and inspect the various Whippy’s in and around the Charlotte area to get a first hand impression on how things are going on the front line.
I got to his office at around half past seven and pulled into the warehouse parking lot across the street, shut the engine off and waited. Sure enough, Larry Whippy arrived in his silver Lincoln a little bit before eight. He got out of the car, and I had my first glimpse of the guy.
He looked just like his picture. Short, fat and bald, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a blue business suit. He walked briskly to the front of his office building and went inside. I settled down for the wait.
This is the tough part of my job, the waiting. I knew I was staring at eight to nine hours of boredom before he left for the day, but there wasn’t much else I could do. Larger agencies could put guys on shifts to alleviate this problem, but I was a lone wolf operator in those days. And to be honest, I really didn’t mind it that much. I always took a few books to read, had a radio for music and some snacks. I've been the solitary sort in life, and maybe this is why I could stay out on stakeout for long periods of time. Even today—despite employing over thirty gumshoes worldwide—when I’m personally on a case, I still like to work alone. More importantly, however, I was blessed with a steel bladder back then. Nowadays, it's more like tin.
There are few things that can screw up a detective more when he’s trailing a man, then having to take a leak. Despite what’s been written or shown on TV, trailing a guy mostly consists of not losing sight of him. A strong bladder means not having to stop and piss every time you down a coke or beer, and that means fewer chances of losing track of your mark. Show me a private dick with a weak bladder, and I’ll show you a guy who has lost track of a person he has been shadowing be he had to stop and find a place to piss.
So I sat there and waited, reading cheap paperbacks and listening to the radio. I had my car widows tinted so it was difficult for anyone to notice me inside. I watched the comings and goings of the employees of the Whippy’s grocery empire. Around ten o’clock, I was pleasantly surprised by the sight of Whippy leaving his office, getting inside his car and driving off. Thankful for this respite, I started my engine and followed him as he headed out.
About thirty minutes later, we were on the west outskirts of Charlotte, pulling into the local Whippy’s supermarket. Larry got out of his car and walked inside. After a few minutes, I did the same.
As I entered the supermarket, I saw Whippy off by the produce department, talking with a man in a white shirt and tie, which I assumed to be the store manager. He was taller and in better shape than Larry, but there was no mistaking who was boss. Whippy strode around the store like he was Napoleon, inspecting the different displays, looking at the meat locker, talking to customers and finally making his way to the manager’s office, where he spent the next half hour looking over the books and lecturing the store manager. He left the store around noon, smiling and apparently satisfied. He got in his car and left.
I followed him as he drove his Lincoln back towards his office, keeping a discrete distance from him at all times. We were about a mile from his office, when Whippy pulled into a local garage, Darren’s Gas and Lube, apparently deciding to top off his gas tank for the weekend—always a good sign of impending action to us detectives. I pulled into a stop-and-rob located across the street, got out and pretended to buy a soda inside, all the time keeping an eye on Whippy.
At the garage, your typical, redneck grease monkey in a ball cap came out and asked Larry what he wanted and was soon filling his tank with gas. Larry got out, pointed to his hood, said something and then went to the bathroom. The grease monkey popped the hood and was busy checking the oil when Larry came back out. They exchanged a few words, a quart of oil was added and Larry paid the tab with his credit card. Altogether, it took about ten minutes and then Larry and I were back on the road.
I expected Larry to go back to his office, but he surprised me by stopping at another Whippy’s, located just a few blocks down the road from the gas station. I pulled into the parking lot behind him and watched him enter the market. I hastily took off my coat and tie, switched to a different pair of sunglasses, donned a ball cap and followed him in.
I had learned this trick from Ernie. Always alter your appearance a bit when trailing a mark. People recognize outfits quicker than faces, so carry an extra coat or sweater and a couple of baseball caps whenever you are on a stakeout. You never know when it might come in handy.
I went inside the store and looked for Whippy. I found him at the frozen-food section, talking to a stern looking matron in her late forties, early fifties. She was rather thickset, had dark hair coiled into a tight bun and wore a severe black dress that came down to her mid-calves. Her feet were encased in some god-awful, rubber-soled shoes. When combined with the clipboard she was holding, the whole ensemble gave her the appearance of a schoolmarm from hell. I was afraid to get too close to eavesdrop, so I kept my distance and pretended to be looking for something. Unlike in the last store, Larry wasn’t strutting his stuff here. He was acting subdued and a bit cowed with this lady. After a few minutes, they retired to the manager’s office. I glided by the office, saw the name “Gladys Mapletree, Manager” stenciled on the door and kept walking. After a few minutes, Whippy exited the office, quickly strode to his car and drove off. I was scrambling just to keep up with him.
He drove the few blocks back to his office and was at his desk by two. I settled in the parking lot for another wait. Sure enough, at five sharp, Whippy exited his office and drove off. He went straight home, and I thought that I was more or less finished for the day. I decided to give him till nine o’clock to see if he was going out for the night, and would then call it quits. I was glad I waited, because at around half past eight, I was greeted with the site of Lawrence Whippy leaving home in his car.
