Merlot Read online

  “Osborne, he’s got her out there somewhere, I just know it, just know it!” Lucerne ranted, driving himself half crazy. He ignored the faint pounding coming from the steel plate wall behind him. He was sure he could find her in a minute or two, rescue her from Osborne’s clutches, and then just drive away.

  “Back in a minute,” he said, pounding on the wall, too preoccupied to realize neither of his brothers would be able to hear him.

  Daphne was enraged, knowing full well Lucerne would never find her with this big clunky armored car in the way. She stormed toward the driver’s side just as the door opened and the driver stepped down.

  “What the hell are you doing? Move that thing. I’m looking for my ride here.

  He’ll never see me with you parked here!” As she sprayed spittle, it never dawned on her that drivers of armored cars typically didn’t wear Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirts.

  “You’re pretty hard to miss. Wouldn’t hurt you to drag that fat ass down a couple of blocks, then just keep on going,” Lucerne said. He quickly moved into the crowd, pushing toward the makeshift stage, keeping his thirty-eight close.

  “Shit, there he goes! Lucerne, God damn it! I knew it. We are fucked man, major league fucked!” Elvis said, looking back at Mendel, his good eye wide, shaking his head.

  “You sure?” Mendel shouted, half jumping across Merlot, dragging his boot back over Merlot to look out the window.

  “Oh my God!” Merlot screamed.

  “It’s okay, Tony, it’s okay,” Cindy said, stroking Merlot’s hair.

  “God damn, I’m gonna have to go and get that dumb bastard,” Mendel said, leaning his AK against the wall. “Watch these two, I’ll be back in one minute. Now you stay put, E, you hear me?”

  Elvis nodded, his one good eye looking wild as Mendel opened the door, stepped out, and stuck his head back in.

  “One minute, E. I’ll get him, one minute, I’ll be back. I promise.”

  As soon as the door closed Elvis peered out the corner of the oval window and watched Mendel disappear into the crowd.

  Merlot had always wondered what he would do if the time ever came to show real cajones. He swallowed hard, grabbed the revolver stuffed in his waistband and thought, my ass really hurts!

  He shot a quick glance at Cindy. Then rose to his knees and pressed the barrel firmly against the back of Elvis’s head, pushing his face against the oval window.

  “Ahh, Jesus, don’t, my nose, my nose, God, you’re hurting me!”

  “Don’t move, or so help me!”

  Elvis exhaled loudly through his mouth, drooling and steaming a portion of the window,

  “Don’t you go shootin that thing, mister. Just take her easy.”

  “Lay down,” Merlot instructed, at the same time prying Elvis’s hand from the AK and handing it to Cindy.

  She grabbed the weapon, shouldered it like a pro, and pushed the barrel into the back of Elvis’s head.

  “I’ve got four brothers,” she said in response to Merlot’s surprised glance.

  Merlot opened the door, grabbed a trash bag as he backed out, “I’ll get help. Tell anyone who looks in to get the cops.”

  * * *

  “Hurry, Milton, hurry,” Osborne said half pushing Milton down the stairs with one hand while spraying Lysol along the handrail with the other. They were approaching the bottom of the stairs. Osborne could see the milling crowd just beyond the door.

  “Milton, get the door, get the door,” Osborne instructed, brushing his sleeves and adjusting the lapels of his sport coat. “Milton, will you get the door, please!” he yelled.

  Milton weaved in Osborne’s direction, stared through glassy eyes before he turned, opened the large door, and crashed to the sidewalk like a collapsing chimney. He bounced once and his body wedged the door open.

  “Oh, for heavens sake, Milton!” Osborne scolded, stepping out onto the sidewalk.

  * * *

  Merlot, carried a trash bag stuffed with currency and the revolver stuffed in his waistband. He painfully hobbled around the edge of the crowd to the front door of the Beaver Hut, just as Osborne appeared in the open doorway.

  “My friends, my good friends, come in and enjoy these tempting feminine treats in air-conditioned comfort! Free drinks to our first fifty guests!”

