by P. J. Tracy
Magozzi thought of what Dubnik had told them earlier about Parr’s rap sheet. “Your plea deal to manslaughter ‒ you turned state’s evidence, didn’t you?”
Milo gave him a black, partially toothless smile. “Somebody gets it. Everybody I ever knew is dead, and I’m next. The only good thing about cancer is that it’ll probably get me first and those cock-suckers won’t have the pleasure.”
“Did you know Trey Norwood?”
“Yeah, right, we joined the same country club.”
“Gus Riskin may have been his dealer,” Gino pressed.
Milo got a funny look on his face. “Gus didn’t deal. Worked construction most days, and when he had time off, he was our grease monkey, kept our bikes running.”
The bleached-blond had somehow made it to the front door of the trailer. She stumbled in clumsily, tripped over a bag of empty beer cans, then gasped when she saw the intruders in her corrugated-metal palace. Her face reddened, screwed up in fury, and she gave Milo a withering look that drifted from one side of his face to the other, never quite finding purchase on his eyes. “What the fuck, Milo, you stupid fuck?”
Gino stood up and twirled an arm authoritatively. What he lacked in stature he made up for in presence. “Minneapolis Police. Outside, both of you, before this place blows.”
The woman didn’t hear Gino: her unfocused eyes were still trained in the general vicinity of Milo. “You stupid fuck! I told you not to let anyone in here!”
“Stupid bitch,” Milo retorted. “Stupid fucking bitch.”
“Outside,” Gino said more forcefully, herding out his pathetic flock.
* * *
“That was truly heart-warming, wasn’t it, seeing a relationship based on mutual love, trust and respect? I felt like I was living a romance novel in a Breaking Bad sort of way, and look at them now, riding off into the sunset together in the back of a patrol car.”
Magozzi smirked. “I guess our friend’s going to miss his radiation treatment today.”
“Maybe somebody should have told him cooking meth in a trailer can cause cancer.”
“Who would bother? I’m more worried about what’s going to happen to the dog.”
Gino started up the car. “Got it covered. Animal Control and a pitbull rescue organization are on their way. That dog’s finally going to have a life.”
“Happy ending all around, then.”
A patrol walked up to their car, carrying the angel picture in a clear plastic evidence bag, along with a chain-of-evidence sheet. “Just sign, here, Detective, and it’s yours.”
“Thanks, Officer.”
Gino cocked a brow. “If you were going to steal some of Milo’s art, you could have taken one of the biker-babe pictures.”
“This is art and it’s stolen.”
“How do you know?”
“This is a Ruscha. An original.”
“What’s a Ruscha?”
“He’s a famous artist. I think Parr got it from Riskin, and I think Riskin stole it from Trey Norwood.”
“Whoa, back up.”
“The Norwoods collect art and I noticed a lot of Ruschas in their house. Maybe Trey Norwood inherited the family passion for modern art, or at least had some of their pieces hanging in his place in Hollywood.”
“So you think Rosalie was right about Trey and Riskin hooking up in California?”
“It seems more probable now.”
“Yeah, but what are we going to do with it? We already knew Riskin is connected to the Norwoods and Milo Parr.”
“It might be important down the road. Even if it isn’t, we can return it to its rightful owner. A piece like this has provenance so we’ll be able to figure out if it belongs to the Norwoods.”
Gino sighed and pulled out of Flamingo Terrace. “Riskin is a lynchpin. He could even be our killer. We’ve got to find him, dead or alive.”
“Nobody seems to be having a lot of luck finding him in the present, so let’s look for him in the past, go back to the time when things fell apart on him.”
“Good idea. I’ll drive, you dial. No reason to waste an hour just relaxing and enjoying the scenery. Not that there is any scenery. Just jack pines and meth labs.”
“At least we shut one down tonight. And we saved a dog, too, proving that bad things don’t always happen in trailer parks.”
“I think this was a one-off.”
