Mr. Softee (19 page)

Dog
wasn’t there, and if the state of the place was any indication, he hadn’t returned since he drove off with Noleen the other morning. Everything was still an absolute mess. About the only difference was that the puddle of Peppermint schnapps had soaked into the plywood counter, mixing with the grease already there to make an attractive sticky mess for the large blue flies crawling and buzzing about.

Just to
do something else I set about cleaning the place. Amazingly there were cleaning supplies stored beneath the kitchen sink. Not surprisingly, they consisted of an unopened jug of Mr. Clean, a full can of cleanser along with a sponge still wrapped in plastic and a bucket.

By midnight
I had sort of calmed down. Dog’s shack was beginning to resemble less of a hazardous waste site and more of a place modestly fit for human habitation. I turned on the flat screen, watched a repeat of the ten o’clock news. It led with the story of, to quote, “Murder and mayhem, as shots rang out in the warehouse district of St. Paul earlier this evening.”

The news report, taking
up eight of the fifteen minutes dedicated to news, went on to list two men dead. A third was hospitalized in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds. They gave the standard, ‘police are asking that anyone with information contact them’, appeal. The report then went on to describe a “small, dark maroon vehicle, driven by a Caucasian male, with the letters VJI or possibly VJL on the license plate.” The driver was to be considered armed and dangerous.

I went outside to check
. Noleen’s license plate read VJL 775. Now what? It was then that I remembered Jill’s dinner invitation.

It was too late to call her
. And what would I say after having told her everything but a few loose ends were tied up.

I opened the wallet I’d taken off the guy on the sidewalk
. The license read Roger Ackerman, which sort of rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it.

I decided going to bed might be the better idea, so I settled into the recliner and closed my eyes.

Dog came in about three in the morning and shook me.

“What the hell happened?” he asked.

I was going to tell him I was just following Lola when all hell broke loose. Some guy jumped or was thrown through the window, another guy shot at me, Lola and the goons drove off. But then he followed up with,

“Fucking place smells like a Christmas tree.”

“That would be the Mr. Clean. I sort of tidied up a bit.” Apparently he hadn’t noticed the three large green trash bags leaned up against the outside of the place. I didn’t mention them.

“You
shouldn’t of bought all that shit.”

“I didn’t, you had it unde
r the sink. That’s where the cleaning supplies are.”

“No shit?” he sounded generally perplexed as he
scratched his thigh then grimaced a little.

“Dog
, would I kid you? Hey listen, this afternoon there…”

“Look
, before you get to that, sorry, but Noleen needs her wheels back. She’s gotta go see her sister or some bullshit up north.”

“My ma, I already told ya’s,” someone screeched from the kitchen area
. I glanced around Dog, and there stood Noleen, same cutoffs, different T-shirt. She had a glass to her lips, with about an inch of what I guessed was peppermint schnapps, she tossed it back, then smiled.

“Anyway, you got
them keys? She wants to take off, now,” Dog said ignoring her.

“Now?”

“You got the keys?” he scratched again.

I handed over the keys, thanked Noleen who
was out the door and driving away after pounding down a second glass of schnapps. I figured the car, hidden up in the Minnesota wilderness couldn’t hurt my cause any.

“God, can she ever be a pain in the ass,” Dog said, th
en made a face as her taillights disappeared over a distant rise.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I got this burn, like a sunburn or something on my crotch, man.”

“I think I got just the thing for you,” I said,
going back inside. I grabbed Noleen’s prescription cream lying underneath the wallet I’d taken from the dead guy on the sidewalk. Then proceeded to fill Dog in on just how my day had gone.

“Any money in the wallet?” he asked.

“I didn’t think to check, just read the driver’s license is all. Roger Ackerman.”

Dog took a long time to say something.

“You don’t think that’s Pinky Ackerman? What’d he look like?”

“Not too sure
, other than bloody and very dead. Then some guy took a shot at me, so I fired back a couple of times before I got the hell out of there.”

“No shit,” he sounded impressed
. “You got two rounds off at the guy, think you hit him?”

“I don’t know, not my top concern right now
. I need to know what was going on there. I’m convinced this Lola is tied into something really big and really bad. I’m more positive than ever she’s the one who stuffed that body in my car. What I can’t figure out is why?”

“Told ya it was the chick, man,” Dog replied.

A couple of beers bathed in swamp water and another hour of discussion did nothing to clear anything up.

Chapter Forty-Seven

I was up around
nine. A few fitful hours in Dog’s recliner had done nothing to improve my outlook. I felt like a bent piece of plumbing pipe. Dog was up shortly after that, looking none the worse given his activity for the past couple days. But then how could you really tell?

“First thing
we gotta do is get you some wheels,” he said spitting bacon across the floor that I’d cleaned last night.

“Think Noleen made it
up north?”

“Probably, less sh
e passed out behind the wheel somewhere along the way. Left here about three thirty, I’d put her in the deep woods a little after seven this morning. Hell, she’s on a damn logging trail by now. Might be a good idea to keep an eye peeled for a day or so, but I wouldn’t worry too much. Besides, not like she knows your name. Cops come, just deny that shit, ‘course you got a couple of bigger problems.”

“Oh
yeah, those.”

Dog placed a
few calls and late that morning got a call back. We were watching a black-and-white movie from I guess about 1955. Some detective thing that was moving painfully slow. I could say I listened to one side of his phone conversation, but that would suggest there had been a conversation.

