I was driving back from the coffee shop, armed with four caramel rolls and Heidi’s double Latte when my cell phone rang.
“Haskell In…”
“Where the hell have you been, dipshit?”
“Mom?” I asked.
“I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour and a half,” Louie said.
“Sorry, I was in a meeting.” Thinking I should have checked my phone when I pulled my jeans on.
“Sure you were, listen as your attorney, let me state, I don’t want to know. I spoke with the good Detective Manning about your place.”
“And?”
“And, with any luck they’ll finish up and you can get back in there by the end of the day.”
“Fantastic.”
“Just keep your fingers crossed.”
When I returned Heidi had progressed to one of the couches in her living room. She lay curled up on her living room couch wearing a pair of sunglasses with a white terrycloth robe wrapped around her.
“Did you remember my Latte?” she groaned from the couch.
“Yeah, a double, and some caramel rolls.”
“Mmm-mmm give me,” she pleaded.
I set the Latte in front of her and went out to the kitchen for some plates, nothing had changed except a half glass of water sat on the counter next to the ice cream container and the open aspirin bottle. Melted ice cream was still pooled on the floor. Her thong from last night rested next to the toaster. I put two caramel rolls on a plate and brought them out to her, then ventured back into the kitchen and started to clean things up.
It took the better part of an hour, but everything was pretty much back to normal, well, except for the green blender spray across the kitchen wall. That would have to be repainted. I grabbed a shower, then peaked back into the living room. Heidi was asleep on the couch, snoring softly still wearing her sun glasses. Latte was dribbled down the front of her robe and only a few caramel crumbs remained on her plate. I knew better than to disturb her and tiptoed out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I drove past my house taking a round about way to the office, just to see if I could learn anything. I didn’t. A few miles worth of yellow crime scene tape was still wrapped around my house and garage. The place looked like the site of some demented high school prank. There was a white Crime Scene van parked in my driveway with a city logo on the door, but I didn’t see anyone outside. With any luck they’d already finished and were relaxing down the block having coffee at Nina’s. I figured it was the wise move to just keep heading toward the office.
It was later that afternoon, I was eating a platter of Bar-B-Q ribs at a place called Fat Daddy’s, right around the corner. The tiny room had three small card tables and maybe a dozen folding chairs with ‘First Baptist Church’ stenciled across the back. There was an aged poster of Little Anthony and the Imperials held to one of the walls with yellowed tape. A more recent Otis Redding poster, maybe just thirty years old, was taped above the order counter. The air conditioner was either broken or turned off and the place smelled of my sweat and sweet, tangy Bar-B-Q grease.
With the exception of Fat Daddy, all four-hundred-and-fifty-pounds of him sweating behind the cash register, I was the only person in the place. Fat Daddy was sipping something from a travel mug, I guessed it wasn’t a Diet-Coke. I could hear the ice cubes rattle whenever he sipped. He hadn’t said much more than ‘What’ll you have?’ since I’d entered the place twenty minutes earlier.
My cell phone rang.
“Haskell…”
“Where are you?” Louie interrupted.
“My office. You hear anything from Manning yet?”
“Where exactly are you?”
“Exactly? Okay, I’m grabbing some ribs just around the corner at Fat Daddy’s. Why is there a problem?”
“If they’re not there yet, some of the city’s finest are on their way to pay you a personal visit.”
“Now what?”
“I haven’t been informed. My guess? They found something during their search of your place.”
“There was nothing to find.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Louie, honest there was nothing. Look, they come up with drugs or something, it’s a plant. I’m not kidding. They find any money they have to split it with me.”
Louie didn’t react to my joke.
“Think you can get to your car?”
I looked out through the second ‘B’ in Fat Daddy’s three foot high, hand painted B-B-Q letters running across his front window. My car sat across the street, parked at the curb, minding its own business maybe thirty feet from the corner.
“Yeah, I can see my car from here.”
“You should be on your feet and moving now, you got two, maybe three minutes tops. I want you to meet me downtown at the police station.”
“What?”
“We’re going to turn you in, do the upstanding citizen thing, answer whatever questions they have and hopefully move on. You’re sure there’s nothing there, at your place?”
“Yeah I’m sure, there’s absolutely nothing there, unless they’re looking for laundry.”
“Unregistered guns, drugs, kiddie porn?”
“No nothing, honest, maybe some vacation photos of naked women, but…”
“Are they over eighteen?”
“Yes, they’re over eighteen.”
“Good, meet me at the cop shop, you know that parking lot, across the street?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t screw around, Dev. I’m talking a couple of minutes here, that’s all you got.”
I pushed back from the card table and walked out the door.
“Gotta run, Fatty,” I called over my shoulder
“You coming back, Dev?” Fat Daddy called after me as I crossed the street to my car. He never left his stool behind the cash register.
I got in, turned the key in the ignition and took a right at the corner. I hadn’t driven more than thirty seconds when I saw a flashing light turn onto Randolph maybe three blocks further down coming toward me, fast. I pulled to the side, gave the car plenty of room. It was a dark blue Crown Victoria, with a removable light flashing on top, no siren, just like on TV. Franco was driving, Manning sat in the passenger seat, I could tell he was chewing gum. They shot past me and I watched them in my rear view mirror. A black and white came off a side street and pulled in behind them. They parked going against traffic, right in front of the stairs leading up to my office. They jumped out of the cars and left the lights flashing. That was enough for me, I pulled away from the curb and went to meet Louie.
I had been baking in the parking lot for close to an hour, watching as the heat shimmered off the hood of my car. The lot was two acres of weeds and graveled pot holes completely devoid of shade. Every time a car drove through another layer of choking yellow dust sifted down on the parked vehicles fading beneath the unrelenting sun.
Louie’s Sentra finally scraped up the entry and across the sidewalk then wheezed into a spot next to the sign that warned drivers ‘Do not leave your vehicle unattended’. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the police station across the street.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked, drifting through a cloud of blue exhaust. Louie had shut his car off but it continued to rattle and shudder for another fifteen seconds, before finally shutting down altogether in a mild explosion.
“Trying to figure out what they’ve got cooked up for us,” he groaned as he climbed out from behind the wheel.
He wore what used to be a light blue suit. The trousers looked permanently wrinkled, there was some sort of brownish sauce dribbled down the right hand side of his coat. He attempted to straighten his tie, but only managed to position it slightly more off center. The top button of his shirt was undone, but chins managed to hide the fact. Darker sweat stains began to seep through the underarms of his suit coat.
“Might as well see what they’ve got on you,” he said, heading across the street in the direction of the police station. He was wheezing heavily before he made it to the far curb.