CHAPTER
32
GARY JUNEAU HAD cleared the last of the trucks for the day and checked them into the lot out back, but he was taking his time with the paperwork, hoping to hear from Jim. At first he’d been mildly uneasy about the whole situation, but as the clock had ticked down the hours to quitting time, his mood had darkened until he felt a full-blown doom.
He maybe wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he knew how the cops worked because he’d spent a few years trying to evade them. They would have taken seriously a report of something like this, as a possible jacking or a theft on Jim’s part, and there would have been cops here long before now asking questions.
The only possible explanation, at least in his mind, was that Lloyd hadn’t called the cops, and that didn’t wash. As things stood now, Lloyd was out a truck and some equipment, which probably added up to a hundred grand, maybe a little more. The old man wouldn’t take that sitting down. He should have been running around, screaming at the top of his lungs and punching his fists through walls. The fact that he wasn’t was a pretty clear indication Lloyd knew more than he was saying, and in that instant, Gary knew Jim was in trouble. The thought made his stomach clench.
Gary looked up when he heard Lloyd’s office door creak open. His boss stuck his craggy, scowling face into the space between the door and the jamb, and shouted, “I’m leaving in five, and if your paperwork’s not done by then, don’t bother coming in tomorrow morning.”
Gary bit his tongue to stifle a nasty retort. “Almost finished. What did the cops say?”
“The fuck? They’re looking for that piece of shit right now. Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”
“Right,” he muttered under his breath, tapping in his final entry. “Finished. I’m outta here.”
Lloyd just looked at him with squinty pig eyes, then slammed his office door.
Gary put some distance between himself and Lloyd’s HVAC, walking under the hot sun until his shirt was clinging to him like a leech. He didn’t mind the heat or the humidity—it reminded him of living in Florida, which had been the best part of his life, back when he’d had a decent future ahead of him and a brand new bicycle. That segment of his existence had been short-lived, from birth to the age of thirteen, but he still had fond memories of it.
He stepped into a dark pub and pulled up a squeaky stool at the bar. The two other customers perched there gave him laconic looks, then refocused on the drinks in front of them without so much as an acknowledgment. That was the kind of place Mario’s was, and that was why Gary liked it.
It was a dive, with greasy floors, cast-off furniture, and sagging booths with tears in the red vinyl upholstery that exposed dingy puffs of fill. If you wanted to rack a game of pool, you’d have to play three balls short. If you wanted food to soak up the alcohol, you’d have to go someplace else. But popcorn was free, and that was good enough for Gary.
Mario came out of the back, a lumbering man with curly salt-and-pepper hair and a fleshy face pocked with acne scars. He didn’t need a bouncer because he could scare you off with a look, but he was actually a jovial old Italian, who still clung to his accent, even though he’d been in the country for fifty years.
“What’ll you have, Gary?” he asked, shaking his hand with his big bear paw.
“The usual, Mario. Just a pint of Guinness.”
“That’s as good as a sandwich.”
“Better. So, I never asked you, what’s a wop like you doing running an Irish pub?”
He gave him a dour look. “I’m half Irish.” He executed a fine pour, placed the glass ca
refully on a coaster along with a basket of popcorn, then erupted in boisterous laughter. “Just sheeting you, Gary. Not a drop of Mick blood in me, so I guess I can’t answer your question, except to tell you the Twin Cities is full of Irish and they like their pubs.”
Gary gave him a weak smile and took a sip, licking the foam from his upper lip.
“Something on your mind?”
Gary shrugged uncomfortably. Keeping your mouth shut was a survival mechanism, but with Mario, it was different—he wasn’t a friend exactly, but he was the closest thing to a confidant he had. Besides, bartenders had heard it all, a lot worse than what he had to say. “My buddy’s missing and I’m not sure what to do.”
“I see.” His tone was confidential and quiet. “Well, if somebody’s missing, you call the cops. Simple.”
