“Mr. Brazill,” he said. “If you should reopen the pipeline, think how happy the bosses would be to get a foothold in the Twin Cities again.”
“No,” I said. “Erin won’t have anything to do with that.”
“But Christine might,” Chandler said. “Especially if it squares things with you.”
“She’ll have to do more than that to square things with me,” Brazill said.
“I’ll be happy to watch the door while you take what you want.”
“No,” I said.
I jumped to my feet. Carl knocked me down.
“Tell me where Christine is,” Brazill said.
“I don’t know. How many times do I have to say it?”
Brazill slid off the bed onto his knees. He grabbed me by the hair and yanked upward. His face was one huge snarl as he spoke.
“I’ll be happy to take Nina Truhler behind closed doors instead. Or her daughter. Would you like that better?”
“Please…”
“Where is she?”
“I told you, we separated. She took off without telling me where in case you didn’t take the deal. She has a go-bag filled with fake IDs and credit cards, even a passport. I don’t know what names they’re under. I only know she’s been preparing to run for something like ten years.”
Brazill yanked my hair some more out of pure antagonism; pain rippled through my core.
“McKenzie,” Chandler said. “McKenzie, if we had agreed to the deal she offered, how would you have contacted Christine to let her know?”
“I wouldn’t have. I can’t. Instead, she’s supposed to call me. I have a burn phone in my bag. Here, I’ll get it.”
I tried to rise, but Carl put his shoe against my spine and pushed me down. Chandler crossed the room to the bureau where my gym bag was resting. He opened it. “Would you look at this?” He pulled out a packet of cash and a wallet filled with fake IDs. “Oh, tsk, tsk, tsk.” He found the nine-millimeter Taurus and held it up for everyone to see.
“You disappoint me, McKenzie,” Brazill said.
Carl put the point of his shoe in my ribs as if that were what he always did when Brazill was disappointed.
* * *
I sat in the straight-back chair and waited. I waited for a long time, all the while pretending that my shoulder and my ribs and my face weren’t throbbing. Brazill was waiting, too, only he was doing it in the queen-sized bed. A couple of times, he dozed off.
You had to admire the man’s patience. Most criminal masterminds on TV and in the movies are portrayed as volatile lunatics, just as apt to take out their frustrations on their own people as they were on their enemies. I always wondered why anyone would ever work for them. But Brazill was calm and quiet. Like Salsa Girl.
Chandler not so much. He sat in the comfy chair and played with his phone, making comments, mostly unfavorable, on whatever he was reading without explaining what he was reading. When he became bored with that he watched some TV, flipping between the NBA and NHL playoffs and a baseball game, again tossing in a lot of derogatory remarks, until he shut off the TV and dropped the remote on the table. He left the room, came back, watched more TV, left the room again, and came back again. I wondered if he was wandering down to the lounge for a bump or just stretching his legs.
Meanwhile, Carl and Frankie had worked out a schedule, taking turns at the door. Half hour on, half hour off. I had no idea what they did during their downtime.
“You had better be right about this,” Chandler said. He said it at least half a dozen times as the afternoon dragged on.
Brazill didn’t say much of anything.
Finally my burn phone rang. Even though we were waiting for it, the sound made us all recoil.
“Put it on speaker,” Chandler said. “Don’t forget what we talked about.”
He showed me his gun just in case I did.
I answered the cell. “Erin.”
“Are you all right?”
We could all hear the sound of wind blowing through a window; clearly she was driving somewhere fast.
“I’ve been better,” I said.
“Did they rough you up?”
“Of course. They had to prove to me that they were in charge.”
“I’m sorry, McKenzie.”
“It’s okay.”
“Did they accept my offer?”
“Brazill wants one million dollars.”
Carl was miffed that I left off the “Mr.” and clenched his fists, but didn’t do anything with them.
“A nice round number,” Erin said.
“Do you have it?”
“I can get it.”
Brazill grinned at Erin’s response.
“What else?” she asked.
“He wants to be partners again.”
“In what? The salsa business?”
“Heroin.”
“He knows about Reyes?”
“I’m afraid so.” I didn’t tell her how he knew; I figured Erin could guess. “He wants you to let Reyes use Salsa Girl Salsa to mule his heroin into the Cities. He’s going to try to make a deal with Reyes to take over part of his operation.”
“And eventually take over all of it. I get it. What else?”
I didn’t say.
“McKenzie,” Erin said, “what else?”
“He wants to hurt you.”
Brazill’s grin became a smile.
“Yeah, I figured,” Erin said.
“Do you know what I mean by hurt you?”
“I know.”
“Fuck these guys, Erin. Just keep driving. You have nothing to come back to.”
Brazill slid off the bed and hovered above me. Chandler raised his gun.
“Ten years ago I would have agreed with you.”
“Erin…”
“All those marks we hustled over all those years, do you know why they nearly always did exactly what we told them? It’s because they were like me. They didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Erin, please. What the bastard has planned for you…”
“Yeah, well, maybe I have it coming. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you. Probably tomorrow.”
