Mr. Softee (21 page)

“Let’s just get out of here,” I said.

“Don’t need to tell this old Dog twice,” he said, then pointed us toward I-35 North and the lake.

By the time we pulled i
n the engine had a noticeable ping and steam was coming out from beneath the buckled hood.

“Shit, coolant, oil, we might as well have dropped bread crumbs, any
damn idiot could follow our trail from downtown,” Dog said shutting the truck off. The engine clanked, shook, vibrated a bit and then steam hissed from beneath the deep creases in the hood.

“Son-of-a-
bitch might blow.”

“You kidding
?” I asked.

“Naw, just giving you some shit
. Come on, you carry the ice cream. I’ll take care of the money,” he said climbing out.

Dog slit the nylon bags with the knife he always carried, dumped the contents out onto the
plywood counter.

“Holy shit
, will you look at this, man?”

I
was attempting to cram the ice-cream boxes into the frost-filled freezer compartment.

“What the…”

Dog had emptied out the two bags into one large pile of currency. He grabbed two fistfuls of bills.

“There’s
probably five or six grand here, man! Whew, damn just look at all this shit!”

“Let’s count it up,” I said stepping over to the counter.

“You count it, I’m gonna celebrate,” he said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a box of ice-cream treats.

I was quickly
sorting currency into stacks of hundreds, fifties, and twenties, carefully facing each bill the same way.

“Hey Dev,
will you look at this shit here? Jesus Christ.”

Dog had taken the top off a box of ice cream treats, onl
y it wasn’t full of ice cream. Bundles of currency were neatly wrapped and arranged inside the box. Each bundle labeled with a handwritten ‘$5000’ in blue ballpoint.

“There’s fifty
grand in this damn thing,” he said looking up at me wild eyed. He tossed the box on the counter where I stood. Then tore the other two boxes out of the freezer and pulled the cover off the first one.

“Shit, ice cream,” he said
, dropped the box onto the floor and tore the lid off the second box.

“Shit, more ice cream, damn it
. You want one?” he asked, down on his knees scooping up a handful of treats and stuffing them back into the freezer.

“Let me
count this up first,” I said losing count and starting all over again.

When w
e finished we agreed there was something in the neighborhood of sixty two thousand and change. It took four separate efforts, I never really arrived at the same figure twice, but I was always in the same neighborhood.

“Lot a damn dough for ju
st selling ice cream,” I said. I was in the process of finishing my second drumstick, stuffing the tail end of the cone into my mouth.

Dog’s lips, beard
, and mustache were coated in melted Fudgesicle. He wiped his hands across his T-shirt and began to tear the wrapper off another one.

“You know, that’s a lot of
goddamn money. You think that little stand was capable of pulling all that in?”

“I do
n’t know, maybe, I guess. The All Star game is day after tomorrow. That could be some heavy betting action.”

“Reason I’m asking is
, let’s say they didn’t do all this action. They’re taking bets, but maybe they’re also a collection point for other places. Softee had more than one truck, right?”

“Yeah, he’s got a lot of trucks
, or at least the company does,” as I remembered Softee was lying on a block of ice down at the morgue.

“If they were all taking bets, or even some of them,
I would guess your girlfriend, Linda, is it?”

“Lola,” I said.

“I would guess your girlfriend Lola’s got more bad actors on her payroll. You see what I’m getting at?”

I nodded, then said,

“The two guys in the Hummer, I’d never seen either one of them before. So she’s got at least two guys we know of still hanging around.”

“
My guess would be more than two. They come looking for us we could be in real deep shit. And that kind of money is a pretty good reason to come looking,” Dog said then crammed half a Fudgesicle into his mouth.

Chapter Fifty-Three

We divided up the
money that night. I took thirty and let Dog have the thirty plus, which made him very happy. I also paid back the twenty-five hundred for the Regal and tossed in another five hundred dollars for interest just because I felt generous.

Dog carefully covered his bed with his share of the money, the
n lay on top of the bills and began snoring. I settled into the recliner and eventually fell asleep with the reloaded Glock lying next to me.

I
watched the sunrise news. They mentioned an early morning traffic accident downtown that claimed the lives of three individuals. They ran a five-second shot of the Hummer wrapped against the phone pole. Then moved on to a story about the home-run derby scheduled before the All Star Game. A little later I woke up Dog and had him give me a ride to The Spot so I could pick up my car.

“I wasn’t sure we were gonna
make it,” I said as the Ram Charger wheezed into the alley behind my car.

“You’re telling me
. Sucker’s going right into the shop from here.” With that I climbed out and watched as he clanged and pinged down the alley and around the corner.

Ten minutes later I was
parked and on my cell.

“Yes,” Lola answered after about the fifth ring.

“Dev Haskell.”

“Yeah, I was waiting for your call
. Look, I can’t meet you morning, something’s come up.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, just a little staffing problem, is all. Tomorrow morning would work a lot better for me.”

“I would really like to get this taken care of,” I pushed.

“Believe me, so do I, but I just can’t today. Tomorrow?”

“I’ll call you,
” I said then hung up.

I
reclined the seat and waited to see what, if anything, came down the alley to Softee’s house. I dozed off in the heat and humidity of the afternoon. The car doors slamming from in front of Softee’s garage woke me. There were two guys. I didn’t catch the first one but the second one wore glasses and had a ponytail with sideburns that followed his jaw line and tapered to a point. He was one of the guys I had expected to see last night.

