Bite Me (Devlin Haskell 3) (13 page)

At six-thirty the
following morning I’d already made coffee and was sitting out on my front porch finishing my first cup as traffic slowly began to build. Even at this hour it was warm to the point of suggesting beastly for later in the day. I had a nine o’clock appointment at the office of my home arrest officer, a Miss Muriel Puehl of Sentinel Monitoring. Meanwhile, Heidi’s question continued to nag away, why me?

The offices of
Sentinel Monitoring were located about three miles up 35W, off Larpenteur Avenue and just inside the St. Paul city limits. One of those nondescript, one story brick strip buildings, housing a dozen different offices where you could park right in front were it not for all the reserved parking signs. I thought I should be on my best behavior so I pulled the DeVille into the far side of the lot then entered the office. I was ten minutes early for my appointment, and sure I was making a good first impression.

The receptionist was named Marcie, if her plastic name tag
could be trusted. She was rather large, and unfortunately rather unattractive.

“Hey good morning, how are you?”
I said.

M
arcie replied with a slight nod and cold, close set eyes. They sized me up over her hooked nose. I tried not to focus on the erupted mole growing alongside her left nostril.

“
I have a nine o’clock appointment with Muriel Puehl.” I pronounced it ‘Pew-L’

“Pull,” Marcie said.

“What?”

“Pull, Muriel’s name is pronounced ‘pull’.
”

I read each letter out loud from my appointment card. “And that’s pronounced ‘pull’?
”

Marcie gave another slight nod, not only unattractive, she was humorless as well.

“I have an appointment in about ten minutes. Devlin Haskell,” I said.

“Have a seat.”

I did and then sat for the next twenty five minutes. Eventually an attractive woman with eyes that looked puffy from crying exited from an office behind the receptionist desk.

“Asshole,” she hissed under her breath
as she walked out of the office. I couldn’t figure out if she meant me or Muriel Puehl.

A few minutes later M
arcie called, “Mister Haskell,” as if she was searching the office for me. I was sitting six feet away from her, the only person in the tiny waiting area.

“Here.”

“You may see Miss Puehl,” she inclined her head toward the door.

If Marcie was rather large, Mur
iel Puehl was massive. A neckless blonde with a number of chins hunched over a desk, fleshy arms easily the size of my thighs jiggled when she moved. She never looked up from the file she was reading, just pointed with a pen and grunted, “sit.”

I did, then sat listening
to her labored breathing. The plastic chair seemed uncomfortably warm. No doubt due to the sobbing woman who’d exited the office minutes earlier.

Muriel’s
perfume was almost eye watering and reminded me of the air freshener in the bathroom of my grandmother’s home when I was a kid. I tried to breathe through my mouth as she read on and on.

Eventually she raised her head to the point where her chin
s formed one large chin which sort of forked at her chest and turned into cleavage. She stared at me for an uncomfortable length of time. The dark bags under each eye looked like carry-on luggage.

“Y
ou’re a private investigator.”

“Yes,”
I nodded, hoping to look bright and somewhat agreeable.

She sucked her front teeth
.

“Interesting, your kind have caused a lot of people a lot of pain.”

“Not intentionally,” I smiled. I couldn’t tell if she was studying me or just trying to come up with the next consecutive thought.

Fina
lly she said, “Sign these top two sheets, initial the third in the places I’ve highlighted. They explain the fees to you?”

“Yes, twelve dollars a day
, right?”

“In advance, payable weekly or monthly, your choice. Here
, initial this,” she slid another form across the desk at me. “Once you decide which option to take, weekly or monthly you can’t change, don’t have the staff for the paper work. We take credit cards. If you write a check back date it to cover yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”
I slid the forms back to her.

“Plus the set u
p and install fee, eighty-seven-fifty.” She glanced down at the forms I’d just slid back across the desk to her. “So, okay, you’re doing the monthly payment. I need a month in advance, three-hundred-sixty, plus the eighty-seven-fifty. I’ll save you the trouble, Mister Hastings,” she said punching keys on a calculator.

“Haskell.”

“Four-hundred-forty-seven-dollars-and-fifty-cents. By the way, trust me, this is not the place to bounce a check. That check gets returned NSF and you’re back in the Ramsey County Jail. Questions?”

“No, they made things pretty clear when I was released. You’ll be checking me
a couple times a day. No alcohol. I have…”

“Or drugs.”

“Not a problem.”

She stared
coldly.

“I have to push the button on the phone within five rings
, punch in my code. I stay in the house. I review my schedule with you a week in advance. I have to phone forty-eight hours in advance to alter the approved schedule. I can travel to and from work. I have thirty minutes to get to my office and thirty minutes to return home.”

“See that you do,
” she said slowly, annunciating each word.

“
About my weekly schedule, I’d like…”

“See Marcie out front.”

“She does the schedule?”

“No, she sets up your appointment to
meet with me, then I approve your schedule.”

“Would it be possible to do that now? You see…”

Muriel held up a meaty paw and stopped me in mid sentence.

“P
lease, let’s follow procedure. You can set up an appointment with Marcie when I’ve finished.”

From there
she droned on for another fifteen minutes. Occasionally she picked up a pen in her chubby right hand and checked off another item on a laundry list, then read the next point in an expressionless monotone. Eventually, she finished up with the loving reminder, “Failure to comply with any of the aforementioned requirements may result in your arrest and re-incarceration. Do you have any questions, Mister Haskens?”

She may as well have asked did I want fries with that? I shook myself awake.

“Haskell. No, no questions.”

