Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) (12 page)

“I gotta tell you, Justine, i
f that was Felicity’s idea
of a bit of
po
sitive spin it was an extremely tiny
bit. Her name ought to be Emma Bitch, not Emma Babe.”

“
Yeah, I heard there may have been a little attitude.”

“
A l
ittle attitude? Try talking to a
pouty thirteen-year—
old
on an exceptionally bad day
, and that woman does fund raising? I can’t imagine she does much. She’s lucky she didn’t go out the window.”

“That bad, hunh?”

“Worse. I don’t know what Jimmy or Fiona told you, but let
’
s just say grace is not Emma’s strong point and leave it at that.”

“Sorry about that, I really am. We still appreciate your effort and going over there and everything.
Hopefully she won’t press charges.
”

“Yeah, well thanks. Look, I
’ll live, but you’ve got an individual
on your hands
with some
real issues
, someone should light a fire under her ass and get her going in the right direction
.”

“I’
ll keep it in mind, maybe we’
ll get things settled at our upcoming bout.”

“I’
d
pay to watch, in fact I’d pay even more to skate against her
, maybe just one time around?
”

“I’ll think about
that
and maybe pass it
on, thanks anyway.”

“Appreciate the call, Spankie.”

She laughed and hung up.

Against my better judgment
I remained for one more Leinenkugel’s then drove home al
ong the back streets. I went online and wasted the next three hours
searching for
reports
of f
ingers sent to p
eople. I
finished up
with
learning more than I
ever need
ed
regarding th
e cremation business. I never did ge
t around to downloading a porn film.

I spent
the next day making collection call
s. Not for me, but for a client, City Student Direct. I hated the task, but it paid some bills, I made twenty percent on anything that came in. Collect
ion calls to people who’d gotten
a loan so they could take a couple of classes and maybe get ahead of the game.

I had the feeling it wasn’t working
, for anyone.
A single mom with three intro computer classes did not a
computer
programmer make. It was depressing for them to get my
c
all and even more depressing for me to make the call.

Fortunately, m
ost
of my
calls went una
nswered, a few hung up, two
cried and about once an hour someone agreed to send in a payment. By close to eight that evening, if everyone mailed in what they promised, I’d make about a hundred-and-thirty-seven dollars. That wasn’t going to happen, by the way, and I left
the office
to
drown my sorrows at The Spot.
I
ended up closing the place and took a back route home.

I woke up
a
little after the noon hour
to
a pounding
head, at least that was my first
thought. Turned out most of the pounding was coming from the patrolmen at my front door, two o
f them. Another two were stationed
at my
back door, just in case.

“Devlin Haskell?” The cop asked
when I opened the
front
door. I was in a
grungy bathrobe and barefoot. There seemed no point in saying Devlin
was upstairs and they could
just go upstairs and get the man while I ran down the street
“Yes,
sir,
that’s me.”

“Mister Haskell, we have a warra
nt for your arrest
…”

He stood about six foot three, black, maybe two-hundred-and-thirty pounds. The Kevlar vest he wore beneath his blue uniform shirt made him look even more solid, not that he needed it. The name stitched in gold above
the flap on his shirt pocket rea
d
Tyler
, M.

A pa
rtner stood off to the side of Officer Tyler, hands resting on his
holster belt.
His right hand fluttered close to his Taser.
He wore a Kevlar vest
,
too, had almost no neck and biceps that looked to have been blown up to the size
of my thighs. He was a white guy
with a baby
face, I pegged him for about fourteen years old.

I
’d been in this position a couple of times before. I knew enough to know I wasn’t going to talk them out of tak
ing me in.
I
t struck me as
a wise idea to address both officers as
sir.

“You are Devlin Haskell?”

“Yes sir. I’ll go with you, could I take a moment and get dressed.”

They nodded in agreement then followed me inside and upstairs to my bedroom.

“Mister Haskell, if you could just tell us where your clothes are we’
ll retrieve them for you,
”
Tyler
said.

I nodded across my bed to the closet and my dresser.
I was tempted to
tell
him
to
go up into the attic and get th
e Santa Claus suit I wore to The Spot
at Christmas
,
but thought better of the idea.

“I’ve got jeans right there hanging on the hook. Third drawer down on the dresser is a shirt, top drawer right is socks, top drawer left is boxers.”