  Merlot didn’t notice Milton on the ground until he had stumbled over the body.

  “Jesus Christ! What’s with him? Is he dead?” Merlot asked.

  “Oh, he’ll be fine. Please, please come in and… DiMento? Is that you?” Osborne asked, scanning what remained of Merlot’s disguise, genuinely confused.

  “Yeah, it’s me Osborne, here’s your payment, in full, we’re even,” he gasped handing the trash bag to Osborne as a stab of pain slashed across his rear. “Ahh, God!” he groaned.

  Osborne snatched the bag from Merlot’s hand, opened it, and stuck his head in for a quick look. In the half second it took to register what was in the bag he wrenched it closed and without another word fled up the stairs, leaving Merlot in the doorway.

  Merlot detected a commotion near the armored car. He turned to make his way back to Cindy just as a large, hairy, bearded giant with a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt hovered over him.

  “Where’s Osborne?” Lucerne asked, not recognizing Merlot without his wig and mirrored glasses.

  Merlot recognized him as one of the robbers from the bank.

  “Just ran up those stairs, office at the top on the left. Can’t miss it,” he offered.

  Lucerne stepped over Milton and quickly dashed up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

  No sooner had he disappeared from sight when police officers wrestled a similar guy to the ground just ten feet away.

  Mendel screamed at the top of his lungs, “Lucerne, you son-of-a-bitch, Lucerne!”

  * * *

  “Officer, officer, I saw one of them. He yelled at me and ran toward the building,” Daphne said tapping a police officer on the shoulder. They were gathered around a woman in a brown polyester outfit with her arms crossed, talking calmly at the rear of the armored car. Some guy with bloody toilet paper crammed up his nose was handcuffed and being placed in the back of a squad car.

  “Lady,” the officer said to Daphne. “I told you before if you didn’t leave the area I was going to place you under arrest.” He slapped a cuff on one of her sunburned wrists, forcefully spun her around and cuffed her other wrist.

  “But, I saw him, he climbed out of the armored car, and he went into the building. I talked to him, I told him not to park there,” Daphne said as she was led away.

  * * *

  Osborne dashed up to his office, closed the door behind him, then held the bag open. It was stuffed with bundles of currency. He inhaled deeply breathing in the sickly sweet smell of currency.

  He figured he had better get it tucked away safely. He was just cramming the last of the bag into the safe when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Osborne?”

  He jumped, slammed the safe door closed with his foot then turned around to look at a hairy giant in a sweaty Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt pointing a gun at him.

  “Changed your clothes, I see,” Lucerne growled, surprised Osborne wasn’t still wearing his tux.

  “Clothes?”

  “So where’s Tracey, what’d you do with her?”

  Osborne raised his hands slowly.

  “I can assure you, I have absolutely no idea what in God’s name you are talking about,” he answered calmly.

  “You got one more chance to answer me, proper like, or we’re gonna dance,” Lucerne said, his color visibly rising, eyes glaring.

  “Look, I can assure you, I know nothing of this, this Tracey woman. I’ve a number of girls here. Help yourself. Find one you like.”

  “That your game, is it? You think you can treat a pretty lady like that, make her dance with you, take time away from her work. You do that to all your vice presidents?” Lucerne advanced toward Osborne.

  “What on ea
rth are you babbling about?”

  “I’ll show you what I’m babbling about!” Lucerne screamed, picking Osborne up by the lapels, and throwing him through the office window.

  “Third one might be up there,” a Sergeant said just as Osborne crashed through the office window dropping almost on top of Milton.

  They raced up the stairs, approaching the second-floor office cautiously. Lucerne sat calmly behind Osborne’s desk. His hand in plain view, the thirty-eight at the far edge of the desk.

  “Come on in, fellas. Look, I ain’t gonna resist no arrest or nothing, I got enough problems to worry about already.”

  * * *

  The hypo they gave Merlot and the subsequent medications knocked him out for the night. He was lying facedown with the middle section of the hospital bed cranked up. He wore a hospital gown that exposed his wound to his mother, sitting in the chair opposite his bed.

