Bite Me (Devlin Haskell 3) (8 page)

We went to the
hardware store, and the dry cleaners, the grocery store, picked up some sort of make up cream at the hairdressers, got some fish oil tablets at a health food store. With all the driving around I had to refill my gas tank. We’d been gone the better part of three hours when I pulled into the alley behind Kiki’s house. I noticed a broken gin bottle in the alley, but didn’t pay much attention to it.

“I hope
Gary was all right, I didn’t think we’d be gone this long,” she said.

I gathered
up a handful of shopping bags from my back seat, grabbed the twelve pack of diet Coke she couldn’t live without. Kiki held a cardboard flat filled with little pink flowers in plastic trays.

“He’ll be fine, with any luck he’
s finished, I have to check him back in early this afternoon.”

“
Check him back in?” she asked, we were climbing the steps to her kitchen door. She’d just set the cardboard flat on the bottom step.

“Oh, he’s in some post treatment joint, they just ke
ep close tabs on the guy is all, don’t want him out drinking, running with the wrong crowd, you know.”

“You knew this and
you left him alone in my house? Jesus, Dev, I offered him a drink, told him where the beer and wine and all my liquor was,” she was hurrying now, quickly pushing into the kitchen. I dropped all the shopping bags next to the kitchen counter.

“Gary, Gary we’re back.
Gary?” she called, walking quickly down the hall.

“Will you relax, he’s fine, Jesus, how much trouble…”

I heard her scream from the bedroom and ran down the hall. She stood in the doorway with a hand to her mouth, a shocked look on her face. I stared over her shoulder. It looked like Gary had taken one of the gallon cans of paint and just flung the contents. The paint was splashed across wall, over the woodwork, and puddled onto the hardwood floor. Long drip marks ran down the wall.

“
Christ, it’s not even the right color,” I said.

“Oh my God, what in the hell… Jesus,
my clothes,” she screamed.

Bras and thongs were scattered across the floor on the far side of her bed
.

“You didn’
t leave them there?”

“Me? No you idiot, of course I didn’
t leave them there. Oh my god, he’s ruined my bedroom. He’s ruined it. Your pervert friend has ruined my bedroom, Dev.”

“Look,
Kiki, I don’t know what to say, I didn’t think…”

“
Stop right there. Oh my god, you complete and utter idiot,” she screamed and picked up an empty bottle of lubricant off the floor next to her scattered thongs.

“Maybe now’
s not the best time for that,” I said, then ducked as she threw the bottle at me.

“Get out of my house,” she screamed.

“Look, maybe I could help clean…”

“Get out of my god damned house you ass
hole, get out, get out, get out!”

I deci
ded not to wait until the knife came out. I dashed through the kitchen and out the back door.

“C
all you later,” I yelled as I jumped off the porch, ran to my car and drove off.

I had no idea where to
start looking for Gary so I went to The Spot. I stuck my head in the door and asked Jimmy.

“Hey, has G
ary Hobson been in here today?”

“He quit
drinking, Dev. Went to some high price treatment facility.”

“Call me if you see him, okay.”

“Yeah, but he won’t be in here, like I said, he quit.”

I
crossed the street to my office, phoned a couple of hospitals, the Detox unit, the police. Nothing. About forty-five minutes later I began getting phone calls from Serenity Center. The calls continued every fifteen minutes. I really didn’t want to talk with them so I let the calls drop into my message center.

Kiki
phoned sometime after
seven that night. I was in the process of stuffing the last of a BBQ cheeseburger from McDonald’s into my mouth and washing it down with a Summit beer. I really didn’t want to talk to her, either, but I answered anyway.

“
Kiki?”

“He’s here,” she whispered.

“Who? Gary, he came back?”

“Apparently he never left. I was doing all my laundry, again,” she paused for empha
sis. “I found him passed out in the guest bedroom down in the basement. You better get over here, right away, before he wakes up or I’m calling the cops.”

I didn’t have to be told twice.