Tyler
walked around the bed,
retrieved the various items and
tossed them
my way
. I caught a half smile when he handed me my boxers. A yellow sign that looked like it came from the Highway Department imprinted just above the fly stated ‘Open at your own Risk.’

“Cute,” Baby Face said, but didn’t smile.

Tyler
searched the pockets of my jeans before throwing them across the bed
.
B
aby
F
ace
kept a hand close to his Taser. I caught him out of the corner of my eye
glancing up at the mirror on my bedroom ceiling.
As I buttoned
my jeans I said,
“It’s been awhile since I had a three way in here,” which got zero reaction from either one.

“In that closet behind you, there’s a shoe rack,” I nodded to the closet door, “If you could j
ust grab a pair
of shoes
from there, please.”

Tyler
opened the
closet door and
tossed a pair of
shoes to me. I thought for just a nanosecond
about making a joke
along the lines of having a butler, but figured it might be better to take the stairs back down rather than being thrown out the window.

“Could you hand me my wallet and cell phone, there on top of the dresser?”

“You really think you’ll need them?”

“Just in case,” I smiled.

Tyler
grunted and tossed them on my bed.

“
Okay, all set I guess,” I said,
shoving the wallet and phone in my pockets,
attempting to sound agreeable.

“Not quite,
just one more accessory,
”
Baby F
ace said, and
pulled his handcuffs off his belt
.

“Hey look, guys,
that
isn’
t necessary.”

“Procedure,”
Tyler
said, sort
of
putting an
end to any further discussion.

Baby Face turned me around and
pulled my hands behind my back
forcefully
,
but not overly so.

A minute later w
e were
standing
out on my front porch,
Tyler, Baby Face
and me,
my hands cuffed behind my back.
Tyler
pulled the door closed and locked it with my key.
The two
patrolmen
from the back door
were walking down my driveway toward the street. They looked like they lifted weights for a living and being cops was
maybe just a side job
. I wondered what
all these muscled cops
meant for the doughnut business in town.

“Problems?” one asked.

“No, the picture of respectability,” Baby Face laughed.

“Sure you got the right guy?”

Selby Avenue
, my street, is
busy, lots of traffic.
It’
s the main route for the
21A
Selby to
Lake Street
bus. But today no
one
driving past
seemed to pay attention
to me standing there in handcuffs
.
Apparently my being arrested had become an everyday occurrence.

A
n older
neighbor
lady
I
’d
seen many times before
slowly walked
past
with
her
dog
, l
ittle,
with
curl
y white hair, the dog that is. On the other hand
,
s
he was rather large, swathed in a sort of paisley tent affair
with hair dyed a shade of red not found in nature. Her rouged checks seemed to flush with even more color
as she glar
ed at me.

“Goo
d morning,” I smiled, Tyler and Baby Face
were
on either side of me, holding my
handcuffed
arms as we marched down the porch steps.

“Oh, I’m not surpr
ised in the least,” she growled. As she spoke she
shook her plasti
c bag full of dog shit at me then
waddled away.

“You
always have that effect on women?
” Officer Tyler
asked
.
T
hen
he casually
took a card out of his
pocket and began to read me my
Miranda rights.
“You have the
right to remain silent…”

I couldn’t help but think this
total waste of taxpayer money
seemed to b
e an overreaction to the
assault charge Emma Bitch had no doubt
gone ahead and
filed. I thought it best to wait unt
il I was officially charged before I
call
ed
Lo
uie my lawyer. He’d
mention the withdrawal
of seventeen witness statements and
we’d
see where things went from there.

We were seated in
interview room number three. A tr
endy little affair if
gray cinderblock walls and damp air conditioning holding just the hint of nervous sweat was your thing.

I had been
left sitting
in
t
here for close to two hours, the past thirty minutes with Louie Laufen, my lawyer. I was st
ill handcuffed although
the cuffs were no longer behind my back.

“Oh, God,” Louie half burped, then screwed the top back onto a plastic blue Malox b
ottle. “I don’t know what I ate
last night.”

“A bottle of Jim Beam from the smell of that burp,” I said. “Louie, can we get back to the matter
at
hand here, hello
,” I said, then
raised my handcuffed wrists.

“Yeah, yeah
,
sure Dev, just sort of not quite a hundred percent today, that’s all.”

“Oh great.”

I had no doubt Manning was probably watching through the two way mirrors on the wall behind Louie. Probably a number of them, all enjoying the little fun-fest they were having at my expense.