Practice to Deceive (31 page)

The pain in my leg grew worse, my steps shorter and slower.

I hit the valley and immediately started to climb out of it and nothing happened. I tensed, anticipating the hard punch of a bullet, but there wasn’t one. No
pop
. No
zing
of a round buzzing past my ear. At first I felt relief. Then I was irritated. What the hell was he waiting for, an engraved invitation?

I followed the path out of the grove. Again the park loomed before me. More playground equipment, more barbecue grills. In the distance a lone batter took hits at a Softball diamond, a half dozen guys in the outfield shagging his flies. The path curved with the lake, leading me past the band shell. I remembered the last time I had been in the park. It was the Fourth of July before my wife and daughter were killed. We had lolled on the hill surrounding the band shell with a couple of hundred other natives, listening to the local orchestra bang out march tunes while fireworks exploded above. But there were no fireworks today. Zero. Zip. Nada.

He’s a professional
, I reminded myself. Zilar isn’t going to hit me on my terms; he’s going to do it on his. He’ll take me when I go back to my car. Or maybe he’s waiting for me to pull into the driveway at home. How many other ways could he do it?

I was past the pier, taking the turn at the volleyball pits before I realized it. “Well,” I decided, “one more time around. The exercise will be good for my leg.”

Only my leg didn’t agree, and it told me so with each step I took as I recircled the lake, again meeting the female jogger, this time along the tracks. She smiled and nodded, and I smiled and nodded back. She wasn’t particularly attractive, but, man, was she in good shape. Better than me, anyway.

The sun was sinking fast when I hit the grove. Again I ran along the edge of the path closest to the lake. And again my stomach tightened when I crested the hill and began my descent into the valley. But I did not expect Zilar to make his move there. And of course that is exactly what he did.

WHOOM!

I heard the explosion and knew instantly what made it—you hear the sound once and you remember. I dived off the path into the trees, rolled, and turned toward the sound. The deep, piercing pain in my leg convinced me I had been shot again, but I wasn’t. It was the old wound, protesting my shabby treatment of it.

WHOOM!

I rolled some more until my legs were in the lake, icy water soaking through my sweatpants. The 25-caliber Beretta was in my hand, for all the good it did me. I couldn’t see a thing. I thought about crawling toward the path but resisted the idea. Let him come to me. And he did. I detected movement out of the corner of my eye, up the path toward my right. He was squatting behind a tree wearing a black jacket zipped to his throat, jeans, and boots.

How did he get over there?
I wondered. I would have bet the ranch that the shots had come from my left side, from down the path.

I lay in the water. I didn’t trust the .25 from that distance, but I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to reveal myself the way Zilar had. Besides, he was the one in a hurry. I waited. Finally, Zilar was on the move, dashing from tree to tree, keeping low, his eyes down the path. He stopped a few feet from the edge, leaning against a tree, giving me an opportunity. I lined him up, took a deep breath, let half out, held the rest, was about to squeeze the trigger.… But Zilar jumped. The woman jogger! She was closing in on his location, about to go past. Zilar turned toward her, the gun leveled.

“
No!
” I screamed.

Zilar saw me and double-clutched. I was on my knees now. He brought his gun up. I did the same.

WHOOM!

The tree Zilar was leaning against exploded just inches above his head, sending splintered wood flying everywhere.

He instinctively pulled his head in.

The woman screamed.

I fired one round. The bullet caught Zilar high in his left shoulder. The force of the blow, even from a .25, was enough to bounce him off the tree. He lost his gun, which clattered on the asphalt.

The woman screamed again.

I was on my feet now, limping fast toward Zilar. I kicked his gun off the path—it was a .38—then drew a bead on his head.

“Don’t shoot me again!” he begged. “I’m hurt. I’m really hurt. Don’t shoot me no more!”

The woman screamed yet again. For someone dressed for running, she sure wasn’t going anywhere very fast. But I didn’t hold it against her. Fear has a way of paralyzing you.

“Call the police,” I told her. But she didn’t move, so I shouted, “Get the cops!”