  Cindy knocked on the doorframe as she entered the room.

  “Tony?”

  “Oh God,” Merlot groaned.

  “Well, it doesn’t look so bad from here,” she said, trying to make the best of the situation.

  “You call him Tony?” asked Rita DiMento, taking an instant liking to this girl. “You know we named Anthony, after his father, my Tony.”

  “Mrs. DiMento, so nice to meet you. I’m Cindy.”

  “Oh, you’re the girl who was with him. He kept calling your name.”

  “Oh God!” Merlot said into his pillow.

  “He saved my life! Hey, Tony, look, you’re the big headline!” Cindy laughed reading the headline, “Man Rear Ends Bank Robbers!”

  “God!” Merlot groaned.

  * * *

  In the end, Merlot was the only one who ever knew about his attempt to rob the bank. All questions were overwhelmed by the fact that he had been shot, held hostage, and had ultimately overpowered one of the bank robbers, leading to the arrest and capture of all three Ditschler brothers.

  Otto O’Malley was credited with, if not foiling, at least altering their getaway attempt. Police later discovered an unregistered Saab parked next to a bank Dumpster. The vehicle was devoid of fingerprints with the exception of a perfect left-hand print belonging to Mendel Ditschler on the hood of the car. After careful consideration authorities surmised that the Saab was to be used as a second getaway car.

  * * *

  Two months later, just before Halloween. Merlot was standing at the bar, watching Cindy sip a glass of red wine as she read him the latest article concerning the bank-robbery trial.

  “Noted strip club owner and reputed mobster Declan Osborne has been found guilty of being an accessory to the crime as well as guilty of receiving stolen goods from last August’s botched bank robbery.

  Portrayed as the mastermind of the comically ill-fated scheme, Osborne is currently awaiting sentencing while recovering from injuries received during his unsuccessful escape attempt from a second-floor office. Throughout the trial he denied any involvement in the robbery. However, four sets of circumstances seemed to outweigh his claims and after thirty minutes of deliberation the jury found him guilty.

  The three Ditschler brothers, convicted of carrying out the actual robbery, fled directly to Mr. Osborne’s place of business, a Minneapolis entertainment club known as the Beaver Hut.

  Second, one of the convicted bank robbers, Lucerne Ditschler, testified under oath that after robbing the bank he intentionally drove to the Beaver Hut for the express purpose of meeting with Osborne.

  Third, approximately one-third of the stolen funds, in stacks of banded currency identical to those recovered from the stolen armored car, were found crammed into an office safe just moments after Osborne’s attempted escape. These same funds were identified by the Minnesota State Office of Forensics as containing a residue of bacon grease and batter consistent with that used at a series of State Fair stands.

  “I still say that guy is really weird,” Cindy said offhandedly, visualizing Otto sweating in a jersey, zinc oxide over the better part of his face, leaving a streak with his nose down the glass of her teller window. She shuddered before continuing,

  “Anyway, forget him.”

  “Fourth, the funds discovered in Osborne’s office safe were wrapped in a green plastic garbage bag identical to the bags used in the robbery. Fingerprints of the bank robbers as well as blood and fingerprints from wounded hostage Anthony DiMento were on the bag. When faced with this overwhelming evidence, Osborne claimed to have received the funds from wounded hostage DiMento.’

  Osborne’s second-in-command and presumed go-between, local mob enforcer Milton Twiddle, was arrested and taken into custody at the same time as Osborne. Twiddle was convicted last week on charges of acting as an accessory to the crime. Currently awaiting sentencing, Twiddle is confined to a high-security prison hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, at the insistence of the United State’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

  “You know the part I don’t get, Tony,” she said, putting the paper down and looking at Merlot. “Why did you take that bag of money with you? Why didn’t you just start screaming for help, like I did? God, I mean how dumb were those guys? There were about a thousand cops around. Why did they even stop at that place?”

  Merlot gave his practiced answer, the same one he’d given her since the morning she met his mom.

  “I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to get those guys after they took you hostage, and I was afraid they’d get away.”

