Last Shot (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator, Book 6)

Mike Faricy

Last Shot

Published by
Credit River Publishing 2013

Copyright Mike Faricy 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior and express permission of the copyright owner.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2013 by Mike Faricy

Last Shot

ASIN
# B00M0LCFDW

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the fo
llowing people for their support:

Spe
cial thanks to Julie, Roy, Donna, Rhonda, Davey and Pam for their hard work, cheerful patience and positive feedback. I would like to thank family and friends for their encouragement and unqualified support. Special thanks to Maggie, Jed, Schatz, Pat, Av, Emily and Pat, for not rolling their eyes, at least when I was there. Most of all, to my wife Teresa, whose belief, support and inspiration has, from day one, never waned.

To Teresa

“The nightmare woke him again. It was
from the distant past yet still frighteningly real. He knew he was safe, because she was there, next to him.”

Last Shot

Annie was a petite
blonde with large brown eyes, who stood barely an inch over five feet. We’d casually linked up from time to time over the past couple of months. Up until now, all of our meetings had been spur of the moment, meaning she called and I suggested maybe she would like to come right over and ‘chat’.

Tonight’s
‘chat’ was different. For the first time she invited me over to her place. We feasted on undercooked spaghetti with little cut up bits of hot dog floundering in a runny ketchup sauce. Apparently, the kitchen wasn’t her strong suit, so the bottles of wine I showed up with helped us survive her lack of gourmet skills.

It was drizzling softly outside
when we finally took a break. Annie was lying next to me with one of her gorgeous shapely legs draped over mine. She was tracing four letter words and triple-X suggestions across my chest with her fingertip, giggling. We’d been frolicking up in her candlelit bedroom for a couple of hours, a room I’d never been in before. During our break I was beginning to check the place out.

The walls were
painted a dinged-up off-white. A large oak double-chest of drawers with a matching mirror that covered most of the wall was wedged in next to the door. About four dozen Mardi Gras-style beaded necklaces hung from either side of the mirror.

A smaller dresser
, once painted olive drab now chipped and scratched, stood at the end of the queen size bed. A flat screen TV sat on top of the dresser and half-covered one of the two bedroom windows. It all made for tight quarters and I’d had to turn sideways just to squeeze around the end of her bed.

S
ix-foot mirrors on the bi-fold closet doors reflected our images as we lay in bed. Next to the closet, the clear imprint of a heavy-treaded boot, about ten sizes larger than Annie’s demure little feet was stamped on the wall.

“
Did you play a lot of sports in school?” I asked.

“No
, not at all, I was a pretty geeky kid. About the only thing I played was the clarinet in the school band and I didn’t do that very well.”

“Then w
here’d you get all the trophies? There must be a couple dozen up here, looks like you’re into ballet or dance or something. What about all those medals and ribbons in the two cases on the wall? Are they from your school band?”

“All that junk belongs to Lydell.
”

“Lydell?
”

“He was my boyfriend. W
ell, until I broke up with him.”

“And
he left all this stuff here?”

“Well
, I only sent him the text last night.”

“The text?”
I asked and rolled over to face her.

“Yeah
, telling him we were through. I really didn’t feel like talking with him. He gets so dramatic and he’s kinda got a temper.”

“You didn’t tell him in person?” I
was getting a warning sign flashing inside my thick skull.

“How could I, Dev?
He’s out of town,” she said, suddenly sitting up and looking down on me.

“Out of town? You mean
just across the river in Minneapolis or like way far away out of town?” I sat up to face her.

“Relax
, he’s in Chicago,” she said, bouncing her surgically enhanced chest from side to side.

I
completely forgot what I was going to ask next.

“He’s such a big baby.”

“Chicago?”

“Yeah, that stupid UFC.”

“UFC…is that where he goes to school?”

“No
, dopey,” she said then pushed me down. She straddled me and began to lightly run her nails down my stomach, smiling in a leering way. “It’s his crazy obsession, baby, that idiotic Ultimate Fight Club. God, I’m so sick of it. He trains all day long lifting his big, dumb weights and drinking all those smelly old protein drinks. Five days a week he spends at least an hour in a cage sparring with some other obsessed animal.”

“Sparring
in a cage?”

“Yeah, he…” Her
iPhone rang at that moment and she reached over to grab it off the top of the double chest of drawers. “Oh, God, can you believe it? Go figure!”

“What is it?” I asked
.

“
Hello, Lydell?”

I attempted to sit up, but she pushed me down
again. “Shhh-hhh,” she said, signaling with her index finger to be quiet.

“S
o, you got my text message?”

I could feel
my heart beginning to pound, but then again he was in Chicago.

“No
, we’ve talked about all this before. No, I don’t care. This time I really mean it.”

