Criminal Enterprise (5 page)

D
ARCY PASSAT
LIVED
in a little two-story company home just south of University Avenue. Windermere rang the doorbell and a dog barked twice, and then a man opened the door. Windermere showed him her badge. “Looking for Darcy Passat.”

The man looked her up and down. He was a big guy, filled the doorframe. “You have a warrant?”

“Don’t think I need one,” she said. “I’m just here to talk to your girl.”

“What about?”

“A bank robbery, chief. You the culprit?”

He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t rob any banks.”

“Didn’t think so. Can I see her or what?”

The man stared at her. Then he shrugged and said something back into the house, and a moment later a woman appeared, a young brunette holding a struggling, wild-eyed beagle. “FBI,” she said, wrestling with the dog. “I already talked to you guys.”

“I just need a few minutes,” said Windermere. “Got a couple more questions.”

Passat dropped the dog to the floor and shoved it back, out of sight. “All right.” She sighed and looked at Windermere again. “What do you want to know?”

—

T
OMLIN FELT
the weight of the gun in his waistband as he walked toward the First Minnesota branch. He glanced back at the Camry where he’d parked it down an alley, fixed his disguise, and kept walking.

Tomlin had found the Toyota for sale in the paper, made the owner a lowball offer. Paid for it out of Tony Schultz’s fifty-grand brick and didn’t bother to change the registration.

He left the car parked in a garage in downtown Minneapolis when he wasn’t pulling scores. Paid cash for a year’s lease on a parking spot in Roger Brill’s name. Swapped cars before and after the job and drove home in his Jag, nobody the wiser.

He’d used Schultz’s cash to pay off the Navigator, and put the rest toward the credit cards. Bought Becca diamond earrings for Christmas, told her he’d picked up some plum freelance work. But the bills kept mounting. The mortgage never ended. The kids needed school clothes, and the dog needed a checkup.

And now here he was, walking into another bank, the pistol tucked in his waistband. He’d left the shotgun at home, and Schultz’s rifle; the big guns fascinated him, but they scared him, too. He couldn’t imagine walking into a bank with either weapon. Not yet.

Tomlin joined the queue in front of the tellers. He stared straight ahead, almost relishing the way his heart seemed to beat faster as the line moved slowly forward. Then it was his turn. It still happened too soon.

The teller was an older woman, sixty or so, somebody’s grandmother. She smiled at him, her head cocked to the side, and Tomlin forced a smile back and slid over the note.

He watched her eyes as she read it. Watched as she pursed her lips, shook her head. “Oh, honey,” she said. “You don’t want to do this.”

Tomlin pulled the gun from his waistband. Held it up so the teller could see it. Behind him, someone stifled a scream. “Nothing crazy,” he said, loud enough that the whole bank could hear. “Empty your tills, and I’ll be on my way.”

The teller looked at him. “Just think for a second.”

Tomlin cocked back the hammer. “The till,” he said. “Now.” He turned the gun on the teller beside her, a young-looking brunette. The woman blushed red and opened her till. Tomlin spun around, saw the whole bank watching him. “I’ll be out of here soon,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Behind him, the old woman had filled a plastic bag with cash. “You’re throwing your life away,” she said, as she handed it over. “You don’t have to do this.”

Tomlin snatched the bag. “I didn’t come for a sermon.” He turned back to the brunette, who was fumbling with her own bag. He studied her flushed face as he approached her counter. “Look at me,” he said. The teller didn’t look up. Kept filling the bag. Her whole body was shaking. Tomlin laid the gun on the counter. “
Look at me
.”

This time, the teller looked up. Her eyes were wide, terrified. Her lower lip trembled. “What are you afraid of?” Tomlin asked her. The woman shook her head. Didn’t reply.

“Tell me,” he said.

There was movement behind him, furtive. The young teller’s till was empty by now, her bag full. The police would be here soon. It was time to get moving. Tomlin held his gaze on the woman. “You’re afraid I’ll kill you,” he said.

The teller didn’t react.

“Aren’t you?”

Now she nodded, quickly, and looked away. She was crying. The thought didn’t disgust him. “I could do it,” he said. “I could kill you right here.
Pow.
Just like that.”

She nodded again. Pushed the money bag at him. Tomlin smiled at her and leveled the gun, feeling a thrill as he watched her shrink back.
“Pow,”
he said again. Then he shouldered the money and walked out of the bank.

—

W
INDERMERE STARED AT
Darcy Passat.
“Pow.”

