Jelly's Gold (33 page)

Sincerely,
H. E. Warren
Public Safety Commissioner

When he finished, Dahlin looked up at me. There was an odd expression on his face that I could not read.

“’Course, there was no way your grandfather could have known of your relationship with Brent Messer,” I said. “Whether or not that would have made any difference …” I shrugged my uncertainty.

For the first time since we met, Dahlin smiled. The smile didn’t last long.

“We do not have a confidentiality agreement, you and I,” he said.

“You’re still afraid that I’ll reveal your secrets,” I said.

He didn’t reply. Just stared.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Dahlin leaned back in his chair. I didn’t know if he liked my answer or not.

“There are still so many questions that remain unanswered,” he said. “Questions that I’ll never have the answer to.” To emphasize the point, he pulled out a photograph of Messer and a photocopy of a shot of Frank Nash he had downloaded from the Internet and carefully set them on the blotter in front of him.

“Whom do you think I resemble most?” he said.

I understood in that instant Dahlin’s dilemma, why he originally fired Heavenly and Whitlow, what kept him awake at night. Did Kathryn and James Dahlin conspire to hide his origins because they didn’t want people to know he was Brent Messer’s son, or because they didn’t want them to suspect he was Frank Nash’s son?

I reached for a framed photograph on his desk, a shot of Kathryn
and James taken when they were both young and happy and full of life. I set it in front of Dahlin.

“I think you look like this couple,” I said.

Dahlin picked up the frame in both hands and studied the photograph. Without looking up, he said, “People have always told me that I have my father’s strong chin.”

“Good luck to you, Mr. Dahlin,” I said. A few moments later, I left his office, his house, and Sunfish Lake.

21

I was on Highway 110 heading for 35E and St. Paul when my cell rang. I wasn’t going to answer it until I saw the name on the display. Genevieve Antonello.

“Hello,” I said.

“It’s Genevieve Antonello,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“Oh. Umm, Uncle Mike would like to talk to you. He asked me to give you a call.”

“Sure, put him on.”

“He’s wondering if you would drop by the nursing home.” “Now?”

“No time like the present, that’s what Mike said.”

“I take it you’re not there.”

“I’m at Bethel, but I’ll be going over soon.”

“If it’s about Jelly’s gold, I’m afraid there’s not much to talk about.”

“I don’t know. Mike said—if you’re too busy to visit him …”

“Not at all. I can drive right over.”

“Good.”

I asked, “How are you?”

“Fine,” she said.

“You seem upset.”

“Do I?”

“Are you still upset with me?”

“Why would I be?”

Because I ratted you out to the cops,
my inner voice said. “I’m sorry about the police,” I said.

“I’m sorry, too, Mr. McKenzie. I’m sorry about the things I said before.”

“You have every right to say them and more.”

“Maybe I’ll see you at the nursing home.”

I checked in at the office on the left side of the nursing home entrance, stepping up to the counter and announcing that I was expected. The woman informed me that my name wasn’t on her list. I asked her what it took to get on the list, and she stared at me as if she didn’t know. After a few moments, she announced that she would make some calls. I said I’d wait and moved across the hallway to the chapel. The carpet was a deep red, and it matched the cushions on all the chairs set in neat rows before the lectern. There was a crucifix in a stand on one side of the lectern and an American flag on the other, and I wondered what religion they preached here. Maybe it was just the gospel according to the AARP.

Before long, the woman informed me that I was allowed to go to the commons to meet Mike. I told her I knew where it was, but she accompanied me nonetheless. Mike was waiting for us when the elevator doors opened.

“There he is,” he said. “How you doin’, copper?”

I stepped off the elevator. “Not bad, convict. How are you?”

Michael was grinning broadly. I hurried to his side and shook his fragile hand. He was standing; there was no wheelchair in sight.

“Where are your wheels?” I said.

Mike looked around me at the woman in the elevator; he watched until the doors closed. His smile dimmed as the elevator took the woman down. That should have told me something, but it didn’t.

“Gotta exercise the old legs,” he said. “Use ’em or lose ’em, the docs say. Let’s go inside.”

