5 Tutti Frutti Page 5

  “What? I can’t tell. Really?”

  “Yeah, it floated in here with you. Actually seems a lot more pleasant than what this place usually smells like.”

  My cell rang at that moment, “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Hi, Dev? Aaron, where are you?”

  “In my office.” Aaron might have been a good friend, but when a cop asks me where I am I immediately get defensive.

  “Hold on a minute, someone here wants to speak with you.”

  “Who’s …”

  “Haskell? Detective Norris Manning. Thanks for taking my call.”

  “Actually, Detective Manning, I didn’t. I was talking to Lieutenant LaZelle and all of a sudden…”

  “Say, I’ve a couple of questions I’d like to ask you, just routine stuff. Wonder if I could swing by, oh say in the next ten minutes?”

  “The next ten minutes? What’s this about?”

  “Just some routine questions so we can clear up a couple of things.”

  I was racking my brain trying to remember if I’d done something I should be worried about. Oddly, I couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Yeah, I suppose that would work. I’ve got a two-fifteen appointment so it would have to be quick, course I’ll have my attorney present.” I glanced over at Louie in the process of dribbling coffee down the front of his shirt.

  “Your attorney, would that be Mister Louis Laufen?”

  “It would.”

  “I look forward to chatting with the both of you. I’ll see you in about ten minutes,” he said and hung up.

  “Great, God damn it.”

  “Who the hell was that?”

  “St. Paul’s finest, Detective Norris Manning.”

  “That red headed, bald guy who always looks like he’s ready to explode?”

  “Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “I got no idea. I’m wracking my brain trying to come up with something I’ve done, but I can’t.”

  “There’s a surprise. Hey this new Candi chick you’re seeing, she’s over eighteen isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s over eighteen.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Believe me, I’ve examined her very closely, don’t worry she’s over eighteen.”

  Vintage Detective Manning, he was there in eight minutes. They must have driven over with the flashing lights on. He was accompanied by a uniformed baby-faced officer who looked to be all of about sixteen named Richardson.

  “Your license must still be suspended, Manning, I see they gave you a driver.”

  Richardson didn’t smile, but I could see a twinkle in his eye.

  Manning gave his ever-present wad of gum a couple of audible cracks. His bald head shone pink against the fringe of red hair that ran round his skull. He flashed a smile for all of a half second, but his blue eyes seemed to grow decidedly icy. He glanced at Louie standing behind the picnic table.

  “Mister Laufen, glad to hear you came out a winner on that disbarment hearing a few months back. Never enough lawyers in town.”

  “Appreciate the thought, Detective,” Louie said then took up a relaxed seat on the corner of the picnic table.

  “I hear you’re providing your services to Joey Cazzo. That should keep you busy for the foreseeable future.”

  “Client privilege,” Louie replied.

  “Mmm-mmm. Long time no see, Haskell. You must have turned over a new leaf. What have you been up to lately?”

  “Tell you the truth, Detective, I’m probably the dullest guy in town.”

  “I’ll bet. I might be looking for a place we could grab a burger for lunch. Anywhere you can think of to recommend?” Manning asked.

  By this time Richardson had stationed himself next to the door and was leaning against the wall. He tried to be casual about it, but his position wasn’t lost on me.

  “Hey look, Manning, I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t drive over here just to get a lunch recommendation from me.”

  He stared at me for a moment then said, “True. You weren’t cruising around town last night were you, Haskell?”

  “It sounds like you’re fishing, Manning. To tell you the truth, I was in a bar named Charlie’s last night. I’d say I was in there from about nine o’clock until maybe ten-thirty or so. Charlie, the owner, can attest to that and maybe a half dozen guys that were in there. I had dinner with a woman, paid in cash, tipped Charlie. I left with the woman once we finished our dinner. She had two martinis, I had a half glass of beer. We drove from there directly to my house.”

  “Gee, a dinner date at Charlie’s bar. You’re a real high class big spender.”

  “We needed a quiet night. Then, like I said, we ended up at my place.”

  “Drove her car?”

  “No, actually I drove mine. She followed me in her’s.”

  “You talk to anyone there?”

  “At Charlie’s? No. Except to place my order. It was just me and this woman. I was waiting for maybe a half hour before she showed. We sat alone in a booth. Of course she was obviously enthralled with my company.”

  “Yeah, who wouldn’t be? You didn’t talk to anyone at the bar then.”

  “Not really, some drunk made a comment, I let it go. I think I said something like no hassle or see ya. He apologized later; offered to buy us a drink. I had other things on my mind to tell you the truth. Why, what’s this all about, anyway?”

  “You know anyone named Gary Ruggles?”

  “No, not that I can recall at this time.” This was taking a turn I didn’t like, and I began to hedge my answers like one of those creeps in Washington.

  “Is your vehicle here, Mister Haskell?”

  “Yeah, it’s right out on the street.”

  “Mind if we take a look?”

  “At my car?”

  “Yeah, your car.”

  “No, I guess not. What’s going on here, Manning?”

  “Just want to check license and registration is all. That okay with you?”