Passat nodded.
“Pow
. Just like that.”

Windermere stared at the woman.
It’s the same guy,
she thought, her heart starting to race.
Somewhere along the way he found himself some friends.

Passat watched her. “So what?” she said. “You get what you came for?”

Windermere smiled and started back to her car. “I’ll say I did,” she said.
“Pow.”

W
INDERMERE UNLOCKED
THE
DOOR
and walked into the apartment. The whole place was dark, and the air was dead still; she barely lived here anymore.

She walked through to the kitchen and turned on the light, looked around at the spotless countertops and the empty sink. Mark hadn’t been much for doing the dishes, but since he’d gone, she’d kept the whole place so clean it looked soulless, like a showroom suite or a spread in a high-end magazine.

Windermere set her keys on the kitchen counter. She took a beer from the fridge and walked into the living room and stood in the darkness, looking around at the gloomy silhouette furniture and beyond to the window and the Minneapolis skyline. She drank her beer, slowly, and she thought about Mark.

He’d practically had his bags packed when she finally came home from the Pender case. Had walked out a month or so after. He’d gone back to Miami, and was probably fishing every day, and dancing, eating ceviche on South Beach. He was working again, no doubt, and Windermere wondered if he was happier now, if he’d found someone new.

Not for the first time, Windermere wondered if it hadn’t been a mistake to leave Miami. She’d had a good life in Florida, a happy relationship and good friends, a promising career and a ’69 Chevelle she could drive every day. Now she was single, getting older alone, one of a handful of black cops on an otherwise whitewashed FBI force.

And as far as she could tell, there was no good goddamn ceviche anywhere in Minnesota.

Windermere finished her beer.
Right now, Mark’s alone in Miami and wishing he could call you,
she thought.
You sure as hell don’t need him to make your life better.
She chucked out the bottle and turned out the light. Walked to the front door and pulled on her coat. It was late, but she wasn’t tired, and what the hell was she going to do in her apartment all night?

Twenty minutes later, she was in the FBI building, sipping bad coffee and staring at her computer screen. The office was empty and silent around her, but Windermere barely noticed. She sat forward in her chair and clicked through Rachel Hill’s bank robbery reports, her mind working faster with each new page she read.

This guy, the Prospect Park guy with the Camry, he’d gone from pulling single-shot robberies with a handgun to taking over a bank with a driver and a sidekick.
So
where did he come from?

She worked through Agent Hill’s robbery files again. Hill made the guy for another job in Robbinsdale, northwest of downtown Minneapolis, a few weeks after Prospect Park. Then another job, in Lowry Hill, southwest of downtown, a month or so later. A couple weeks before Eat Street.

Hill had come up with nothing before Prospect Park, though, and Windermere figured she’d double-check her colleague’s work. She paged through the unsolved bank robberies for December, November, the fall. Found nothing that fit the Prospect Park MO, no gold Toyota Camrys, no men with guns and aviator sunglasses terrifying the tellers.

Maybe Hill’s right,
Windermere thought.
Maybe Prospect Park’s his first score.
She broadened her search. Every bank job in the state. Just lonely men with notes, mostly; one sad-looking woman in a Bugs Bunny sweater. Windermere brought up the Prospect Park file and copied out the man’s note: “I have a gun. Empty the till.”

She searched through the files again. Got a couple of hits. A job out by the airport. Another in Midway, about halfway between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, a Bank of America heist last November.

According to the file, the Midway guy was a rank amateur. He’d panicked and bolted midway through the heist, made off with a shade under two grand. By the time the first police cars arrived, the man had vanished.

He’d scrawled his note on some kind of receipt, the file said. Wore woolen winter gloves. Aviator sunglasses.

Windermere stood and rode the elevator down to the evidence locker. A kid named Lucente sat guard at a desk, reading a paperback novel. He buzzed her in. “Welcome to the dungeon,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Notes,” said Windermere. “Bank robbery notes.”

Lucente yawned. “Most recent stuff’s that way,” he said, pointing. “We keep it for a year before it goes to the warehouse.”

Windermere thanked him and walked into the stacks. The shelves stretched to the ceiling, a jumble of bankers’ boxes and dusty plastic bags. She found Hill’s Prospect Park file quickly, glanced at the note. Blue ballpoint pen on white printer paper. The same unimaginative instructions.

Windermere walked farther and found the Midway evidence box. Not much inside besides the bag with the note. She picked up the bag and studied it in the light. The writing was shaky, in a hurry. Still, the wording matched the Prospect Park note, and the handwriting looked almost identical.