Gary was on the floor and out cold. He must have rolled off the bed. He lay wedged between the bed and the basement wall. His face looked like it had gone about three rounds with the concrete floor when he fell. He had dried blood below his nose, a split bottom lip and a gash on his cheekbone.

“Did you do that to him?” I asked
Kiki.

“If I’d done it he’d look a lot worse, believe me,” she sneered.

I believed her.

“
Gary, hey Gary,” I was shaking his foot, attempting to wake him up.

“Just get him t
he hell out of my house, now,” she demanded.

“Look. I’m trying to, but he’s out cold.”

“I want him out of here before he throws up all over the place. God, you and your friends,” she said, like this was an everyday occurrence instead of just the fourth time I’d ever been in her house.

“Can you help me carry him?”

“Me?”

“If you can just help me get him up the basement steps, then I can drag him out the door.” I explained.

“I just don’t want him to throw up,” she shuddered.

“He won’t, look, he’s dead to the world,” I shook
Gary’s foot again and got no reaction.

“Oh, that’s great,” she said, then crossed her arms, cocked a hip and thrust her bottom lip out.

“Just grab his feet, okay?”

“Ugh,” but she did it.

I held Gary beneath his arms and wrestled him up Kiki’s ancient basement stairs. Talk about dead weight, but eventually we got him up into the kitchen.

“Can you get the back
door for me?”

She let go of his ankles
and they dropped with a thunk as she hurried to the back door and opened it. I dragged Gary out the door and across the porch.

“You better get your ass back here tomorrow and fix the
fucking mess he left here.”

“Me?”

“God,” she screamed, then slammed the kitchen door and turned off the porch light. I dragged Gary down the steps and out to my car in the dark. I stuffed him in the back seat, checked for a pulse once I got him in, then headed off in the direction of Serenity Center.

I answered my phone
on the drive to Serenity.

“Haskell Investigations,” I was pretty sure I knew who it would be.

“Mister Devlin Haskell, please. This is Gordon Sweitzer, provost at the Serenity Center.

“Yes,
Mister Sweitzer, I’m enroute to your facility now. Should be there within the next fifteen minutes,” I put a little cheer into my voice and tried to keep things positive.

“You
do realize you are in gross violation of your sworn pledge.”

“Yeah, well something unexpected came up.”

“You may find this amusing, Mister Haskell, but I can assure you there is nothing funny about this situation. Mister Hobson is much like a fragile flower, and you’re responsible for leaving him out in the sun too long, far too long.”

“Believe me he wasn’t in the sun.”

“Excuse me?”

“No problem. See you shortly,” I said and hung up.

I drove on for a few more minutes when I heard Gary cough from the back seat and suddenly he sat up and breathed on me. I put down the window.

“Let’s stop for a drink,” he said, clearly having difficulty forming the words.

“I’d love to Gary, but I think we should probably take a pass on that tonight, I’ve got to drop you off, get home myself. Maybe some other time.”

“Then I better just get out
here,” he said. At the moment we were in the center lane of I-94, doing a little over seventy-five.

“Tell
you what, why don’t you just lie back down, rest your eyes. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“You’ll tell me? Promise?” he said laying back down.

“I promise, Gary. Rest your eyes,” we were maybe five minutes away.

The remain
der of the ride was uneventful. Gary snored in the back seat. I sort of toyed with how I was going to play the Serenity folks, decided there wasn’t much to say other than to hand Gary over and suggest that there might be a flaw or two in their after treatment approach. Then run like hell.

I pulled up in front of
the facility. The front porch light was on, the porch uninhabited. The Serenity House looked to be in lock-down mode.

I turned off my car, looked into the back seat where
Gary was snoring soundly.

“Rise and shine sleeping beauty,” I called, then shook him when I didn’t get a response.

Gary groaned and grunted, but eventually, with some vigorous shaking he sat up and leaned forward on the front seat.

“Are we there?”

“We are,” I answered.

