by P. J. Tracy
“Did you hack his state records?”
“That’s what I’m doing right now. For future reference, the government of the great state of California has shit firewalls.”
The doorbell rang and Harley stuffed a wad of bills into Roadrunner’s hands. “That’s the pizza. You fly, I’ll buy. Give him a twenty for a tip. Deliveries stopped an hour ago, but I called my regular guy for a favor.”
By the time Roadrunner returned with two fragrant pizza boxes, Harley had full access to every documented move August Riskin had made in California while he was still August Riskin.
Harley started the printer and abandoned his computer for his Carnivore Special. He selected a huge, greasy slice and took a lusty bite. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Roadrunner,” he mumbled, around an enormous mouthful. “That gluten-free, vegan-cheese crap you’re eating is an abomination and shouldn’t be called pizza.”
Roadrunner gave him a nasty look. “I’m gluten-intolerant and I don’t eat animals.”
“What’s the problem with eating animals? Animals don’t have problems eating other animals. You ever have a cat? Those suckers are the sweetest, most adorable little bloodthirsty killers in the world.”
“A lot of animals are vegetarians, too.”
“Whatever. I got into California and I’m printing everything on Riskin. If nothing pops, I don’t know where else to go. Drives me crazy, thinking there might be a dead end in all those pages.”
“Have we ever hit a dead end?”
“Come to think of it, no. You want a beer?”
“I don’t drink, you know that.”
“Because the last time you drank, you had too much pink champagne and felt like shit for three days. If you’re not a drinker, champagne hits you like a ton of bricks. Beer isn’t like that.”
Roadrunner shrugged ambivalently. “I don’t know …”
“No animals in beer.”
“Okay. Why not?”
While the two of them enjoyed pizza and a beer, quite possibly the holiest of holy grails for male bonding, they started doing the yeoman’s work of going through the printouts. August Riskin had had his share of past shenanigans, but even his records before he’d disappeared were few and far between. His only permanent address in California had lasted six months, and that was an apartment in Tustin, down in Orange County. When he was picked up on assault and battery, he was living in a trailer in the desert with no running water, no electricity and no address.
“This is like looking for a phantom,” Roadrunner commented, his speech slightly slurred. “Is it possible to get drunk on half a beer?”
Harley chuckled. “It’s possible to get buzzed on half a beer, if you’re a lightweight. Should I cut you off?”
“No way, I feel great.”
A half-hour later, Harley was finishing his fourth piece of pizza, deliberating on a fifth, when Roadrunner ruffled a sheet of paper at him. “Harley, look at this. It’s a notarized application for a name change and a signed order from a judge.”
Harley took the paper and studied it. “Damned if you aren’t right, Roadrunner. August Riskin legally became Gustav Holst two years ago. Clever. He could still be Gus, if he wanted to be, but the baggage that came with his last name disappears.”
Roadrunner started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Gustav Holst was a famous early-twentieth-century English composer. He wrote The Planets. You’ve probably heard parts of it a million times.”
“If it’s not opera, I don’t know it. So he’s a smart-ass who likes classical music, but I don’t give a crap about his name selection. Why didn’t the PI or Leo and Gino find this before now?”
“Because it’s a sealed record ‒ says so right there on the cover. They didn’t have a reason to dig that deep until Riskin’s prints showed in the truck.”
“Like Witness Protection?”
“No. That would be federal. This is state. He must have made a compelling argument to the judge to get this buried. With his background, it probably wasn’t hard to do. He was running with some nasty characters. He probably gave a few up.”
Harley gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Good catch. I’ll give Leo a call. And if you’re sober enough, start looking for a Gustav Holst in this century.”
CHAPTER
47
“THERE IS NO public record of any Gustav Holst in Minnesota,” Gino said in disgust, pushing away from his desk. “No driver’s license or vehicle registration, no property records, no arrests, not even a parking ticket. I’m waiting on the warrant for utilities records.”