Not so simple if you were an ex-con sneaking around behind your employer’s back. The fallout was unknown, but one thing was certain: he’d lose his job, either because Lloyd was into something and would end up in jail or because Lloyd would find out he was the one who’d made the call. Gary had never been one to grapple with morality, so his current quandary was like being on an alien battlefield without a light saber. “It’s a long story.”
Mario gave him a shrewd glance. “So you don’t want to call the cops but you do. He’s your friend, right? You worry, you want to help?”
Gary nodded miserably.
Mario had a way of rubbing his perennially grizzled jaw circumspectly. It was one of his trademark gestures and it could have any number of meanings, depending on the situation. “Hmm. Maybe I have a solution for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Call from the phone here, make an anonymous tip. No worries, no troubles. Cops get anonymous tips all the time. I turn my back, you make the call, I never saw you.”
* * *
Lloyd closed the outside office door and fumbled for his key-ring with shaking hands. He’d eaten half a bottle of Tums today, but his sour stomach was still repeating, sending acid up into his throat. Goddamn Jim Beam goes missing today of all days, and what a jackass he’d been, hiring someone named after booze.
As he shoved the key into the lock, he heard a sound behind him and felt a prickling sense of dread creep up his spine. He turned slowly, sluggishly, like he was executing a clumsy pirouette underwater, but there was nothing to see except his truck in the parking lot and some crows fighting over an empty McDonald’s bag that had blown in from the street.
Paranoia will destroy you. The sentence popped into his head and started running an agitating loop. He didn’t know where it had come from ‒ an old song, maybe, or something he’d read, but it was persistent and loud in his mind.
He turned back to the door and thought about going inside to get the gun that was locked in his office drawer. Paranoid or not, you never knew what kind of shit could happen in a city, especially during a heat wave like this one. Tempers ran as high as the mercury, which brought every single crazy son of a bitch scuttling out from under their rocks.
He jumped when he heard a string of firecrackers popping in the distance. Or maybe it was gunfire. It was hard to know in this fringe neighborhood that was on the cusp of an uncertain fate—the gangs and the city planners bent on gentrification were in the middle of their own turf war right now. None of that really mattered, though, because he’d made his decision: he was definitely getting his gun.
As he pushed the office door open, he felt something heavy hit him from behind and sailed back into the office with outstretched arms, thinking bizarrely that paranoia didn’t destroy you after all—other people did.
* * *
Gus walked past 111 Washington Avenue and felt the most amazing sense of freedom and exhilaration. Things were finally coming full circle. He didn’t know how his journey would ultimately end but, with luck, he’d be someplace very far away by this time tomorrow.
Two blocks ahead, he saw the archaic red-stone bulk of City Hall. It looked out of place looming in the shadows of modern steel and glass skyscrapers, and he wondered if it would eventually be razed, like the rest of the old buildings that had been sacrificed in the name of progress in the last century.
As he approached the light rail station in front of City Hall, he was surprised by a heavy police presence, and not just uniforms but a lot of plainclothes and definitely some feds. Maybe they weren’t obvious to the average person, but to him they were glaringly apparent, with their furtive, watchful eyes and rigid postures.
Apparently Abdi had fucked up somewhere along the way because law enforcement had clearly had some kind of a heads-up on what they were planning at City Hall. They were all there to prevent the tragedy. Weren’t they going to be so goddamned surprised?
He took a seat on a bench on the platform to wait for his train. It was an excellent vantage-point to safely view the low-level panic outside City Hall. He was a little disappointed that his train came so quickly, but he boarded and found a seat in the back, where there were no other passengers, just a discarded Starbucks coffee cup, an M&Ms wrapper, and a morning newspaper opened to the headline: GREGORY NORWOOD, MINNESOTA ICON AND PHILANTHROPIST, FOUND DEAD IN HIS HOME.
That was just a damn shame.
CHAPTER
33
ROADRUNNER HAD DISASSOCIATED a possible terror attack on Minneapolis from the work he was doing now, the work they were all doing. It was important to compartmentalize to keep focus, keep going, and his entire youth had been a boot camp in that survival strategy. It had evolved over the years, but most of the time, and especially right now, his world was an endless stream of zeros and ones that shielded him from anything bad.