My phone rang.

“Haskell Investigations,” I answered after checking the caller ID.

“Oh
, so now you’re answering.”

“Hi Jill, how are you?”

“Still pretty pissed off, if you want the truth. Where the hell were you?”

“Something came up I had to deal with,” I was going to say a staffing problem l
ike Lola had told me, but thought better of the idea.

“You
know you still could have phoned.”

“Hey
, I planned to but you made it pretty clear not to call, ever, if I remember correctly.”

“That was later, but
yeah, it might not have been a good idea to call me at that point. Look, I…”

They were back out behind the garage, ponytail, and the dumb
looking guy with the crew cut, not running, but not wasting time either. They were driving some sort of red thing, I couldn’t tell what it was but wrote the plate number down on an empty Starbuck’s cup as they made a U-turn in the alley, then backed up toward me. The garage door opened and the Mercedes pulled out. Lola sat in the passenger seat, some ugly guy with sunglasses acted as a chauffer.

“…
I mean if you still wanted to. Hello, hello.”

I started the Regal, waited a moment before I followed.

“Sorry Jill, I must have hit a dead spot there, I just came out of a tunnel. What were you saying?”

The
re was a pause while she considered.

“I was saying
, do you want to get together sometime. If you don’t, just say so, I don’t have to be throwing…”

“Jill, Jill, calm down, I would love to get together
. I just have some stuff going on right now that requires me to sort of be on call. We can plan something, but I may have to cancel at the last minute, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Sorry, it
s just been an upsetting couple of weeks, you know.”

“Yeah, believe me I know.”

“Look, I’m doing brats on the grill tonight, just show up. If you can make it, great. If you can’t, don’t worry. Fair?”

“Yeah, look if I can’t make it I’ll…”

“No, if you can’t make it, don’t worry. Okay?”

“Okay.
And thanks for being patient with me.”

I followed Lola and c
ompany to the Mister Softee building. Both vehicles drove into the garage. I went up the street, pulled over and then waited.

Lola’s Mercedes, complete with chauffer,
exited a little after four, followed by the two guys in the red car. They drove to the bank and parked in the lot. Lola entered the bank carrying a purple bag. She returned four or five minutes later. She got back in the passenger side and the Mercedes drove off with the red car following behind.

They stopped at a traffic light and
the red car made a right turn while the Mercedes waited for the light to change. I decided to follow the Mercedes. We weren’t more than two blocks away when something caught my attention in the rearview mirror. The red car was a block behind me and coming up fast.

Suddenly the Mercedes
came to a complete stop in the middle of the street. I was two cars behind. The two vehicles ahead began to honk, then thought better of it as a rather large man with sunglasses and a Hawaiian print shirt quickly climbed out of the car. His shirt was untucked, his hand had gone beneath into his waistband and remained there while he walked looking very determined and headed in my direction. Cars farther back began honking but stopped as well when the two thugs jumped out of the red car and began running toward me.

I waited
about half a second, then cranked the Regal left across on coming traffic. An car screeched to a stop, horn blaring as I shot across its path. I bounced up a small driveway, then turned and raced down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. My two pals from the red car, ponytail and dummy, had crossed the street to head me off but I shot past and they had to jump out of the way. I tore across the grass boulevard, bounced over the curb and back into the street. I saw the red car making a U-turn in my rearview mirror just as I turned down a side street. I raced down an alley, praying some kid didn’t come flying out of a garage or a back yard. At the far end of the alley I caught the red car in my mirror as it streaked past. I could hear the tires screech from a block away and quickly turned left, then took another left into the next alley and raced up to the far end.

I waited for a moment, then
zigzagged to a major intersection, from there onto I-94 figuring they’d never find me in rush-hour bumper-to-bumper. After a half hour of driving aimlessly and checking in my rearview mirror I stopped for provisions then headed to Jill’s.

Chapter Fifty-Four

I arrived carrying four
bottles of chilled wine and a thirty-five dollar cake with marzipan frosting from Wuollet’s Bakery on Grand Avenue.

“Wow, what, did you win the lottery or something
? You didn’t have to do this, Dev.”

She was wearing
white shorts. Short, tight white shorts. And the T from her blue thong was riding maybe a half inch above the back of her waistband. She had on a strappy top that was cut off, exposing a flat stomach and almost, but not quite, her boobs. Not for lack of trying to look on my part.

“Throw that wine in the fridge
, will you? Give me that cake. How did you know?” she asked opening up the white bakery box.

“I
just thought, well you know as a peace offering, I…”

“Stop groveling, okay
. Pour me a glass of wine and if you want beer you know where it is.”

Over brats, beer
, and wine we fenced back and forth verbally. I refilled her wine glass, not for the first time, brought both of us a large piece of cake, then asked,

“Can we go over
some Mister Softee stuff?”

“Why do care about that jerk
? He’s dead and the world is a much better place.” she said then took another forkful of cake.

“Yeah, I know, just trying to figure out the operation
. Did you know he was running a betting shop out of some of his trucks?”

She looked at me like I was nuts, took a healthy swallow of wine
and seemed to compose herself.