Madman on a Drum (19 page)

“How 'bout this: Mrs. Thomforde tells Scottie that Karen and I are looking for him. To protect himself, Scottie comes over here and convinces Joley to alibi him for the entire day.”

“Why would she still be sticking to the story? Scottie's dead.”

“Two possibilities,” I said. “One, she's frightened by the man who put a gun to her head and told her to call me. Two, she's in on it.”

“Three,” said Harry. “She's not in on it, but having lied for Scottie the first time, she's now afraid that if she tells the truth she'll be implicated.”

“Victoria Dunston said that the T-Man spoke to someone on the phone. Someone he called ‘babe.' ”

“Do you think Joley Waddell is the babe?” Harry said.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Still, he could have been speaking to a man. Babe Ruth. Babe Winkelman. Babe the Blue Ox.”

“I'm just telling you what I heard.”

“We'll pull Joley's phone records and canvass the neighborhood, see if we can find a witness who saw Scottie Thomforde. It doesn't make sense, though. Kidnapper has a million untraceable, why hang around to kill you?”

“I don't know.”

“Why risk revealing himself by trying to kill you?”

“I don't know.”

“If he wanted both the money and you dead, why not take you off the board at the ransom drop?”

“You keep asking the same question,” I said.

“Whoever the second kidnapper is, this isn't about being afraid that you might identify him,” Harry said. “He has a grudge. A big one. Big enough that taking a million off you won't satisfy. Tell me, McKenzie. Who doesn't like you?”

“You want a list?”

Harry took a notebook and a pen out of his pocket and gave it to me. “Seriously?” I said.

He opened the passenger door of his car. “Sit. Write.”

I sat, I wrote, jotting down names as they came to me, names of people who might want to kill me. It took nearly an hour. I was distressed by the length of the list and depressed by its quality. They were punks, all punks, even my upper-middle-class enemies. No one smart or audacious enough for a caper like this.

I gave the list to Harry. He said, “Maybe you should lie low for a few day till we can sort all this out.”

“I could do that,” I said. At the same time, I was staring across the street at nothing in par tic u lar, contemplating my next move. Harry hit me hard on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Go home,” he said. “Lock the doors. Stay away from the windows.”

“Sure.”

 

I didn't go home; I doubted Harry believed that I would. Instead, I drove to the Thomforde residence. On the way, I took the time to call Nina on her cell phone. She was at Rickie's. I told her that I was coming over and she shouldn't leave until I arrived, and she said okay. I didn't tell her that she might be in danger. I figured it was one of those conversations best had in person.

Mrs. Thomforde answered the door when I knocked. I was a bit surprised when she hugged me and asked me to come inside.

“Some of my friends are coming over in a few minutes,” she said. “I have to go to the funeral parlor to start making arrangements. The police said they would release Scottie's body in a couple of days.”

“I am so, so sorry,” I told her.

She thanked me for my concern and offered coffee, which I accepted. I watched as she poured. Mrs. Thomforde was old-school, like my father. Time and experience had draped a cloak about her shoulders, the same cloak worn by many of her generation. She wore it to keep the hurt to herself, so as not to burden others with it. Any tears she had for her youngest son were shed in private. At the same time, there was a great tenderness to go with the reserve. I saw it in her eyes when I mentioned Scottie's name.

“I wish,” she said, stopped, started again. “I think when you look back on your life, you'll find that there are one or two moments that change everything, that set you down a path that you just can't get off of. You don't recognize these moments at the time they take place. Sometimes you won't even know that they took place at all until years and years later. Like with Scottie. I should never have bought him that drum kit. If he hadn't played the drums, he would have kept playing hockey and baseball with you. He wouldn't have met Dale Fulbright. He wouldn't have gone to prison. He wouldn't have… I don't want to believe it, McKenzie. I know it's true what they say about Scottie. That poor little girl and Bobby Dunston—I never liked him, but for this to happen, for Scottie to be involved. I just don't want to believe it.”

“I don't want to believe it, either.”

“People keep asking questions. The police. The FBI. Who were Scottie's friends? What did he do? Where did he go? I don't know the answers, McKenzie. I don't know anything. He wasn't staying with me. He was at the damn halfway house. They should be asking questions over there. The person who runs it. Roger something…”

“Roger Colfax?”