He was vaguely aware that the Monkeewrench office was unusually quiet. The hum of the large bank of computers was always so omnipresent in the room that it barely registered with any of them, and the occasional soft tap of fingers on keyboards seemed faint and distant. Even the deep aches in his lower back and shoulders hardly seemed to exist. His awareness was sharp and singular, focused on the agonizingly slow movement of the progress bar at the top of his monitor as the program processed the data input from Dahl’s flashdrive in the hope they could pinpoint the location of the terrorists through that.
Time seemed like it was moving through sludge that got more viscous with each passing second. They were asking a lot of a prototype, and none of them were entirely sure the program could get through all the encryption they were hitting, which was why they were all working manually on the hacks while they waited ‒ even Annie, the most skittish of the four of them when it came to crossing questionable lines. But there weren’t any lines at all when it came to the possibility of saving lives, and she knew that better than any of them. She’d stabbed a man to death to save her own when she was seventeen.
We have to think of a name for the program. The ridiculous, insignificant thought briefly interrupted the rapid-fire calculations that were consuming his mind. Somehow a name seemed important, even though Minneapolis was potentially on the verge of a tragedy they might or might not be able to prevent. Everything depended on what was happening in the tiny circuitry housed in the far wall of the office, and to a certain degree what happened in the circuitry housed inside their brains.
He stole a glance at Harley sitting next to him, his eyes lasered on his screen. Grace and Annie were at their own stations, equally focused. His leg started pumping up and down as if the motion would speed things along. But what was happening couldn’t be rushed. The sources of the data Dahl had given them were hidden in the vast, unfathomable labyrinth of Tor, an onion router with layers of anonymity that made it virtually impossible to trace where traffic was coming from. They had to wait until somebody made a mistake they could exploit.
Virtually impossible, but not entirely impossible. People made mistakes all the time.
A half-hour later, his computer suddenly trilled an alarm and he jumped, feeling a prickly, hot rush of adrenaline shoot through his long limbs. Harley rolled his chair
over while Grace and Annie simultaneously strode from their stations to gather around him expectantly. Even Charlie joined the group, his pink tongue lolling from his mouth, panting in anticipation of some grand proclamation he probably hoped would result in more chicken tenders from Harley.
Roadrunner clicked to enter the alarm screen and jabbed a misshapen finger at the message there, which was flashing a simple, bold display in red letters: TARGET BREACHED, ACCESS GRANTED. He looked up at all of them, catching their stunned, disbelieving eyes before he said, “We broke the encryption and got through Tor. We’ve got access to our bad guys. Now we just have to hunt them down.”
CHAPTER
34
ROBERT ZELLER FELT weariness and sorrow sinking deeper into his bones as Conrad pulled the Town Car up to his downtown office building. A cluster of media was loitering on the sidewalk, microphones and cameras ready to violate. They’d been tailing him most of the day and had generally been respectful, but they were getting bolder and more impatient now. The very short half-life of media consideration had apparently expired and now he was fair game again. It was sickening and infuriating and intolerable, yet he had to tolerate it. It was his job.
“Are you sure about this, sir? I can divert now and go into the parking garage. At least it’s secure and that way you wouldn’t have to deal with them.”
“That’s a tempting proposition, Conrad, but my presence is important right now.” He took a deep breath, prayed for forbearance, then stepped out of the car and into a relentless blizzard of camera flashes. The reporters knew well enough to give Conrad wide berth and maintain an appropriate distance, but that didn’t stop them shouting idiotic questions as if Robert were deaf.
Will you be canceling tomorrow’s fundraising dinner in light of Mr. Norwood’s death?
How is the Norwood family handling this sudden shocking loss?
Are you satisfied with the MPD’s investigation so far?
Are you concerned the MPD hasn’t issued an official statement on cause of death by now?