When his phone rang
Dog had turned down the volume with the remote. He answered the phone with a grunt, then held up his end of conversation with more grunts. After about ninety seconds he gave a final grunt and hung up.

“Let’s go get your wheels
, man,” he said turning off the flat screen. We climbed into his truck. As sort of an afterthought Dog said,

“
Oh yeah, this’ll run ya about twenty-five hundred.”

“Twenty-five hundred?!” I gasped as we bounced onto the main road.

Dog glanced over at me with a sense of disbelief.

“Yeah, twenty-five hundred, it was a rush job
. Hell, it probably took ‘em five or six hours just to get the thing down here.”

“What?”

“The car. Your car. You know, so you can drive around and figure all this shit out, instead of just capping that broad like I would. What? You think I’m gonna be your damn chauffer or something?”

“Look, Dog, I,
I don’t have twenty-five hundred bucks, just for starters. I’m sure it’s a great deal and all that, but I don’t have that sort of cash.”

He gave a long sigh, shook his head disgustedly.

“Walter ain’t the kind of guy you stiff or tell ‘catch you later’. How much can you come up with?”

“I’m sort
of close to running on empty,” I said.

“Oh god, okay, okay,
I’ll cover ya, but you gotta get it back to me, man.”

“Yeah, I, I appreciate that Dog, really I do but
, well about this car, what…”

“Ahhh shit, don’t go getting all legal and everything on me, okay
. You need some wheels, I got you some. A step up from Noleen’s piece of shit, I might add. Look, no need to thank your buddy here for going out on a limb for ya. Just, forget it, we’ll get the damn car, the deal is no questions asked, got it?”

I really wasn’t in a position to argue so I just nodded.

“Smart boy,” Dog said.

Chapter Forty-Eight

We met the prospective
seller, Walter, in the Trend bar. Walter was a black man with close-cropped hair and skin the color of milky tea. He was nicely dressed in slacks, a dark blue polo shirt, shiny, comfortable-looking black loafers, and what looked like a very expensive watch. He sat at the bar nursing a cup of coffee. It was just a little past noon and the place was packed, although no one crowded Walter.

As we entered there was a noticeable drop in casual conversation, all eyes followed us until Dog spoke to Walter
, whereupon the noise level returned.

The transac
tion took no more than a minute. Dog palmed a roll of cash into Walter’s hand. Between sips of coffee Walter gave Dog the vehicle location, across the street in the Rainbow Food parking lot as it turned out. The key would be waiting for us under the floor mat on the driver’s side.

Back outside, standing on
the street in front of the bar, Dog said,

“Look, you get the car, come on back to
my place. A couple of Big Macs for your buddy here might not be a bad idea. You can cover that much, can’t ya?”

“Yo
u don’t want to see the car?”

“What difference would it make
? Besides, if someone was gonna nail you, that car would be as good a place as any. So no, I don’t need to be there. See you back at the lake, right?”

“
The lake.” I nodded.

“And don’t forget them Big Mac
s,” Dog called as he climbed into his truck.

My new vehicle was a silver Buick Regal
. After chugging around in Noleen’s Geo it looked like something James Bond might drive, except for the North Dakota license plate. Chromed wheel covers, a leather interior, and less than twelve thousand miles on the odometer. The phrase,
interstate transportation of stolen goods
sprung immediately to mind.

The driver
’s side door was unlocked and beneath the floor mats were two shiny new chrome keys. I was able to start the car without ear-splitting alarms going off, then pulled into a nearby McDonald’s to pick up Dog’s lunch.

Back at the lake and  t
hrough a mouth crammed full of Big Mac, Dog reiterated his version of my options.

“Follow this broad and wait for her to fuck up, then call the cops, seeing as how you won’t handle certain aspects on your own.”

I couldn’t argue with his logic.

“One other thing,” I said
. “I’ve got the license number of Lola’s Mercedes and the Hummer those Neanderthals are driving…”

“They’re brothers
? That’s their name?” As he spoke Dog spat Big Mac and fries in my general direction.

“No, it’s not their name
, just a term. Look, I got the license numbers. Just call the cops from a pay phone, don’t use your cell. Tell them you saw the cars at the shooting yesterday. Give a description and make sure you give them the license numbers. Make it sound like you don’t want to get involved. Hopefully someone else called in and mentioned the same thing and didn’t pay attention to me in that bomb of Noleen’s.”

“You can count on me
to be the good citizen,” Dog said.

Chapter Forty-Nine

After lunch Dog went
off to make his phone call. I settled into the recliner and took a nap. When I woke up I turned my cell phone on to check for messages. There was one from Detective Manning, two from Aaron and seven from Jill.

Mannin
g’s message was pretty straight-forward.

“
Mister Haskell, I’m advising you to surrender to law enforcement authorities, blah, blah, blah.”

Both of
Aaron’s were a little more to the point,

“You fucking idiot, call me
, damn it!”

“Dev, you’re running out of time, don’t screw this up, call me, you dipshit.”

Jill’s started out sounding rational, but eventually went off the deep end.

“Hi Dev, Jill here, almost eight o’clock
. Hope you didn’t forget our date, give me a call, bye.”

“Hey Dev,
this is Jill, it’s about eight fifteen, no problem, but you’re starting to worry me, please call.”

“Dev, Jill
. You were supposed to be here an hour ago. You okay?”