Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) (4 page)

“I hope not. I don’t think there will be. But
,
I’ll give you this, it’s pretty strange.”

“Yeah and not the sort
of
publicity we’re looking for.”

“I don’t know
, you could probably get a sell
out crowd showing up just to see if anything was going to happen.
People dig this weird shit
, look at all the folks into the whole vampire thing
,
”
I said, then sipped.

“That is s
o not the sort of fans we’re looking for. We’ve worked really hard to get beyond the image of strippers on roller skates and then something like this comes along.”

“Maybe it
’
s someone who gets their kicks getting headl
ines, you know their
fifteen minutes of fame
sort of
deal. If that doesn’t happen
, if you keep it quiet,
maybe the guy will just go away.”

“Or get more aggressive,” she said.

“There is that.”

“Who would let some guy cut off their finger?” she said, then shuddered swallowing her beer.

“I’ve been thinking about that. At first I was thinking, it’s him,
you know some nut case doing it to himself
but there are too many middle fingers for one guy. Then, I thought maybe homeless people,
druggies,
but that seems sort of far fetched. I’m guessing someone with ready access.”

“Ready access? To fingers? You gotta be kidding.
How does that work?
”

“Maybe it’s someone who works in a hospital or a morgue or a funeral home, something along those lines.”

“Oh, t
hat’s comforting.”

“Just thinking out loud.”

“You hear back from Miss Cosmopolitan
?”
she asked, moving quickly away from the subject of fingers.

“No, not
really
interested,” I said. I saw no benefit admitting I heard Carol’s stupid French phone message. I could only hope little old Nicholas was just that, little.

“Need a hug?”

“What?”

“Get over here
,
stupid,” she said and took her glasses off.

“I wrote the
Hustlers’
phone
number
on the
back of my card
,
here,
” Justine said, then
pushed her
card
next to my coffee cup. It was almost six in the morning and if I was going to be up
at this hour
I was in desperate need of coffee and lots of it.

Justine was already dressed in
blue hospital scrubs, d
oing something to her eyes using a brush and a
mirror while she sat at her
kitchen counter.

“Jimmy is the manager’s name, if he’s not the guy to talk to he’ll know who is. He’s a little hard to understand,
you know,
the accent.”

“I’ll give him a call this morning. They flying in tomorrow?”

She glanced over at me.

“No, they’re on a team bus, coming out of
Denver
. They’
re probably
west of
Omaha
right now,
somewhere
in the middle of
Nebraska
.”

“Gee, the romance of show biz.”

“
Denver
’s a nice town.”

“I wasn’t referring to
Denver
.”

“Oh yeah, that. We
should
be looking pretty good to them by the time they get up here. I just hope everything
goes okay and
no
thing happens while they’re in town
.
”

“I’ll make
sure
nothing happens
.”

“Let’s hope,” she said.

It was almost noon before I reached Jimmy McNaughton on his phone.
I’d spent the morning forcing myself to work through the stack of job applications. Between Jimmy’s
accent and phone coverage in the middle of
Nebraska
I could
only
make out about every thi
rd word he said. But I got the g
ist of it. He gave me the name of their hotel. When they expected to
arrive and then casually added,
“Looking forward to meeting you
,
mate. Had another little surprise waiting for us last night.”

“A surprise?”

“Taped to the door of the bus. An env
elope addressed
to
Harlotte, another
finger inside.”

“She okay?”

“Didn’t want to bother her about it.”

“What’d
Denver
police say?”

“Didn’t care
to wait
,
to tell you the truth
. The girl
s have
a schedule to keep. We’d lose a day waiting
for them to tell us I was right,
it was a finger.
You’d think your man would be running out of mates at this point.”

“How many does that make?”

“Four
, that we
know of.”

“All the middle finger?”

“Right.”

“You said four
you know of, you think there may be more than that?”

“I’m not sure what to think.”

“Let me do some checking on this end, I’ll be waiting for you at the hotel.”

“Cheers,” Jimmy said and hung up.

“Homicide” the voice answered three minutes later.

“Detective Manning,” I said, against my better judgment.

“Who’s calling?”

“Devlin Haskell,
”
knowing this was bound to slow things up.

“Just a minute.”

I knew it wouldn’t be a minute, or two or
even
three. I waited for close to ten
, was just a
bout to hang up when he graced me with his voice.

“Manning.”

“Detective Manning, Devlin Haskell.”

