Warrior in the Shadows (9 page)

2.4

Kativa Patel sat hunched over her desk in her office, one leg drawn up and crossed bonelessly in her lap, her left hand holding her hair back, while her right hand wound a pencil through her hair again and again. She had only a painfully short list of notes to give Charley Payne: a brief note that the image of Anurra was from the Laura area, at Split Rock to be specific, and that it was thought to be the work of the Ang-Gnarra tribal group or possibly the Kuku-Thypan.

She set the note aside and flipped through several illustrated books of Aboriginal stories, most by Percy Tracy, who she knew and loved as a good friend and mentor. There wasn't any reference to the specific image there, but there was plenty about the Imjin. She didn't really know what else to say about the image other than what she'd told Charley. She had no idea how someone with an obviously intimate knowledge of Aboriginal ritual would come to Minneapolis to kill in the ritual fashion and put the image up on the wall.

So that's all she'd be able to tell Charley.

She wound her hair round the pencil once again. Charley. She liked that name and she liked the man, too. He had an interesting face, long and lined with good humor, but his eyes were capable of hiding things. She had the sense and intuition of all attractive women who have had to deal with the attentions, wanted or unwanted, of many men, and she had a feeling that Charley was attracted to her, just as she felt herself attracted to him. It warmed her, deep in her middle, the memory of his obviously hard body brushing against her in her small office. She chided herself for thinking that way about her friend's boyfriend and got her mind back on track.

But she still had little to tell him about Anurra.

So maybe if she took him to lunch it would make up for the paucity of her information. She picked up the phone, hesitated, then punched out his number.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Charley, this is Kativa Patel, from the museum?"

"Hello Kativa Patel from the museum."

"I have a little bit of information for you, not much I'm afraid. Would you care to meet me for lunch here at the museum? The Café is quite good for lunch and we have a very good view of the city," Kativa said.

She felt her face heating and silently cursed herself for the slight stammer in her voice.

"I'd love to have lunch with Kativa Patel from the museum," Charley said. "And the Café is just fine. I've eaten there before."

"Have you? Visiting the museum?"

"I like to take pictures in the Sculpture Garden."

"We're quite proud of that garden," Kativa chattered on. "One of the best in the country."

"Yes. Well. When?"

"How far are you?"

"Just over on Lake Harriet."

"Half an hour, then?"

"Half an hour it is."

"I'll see you shortly."

Kativa hung up the phone and twisted the cord in a knot. Should she feel guilty for not inviting Mara? No. After all, it was only lunch.

* * *

The Museum Café had ceiling-to-floor glass on the one wall that looked out over the Sculpture Garden and Loring Park. From any table in the room you could look out and see people walking in the street below, the trees in full fall bloom, the intricate maze of the carefully trimmed hedges in the Sculpture Garden punctuated with carefully arrayed pieces of art, and the twists and turns of the footbridge that crossed over Hennepin connecting the Sculpture Garden and Loring Park. Kativa and Charley sat at a table up against the glass where they could look out at the city when they weren't looking at each other.

"So you're Mara's international man of mystery," Kativa said playfully. "And you hang out in Linden Hills?"

"I like being the neighborhood oddball," Charley said.

Kativa tried to hide her laugh behind one hand. "I never know when you're serious or not."

"Either do I," Charley said. "You can laugh at me, I don't mind."

Kativa dropped her hand and laughed, then bowed her head to her salad and artfully forked the last few mouthfuls in.

"What do you think of that image now?" she said. "Now that you've thought about it for a while."

"What do you think is the question," Charley said. "You're the expert."

"We know where the original of that drawing is. This person must have knowledge of the Aboriginal artwork and history in the Laura region."

"Any idea where we'd find such a person?"

"Not here in the Cities. I checked at the University of Minnesota, but they don't have a specialty in Australian art. I have a call in to the head of ethnography degree focus, but I don't expect her to tell me anything different. I think you may have a traveler, someone who may have been there or is originally from Australia."

"That's a possibility," Charley said. He looked Kativa in the eye till she looked away. He smiled then and said, "Maybe Customs would have the latest on who's visiting from Australia."

"May I ask you a personal question?" Kativa said.

"Sure."

"You and Mara seem so… different together. Do you think that helps you in your relationship?"

"I don't know if I'd call what we do a 'relationship' in the sense you mean it."

"Does that mean you're just in it for the sex?"

"No," Charley said, a serious tone in his voice. "Not just that. Mara is my friend, a very good friend, an intimate. I enjoy the time I spend with her, and I think she enjoys the time she spends with me. We enjoy each other, and that makes the difference. Why do you ask?"

