Bite Me (Devlin Haskell 3) (22 page)

He was in the
back booth, just behind the one I’d sat in yesterday. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was wearing the same clothes, only they looked a lot worse. He needed a shave and a very long, very hot shower. What a pair we made. Close to a dozen empty beer mugs and a half dozen shot glasses littered the table in front of him. There were maybe eight customers in the Coal Bin, every one of them staying clear of Louie. Marge, with the nuclear red hair, was pouring a shot of Sambuca as I walked in. She brought the shot, along with another mug of beer over to Louie.

“I’ll have
a Summit and better get a black coffee for Louie,” I said, once she waddled back behind the bar.

“He ain’t gonna like that.”

“Humor me.”

I walked to the back booth and sa
t across from Louie. He looked at me with glazed, bloodshot eyes, but I wasn’t sure he could see me. He gulped down a fair portion of beer, slammed the mug down harder than he intended. Beer dribbled down the corner of his chin it wasn’t like him to waste alcohol.

“So counselor,
seems you’ve had a busy day.”

He attempt
ed to focus for a brief moment, then his head rolled from side to side and he belched.

“Just doing
the public’s biding,” he said. Then grinned idiotically and lurched a hand toward his mug. He missed the handle, just pushed the mug across the table in my direction as it clanged off the empties scattered around, he seemed not to notice.

“Here Louie, compliments of your friend,” Marge said, then sneered at me.

“Love me?” Louie asked her.

At this point I had real concern
for him.

“
Louie, drink this,” I said, placing the coffee mug in front of him.

He took a sip,
and another, after the third sip he said, “Jesus, that’s coffee. I need a beer.”

“I know the feeling
, but I think we should probably just go home, drink some there, what do you think?”

We sat for a
nother year or two. I got two more cups of coffee into him.

“Louie, what do you say we head back to your place, crash for the night?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, then attempted to get to his feet and immediately fell back into the booth.

“Here let me give you a hand,” I said
. I almost threw my back out wrestling him into the Fiesta.

“What the hell’s your address?”
I was attempting to buckle him into the seat, the car was leaning toward the passenger side at close to a forty-five degree angle and I wasn’t sure the seat belt was long enough to reach around him.

“Damned if I can remember
.”

I’d been here before with people, usually dates I’d deliberately over served, which
was something that never seemed to work in my favor.

“Loui
e, Marge sent over a gallon of Sambuca to your place, she wants us to go get it, what’s the address.”

He rolled his head in my direction, attemp
ted to focus, then mumbled what I could only hope was his address and we were off.

I parked in front, led him up the front walk using his tie as a leash, it worked, more or less. He attempted to pull his keys out of his pocket, dropped them on the fron
t steps where I scooped them up. I opened the door, entered his living room and led him to a dilapidated couch. He wobbled for a brief moment, then collapsed face first onto the thing and was snoring in fifteen seconds.

I ex
amined his bed, decided not to chance it, showered quickly and settled into a tattered recliner in the opposite corner of the living room.

It was bright and sunny out when Louie’s coughing woke me. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, in a t-shirt, red
boxers and black socks. Not the vision you’d want on any given day and certainly not the first thing in the morning.

“Oh, fuck me,” he groaned
.

I thought that pretty much summed things up. He sat there for a few minutes, coughing, clearing his throat, in gener
al trying to focus before he rose to his feet. I thought it was pretty awful when he was seated on the edge of the couch, but the view once he stood was even worse.

“Tuck yourself in, man, Jesus.”

“Screw it, you want a beer?” he asked, lumbering into a small kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open, it grew quiet for a long moment. Then he groaned, “God damn it,” and the refrigerator door slammed shut. He reappeared a minute or two later empty handed.

“Guessing you heard what happened?” he said
, scratching himself in the kitchen doorway.

“Depends.
I heard you were taken off my case.”

“Pricks fired my ass.”

“Oh that, how come?”

“
Various infractions. I’m not sure really which one set them off, I mean there could be tons of reasons, but that heartless bitch…”

“Daphne
Cochrane?”

“…was involved.”

“She’s the one who called me. Told me to plead guilty and turn myself in to Manning because…”

“Actually, that’s still pretty good legal advice.”

“But, I didn’t do anything. Between him and that weasel cop Heller, those two would lock me up and just throw away the key.”

“Yeah, not your biggest fans,
I meant the turn yourself in was good advice, you got your pal in there, LaZelle, he wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Daft has a tendency to forget the innocent until guilty part when dealing with the lower strata of society.”

I ignored his lower strata
comment.

“I’m n
ot turning myself in until I figure out what happened. It still isn’t making any sense to me.”

“It’s abo
ut to get worse,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m guessing Daft didn’t tell you.”

“She didn’t say shit except that I should
plead guilty and turn myself in, immediately. Told her I didn’t do anything and all she said was ‘don’t use that tone with me’. Like she’s some damn school teacher.”

