Russian Roulette dh-1 Read online

  When Brad mentioned their names, Barry and Greg nodded, like they were just being introduced over a casual beer instead of being fingered as call girl’s customers and potential blackmail targets.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photo of Nikki and the smaller Asian woman, both naked with tan lines. There were two guys standing alongside and behind them on a beach, maybe a lake, maybe the ocean, hard to tell. The Asian woman had a sunburst or something tattooed around a pierced navel.

  “Is this Nikki?”

  “Yeah,” Brad nodded but looked deadly serious. Barry and Greg passed the photo back and forth, nodded. No one joked.

  “You know either of those guys in the photo? Or maybe where it was taken?”

  Barry looked at the photo again, shook his head no as he looked.

  “Any of you happen to know who the other woman is?”

  Head shakes all around.

  “Did you ever meet at Nikki’s?” I asked hoping to get a line on what was up with the place. They all shook their head no again.

  “I always met her in a bar, then, well I’d have a room lined up somewhere and we’d go there,” Barry said.

  “To tell you the truth I was always a little leery about getting bush whacked,” Greg smiled at the term. “You know some guy hiding in a closet with a baseball bat or the cops come knocking on the door and it was a set up and now I’m really screwed. I, well, I paid her and then just took her back to where her car was once we were finished. We never spent the night together or anything.”

  I couldn’t help but think, oh well, since you didn’t spend the night together I guess that makes it okay, you idiot.

  “Did you know where she lived?”

  All three shook their heads.

  “What kind of a car did she drive?”

  Three completely blank looks from one to the other.

  “What did she charge?”

  “Usually about two hun…”

  “Don’t answer that,” Brad interrupted, cutting Greg off.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Look Dev, like I said before I don’t think we can be of much help. None of us have seen her for quite a long time. We’ve no idea where she could be or even who would know.” Greg and Barry nodded in agreement.

  I asked Brad,

  “What about the pictures of you she threatened to post on the Internet?”

  “That was the screwiest part, or one of them. She never took a photo of me, not even with her phone. The places we got together, I arranged them so it’s not like she could have had them bugged. She never knew where we would end up. I don’t ever recall so much as holding her hand in public. It was strictly business, very private and yeah, believe me, I know it was really stupid, on a number of levels.”

  I had to agree.

  “Sorry, wish I could help you more but that photo you passed around, that’s the first time I’ve even seen Nikki in almost a year and a half, God’s honest truth. After the blackmail threat I purged all my records of anything to do with her. I wouldn’t know how to contact her if I wanted to, which I don’t. Look we’re expecting, Linda and I, my wife. The last thing I need, or any of us need right now is Nikki coming back and holding us up. God, I’d go right to the cops.”

  More nods of agreement.

  I left shortly after that. Nice-enough guys who’d been really stupid and instead of giving me any answers just left me with more unanswered questions. I shook hands all around, threw a twenty on the bar and told them the next round was on me.

  Chapter 8

  Aaron LaZelle’s call woke me up at 8:45 the next morning. Okay, I was awake but I was in the lounging mode, still in bed staring at the ceiling.

  “You dipshit, don’t tell me you’re still in bed!”

  “Mom, is that you?”

  “Look dopey, I’m about four blocks from that flophouse you live in. Meet me at the Donut Hole for lattes and French donuts. I’ll start without you. Oh and you’re buying!”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  “Make it ten, I don’t have that much time,” Aaron replied and hung up.

  I levitated out of bed, threw on a semi-clean golf shirt, last night’s jeans, and a sport coat from a few nights back that I hadn’t hung up yet. Just to be nice I tossed four or five Tic Tacs in my mouth and chewed them up as I stuffed the Nikki beach photo in my pocket and walked down the block to the Donut Hole. It was barely past nine in the morning and the cloudless sky held the promise of becoming beastly hot.

  The Donut Hole occupies the corner of a five-story red stone building built as a hotel in 1889. The building sat derelict for most of 1970s before getting revamped into designer condos in the ‘80s. The place, the Donut Hole that is, has excellent latte’s, fantastic high-cholesterol pastries, and a pleasant female staff more tattooed than not. Aaron had just finished ordering when I walked in.

  “Make it a double latte, and two of those French donuts. He’ll pay,” he nodded in my direction.

  I nodded back to girl at the counter. She was pretty without makeup, and might have been prettier had it not been for the sky blue hair, a five-pointed star tattooed on either side of her neck, and what looked like a bouquet of a dozen roses that covered her chest.

  “Another double latte and one French donut,” I said.

  “On a diet?” Aaron asked.

  “You must be working undercover this morning, you’re dressed so nicely. Or, are you appearing in front of Internal Affairs, again?”

  “Jesus, don’t even joke about those guys.”

  I’d known Aaron since we were kids. He’d been working vice for the past three or four years. One of those cops on the way up, destined for bigger things. He made lieutenant a year ago.

  “You called yesterday,” he said once we sat down. The donut in his hand fluttered close to his mouth, and he inhaled almost half of it before I had a chance to answer.