"I'm curious about how American men think."

"I'd think you'd have plenty of opportunity."

"Not as much as you might think."

"Why is that?"

"I'm not sure, really. What do you imagine?"

"About what?"

"About why it's hard for me to get a date here."

Charley smiled slowly, a lupine smile.

"Maybe you don't get out enough," he said.

"I am quite busy."

"Busy."

"Quite."

"Quite."

Charley laughed out loud. Heads turned at nearby tables.

"I think you're probably a bit much for your run-of-the-mill Minnesotan, Kativa Patel," he said. "They're not used to this sort of thing."

"What sort of thing would that be?"

"High-level flirtation. Around here it's more likely to be hey, how about a beer and a bratwurst and what do you think the Vikings are going to do this year? You're probably too smart for them, too exotic, too…"

"Too…?"

"Too, too much. Do you like to walk?"

"Certainly. A turn around the garden?"

"Just what I was thinking."

* * *

They strolled slowly along the manicured paths that wound through the Sculpture Garden, both of them with their hands pressed deep into pants pockets.

"Mara tells me you are really a good photographer," Kativa said.

"I like to shoot," Charley said. He lifted his chin and inhaled greedily. "I love the fall air."

"It's the best season here," Kativa said. "Nothing like it in South Africa or Australia, that's for sure."

"Why did you leave? South Africa, I mean."

Kativa sighed. "My whole family has left. After Mandela came to office, everyone had high hopes that things would change. And they did, some of it good, but much of it bad. The crime was the worst— so much violence, and we all knew someone personally who had suffered. It was just a matter of time before something happened to us. I always knew I wanted to go. I was in Australia when the rest of my family left. My mother and father are in Canada, just outside Vancouver."

"That's a beautiful city."

"Yes it is. It's like heaven for them there, and there's a large Indian community and a fair number of South Africans there. Lots of immigrants in Vancouver. And I'm not too far away from them, here."

"What about Australia?"

"Oh, I loved it there. Loved the country, loved the people. Have you ever been?"

"No."

"Queensland is where I spent most of my time, out in the bush country near Laura."

"So you know this area pretty well?"

"Yes. I was there for six months, a long time."

"Is that where you learned about the magic, or was that part of your coursework in university?"

"I learned a lot in university, but it wasn't until I got out into the field that I really began to learn about the magic. Much of Aboriginal lore is held in an oral tradition and they resist having anything written down, so it's only when you hear the stories from the people themselves do you get the real insight into what makes it all come together."

Kativa crossed her arms across her chest.

"What were you just thinking?" Charley asked.

She hesitated, took a few steps, then looked sidewise at Charley.

"I had a little brush with Aboriginal magic when I was there," she said.

"Tell me about it."

She sat on a concrete bench beside a sculpture of a long-eared hare astride a bell. Charley sat beside her, both of them conscious of the warmth of their thighs brushing on the cool concrete bench.

"I'd been in the field for about three months, and besides cataloging the rock art there I was doing interviews with the women. Women would talk to me, but most of the men were uncomfortable talking about any of their rituals or ceremonies to a woman, especially a white woman. But there was one man, older, in his forties, who paid me a lot of attention. He was always trying to chat me up. Finally one of the women told me to watch out for this man, that he was trying to work love magic on me because he wanted me."

"Love magic, huh? Sounds useful."

Kativa half smiled. "It sounds silly, sitting here, but you have to be there to fully realize just how much of this Dreamtime stuff is woven into the daily life of the Aboriginals and those whites who interact with them. It wasn't long after that, that I began to have a recurring dream, a dream of an Aboriginal man with a bone in his nose, his body covered with scars."

"Like the bush men in the pictures you showed me?"

"Yes. At first I dreamed that we were outside, in the bush, and he was far away, just watching me. But then each dream, he got a little bit closer, closer and closer and he began to call my name out. It got to the point that during the day, I'd hear someone calling my name when I was working. It began to affect my work."

"What did you do then?"

"I finally brought it up to Percy, who was helping me in the work. Percy is an initiate in the tribal group there, the only white man to be accepted, and then only because of his work in conserving the rock art in Laura and helping the local Aboriginals. As soon as I told him, he immediately took it seriously. He took me to see one of his friends, a man I knew to be a shaman initiate. He spoke to me and asked me to describe the dreams to him. Once I did, he did a small ceremony for me: he and another shaman played the didgeridoo, danced out a dance, and laid hands on me so that they could see for themselves what I was dreaming."

"What?"