Mike led me into the commons. I would have taken his arm, given him something to lean on, but he seemed to be moving all right, if a tad slow, and I didn’t want to embarrass him. A pretty young thing like Genevieve could get away with doting on Mike; I doubted he would take it from me.

Mike was dressed as he had been the other day, in black slippers, black slacks, and black shirt, only this time he wore a sky blue cardigan sweater and matching dress cap. I asked him if he played golf.

“Not so much anymore,” Mike said, “but back in the day, yeah, I chased the little white ball. We all did. It was a dangerous hobby. You know, that’s how the Feds got Jimmy Keating, Tommy Holden, and Harv Bailey. Grabbed ’em up on the eighth hole at the Mission Hills Country Club in Kansas City. Almost got Dillinger the same way over here in Maplewood at the Keller Golf Course. Tried to nab ’im on the third hole, only he escaped. Yeah, dangerous hobby. We used to have two caddies. One to carry the clubs and the other to carry sub guns and rifles. How ’bout you, copper? You play?”

“Yes, but I never carry. The way I score, someone might get hurt.”

He gestured as if he were holding a tommy gun. “I once shot up a green to teach it a lesson. You know what I mean.”

I told him I did as we moved deeper into the room. Mike glanced about carefully. We were alone.

“I remember one time I was playing with Leon Gleckman,” he said.
“If it wasn’t for his bodyguards, I would have shot him down on—what’s the hole on Keller, the one that overlooks the big lake?”

“Eleven.”

“Yeah, I would have shot him down on the eleventh hole. The sonuvabitch was cheating. Cheating at golf. Imagine that! How low can you get?”

Mike took three cautious steps backward, putting distance between us. “That’s not what you call a rhetorical question,” he said. He reached behind his back and produced a small, shiny revolver from under his sweater. He pointed it at my chest. “How low can you get, McKenzie, jamming up a sweet kid like Genevieve with the cops? What, you didn’t think I’d find out?”

I looked first at the gun, then up at Mike. His words came flooding back to me.

You see me as this nice, harmless old man, maybe colorful, I don’t know. Only I wasn’t so nice back then. I sure wasn’t harmless … I had a rule like everybody else. If it was between you getting hurt and me going to prison, it wasn’t going to end good for you. I didn’t like guns. Didn’t like to hurt. But if it was a choice of you or me or if you messed with my family—I would do what needed to be done.”

I slowly raised my hands and began backing away. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Why not? It’s not like I haven’t done it before.”

“Berglund?”

“That’s right.”

I kept moving backward, casually, cautiously, trying not to call attention to it. Chairs and sofas facing the TV were behind me and to the right. My plan was to get behind one, use it for cover while I tried to get through the door into the hallway. I didn’t like my chances. Mike might have been ninety-five, but the handgun made him as tough as any gangbanger.

“Berglund messed with Sugar,” Mike said. “Now you’re messin’ with her, too.”

“You think of Genevieve as family,” I said.

“All the family I got left.”

I kept glancing from his face to the gun. He held it loosely in his hand, continued to point it at the center of my chest; it didn’t waver.

He’s a ninety-five-year-old man,
my inner voice screamed.
How come his hands aren’t shaking?

“You’ll die in prison,” I said.

“Gotta die somewhere.” He tightened his grip on the gun.

“Just tell me one thing, Mike,” I said. “Will you answer just one question?”

“Huh?”

“Did Frank Nash play golf?”

“What? No.”

I turned and leapt sideways behind a chair. Mike rushed his shot. There was a high-pitched crack, and a small-caliber bullet plowed harmlessly into the arm of the chair—harmlessly unless you happened to be the chair. I moved quickly in a low crouch past the chair and past a sofa, making my way toward the large door leading to the corridor. He moved to his left, covering the wide gap between the furniture and the door. He fired again, but it was just to remind me that he was there. I grabbed a large pillow, thinking I could distract him. I raised my head to see above the sofa.

Mike used both hands to level the gun at my face.

I flung the pillow as hard as I could at him and moved toward the corridor.

Mike tried to bring his hands up to take the blow, but he moved too slowly. The pillow caught the old man square in the face. The force of the blow was enough to send him staggering backward. He stumbled, tripped. He seemed to fall in stages, first his legs, then his rear, then his back, then his head. I heard the air escaping from his lungs.

