Last Shot (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator, Book 6) (21 page)

The
next drawer contained more clothing, none of it folded. The bottom drawer held two pairs of blue jeans, a tube of
KY Intense Arousal Gel for Her
and two rather large vibrators still glistening with lubricant. I decided not to touch any of it.

Hanging on the corner of the mirror
were three plastic bead necklaces, the sort of necklace one either earned or gave away on Mardi Gras. Next to them hung a gold chain with a small gold Irish Claddagh medallion… hands holding the heart with a crown.

There was a small closet in the corner next to the couch,
but nothing was on hangers. There were three jackets and another pair of jeans hanging from hooks attached to an unpainted board across the back wall. Two pairs of boots, three shoes and a sandal matching the one in the dresser drawer were thrown in a corner. Two baseball caps sat on the shelf and next to them was a silver roll of duct tape.

The duct tape got me thinking
, and I went back into the bathroom and removed the top of the toilet tank. There was nothing in there but rust and water. I checked the back of the tank… nothing.

I looked bene
ath the little bathroom sink, and there on the backside of the sink was a plastic bag taped in place. Vintage Pauley, only the second place everyone would look.

The plastic bag held
a small black pistol, a Beretta 950. It was maybe four-and-a-half inches long, three-and-a-half inches high, a .25 caliber. The sort of weapon you’d use for concealed back up, maybe in a coat pocket, on your ankle or in a purse.

I
remembered when they wheeled Desi’s body out the ME had said to Aaron,
“Looks to be a small caliber, if I had to guess I’d say maybe .22 short or a .25.”

That got me thinking about the gold Claddagh medallion
on the mirror. There was no way I could ever prove it, but it sure looked like the one Desi had worn the day I turned her down. I left it hanging on the mirror and decided to flee the scene before I contracted some weird disease.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I hadn’t taken
more
than two steps back into the hallway when I heard laughing and heavy stomping coming up the front stairwell. I ducked down the back stairs and out of sight just as the voices arrived on the second floor. One of them sounded stupid enough to be Pauley.

“J
ust playing hard to get. I know she wants it.”

“W
hat she wants is to be left alone,” another voice said, followed by guffaws and giggles.

I heard the
apartment door creak open and Pauley said, “Hey, what the fuck?”

“You don’t lock your door
?”

“Pretty sure I did. Y
ou guys notice that shitty de Ville parked out front?”

“De Ville?”

That was my cue to get out of there before I was spotted. I stepped into the first floor hall just as an apartment door opened and a rather obese woman in a purple T-shirt waddled out using her walker.

“Who are you?” she snarled.

I smiled, nodded and kept on moving.

“I said
, who are you? Hey, you, what are you doing in here? I’m going to call the police,” she yelled after me.

As I picked up speed
, I heard footsteps thundering down the rear stairway.

“
Stop him, I think he wanted to rape me,” the woman growled.

“There h
e goes,” a voice yelled just as I flew out the front door, running toward my car. I had just slipped behind the wheel when the front door to the building burst open. Pauley and two exceedingly large guys screeched to a stop and looked up and down the street searching for their prey, me.

They
zeroed in on my car as I fired up the engine. Pauley yelled something, but I couldn’t make out what he said and didn’t see any wisdom in asking him to repeat himself.

As I pulled away from the curb
, the car suddenly rocked and I glanced out the passenger window just as one of Pauley’s gigantic pals kicked the door again. “Get out of your God damned car, stop damn it, stop!” he screamed and began to punch the window with his fist.

I
accelerated to get away from him. A second later I heard a loud thump above my head and a baseball sized rock bounced off the roof of the car and across my hood. I rounded the first corner, then zigzagged the next few blocks in case they were following. I hopped onto Interstate 94, heading east toward Wisconsin, the opposite direction from where I wanted to go. I kept checking the rearview mirror every other second, but couldn’t spot anyone following me.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Around
ten miles out
of town I began to think about heading back. I had checked the rearview mirror repeatedly, but never spotted anyone following and began to feel a little more comfortable. I drove to my office and parked in front. Louie was nowhere to be found, so I wandered over to The Spot for a quick beverage just to calm my nerves.

I was on
my fourth or was it my fifth calming beer when a guy I recognized and whose name I’d forgotten wandered in.

“That your DeVille they’re towing?”

“Towing? Not likely,” I said, shaking my head.

“Red,
with a blue passenger door? I’m guessing you had some windows in there at one time,” he said, nodding as Carrie the bartender slid two shots across the bar.

I’d been half lost in some country
song coming out of the juke box. “Huh?”

“Looks totaled, M
an,” he said, downing a shot and nodding in a nonchalant sort of way like my car being totaled and towed would be an everyday occurrence.

I looked out the dingy
front window through the orange neon ‘OPEN’ sign. My car, or what was left of it, was being pulled onto the bed of a large blue and shiny chrome tow truck. There was a squad car parked in front of the tow truck and the two cops seemed to be having a casual chat as the tow truck driver hooked chains to the under carriage of my car.

I was out the door shouting
. “Wait, wait, hold on, that’s my car.”

The three of them turned in unison to watch me running toward them. One of the cops said something I couldn’t hear, but it brought a smirk to their faces.

“This vehicle belongs to you, Sir?” the smaller of the two cops asked once I’d crossed the street.

The tow truck driver
suddenly became very involved in raising my car onto the bed of his truck.