  “Is my client suspected of something, Detective? I’m guessing sooner or later you’ll arrive at the real purpose of this harassment.”

  God, it took Louie long enough, but I didn’t have anything to lose with Manning checking my car, unless Candi had called him to report my tail lights. “Car’s out on the street, you want to follow me I’ll show you the license and registration.”

  Manning nodded and the four of us went down the steps and outside to my car.

  “I should have known this beast would be yours when we first pulled up,” Manning said, looking back and forth along the length of my car. “Why the blue door?”

  “A work in progress,” I said. I had climbed behind the wheel to reach over into the glove compartment. I handed Manning my registration and insurance card. “Sorry, didn’t realize you’d been promoted to traffic division.”

  “A note from one of your fans?” Manning asked, indicating Rose’s spray paint along the passenger side.

  “Just a slight misunderstanding.”

  While we talked, Richardson walked around studying the car then looked over at Manning and shook his head.

  “You’re leaking a good bit of oil there; you might want to get that checked,” he said.

  “Thanks, I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “Surprisingly, this all seems to be in order,” Manning said, sounding just a little disappointed as he handed me back my paperwork.

  “Gee, thanks,” I replied.

  “What sort of mileage do you get with this beast?”

  “It’s improving, somewhere between eight and ten miles to the gallon. To tell you the truth, with gas only about four bucks a gallon, a high roller like me doesn’t have to really worry about fuel costs.”

  “Enjoy your day, gentlemen,” he said. They crossed the street, climbed in the front seat of a squad car, and drove off.

  “I have to say you seem to have
a strange effect on people. What did you do to piss that guy off?” Louie asked, watching as the squad car slowly disappeared down Randolph Avenue.

  “I have no idea what any of that was about. What was that guy’s name he mentioned?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Yeah here it is right here. Jesus, hit and run victim last night.” Louie had a four sentence article displayed on his laptop. Once Manning left, he’d done a search on the name Gary Ruggles. It hadn’t rung a bell until he began reading out loud.

  I guessed Ruggles was walking home when he was struck by a car and killed. The accident happened in a residential neighborhood. The street was about two blocks from Charlie’s.

  “Oh shit, I get it,” I said. I’d been standing behind Louie reading the screen over his shoulder. I’d walked back to my desk chair when it dawned on me. The story had read more like a notice. It was probably just a summation of a police report coming across the wire rather than an actual story.

  “You knew this guy?” Louie asked, looking over at me.

  “Not really, but we sort of had words last night.”

  “Define sort of.”

  “He was a little drunk, maybe a lot, made some dumb ass comment to Candi. Then when I was at the bar he said something stupid. I let it go. In fact, when we were leaving he apologized and offered to buy us a drink. Like I said, the guy was drunk.”

  “Did you threaten him or tell him to apologize, touch him? Anything like that?”

  “No, nothing like that. I think I told him to have a nice night, and when he offered to buy us a drink I probably said no thanks we had to get home or something. At least if it’s the same guy I’m thinking of. I remember Charlie called him Gary. The guy was wearing a teamster’s baseball cap.”

  “Be a strange coincidence if it wasn’t him. I’d say the police talked to patrons at the bar, probably Charlie, your name came up.”

  “Yeah, and that prick Manning jumped on it,” I scoffed.

  “Just doing his job. That’s what the license and registration deal was about. Probably an excuse to look for any damage to your car, which was why the cop was walking around that bomb, checking it out.”

  “That was just harassment. They don’t need an excuse to check my car. Certainly Manning doesn’t. He just hoped my insurance had expired or there was some obscure violation he could nail me on.”

  “You might want to give your love buddy Candi a call, let her know she might have visitors. Make sure she has her timeline correct.”

  “That article doesn’t actually give a time. I’m guessing it was probably a little after closing. By then she was at my place wearing a smile and putting me through a workout routine.”

  “Too much information, Dev. That’s a pretty quiet neighborhood and a strange time and place for some idiot to be speeding.”

  “Who knows, maybe that Gary guy staggered into the street, someone bumped him, and he hit his head on the curb, or hell, it could be a million and one things. Too bad, he might have been a drunk with a big mouth, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Manning doesn’t seem to be your biggest fan.”

  “You think?”

  “I’d say he’s a major coronary just waiting to happen.”

  “You pick up on his Joey Cazzo comment?” I asked.

  “You mean keeping me busy? Well, it’s no secret I filed the motions. You said your cop pal LaZelle figures Gino D’Angelo is going to win his appeal. Maybe that was the whole purpose of his visit.”

  “What, to let us know he’s going to get off and they’re watching? Why would we care? And why would they care if we knew? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  I phoned Candi, but she didn’t answer. Maybe she’d gone back to bed. I sure could have used the rest. I left her a brief message with the details about Manning’s visit. It suddenly dawned on me he never asked Candi’s name.

  I listened to a short news report on the radio while driving home. Nothing really enlightening other than Gary Ruggles was thirty-seven years of age, lifelong resident of St. Paul, over-the-road trucker, and the city’s third hit and run victim this year. Anyone with information was asked to contact the police.