“Did you try California? Maybe he’s just passing through here to kill a few people.”
“Of course I did. Nothing there, either. But you know what’s really bumming me out? Just because he changed his name a few years ago doesn’t mean that’s the ID he’s using now. He could be anybody.”
Tommy Espinoza toddled in carrying a Red Bull and a scrap of paper. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, which had turned his irises a surreal shade of blue. “I finally found something.”
Gino raised his head upward in a silent hallelujah. “Show us.”
Tommy placed the paper on Gino’s desk and pointed out a series of numbers. “Here are the unusual cash withdrawals you were looking for, taken from a bank account with just Gregory Norwood’s name on it. Twenty K every month from April to August of this year. A hundred K total. It piqued my interest because there was no precedent for this kind of cash withdrawal from the account prior to this year, going back three years. The timing synchs with the phone calls from the burner phones.”
“Thanks, Tommy.”
“You’re welcome. By the way, I’m zeroes on Gustav Holst, but I’ll keep trying.”
Gino gave him a fist-bump. “You’re the man. Be in touch.”
Magozzi looked up at Tommy. “These transactions should have triggered reporting by the bank. Do you know if they did?”
“Norwood had an exemption as a regular business customer, filed by his bank to the IRS yearly. If he needed big chunks of his own cash for whatever reason, he got it, no questions asked, no Bank Secrecy Act triggered.”
“I don’t suppose there’s some kind of money trail, any additional wires to accounts in those increments?”
“No, just the cash.”
After Tommy had left, Gino got up from his chair and paced around his desk, no destination in mind. “How did Norwood get the cash to Riskin?”
“Some kind of dead drop. Probably a safety deposit box somewhere. Or a lot of different safety deposit boxes. That’s what I’d do.”
“A hundred grand is a lot of money to pay out for information that’s dubious at best, but for some reason, Norwood kept shelling it out. He had to have had another reason to play the game.”
“You think Riskin had something on him?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
* * *
Roadrunner pushed away from his computer and rubbed his eyes. “Hey, Harley, I just got into Xcel Energy. I’ve got the utility records pulled up.”
Harley rolled his chair over. “Good job. Who needs to wait for warrants?”
“You shouldn’t even say stuff like that out loud. Can you spell me? My eyes are on fire and I need a break.”
“Go. Get on the treadmill or do some t’ai chi or yoga or something. You’re hunching over like a ninety-year-old man.”
“Actually, I was thinking of taking a walk. You want something from downstairs when I get back?”
Harley eyed his half-empty bottle of Heineken. “Yeah, bring some more beer.” When Roadrunner had left, he started scrolling through the list of Xcel Energy customer names, hoping Gus Riskin-slash-Gustav Holst wasn’t living off the grid in a van down by the river and had been stupid enough to keep his California alias and entrust it to a utility company. Five minutes later, he hit paydirt, polished off the rest of his beer in celebration, and called Magozzi.
“Hey,
Leo, I just found Holst.”
“You are a god among men. Do you have an address for us?”
“Yep, it’s …” Harley squinted at the monitor and rubbed a deep crease between his brows that hadn’t been there that morning.
“Something wrong?”
Harley enlarged the screen, not trusting his eyes. “You tell me. Gustav Holst lives in the same Roseville apartment building the feds raided a couple hours ago. The building we traced to the terror threats against City Hall.”
CHAPTER
48
GINO CAREENED DOWN a deserted Roseville street while Magozzi tried Dahl for the fourth time. He had absolutely zero hope he would answer his phone, but it didn’t hurt to keep trying. “Dahl, this is Detective Magozzi again. I know your hands are extremely full, but there might be a murder suspect in the building you raided, unit twenty-four, Gus Riskin a.k.a. Gustav Holst. He’s armed and very dangerous.”
Tires squealed as Gino made a sharp right. “Dahl’s in the middle of an anti-terror op, which I’m really thrilled about, but our murder suspect is way down on his priority list right now.”
