Bite Me (Devlin Haskell 3) (19 page)

I picked up the
phone at Heidi’s back door a little after nine. I’d just gotten back into my car when the monitor call came through. I responded, then drove to the office. The same three coeds were waiting for the bus, they looked half asleep and no more fun than the last time I saw them. It was too late in the morning to leer at the girls going to work.

I scrolled through the incoming calls on the pay-as-you-go phone. All four were identified as caller unknown.
I had to get rid of this thing, permanently. It took me about five minutes before I figured out how to open the damn thing up. I took out the battery, then removed the SIM card and cut it in half with a pair of pliers. I kept the two sections of the phone separate.

I dro
ve across the High Bridge, tossed half the phone into the Mississippi river from the city side of the bridge, tossed the other half into the water on the far side. I dropped the battery into a trash can up by the St. Paul Cathedral. Then tossed half the SIM card down a sewer on Selby Avenue, the other half I flushed down the men’s room toilet in Milton Mall. Then I drove back to my office and stared out the window for the rest of the day.

On the way home I drove past KRAZ. Farrell’s BMW was parked close to the front door. I pulled into the parking lot and tun
ed my radio to seven-forty and waited a couple of minutes until five-thirty when Farrell’s ‘Voice of Freedom’ or ‘Pilgrims Rights’ or whatever they called their broadcast polluted the air waves.

It was j
ust as bad as I remembered. Part way through his rant Farrell got caught up in a coughing jag that burned up a good half minute, it was the highlight of the broadcast. He continued on, unfazed, droning along in close to a monotone. Not that it mattered, who could stand to listen?

I twiddled my thumbs for another twenty minutes after the broadcast, finally, afraid I was really
pushing my luck if I remained, I left. I grabbed a couple of necessities at the grocery store on the way home, frozen pizzas, lime Dorito chips and a box of Snickers ice cream bars. I came in the front door and when I went to close it behind me I noticed something silky hanging from the inside door knob, in the pattern of an American flag, a thong. I didn’t put it there. A list of names ran through my mind, a short list. Very short.

I phoned Heidi
from my front entry.

“Hello.
”

“Pretty funny, look
, I said I was sorry.”

“Not sorry enough, and I s
till fail to see the humor.” She still sounded pissed. “You didn’t just ruin the moment, you ruined the night. By the way, you missed a spot in my bedroom, by one of the outlets.”

“
I’ll take care of it. No, I’m calling because of what you left for me, at my place.”

“Left for you?”

“Very funny. Yeah, today, when I came home, I just got it.”

“You’re sounding more obtuse than usual, what in the hell are you
babbling about?”

“Please tell me you were inside my place today.”

“No can do, Dev. Your place, you kidding? I’m just coming out of an all day meeting, on the way to my car. Your place? I don’t have time to screw around like that. What are you talking about?”

“Look Heidi, I’ll paint your entire house, don’t play games with me, this is really serious
, so give me a straight answer. Did you leave something inside my front door today?”

“No
, I didn’t, I already told you, I’ve been in a client meeting the whole damned day. Honest to God, my head’s killing me, if I have to smile and nod at another stupid suggestion one more time I’m going to explode.”

“You didn’t
leave a thong on my door knob? Looks like an American flag.”

“A thong?
Like a flag? Not really my style. You’re not dating that Marine Corp chick again are you? Wasn’t she the one who threatened to shoot you if you ever tried to contact her again?”

“That’s beside the point and anyway, I’m not seeing her, in fact I haven’t seen her in at least a year.”

“Look, no offense, but you’re sounding kind of crazy. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t slumming in your neighborhood today, okay. And you are still on my shit list, bye.” Click.

I could think of three other women who had keys to my place. The first two hung up on me
when I called. The third one explained, in rational tones, that the only thing she would think of bringing over was her boyfriend to beat me up. I put them all in the ‘unlikely’ column. Heidi was still my best bet, and I believed her when she told me she’d been in meetings all day. That left a frightening thought.

I decided to call a
n old friend named Felix Alkers. He was a locksmith and owned a little one-man-shop called Prevention Installations. I’d met him a few years back while we were both waiting to testify in a case that ended up settling at the last minute. We’d sent one another the odd bit of business since then. I left a message on his phone, everyone who called had to do that, Felix never answered. He phoned me back about ten minutes later. I was in the process of walking around the first floor, making sure all the windows were locked.

“Haskell Investigations.”

“Prevention Installations returning your call, is this Dev?”

“It is, Felix, good to hear your voice.”

“Likewise. What can I do for you?”