Erin turned off her phone.
I turned off mine.
Brazill smiled down at me.
“A hero to the end, aren’t you, McKenzie.”
He nodded at Carl. Carl’s fist drove me back to the floor.
* * *
The Pizza Ranch was next door to the Calumet Inn, and Brazill sent Frankie over for a couple of large pies. I would have preferred Dars about a mile away, but it’s not like they gave me a vote.
The pies arrived along with bottled beers that Carl scrounged. It was hard to eat; my teeth felt loose, and my mouth and jaw were sore. Dinner conversation centered on where the best pizza could be found. Chandler said he had grown very fond of the thin-crust sausage pizza at the Side Street Saloon near St. Alphonsus in Lake View, which I guessed was a neighborhood in Chicago. Brazill favored the deep-crust pie you can get at Lou Malnati’s.
“Which location?” Chandler asked.
“The one on Rush and State Street in the Gold Coast.”
I suggested that the best pizza I ever had was at an Italian joint called La Trattoria on Rue de la Convention in Paris.
“Who asked you?” Brazill said.
“Shut the fuck up, McKenzie,” Chandler said. “They don’t have pizza in France.”
Yeah, okay.
Night came without any message from Salsa Girl. The boys tied me up and left me on the floor. I asked for a pillow, which they thought was pretty funny. I didn’t think there was anything funny about it unless you count the fact that I was paying for the room and I had yet to use the bed.
What seemed like a short time later, someone opened the window blind. A harsh sun found my face on the floor. I opened my eyes into a glaring light. The way my mind worked, my first thought was of the old Harry Belafonte song—Day-o, day-ay-ay-o, daylight come and me wan’ go home …
“The bitch had better call back,” Brazill said.
She did, ten minutes later. I answered, putting the cell on speaker as ordered.
“McKenzie, are you all right?” Erin asked.
“Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t answer the first time you called. I was tied up.”
“They’re listening, aren’t they? We’re on speakerphone like we were the first time I called, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good morning, Carson.”
“Hello, Chris,” Brazill said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has. Are you doing well?”
“Not as well as I was doing before you ran out on me.”
“How angry are you, exactly?”
“Pretty angry.”
“Angry enough that you would let it obstruct a lucrative business arrangement?”
“That depends on the deal.”
“First the money. You’ll get it, but not in a lump sum. Not unless you want the Treasury Department to knock on the door and ask what I’m doing with all that cash.”
“You have thirty days,” Brazill said.
“I need six months.”
“Are you trying to negotiate with me, you fucking whore?”
Erin responded in her typically serene voice. “Don’t call me names. Do you want your million dollars or don’t you?”
“You’re going to give me a lot more than that.”
“First things first. Do you want—”
“All right, six months. You better not try to screw me.”
“Perish the thought. About the heroin—what the hell, Carson? Do you think you’re going to sell it in open-air markets like they do on the West Side? People lined up in their cars like it’s a drive-through? This is the Twin Cities, not Chicago.”
“Reyes is moving four keys a week in your squeaky clean Minnesota. I can do better.”
“If the Red Dragons let you.”
“What do you know about them?”
“I pay attention.”
“You haven’t changed at all, have you? You’re still the same girl who used to fuck old men for money and stock tips.”
“Four keys, you say.” Erin paused as if she were impressed by the number. “If I do this for you…”
“If you do this for me, you get to keep breathing. Take it or leave it.”
“Carson—”
“You hurt me, Chris. Taking off like you did without even saying good-bye, that hurt a lot. After all we’ve been through—I thought we were friends. Worse, what you did embarrassed me with the Outfit. It nearly ruined my career. So you’re going to do what I tell you to do. Otherwise, I will find you and I’ll do what I’ve been promising myself I’d do for the past fifteen years.”
“I’ll let you use my business—”
“Damn right you will.”
“But you will not interfere with my business. You will keep your operation separate. I don’t want to know anything about it.”
“That’s because you’re such a sweet and innocent little girl.”
“I know exactly what I am, Carson.”
“What you are is my bitch. From now on, whenever I say jump you’re going to say how fucking high.”
“Don’t do it, Erin,” I said. “Keep running.”
Carl hit me in the back of the head and drove me to the floor once again; he hit me hard enough to knock me unconscious. Only I wasn’t unconscious. I was pretending.
“McKenzie,” Erin said. “McKenzie?”
“He’s fine,” Brazill said. “But he won’t be if you try to fuck with me.”
“McKenzie has nothing to do with our arrangement. Let him go.”
“I’ll let him go when you and I have a face-to-face.”
Erin paused again.
“All right,” she said. “Tonight at Salsa Girl Salsa. Make it seven thirty, after everyone’s left.”
Erin silenced her cell phone. Chandler closed mine.
“Do you trust her?” he asked.
“Of course not,” Brazill said. “She’ll try to find a way to protect herself, if she hasn’t already.”
“Cops?”