"It sounds silly, but I felt as though they could see what I'd seen when they touched me. They told me that the other man was working love magic on me and they cast a counterspell to defeat it. They said that I was connected to Laura in ways that I didn't know and that I would come back there again. They gave me a small cloth bag and told me to wear it. Inside was a small bone and a piece of crystal. Once I put it on, I stopped having the dream. That night."

"What happened to the cloth bag?"

"They took it back after a couple of months. They assured me I would never be bothered by that man again."

"What happened to the man who was casting the love magic?"

"This is the frightening part," Kativa said. "He died. Heart attack, one night after he'd been up drinking. Or so it was said."

Charley nodded, and Kativa saw that he was taking it all seriously.

"So you have it firsthand," Charley said.

"It's hard to explain in the light of day here in Minnesota," Kativa said. "But the rituals and magic are very real in bush Australia. And once you've been there, seen the paintings, felt what it's like at night when all those thousands of years of habitation are pressing on you, then it's much easier to believe in the potency of those images. Like that image you've taken of Anurra."

"Do you ever have dreams of that time?"

"Not since then."

Charley nodded. "You can sense something about that image," he said. "There's a sense of power in it. Somebody took their time making it and it's the making of the image that's important. That's what I see. And whoever made it sees the same thing."

"It's quite evil," Kativa said.

"Yes it is," Charley said. "Yes it is."

2.5

The Gentlemen Only was the classiest and most expensive strip club in town. It had the best lunch buffet special in the downtown district— if you found naked women with your roast beef appetizing— which accounted for the herds of overfed businessmen looking to mix business with pleasure on their expense accounts. The interior was done up in a red rococo motif that was supposed to suggest New Orleans or the Moulin Rouge in Paris, and the bartenders all dressed up like riverboat gamblers. What Bobby Lee liked about the club is that the customers never paid any attention to the other customers. He could come in here, savor the lovelies while he had a good meal, and not be bothered or distracted unless he wanted to be. It didn't hurt that it was a short walk from Police Headquarters.

Bobby Lee saw the head of security for the club standing against a wall, watching him. Dave Nyser was a huge half black, half white man with piercing green eyes who'd done a term for manslaughter, got out, went to school, and gotten his rights restored. He'd graduated from throwing drunks out of the rough workingclass bars on the North Side to working here in a business suit, with a calm and diplomatic way of dealing with rich drunks who thought that buying a lap dance entitled them to something more at the end of the song. Nyser was a silent man, but he heard everything from a variety of sources in his quiet float around the club. He had been Bobby Lee's best source for information about the gray world between legitimate business and the street since Bobby Lee had put in a good word for him when he was getting his rights restored.

He waved the big man over.

"How are you, David?"

"I'm very well, Mr. Martaine. Yourself?"

"What do you hear these days?"

"Many things, Mr. Martaine. Many things. Yourself?"

"What do you think about this cannibal thing with the banker?"

Nyser checked the buttons on his expensive suit jacket, then crossed his hands at the belt line.

"I think," he said, pitching his voice softly, "that someone may have been angry with Mr. Simmons."

"You knew the guy?"

"Mr. Simmons came here occasionally. Never alone, always in the company of several other men."

"You know any of these men?"

"They were not regulars."

"What do you remember about them?"

"Some of them were from Australia, business types, very well dressed, good manners, loud but behaving themselves."

"Australia?"

"Yes. On several occasions. Mostly different men, but one man twice."

"What about the one man who came twice?"

"Young, late twenties, very well dressed. A diplomat of some sort."

"How could you tell?"

"The way he spoke. And he mentioned the Australian consulate in Chicago as his place of work to one of the girls."

"Which girl?"

"Josie, dances as Josephine. She's no longer with us. Very popular dancer when she was."

"Josie, dances as Josephine. Okay, we'll come back to her. Have you seen any of these others or this Australian guy since then?"

"No, sir."

"Think you could work up a better description of the Australian for me? The diplomat?"

"Not too much more… just under six feet, sandy blond hair parted on the left, longish to the collar, brown eyes. Lean build, like a swimmer."

"You remember anything else?"

Nyser paused and took his time looking over the club. "Yes, Detective Martaine. Several times I think Mr. Simmons was accompanied by police officers."

"Cops?"

"Yes."

"You know any of them?"

"No, sir. They refused to give up their jackets when they identified themselves to the girl at the front door check. Unfortunately, I wasn't here, as it's my policy to personally inspect law enforcement credentials myself."

"Could the girl tell me?"

"Unfortunately not. We've had a change in that position, due in large part to that incident."

"What's that girl's name?"

"That would be Josephine."

"I thought she was a dancer."

"She didn't want to dance anymore, so she took the door check job."

