“I was thinking of some coffee first,” I joked.
Peters looked at me deadpan, didn’t crack a smile.
“Lieutenant LaZelle has been filling us in, but we’d be interested in your take on things,” Hale said. He’d smiled at my coffee request.
“What’s I.C.E.?” I asked.
“Everyone asks that, sounds sort of sinister, doesn’t it? We were in the old INS up until 9/11. Now we’re rolled into Homeland Security. It stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But I.C.E. sounds so cool, I can’t resist, you know,” he joked.
“The Vucavitch woman?” Peters asked, giving an exasperated glance in Hale’s direction before he brushed imaginary lint from his immaculate trousers.
“Not much to tell you,” I said and then reiterated most of what I knew. I forgot to mention my drunken, sexual romp with Kerri the night she hired me and I skipped the part about my visit to the Moscow deli and grabbing Da’nita’s laptop. I’d be turning that over to Aaron soon enough, anyway.
“And you didn’t think to contact the authorities about any of this?” Peters asked.
“Contact them about what? A woman can’t find her sister? That was the information I had and operated under. It turns out that was incorrect, but I had no way to know it at the time.”
“Russian gangs shooting up the place, trafficking illegal’s for sex between here and Chicago. We’ve got a number of homicides. Tate, Dundee, the Asian Jane Doe to name just three. A probable fourth with the Bell woman just the other night. You seem to have at least a tangent relationship in all four instances,” Peters suggested, reminding me why I so disliked Federal agents.
“Hey, I didn’t know Kerri was Russian, she told me she was French, not that it makes a difference. This is the first I heard about any illegal’s. Over the years I’ve been with a couple of women who’ve had accents. I think it’s kind of sexy. But it’s never really crossed my mind to call the FBI. I get into a tangent relationship every time I watch the St. Paul Saints win or lose, doesn’t mean I had shit to do with the outcome of the game.”
Peters gave me a very practiced FBI glare.
“By the way Dev, I checked, those paint-chip samples, from the Da’nita Bell hit and run. You owe me lunch, they were red, not dark blue,” Aaron added, getting the discussion back on course.
I nodded.
“We’ll be moving on those samples, I don’t want to wait,” Peters said, then looked from Hale to Aaron. “Does anyone have any more questions for Mr. Haskell?” He asked, apparently concluding my portion of the meeting before I could ask anything.
I.C.E. Agent Hale shook his head, pulled a business card out of his pocket, and handed it to me.
“Please give me a call if anything else comes up, or if you want to catch a Saints game,” he smiled.
“You can reach me through Lieutenant LaZelle, here,” Peters said as he stood, dismissing me.
“Can’t thank you enough for the time,” I said looking around the room. Aaron sported a crafty grin. They knew something and I wasn’t going to be a part of it.
Chapter 26
I was still pissed off thirty minutes later, not because I was cut out of the information line, that was fine. But the superior act, the “we’ll let you know if and when it suits us”, that frosted me. After all I was the one who had the bullet bounced off his thick skull.
I parked in the shadeless, mostly empty parking lot about forty feet away from the Moscow Deli. I thought if I could grab Da’nita’s Rolodex, get it to Sunnie, I’d be able to point to accomplishing something productive over the course of the day.
The Lee-Dee office door was unlocked and the lights were on. The Rolodex was still sitting undisturbed on the desk, but the rest of office had been tossed. The larger office, the one I assumed was Kerri’s, had sheets of paper scattered all over the floor. The seats and cushions on the couch had all been sliced open and the stuffing scattered around the room. The printer lay smashed in a distant corner looking as if someone had lifted it over their head and tossed it fifteen feet. Bits of plastic from the shattered paper tray were all over the floor, toner sprayed across the wall.
I came to the quick conclusion this maybe wasn’t the best place to be. I picked up the Rolodex and made for my car. I was just climbing in behind the wheel when a shout came from the direction of the Moscow Deli. I glanced at three large individuals funneling out the door and quickly decided nothing positive would result from my meeting them. So I did what any red-blooded male would do. I fired up the engine and fled the scene.
I was two stoplights farther down the street when I caught a red Lexus in my rearview mirror. They were swerving in and out of traffic in an effort to catch up to me. I didn’t know if they had seen me yet. If they hadn’t, it was only a matter of a minute, possibly two. I placed my pistol on the passenger seat.
The light ahead turned yellow, then red when I was maybe fifteen feet from the intersection. I leaned on the horn, pushed the accelerator down, then cringed as I sailed through the intersection. A high-pitched screech followed by an angry horn blast almost shattered my passenger side.
I checked in the rearview mirror but didn’t see the Lexus. So I raced on for three more blocks then dropped down to the posted speed and checked the mirror again. This time I saw them, coming up fast in the oncoming traffic lane.
I took a half right at the next light, shot onto St. Clair Ave and dodged a thin, elderly woman in some unflattering tweed outfit. She was wearing sensible shoes and just stepping off the curb to cross the street as I shot past. She had to jump back, then gave me the finger, and shouted a string of obscenities.
St. Clair followed the edge of the river bluff here and curved back around. I swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid two kids on bicycles and then swerved back into the right lane after almost hitting a car head-on. The driver hit the brakes and leaned on her horn as I streaked past. Unfortunately my actions were not lost on the police squad just behind her. I heard the siren, then watched as the squad made a U-turn and roared after me. I immediately pulled over figuring at least I’d be safe with the police.
The squad car pulled up behind me, two officers climbed out. One stood at the ready about five feet off to the rear of my passenger door. The other officer approached cautiously and called to me, none too gently.
“Place your hands where I can see them.”
I put my hands on the dashboard. They studied me for a very long minute.
“Exit the vehicle. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“I’m gonna have to open my car door,” I called to him.
“Do it carefully,” he cautioned.
I opened the door, pushed it all the way open with my foot.
“I’m getting out,” I said holding my hands in front of me.
“Move back here to the rear of the vehicle,” he instructed.
I did as I was told, moved to the back of my car, and had just placed my hands on the trunk and spread my feet in anticipation of what would come next. I guessed wrong.
My feet were suddenly kicked out from under me. My forehead bounced off the trunk of the car with a decidedly hollow-sounding thump.
“Oh cool! Did you see that?” it was one of the two kids on bikes, they had pedaled up and stood watching my predicament.
One of the officers knelt on my head while the other pulled my right arm back and cuffed my wrist, then attempted to twist off my left arm. When that didn’t work he bent it back and cuffed it. Once they’d ground enough sand and pavement into my face they lifted me up and slammed me onto the car trunk.
“What the fuck, you guys having a bad day?”
“Going a little fast there, sir, you been drinking?”
“Me, no, I mean, not recently.”