  I nodded, my own mouth full.

  “These things are great,” Aaron said, spitting crumbs.

  “Yeah. Hey, I’m looking for someone. A woman, but…”

  “You giving up on dating guys?”

  I ignored his comment and continued.

  “But it’s gotten screwier. I have that funny feeling I’m not being told the whole story.”

  “This professional or personal?”

  “You think I’d call you on a personal deal?”

  “Never stopped you before,” he stuffed the last half into his mouth, then picked up the second donut.

  “Yeah, true, but this is professional, maybe in more ways than one. Looking for someone’s sister, supposedly.” I wiped my hands off on a napkin, pulled Nikki’s photo out of my sport-coat pocket, and handed it to Aaron. I felt something else in my pocket, reached in, and pulled out the corner of a green thong. Kerri. Small world.

  “Nice tan lines on the boobs. You know these people?” Aaron commented as he studied the photo.

  “The redhead’s name is Nikki Mathias. Her sister hired me to find her. Supposedly been missing for a couple of months, according to her sister anyway. But things aren’t adding up. Maybe a bit of professional working girl, here. I don’t know anyone else in the shot.”

  “That why you called me?”

  “Not at first, I called you for this.” I opened my wallet, took out the dry cleaning receipt with Kerri’s car description and license number written on the back, handed it across the table.

  “I suppose you want to know who this is? Not caring that I would jeopardize my career were I to give you that sort of information.”

  “Something like that. Actually it’s my client, the sister, Kerri. That’s her car, or at least the car she was driving. I just wondered who it was registered to is all.”

  “And you think it’s not hers?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said something’s just not adding up.”

  “Nice set of wheels, when did you become a car buff?” he asked reading my note.

  “I was at the dealers
hip yesterday. By the way, sixty-one g’s and some change worth of nice wheels. Just wondering if it’s hers. What about the photo recognize anyone?”

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “From my client. Like I said I’m supposed to find the redhead.”

  “And this is the only picture she had of her sister?”

  “Makes you sort of wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “Cash in advance?”

  “Well, a retainer, and then she…”

  “I don’t want to know,” Aaron shook his head.

  “You recognize the other woman?” I indicated the photo with my chin.

  “The Asian gal?”

  “No the other woman you can’t see. Yes, the Asian gal, the only other woman in there.”

  “Oh sorry, I hadn’t looked at her face yet,” Aaron reappraised the photo.

  “Jesus.”

  “Actually, I do recognize the two guys.”

  “Really? Great, maybe they can point me in the right direction, any direction would help.”

  “Well, not unless you’re clairvoyant. They’re both dead,” Aaron said glancing up at me from the photo.

  “Dead?”

  “This guy, in the back, he’s Dennis Dundee,” Aaron pointed to the heavier of the two men in the photo.

  “Should that mean something to me?”

  “Kind of a player, heavy into girls, some drugs, but always a step or two away from the action if you get me. Then, remember that meth lab, blew up maybe late February?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, it blew the front of the place halfway across the street. Burned down what was left of the house. Luckily no one was killed, at least that’s what we thought. Turns out your boy Dennis was in there. Only the postmortem suggests he was dead prior to the explosion. It’s inconclusive because there wasn’t a piece of the guy big enough to properly examine.”

  “Great, and the other award winner?”

  “Humph, Leo ‘Pugsley’ Tate, man! A real sweetheart, had an alleged appetite for underage little girls. He was never too far away from whatever the latest bit of sleaze was rolling into town. Your girl here can sure pick ‘em.”

  “You said he’s dead, too?”

  “Yeah, assisted suicide.”

  “Assisted suicide?”

  “Back in maybe late March, early April of this year. He apparently blew his brains out with a colt.45, then put a second round in what was left of his skull just to be sure. 45 still in his hand, an unsigned, typewritten note stuffed in his pocket.”

  “That said?”

  “That said some bullshit about seeing the error of his ways, a life of sin, asking forgiveness. If I recall it was about three sentences long.” Aaron licked donut crumbs from the tips of his fingers.

  “And you’re not buying it?”

  “Well, for starters all the words were spelled correctly and it wasn’t written with a color crayon.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I think the guy intended to keep the hot date he’d arranged for the following weekend with sixteen-year-old twins and the.45 slugs ruined his plans.”

  “For real, the date I mean?”

  “Yeah, they were regulars. He’d paid their druggy mother in advance.”

  “God. Suspects?”

  “You kidding? We’d have to rent the Xcel Center just to hold ‘em all. Both of these guys aren’t exactly missed by anyone. Like I said, your lady friend here could set the bar a little higher when it comes to guys she wants to stand around with when she’s naked. These guys were mid-range players in the whole Internet escort-service thing. They were killed before we got a chance to nail them. You find this girl, you’ll be lucky if she isn’t really messed up.” He handed the photo back to me.

  “Hunh?”

