Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) (33 page)

“Coming, Mister Haskell, or have you grown fond of our interview rooms?” Manning smiled.

“Wait, she had all these fingers, I mean, why? How? Fat
Wayne
found it?”

Manning nodded.
“
Turns out she had them shipped to her, some wigged out boyfriend packed ‘em in dry ice, overnighted the things to her.”

“From
England
?”

“Yeah, it
s why they didn’t match o
u
r database, well one of the reasons, they weren’t from here.”

“But still how? Why?”

“He’s some surgical intern, or was, London Metro has him right now. Why? Money, I guess everyone
was
pretty much
a volunteer
, except
for the main fundraiser, that
Simmons woman
, Harlotte Davidson
. She got a percentage based on her contract. Nothing wrong or illegal
, the arrangement just made the
Bard
woman
jealous and apparently she thought s
he could scare the Simmons gal
off and do it herself. When that did
n’t work things escalated
to this point,” he said shrugging his shoulders.

“I was just thinking,” I said walking toward the door, “if perhaps Officer Trang was around she could give me a ride home. I gave Heidi
Bauer
my keys,” I said.

Manning nodded,
“I’ll see what I can do.”

Officer Linh Trang opened
the rear passenger door of the squad car and waited for me to step out.

“I don’t know if that would be the smartest career move,” she said.

“What can
possibly
happen? We’re
just
meeting for a drink, in a very public place. We’re arriving in separate vehicles
,
from separate locations. If it makes you feel any better you can say we just ran into one another. You don’t have to admit we were on a date. It really isn’t
a date,
as a matter of fact.”

“You’re sort of known around the department,” she said, smiling, maybe.

“In a good way?”

“Depends.”

On what?”

“On w
ho
you talk to. From what I
hear
and saw
the last woman to go out with you
was strapped to a two wheeled dolly and
got her
ass
slapped.”

“Well, yeah but that… Wait, from what you saw?”

She smiled wide. “Now I suppose if I don’t go out with you, you’re going to threaten to expose me for being one of about fifty officers laughing at the evidence photos.
A certain bruise after your
lady
friend
w
as slapped across her
very nice ass
.
”

“You mean if I threaten to tell on you, you’ll meet me for a drink?
”

“Okay where?” she la
ughed.

I decided to sound trendy.
“You know the Dew Drop?”

She nodded.

“How about eight tonight?”

“I can do that,” she said.

I hadn’t been in
the place since the night Carol left with that French guy Nicholas and I met Justine. It seemed like a century ago
.
What passed for music
here
didn’t start blaring until nine
and I hoped
we could
pound down a couple
of drinks
and
then decide on someplace better
,
maybe
like The Spot
,
or better yet my penthouse suite
before it got too noisy
here
.

“Funny finding you at the bar,” a voice said.

I turned and saw Linh
, looking delicious in a
short little
off white outfit. I stared, running my eyes up and down her figure.

“Linh, you look fantastic, not that you wouldn’t
anyway
, but wow, you really look great
.”

“Thanks,” she said, then examined
what I was wearing
, jeans and a
green
golf shirt with
an
embroidered Jameson logo, she
didn’t comment but I think she made a mental note.

“Get you something?”

“Maybe a cosmopolitan?” she said.

“Oh, Sex in the City fan?” I asked, remembering
what Justine had said
the night I’d met her.

“Don’t you
just love that s
how, even though it’s in reruns
now
, I still really like it
.”

We stood at the bar
,
chatting for about ten minutes.
All of a sudden
I caught Linh staring wide eyed over my shoulder and turned to look.

She grabbed my arm and said, “don’t look.”

“Why some old boyfriend?” I smiled.

“No hardly,
big
doper, major
dealer
,
we heard he was in town
,
but we
could never get
any confirmation. W
e’ve been looking for the guy for
a month
. I can’t believe he’s
in
here, out in the open. I’ve lost count of how many roll calls I sat through liste
ning to what a jerk that guy is and staring at his picture up on the screen.
I got a BOLO on him in my purse.
”

I started to turn and look.

“
D
on’t, Dev,” she said, then
grabbed my arm again. This time she
placed
some excruciating pressure on my wrist using just her thumb and forefinger.

“Ouch, okay, okay, man let go that really hurts.”

