Free 5 Tutti Frutti by Mike Faricy

us posted, Dev, let me know how it works out.”
    Manning crammed the last bit of a caramel roll into his mouth. “Be careful, Haskell,” he mumbled and they left.
     
    Chapter Seventeen
    Mercifully there was only one Dudley Rockett in the white pages reverse directory. I was ringing the doorbell and knocking on his front door around eight thirty in the morning. If Dudley was home he didn’t bother to answer.
    The house, a pinkish sort of late fifties rambler with an attached single car garage, had a faded and unkempt look about it. Unkempt if you discounted the high tech security cameras mounted on either end of the house and over the front door. Yellowed shades were pulled down over every window. Peeling paint, untrimmed grass, weedy looking front shrubs or maybe they were just weeds, I couldn’t tell.
    A mail box stuffed with grocery store circulars hung crookedly next to the front door. Candy wrappers and a couple of plastic bags had blown up against the front of the house and looked to have been there for a while.
    Through the small rectangular window in the front door I could see what looked like a television screen flickering back in a darkened kitchen. I couldn’t detect any other movement. I took out my cell and dialed the phone number I’d gotten online. It rang but no one answered and I never got a message option.
    I was sitting in my car trying to come up with some other idea when a kid about fifteen strolled down the street. He wandered up to the keypad on Rockett’s garage door and entered a code. As the door rose up I could see a nondescript black Toyota sitting in the garage. The kid carefully reversed the car into the driveway, climbed out, and began to walk away.
    “Hey , excuse me, son, hold up there,” I called from my car. He didn’t seem to hear me and I called again. “Excuse me, young man, hey.” This time he stopped and stared as I hurried across the street toward him. We were standing in front of the house next door to Rockett’s. I could see a rough looking woman in a ratty bathrobe studying us through her front window as she sipped her coffee.
    “Do you live there?” I asked, pointing back toward Rockett’s house.
    “No.”
    “Do you know Dudley Rockett?”
    He gave a slight nod, “Sort of.”
    “Do you know if he’s home? I tried knocking on the door but no one answered.”
    “Yeah, he usually doesn’t. I back the car out for him every day. Don’t know if he’s home, I never see the guy.”
    “ You get paid for that?”
    “ Yeah, he sends me fifty bucks every month.”
    “ Seems a little extravagant.”
    “What ever. You a cop?”
    “No, I’m with the Minneso ta State Lottery. Mister Rockett is registered as the holder of a winning ticket and we wanted to contact him.”
    “Cool.”
    I heard a car door slam. By the time I turned around the Toyota was backing out of the driveway. Whoever it was didn’t waste any time.
    “Mister Rockett, Mister Rockett, Dudley,” I called.
    The Toyota quickly backed into the street and drove off.
    “ That him, Rockett?” I called back to the kid as I ran to my car.
    “I think so, I’m not really sure . I only saw him once, but that’s his car.”
    I pulled awa y from the curb as Rockett’s black Toyota screeched around the corner at the far end of the block. I raced round the corner, heard some stuff roll across my back seat and then onto the floor as I accelerated. The Toyota was a block and a half ahead of me, the tail lights flashed as it approached a stop sign, but never really slowed and blasted through the intersection.
    I approached the sign a moment later then had to slow and finally stop while a school bus lumbered across my path. Once the bus passed, I couldn’t see the Toyota. He must have turned onto a side street. I accelerated across the intersection, slowed for half a second at the cross street, looked left and right but didn’t see the Toyota. I gambled and raced ahead but couldn’t see Rockett’s car. I