by Glenn Ickler
The drizzle had turned to a soaking rain so we put on our hooded plastic ponchos for the long trek to the marina. When we got there we found the door to the rental office closed. With the all-day rain, this was no surprise. I knocked and got no response. I knocked again, louder. The door opened a crack and a young man peered through the opening. “You want a boat in this weather?” he asked.
“No boat,” I said. “I just want to ask you some questions.”
He opened the door and gestured us into the office, which wasn’t much bigger than a broom closet. There was a desk with a single chair, which he offered with a gesture, apparently expecting us to flip a coin or arm wrestle to decide who would sit. We both remained standing and introduced ourselves. “I’m Pete,” the man said in return. His blond hair was almost white, and he looked young enough to be a high school kid. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and somehow his face had acquired a suntan that would have looked natural in July.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Pete asked when the introductions were finished.
“Were you working here last Friday morning?” I asked.
“You mean when all hell broke loose because of the empty boat?” Pete asked.
“Before that. I’m talking about before sunrise. Did you rent the boat to Alex Gordon that morning?”
“No, sir. Mr. Gordon took the boat out Thursday evening, just before I closed for the night. He wanted to get out on the lake before we would be open Friday morning, just like he did last year.”
This was not helpful. “Was anyone with him when he was here?” I asked.
“No, sir, he was alone,” Pete said.
“Did he say anything about who might be going with him in the morning?”
“No, sir. He went out alone last year and I figured he was doing the same thing this year. I remember him complaining that he couldn’t talk anybody else into getting out of bed that early Friday morning because they all got shit-faced . . . uh, I mean, drunk . . . the night before.”
“So as far as you know, he was going out alone Friday morning?”
“Yes, sir.
“And you didn’t see him leave Friday morning?”
“No, sir, I was still sleeping when he went out. I didn’t need to be here until six o’clock.”
“Looks like we struck out on this one,” Al said.
“Yes, damn it, it does,” I said. “Just one more question, Pete. How did you get such a deep suntan this early in what’s been a cold, rainy spring?”
Pete laughed. “It’s actually been fading since I got here. I got tan skiing out west. Spent all winter in Colorado and got a pretty good burn on sunny days with a lot of snow to reflect it.”
“So you work here in the summer and ski out west all winter?”
“Yes, sir. I make enough in pay and tips in the summer to be a ski bum all winter.”
“Nice life,” Al said. “Enjoy it while you can. Some day you’ll be saving your money for your kids’ college tuition like I am.”
“Not unless I adopt some, sir,” Pete said. “I’m gay.”
“That was more than I wanted to know,” I said when Al and I were once again outside in the rain.
“At least you can’t fault him for hiding in that closet he calls an office,” Al said.
We slogged back to the lodge, where we were greeted by Ann Rogers. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. “The sheriff just got back from Rugby and he was looking for you, Mr. Jeffrey. You missed your turn to be interviewed and now you’re at the end of the line.”
“How long until he gets to me?” Al asked.
“He said he was tuckered out from being up all night and left for home,” Ann said. “He won’t get to you until tomorrow morning.”
“Son of a bitch!” I said so vehemently that Ann took a step back. “Sorry,” I said in a calmer voice. “We were counting on going home today.”
“At least we didn’t pack our stuff,” Al said.
I could have pointed out that if we had stayed in the cabin and packed our bags, the sheriff would have found Al in time for the interview, but some things are better left unsaid.
Twenty-Nine
Martha’s Misery
Here goes nothing,” I said as I pressed Martha Todd’s cell phone number. The call went to voicemail and I left a message.
“She’s not answering. The condemned man has a little while longer to live while waiting for a return call.”
“It’s time for the feminine wiles thing I was talking about earlier,” Al said.
“I’ll suggest it but I don’t think it will sell.”
I was on the bed, half asleep with a true crime novel resting on my chest, when Martha called. I told her about the postponement of Al’s interview with the sheriff, being careful to put the blame on the sheriff and not on our absence from our cabin, and held the phone a couple of inches away from my ear.
Al heard the shriek fifteen feet away. “He can’t keep you there. He’s got to let you come home.”
“He’s the sheriff,” I said. “He can keep me here.”
“There are freedom laws. There are anti-cruelty laws. There are common decency laws. I’ll go to court and get a writ of habeas corpus.” Each sentence came out in a higher note and a greater decibel level. By the end of the third one, I was holding the phone at arm’s length.
I pulled the phone back to its normal position. “Do you want to try talking to Don?” I asked in my calmest, most deliberate manner. “Maybe you can persuade him to send up a replacement for me so I can go home tonight. He’s left work by now but I have his home number.”
Martha was close to tears. “Yes . . . no . . . maybe. Oh, forget it. Get married in your damn old funeral blazer and slacks. It’s you I care about, not the stupid clothes.”
“I’m relieved to hear you say that. If we get home tomorrow, there’ll still be time to buy something.”
“There won’t be time to tailor it. You’ll have to turn up the cuffs with safety pins.”
“Okay, I’ll be your pin-up groom.”