“For all we know, Riskin is part of it.” Magozzi grabbed the door handle as the car leaned dangerously into another turn. “Jesus, Gino, get us there alive.”
“The raid could have flushed him out. He’s a slippery bastard.”
“Or he could be sitting in a room somewhere getting interviewed by the feds.”
The red meat of the raid was winding down when they arrived, but it still looked like a war zone. There were dozens of FBI vehicles, from sedans to SWAT units to Evidence Response Team vans and K-9; the outer perimeter that encircled them was made up of multiple MPD squads that splashed red and blue into the darkness. Heavily armed men and women patrolled the grounds and exited the building in a steady stream, carrying out boxes of evidence.
They got through the MPD cordon and pushed through federal agents with their shields extended to save everybody the time and hassle. They were met with stern, sometimes suspicious glances, but nobody seemed to have the will to engage, probably because they had more important things to do than abuse two MPD detectives who didn’t belong at a terror raid.
They found Dahl pacing by a crime-scene van, his head down, phone pressed to his ear. He was having an animated conversation with whoever was at the other end of the line, but they garnered his undivided attention when he looked up and saw them. His expression shifted between confusion and mild shock before he finally spoke. “Detectives. What are you doing here?”
Apparently, he hadn’t gotten the messages. “We’ve got a murder suspect listed as occupant of unit twenty-four in this building and we need to get in there. August Riskin a.k.a. Gustav Holst.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“We have exigent circumstances. We think he killed Gregory Norwood and three others, and there’s a possibility the surviving Norwoods might be in danger, along with anybody else who gets in his way.”
The cheap, hollow-core door of unit twenty-four gave easily to the FBI SWAT agents Dahl had co-opted for the job. Gino and Magozzi watched in awe as the team breached and cleared the apartment, like deadly dancers executing a perfectly choreographed ballet. “Clear!” one finally shouted, stepping aside to let Dahl, Magozzi and Gino into the apartment.
It didn’t take long for the bad news to sink in. If August Riskin-slash-Gustav Holst had indeed ever lived there, he was gone without a trace. The only things left behind were a few pieces of cheap furniture and a half-dozen eggs.
“Fuck,” Gino muttered, slamming the last kitchen cabinet shut before joining Dahl and Magozzi in the living room. “We missed him. And not by much. I can still smell coffee and burned toast.”
“Any way he knew you were on his tail?” Dahl asked.
“No. We didn’t even know we were on his tail until an hour ago. He cleared out way before that and way before your raid. It was part of his plan, whatever the hell that is. For all we know, he’s on a flight to Zimbabwe right now, if Zimbabwe’s even still a country.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get your man tonight, but I’ll brief my team on his name and alias and include it as part of our ongoing investigation.”
“We owe you one.”
“And we owe Monkeewrench one, so let’s call it even. We took six men into custody tonight. We believe they were part of the plot against City Hall, but we’re missing a key person of interest. Ahmed Abdi. His specialty is bomb construction.”
“We’re not letting our guard down. The bomb squad was back at City Hall when we left.”
Dahl nodded morosely. “The entire city will be on high alert for a while.” He looked around the empty apartment. “One day, I’d like to hear how an investigation into Gregory Norwood’s murder led you to a federal anti-terror raid.”
“It was a twisted path. Do you believe in coincidences?”
“No.”
“Neither do we, so have your crime-scene people go over this place with a microscope and ask your suspects about Riskin.”
“I will.” Dahl checked his buzzing phone. “I’m sorry, but I have to take this.”
“You’ve got a job to do,” Magozzi said. “We’ll slink out of here and leave you to it.”
Dahl started hustling toward the door, then turned around. “You need to talk to the landlord.”
“We have questions for him, but I’m sure your people are keeping him busy right now.”
“They are, but he’s still on site and, depending how it goes, he might not be for long. I can get you five minutes. Does that work?”
