Highway 61 (20 page)

Yes, it would have given me a list of “Documented Steven Ritzer Fires (suspicion or arrest)” with twenty-six entries, seven of them before I was born. It would have told me that at least one of the fires resulted in death—apparently a security guard who had been drinking on the job was unable to escape when the office building he was watching over went up. Yet it would not have told me that investigators had a more comprehensive list of a hundred and thirty-seven fires that they feel certain Ritzer started, based on MO, either alone or with his partner, Max Lucken. Nor would I have learned that investigators knew—
knew
—that the two men had been operating a profitable arson-for-hire business for decades. Or that Bug and Backdraft had admitted to being arsonists many times in the course of interrogations and taped telephone conversations with investigators, yet always without implicating themselves in any specific fire.

“Mr. Ritzer—”

Bug cut me off.

“You a white man, that’s good,” he said. “I figured you might be with a name like McKenzie. Only these days you can’t ever be sure. ’Specially since you’re a friend of Chopper’s. Bad enough you got the Nig-rows and Messicans taking over everything without them taking our names, too.”

He lit the lighter, flicked it shut, and lit it again.

“You know, Mr. Ritzer,” I said, “there are cops down the street.”

“Shit yeah, I know. Why you think I’m doing this for, my health? Giving the ball-yankers something to think about is all.”

He smiled at me.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “We’re all friends here, me and the pigs. Sometimes I think they’re my only friends now that Maxie is—is—they fucking took a hammer to him. Hit him so hard they hurt his brain. Got him in an assisted living place, feed him, take care of him, shit! Who I got to assist me now? Couldn’t live in that apartment no more. Not alone without Maxie. Had to move back here with Ma, ain’t even the same place no more. Nig-rows and Messicans done took over the avenue long ago. I kept saying, Ma, you gotta get out of there, it ain’t no neighborhood for a white woman, only she won’t leave her home, so this is what I’ve come to, all my money going to keep Maxie in assisted living.”

“I heard the Joes were responsible.”

“Whole fuckin’ family, ain’t a white man among ’em doing Maxie that way. I wanted to kill that fucker myself, only the shithead got busted ’fore I could. Terrible what happened to True Joe in prison, ain’t it?”

“Terrible,” I said.

Bug smiled again. “Not all my money went to keeping Maxie in assisted living,” he said. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I know.”

“Cuz I ain’t ever gonna say it.”

Bug looked down the avenue at the unmarked police car and flicked his lighter.

“Ball-yankers just sitting there watching,” Bug said. “Been sitting there and watching ever since—I heard someone tried to blow up the Joes’ armored house. What did you hear, McKenzie?”

“I heard the same thing. I also heard that the Joes have been on the run ever since.”

Bug stopped flicking his lighter on for a moment and stared at me.

“Chopper vouches for you,” he said. “I done business with Chopper a while back…”

Don’t tell me that,
my inner voice said.

“That don’t mean we’re brothers, though. Ain’t that what the Nig-rows say, you my brother? So you tell me, McKenzie, why should I believe you ain’t wired? Why should I believe you ain’t a pig?”

I tried to choose my words carefully.

“Mr. Ritzer, it would probably be safer for both of us if you do believe I’m police.”

Bug flicked his lighter on again and slowly waved the palm of his hand over the flame, feeling its heat. He never stopped smiling.

“Max would say that, too,” he said. “Anytime we talk business, he’d say, talk like there’s folks listening. What do you want, McKenzie?”

“I don’t want anything. I just wanted to drop by and say hello since we have so much in common.”

“What do we have in common?”

“You have a friend. I have a friend. Your friend was hurt up here on the North Side. My friend was hurt down in Eden Prairie. Could be they were hurt by the same people.”

“I’ve looked for ’em. Can’t seem to find ’em. Eden Prairie, you say? Where’s that?”

I was surprised by the question. Did he really not know where Eden Prairie was?

“A suburb southwest of Minneapolis,” I said.

Bug nodded as if he knew all the time.

“I don’t get around as much as I used to,” he said. “Them people, I’d pay a lot to meet up with them people.”