  He waited a beat or two. Then just as he was about to suggest they grab something to eat, she struck.

  “So, okay, I mean I get all that, but the wig, your disguise, the gun, what was all that again?”

  “I told you a thousand times, I was going to ask you out, pretend I was a different guy.”

  “But why would…”

  Merlot quickly kissed her.

  “Why…”

  He continued to kiss her, getting a charge, just like the very first time.

  “Let’s get something to eat and then go home,” he whispered in her ear. “See how things go from there.”

  Check out the sample of Russian Roulette just after my thank you and list of Books.

  Thanks for taking time to read Mr. Softee. I’ve been a soldier, a bartender, a seller of designer cakes, a painter and regularly play bagpipes with the Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band. I live with my extremely patient wife in St. Paul, Minnesota and Dublin, Ireland. Again many thanks for your time. If you enjoyed this book please tell 2-300 of your closest friends and don’t miss these other titles;

  Baby Grand

  Chow For Now

  Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick

  Merlot

  Finders Keepers

  End of the Line

  Russian Roulette

  Mr. Softee

  Visit mailto:www.mikefaricy.com

  Email [email protected]

  Here’s a Free sample from Russian Roulette, happy reading,

  Russian Roulette

  1

  I was sitting in the Spot Bar, minding my own damn business, content in a mild and steadily growing alcoholic haze. A client had paid me. The check was enough to cover my overdrafts and fund a night or two of partying.

  I saw her come in the side door and look around for fifteen seconds. She was blond, hot looking, thirty something, maybe wearing a little too much makeup. Dressed in a delightfully slutty sort of way. Conversation didn’t stop but heads turned as she walked past. She headed toward an empty stool. There were four on either side of me. Her chest was like the prow of a battleship and plowed a firm, bouncy course down the length of the bar. She passed the first three empty stools and pulled out the one next to me. It was red vinyl and edged in worn duct tape.

  “Is anyone sitting here?”

  I caught the slightest hint of an accent.

  “Not that I can see.”

  “You are Mr. Devlin Haskell, right? The private dick?”

  She batted her eyes a few times, whi
ch at the moment struck me as extremely sexy. Her perfume wafted over me like a plastic dry cleaning bag and forced me to gasp for breath. It was strangely spicy.

  “Yeah, that’s me. Although it’s not all that private,” I joked.

  Incredibly she smiled but didn’t comment. After a moment she said,

  “Mr. Haskell, I’ve been looking for you. Of course the other places were a little nicer than this,” she said, gazing around at the dingy brown, smoke-stained ceiling. Maybe she caught the two bullet holes in the front door now filled with putty and supposed to have been painted sometime just before Obama took office. Maybe it was the 60s-style cheap wood paneling on the walls, or the ode de beer reek of the place. Maybe it was the worn wood-grain Formica tables in the booths or the twenty-watt bulbs in the light fixtures. Maybe it just didn’t matter, I thought, as she sat up straight, spun toward me on her stool, and thrust her death-defying cleavage in my face.

  “You were looking for me?” I asked, wondering if my luck had finally begun to change.

  “Yes, a friend gave me your name.”

  “Really, what can I do for you?” thinking maybe a getaway weekend to a quiet lake, or a bed and breakfast with a jacuzzi in the room, or just your basic tawdry night at my place.

  “Well, I hope you won’t think I’m strange.”

  At this point Grace, the bartender, stepped in front of us. An experienced little voice inside my head said just smile, finish the drink and get the hell out of here before you get in real trouble.

  “Buy you a drink?” I asked.

  “Will you have another?”

  That experienced little voice whispered no.

  I nodded yes toward Grace who rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah, okay, I guess I’ll have a double vodka martini, two olives,” she ordered quickly, then smiled at me.

  A double, my kind of girl.

  “So, I was about to think you’re strange?” I said.

  “What? Oh yes. Look, I wanted to hire you, to sort of find someone. I will pay you,” and with that she dug in a small beaded handbag suspended on a chain over her shoulder.