I wasn’t sure she should be
sitting on top of me during this conversation.

“What?” s
he said. “You did? When?”

Whatever it was, Lydell had
her attention. I was guessing a tattoo with ‘Annie’ emblazoned across his heart.

“
No, Lydell, this time I’m not kidding,” she said, sounding like she really wasn’t.

I was
thinking maybe some of the passion and romance in the air from just a moment ago was beginning to dissipate.

“
Fine, go ahead! So what? Oh, really? Is that supposed to be a threat, Lydell?”

Oh-oh.

“I don’t care if you are parked out front. Besides, this just isn’t a very good time for me.”

Out front?

“Well, you should have called me first.”

Not what I wanted to hear
.

“Don’t you talk to
me like that and it’s really none of your business.”

Alarm bells were sounding in my head.

“Well, just go ahead and try. See if I care. Anyway, I had the locks changed.”

Not good.

“Don’t you dare! You kick that door in and you’re going to pay for it. I’m warning you, Mister.”

I took that last line as
my walking papers. I rolled out from underneath her just as a loud boom sounded downstairs.

“God
, I just hate it when he goes crazy like this. He gets so worked up he’s liable to do anything. You probably should leave, Dev,” she said, then slid off the bed and tossed her phone onto the pillow.

I
heard wood splintering in the door frame downstairs.

“Oh-oh,
might be better if you just went out the window.” She made it sound like it wasn’t the first time someone had fled by that route

“Annie, damn
it,” a voice roared from downstairs.

“Better hurry,” she half whispered
, then sort of motioned me away with her hands before she peeked into the hallway.

I ra
ised the window and stared into the wet night. God, it was at least a story and a half drop. There was some sort of large bush spreading out right below the window. A light flashed on in the house next door and I could see a little high school girl filling a glass of water at the kitchen sink.

“
Annie, where the hell are you?” Lydell roared. It sounded like he was stomping through the dining room, making his way into the kitchen.

“You gonna be okay?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, he does this every once-in-a-while. Soon as he sees me with my clothes off he’ll calm down and get all apologetic, but you better go,” she whispered and nodded toward the open window.

“Annie,” he screamed
as he stomped back into the dining room.

I figured
a 911 call wouldn’t get the police here fast enough. What the hell, just a story and a half. I was out the window, hanging from the sill, dropping. Ouch! Snap, crackle and pop! I sort of landed on my feet and tried to do the crouch, tuck and roll just like I’d learned in the Army, but I’d never done it naked before and then there was that damn bush. I heard something break as I tumbled into the mud. Fortunately it was a branch on the bush. I didn’t care to contemplate a misplaced limb.

I’d barely landed when my jeans an
d T-shirt flew out the window. One of my shoes sailed out next. Then the other, hastily tossed, landed on the back-porch-roof of the house next door.

The
high-school girl at the kitchen sink stared at me wide eyed as I picked up my T-shirt. She looked up toward the ceiling when my shoe thumped across her roof, but I really couldn’t worry about that just now. I was more concerned about that Ultimate Fight Cluber, Lydell, flying out the window after me. I couldn’t find my boxers and didn’t have the luxury of time to search. I pulled my T-shirt on over the mud and scratches then quickly stepped into my jeans, zipping them up on the run.

I only had one shoe. Fortunately my wallet and car keys were still in my jeans. I limped
across the backyard and out to the alley so I could circle the block. The high school girl had moved from the kitchen window to her backdoor and watched me as I faded from view under the alley light.

Luckily
, I had parked across the street and down a couple of doors. A bright red pick-up truck had skidded to a stop after barreling fifteen feet through the hedge into Annie’s front yard. The thing had dual rear wheels and an Ultimate Fight Club bumper sticker that said ‘Go Ahead - Take Your Best Shot’. The driver’s door was still open with some country chorus blaring ‘Death before Dishonor’.  Pretty safe guess the vehicle belonged to recently returned Lydell.

As I drove past
, I could see the back of a broad-shouldered muscular guy with a shaved head standing in Annie’s front entry. His head looked like a shiny globe and appeared to be hanging in abject surrender on his muscle bound body. He was nodding slightly and it looked like he had already been reduced to the apologetic mode. I could just see Annie from the knees down standing halfway up the stairs. Hopefully she’d make him sleep on the floor against her ruined front door.

I
drove home scratched, muddied, but still alive.

Pauley
Kopff was a
ninth-grade dropout, a doper, a failed petty criminal and in general, a lifelong disappointment to anyone who had the misfortune to come in contact with him. Even worse, he still owed me close to two hundred bucks for some investigative work I’d done at his behest a while back. Like all things where Pauley was involved, someone got stiffed. In this case, me. I figured two hundred bucks wasn’t worth the trouble of dealing with Pauley again.