“Oh, damn it, it’s you calling. I thought they said someone was calling you in DOA. My mistake,” he said, then cracked the ever present piece of gum into the phone.

“Sorry to ruin your day, Detective.”

“I’m used to it,” he said, not joking.

“Say
,
I just wanted to touch base with you. I’m providing security for an individual and she…”

“
Security? You?
She must be nuts.”

I ignored his comment.

“She’s been receiving threats
for some time. The thing
’
s escalated to
some nut case mailing her
human
fingers. She started receiving…
”

“This that English Roller Derby broad, Harlotte Davidson?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

“They’re heading our way from
Denver
?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re aware of it.”

“What are
you
doing about it?”

“Doing about it?”

“Yeah, is there a plan, are you putting
extra
people on?”

“Extra people? Have you read the damn newspapers
or turned off the cartoons and watched the news
the l
ast couple
years? We’re down by almost fifteen percent
. Put some people on, gee, why didn’t I think of that
?
Tell you what, I’ll just
walk over to the squad room, you know find a-half-dozen guys who are sitting around eating doughnuts and tell them to stand by.
In fact
,
g
ood thing you called, now you can tell them, here hang on a minute, just let me put you on speaker phone.”

“I’ll take that as a no, there isn’t a plan.”

“A plan, yeah I got a plan. We’re watching every post office, one of those envelopes comes in with no return address we’ll be the first to let you know.”

“They weren’t all mailed, the fingers.”

“You must be referring to
Chicago
where the guy slipped it under the door of the hotel room?”

“Not just Chicago, Detective.”

“You mean the envelope taped to the door of the bus in
Denver
last night
? Checked out like all the others.”

“Have you guys thought of maybe runni
ng the fingerprint on the thing.
I mean
,
does it strike you
as strange you got
four
people missing a finger and no one has reported an assault or a body
or a missing person or anything?
”

“Wow, Sherlock, amazing you aren’t a cop with all those great ideas you have. Yeah, I think the various departments thought about running the fingerprint, just one problem
,
there isn’t one.”

“Isn’t one?”

“The finger print, it’s missing. Whoever’s doing this cut
s
off the finger tip. Anything else you care to add?
Pardon the pun,
”
Manning chuckled at his humor.

“Do you have a plan?”
I asked again, not sounding too sure.

“A plan? Yeah, I got a plan. Hope nothing happens here and that they’re all out of our jurisdiction sooner rather than later. How’s that sound to you, Haskell?”

“Sounds like a pl
an detective
.”

“Always a pleasure,” he said
,
and hung up.

Ch
apter Six

Jimmy McNaughton and the
Hasting
s Hustlers arrived about seven that night. They looked like you’d expect after riding on a bus for a thousand hours from
Denver
up
to
St. Paul
, tired and cranky.

“Right, the girls will check in, meet in the lobby in an hour or so. I’d say that gives us just enough time to get acquainted over a pint
. Lead on, mate,
”
Jimmy said
,
fleeing the checkin scene in the lobby and
sounding like he could use a break from the ladies
.

I had a feeling we
were going to get along just fine.

“Two more, please,” Jimmy signaled to the bartender
twenty minutes later, then followed her with his eyes
as she walked down the bar to
ward
the beer taps.

“You were telling me about your plans, what you’ve been doing with Harlotte.”

“What we’ve been doing,” he said
,
turning back to me
and running a hand over his shaved head
, “is just running a bit of interference. Bout all we can do
, we’ve got her ring fenced
.
There’s another girl shares the room with her, a black belt in karate. We check the mail. We’ll
post someone from the hotel staff outside her door
the entire time we’re here
. I
’ll
esc
ort her to and from the track. If s
he does an interview, I’
ll be
there standing next to her. We scrutinize everyone who’s going to be near her, hell
,
we
’ll
even check her meals before they’re placed in front of her.”

“How’s she holding up?”

“
Harlotte? P
retty well. Don’t let th
e name fool you, she’s the strong
silent type.”

I grinned.

“No really, she is. The girls go out, Harlottes’ the one in the corner drinking a coke. She might order a white wine if she was really going to celebrate, but it would take her all night to finish a glass. She calls home every night, talks to the kids and her husband for ten minutes.”

“We talking about the same Harlotte Davidson?”

“
Husband’s a primary school teacher.
That’s showbiz,” Jimmy said.

He wasn’t kidding, another pint later and we were joined by Harlotte and a raven haired beauty
intro
duced as Emma Babe. Emma was Harlotte’s
black belt roo
m
mate.