  God, didn’t that just figure? The guy drove day after day hauling freight and he gets run over walking home from a bar. You gotta wonder.

  When I got home I opened a beer and put a call into Candi. I had to leave another message.

  ***

  My phone rang about nine-fifteen that night. I was halfway through my fourth beer; maybe fifteen minutes into a nap. The Twins were down by four runs.

  “Hey, baby,” I answered, still half asleep and dreaming of wild sex with Candi.

  “Dev, you okay? Am I interrupting something?” Louie asked.

  “No, no, not a problem. Just reviewing some notes here. What’s up?”

  “Joey Cazzo just called and wants to meet tomorrow at ten.”

  “You want me out of the office? I can come in after…”

  “No, he wants you to be there.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “Nothing as far as I know, he just said he wanted to meet with you. I got the feeling he may have some sort of investigation project he wants you to work on.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Said I’d try and get hold of you, that you were working on something and I hadn’t seen you for a few days.”

  “Hunh, you’re almost as good a liar as me. I got nothing going other than watching women board the bus. What time?”

  “Ten, tomorrow morning.”

  “See you there.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I thought I’d go in early just to play it safe. I opened the office door at nine thirty. Louie was already seated at my desk behind stacks of files.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Good morning. Oh sorry, I sort of left the impression that this was my desk, and I just set these files out to make me look busy.

  I picked up a manila file folder from the nearest stack. It was relatively thick and labeled with some sort of nine digit numeric code written in black marker. The thing held maybe thirty sheets of paper, all blank. I glanced from the file to Louie.

  “Are all the files like this?”

  He was inserting a grocery store circular into a file and cramming the thing back into the middle of a tall stack.

  “No, some are thicker, some are thinner.”

  “I meant blank.”

  “Look, just a little window dressing. Don’t want Cazzo to get the wrong idea about us.”

  “And you’re at my desk.”

  “Yeah, you mind sitting at mine?”

  “The picnic table?”

  “Just while Cazzo is here.”

  I noticed Louie was wearing a reasonably clean white shirt. At least it was clean before he managed to get a half dozen black marker stains across the front.

  “You actually think this will work?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Louie said then Googled the Thompson-Reuters website on his laptop.

  “Want me to ditch the dart board?” I asked.

  “Just pull those darts out of the wall and stick them in the board. Better not make them a bull’s eye, stick them in a little off to the right.”

  “You’re really taking this serious.”

  “Joey Cazzo is a big deal, Dev, he could get us out of hock.”

  “I really don’t owe anyone.”

  “Yeah, and you’re about a hundred bucks ahead of the game if things break your way every month. I’m talking some serious dough here. If all goes right with the motions I filed, it could lead to lots of work. The D’Angelos own a lot of property, of course the Tutti Frutti Club, a number of apartments. This could mean our train has finally come into the station. They even have land way up north.”

  “Where they probably bury bodies…”

  “Allegedly bury. Come on, last night you said you were going to be in on this.”

  “I did, Louie. It’s just th
at you forgot to mention you’d have a hundred fake files stacked across my desk. That fake phone there next to you with multiple lines that will never ring because we don’t have a land line in here. Then again why would we need multiple lines? Our office consists of this one room, and no one ever calls.” I looked around the office, but nothing else seemed too out of place.

  “Louie, why don’t I brew some decent coffee? When Cazzo arrives we can just tell him our gorgeous, well-endowed, young secretary is out making another deposit at the bank.”

  “Oh yeah, glad you brought that up, could you run across the street to The Spot and get three matching coffee mugs?”

  “What?”

  “We only have two mugs in the place, one’s chipped and the other is plastic. As long as we need one more don’t you think we could get three that match? And make sure they don’t have lipstick on them.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  We were staring out the window when Joey Cazzo pulled up in some low-slung, red foreign thing that probably cost more than my house. He parked across the street then sat in the car for another ten minutes while he appeared to berate some poor soul on the other end of the phone.

  “Places everyone,” Louie said as Cazzo got out of the car.

  Louie hurried behind my desk, picked up the dead phone, and wedged the receiver between his chins and shoulder. He began to nod saying, “Yes, that’s correct.” He had a stack of contract forms he’d pulled off the Internet piled in front of him. He began slowly paging through them initialing a paragraph every so often, pretending to be busy.

  Cazzo burst in the door a few seconds later; the energy was palpable. He was shorter than I imagined, a hooked nose, thinning hair pulled into a sort of wispy pony tail at the back of his head held in place with a silver and turquoise clip. There was a bit of a rodent look to him. He sort of nodded at Louie. It was not so much a greeting as it was an indication to get off the phone, and soon.

  “You must be Haskins,” he said, turning and leering before attacking me with an outstretched hand. He had an East Coast accent, New York or maybe Jersey. It automatically grated on my nerves.

  “Haskell, Dev Haskell.” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Yeah sure, whatever,” he replied, giving me one of those squeeze-as-hard-as-you-can shakes.