Free Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4) by Mike Faricy Page B

forcefully , but not overly so.
    A minute later w e were standing out on my front porch, Tyler, Baby Face and me, my hands cuffed behind my back. Tyler pulled the door closed and locked it with my key. The two patrolmen from the back door were walking down my driveway toward the street. They looked like they lifted weights for a living and being cops was maybe just a side job . I wondered what all these muscled cops meant for the doughnut business in town.
    “Problems?” one asked.
    “No, the picture of respectability,” Baby Face laughed.
    “Sure you got the right guy?”
    Selby Avenue , my street, is busy, lots of traffic. It’ s the main route for the 21A Selby to Lake Street bus. But today no one driving past seemed to pay attention to me standing there in handcuffs . Apparently my being arrested had become an everyday occurrence.
    A n older neighbor lady I ’d seen many times before slowly walked past with her dog , l ittle, with curl y white hair, the dog that is. On the other hand , s he was rather large, swathed in a sort of paisley tent affair with hair dyed a shade of red not found in nature. Her rouged checks seemed to flush with even more color as she glar ed at me.
    “Goo d morning,” I smiled, Tyler and Baby Face were on either side of me, holding my handcuffed arms as we marched down the porch steps.
    “Oh, I’m not surpr ised in the least,” she growled. As she spoke she shook her plasti c bag full of dog shit at me then waddled away.
    “You always have that effect on women? ” Officer Tyler asked . T hen he casually took a card out of his pocket and began to read me my Miranda rights. “You have the right to remain silent…”
    I couldn’t help but think this total waste of taxpayer money seemed to b e an overreaction to the assault charge Emma Bitch had no doubt gone ahead and filed. I thought it best to wait unt il I was officially charged before I call ed Lo uie my lawyer. He’d mention the withdrawal of seventeen witness statements and we’d see where things went from there.

Chapter Twenty-Two
    We were seated in interview room number three. A tr endy little affair if gray cinderblock walls and damp air conditioning holding just the hint of nervous sweat was your thing.
    I had been left sitting in t here for close to two hours, the past thirty minutes with Louie Laufen, my lawyer. I was st ill handcuffed although the cuffs were no longer behind my back.
    “Oh, God,” Louie half burped, then screwed the top back onto a plastic blue Malox b ottle. “I don’t know what I ate last night.”
    “A bottle of Jim Beam from the smell of that burp,” I said. “Louie, can we get back to the matter at hand here, hello ,” I said, then raised my handcuffed wrists.
    “Yeah, yeah , sure Dev, just sort of not quite a hundred percent today, that’s all.”
    “Oh great.”
    I had no doubt Manning was probably watching through the two way mirrors on the wall behind Louie. Probably a number of them, all enjoying the little fun-fest they were having at my expense.
    “So tell me again,” he said, burping more bourbon fumes. He looked down at the half page of notes he’d scribbled on the yellow legal pad.
    “It was the halftime, the girls came into the locker room all pissed off , swearing, the n Emma…”
    “Real name Felicity Bard, correct?”
    “Yeah , correct . The n Emma begins slamming her helmet against one of the lockers, again and again. She seems to be the most pissed off, s ays something about kicking a redheaded American bitch’s ass.”
    “Typical locker room stuff,” Louie said.
    “Pretty much, she, Emma that is , just seems the most pissed of f, is my point.”
    “Then what happens?”
    “Jimmy, their security guy, calls me out into the h all, the girls come out maybe ten minutes later, Emma goes nuts on me. I defend myself, they keep her overnight for observation in Regions Hospital . At the request of my contact…”
    “This Justine woman ?”
    “Yeah. She asks me to