“Yeah, it is. D
id someone hit it?”

“
Not exactly,” the other cop said, looking up to where my office window used to be.

For the first time I
became aware of a crunching beneath my feet and noticed glass, lots of glass scattered around the street and sidewalk. Then I noticed there was a beige, two drawer file cabinet that was wedged between my dashboard and the roof of my car where the windshield had once been.

“You want to tell us what happened here?”

“I don’t know. That’s my office up there, and I think that looks like my file cabinet.” I nodded as my car was hoisted up toward the front of the tow truck bed. Both cops glanced up at my car then looked back at me.

“I, I just went into The Spot
for a minute to use their phone,” I said, realizing how stupid that sounded as soon as I said it.

“That’s your office up there?” T
he shorter cop indicated the broken picture window on the second floor with a nod of his head. “And you don’t know how that file cabinet ended up in your front seat?”

“Well
, I’d say someone threw it out the window.” I was picturing the idiot screaming at me and punching my passenger side window back at Pauley’s just a couple of hours ago.

“Any idea who might have done this?” the other cop asked. He sounded calm and he came across as one of those quiet
, even keel types. I had the feeling he was finding the whole situation rather interesting.

“No, no idea,” I said
pretty sure they knew I was lying.

“Been i
n an argument or fight with anyone? Maybe an outstanding debt? Road rage incident, something like that?” short cop asked.

“No, no nothing like that.”

“Girlfriend trouble?” calm cop asked.

“No,
no girlfriend. Nothing.” I looked up where my office window used to be. I guessed whoever did that had to have kicked in the office door to get to the file cabinet, and probably trashed the place for good measure.

“Well,” short cop said
, glancing up at the broken picture window. “Someone doesn’t seem to be too happy with you.”

Another squad car pulled up with just one officer in it. He sat behind the wheel
, looking at us for a moment while he had a brief conversation on the radio before he climbed out of his car. I saw sergeant stripes and he sort of looked familiar, although I couldn’t place him. Most of the cops, and especially the younger ones like the two I was talking with, were in good shape. They had physiques on them that suggested they worked out, a lot, and wouldn’t have a problem handling most people if it came to that.

This S
ergeant wasn’t like that. I put him at mid to late forties, heavy, but in that farm kid or laborer sort of way. He wasn’t fat, but not a sculpted body builder either, just old fashioned solid, maybe a hockey player. The ‘S’ curve on his nose suggested he may have held some solid opinions on occasion. He gave me a perfunctory nod and directed his question to the two officers.

“What happened?”

“We were just asking this gentleman the same thing,” short cop said, and then looked at a small notebook in his hand before glancing up at me. “Mr. Haskell?”

“I don’t know.
Like I said, I was in The Spot using the phone.” I indicated over my shoulder where three guys were standing on the sidewalk, smoking and watching. None of them made a move to venture over toward us.

“And this just happened? No fight
, no argument, no sort of incident?” the Sergeant asked.

“No
, nothing like that. Someone said they were towing my car and I looked out the window and, well, here I am.”

He nodded like he’d been here before. I wasn’t going to give him anything and he had more things on his plate than wasting
time with me. He turned to the two officers. “You check upstairs?”

“Door kicked in, place trashed, the win
dow obviously,” short cop said and glanced up to the second floor. “Mr. Haskell, you better check things out up there. Look for items missing, maybe files. I don’t know if you kept valuables or cash up there. Maybe there was a safe.” He rattled this last bit off like a memorized line. He sounded like he wouldn’t just be surprised he’d be positively shocked if there had been anything remotely of value in my office.

Then he suddenly produced a sheet of paper from out of nowhere
. “This has contact information. That’s my card attached at the top along with a case number you can reference. You can file your report online. Please feel free to contact us should you have any information. Obviously, we’d like to get the person or persons who were involved, but it becomes difficult if not next to impossible without any cooperation from you, Sir.” He smiled then handed me the form.

They were gone three minutes later.
I guessed experience told them I wasn’t going to say anything and they were just wasting their time. The tow truck driver handed me a clip board with a form I had to sign. “You can claim your vehicle at the start of business tomorrow down to the impound lot. Course you ain’t going anywhere’s with no windows. You could have ‘em replace them widows on site, but there’s a crease where that file cabinet hit, so a body shop probably have to take care a that ‘fore they fit a new piece a glass to her. ” He flashed a quick smile then spit a shot of tobacco juice off to the side.

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded, tore a pink copy of the form off and handed it to me. “Be seeing ya,” he said then spit once more for effect before climbing into the cab of his tow truck and driving off with what was left of my de Ville.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“I’ll total up the
charges and slide the bill under your door sometime tomorrow night,” Oscar said. He was measuring the window they tossed the two-drawer file cabinet through. It was the window overlooking the street where I leered at all the pretty women. Oscar was our office landlord and not too happy about the state of things right about now.

“Christ, I suppose everyone’ll
be wanting new locks and more security. I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to pay for all that.” He shook his head and shot me a look.

“You better get all that glass and shit cleaned up out
on the street. Someone gets a flat tire or some little girl cuts herself, you’re the guy who’s liable, Pal. Saw all sorts of papers blowing into folks’ yards down the block. Guessing that’s from your damn file cabinet. Jesus Christ, you’d think at some point you might just catch on. I don’t know what woman did this, but you must have really pissed this one off, Dev.”