“Yeah, that
sounds like her,” Louie said, then gave a tremendous belch. “Oh man, much better, much better.”

“So, you said it’s going to get worse?”

“They found your pal, Farrell.” Louie said, lumbering back to the couch.

“Found him?”

“Hit and run. Someone phoned in an anonymous tip, gave the description, a red, ’95, Cadillac DeVille, a blue door on the passenger side, sound familiar.”

“That’s my car.”

“You think?” Louie said.

“T
hat’s probably the damage to my front end, right?”

“Pretty fair guess.”

“Someone phoned it in, let me guess, a female voice.”

“You got it. A
mazingly similar to the report of shots fired at that bullshit press conference those clowns had. I’m guessing voice comparison would match this to the press conference call and the report of your vehicle driving over by Thompson Barkwell’s place. Amazingly, all the calls were made from some untraceable, bogus phone. Seems like someone is really pissed off at you.”

“I seem
to have that effect on people. Did you ever get Barkwell’s autopsy report?”

“No, I was busy getting fired.”

“Think the Medical Examiner knows you’ve been fired?”

Louie shook his head, rubbed his eyes.

“Doubt it. They’ll know soon enough, though, Daft will probably have it up on Face Bag and Tawter, the bastards will probably have me disbarred by the end of the day.”

“Louie, let’s get cleaned up and
go get that autopsy report, while we still have time”

“
What? Do you think you’re going to actually accomplish something? I think I’d rather go back to the Coal Bin,” he said, then yawned and scratched himself.

“Even if it’s nothing, that would accomplish
more than sitting on my ass and feeling sorry for myself.”

“As your former legal council I advise you to flee the country,” he said, groaning to his feet.

“You serious?”

“No,
they’d probably nab you at the border anyway. Come on, you can drive me back to the Coal Bin.”

I looked at him, my mouth hanging open.

“Oh Jesus, will you relax, I gotta pick up my car,” he said.

Louie saw me and
waved as he stepped in the door, then marched directly over to the booth I was sitting in.

“
Been waiting long?” he asked.

“’B
out three hours.” I finished the last of my drink.

“Here
, you can read through this while I grab something. You want anything?” he said, then dropped a file on the table in front of me.

“Maybe anothe
r coffee.” I opened the file and started to slog through the technicalities of Thompson Barkwell’s autopsy report while Louie ordered.

He returned carrying
two Big Mac’s and my coffee. He also had French fries, some onion rings, a giant pink shake and some sort of dessert thing. He spread it out across the table and started cramming food in his mouth.

“Skip that technic
al bullshit,” he said, spitting a mouthful of French fries in my direction before slurping some of the pink shake. “Get over to page four, that’s the part that’s interesting, tells you the contents of the guy’s stomach.”

“Barkwell’s?”

“Who else?”

“Just wondered
, I can hardly wait.” I turned to page four, about halfway down Louie or someone had highlighted a paragraph;
‘
… partially digested rice and what appears to be the severed tip of an index finger. The finger tip appears to have come from the right hand of an adult Caucasian, aged between twenty-five and fifty. Separation occurred at the first joint. Examination suggests that severing possibly occurred from the deceased biting the finger tip and swallowing. Inner cheek, gum and tracheal bruising are consistent with the insertion of, and possible probing with, a foreign object. Possible effort to retrieve?’

“Someone cut a finger off and stu
ck it in some rice dish that Barkwell ate?” I said.

“Not exactly. He had
a meal, part or all of which was rice. At some point, someone stuck their hand in his mouth. Your invoice was crammed in the guy’s mouth, when they found him, right?’

“Yeah?
” I wasn’t getting up to speed with this.

“So
mebody crams your invoice into his mouth. He reacts, maybe it’s reflex, maybe he’s pissed off, maybe he’s just hungry, but he chomps the guys finger, then swallows the damn thing. Whoever it is tries to get it back.”

“Tries to get it
back? What the hell for?”

“Fingerprint
s for a starter? Maybe they’re just pissed off, I don’t know. We do know he swallowed the damn thing so they didn’t succeed.”

I was
suddenly thinking of Farrell getting out of the BMW the other day, rubbing Kiki across her ass, all that gauze wrapped around his right hand and the index finger.

“It was Farrell.”

“Or the broad.” Louie said, then crammed the final half of a Big Mac into his mouth.

“No, it was Farrell,” I went on to explain while he chewed.

“Well, then they should be able to put this together when they do the autopsy on Farrell.” Louie said. He was licking his finger tips, getting the last bit of whipped cream with chocolate sprinkles, his appetite seemed to be unfazed by our topic.

“Maybe a phone call
to the police would be helpful. You know, like in the movies, you’ve been kicked off the case, but you want to see the pursuit of justice all the same,” I said.

“That’
s the movies,” Louie said.

“I need your help her
e Louie, these people are trying to railroad me.”