A voice called out.

“Uncle Mike!”

Genevieve rushed into the room from the door nearest the elevator. She knelt at Mike’s side. I did the same thing. She gently cradled his head in her hands; the hat had fallen away, leaving a ring of wispy white hair. I yanked the gun out of his fist.

Mike gasped and wheezed and shook; his face was a ghastly white, and his eyes seemed to roll back into his head.

“Mike, Mike,” Genevieve chanted. “I’ll get help.”

Mike grasped her wrist in his frail hand. “No,” he said.

“Why not, Mike? You’re hurt.”

I sat on the arm of the chair that Mike had shot, the gun in my hands. It was a .25. I looked down at him, and he looked up at me.

“Fucking copper,” he said.

“Convict,” I said.

He was so old, his body so susceptible to damage, I wondered if the fall had killed him. Yet even as I watched, the color returned to his face and he began to regain his breath.

“Anything broken?” I said.

“I don’t think so.” He tried to rise, but it was too much effort and he slumped back against the floor. “Got taken out by a pillow. I don’t believe it.”

“It was a hard pillow,” I said.

“It’s embarrassing, that’s what it is.”

“Just rest easy,” I said. “Genevieve, why don’t you go for help. We’ll make sure Mike is all right and then we’ll call the police.”

“The police?” she said.

“Goin’ all the way, huh, copper?” Mike said.

“You have your code, convict. I have mine.”

“What are you talking about?” Genevieve said.

“Ahh, Sugar,” Mike said. “I killed that weasel Berglund. I knew what
he did to you, knew how he treated you, so I shot him. I was gonna shoot the copper, too.”

“Why?”

From the expression on his face, Mike seemed surprised by the question. “Cuz you’re family,” he said.

“How did you kill Berglund?” I said.

“Wasn’t hard. He gave me his business card, so I knew where he lived. I just walked over to the shopping mall and grabbed a cab to a place not far from his apartment.”

“You walked,” I said.

“Gotta draw you a picture?”

I remembered what Ivy had said about Berglund’s killer.
He walked so slowly, and he used the wall for support, like he was sick or something.

“I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, when I got there, to the apartment, the door was wide open. I called, but no one answered.”

Whitlow, that putz,
my inner voice said.
He didn’t close and lock the door before he left.

“I went inside,” Mike said. “Didn’t take me long to understand that this was a woman’s apartment—the furniture, the clothes. I realized then that Berglund had not only messed with Sugar, he was cheating on his own woman. So I waited. Waiting made me think how foolish it all was, made me think I was getting too old for this kinda ruckus. I decided to leave. Only when I opened the door, Berglund was standing there.”

“Why did you shoot him?” I said.

“Way I saw it, he was standing between me and my freedom.”

Old habits die hard,
my inner voice said.

“Where did you get the gun?” I said aloud.

“Had it for years,” Mike said. “Kept it hidden from the keepers.”

“Do you have a license for it?”

“McKenzie, please.”

Foolish question.

“It just keeps getting better and better,” I said. I made sure the safety was engaged and slipped the gun into my pocket.

“What happens now?” Mike said.

“That’s up to the courts,” I said.

“No,” Genevieve said.

“He killed a man,” I said. “He has to pay for that.”

“You get caught, you do the time, Sugar,” Mike said. “That’s how it works. Me and McKenzie, we know the rules.”

“Besides,” I said, “my friend is on the spot for it.”

“The friend you told me about,” Genevieve said.

I nodded.

“Yeah, I’m sorry ’bout that,” Mike said from the floor.

“But, but…” Genevieve chanted.

“There are no buts,” I said.

“You said—you told me that you were trying to help your friend. When we were on the phone, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Could you, would you … McKenzie, can you help Mike?”

“Why would I do that?”

“He’s my friend.”

I looked down at the ancient gangster. He was smiling as if he already knew my answer.
The sonuvabitch tried to shoot you!
my inner voice reminded me. Yet something about him, or maybe about Genevieve—or maybe I just wanted to redeem myself for hurting both Genevieve and Ivy unnecessarily … I shook my head at the wonder of my own generosity.