“Maybe a phone call to the police would be helpful. You know, like in the movies, you’ve been kicked off the case, but you want to see the pursuit of justice all the same,” I said.
“That’s the movies,” Louie said.
“I need your help here Louie, these people are trying to railroad me.”
“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. I’d say so far, they’ve been pretty damn successful in screwing up both our lives.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“Kiki, Kiki, Kiki, Kiki, Kiki.”
“God, would you knock it off, you’re weirding me out, here.” Louie said.
We were sitting in his car, amongst all the food wrappers, files, gas receipts and debris, parked in the KRAZ lot, waiting for something, anything to happen.
Farrell’s car hadn’t moved and sat aging in place. Ideally Kiki would show up, spot us, realize the error of her ways and immediately confess, but so far that hadn’t happened. Right now, I was ready to settle for someone making a wrong turn and driving into the parking lot.
“So, is this what you guys do all day?” Louie asked, he followed a Styrofoam cup dancing across the parking lot.
“Pretty much, it’s not all gorgeous women and wild excite…”
“I could get used to this gig, man. Just sit around, do nothing.”
“Yeah, sort of like being a high buck lawyer.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said.
We had the radio on, some feminist talk show dealing with what was wrong with men. All the phone lines were jammed and they were going to extend the discussion into the next hour.
A minute or two before five-thirty I tuned to the radio to KRAZ. On cue the patriotic music started and then we heard Farrell’s voice, giving their post office box address, before slipping into a rant on banker controlled communist Washington.
“This the same shit you heard before?” Louie asked.
“Hard to say, it all sounds the same to tell you the truth. It’s so damn dull I usually nod off before he’s even finished. I didn’t catch on until he made a mistake, flubbed a word, coughed, something like that.”
“Absolute nut case is what they are,” Louie said. He was shaking his head as he listened to Farrell’s monotone rant.
“So, if Kiki isn’t here, how are they doing this?” I asked.
“I’m guessing it would be pretty simple to access their computer from somewhere off site, especially if she was involved to begin with. She could be replaying this shit and sunning herself on a beach right now.”
“In other words, multitasking,” I said.
“They’ve been known to do that.”
“You think she’s gone?”
“I’d say there’s a reasonable chance she may have fled the state. I would if it was me,” he said.
“I’m thinking about how she got my car,” I said, drumming my fingers on the glove compartment, I had it open as a tray for my empty coffee cup.
“And?”
“Like I said, I’m thinking.”
“Hotwire it, I guess,” Louie said.
“Except, I’d notice someone had been screwing with the ignition, wouldn’t I?”
“Yeah, probably.”
On the radio Farrell suddenly stumbled over the word ‘anarchists’ then kept on reading.
“There, I heard that shit before,” I said.
“What?”
“Him screwing up ‘anarchist’, then just keeps right on going. Come on,” I said, and stepped out of the car.
“Where’re you going?”
“Up to their office. I’ll lay you odds no one is even in there.”
“You sure?” Louie was still seated behind the wheel, calling to me out the driver’s window.
“Come on, man.”
By the time we’d climbed the stairs to the sixth floor Louie was scarlet faced and looked like he was going to have a coronary right there in the hallway.
“Jesus, my heart’s beating like a rabbit,” he said, gasping for breath.
“Must be the altitude, come on, it’s just down here.” I led the way.
The wooden door to the office was locked, the hand written sign, ‘KRAZ National Headquarters’ was still crookedly taped above the mail slot. Looking through the slot I could see a pile of envelopes and circulars on the floor, the lights seemed to be off.
“Damn it, I don’t have my tool kit,” I said.
“Tool kit?” Louie said he was slowly waddling down the hall behind me.
“Yeah, to get inside.”
He gave me a long look, then knocked on the door. No answer.
“I knew it,” I said.
“Here,” he pushed me aside, glanced back down the hall, then gave the door a solid hip check, then another and it suddenly flew open, bouncing off the front of the desk just a foot and a half inside.
“Problem solved,” Louie said and smiled.
I stepped inside, listened for an alarm, but didn’t hear anything. Louie made his way to the chair behind the desk and sat down.
“God, those steps damn near killed me. How high up are we?” He was still breathing heavily.
“Six floors.”
“Six, that all?”
“Six.”
“Gotta be more like ten, I’d get up and check, but I’m too exhausted.”
The pile of mail hadn’t been touched in four days. Beyond that I couldn’t tell that anything had changed. The place looked as messy and disorganized as ever.
“This has all the ear marks of people slipping under the radar,” Louie said, looking around.
“Well yeah, except two of them are dead.”
“Plus your pal over at the U.”
“Doctor Death.”
“Yeah, that makes three.” Louie said, looking sideways at the desk like he was going to go through the drawers.
“Can’t be long before Manning washes up on shore, here. Don’t touch anything in this place.”
“Oops, okay, just my fat ass on this chair.”
I did a very quick walk through the place and came up with nothing.
“Might as well go, we’re not gonna learn anything else here,” I said. Louie was still huffing and puffing in the desk chair.
Chapter Sixty
“You know we’ve gone back and forth, over and over this shit, maybe we’re making it too hard,” Louie said.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
It was after ten that night. We were back at Louie’s, working our way through the better part of a case of Summit Extra Pale. Louie was flaked out on the couch, empty beer bottles lined up on the floor in front of him. I was running a couple of beers behind and straining my ears. I thought I heard some sort of rodent scurrying around inside the ratty recliner where I sat and I was listening for the thing.
“I’m not sure,” Louie said, then tilted the bottle up and drained a good third. “The radio deal is a hoax, at least with Kiki, probably was with Farrell, too. I’m guessing Thompson Barkwell believed it, but they just used him. Sweetened the pot with Kiki, told him she was Farrell’s sister. He probably couldn’t believe his good luck, dumb bastard. But why? Sell drugs to Evangelical Christians and the Tea Party? That just doesn’t seem to work,” Louie said, burped and then drained the rest of his beer.
“It’s something, that’s not it, but it’s something.”
“The other thing I don’t get,” he’d grabbed another beer, opened it using his key ring. “Why continue running the radio spots?”
“Make it seem like Farrell was still alive,” I said.
“Okay, so then why would you call the cops and tell them he was run over by a car? Your car as a matter of fact, and then have the radio spots still playing? It just doesn’t add up.”
“That’s the only thing you’ve said that makes any sense, none of this adds up.”
“Do the broadcasts say anything? Is there information imparted? Are they…”
“No, you heard the damn thing today, just a monotone rant. Hell, if the guy didn’t make a mistake or cough his chain smoking lungs out, we never would have picked up on it. Fifteen minutes of him just droning on and on and on. Then all that bullshit a half dozen times about sending cash donations to…”