“Sounds like the proverbial slam dunk,” Louie said.
“I can only hope.”
With that the door opened. At no surprise Detective Norris Manning came in, bald head shining pink. He attacked the proverbial piece of gum with his front teeth, cracking it as he approached. There were two other people behind him. One I sort of recognized, guy about forty, curly salt and pepper hair, wearing a sport coat and loose tie. He had one of those five-o’clock shadows some guys permanently have and dark bags beneath his eyes. I couldn’t put a name to him.
The other individual was a woman, attractive in a tough looking way, not beat up, but more sort of, no nonsense. She wore black slacks and an off white blouse. She was blonde, with a tight jaw line, a nice figure. She had very dark eyebrows and brown eyes that seemed to bore into me. I guess it was a nervous sort of reaction, but I couldn’t help but think the drapes didn’t match the rug.
“Mister Haskell, Mister Laufen,” Manning said sitting down, laying a file on the table in front of him.
I nodded.
“Detective Manning,” Louie answered.
“This is Detective Franco, Detective Schumacher,” Manning introduced his accomplices.
Franco rang a bell, that was the name. I’d worked with him on a lottery scam a couple years back, met for all of twenty minutes. Schumacher, the woman, I’d never seen before. Both nodded as Manning said their name but remained leaning against the wall.
“Where to begin, where to begin,” Manning said, making a dramatic act out of opening the file and then giving a long sigh.
“Maybe you could begin with the charge against my client,” Louie said.
“Or the withdrawal of seventeen sworn statements,” I added.
Louie gave me a look suggesting I should just be quiet, but I knew better and decided I was going to enjoy this.
“You know as well as I do that this is bullshit, Manning.”
“Dev,” Louie cautioned.
“Ask any of those English girls.”
“Dev.”
“Ask their security guy Jimmy McNaughton. Ask any of the Bombshells.”
“Dev stop it.”
“Go ahead, ask Fiona Simmons, the one they call Harlotte Davidson, she’ll tell you that I…”
“God damn it, Dev, shut up,” Louie yelled.
“Yeah, if I could get a word in edgewise here. I mean we’re all interested in what you have to say Mister Haskell. No really we are, it’s just that, well, in order to check with Miss Simmons, well I’d love to, but someone fire bombed her hotel room and she’s in the hospital right now.”
“Hospital?” Louie and I said in unison, then stared wide eyed at Manning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Well hard as it may seem to believe this, I’m still having a problem with your story.” Manning said to me.
We’d been a number of hours in the interview room, but it felt like weeks. Franco and Schumacher hadn’t done so much as blink. In fact they’d done nothing other than lean against the wall and occasionally adjust positions.
That was okay with me, Manning had been piling it on just fine without help from anyone.
“So let me get this straight, you told Miss Justine Dahl that you intended to light a fire under that bitch’s ass, referring to Miss Bard. Is that correct? Are those your words? Light a fire under that bitch’s ass?”
“Well, yeah, I may have said something like that, sort of, but it was just a phrase.”
“And during the same phone conversation you suggested to Justine Dahl that Felicity Bard was in your words a real bitch? Is that correct?”
“No, not exactly, see Miss Bard’s roller Derby name is Emma Babe, E-M-M-A,” I spelled it out. “I was just doing a little play on words suggesting it should be Emma Bitch, see? Sort of making a little joke.”
“A little joke?” Manning asked.
“Well, maybe more to make a point,” I said, before Louie could stop me.
I think I was the only one in the room who got the play on words.
“So then to add to the joke, to make your point, you fire bombed the hotel room of Fiona Simmons and Felicity Bard.”
“No.”
“Miss Simmons is hospitalized and Miss Bard has been released and is recovering, again. A hundred and fifty hotel guests were evacuated, just to make your point, as you say.”
“Look, I said the things you have there in your file. But it’s a huge jump to go from that,” I nodded at his file, “to fire bombing a hotel room. Don’t you think?”
“No, not really Mister Haskell, not really.”
“I didn’t do this,” I said.
“And you commented to Mister James McNaughton that you noticed there was no security present at the hotel room, is that correct?”
“Yes, yeah I said that. But, only because Jimmy had told me they were going to hire hotel staff to remain round the clock outside that hotel room. When I saw no one was posted outside the room I questioned it. I didn’t think that was a good idea.”
“Questioned it in order to see just how that might work for your benefit?”
“No, I questioned it because he had told me differently, that’s all. I felt they should have security posted outside the room.”
“Did you view that as a lost business opportunity, Mister Haskell?”
“Lost business opportunity?”
“That’s what I said. Guarding the room, wasn’t that a lost opportunity for you. Work you apparently missed out on.”
“No, no, I didn’t think anything like that.”
“You weren’t upset they hadn’t hired you to provide security at the hotel?”
“No, I just told you, I wondered why they had removed their security. Jimmy said it was because of budgetary cutbacks.”
“Yeah, their budget sort of went to hell after you assaulted Miss Bard, didn’t it?”
“Sharp observation, except I didn’t assault her. But, their budget was getting pretty tight, I gathered, so anyway it was an expense they apparently decided to do without.”
“Yeah, apparently, too bad, isn’t it?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I was prepared to spend the night in a cell. But, somehow Louie convinced them I wasn’t a flight risk and besides, Manning didn’t charge me. It was after seven when we got out of the interview room. We were standing outside on Kellogg Boulevard, which, even after rush hour traffic was still backed up, deja vu all over again.
“Let me drop you off at home,” Louie said.
“Thanks, I could use a shower and I’d just like to forget the day.”
“Yeah, you aren’t kidding.”
“Hey, you’re getting paid to be in there, how tough can it be?” I asked.
“No, I meant you could use a shower.”
Louie gave me a lift home in his rust accented blue Nissan Sentra. In case I thought the holding cell and the interview room had been bad, Louie’s car put all that to shame. I had my window down in an attempt to get some air moving over the trash and debris fluttering around the inside of his car.
“No offense, Louie, but your car could use a shoveling out and then a pretty aggressive decontamination.”
“Hunh?”
“You kidding? You’ve got Big Mac wrappers back there with Christmas wreaths printed on them and its summer. I’m sure I wouldn’t have to search very hard to find a couple of empty bottles under the seat. I see at least three Domino’s boxes, I didn’t know they even delivered to cars. All the unopened mail back there, this one’s from the power company.”
I pulled a brown envelope edged in red from a random pile. Red block letters above the address window read ‘Open Immediately’.
“What’s that?” Louie asked.
“I’ve gotten these myself from time to time, it’s a shut off notice form Xcel Energy.”
“Not to worry, I paid that one months ago,” he said.
“Great, but that doesn’t make your car less of a rolling dumpster. God forbid you ever have the opportunity to chauffer around someone worthwhile…”
“You mean as opposed to you?”