“The usual, need a new set of locks
for a front and back door. Nothing too special, Schlage will work, that’s what’s in there now.”

“Okay, when do
you want this done? I could maybe get to it in the next forty-eight hours, that work for you?” he asked.

“Actually Felix, I was hoping you might be able to do it tonight.”

“Tonight? This your place?”

“Yeah, I…”

“You’re not having trouble again with some woman, are you?”

“Well, let
’s just say…”

“Save it. I’ll have to charge you time and half, Dev. Plus
cost of the hardware, I’ll give you a discount, won’t put a mark up on materials. I’m looking up your account as we speak, yeah here it is, did ‘em both about two years ago for you. Well,” he chuckled. “At least, you seem to be moving up the food chain, time before that I think it had only been about ten months before you had to have ‘em changed.”

“You can make it over
here tonight?”

“Yeah, let me check at the shop. I think I got replacement sets on hand, I should be there in an hour, hour-and-a-half, tops.”

Felix was knocking at my front door in forty minutes. He was a solid, square built guy, though you’d never think of him as fat. He sported a crew-cut. If I had to guess, I’d put Felix just north of sixty years old. I figured in his younger days he may have played some hockey. The nose had been broken once or twice, some pucker scars ran across his chin suggesting two to three stitches apiece. He had both sets of locks, front and back, replaced within thirty minutes.

“Just toss the check
in the mail, Dev,” he said. Then tore off the original copy of the invoice he’d just written up while sitting at my kitchen counter. Sixty bucks a pop for the locks, ninety bucks for the labor. Two-hundred-and-ten-dollars for thirty minutes work and I was thanking him.

“Don’t mention it, Dev, good to see you again.”

“Now the old keys won’t work in these, right?”

Felix looked at me
like I was nuts.

“No, it’s the same make as
you had in there before, you can insert the old key, but its not gonna unlock your door. Now, here’s your new keys, four of them, why don’t you give me your old ones now, so you don’t mix them up, they all look the same.”

That sounded like a pretty good idea,
obviously Felix had seen me in action. I took the old house key off my key ring, took a second one off a hook by the kitchen sink and handed them over.

He chatted for a minute or two about the work he planned to do on his rose bushes when he got home tonight. I had tossed the flag thong on the table in the dining room where it still sat as we passed to the front door. It was sort of crumpled up, but there was no mistaking what it was. Felix glanced at it, but didn’t comment. He shook my hand at the door and thanked me again.

“Maybe be a bit more on the cautious side when handing the keys out to your lady friends,” he followed
that advice up with a wink, and then waved over his shoulder as he walked to his van.

I watched him drive off, closed the door and snapped
the dead bolt on my new lock into place. I pulled at the door slightly, just to make sure it was secure. My monitor call came through a little after ten. I was in bed, asleep before eleven.

It was da
rk in
the bedroom and my eyes snapped open the instant I heard the rattling. It was subtle, I wondered for half a moment, thinking it might be the wind, then I heard it again. I slid out of bed, grabbed a snub .38 in a web holster I keep in my top dresser drawer. I tip toed toward the stairs, heard the sound again as I moved down the hallway. There was someone at my front door, trying the lock.

I peeked around the corner and
looked down the staircase, I didn’t see anyone. I waited for three or four minutes, started to convince myself it really must of have been the wind on this still night when I heard the noise again. This time more distant, but definitely there. I stood in the dark looking down through the large, beveled glass window of my front door. No one was out there, then I heard the rattle again, my back door.

I flew down the staircas
e, quietly moved toward the rear of the house, heard the noise coming from the back door, this time a little more forcefully. I stepped into the kitchen, but couldn’t see anyone on the back porch. Over the course of the next hour I moved back to the front, then returned to the kitchen, checked the front again. Whoever it was seemed to have left.

My monitor cal
l came through at seven-ten in the morning. Not a problem, I was already up and on my third cup of coffee. I’d never gone back to sleep. It had started to rain around five and the gray morning felt even worse with the steady drizzle coming down. I punched in my code, hopped in the shower and then drove to the office.

I watched the
office girls going to work. There were some nice looking women huddled under umbrellas waiting at the bus stop. It was still about forty-five minutes too early for crabby coeds. Occasionally someone drifted into The Spot for a liquid breakfast, no one had left the place, yet. At five-past-nine I phoned Louie’s office.

“Louie Laufen, please.” I was prepared for the
‘he’ll call when able message.’ But to my surprise she said, “One moment please, I’ll connect you with Mister Laufen.”

The phone rang twice, followed by
a nasty spat of coughing before I heard,
“Yeah. Hello.”

“Louie?”

“Dev?”