Even better, he was alone.
My instincts kicked in went off when I saw this. I knew something was going down. I was a little pissed at first, because it had been a long day already, and I wanted to go home. Eventually, I convinced myself that if I could nail something down that night, it’d free up the rest of my weekend. So I resigned myself to a long night and hoped for the best.
I followed Whippy as he made his way back east, towards Gaston County. I kept my distance from him. After about thirty minutes, he pulled off the main road and headed south down a narrow two-lane road. I followed, keeping his taillights in sight the whole time. It was dark now. I was starting to worry I might lose him if this took much longer. Then, it happened. We entered a one stoplight town, where I saw him brake up ahead and turn into a small motel parking lot. I slowed down and pulled into a closed used-car lot where I could observe the motel complex.
Whippy didn’t bother to check-in at the main office, but parked his car in front of one of the rooms in the back of the motel. He’d just knocked on the door when I spied him. His girlfriend must have gotten there before him. The door to the motel room opened up just a crack and Larry slipped in.
I had him. Now I had to figure out a way to get in that room, and at just the right time.
I sat back for a second and surveyed the situation. There wasn’t much in this small, one-horse town. The motel, the car lot I was parked in, a diner and a gas station was abo
ut it. Everything was closed but the motel. The name flickering on the neon sign next to the road was “Shamrock Inn”. It had around twenty rooms, of which about only a few appeared to be occupied. I were any judge of small town motels and morals—and I am—I’d have bet that none of the couples checked into this dive were married, at least to each other.
The motel had seen better days. The yellow siding was showing signs of major mold, and the parking lot asphalt was crumbling. What stood out the most were the doors to the rooms. They’d been recently painted a garish purple and smack-dab in the middle of each door was painted a neon green, two-foot, four-leaf clover. It gave you a headache just to look at it. If you want the real reason to hate the 1970's, it was the color combinations they had back then, not disco.
I sat in the car and thought for about ten minutes. Once I had a plan of action worked out in my head, I started up my car.
I pulled into the motel's parking lot and cruised by the door I’d seen Whippy enter. The room number was twelve. I parked my car in front of the motel office and entered it. No one was manning the desk at the time, but the guest register was on the desk behind the counter. Quickly, I grabbed it and checked to see who had signed into room twelve. A “M. Smith” had checked in early evening, paying for the room in advance. As I was looking at the book, I heard someone open up a door in the back. I had just enough warning to put it back on the desk and stand in front of the counter as the desk clerk for the night walked in.
He was a young kid, in his early twenties, with long hair tied back in a ponytail. Wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt and jeans, he was a few inches shorter than me, but was painfully thin. More importantly, his eyes were bloodshot and the faint, sweet smell of marijuana floated around him. He was stoned to the max, and I was thanking my lucky stars.
He looked at me warily and said, “What can I do for you?”
I just stared at the little twerp for a few seconds and let him sweat. Then, ever so slowly, I reached my arm back to scratch the back of my head. As I did, my coat opened up a bit, and there it was, my .38 caliber police special, glowing with menace. He saw it, and his eyes got wide.
“Well, that depends,” I said, fully aware that he had seen the gun, “are you too stoned to help me, hippie-boy?”
There are few things more fun in my line of work than picking on poor, defenseless, longhaired druggies. They’re paranoid when straight, so you can imagine how nervous they are when high. Their whole world revolves around music and drugs, and they have no stomach for any real violence. I’ve routinely found them to be easy pickings, especially since I’m usually a lot bigger and armed. You can push them, prod them and use them, and they will let you, cause they don’t want to get busted. That means jail and jail means sobriety and sobriety means reality. Drugs, it’s their Achilles heel, and I must admit, I always enjoyed taking advantage of ‘em. The power to terrify another human being into becoming a babbling fool is a hell of an ego trip, and it’s so easy with a pothead.
Simply put, it feels good to feel superior.
My running into this punk couldn’t have come at better time. I needed a passkey to the motel room. I was thinking that I was going to have to bribe the desk clerk into giving up the key and if the clerk had been a straight arrow and couldn’t have been bribed, then force, or even implied force, would have been out of the question. That meant either I’d have to wait for another day and another motel to get the goods on Whippy, or just break down the door and snap what pictures I could—not exactly the best way to get what you want.
That was moot now. I had a dope-head for a motel clerk. If I couldn’t extort the passkey from him, I might as well give up my detective license.
The little shit was sweating now. He probably assumed I was a cop, and I wasn’t about to let him think otherwise. He just stood there and looked at me, shaking like a leaf.
“Listen, I’m not after you, at least not yet,” I sneered. “I really don’t give a damn what you rot your brain out with, as long as you do exactly as I say. Don’t work with me, and I’ll see that you get popped for possession and whatever else I can think of. Do as I say, and you can go home after your shift and smoke a joint.”
I let it hang there second or two, then said, “Okay asshole, what’s it going to be?”
“Man, I’ll do whatever you want, just give me a break.”