Unbeknownst to me
, he was currently working at Karla’s Karwash. Fortunately, I’d seen him first and had successfully hidden in a retail aisle amidst packages of naked-girl air-fresheners and devil’s-head gearshift knobs until I had to step up to the register and pay for my carwash.

Pauley
stood no more than five-foot-six if you included his ridiculous gelled-spiked hair. He held the door as I walked outside to my car. He somehow seemed to always have a wiseass look pasted across his face and I felt the immediate urge to hit him, hard.

“Thank
you for getting cleaned up at Karla’s, please … Hey, Dev Haskell, right? Is that really you? Didn’t recognize you with all those scratches. Did someone change her mind?” he said then laughed just a little too loudly. “Get it? Change her…”

There were too many witnesses around
for what I had in mind, so I decided to ignore his comment.

“
Hi there, Pauley. When did you get out?”

“
Two months and twenty-six days ago. I only had to pull two years on a four-to-six. Good behavior,” he bragged, as if it was somehow an over-the-top lifetime accomplishment.

“Congratulations, Pauley
. I hope things continue to work out for you,” I said still on the move, trying desperately to put more distance between us.

“
Got another four days, six hours and thirty-nine minutes and I’m out of that half-way house. But, who’s counting?” He chuckled after me.

I figured the folks at the
half-way house were counting the seconds and crossing the days off their calendars. The entire staff probably had a party lined up to celebrate Pauley’s imminent departure.

“G
ood for you. Sounds like things are getting back on track. Keep up the good work, Pauley,” I said all the while hurrying toward my car. I slid behind the wheel and tried to pull the door closed.

A
woman stepped between the car door and me. She had shoulder-length auburn hair pulled back in a pony tail. She pretended to wipe the doorframe dry then caught me trying to look down her T-shirt. There was a gold chain around her neck, but it had slipped inside her T-shirt and gotten lost somewhere in that healthy cleavage so I couldn’t see what sort of lucky medallion dangled on the end.

She
stared up at me with brown eyes before she whispered, “I could really use your help, Mr. Haskell.”

“
Do I know you?”

She visibly blushed
, then glanced around quickly to see if anyone else was listening.

“
No.” She shook her head. “But Karla told me about you. She’s a friend of mine. I heard Pauley say your name. Will you give me a call, please? Promise?” She handed me a card that advertised a dollar off my next carwash. Her name and number were hastily penned across the back.

“Gee a dollar off…
how can I refuse?”

“Promise?
”

“You’re Desi?
” I asked, reading the name scrawled across the back of the card.

A car honked behind me. Pauley was behind the wheel, slowly rolling forward with the driver’s door open. He sprayed glass cleaner on the inside of the windshield then honked the horn again.

“I’m finished here at three,” she said softly, then stepped away and closed my door.

“I’ll give you a call,” I said, nodded and checked her out in my side view mirror as I drove off.

I left a message on Desi’s phone around dinner time.

I’d fallen aslee
p later that night on the couch watching the Twins lose. I had no idea what time it was or who was on the other end of the phone when it rang.

“Hi, Mr. Haskell, I hope I’m not calling too late,” the voice said after my hello.

“No, not a problem. I was just going over some paperwork here. How are things on your end?” I asked, fishing for some clue, trying to determine who in the hell I was talking to.

“Fine, I guess, as long as you don’t go into any real detail.”

“Okay, I won’t. What else is cooking?”

“Well, Mr. Haskell I…”

“Please call me Dev, okay?”

“Okay, Dev. Look, I wondered if we could get together and talk about my, ahhh situation. Karla said you were pretty good.”

Got it, Desi from the car wash.

Pretty good? That covers a lot of sins.” I chuckled.

“I’d like us to meet so I could maybe get your opinion, she said, ignoring my attempt at humor then added, “Some public place.” Apparently Karla had told her about me and she was playing it safe.

Today was the seventh or eighth and other than Jameson night next Thursday at The Spot bar I had an open calendar for the rest of the month so I asked, “What’s your week look like?”

“I’m working from noon till seven at night for Karla, and I picked up a bartending gig at Nasty’s on the weekend, nine ‘til close. Other than that I’m pretty much free.”

“You know Nina’s?”

“That coffee place?”

“Yeah. Right, I could make some calls and reschedule things to meet you, say tomorrow morning? Does that work?”

“You sure? I mean, I don’t want to cause any problems. I’m guessing you’re really busy.”

“I think I can move some things around. Let me get to a couple of people. I don’t anticipate any difficulty. I’ll see you a Nina’s, 9:30 tomorrow.”

Thank you, Mr., I mean, Dev. I’ll see you there.”