“No need for payment. I’d be happy to introduce you at the very first opportunity.”

“What would you require in exchange?”

“Anonymity.”

“When and where would this meeting take place?”

I pulled a prepaid cell phone from my pocket.

“Is this yours, Mr. Ritzer?” I asked. “I found it just over there by the curb in front of your house.”

He took it from my hand and examined it casually.

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen it before,” he said.

“You should hang on to it. The guy who lost the cell might call looking for it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Bug slipped the phone into his pocket.

“I should leave now,” I said.

“I ain’t had anyone to talk to for some time,” Bug said. “Can’t talk to my ma, can’t talk to the ball-yankers. It gets frustrating. You come here talking to me like a person, talking to me like a white man. That goes a long way, McKenzie.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Ritzer.”

I left his yard, closing the gate behind me, wondering what it was I said that impressed Bug so much. I gave him a little wave as I climbed into the Cherokee. He smiled and waved back. He had resumed flicking his lighter as I pulled away from the curb.

*   *   *

I managed two blocks before the cops in the unmarked car pulled me over. They came at me like professionals, one to each side of the Cherokee, both officers resting their hands on the butts of their handguns—one carried a SIG SAUER, the other a Beretta like mine. I made a show of resting my hands on the steering wheel as they approached.

“Would you step out of the vehicle, please,” said the cop closest to me.

“Certainly,” I said.

I opened the car door and slid out of the Cherokee, again keeping my hands in plain sight. I turned my back to the cop and rested my hands on the hood of the SUV.

“Officer,” I said, “I have a nine-millimeter Beretta holstered to my belt behind my right hip. The gun is registered. I have a carry permit in my wallet.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” the officer said. He was not being sarcastic. He cautiously patted my hip, reached under my jacket, and removed the Beretta. I thought I heard his partner breathe a sigh of relief. The cop also took my ID. Minutes expired while everything was sorted out. Cars drove past. I expected to see expressions of curiosity on the faces of the drivers and passengers in the cars. That’s usually what you get in St. Paul. Only we were on the North Side of Minneapolis, and instead all I saw was anger and resentment. I don’t think it was directed at me. Finally the officers returned my possessions.

“We know who you are, McKenzie,” the first cop said. His name was Dailey. His partner was Moulton. They both worked out of the Arson Squad, an interdepartment unit of the Minneapolis fire and police departments. “What we would like to know is why you were talking with Bug.”

“Just old friends reminiscing,” I said.

“Bug doesn’t have any friends except Maxie Lucken,” Moulton said.

“He thinks you’re his friends.”

“He’s wrong,” Dailey said.

“Bug is a pyromaniac,” Moulton said. “Between him and Backdraft, it seems like they’ve set fire to half the city at one time or another. They’ve been doing it for decades. Up until now, it’s always been controlled. It’s always been about profit. Only one person was hurt in a fire they set, and that was more or less by accident. Now…”

“Bug’s slid a long way since Backdraft got hammered,” Dailey said. He grinned at his partner as if it were a joke they shared before. Cop humor—I understood it well. “Backdraft was Bug’s only friend. Now that he’s drooling in his oatmeal, Bug has become a lonely, frightened old man. He drinks. When he drinks, he becomes angry. When he becomes angry, he lights fires. At least a dozen in the past month alone. He doesn’t care where he sets them, either. Random targets. Most have been in the neighborhood.”

“I’ll tell you what his day is like,” Moulton said. “Bug gets up, sits at his mother’s kitchen table drinking beer until about noon, then he goes out and sets a fire somewhere close to home so he can see it when he goes back to drinking his beer.”

“You can’t put him away?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s going away,” Moulton said. “He set a fire up on Lowry, couple blocks away. We found a half can of beer at the scene. The numbers stamped on the bottom of the can matched a twelve-pack he had at home. We swabbed him and got a DNA match.”

“Bug’s gotten so careless, it was like he wanted to get caught,” Dailey said.

“He made bail, and he’s prolonging the inevitable by changing his plea, by changing his lawyer,” Moulton said, “but he’s going away. Probably he’ll get sentenced under the Dangerous Offender statute. Ten years, easy.”