She nodded and started running through the grove toward the houses hidden beyond.

“Nice ass,” Freddie said as he watched her scamper through the woods, fall, regain her feet, and hurry on. I didn’t answer, my gun still trained on Zilar’s head. “This the guy?” Freddie wanted to know.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Gonna shoot him?” he asked as if he wanted to know whether I preferred butter with my popcorn.

“I’m thinking about it,” I admitted.

“I’ll do it,” Freddie volunteered. “No problem.”

“Don’t shoot me! Don’t shoot me!” Zilar pleaded. “You got me, man. You don’t need to shoot me no more.”

“Who hired you?” I asked.

“I’m hurt bad,” Zilar replied, his right hand pressed against his shoulder, both the hand and the jacket red with blood.

“Who sent you?” I asked again.

“G’ahead, take ’im out,” Freddie urged me. “We can tell the cops anything we want; who’s gonna know?” When I didn’t reply, Freddie added, “Man, what are you? A pussy?”

I took Zilar’s left wrist, stretching his arm and causing great pain to his shoulder. I pressed the muzzle of the .25 to his elbow and said, “First this one and then the other. You don’t tell me what I want to know, I make it so you’ll have to ask strangers to unzip you whenever you need to take a whiz.”

Zilar yanked his arm away. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph!” he said. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“And then tell the cops something else?” Freddie volunteered. “Shit, Taylor. Kill the fucker.”

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph!” Zilar hissed again, slumping against the tree. “Oh, Jesus!”

Freddie leveled his gun at Zilar’s face. “Say, Taylor?” he asked me. “Did I show you my new gun, yet?” He was holding a 50-caliber Desert Eagle, just like the one Zilar’s buddy had tried to use on me at Rice Park. Freddie—the man’s a slave to fashion.

Zilar was shaking his head now with a calmness I found mystifying. “There isn’t any need for this. I get it,” he said. And apparently he did because he straighted up, his hand clutching his shoulder, and said, “I roll on Saterbak, turn—whaddaya call it—state’s evidence, and maybe they let me plead down to simple assault with a sentencing recommendation. You’ve got some nice, cushy prisons in this state. Clean. Modern. No gang rapes. No sodomy unlessin’ that’s your pleasure. Yeah, I can do a year in Stillwater or St. Cloud, no problem. So, tell me, what is it exactly you guys want to know?”

I looked at Freddie. He looked at me.

“I told you this was a good idea,” I said.

S
ERGEANT
J
OHN
H
AWKS
studied Freddie’s Desert Eagle carefully after unloading it, shook his head in disgust, and said, “Compensating for a small penis, are we?” I don’t know what he thought when he examined my tiny Beretta.

We gave him a statement at the scene, after which he was kind enough to remove the handcuffs his patrolmen had wound around our wrists. He then took me, Freddie, and the female jogger to the Roseville Police Department, where the three of us gave our statements again, first to the city attorney, and then to a stenographer. After we signed them, the woman was offered a ride home. Freddie and I were asked to wait. And so we did, while Michael Zilar was treated at the St. Paul–Ramsey Medical Center. His wound wasn’t particularly grievous. My bullet had torn away part of his deltoid muscle just below the shoulder joint. It was what people who haven’t been shot call a “flesh wound.”

After a couple of hours, Hawks loaded Freddie and me into a patrol car and drove us down to the Ramsey County Annex in downtown St. Paul. We were installed in separate holding cells and waited some more. Eventually the assistant Ramsey County attorney arrived. He watched me through the round peephole in my door, gave me a hard look, then left.

When he came back—it was either early or late depending on your sleep habits—he informed me that Zilar had been true to his word. After negotiating a deal, Zilar spilled his guts about Carson Saterbak, starting with Saterbak’s original call to Chicago on behalf of Levering Field. He confessed that Saterbak brought him to town following Tom Storey’s untimely death in Rice Park, putting him up in a hotel near the Mall of America. He confessed that Saterbak had contacted him on what was now yesterday afternoon and promised to pay him twenty thousand dollars if I was dead by noon the following day. (Later that evening, after learning the price tag, Freddie would nudge me with an elbow. “See, I told you you were worth twenty.”)