“I don’t think so. That’ll bring too much scrutiny. Someone might ask her if Erin Peterson was her real name. They might ask how she got the money to start Salsa Girl. No, no cops. What you have to remember, Levi, is that when Chris and I worked together, the first thing we always did when sizing a mark was to ask, What does he want? What can’t he live without? In Christine’s case, it’s her business. She won’t do anything that’ll jeopardize it. She loves it too much. Which is why I’m going to take it away from her. After I take her body. After I take her pride.”
“What’s our play?”
“Get McKenzie up.”
Carl and Chandler dragged me to my feet and wrested me into the straight-back chair. They held both of my arms while Brazill tossed a glass of water into my face. I sputtered and opened my eyes.
“Still with us, McKenzie?” Brazill asked.
“What happened? What did Erin say?”
“It looks like we’re going to do business after all. Now I have something for you to do.”
“I want no part of your shit.”
Carl raised his hand to hit me again, but Brazill stopped him.
“No need for that,” he said. “McKenzie’s going to cooperate. Aren’t you, McKenzie?”
I didn’t say if I would or wouldn’t.
“I have a few tasks for you to perform,” Brazill said. “You do those for me, you’ll get to go home—go home to Nina Truhler and her daughter and live happily ever after.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I’m a businessman, McKenzie. First and foremost. I only hurt people to get what I want and only if they won’t cooperate otherwise. If you had cooperated from the beginning, no one would have laid a finger on you, no one would have threatened your woman. We can get past all that, though. Please, just do what I ask.”
“What do you want?”
“I need you to make a couple of phone calls.”
“To who?”
“To whom. First, Christine’s business partner, what’s his name?”
“Randy Bignell-Sax,” Chandler said.
“Yes. First we’ll call Randy. Then I want you to contact this Reyes punk.”
“Reyes doesn’t know me as McKenzie,” I said. “He thinks my name is Dyson.”
“Same as the name on the fake IDs in his bag,” Chandler said.
“I don’t care what name you use just as long as you convince him to meet with me.”
“Where?”
“At Salsa Girl Salsa. Make it eight o’clock tonight.”
“He doesn’t know us,” Chandler said.
“Yeah, I know. He’ll need an incentive.”
I hesitated as if I had to think about what I was going to say before I said it. “I have $80,000 worth of his heroin.”
“My, my, my, McKenzie, aren’t you full of surprises,” Brazill said. “Tell me—what were you going to do with all that dope?”
“Flush it down the toilet.”
“You have no vision. That’s your problem. All right, after Reyes, the Red Dragons. Tell me you know someone connected to the Red Dragons?”
“Why talk to them?” Chandler asked.
Brazill waved his finger at his lieutenant.
“She’s getting careless in her old age,” he said. “Either that or she’s out of practice. The old Christine would never have mentioned the Dragons.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s who Christine is going to use against us. She probably already has them itching to take us out when we get to Salsa Girl. Don’t forget, I know how that bitch’s mind works. By the way, what makes you think we’re going to talk to them? Hmm? I want you to call Chicago. We’re
going to need a couple more soldiers. We’re going to need them right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“McKenzie, I asked you a question. Do you know someone connected to the Dragons?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said.
FIFTEEN
The sun wasn’t supposed to set for another half hour, but the western sky was filled with gray clouds, so it was pretty dark at seven thirty when we arrived at the offices of Salsa Girl Salsa. We had taken two vehicles. I was on the floor of the van. The jostling I took during the long drive from Pipestone did nothing to alleviate the pain in my shoulder or my ribs, which, I was now convinced, were fractured. My face was swollen and beginning to show signs of serious bruising. All in all, I was in lousy shape, yet I felt both excited and happy.
You are one screwed-up individual, my inner voice told me.
Who was I to argue?
The boys took their own sweet time driving around the industrial park in search of an ambush, although Brazill didn’t expect one.
“The Red Dragons are probably running for the hills by now,” he said, whatever that meant.
Still, they dropped a couple of soldiers at key intersections to keep watch while the rest of us drove into the parking lot. We parked in front of the door. Carl and Frankie dragged me out of the van and pushed me forward; my hands were tied behind my back. Brazill stopped us before we entered the building.
“Where did you say you hid the H?” he asked.
“It’s in a box behind the front tire of the bombed-out truck in back. Do you want me to go get it?”
Brazill smiled at the suggestion. He nodded at his lieutenant. Chandler began to circle the building at a nice clip. Frankie moved to the front door and opened it. Brazill stepped inside. Carl shoved me in after him.
Erin Peterson was inside the foyer, leaning her backside against the edge of the reception desk. She was wearing a clingy sweater dress, her arms folded across her chest, just as she had been when I met her—was it really just a week ago? It seemed longer.
“Hello, Carson,” she said.
Brazill had an odd expression on his face. It was as if he were happy to see Christine in spite of himself. He walked across the foyer as if he meant to hug her. Instead, he slapped her hard enough that she staggered several feet. She quickly regained her balance and gently rubbed the spot where his blow had landed.
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