“Please initial in the box provided next to each check mark, indicating you fully understand the requirements as I’ve explained them to you. Then sign at the bottom, indicating you agree with the initi
als you’ve placed in each box.”

As she said this she slid that meaty paw
across the desk again, pushing a long narrow form toward me. There were a number of creases in her fat wrist like she had string or something tightly tied around it.

I initialed and signed.

“Very good, Mister Hastings, please report to Marcie,” Muriel didn’t bother to raise her massive chins and look at me.

“Thank you,” I said, and
exited.

It was more of the same from the
lovely Marcie out at the front desk, except she was less charming. At no surprise, neither woman wore a wedding ring. Either they didn’t come in the required size or they hadn’t found a guy stupid enough. Marcie set up my appointment to see Muriel, tomorrow, when she would theoretically approve my schedule. Good thing I didn’t have anything else to do in my life.

Back home
that evening
I felt like a caged animal. As I sat on my front porch sipping ice water a crowd of five women walked past, chatting and not listening to one another on their way to the next saloon.

“Want to come in and
see my ankle bracelet?” I said, a little too loudly.

That seemed to put a spring in their step and they went quickly on their way. Eventually I got bored with watching people enjoy
ing themselves, became frustrated with nothing on TV and so I went to bed. I tossed and turned fitfully through the night and was sipping coffee out on my front porch at six the following morning.

I had a nine-thirty appointment with the charming Muriel Puehl to hopefully approve my work schedule. I arrived ten minutes early, again.

“Yes,” Marcie said at the receptionist desk.
I recognized her blank look. She was oblivious to the fact I’d been in twenty-four hours earlier and had scheduled today’s appointment on the way out the door.

“Devlin Haskell. I have a nine-thirty appointment with Muriel.”

“I’ll see if Ms Puehl can see you.”

I noticed the crossword puzzle in front of her, I was going to say something smart, thought better of it and took my choice of uncomfortable seats and waited.

“Mister H
askell?” Marcie called out twenty minutes later searching for me in the small reception area once again I was the only other person there.

“Yes.”

“Ms Puehl will see you now,” Marcie said, the same blank look on her face a quick glance suggested she’d gotten no further on the crossword puzzle.

Muriel was reading some papers at
her desk when I entered, pink chins rolled down her chest. The air was almost syrupy with perfume. She didn’t look up, simply pointed a sausage like finger at the uncomfortable chair in front of her desk and kept reading.

I sat, watched her, counted four separate and distinct chins and waited.

“You’ve brought this week’s schedule?” she said eventually looking up.

“Yeah, actually I brought two we
eks I figured we might as well…”

“We approve
one week at a time, I’ve neither the patience nor inclination for changes.”

“Okay.”
I swallowed down the wise guy comment about her living with five cats, eating cake frosting out of the can every night and placed my schedule on her desk.

“I see,” she said then took
a few minutes to read the single page schedule a dozen times.

“You’ll be allowed thirty minutes to commute to and from your office. Other
than that you will be in your office or your place of residence. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, you can see Marcie about your next appointment.”

“Wo
uld it be possible to email my schedules to you, might save us both some…”

“No. Please make your appointment with Marcie on your way out, good day.”

There were a number of things I wanted to ask; Why couldn’t I email a schedule? Why was she so fat? Had she ever been laid? If so did the poor guy survive? Instead I settled for, “Thank you.”

I made my appointment with Marcie. It dawned on me they were probably scamming the county, paid a specified amount for every client appointment. Therefore, everything required an appointment. I decided to shut up and just get out of there as fast as possible. Marcie was only too happy to oblige
so she could return to staring blankly at her crossword puzzle.

I fled
Sentinel Monitoring and drove to my office. I looked longingly across the street at The Spot bar for a moment and then climbed the stairs. There was over a week’s worth of mail shoved under the door. A dozen circulars from grocery stores, two past due notices and a post card from Las Vegas written so illegibly I couldn’t determine who had sent it. I dumped most of the pile into the waste basket, taped the post card to the wall, then went to make coffee and discovered I was out.

I hit speed dial on my cell
and walked out the door.

“The Spot.”

“Jimmy, Dev, can you get me two coffees, to go?”

“To go? And where you been the last few days? Christ we’re down about fifteen percent.”

“Long story, can I come over and get the coffee?”

“Yeah, how long you gonna be?”

“I’m crossing the street now,” I said, hung up and pushed open the front door. Jimmy still had the phone in his hand.

“You weren’t kidding.”

“I’m a busy guy. You got something I can carry those in, besides the dirty coffee mug you usually serve me?”

“I’ve never served you a coffee in here in your life.”

“You got a point.”

“Here, take this,” he said sliding the pot across the bar. “It’s way past time to make a fresh pot anyway.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“On your tab, I’m guessing.”

“Is there another way?”

“Amazingly some of our customers pay cash.”

“On the tab.”

“Everything going okay?”

“I’m about to start on that now.”

“And you think
that coffee is gonna help?”

Fifteen minutes later I was thinking
Jimmy had a point. I grimaced as I felt the acid burn a hole in my stomach. I swirled the coffee a little to see if there was any glaze left on the inside of the ceramic mug, then pushed the thing aside. The coffee had to have been from yesterday, early in the day.

I
drummed my finger on the desk and thought about that lunatic Kiki, Misses Thompson Barkwell and her idiot brother Farrell Early. I wrote their names on a sheet of paper. Then wrote KRAZ off to the side. I wrote Thompson Barkwell below that, then drew a question mark in the middle. A half hour later all I’d done was retrace the question mark a few thousand times.

Had I been set up or was
I once again just in the wrong place at the wrong time?