Unidentified Woman #15

by David Housewright

  “Are you looking for a nanny cam, Ms. Nina?” Lantry asked. “I have seventeen different varieties, including the cutest teddy bears.”

  “Actually,” I said, “we need a wire. For the lady.”

  “We do?” Nina asked.

  “And a receiver.”

  “Distance?” Lantry asked.

  “A couple hundred yards, at least.”

  “Recorder?”

  “Probably a good idea, but I need to listen in real time.”

  “You realize that it’s illegal to intercept and record conversations without the consent of the folks involved, right?”

  “It’s also illegal to sell bugs for the purpose of intercepting and recording conversations without the consent of the folks involved.”

  “Just as long as we’re both on the same page.”

  “Wait. What?” Nina said.

  “So, you’re looking for…” Lantry turned his back to me and was scanning his shelves. “People are going to say things to the lady and you want to listen in?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What people?” Nina asked.

  Lantry went to a shelf laden with computer keyboards, mouses, wireless routers, thermostats, smoke detectors, power strips, air fresheners, wall clocks, clock radios, picture frames, even baseball caps.

  “Are all these bugs?” Nina asked.

  “Listening devices, yes.” Lantry spoke as he rummaged. “TV shows, you always see the hero wearing a wire, literally a wire, taped to his chest. That’s just so the audience can wonder if the hero’s going to get caught. It’s for dramatic effect. In reality, there are so many less visible ways to do it. Hey, McKenzie, how ’bout this—a woman’s silver watch that contains a high-definition miniaturized camcorder. Or wait, I have the same camcorder in a black pen”—he showed it to me—“and a key chain.” He showed that to me, too.

  “We don’t need pictures,” I said.

  He took an earbud and held it up for everyone to see.

  “Spy Ear III,” Lantry said. “Two-way communications system.”

  “I didn’t know these were real,” Nina said. “I thought it was just something you see on TV.”

  “Oh, they’re real.”

  “Except that you need to wear a neckloop,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Nina asked.

  “It’s a coil of wire that you wear around your neck,” Lantry said. “It’s kinda like an antenna that plugs into an audio monitoring device.”

  Nina’s hand went to her throat as if she were already wearing it.

  “An actual wire like TV again,” I said. “I’d like to avoid that.”

  “Sure, sure.” Lantry held up a listening device that resembled a tiny flower—a light blue forget-me-not—attached to a needle about the length of a toothpick. “Lapel mic. Pin it to her coat. I’ll configure your cell phone so you can listen in and record. One ninety-nine retail. For you, one forty-nine.”

  “Sold,” I said.

  Lantry set the forget-me-not in Nina’s palm.

  “Not as cool as the earbud,” she said.

  TEN

  Unlike Arden Hills, Woodbury did not want for development. It wasn’t even a city fifty years ago, yet now it was the tenth largest in Minnesota. CNN Money ranked it eleventh on its list of 100 Best Places to Live, and for the most part its homes reflected that position. They were large and opulent and looked as if they had been built yesterday. The house listed in the flyer was no exception. We found it near a Lutheran church at the top of a T-intersection. Like the place in Arden Hills, it was surrounded by vehicles. I was fortunate to find an open space about a block away at the bottom of the T with a clear view of the garage.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said.

  “They’ll speak to me more freely if you’re not around,” Nina replied. “You said so yourself.”

  “Actually, what I said is that they’ll be more likely to flirt with you if I’m not around.”

  “And that’ll help me get information.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Nina flicked the petals of the forget-me-not attached to the lapel of her charcoal coat. The sound of it rumbled off my smartphone speaker like a rifle shot.

  “Will it be dangerous?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t think so. On the other hand, we are dealing with a criminal enterprise.”

  She flicked the lapel mic again.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “Just checking to make sure it works. Should we have a code word in case something goes wrong?”

  “I’ll have eyes on you”—I held up a pair of binoculars—“as well as ears, so probably that’s not necessary. On the other hand…”

  “I could say ‘broccoli.’”

  “You could say ‘help.’ How ’bout that?”

  “Fine.”

  “Call for help and I’ll come running.”

  “Good to know.”

  Nina left the Lexus and started walking toward the house. The layout was the same, with “used” items lining the driveway and newer merchandise loaded on tables inside the garage, although the garage was larger. It had doors for two vehicles and a third for a boat and trailer. There were more customers as well. They seemed better dressed, too, which didn’t surprise me. Woodbury had a median income of over one hundred and ten grand. Instead of saying WELCOME, the signs posted at the city limits read PLEASE WIPE YOUR FEET.

  I watched Nina through the binoculars as she passed a blue and white real estate sign.

  “Hey, McKenzie,” Nina said. Her voice was perfectly calm. “Wasn’t the other house for sale, too?”

  “Yes, it was,” I answered, although she couldn’t hear me. I wrote the name of the Realtor in the little notebook I always carry.

  Nina browsed her way up the concrete driveway. Like the day before, the temperature was touching the low forties, and the customers were in a jovial mood. I heard many happy voices. One guy said, “I bet we’re playing golf by the end of the month.” I assumed it was the fellow standing just off of Nina’s shoulder and handling a pitching wedge that he took from a golf bag belted to a hand-drawn cart.

  “Don’t jinx it,” another fellow said.

  The golfer returned the wedge to the bag and removed a putter.

  “This year I’m finally going to break eighty,” he said.

  “Okay, now you’re just talking crazy,” his partner replied.

  Nina kept moving along the tables. She paused to examine one of those flat, round vacuum cleaners, the kind that roam randomly across the floor, caroming off of furniture until, theoretically at least, it covers every nook and cranny. She held it up, I presume for me to see.

  “I have a boyfriend who would love this,” she said.

  A young woman was standing behind the table—the same one who was demonstrating the juicer the day before.

  “Would you like to buy it for him?” she asked.

  “No. When it comes to housecleaning, he’s lazy enough as it is.”

  “Hey, hey,” I said.

  Nina returned the vacuum cleaner and kept moving, seeming every inch the dedicated shopper. She stepped inside the garage, and my cell phone started broadcasting a steady moaning sound that competed with the voices. It was the sound of the overhead blowers working hard to keep the garage heated. I turned up the volume just in time to hear the young man.

  “Nina, isn’t it?” he said.

  I could see Nina pivot slowly to find Mitch standing behind her.

  “You made it,” he added.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  Mitch’s smile was clearly visible to me through the binoculars, and I thought, Be very, very careful, pal.

  “You showed some interest in pearls yesterday,” he said. “I have something you might like.”

  Mitch led Nina to the cafeteria-style table where they had laid out the jewelry. He held up something for Nina that I couldn’t see. Nina took it from his hand.

  �
��Pearl earrings,” she said.

  “They’re nearly identical to the necklace you bought yesterday.”

  “I can see that. How much are they?”

  “Two hundred dollars for the pair.”

  “That’s a very good price.”

  “A new customer, we like to keep your business.”

  “This is the way to do it.”

  Nina reached into her bag and produced the cash. If Mitch had been paying attention, he would have noticed that there was plenty more where that came from. The way he suggested, “Please, keep looking. I’m sure you’ll find other merchandise that you’ll like,” made me think that he had. Nina wasn’t about to let him go, however.

  “Do you get a lot of pearls?” she asked.

  “Depends.”

  “I love pearls.”

  “I gathered.”

  Nina allowed her voice to drop an octave or two.

  “If you should come across a necklace made with Japanese Akoya pearls, I’d be interested in paying a buy-it-now price,” she said.

  “Buy it now?”

  “Isn’t that what they do on the Internet auction sites, give customers a chance to buy it now and avoid an auction?”

  “It’s not an auction, but—Japanese Akoya pearls, you say? It’s possible we can do something for you.”

  “I’m also looking for pearl pendants.”

  “If we come across anything…”

  “You have my e-mail address.”

  “Clever girl,” I said.

  “Mitch.”

  Over the smartphone, it was just a guy calling a name. The way Nina’s and the young man’s heads snapped around, it must have sounded much more fervid to them.

  “Excuse me,” Mitch said.

  I followed him with the binoculars as he left Nina’s side and moved toward an older man who was standing with his hands locked behind his back. A second man, younger, taller, thinner, with short brown hair and completely devoid of expression, stood a few feet behind him, his head swiveling slowly from side to side.

  Bodyguard, my inner voice said.

  Mitch said something that I couldn’t hear, and the older man grabbed his arm. Mitch pulled it out of his grasp. The older man glanced about as if he were afraid of being overheard, took Mitch by the arm again, and guided him to the table stacked with cashmere sweaters. The bodyguard moved with them, keeping a respectful distance.

  Mitch and the older man spoke earnestly, only I couldn’t hear a word that they said. And then I did. Nina was moving slowly toward them.

  “No, no, no,” I chanted.

  The two men ceased speaking.

  “Excuse me,” Nina said.

  She fondled a couple of sweaters and moved on.

  “What are you doing here?” Mitch said.

  His voice was clear over my smartphone.

  “Damn, Nina,” I said. “Good move.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” the older man said. “Karl Olson is dead. Someone shot him.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Mitch said. “What has that got to do with us?”

  “You could’ve told me.”

  “All I knew about Olson was his name. The Boss paid him to hang around during the sales to make sure nothing went sideways; he wouldn’t even talk to us. Which made me think he wasn’t here to watch the customers, he was here to watch us. Only he didn’t show yesterday.”

  Mitch threw a thumb at the bodyguard.

  “Now we have this guy,” he said. “Are you hearing everything okay? Are you sure you don’t want to stand a little closer?”

  The bodyguard didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge that Mitch had spoken to him.

  “What’s your name, anyway?”

  He didn’t reply.

  Mitch lowered his voice and spoke to the older man. “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “Peter Troop, I think, but I don’t know. I barely knew Olson. You could’ve told me about him. Why did I have to read about it in the Star Tribune?”

  “It’s not my job. Look, John. We had an arrangement.”

  John, my inner voice said. His name is John.

  “Yes, we did,” John said. “I handle the outside and you handle the inside. Except you’re not doing a very good job with your part.”

  “We’re doing fine.”

  “Hell you are. You think I don’t hear the complaints? You haven’t brought in any merchandise worth selling in over a month, and that’s starting to affect my side of the business.”

  “Whose fault is that? Everything was fine until you got greedy.”

  “It wasn’t me. How many times do I have to say it? I’m just doing what I was told.”

  “Sure you are.”

  John jabbed a finger in Mitch’s face.

  “The Boss says—”

  Mitch pushed the finger down. “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “The Boss says to get that so-called expert crew of yours back into the stores. If there isn’t an improvement by next week, there’ll be consequences.”

  “Fuck the Boss.” Mitch’s voice was defiant, yet I noticed he glanced over his shoulder at the bodyguard when he spoke. “As far as I know you’re the Boss. You invented this unseen persona to keep me in my place.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “We were doing fine before the Boss came along.”

  “C’mon, Mitchell. That’s not true either. We were driving around the Midwest working flea markets—and only when it wasn’t winter, and when isn’t it fucking winter up here? Now look at us. The Boss got us working together—”

  “The Boss that I’ve never met. How ’bout you?”

  “I never met him either. Dammit, Mitch. We went from penny ante to big time.” John gestured at the large crowd rubbing elbows in the garage and driveway. “Business is good.”

  “Except now we’re in a different line of business, aren’t we? That’s why you’re really here. Not to deliver a message. You’re here to claim another victim for the Boss.”

  “I’m doing what I’m told. You should do the same.”

  “This was supposed to be a three-way partnership. Do you feel like a partner? Cuz it looks like you’re an employee.”

  “Whatever, it has nothing to do with you.”

  “Hell it doesn’t. El was right about that.”

  John started pointing fingers again.

  “I don’t want to hear her name again,” he said. “She’s gone. And good riddance, too, bitch trying to ruin our lives.”

  “Is that how you justify what happened? By blaming her?”

  “If she had just … kept … quiet.”

  My hands gripped tightly to the binoculars. I forced them to relax.

  “You should do the same,” John said.

  “Is that what the Boss says?” Mitch asked.

  “You get the same e-mails that I do.”

  It was as good an exit line as any, yet John didn’t exit. Instead, he moved out of the garage and down the driveway, stopping in front of the young woman who tried to sell the vacuum cleaner to Nina. Peter Troop moved with him, again maintaining a respectful distance. The young woman watched Troop as he donned a pair of sunglasses. She seemed uncomfortable in his presence. If the security guard noticed, he didn’t care.

  “Mitch,” a man said.

  I angled the binoculars to look back inside the garage. The young man who had been demonstrating the remote-controlled toys in Arden Hills was now also standing next to the cashmere sweaters.

  “What did Kispert want?” the young man asked.

  Kispert, my inner voice said. The man’s full name is John Kispert.

  “Hell, Craig. What do you think he wanted?”

  Ella’s Craig?

  “We should never have gone into business with these people,” he said.

  “They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, remember?”

  “I remember that we were doing better on our own. At least we were happier.”

  Disgruntled employees, my
inner voice said. You can use that.

  “I know, I know,” Mitch said. “Sometimes I wish we had never left Rochester.”

  Ms. Bosland came from Rochester.

  “Got that right,” Craig said.

  “Look at him. He’s here to claim another victim for the Boss, I know it.”

  “Yeah, and sooner or later it’s going to come back on us.”

  “Like it hasn’t already?”

  “Did Kispert ask about Olson?”

  “That was topic number one.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said Olson wasn’t our problem.”

  “Not anymore, anyway. Did he say who he thought killed him?”

  I could see Mitch shaking his head through the binoculars.

  “I thought he might blame El because of what happened,” Craig said.

  “He thinks she’s long gone. I don’t know, maybe she is.”

  “What about the other kids? Do you think they went home?”

  “My sister would have told me if they had.”

  “We need to replace them. We need to do it soon.”

  “I know. It won’t be easy, either. How long did it take us to teach El and them their trade? And now we have to start over?”

  Craig didn’t speak for a long time, and when he did, he said, “How could things go so badly?”

  “Maybe we should get out—like the kids,” Mitch said.

  “Do you think the Boss will let us?”

  “If we found someone to take our place … I don’t know.”

  “It might not matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Olson. If Kispert and the Boss think he was killed because someone is trying to move in on our business, they might fold it up. We could become free agents again, just like we talked about.”

  “That’ll take more than Olson getting shot, I think.”

  The two young men stopped chatting and simply stood next to each other, comfortable in the silence that followed the way that good friends sometimes are. I started searching for Nina. I found her in the driveway, squatting next to an eighteen-inch-by-three-foot high hexagon-shaped glass terrarium with a hook on top so you could hang it from the ceiling. She was examining it as if she were actually planning to buy it and I thought, C’mon, Nina. Where in our condominium do we have room for a terrarium, and who’s going to take care of it anyway?