  “If she’s involved with these two clowns or anyone like them, be lucky if she’s not dead from an overdose in twenty-four to thirty-six months. That’s the upside. These creeps, they’d look at gals like this, just fresh meat as far as they’re concerned. They’d want to get them out there hustling just as fast as possible.”

  “Charming.”

  “That’s why I love my job. Every once in a while we nail one of these bastards.”

  Chapter 9

  Sitting at the Spot I decided it might be time for a little Come to Jesus chat with my client, Kerri Mathias. I didn’t necessarily mind looking into things that were on the far side of the law, but it would be nice to know what I was getting into before I got into it. I didn’t like surprises in my business.

  “Let me talk to Kerri, please,” I added the please as an afterthought.

  “She’s busy right now. Perhaps I could show a few items of interest that might allow you to broaden your horizon…” a couple of telltale hisses in her pronunciation.

  “Da’nita?” I guessed.

  “Who this? Wilson, is that you?”

  “No, actually it’s me, Dev?”

  “Dev? Oh Devil, how have you been, baby?”

  “Thanks for your concern. I’m doing just fine.”

  “Look, I’ll have Kerri call you back, unless like I said, you might want to broaden your horizon, you know.”

  “Sweet of you Da’nita, but I need to get hold of Kerri. If you can just have her call me that would be fine.”

  “You sure? I could show you things that…”

  “No doubt you could. I appreciate your effort but I just need to talk with Kerri. Okay?”

  “All right, if you say so. I’ll give her the message, she’s got your number?”

  “Yeah, she does, at least I think she does. You got a pen? Let me give you my number just in case.”

  I gave Da’nita my number, then hung up, and tapped my fingers on the bar wondering what next. I didn’t have to wait long, my phone rang before I had another sip of beer. As always I attempted to read the incoming number and as always, failed, I was going to have to get a pair of cheaters.

  “Haskell Investigations.”

  It was Kerri, I thought I could smell her perfume through the phone.

  “How are you, Dev? Have you found Nikki?”

  “Amazingly no, I haven’t, at least not yet. But I’ve come up with a lot of questions. Can we get together and go over some things?”

  “What kind of things?”

  I wasn’t going to get into anything with Kerri while I was in the Spot Bar. And I certainly wasn’t going to get into anything with her over the phone. I like to watch people when they lie to me.

  “Just some general background info that might speed things up. Can we get together tonight?”

  “I wish we could but I have, ahhh, an appointment that will probably be late.”

  I didn’t need any detail on the appointment.

  “How about breakfast, tomorrow?” I asked, then thought I detected the slightest pause.

  “Yes, I guess that would work.”

  “You just tell me where and when,” I said trying to hide my surprise.

  “You know Bon Vie?” she asked.

  It took me a moment but I did, it was almost within sight of my front porch and didn’t have a bar, which may have explained my pause. Other than McDonalds, I don’t frequent many food establishments without a bar.

  “Yeah, sure, perfect. What time?”

  “Noon would be best,” she said.

  “Noon?”

  “Yes, twelve o’clock, noon. Does that work for you, Dev?”

  “It does, I’ll see you there.”

  I hung up and phoned Aaron to check on what he had found out on Kerri’s car. I ended up leaving a message.

  A few beers later I thought about dinner and after dinner. Fortified by the beer I placed a couple of calls and ended up leaving messages at both numbers. I wasn’t exactly feeling like Mr. Popular.

  I woke up sometime after three the following morning. Bourbon and a book will do that to me. I’d been sleeping in my favorite reading chair, which was great for reading and not the best for sleeping.
My body felt like a bent piece of plumbing pipe and I stretched and groaned on the way to bed. My joints sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, and pop.

  I stumbled out of the bathroom sometime after nine in the morning and noticed the message light blinking on my phone. The first voicemail was from Pam, one of my attempted post-dinner dates from the night before.

  “Hi, look, Dev, thanks for the invite but I really wish you wouldn’t call me, umm, ever again. I’m very happy with my life now that you’re not in it, and I would prefer that I never, ever hear from you. Hope everything is going okay, bye.”

  I pushed the delete button and made a mental note not to offer Pam the opportunity to enjoy an evening of my witty comments followed by mad, passionate debauchery. Which was screwier, Pam’s message or my calling her in the first place?

  Next message.

  “Hey dipshit, you there? Call me, I think I got something that might interest you. Grab that photo you showed me, too, will you?”

  It was Aaron. I called him back, left a message in response to his message then padded into the kitchen and made some coffee. He phoned back a minute or two later just as I was pouring my first cup.

  “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Christ, you sound barely awake. You keeping banker’s hours over there? How soon can you meet me?”

  “I’m just finishing up a meeting,” I said.

  “Yeah right. Look, get dressed and meet me at the morgue in thirty minutes. I got something for you.”

  “The morgue that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Don’t forget to bring that photo with you. See you there,” Aaron said and hung up.

  I poured my coffee into a travel mug, sipped as I got dressed, topped the travel mug off, and headed out the door.

  Chapter 10