“Even he was here asking questions about where Scottie went and who he knew. If he doesn't know the answers, how am I supposed to? If Scottie had been staying here, if he had been with me, maybe, maybe… I don't know.”

Mrs. Thomforde didn't say anything for a few moments, just stared into her coffee mug. Finally I spoke. “They can't find Tommy.” I said “they,” not “we”—I wanted to maintain the illusion that I was merely a family friend offering my condolences. “Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Do you think maybe Tommy was involved in the kidnapping?”

“I don't know what to think.”

“Mrs. Thomforde, when we were at the Silver Bucket the other day, Karen Studder said that Scottie went out to a bar the Saturday night he was supposed to be at your house. You said it wasn't true. It was true, though, wasn't it?”

She nodded.

“Do you know who he went with?”

“Tommy,” she said. “He went with Tommy. I thought it would be all right, two brothers having a beer together. I thought Tommy would take care of him. I thought…”

“That night at the Silver Bucket, right after Karen and I left, you made a call on your cell phone.”

“How did you know that?”

“Who did you call?”

“Tommy. Why?”

I didn't say. Mrs. Thomforde closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “You never know when those moments will sneak up on you, McKenzie. You never know when a decision will change your life.”

 

I called Harry as soon as I left Mrs. Thomforde and repeated what she had told me. Turned out she had already confessed pretty much the same thing to him earlier. Still, he thanked me for the information. Then he told me to go home. “You're interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation,” he said.

Like I haven't heard that before.

I found Nina in her office at Rickie's, sitting behind her desk, her elbow planted on the blotter, her chin resting in her hand, a pair of readers perched on her nose as she tapped a pen on top of the intimidating sheaf of papers in front of her. She looked up when I entered, grinned, dropped the pen, and slid the glasses off and into her top desk drawer so deftly that only a semiprofessional investigator might have noticed it.

Nina came around the desk and gave me a soft, moist kiss. “Hey,” she said. “What's the surprise?”

“Surprise?”

“You said not to leave until you arrived.” Nina raised and lowered her eyebrows Groucho Marx style. “You have something in mind, big boy?”

“Yeah, about that. I was thinking that you're due for a nice vacation. You've been working much too hard lately.”

“Hmmm.” Nina raised her eyebrows again and smiled brightly. “You know, Erica is going off on her band trip tomorrow. Toronto. Five days.”

“You should go with, listen to her play.”

Nina's smile was replaced by a frown. “Are we talking about the same thing?” she said.

I asked her to sit down. She sat. I explained what had happened at Joley's house. I told her that the FBI now believed that Victoria's kidnapping and the two subsequent attempts on my life might have been perpetrated by someone who was trying to settle a grudge against me. She wondered what that had to do with her.

“If the FBI is right—and I'm not convinced they are—this person is using people I care about to get to me. First Victoria Dunston, then Joley Waddell. I'm afraid next he'll go after you and Erica.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because I love you.”

Nina gave it half a dozen beats before she replied. “You can be such a jerk, McKenzie.”

“What did I say?”

“I love you.”

“Nina—”

“You can't say that while we're walking around a lake or holding hands in front of a fireplace or standing on the damn street corner. No, I have to be in danger before I hear it.”

“I've said I love you before.”

“When?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Name one.”

“It's not like I keep track.”

“Well, I do.”

“Nina, you're missing the point.”

“The point is that one of your crusades has gotten you into trouble and now you're bringing it into my place. I don't want you to do that. You need to keep your business out of my place.”

“That's not the point.”

“McKenzie, I am not going into hiding just because you're in trouble. No way. If I did that, I'd spend the rest of my life on the lam—is that what you call it, on the lam?—because let's face it, you're always in trouble. If we were talking about Erica, that'd be different. Fortunately. Erica is leaving the country tomorrow at about ten o'clock with a dozen chaperones and about a hundred of her closest friends, so she'll be all right. As for me, I have a business to run, and since we are fast approaching the dinner hour, I suggest you get out of here and let me run it.”

The conversation had not gone the way I had expected. I decided to try again. I reached across the desk and took both of Nina's hands in mine. I squeezed them gently.

“Sweetie,” I said. “I need you to be safe. I understand that you're reluctant to go into hiding, but we can hire bodyguards—”

“No.”

“Nina, be reasonable.”

“Look down,” she said.

I glanced at the sheaf of papers our hands were resting on.