Gary
looked at me through bleary, bloodshot eyes and then threw up, all over me and the front seat of my car. Projectile vomiting, as they say, he even managed to get the inside of the windshield. I didn’t have a chance to recoil. I just sat there for a long moment as a lot of liquor and what looked like beef hash, slowly dripped off my dashboard.

“You finished?” I asked.

He threw up again, but this time on the back seat.

I got out of the car, opened the back door, pulled
Gary out and half carried, half steered him toward the front porch. I more or less man handled him up the steps, leaned him against the wall, just below the brass plaque that said you are at a secure facility ring the bell for service. I did just that, rang the bell the bell for service, twice, as a matter of fact.

I
was back at my car, standing with the driver’s door open, debating about getting back in, when they opened the front door. Gary had slithered off to the side, and was leaning against the door when it opened. He fell backward, I heard the thump from out on the street as his head bounced off the polished wood porch floor. He groaned, rolled sideways, and then threw up again.

I was going to yell something at the attendant, thought better of it, slid behind the wheel of my disgusting car and drove home.

I stripped my clothes
off out in my back yard in the dark and just tossed everything in the trash. I removed anything worthwhile from my wallet, then discarded that with the clothes. I took a very long shower, drank a very large Jameson and went to bed.

Kiki
’s seven-thirty call the following morning woke me.

“What time are you planning to come over here and fix this major league fuck up?” she asked before I had a chance to answer hello.

“Who is this?” I groaned.

“How many home
s have you ruined this week?”

“Oh, hi Kiki. T
oday?”

“Yes today. And just so you know, I have to leave for an investors meeting at K
-R-A-Z no later than eleven-thirty.”

“Yeah, well, see I have to get my car cleaned.”

“Your car? You mean that wreck you drive around town takes precedence over the disaster you two idiots left in my bedroom?”

“
But, I didn’t do anything,” I pleaded.

“Oh really? Well how in
the hell did your friend find his way to my door. Your dreadful painter extraordinaire, as you called him. He didn’t just wander in and destroy my house on his own. You brought his ass in here, then left him here to ruin my bedroom, drink all my gin, perform sex acts with my leopard skin thong, pass out in my…”

“I get the point,
Kiki, okay. We had a bit of an accident on the way home. I have to deal with that.”

“
An accident. You didn’t let him drive, did you?”

“No, he just threw up all over me and the inside of my car, twice.”

“Serves you right.”

“Thanks.”

“So what time do you plan on being here, I’ve got a meeting that…”

“I know
, a meeting that you have to leave for no later than eleven-thirty. I’ll be there before then, I’m not sure how long it will take to get my car cleaned out.”

“You let it sit, overnight, with, with all that blicky stuff all over?”

“I did.”

“Oh gross.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Just get over here and get this
mess cleaned up,” then she hung up.

I rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep, it didn’t work.

I was ringing Kiki’s kitchen doorbell at eleven-fifteen.

“Come in. Thank you for coming,” she
called from the far side of the kitchen counter and sounding like she didn’t mean one word of it.

“Yeah
sure. Look which paint is the right one,” I said. There were two gallon cans on the kitchen floor, next to the door.

“Like I told that
Gary person, yesterday, I’m not sure. Can’t you just put a little dot of it somewhere and see if it matches?” she said.

Actually that sounded like a pretty good idea, but I didn’t
plan to let her know that.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Well, I found some sandpaper in the basement, you’ll have to get all the drip marks off the wall before you even begin. Just for the record, I don’t want to see that psychotic Gary person over here or anywhere for that matter, ever again.”

“This may come as some surprise
, but I sort of feel the same way.”

“What
in the hell were you thinking?”

“Do you think I would have brought him over
here, if I knew he was going to do an Amy Winehouse on you?” I said.

“Look, I have to get to this investors meeting, just get the problem taken care of. Can you do that much? Not make things in there any worse.”

I nodded then stared as she walked out the back door, across the yard and into her garage. Even mad at me and certifiable, she looked hot.