“It’s supposed to, you might do well to remember that, now don’t look over there again, I’m going to call this in,” she said taking a cell phone out of her purse.
She pulled what looked like a wanted poster out, nodded
at the thing as if to confirm
, then dialed.

She had her back to me, phone up against her right ear and a f
inger in her left as she talked
.

“
They should be here shortly,
”
she said,
once she
hung up and
turned around.
“
I think I’ve got time for another Cosmo.
”

“Don’
t you want to go strap on a Kevlar
vest or something?”

“No, I don’t think so, but it might be a good idea to get out of the way and move down toward the far end of the bar.”

She sat sipping her
Cosmo at the corner of the bar, back near the rest rooms
. I can’t recall what she was talking about for the simple reason I wasn’t paying any attention.
I figured if things got hot I’d just jump behind the bar, pull the
fat
bartender on top of me and hope for the best. Linh’s
cell rang about tw
enty minutes later. I could hear
her giving directions t
o whoever was on the other end.

“Yeah, five tables back,
in the corner,
he’s wearing a
blue shirt
, sitting
with a
blonde
woman.
She looks
kind of bitchy and
she’s got fake boobs. No I’m not kidding. You can’t miss them. Yeah, I thought you’d like it,” she chuckled then clicked her phone shut and reached in her purse.

“Dev, do me a favor and step back here, will you?”

“Hunh,” I said, then glanced down and saw her little hand de
murely wrapped around the
grip of some sort of snub pistol.

“Get you
r
ass behind me, now,” she said.

I didn’t need to be told a third time
and moved behind her
just as three Swat officers burst
in the front door.
A second later three more ran
in
through
the back entrance. The
y
had w
eapons drawn,
and were
screaming,
it seemed like déjà vu all over again for me.

“Everyone down, down,”
they
yelled
charg
ing
into the far back corner of the Dew Drop.

“Get ‘em up. Get ‘em up.” They yelled at the blue shirted guy
sitting at
the
corner table
.

He had longish hair
and what looked like about a thre
e day growth of trimmed beard, j
u
st the right amount to be cool
. Some guys could pull that off,
I can’t. I
f I tried
,
it would just look like I’
d been on a three day bender.

Mister Cool
moved left
,
right, turned around and then just stopped and raised his hands above his head. Linh was moving toward him in a shooters stance with her pistol pointed
directly
at the guy
,
sexy and cat-like
.

One of the Swat guys
had stepped
in and
was placing handcuffs on the guy
, none to gently. I recognized the cop
as the jerk who’d pulled me over the stair banister and cuffed me in my
own
house.

The bad guy
’
s date was on her feet, shaking her head back and forth screaming at the cops. “No, no there’s been some mistake. Stop this, stop it.” She was stomping her fo
ot, then jumping up and down
screaming
,
“
S
top
, stop”
.

Linh had been right
the woman did have fake boobs. I recognized the
ir bounce and her
bitching, Carol. I knew it was
her the moment she stomped her foot. And there, cuffed and being read his rights was my French friend, Nicholas.
Pepe le Pew.
Oh
man
I thought,
he’s guilty, he has
to be guilty.

“Look
Dev, I’m sorry, but I
have to go downtown. We’ve been looking for this guy forever. I hate to do this to you, our first date, but, well do you understand?” As she spoke she was shoving her snub back into her purse.

“Actually Linh, I can’t tell you how you made my day, really.”

Linh turned back to watch the excitement for a moment.

“No you don’t understand, you’re not listening to me…” Carol screamed, following behind the Swat team as they led Nicholas out the door and into a squad car.

“Thanks for understanding, Dev, gotta run,
maybe latter,
” Linh said
,
then reached up and kissed my cheek.

I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

Chapter Fifty
-One

The phone rang and
kept ringing. After a while I stumbled out o
f the four poster bed
made my way to the e
nd table and the offending noise
.

“Hello,” I said sitting down on the couch half wondering why room service was calling so early.

“Well,
well,
Mister Haskell, I hope I woke you.”

“
Hey
, Detective Manning, how’s it going?”
I said,
then used my foot to shove
a
pair of
open toed
shoes off to the
side
.

“Not so well.”

“Oh?”

“There’s the little matter of a
hotel bill that came across the department
’
s desk yesterday.
Does t
he term
city—
wide budget cuts mean anything to you?
”

“
Hotel bill, m
ine?”
I picked up
the
little
off-white
garment from
the coffee table, arranged it neatly over the back of the couch.