“That's an insurance policy,” she said. “It covers my business. Why do I have a feeling that hanging around with you is going to raise my premiums?”

“Nina—”

“Forget it. I am not going to have guys with guns around my place.” She pulled her hands out of mine. “It seems to me that this is your problem, McKenzie, not mine.”

She has you there,
my inner voice said.

“Okay,” I said aloud.

“McKenzie, I'll be fine. Now go away, will you?”

 

Schroeder Private Investigations was a cop shop. Every man who had ever worked there had been an investigator for one law enforcement agency or another—sheriff 's office, police department, even the FBI. They all acted like it, too, answering calls in white shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters, sitting behind gray metal desks with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. It was located on the third floor of an outdated office building in downtown Minneapolis. The directory listing the building's occupants was hand-written. So were the legends identifying each office; they were painted in gold and red on a ten-inch-wide, floor to-ceiling glass panel next to the doors. A heavy curtain kept everyone from seeing inside. I walked in without knocking.

A woman intercepted me in a reception area just inside the door. “I'm here to see Greg Schroeder,” I said. “My name is McKenzie.”

She led me halfway across the large, busy room until a voice boomed out. “Rushmore McKenzie,” the voice said. “I'll be a sonuvabitch.” She abandoned me as Schroeder approached.

Schroeder's fortunes had ebbed and flowed over the years. At one time, he had had as many as a dozen investigators working for him, yet when I first met him he was alone. Now there were five investigators in the office and I couldn't say how many more on the street.

“Last time I saw you was down in Victoria, Minnesota,” Schroeder said. “Seems to me I saved your ass.”

“So you did. Difficult shot, if I recall.”

“Come.” Schroeder led me to a metal desk against the far wall. “Sit.”

I sat in front of the desk.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Schroeder said.

I told him I wanted to hire a few bodyguards.

“To protect whose body?”

I opened my wallet and retrieved a photograph of Nina. Schroeder took one glance and said, “That's a body worth protecting. Who is she?”

“Nina Truhler.”

“Your girl?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

I gave him every detail I could think of, including the license plate number of her Lexus.

“What are we protecting her from?”

I explained that as well.

“No specific individual to watch for,” Schroeder said. “Makes it tougher. Where is the lady now?”

“Rickie's.”

“Okay. I'll pull in a couple of guys. We'll go over there. You can introduce us. We'll give her a couple of rules to follow—”

“Umm.”

“Umm, what?”

“You can't let her know that you're watching her.”

Schroeder studied me for a few beats. “That'll cost you extra,” he said.

“Price is no object.”

“People say that, yet they rarely mean it.”

“I mean it.”

“What about you? Want a couple guys watching your back?”

I shook my head. “Nah,” I said. “I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

“Famous last words,” Schroeder said.

 

I decided to take Harry's advice—finally—and go home. In fact, that was the plan after I stopped for a meal at a pretty good deli I knew on Como Avenue. Only my cell phone rang—I still hadn't changed the damn ringtone. A voice from my sordid past told me I should drive to a club in downtown Minneapolis.

“You really want to meet me,” Chopper said. “You really want to meet me right now. It's what you call a matter of life and death.”

 

Stroll along Block E in downtown Minneapolis these days and you'll hear opera—
La Bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Don Giovanni, La Traviata.
They were playing Bellini's
Norma
from a speaker on the corner of Seventh and Hennepin when I crossed the street. It was meant to drive off the riffraff that were now congregating in the area between Hennepin and First avenues and Sixth and Seventh streets. I suppose it might work. Opera, after all, is a complex art form that uses a different style of voice than we're accustomed to, and that makes some people uncomfortable. On the other hand, I didn't care for the music at all until an ex-girlfriend exposed me to it, and now I like it, so who knows? Instead of ridding the streets of the less desirable among us, it might turn them into opera fans.

Still, you can't blame the local merchants for trying. There was a time not too long ago when a tourist couldn't swing a commemorative shopping bag on Block E without hitting a prostitute, john, pimp, drug dealer, drug addict, mugger, pickpocket, panhandler, or loitering teenager. It was the most notorious chunk of real estate in Minneapolis, a place of disreputable businesses, rough-and-tumble bars, peep shows, sex-oriented bookstores, and triple-X movie theaters that accounted for 25 percent of all the arrests in the city. The city council's response to this blight on their fair community was to invoke eminent domain, seize all the businesses, and bulldoze them, literally turning Block E into an asphalt parking lot, thereby impelling the sinners to locate elsewhere.