“Louie, you just on your way home from last night?”

“I wish, I’m in trial today, thought it might be nice to prepare. What do you need?”

“Any word from Manning on that stuff you sent over?”

“You mean that stuff where your pal Farrell married his sister in Vegas?”

“Yeah, although she’s not actually his sister, that’s just how they presented her to me,” I couldn’t believe I was defending Farrell and Kiki.

“Well to answer your question, no.”
Louie cleared his throat into the phone.

I desperately wanted to ask about Doctor Death.

“Not unusual,” Louie continued, “I’d give them a week to check things out, they’ll take their sweet time, but eventually they’ll realize you’re the wrong guy.”

“You sound a hell of a lot more optimistic than I feel.”

“I may have an inside track, nothing concrete, but I’m picking up some rumblings.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing solid, yet. Lets just say rumors are your buddies at K-R-A-Z maybe aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, things seem to be going in a couple different directions right now. Listen, Dev, your job is still the same, pretend to be an upstanding citizen, okay?”

“Can you tell me anything besides you heard a rumor there might be rumors?”

“No, that’s about as good as it gets, for now. Listen, I gotta run, anything else that can’t wait?”

“You can’t tell me anything? Maybe just give me a…”

“No, like I said, nothing to tell. Peace, love, dove, brother,” he said and hung up.

I’d like to say
I spent the night scrolling through boring cable channels, but in actuality I slipped onto an Internet porn site around eight-thirty, promising myself it would be no more than fifteen minutes. Sunnie’s laptop seemed to be working a little slower tonight so I didn’t get to bed until a little after one. I woke at about two-forty-five. I thought I’d heard a car in my driveway, but then drifted back to a fitful sleep. I was finishing my coffee at the kitchen counter the following morning when the monitor call came through. I punched in the code, then drove to KRAZ and nibbled blueberry muffins sitting behind the steering wheel in the far corner of the lot. It was a gorgeous morning, sunny but not beastly hot, very pleasant. Despite the trash around the place I almost thought I could pick up the scent of flowers or perfume. Farrell’s BMW was already parked in its usual spot when I arrived, pretty early in the morning for old Farrell.

A sleek silver Audi pulled in next to Fa
rrell’s car a little before ten and a gorgeous brunette climbed out, Kiki. She nibbled an apple, dressed in tight fitting jeans, heels and a sort of slinky top with spaghetti straps. Even from this distance she looked delicious as she made her way to the front door. Her entire appearance lasted less than thirty seconds, she never glanced in my direction. That was a good thing since just my watching from this distance violated her bogus restraining order.

Another car pulled in, some nondescript SUV, nothing too fancy. The guy got out,
stood for a moment and gave my car a long glance before he walked toward the building. That was enough attention for me and as soon as he stepped inside I left.

As
I drove to the office Farrell’s voice droned on the radio. I had learned absolutely nothing, other than Kiki, crazy as she was, still looked great.

I was at my desk a little before noon
, reading through my mail, which consisted of a grocery store circular featuring a special on brussels sprouts, chick peas and beets. I wondered what sort of clientele they were attempting to reach.

There was some high pitched, feminine
screeching coming from in front of my building, nothing desperate, just loud and obnoxious. I looked out the window and saw the three coeds lumbering across Randolph toward a waiting bus, giggling, screaming and in general disturbing everyone’s peace. Once the bus pulled away I continued to watch as it disappeared up the street.

My car was p
arked at the curb, just a few spaces from my office door. I looked at it out the window, something wasn’t right. The headlight seemed to be broken on the passenger side. The bumper looked dented and was hanging at an odd angle.

I was swearing and grumbling as
I raced down the stairs and outside to inspect the damage. Some idiot must have backed into me the other night at the grocery store and took off, I’d never even noticed.

It got worse as I walked
closer. The head light was broken. The front of the car dented, the grill damaged, down along the edge of the bumper there looked to be rust. I scraped at it with my thumb nail, hoping. Unfortunately, it wasn’t rust, it was dried blood, I knew as soon as it flaked off. I could only hope a dog had been hit, closer examination suggested that wasn’t the case. There was a bit of hair around the outside edge of the headlight, threads snagged on the underside of the dented bumper. Someone had really been nailed. I hadn’t had a drop to drink for so long I’d lost an inch around the waist, it hadn’t been me behind the wheel, but that didn’t change the facts.

I decided
I’d better get the car washed, so I hopped in, there was that smell again, subtle, but none the less there, flowers, perfume? I had a pair of shoes on the back floor I used for softball, that wasn’t it. On the way to the car wash I thought it might be a better idea to see Louie first.