* * *
George Crenshaw, the landlord of the Roseville apartment complex the feds had trampled, was on the wrong side of middle age, with a badly receding hairline and a protruding gut that strained his Minnesota Twins T-shirt. He was wearing floral board shorts that would have looked stupid even on a twenty-year-old surfer. Worse yet, they revealed fleshy calves that were covered with a startling amount of wiry gray hair. Magozzi thought, Slob, when he first met him, but now he was feeling a little sorry for him: the guy seemed genuinely terrified. And who wouldn’t be? It wasn’t every day the feds came to raid your building in the middle of the night. The shock alone would have been bad enough, but he had the feeling the feds had been giving him the full-on interrogation treatment—as they should ‒ and this was his five-minute reprieve from the wrath of Dahl’s minions.
When he spoke, his voice was an octave or so higher than it probably was normally, and it was shaky. “All I can tell you about Gustav Holst is that he paid his rent on time in cash. He was a good tenant. No troubles. But it was the same with the Somali guys that got taken away tonight. They paid their rent on time, too, no troubles with them, so I guess you never know about people. Are they really terrorists?”
“That’s not our case, Mr. Crenshaw. Our only concern is Gustav Holst. How long did he live here?”
“Since April, I think. I’d have to check in the office to know for sure.”
“Do you have a vehicle for him on record in the lease office?”
George looked genuinely baffled. “No, why would I? People come and go, they change cars, that’s their business.”
Magozzi tried to tamp down his disappointment as one easy lead disintegrated. “Do you know what kind of vehicle Holst drove? Maybe you saw him in the parking lot, leaving or coming home, something like that.”
He thought for a minute. “Actually, no. I never saw the guy except on the first of every month when he dropped off his rent in cash. I don’t even know if he had a car, to tell you the truth. He kept to himself.”
“Was he employed?”
“I don’t know that, either, but I’m assuming he was. How else is he going to pay rent?”
Magozzi’s disappointment was slowly being usurped by growing frustration. It was truly stunning how unobservant most people were. “Well, did he wear a suit and a tie, for instance? A uniform of some kind?”
He shook his head. “No,
nothing like that. He wore jeans, T-shirts, sometimes a heavier workshirt, like a Carhartt. If I had to guess, I’d say he was in the trades, construction, you know. He had rough hands and he was pretty well-built. Muscular, like a laborer would be.”
Gino pushed a copy of Riskin’s California mug shot across the desk. “Do you recognize this man?”
Crenshaw studied the photo for a long time. “This guy is a lot skinnier than Holst. And his hair is long and blond. But put some meat on his bones and shave his head, then, yeah, I’d say it’s him. Jesus, this is a mug shot.”
“It sure is.”
“What did he do?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Jesus,” he muttered again. “I never had any trouble with Holst, I swear. You never know about people,” he repeated.
CHAPTER
49
GUS RISKIN WAS on top of the world as he pulled into Flamingo Terrace Trailer Park. Milo had a different car for him and a sofa he could crash on until things blew over. Then he could get the hell out of Minnesota. In return, he’d give him a little cash to help with his medical bills. Cancer was a nasty bitch.
He turned a sharp bend in the road and his heart started slamming in his chest when he saw all the lights ‒ Klieg lights, strobing patrol car bubble lights, bouncing flashlights. Crime-scene tape was festooned around Milo’s trailer, like birthday crepe paper, while cops and techs were crawling all over the damn place. There were four squads parked out front, along with a crime-scene unit and two Haz-Mat vans.
Keep driving, nice and easy. Don’t lose it now.
He slowly made the loop around the trailer park, then jumped back onto the freeway and headed north at exactly the speed limit, trying to keep his panic in check. Son of a bitch, what was he supposed to do now?
He didn’t have any real fear of the cops because there was no way they could connect him to Milo or anything else. And if by some miracle they did, Milo couldn’t hurt him because he didn’t know anything. But he needed a different car ‒ he couldn’t take any chances at this stage in the game. The only reason he was here now was through an abundance of paranoia and caution. Preparation. Care.
