Mr. Softee (23 page)

“Anyway, you’re such a top notch P.I. and all, I want you to find out who stole a hundred grand from me the other night? Who’s trying to shut down my operation? I don’t know how, but find out. I’ll give you forty-eight hours.”

I felt like telling her it wasn’t a hundred grand,
it was only sixty and some change, but figured it might make more sense to just shut up.

“Now, if you don’t
find out, well, you remember that guy who tried to fly out the window the other day, don’t you?”

Pinky Ackerman, I thought, but didn’t let on I knew.

“We already checked, he can’t fly,” one of the thugs giggled behind me.

Lola looked past
me disapprovingly, then said,

“Oh, and if you have any thoughts about doing
your usual something stupid, you know, like going to the police, here’s a little added incentive.” She nodded at Benton who stepped into a dark office and rolled out a desk chair.

The chair
was gray, with armrests, and squeaked slightly. Jill’s arms and feet were taped to the chair. Her jeans were torn and bloodied on both knees, there were two dark bruises on her arms. She had duct tape covering her mouth. Benton grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back. One of her eyes was blackened, swollen almost closed, the other looked scared to death.

“
Just remember, you don’t come across and your little lover is liable to end up in bed with your new friends, here. And when they’re done, I’ll feed her to my dogs. I promise,” Lola said.

Benton
smiled at me then bent over and ran his tongue up the side of Jill’s face.

“She’s gonna be a lot of fun,” he laughed.

“Now, get him the hell out of my sight, take him back to City Hall, where he feels safe,” Lola snarled.

Benton
drove the van while the other two kept their guns on me. They stopped a block away from City Hall, the guy behind me slid the side door open. As I got out, he said,

“Hey,
Haskell. She ain’t kidding, we’d love to have a go at that girlfriend of yours.” Then he made a licking motion with his tongue and they drove off laughing.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

People walking past were
giving me a wide berth. I still felt groggy and held the blood-soaked towel against my nose. Blood was splattered down my shirt and onto my jeans. I phoned Dog.

“Where the hell are you, man
? I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said.

“Things didn’t quite go according to plan
. Can you come and get me?”

“You sound like shit, you okay?”

“Just come and get me,” I said, then told him where I was.

“Jesus, you’re gonna need a doctor,” Dog said
ten minutes later when I climbed into the Crown Victoria.

“J
ust get me home.”

We were three and a half hours in emergency
. I walked out with a nose splint, pain pills, and a splitting headache.

On the way home Dog said,

“Look, don’t be pissed off at me, Dev. But I’ve been here before, you feel like shit now but you’d feel even worse tomorrow if you didn’t get that splint and those pills. You’re gonna just have to take it easy for a couple of days.”

“There’s no time to take it easy
. I gotta get a hundred grand to them,” I groaned.

“A hundred grand
? Where’d that come from?”

“I guess from the other night, with the truck and Hummer and all.”

“First of all it wasn’t no hundred grand. Second of all, we found it, free and clear. Not like we went looking to score, it just sort of happened. Finders keepers, man. I told you we should have taken those guys…”

“They got Jill
.”

“Jill?”

“Yeah, they got her. Unless I get the money to them they’re…”

“The money
? Jesus, are you ready to stop playing around with these fucks and deal with the problem? It’s obvious they don’t take you as much of a threat, certainly nothing to worry about. They know about me?”

“No, I don’t think so,
I never mentioned anything.”

“They’re about to find out, man.
”

“Look, can we just go home
? It’s been kind of a horseshit day, ya know. I gotta figure out what I’m gonna do.”

“Here’s the deal, Dev
. They won’t do anything to her until you get the money to them. But, once they got the money, there’s nothing to stop them from killing both of you.”

Unfortunately I couldn’t argue with his logic.

Chapter
Fifty-Nine

If two pain pills
made me groggy, six knocked me out.

“Fuck, it’s already after ten,” I s
aid jumping out of the recliner the next morning.

“Told you those pills would work,” Dog said sipping a mug of coffee.

“I gotta get that money to them or else…”

“Or else nothing
. Look, I been thinking, man and you got a couple of things in your favor, maybe, sorta. But one thing that won’t help is giving them a hundred grand. That gets you nowhere. If they’re that hot for the money, they’re feeling pressure. I’m guessing they have to cover bets on that All Star game. So we can use that to our advantage.”

“
Dog, they’re going to kill her.”

“
No, they’re not, at least not yet, so stay cool.”

“I should call Aaron, he’ll…”

“Your cop pal? Look, I’m sure he’d help, but they’re gonna lock you up first and then sort it out. That’ll take a week. We got a little time, but we ain’t got a week, pal.”

“So
, what do I do?”

“First thing, we need to go to the bank.”

Chapter
Sixty

“See this is exactly
the reason I don’t like to tidy up the place. Where would we be if you’d tossed all this shit out?” Dog asked as he opened a beer then went back to digging through a trash bag.

We were
back from the bank, with three grand in cash, two grand in hundreds, the rest ones. Dog had me sorting the cash, wrapping the old bands with the handwritten $5000 in blue ballpoint around the bundles. I placed a hundred dollar bill on the top and bottom of each stack, the ones stuffed in the middle.