Nyser went away for a few minutes. When he returned, he handed Bobby Lee a small slip of paper with the name Josie Royale, 140 N. Emerson Street, 555-4988 on it.

"Her last address and phone number, Detective Martaine."

"Thanks, Dave," Bobby Lee said. He took out a twenty from his wallet and began to fold it.

"That's not necessary," Nyser said.

Bobby Lee paused, then replaced the twenty. "Favors in the bank, Dave." He reached out and shook the big man's hand.

"Thank you, Mr. Martaine. Always a pleasure speaking with you."

The big man walked away, quietly nodding to the burly members of his staff, pausing by the buffet table to see how lunch was holding up, and nodding to the girls working the tables, making sure they were moving quickly from customer to customer.

Bobby Lee sat back and thought. Cops? Cops with Simmons? What the hell was that about? Australian diplomats? He was going to have to shake that tree till it fell down. There were going to be complications in this case. He took out his cell phone and dialed the Major Crimes Unit.

"Janine?" he said to the secretary who answered. "Do me a big favor and forward this to Oberstar's desk, will you?"

"Sure thing, Bobby Lee. Where are you?" she said.

"Gentlemen Only, on pussy patrol."

"The mouth on you," she said, laughing. "Here's Oberstar's phone. Don't work too hard, you hear me?"

The phone rang and rang, and then the answering machine kicked in.

"This is Lieutenant Oberstar. I'm not at my desk right now. Please leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

Bobby Lee left his cell phone number on the tape and hung up. He pushed away his unfinished chef salad and side order of breadsticks, his appetite diminished by the thought of cops being involved in this. What the hell was a hoity-toity downtown banker doing in The Gentlemen Only with plainclothes cops? Something smelled dirty here, and it was going to take more juice than he had to get it sussed out.

His cell phone chimed.

"Bobby Lee?" Oberstar said.

"Yeah, Obi Wan. Look, I need to talk to you."

"Where are you?"

"In The Gentlemen Only, down the street. Can you meet me here?"

"I was just taking a piss. I don't want to go in that dive."

"It's no dive and the scenery is better here than down the street."

"I don't go in that place. Bugs me to see all those girls young enough to be my daughters."

Bobby Lee laughed. "I can see if I can find you a nice wrinkled grandma."

"What's the problem?"

"Look, let's go for a ride. You want to go for a ride? I want to talk to you about something but I don't want to talk about it there."

"Why the mystery?"

"Something on this Simmons case. I got something I don't like."

Oberstar was silent for a moment, then said, "What don't you like?"

"We're not going to talk about it on the phone, Obi."

"You betcha," Oberstar said. "Then we're not going to talk about it there, either. I'll pull a squad and pick you up on the corner. I'll be there in ten minutes."

It was ten minutes exactly when Oberstar pulled up to the corner in an unmarked squad car. Bobby Lee had barely shut the door when Oberstar accelerated away into the traffic and said, "What do you got?"

"Slow down, Obi, before you hit somebody."

"I want to get over to Bertolucci's, get some sausage, before it gets too crowded."

"The kids coming home this weekend?"

"Yeah, and I gotta get a sandwich. I'm starving."

"You should of come in, ate the buffet."

"I told you, I don't like that place. That asshole Amerikahas that owns it, he's as dirty as the day is long."

"That's old news."

"It's good reason not to go in there. You think he don't like having cops in there all the time?"

"I got something along those lines."

"Whaddya mean?"

"One of the employees saw cops in there with Simmons. Simmons went in there sometimes with some Australians. We got a solid lead on that, but it bothers me about a cop with Simmons."

"How do they know it was a cop?" Oberstar said. "He in uniform, what?"

"No, plainclothes. Had the look, kept his coat, badged one of the girls but she's not there anymore. You know how they make everybody lose their jackets. Only cops keep them."

Oberstar wound through traffic, jockeying for a position at the light. "Son of a bitch," he said. "I don't like where this is taking us, Bobby Lee."

"Tell me about it. I'll have to get our financial guys to go through the records and see if any cops' names fall out."

"I got a good guy can do that, keep it quiet."

"What?"

"You think that if you send somebody to start cross-checking cops' names against Simmons's contacts and the bank that you ain't gonna come up with a bunch? First Bank holds mortgages, you got guys with checking and savings accounts, we might have a hell of a list. And then everybody will know about it, including any cop that might have his hand in the till. We use my guy, he's retired, we can have him do it on the QT, keep it quiet till we got something solid."

"For an old dog almost out to pasture, you think pretty good, Obi-Wan," Bobby Lee said. "Let's get those sausages, I can still eat."

"You can do that, you're still young and got your life ahead of you. Rot your stomach, you'll enjoy it."