“Question is, how much damage is he going to do first?” Dailey asked. “Which brings us back to the original question.”

“Why were you talking with Bug?” Moulton asked.

I considered the various lies I could tell, decided to hell with it.

“I’m trying to get a line on the Stippel brothers,” I said.

The two officers exchanged weary glances.

“What do you want with the Joes?” Dailey asked.

“They’re leaning on a friend of mine. I want to make them stop.”

The two officers exchanged glances again, and I realized that they must have been partners for a long time. They were communicating the way Bobby Dunston and I often did, without words.

“We know the Joes,” Dailey said. “They haven’t been around for a while.”

“Gone from our jurisdiction, but not forgotten,” Moulton said. “As much as we want to put Bug away…”

“We’ve been trying to put those bastards in prison for ten years,” Dailey said.

“Or six feet under, depending on the circumstances,” Moulton said.

“The shit they’ve pulled up here,” Dailey said. “The people they’ve hurt.”

“We could tell you stories, McKenzie,” Moulton said.

“I’ve already heard some of them,” I said.

“We had three witnesses lined up to testify against them on felony arson and assault charges,” Dailey said. “They broke into the house of one of the witnesses, beat him, and then left him in the bathtub in a pool of his own blood.”

“They put a couple of rounds through the front door of the second witness,” Moulton said. “Next day both witnesses recanted.”

“Who could blame them?” Dailey asked.

“The third witness disappeared,” Moulton said.

“Missing in action, presumed dead,” Dailey said.

Moulton tapped his chest.

“That’s on us,” he said. “It’s all on us for not protecting them better.”

“Oh, yeah, we want the Joes,” Dailey said.

“Any way we can get them,” Moulton said.

“That’s good to know,” I said.

“Last we heard, they were wreaking havoc in Eden Prairie or thereabouts,” Moulton said.

“That’s what I heard, too,” I said.

“Should you have a conversation with the aforementioned parties, you might want to consider having it on the North Side,” Dailey said.

“Yes,” Moulton said.

“You’ll find that there are people up here who might want to lend a hand,” Dailey said.

“We don’t know who those people might be, mind you,” Moulton said.

“No, not at all,” said Dailey.

“We wouldn’t want to become involved in anything illegal,” Moulton said.

“But there are people,” Dailey said.

“Yes, people,” Moulton said.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend,
my inner voice said.

“That is also good to know,” I said aloud.

“See ya around, McKenzie,” Moulton said.

The two cops returned to their unmarked squad car and drove off. Dailey gave me a head nod as they passed.

“Wow,” I said.

I drove off a few moments later, down Central to Lowry and then east toward the Francis A. Gross Golf Course. As I drove I was reminded of what Bobby Dunston told me about crossing over into the darkness in order to get a job done. He was right—it’s no place to live.

*   *   *

I checked my e-mail and phone messages when I returned home. By then most of Vicki’s friends had responded to my inquiries. Nearly all had the same thing to say—they had not seen or heard from Vicki since the Fourth of July. A few of them seemed genuinely concerned. One of them was named Anita Malaska. She agreed to meet me. I was heading for the door when my prepaid cell rang. It had the tinny ringtone of an old-fashioned telephone.

“McKenzie, this is Jason Truhler. I don’t know what to say.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I mean, I don’t know what to do.”

“About what?”

“You know about what. About, about—the Joes called. I told them what you said about the money. They said they won’t take it, the thirty-five thousand, I mean. They said they want more, to cover their time and trouble, they said.”

“How much more?”

“They want fifty thousand. They said if they don’t get it they’d hurt Rickie and Nina.”

“How do they know about Erica and Nina?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know—but that’s not all. They said they don’t trust you. They said that you’re liable to do something stupid, that’s what they said.”

“They may be right.”

“The Joes said I have to deliver the money. They said I should get it from you and then deliver it to them alone.”

That didn’t sound right to me. From what I’d heard of the Joes, I was sure they would demand a pound of my flesh to go along with their money.

“When and where?” I asked.

“They said they’d tell me when the time was right. They said in the meantime you should get the money together.”

“What do you think about this?”

“What do you mean?”