“Don’t you think they’re gonna f
an through these things, see all ones?”

“No.” He took another sip of beer.

“You want to maybe give that a little more thought?”

“No
. I already have. Look, they’ll be nervous, waiting for you to maybe try something. They need the cash. All they’re gonna see is hundreds, and not think beyond that. Plus, they’ll be planning to take you and the chick out…”

“Her name is Jill.”

“…soon as you deliver this dough.”

“You’re sure?”

“No,” he sipped. “But you start trying to play every option and you’ll drive yourself nuts.”

“Jesus, I don’t know
if this is gonna work,” I said, looking at the stacks of cash.

“
’Course it will, relax, stuff those in here,” Dog said, fishing an ice-cream box out of the trash bag and tossing it on the counter.

I arranged
the dummy stacks of hundreds in the box.

“I gotta admit,
” I said, “at least it looks like the stuff we grabbed. But now what?”

“Call
‘em and ask for more time.”

“More time?”

“They won’t give it to you, but if you were working this you wouldn’t have figured out what happened yet, would you? Hell, the news reported it as a car accident. If the cops knew we were involved, don’t you think you would have heard something? A phone call from your pal Alan or…”

“Aaron.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“
Call that broad, ask her for more time, she’s gonna tell you no, but it’ll help convince her you’re actually trying to do something.”

As frightening as it sounded I couldn’t argue with Dog’s logic.

“Hi, Lola. Dev Haskell.”

“How’s the nose?”

It was swollen, hurt like hell, throbbed nonstop, I couldn’t breathe out of it and if I wore the splint it hurt even more.

“It’s fine.”

“What have you got for me, lover boy?”

“I want to know Jill’s all right, first off.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Wake her.”

“Don’t you want to know with who?”

I was silent for a long moment.

“Ha, ha, ha, touchy, are we? I bet my old girlfriend is pretty good in the love department.”

“She had better be okay, if you so much as…”

“Save it, hero. She’s fine. For now. What have you got for me?”

“Well, from what I can learn that wasn’t a simple
car accident the other night with that Hummer and your truck. Turns out…”

“God
damn it, I don’t need a traffic report. I could have told you that yesterday. That’s all you have so far? I thought you were supposed to be some hot shot investigator?”

“It takes time, Lola
. Look, I’m going to need a couple more days to find out what happened. There aren’t a lot of leads here for starters, and the cops aren’t talking. By the way, your uncle or whatever Softee was, his body in the trunk of my car doesn’t make it any easier for me to get police cooperation.”

“Then you had better figure something out
and fast or plan on taking out a loan. I don’t see that cash here, your girlfriend is going to get one hell of a last night to remember. Got it?”

“
I just need more time. Why is that so …”

“No,” she screamed and hung up.

“Sounded like that went pretty well, you want a beer?” Dog asked opening the cooler.

Chapter Sixty-One

Cleaning and reassembling my
Glock a half dozen times did nothing to calm my nerves.

“Jesus, you’re even driving me nuts,” Dog said.

“I feel like I should be doing something,”

“You are doing something, Dev
. You’re putting pressure on. If you’re going nuts, just think how crazy things probably are over at the Softee household right now.”

“Small consolation.
God I hope Jill is okay.”

“Com
e on, let’s take a look,” he set his empty next to the others on the counter.

“Take a look?”

“Yeah, Softee’s. Not gonna hurt anything to just cruise by. What? You think they’re looking out the window waiting for you? Besides I need to check the joint out.”

“What do you expect to find?”

“Find? Nothing. But while you’re going in the front door tomorrow night, I’ll be in the back. Be nice to have a rough idea of what I’ll be dealing with.”

“Hey Dog,
I don’t know if I’ve said thanks, but I can’t thank you enough for your help. You’ve been great.”

“Just remember, we’r
e even when this deal’s over.”

“Believe me
, if we never mentioned any of this again that would be okay with me. But, really I mean it, thanks.”

We went to some burger bar
named Charlie’s that Dog knew and oddly, I’d never heard of.

“Place was called Ted’s for about a thousand years
. Then a guy named Charlie bought it. I don’t know that he changed the menu, but at least they wash their hands now before they cook the burgers.”

There was a couple shooting pool at a table about six feet away
. I caught the woman staring at me a couple of different times. I guessed it was my nose. Eventually she said something to the guy she was with, he looked over at us a moment, shook his head. She rubbed his arm a few times and suddenly they were out the door and never finished their game.

Dog caught it, looked at me
, said,

“She must know you.”

“Look, I know I’ve said this before, but, well shouldn’t we be doing something?” I dragged my last French fry through a ketchup slick.

“We are doing something, you want another?” he asked, signaling the bartender with his empty glass.

I shook my head no.

“We’re waitin
’ till dark, then I’m gonna recon the place, maybe get a little head start. You’re gonna phone what’s-her-face…”

“Lola.”

“Tomorrow morning, you beg for more time, then agree to be there with the cash at ten tomorrow night.”

“Why ten?”

“You know, sometimes I wonder if there’s anyone home up there. ‘Cause the All Star game is tomorrow night, out on the West Coast. Ring any bells? They’re two hours behind us. Things will just be getting under way, and Softee’s little pal will be feeling the pressure.”