Windermere turned the bag over and examined the receipt. A parking receipt, she saw, squinting at the faded ink. Saint Paul E-Z Park. Dated last July. Whoever owned the receipt had parked in downtown Saint Paul on a Tuesday, from eight in the morning until almost six at night, and had paid twenty bucks for the privilege. Windermere walked out of the stacks and had Lucente make a photocopy of the receipt, both sides. Then she climbed back on the elevator and studied the receipt again as the elevator climbed back up to CID.

A worker bee would park in downtown Saint Paul all day on a Tuesday,
she thought.
Someone with a job in an office somewhere.
But what kind of worker bee robs a bank?

Windermere looked at the address on the receipt. Memorized it.
Only one way to find out
, she decided.

T
HE INMATE
CHEWED
on the Snickers bar. “Sure, I seen a car like that. Wasn’t nowhere near Duluth, though.”

Stevens watched the man across the desk. A guard watched them both from the doorway. “An old Thunderbird,” Stevens said. “Red.”

The inmate finished the candy bar. Wiped his mouth, nodding. “I can see it in front of me,” he said. “Could take you to it tomorrow, if you wanted.”

Stevens leaned back in his chair and studied the man. Tried to gauge the odds he was telling the truth. The odds that this T-Bird was Sylvia Danzer’s.

He’d been working the Danzer murder for nearly a week now. Had spent most of it retracing the Moose Lake sheriff’s work, reviewing the BCA agent’s notes, calling old contacts and reopening wounds. Hadn’t come up with much but what was in the report: The Danzers weren’t newlyweds, but by all appearances, they were happy together. Neither had had an affair. Stevens had even talked to their accountant. Neither Elliott nor Sylvia Danzer had any particularly eye-opening debts. They were comfortable financially; neither had any unusually large life insurance policies. As far as anyone could guess, there was no reason for Sylvia Danzer to have murdered her husband.

After a couple days of paper cuts and dial tones, Stevens had exhausted the high-percentage plays. Time to play the long shots. He had the Danzers’ pictures printed up and sent around to every jail, drunk tank, and correctional facility in the state, along with a description of the Thunderbird and a rundown of the crime. Asked the guards and wardens to pass out the pictures, get the inmates talking, figuring maybe someone knew someone who knew something. The play netted about a hundred oddball claims in the first two or three hours, mostly desperate criminals looking for a reduced sentence. But then there was Ernie Saint Louis.

Saint Louis was a chocoholic serving a three-to-nine for marijuana possession with intent to traffic. He told Stevens he’d trade information for candy bars and a good word to the judge, so Stevens drove down to the federal lockup in Waseca with a bag full of chocolate bars and agreed to hear the guy’s story.

Saint Louis rummaged in the bag and came out with a Milky Way bar. Opened the wrapper and took a bite. “Sure, I seen it,” he said. “I seen that old T-Bird every week for about five or six months.”

Stevens nodded. “Good,” he said. “Where?”

“North.” Saint Louis chewed. Looked across the table at Stevens. “I had a real good thing going,” he said. “It was just pot, anyway, no big deal.”

Stevens leaned forward again and looked through the man’s file. He’d been picked up in Big Falls, maybe thirty miles from the Canadian border. Had nearly eight kilograms of marijuana stored in his Ski-Doo. “You ran drugs across the border,” Stevens said.

Saint Louis shrugged. “Just pot, like I said. No big deal.”

“And you saw this Thunderbird somewhere.”

“In the bush, man.” Saint Louis blinked, shook his head. “Just rusting away. Two years in a row. A damn shame.”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “You get a good look at it?”

Saint Louis shrugged again. “Wasn’t really concentrating on seeing the sights.” He winked at Stevens. “Kind of time-sensitive cargo.”

“So what the hell was it doing out there in the bush?”

“Figured it was abandoned.” Saint Louis shook his head. “Somebody got tired of it, drove it out on that old logging road and forgot about it. Was my guess, anyway.”

“Abandoned it. An old T-Bird.”

“Crazy, right? It was that same car, though. Same vintage, everything. Just rusting away in the bush.”

Stevens stared at the ceiling, thinking. Saint Louis chewed, loudly. Finished his Milky Way bar and sat forward, his eyes hopeful. “Could take you there tomorrow, if you want.”

Stevens pushed his notepad across the table. “How about you just draw me a map?”