“Fine. What’s your name?”
“Cecil—Cecil Akins.”
“Okay, Cecil, first, tell me who is checked into room twelve?”
He turned to the register and looked.
“It says someone named ‘M. Smith’ checked in there about half past six. I wasn’t here then. My shift started at eight. Meg was on then.”
“Is Meg still around?”
“No, sir. She left right after I got here. She had a date.” The boy was a fount of knowledge.
“Tell me about your rooms here, hippie-boy, what kind of locks do they have?”
“Just plain old door locks.”
“Hell, I figured that,” I growled. “What I want to know is what kind of security lock the person can set in the room. Is it a chain lock or what?”
“Naw, just a simple door lock is all we got. Mr. Sampson, the owner, was talking of putting in chain locks for the customer, but never got around to it. This place is pretty old you know.”
“How many beds in twelve?”
“Two queens,” muttered Cecil.
I thought for a second. It was shaping up nicely, almost too nicely. Catching the guy stepping out on the first night of surveillance, going to a nice, quiet out of the way motel, the druggie for a clerk, and now only needing a passkey to open a door with no security chain to slow me down. It was almost too perfect. Life is strange like that, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I looked at Cecil, reached into my pocket and pulled two twenty-dollar bills.
“How would you like to make a quick forty bucks?”
Now he was confused. Cops weren’t supposed to offer money.
“I don’t get it—What kind of cop are you?”
“Who said I was a cop, kid? I’m a private detective, and I need to get into room twelve without breaking down the door. I expect you let me borrow the passkey for a while and let me do my job. In return, you’ll get this forty bucks, and I won’t call the cops and tell them you’re smoking and selling weed at this motel.”
Cecil looked at me for a second, looked at the money, and then looked at me again. I could see that once he knew I wasn’t a cop, he’d calmed down a bit, but he knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“You sure I won’t get in trouble?”
“Only if you don’t do as I ask,” I replied. “Now, where’s that key?”
He hesitated a second or two, then opened a drawer on the desk reached in and grabbed a key chain with a couple of keys on it. He handed them to me.
“Here you go, both of the keys are passkeys. Now give me my money.”
I threw one twenty at him.
“You’ll get the other one after I’m done. Now go out back and smoke a joint or something. I’ll leave the other twenty on the desk after I’m finished.”
I turned and strode out of the office. I got in my car and moved it to a parking space just down a bit from room twelve. I reached in the back and got my camera case out. I grabbed my camera and fitted the wide-angle lens on it. This was going to be quick, close in work. I wanted to make sure that when I snapped the picture of Whippy and his girl making it on the bed, they would be in the picture. I figured that I wasn’t going to have time to frame the shot. I had one chance and one chance only. I put on the flash for the camera, made sure it was charged and that the motor drive for the camera was ready to go. It’d snap pictures as long as I held the button down, and the camera had film in it. I was ready.
The lights were still on in room twelve, so I slowly sauntered by it, not expecting to hear anything. I was wrong. There was a radio playing Sinatra on inside and above
that sound was the unmistakable sounds of grunts and lust emanating from the room. Christ, a perfect day just got better. They had left the lights on! With this film I was using, a flash would be unnecessary. That meant I had a 50/50 chance of quietly unlocking the door, sticking the camera through the crack and taking a lot pictures without them catching on vice getting one flash shot and all hell breaking loose. Between Sinatra and the grunting going on, I was hoping they wouldn’t notice I’d been there. Milton would love being able to spring these pictures on the Whippy family unaware, and I might even get a bonus. Anyway, the last thing I wanted was to make a scene and the more pictures I could get, the better.
Quickly, I took off the camera flash and approached the door with passkey in hand. I slipped the key in and slowly unlocked and opened the door. The level of noise increased dramatically. I heard the unmistakable sound of skin slapping on skin and the voice of a male, grunting in cadence with the slapping noise.
Without looking in, I stuck the camera through the small opening and started snapping pictures, knowing that with the wide-angle lens, I wouldn’t miss a thing. My camera was an expensive model, and the sound of the camera’s motor drive was drowned out by the noise from inside. Within a few seconds, I’d taken over ten pictures and had probably gotten all the proof/blackmail Milton needed, but I wanted to be sure. The last thing I wanted was to get back to the office, have these pictures developed and find out that the faces were covered up. So I decided to take a gamble and stick my head in a get a few more shots, just to be sure. If I was seen, it was no big loss, but it’d be nice to get away without them catching on!
Slowly, I put my head through the crack in the door, camera ready. I admit, I was a wee bit curious as to whom ol’Larry was banging.
Inside, on the queen-sized bed furthest from the door, I saw a nude Lawrence Whippy, up on all fours with his head buried in a pillow. Situated behind him, with his eyes squeezed shut, was the gas-station attendant from Darren’s Gas and Lube. He was wearing nothing but an Atlanta Braves baseball cap and pair of black socks, pounding for all he was worth on Whippy’s raised, pink ass.
Chapter 7
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