A decade later, a few enterprising entrepreneurs decided that
E
stood for “Entertainment” and subsequently transformed the block into the crown jewel of Minneapolis's thriving club and theater scene. A movie house, a pizza joint, an ice cream parlor, a game center, a Hard Rock Cafe, and other attractions were brought in, and the area was lit up like the inside of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome during a ball game. Only, along with the tourists and suburbanites, the bright lights also attracted a criminal element, and Block E was once again becoming known for its casual shootings and what the cops euphemistically referred to as “disturbances.” Thus the experiment with opera. I almost felt guilty for humming along.

I found Chopper in an upscale club near Block E. He was drinking tap beer at a small table with a thin, twitchy white dude who had felon written all over him. The pair had demanded the attention of customers and the waitstaff alike, if not for their scruffy appearance, then certainly for their voices, which were loud and annoying—I heard them from six tables away. Not even the club bouncer dared try to do anything about them. I suppose it was fear. Chopper was sitting in a wheelchair, and nobody wanted to be accused of insensitivity toward the handicapped.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Chopper called loudly as I approached, doing his best Fat Albert impersonation. “Long time, man.”

I caught the eye of an alarmed waitress and made a circular motion with my finger as I sat, and she went off to fetch a round of drinks.

“So you're fuckin' McKenzie,” the felon said.

“Lower your voice or I'll kick your teeth in,” I said.

His face tried to turn red with anger, but he was so pale all he could manage was pink.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Chopper.

I pointed a finger at him. “You, too.”

“I don't need this shit,” the felon said. Quietly.

“It's cool,” said Chopper. His voice didn't carry beyond the table, either. “McKenzie's cool. You gots t' know the man has reason to be hostile.”

The waitress came with our beers. “These guys running a tab?” I asked as she distributed the glasses.

“Yes, sir.”

“I have it.” I dropped a fifty on her tray. “Keep the change.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” she said and hurried away.

“That's real white of ya, McKenzie,” Chopper said.

“It's not hard to make people happy,” I said. “Just speak softly and pay your bills.”

“Yeah?” said the felon. “How happy you gonna make me?”

I turned to Chopper. “Who is this?”

Chopper downed what was left of his first beer and started working on his second. In between sips, he said, “This here is—”

“Ain't no need for names,” the felon said.

“This here is a friend of mine,” Chopper said. “And a friend of yours.”

“Is he?” I said.

Chopper gestured at the felon with his glass. “Tell 'im what you told me,” he said.

“We ain't talked about whatchacallit, recompense, yet.”

“No money gonna change hands. What you doin' is a favor to me.”

“Fuck that.”

Chopper's eyes grew wide and menacing. Hell, I was frightened and he wasn't even looking at me. But then, I knew his history. When I was in harness, I found Chopper sprawled in a parking lot in St. Paul with two slugs in his back. Apparently he had run afoul of a rival dope dealer. I saved his life that night (ask Chopper about it, he loves to tell the story), though the damage to his spine put him in a wheelchair permanently. Six weeks later, he wheeled himself out of the hospital. Two days after that, we found the dealer and his two bodyguards under the swings at a park near the St. Paul Vo-Tech. Someone had nined all three of them from a sitting position. The murders were never solved. Of course, that was before Bobby Dunston took over the homicide unit. Shortly after the killings, Chopper moved to Minneapolis. He now made his living operating a surprisingly lucrative ticket-scalping operation; he even had a Web site. What else he was involved in I didn't know, nor did I care to know.

“You owe me, man,” Chopper said.

The felon gave him the mad-dog, only his heart wasn't in it. After a few seconds—just enough time to satisfy his manhood—he said, “Aww, fuck it,” and drank more beer.

“Tell 'im,” Chopper said.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“There's a price on your ass,” the felon said.

“A price?”

“A contract.”

“A contract?”

“What I'm sayin'.”

“What are you saying?”

“McKenzie,” Chopper said. “Watch my lips. Man put a hit on you. Open contract. Pays fifty large.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?”

“What I'm sayin',” the felon said.

“That's ridiculous,” I said.

“I agree,” Chopper said. “I know guys who'd do it for five.”