Under that, with lots of cartoonish foam overflowing from an oversize beer mug and a washing machine, was Sudsie’s’ marketing slogan:
Nesbitt groaned audibly.
What were you thinking, Skipper?
About that and everything else?
He then pulled the M3 coupe into an empty parking spot at the curb around the corner.
When Chad Nesbitt got to the new front door of Sudsie’s, he saw that someone had posted a sign that read CLOSED-PLEASE COME AGAIN and an emergency contact telephone number. He didn’t recognize the number.
He hammered the door with a balled fist, but there was no answer.
He then pulled out his phone from the left front pocket of his pants. He thumbed keys to reach the RECENT CALLS menu, then highlighted the first call on the list. He hit the CALL key.
When the man answered, he said, “This is Chad Nesbitt. You asked to see me? I’m at the door.”
There was silence on the phone for a moment. Then Nesbitt saw the brown paper on the glass of the door pull back just enough for someone to peer out. There then came the sound of the front door being unlocked.
Nesbitt hit the END key, put the phone back in his pocket, and scanned the area. About all he saw were students coming from the Southeast Philadelphia Transportation Authority’s Susquehanna-Dauphin Metro stop. Some of them crossed the street, headed for McDonald’s before class.
The door, its hinges squeaking, opened not quite halfway.
Nesbitt saw standing there a five-foot-two Hispanic male. He was heavyset, with an enormously wide, flat nose. He looked to be maybe thirty.
“Come, come!” the man anxiously told Nesbitt, waving him in.
Nesbitt did. The man looked nervously up and down the sidewalk before closing and locking the door.
Chad Nesbitt looked around the brightly lit, newly renovated laundromat. It was obvious to him that this was Skipper Olde’s work, that this was one of the locations they had acquired in the package deal. There were lines of brand-new commercial-quality washers and dryers in the walls, and positioned neatly against the back of the room at a long tan linoleum counter were waist-high thick-wire baskets on heavy-duty casters.
The man walked up to him and held out his hand.
“Se?or Nesbitt, mucho gusto. I am Paco Esteban.”
“Paco,” Nesbitt said shaking his hand, “you want to tell me now what the hell’s going on here?”
“Here?”
Nesbitt looked around the room. “Okay. Start with that. Why are we here?”
El Nariz looked him in the eyes, then nodded.
“S?. I have agreement with Meester Skeeper,” he began, “to use his machines for my laundry service…”
“… And as the evil man was leaving, he shot holes,” Paco Esteban said, as he finished his five-minute explanation. “And so everyone, all of my crew, they run for their lives. I come back here to clean up the place. I could not leave it the way it was.”
“This evil man shot holes?” Nesbitt repeated.
“S?. Come. I show you.”
El Nariz led Nesbitt to the rear room. He pointed to the arch that was the bullet-riddled masonry wall.
“My God!” Nesbitt exclaimed.
“S?.”
“Why did he do that? I mean, to scare you?”
El Nariz nodded. “S?. Muy scary.”
“And you have a head in your freezer?”
“S?.”
Chad Nesbitt could not believe what he was seeing and hearing.
The gunfire was bad enough-gunfire in a business he partly owned.
But the barbarism?
Jesus!
That’s the kind of thing you hear about those animals committing in faraway backward countries!
He pulled out his cellular phone and hit the speed-dial number of Matt Payne. The phone beeped in his ear, and when he looked at the screen, he saw: