Brazill glared some more but said nothing.
“McKenzie,” Chandler said, “you told us that you came across Christine’s name while searching for someone else. Who?”
“I saw Christine’s photos on the missing persons website. It’s not the same woman.”
Chandler and Brazill exchanged glances as if I had told them something important. This time I was the one who asked, “What?”
“Who were you looking for?” Chandler asked.
“I told you, it’s not the same person.”
Brazill slapped the tabletop. “Who?”
Brazill’s outburst caused more silence and more head-turning. A security guard with a white shirt, gold badge, and blue patch on his shoulder approached from the right. A plainclothes guard moved on us from the left. Two other men, both wearing suits, rose from their tables. They didn’t look like they worked for the MOA, though. They looked like they worked for Brazill.
“Now see what you’ve done,” I said.
The plainclothes man was the first to reach us. He showed a gold badge, flashing it with pride just the way I used to when I was with the cops.
“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” he asked.
“It’s none of your goddamned business,” Brazill said.
“Sir, you will lower your voice.”
“Fuck you.”
Brazill’s two henchmen closed on the table. Counting Chandler, he now had three associates surrounding the two fifteen-dollar-an-hour security guards who were flanking him and me.
The security guard remained calm, probably because he knew reinforcements were on the way. “What is your business in the mall?” he asked.
Brazill glared at him.
I had a terrible feeling that this was about to become a Dyson moment, so I stood slowly. I smiled, making sure everyone could see the smile, while I slipped my jacket off the back of the chair.
“I ask you,” I said. “If a man can’t have a quiet root beer in the Mall of America, where can he? This is all going on my Yelp review.”
Brazill glared some more.
I made my way to the corridor, slowing only long enough to deposit my paper cup in the waste bin and put on my coat. By then more security guards were descending on the food court. I wondered if Brazill was dumb enough to pick a fight with them. I hoped he would. In any case, I didn’t bother to look back.
TWELVE
Erin Peterson lived in a Minneapolis neighborhood called Prospect Park that had somehow managed to find its way onto the National Register of Historic Places. The houses were built very close together, mostly in the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles along narrow, winding streets barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was easy to get lost, which I did, turning right when I should have turned left. Yet I was able to correct myself by using the Prospect Park Water Tower, often called the Witch’s Hat because of its fanciful green ceramic roof, for reference. Some say it was the inspiration for the Bob Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower” because it was clearly visible from Dylan’s former home in Dinkytown on the north side of the University of Minnesota campus.
Parking was an issue, as it nearly always was, especially on a Saturday afternoon, and the closest empty spot I could find was six houses past Erin’s on the opposite side of the street. There were plenty of people moving through the neighborhood, some riding bikes, some walking dogs, and some walking children. Erin’s 1920s house was perched on a low hill. I climbed the concrete steps to her tiny porch and rang the bell. There was a spyhole built into the front door, and a shadow passed over it before the door was yanked open.
Erin appeared. She was wearing tight jeans and a soft green sweater that contrasted nicely with her hair.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were going to call.”
“We need to talk.”
Erin held the door open so I could pass through it into her house. There were hardwood floors, arched entryways, beamed ceilings, a brick fireplace, vintage lamps, and furniture that looked like it was made the same year as the house. Nina had loved the place when we were last there about two years ago.
I unzipped my leather jacket but didn’t take it off.
“Coffee?” Erin said. “Beer?”
“I’m good.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I have something,” she said.
Erin passed into her kitchen with me following behind. Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen looked like it had been built yesterday as a showplace for a design company. It made for an interesting dichotomy.
There was a delicate-looking cup and saucer already on the granite counter. Erin filled the cup from a French press and took a sip while holding the saucer beneath it. For some reason I thought this was odd, but then I grew up in decidedly blue-collar Merriam Park and drank from a mug emblazoned with an image of the Millennium Falcon.
“Are you sure I can’t offer you anything?” she asked.
“Carson Brazill.”
“Yes, I was afraid it might be him when you mentioned that you had been followed by someone from Chicago.”
“He said he’s looking for Christine Olson.”
“I’m sure he is. It’s more comfortable in the living room.”
Erin moved past me. I followed her again. She found a spot on a mohair-upholstered chair with carved wooden arms and feet, balancing the saucer with one hand and drinking from the cup with the other.
“Tell me you weren’t followed,” she said.
“I wasn’t followed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure. Who’s Carson Brazill? Who’s Christine Olson?”
“Christine is a figment of my imagination. I wish I could say the same of Carson. How did he look, by the way? Did you see him?”
“He looked like a congressman who dreams of one day becoming a lobbyist for the coal industry. Erin—”
“What did you tell him?”
“About Christine? I told him I never met the woman, that I had no idea who she was.”
“He didn’t believe you, though, did he?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Erin set the cup on the saucer and held both in front of her as she leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. She was speaking to herself, yet I heard her just the same.
“So close, so close,” she said. “I can’t lose now.”
“Salsa Girl?”
Erin’s eyes snapped open and she looked up at me.
“How can I help you?” I asked.
“You might not want to after you’ve heard my story.”
“Have you murdered someone?”
“Of course not.”
“Then tell me what I can do for you.”
“Really? Not being a murderer is where you set the bar when deciding whether or not to help someone? That’s awfully broad-minded.”
“It helps that we’re friends.”
“I could use a friend.” Erin turned her head and stared out of her living room window at the sidewalk and street beyond. “I’m not sure, though, that—oh.” Erin’s eyes grew wide and she sighed deeply, dramatically. “Not followed, huh?”
I rushed to the window and looked out. Four men, all dressed in suits, stood in the center of the street three houses down. I recognized them all—Brazill, Chandler, and their two minions. They were looking at the houses around them as if they were unsure which direction to turn.
“How did they…” I smacked my forehead with my left hand; I figured I deserved the stab of pain the gesture brought to my shoulder. “Dammit, Erin. This is on me. They must have tagged my Mustang while it was in the parking lot last night. That’s how they found me in Cambridge this morning, only I was too dumb to catch on at the time.”
“You were in Cambridge?”
I turned around. Erin had left the comfort of her chair and was standing behind me, balancing the saucer in one hand and the coffee cup in the other. She seemed p
erfectly calm.
“We have much to talk about,” I told her.
“Where are you parked?” Erin asked.
“A block down from here and across the street.”
“That means they have no way of knowing which house we’re in.”
“Judging by the way Brazill and Chandler are wandering up and down the street—no. Maybe they think we’ll step outside and wave, invite them in for French press coffee.”
Erin sipped what was left of the brew and set both the cup and saucer on an antique table.
“What would you do if you were them?” she asked.
“They can’t loiter much longer, not in this neighborhood. Someone is bound to become suspicious and call the police. What I would do, I’d go back to my car and pretend to be inconspicuous. But first, I’d take down the address of every house in the immediate vicinity. While I was sitting in the car, I’d use my smartphone to run the addresses one at a time through the Hennepin County property tax website. Among other things, that would provide me with the name of each homeowner, as well as whoever is paying taxes on the property—this is all public record, you see. If that didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, I’d Google each of the names, using the addresses to narrow the search. Between Facebook, LinkedIn, Whitepages, and all the other sites that are available and the images that are posted on them, it shouldn’t be too hard to decide which door to knock on.”
“How long do you think that would take?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Plenty of time.”
“To do what?”
“Make good my escape.”
“Erin, you can always call the cops yourself.”
“No, I don’t think so. Besides, what could they do for me besides delay the inevitable? These people have been chasing Christine Olson for fifteen years. They’re not going to stop now.”
“Who exactly are these people?”
“The Outfit.”
“The Outfit? The organized crime family based in Chicago that was started by Johnny Torrio and Al Capone—that Outfit?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh…”
“You seem concerned.”
“Wait. The Outfit doesn’t have a presence in Minneapolis. The Cities have been pretty much free of organized crime ever since they put Isadore ‘Kid Cann’ Blumenfeld away for violating the Mann Act and jury tampering in the early sixties.”
“I know. That’s why I originally moved here.”
“I was right before—we really do have a lot to talk about.”
“There’s no reason for you to continue involving yourself in my troubles.”
“You mean besides the fact that I’m responsible for leading a squad of career criminals to the street where you live?”
Erin made the sign of the cross in the air in front of me.
“I absolve you of all your sins,” she said.
“What? No penance?”
I stared out the bay window at the street. The four gangsters had split up and were now moving independently up and down the adjacent streets, peering at houses as if they could see inside them.
“I need to get to my car,” I said.
“Your car has been tagged, remember. They probably attached a tracking device to your bumper and used a sat nav system to determine your location.”
“Let me rephrase—I need to get something out of my car?”
“What?”
“A gym bag filled with $10,000 in cash, a burn phone, fake IDs, and a nine-millimeter handgun.”
“Always prepared; I knew you were a Boy Scout. But McKenzie, we don’t need those things.”
“Fifteen years you say you’ve been running from these guys? Do you want to keep running? For how long? The rest of your life? Think of what you’ve built here. Think of what you’ll be giving up.”
“I have been. I’ve been thinking about it very hard, believe me.”
“Well, then.”
“Don’t tell me you already have a plan.”
I tapped my temple with two fingers.
“The wheels are spinning,” I said. “But I’m going to need to get to my car.”
“In that case, I have an idea.”
Erin told me what it was.
“I have to say, Salsa Girl—I’m astonished by how calmly you’re taking all of this.”
“I assure you, McKenzie, I am anything but calm. And don’t call me Salsa Girl.”
* * *
I escaped Erin’s house through her back door, crossing her tiny yard, hopping a fence—which caused my shoulder to ache some more—cutting through the yard of the neighbor directly behind her, and moving in a straight line, crossing two streets and four more yards until I reached the base of the small park where the Witch’s Hat was located. I hung a left, walked nearly a quarter mile, hung another left until I hit Erin’s street, and started walking back toward her house and my Mustang. I saw one of Brazill’s henchmen a couple of blocks directly in front of me, only he was on the other side of my car and facing the opposite direction.
My leather jacket was unzipped, and when I lowered my head it looked as if I were speaking to my inside pocket.
“I’m nearly there,” I said.
I kept walking; it was all I could do to keep from breaking into a run. The only reason I didn’t run was I was afraid of bringing undue attention to myself.
“Thirty seconds,” I said.
Up ahead, the henchman stopped and watched while a BMW backed quickly out of Erin Peterson’s garage and down her short driveway. ’Course, he didn’t know whose garage and driveway it was. The car backed into the street. For some inexplicable reason, the henchman glanced over his shoulder. And saw me.
“It’s him.” He pointed in my direction. “There, there, there.”
I didn’t see who he was yelling to, and I didn’t bother to look. Instead, I sprinted the rest of the way to the Mustang. I popped the trunk with the button on my key fob and grabbed the gym bag. The henchman was nearly on me. But Erin had been quicker. She screeched the BMW to a halt next to the Mustang. I stepped into the street, opened the passenger door, and slid inside. Erin drove off as I was closing the door. I glanced behind me. The henchman held a gun. He raised it with two hands and sighted on us. Before he could shoot, though, Chandler appeared at his side. He placed his own hand on the henchman’s gun and pushed downward until the muzzle was pointed at the ground.
Meanwhile, the black Acura pulled out of its parking space and motored down the street behind us. It stopped only long enough for Chandler and the henchman to climb aboard. Erin turned, and I lost sight of it.
“I should drive,” I said. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and tapped the END CALL icon; that was how Erin had heard me talking to her.
“Because?” Erin said.
“Police academy.” I slipped the cell back into my pocket. “I was trained to do this.”
“I thought you were going to say it was because you’re a manly man who does manly things in a manly way.”
“Excuse me. What?”
“Something I heard you say once when you were asked why you still play hockey at your advanced age.”
“Advanced age? How old do you think I am?”
Erin was glancing at her rearview mirror when she said, “Put on your seat belt, please.”
I glanced through the rear window. The Acura was on our tail and coming fast. I was relieved to see that Chandler and his pals weren’t leaning out the windows of their vehicle and spraying Prospect Park with bullets like they do in the movies.
Professionals, my inner voice said.
I put on the seat belt.
Erin accelerated hard while threading her way through the narrow streets. She let the Beemer drift to the left side of the street as she approached an intersection, braking gradually at first and then more heavily before swinging the steering wheel hard to the right, making sure her tires were as close as possible to the inside edge of the corner as she turn
ed. Once clear she stomped on the accelerator again, and the BMW leapt forward.
The most important thing to remember in a high-speed chase, or so I had been instructed, was not to crash, because even if you survived the accident you were going to be a sitting duck. That’s why high speeds were not recommended. By keeping your speedometer under sixty miles per hour, you’d have greater control of your vehicle and evasive maneuvers would be easier to accomplish. Erin seemed to understand this; Brazill and his minions not so much. I didn’t see it because Erin had maneuvered the BMW through another tight right turn, but I was sure I heard the distinct crunch of metal against metal behind us. Erin made two lefts and one more right that brought us to University Avenue heading for St. Paul, where she slowed to the speed limit. I could no longer see the Acura.
“Ms. Peterson?” I said.
“Mr. McKenzie?”
“You can drive.”
She thought that was awfully funny.
* * *
We didn’t remain on University for long, only a couple of blocks, before Erin turned off. My first thought was that she was heading for her place of business; not a good idea. I would have told her so except that a couple more turns brought us to the service road that ran alongside I-94. At the end of the service road was a sprawling, three-story storage facility. I decided it wasn’t a coincidence that the facility was located almost midway between where Erin lived and where she worked.
She halted the BMW at the gate leading to the storehouse, slipped out of the car, and walked quickly to an electronic control unit mounted on a steel pole. She inputted a code from memory, and the gate began to slide open. Once back in the car, she waited until the gate was opened fully and drove through it, following the concrete driveway to a metal garage door large enough for furniture trucks. She paused until the gate behind us closed. When it did, the garage door opened automatically, and Erin drove inside.
The building reminded me of a parking ramp, except instead of spaces, there were car-sized storage units lining the walls on both sides of the wide driveway. We followed it, passing a bank of huge elevators where people could unload their belongings onto dollies and lift them to the smaller storage units on the second and third floors. Finally Erin halted the BMW. She turned off the car, got out, and made her way to a garage door. There was a lock that she opened with a key. The door was on rollers, and it was easy for her to push it open. Inside the storage unit was a car, its hood up, its battery connected to a charger that was plugged into a wall socket.
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