Zilar even explained what little he knew about Willow Tree, which was little indeed. That’s what the ACA wanted me to tell him now: more about Willow Tree.

“I can tell you that Willow Tree was founded by Joan and Peter Dully, who were Saterbak’s employees,” I said. “Beyond that, I can tell you nothing.”

The ACA was furious until I explained.

“Most of the information I have on Willow Tree was obtained illegally,” I confessed. “Anything I tell you now will probably be thrown out of court. A smart defense attorney will argue that I was acting as an agent of the police department and therefore am subject to the same rules of search and seizure, and the court of appeals will probably agree. You’ll lose what evidence I give you and any evidence you develop because of it.”

The ACA nodded. He knew I was right. He also knew he should have thought of it first.

“I promise you,” I said, cheering him up, “everything you need will be right there in plain sight.” Then, remembering the size of the names on the Willow Tree investment list, I added, “All you need is a little nerve, and this could become the biggest, most important case of your career.”

He was smiling when he left the room, probably wishing cameras were allowed in Minnesota courtrooms.

After a while they let Freddie and me out of the holding cells and gave us some coffee and donuts. Meanwhile, the ACA had set an all-time land-speed record in obtaining arrest warrants for Carson Saterbak and the Dullys. Freddie and I were still there when Ramsey County sheriffs deputies brought Saterbak in, his hands cuffed behind his back. He stared at me for a long time while he was being processed. I smiled back. Words didn’t seem necessary.

A half hour later, another squad of deputies ushered the Dullys past us. I turned to Freddie. “Our work here is done,” I announced.

“Our work?” he grunted, his lips encrusted with tiny red-and-white sprinkles from a cake donut. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got fourteen, fourteen and a half, make it fifteen hours you owe me for. I’ll send a bill,” he promised and took another bite of donut.

Of course, Zilar did not admit to shooting Field. Or me. Or of taking several pot shots at Amanda, for that matter. And the gun we took off him at the park—a .38 wheel gun manufactured by Charter Arms—most certainly had not fired the 32-caliber slugs they dug out of Field, me, and Amanda’s siding. But let’s face it, that would be a lot to ask. There was no way he could have plea bargained those charges away. Besides, I was satisfied. I was particularly pleased when the ACA told Freddie and me that we were free to go, leaning in real close and saying, “You lucky sonuvabitch, get out of my sight.”

TWENTY

I
TOLD
F
REDDIE
that I owed him big time. He told me where to send the check. I offered to buy him breakfast—the sun was up, the birds were singing. He stretched, yawned, and said, “It’s past my bedtime. I’ll see ya around.”

“Yeah, around.”

I watched him walk away. The man had saved my life. Twice. And I wasn’t even sure I liked him.

C
YNTHIA
G
REY HAD
been worried about me. After I retrieved my car and drove home, I found several messages on my machine, all from her. Before I could return them, she called again.

“Where have you been?” she wanted to know.

“In jail.”

“What, again?”

I chuckled and explained everything, then asked if she wanted to meet for lunch. She had a prior engagement. Dinner? Same thing. But, maybe she could swing by afterward. I thought that was a good idea.

“It’s too bad about the money, though,” she said before hanging up.

“Hmm?”

“The two hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I would liked to have gotten the money for the old lady.”

And then it hit me, really hit me. Everything that had happened since my father called me down to Fort Myers had been for nothing.

“Nuts,” I said. “What am I going to tell my mom?”

I
PUT FIVE
CD’s on my machine—a little Miles, some Bird, some Diz, two Coltranes—hit the shuffle button, and cranked the volume. I made some scrambled eggs. Ate the eggs. Then I lay down on my sofa in the living room to rest my eyes. I opened them again to silence and a dark house. The sun had set, and the only light I could see was the green dot that informed me that the CD player was powered up. I had slept ten hours.