“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. I’d say so far
, they’ve been pretty damn successful in screwing up both our lives.”

“Kiki,
Kiki, Kiki, Kiki,
Kiki.”

“God, would you knock it off
, you’re weirding me out, here.” Louie said.

We were sitting in hi
s car, amongst all the food wrappers, files, gas receipts and debris, parked in the KRAZ lot, waiting for something, anything to happen.

Farrell’s car
hadn’t moved and sat aging in place. Ideally Kiki would show up, spot us, realize the error of her ways and immediately confess, but so far that hadn’t happened. Right now, I was ready to settle for someone making a wrong turn and driving into the parking lot.

“
So, is this what you guys do all day?” Louie asked, he followed a Styrofoam cup dancing across the parking lot.

“Pretty much, it’s not all
gorgeous women and wild excite…”

“I could get used to this gig, man
. Just sit around, do nothing.”

“Yeah
, sort of like being a high buck lawyer.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said.

We had the radio on, some feminist talk show dealing with what was wrong with men. All the phone lines were jammed and they were going to extend the discussion into the next hour.

A minute or two before fi
ve-thirty I tuned to the radio to KRAZ. On cue the patriotic music started and then we heard Farrell’s voice, giving their post office box address, before slipping into a rant on banker controlled communist Washington.

“This
the same shit you heard before?” Louie asked.

“Hard to say, it all sounds the
same to tell you the truth. It’s so damn dull I usually nod off before he’s even finished. I didn’t catch on until he made a mistake, flubbed a word, coughed, something like that.”

“Absolute nut case
is what they are,” Louie said. He was shaking his head as he listened to Farrell’s monotone rant.

“So, if
Kiki isn’t here, how are they doing this?” I asked.

“I’m guessing
it would be pretty simple to access their computer from somewhere off site, especially if she was involved to begin with. She could be replaying this shit and sunning herself on a beach right now.”

“In other words, multi
tasking,” I said.

“They’ve been known to do that.”

“You think she’s gone?”

“I’d say there’s a reasonable chance she may
have fled the state. I would if it was me,” he said.

“I
’m thinking about how she got my car,” I said, drumming my fingers on the glove compartment, I had it open as a tray for my empty coffee cup.

“And?”

“Like I said, I’m thinking.”

“Hotwire it, I guess,
” Louie said.

“Except, I’d notice someone had been screwing with the ignition, wouldn’t I?”

“Yeah, probably.”

On the radio Farrell suddenly st
umbled over the word ‘anarchists’ then kept on reading.

“There, I heard that shit before,” I said.

“What?”

“Him screwing up ‘anarchist’
, then just keeps right on going. Come on,” I said, and stepped out of the car.

“Where’
re you going?”

“Up t
o their office. I’ll lay you odds no one is even in there.”

“You sure?” Louie was still seated behind the wh
eel, calling to me out the driver’s window.

“Come on, man.”

By the time we’d climbed the stairs to the sixth floor Louie was scarlet faced and looked like he was going to have a coronary right there in the hallway.

“Jesus, my heart’s beating like a rabbit,” he said, gasping for breath.

“Must be the altitude, come on, it’s just down here.” I led the way.

The
wooden door to the office was locked, the hand written sign, ‘KRAZ National Headquarters’ was still crookedly taped above the mail slot. Looking through the slot I could see a pile of envelopes and circulars on the floor, the lights seemed to be off.

“Damn it
, I don’t have my tool kit,” I said.

“Tool kit?” Louie said
he was slowly waddling down the hall behind me.

“Yeah, to get inside.”

He gave me a long look, then knocked on the door. No answer.

“I knew
it,” I said.

“Here,” he pushed me aside,
glanced back down the hall, then gave the door a solid hip check, then another and it suddenly flew open, bouncing off the front of the desk just a foot and a half inside.

“Problem solved,” Louie
said and smiled.

I stepped inside, listened for an alarm,
but didn’t hear anything. Louie made his way to the chair behind the desk and sat down.

“God, those steps damn near killed me. How high up are we?”
He was still breathing heavily.

“Six floors.”

“Six, that all?”

“Six.”

“Gotta be more like ten, I’d get up and check, but I’m too exhausted.”

The pile of mail hadn’t been touched in four days. Beyond that I couldn’t tell that anything had changed. The place looked as messy and disorganized as ever.

“This has all the ear marks of people slipping under the radar,” Louie said, looking around.

“Well yeah, exce
pt two of them are dead.”

“Plus your pal
over at the U.”

“Doctor Death.
”

“Yeah, that
makes three.” Louie said, looking sideways at the desk like he was going to go through the drawers.

“Can’t be long before Manning washes up on shore
, here. Don’t touch anything in this place.”

“
Oops, okay, just my fat ass on this chair.”

I did a very quick walk through the place and came up with nothing.

“Might as well go, we’re not gonna learn anything else here,” I said. Louie was still huffing and puffing in the desk chair.