“Oh, Mitch, I don’t need this on top of all the other crap that’s been going on today. The woman at Immigration called and said they’re going to deport Grandma Mendes.”
“Good god, why? She’s been in this country forever.”
“They say they can’t grant her asylum because there’s no evidence that her life is in danger if she goes back to Cape Verde. The perverse woman I’ve been dealing with, her name is Ms. Wong, says we have to prove Grandma’s life is in danger if she goes back there.”
“Ms. Wong isn’t wight. Your grandmother is too old and frail to survive away from her family. Wait a minute. What’s Ms. Wong’s first name?”
“I think it’s Grace. Yes, I’m sure it is.”
“Grace Wong? I think I know her. Give me her phone number.” Martha recited the number and I wrote it on the notepad beside the bed. “I’ll call her tomorrow and see if it’s who I think it is.”
“Oh, sweetie, if you can get those people to change their decision I’ll . . . I’ll marry you if you have to wear a ragged pair of jeans and a paint-spotted T-shirt with holes in it to the wedding.”
“Be careful what you’re promising,” I said.
* * *
I did know Grace Wong. She was a regular attendee of my Monday night Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
My first encounter with Grace had been two years earlier when I covered the deportation hearings for a ninety-five-year-old German immigrant accused of having herded prisoners into gas chambers in a World War II Nazi death camp. The process dragged on for more than a year while the man’s attorneys tried every trick they could think of to thwart the effort to return him to Germany for trial.
Grace Wong was an investigator on the case and serve
d as the spokesperson reporting to the public. I had interviewed her an hour after the issue was finally resolved and the man had been escorted out of the courtroom and into a van headed for the airport. She was so shaky and distracted during the interview that I finally asked why she was so severely affected by the case. Grace replied that her grandfather had been an officer in the Chinese army during World War II and had been captured by the Japanese. His captors had tortured him so severely that his mind had reverted to his early childhood when he returned to his family at the end of the war.
“Listening to the evidence against Otto Bergsdorf brought all that back to me,” Grace had said. “I’m so shook up and sick that I’m absolutely dying for a shot of whiskey.”
When I’d said that a calming drink was not unusual or inappropriate, she had surprised me by telling me that she was only six months out of treatment for alcoholism and was afraid she was about to fall back. “I’ll lose my job,” she had said. “I saved it by going into treatment at Hazelden, but now I’m craving alcohol and if I go back to drinking they’ll fire me for sure. I am really worthless when I’m drunk.”
I was stunned to hear something so deeply personal from a woman I didn’t know, but I had a ready response. “You need AA, and you need it now,” I’d said, and immediately called my sponsor. Between us we had staved off the immediate crisis and gotten Grace started with my group. She had been there every Monday since, and never failed to express appreciation for the rescue.
The question now was: how could I use this relationship to keep Grandma Mendes in St. Paul? I would have to approach Grace as a supplicant and hope she felt a need—and could find a way—to repay me for steering her into AA.
“You’re thinking awfully hard about something,” Al said.
“I am,” I said. “And it’s something I really can’t discuss with you.”
“I’m assuming it has something to do with the phone number you wrote down.”
“It does. I’ll let you know if the problem gets resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
It was after five o’clock. The Immigration office would be closed. The call to Grace Wong would have to wait until the next morning.
* * *
Thursday dawned bright and clear, with the clean sweet smell of wet grass in the air as Al and I walked to the lodge for breakfast. On Tuesday night we had decided to wash out two sets of underwear at a time so that one set would have an additional day to get dry if we were still stuck at Gull Lake. Here we were on Thursday, and for the first day since Sunday I hadn’t been forced to put on slightly damp underwear. How could life be better?
Well, maybe by putting on a fresh shirt that hadn’t been worn three times without washing. Or best of all, by being told we could go home.
Ann Rogers was also still stuck at Gull Lake. I had no idea what the governor’s press secretary was doing about underwear and I wasn’t about to ask. She was making the rounds of the media-occupied tables, spreading the word that Sheriff Val Holmberg would give us a briefing at 11:00 a.m. He was planning to give updates on both the case of the tree-and-silo-climbing kidnapper and the case of the mysterious death of Alex Gordon.
“Has he got a suspect in the murder case?” I asked when Ann reached our table.
“He didn’t say,” she said. “All he said was that he’d give you folks an update.”
“Be nice if the update was that the killer is in jail,” Al said.
“We should be so lucky,” Ann said.
“I can’t believe you’re still stuck here with us,” I said. “How is the governor operating without a press secretary? Has he been breaking in a new assistant for you?”
“He’s using the lieutenant governor’s press secretary,” Ann said.
“I thought the lieutenant governor was on what he called a pre-campaign tour,” I said. “Is he touring northern Minnesota without a press secretary?”
“He can’t use a state employee on any kind of campaign tour, pre or otherwise,” she said. “If he’s got a press secretary with him it’s not anyone your taxes are paying for.”
“Where is Old Smokey, anyway?” Al asked.
“I don’t really know,” Ann said. “I’ve been too busy with all the crap that’s going on here to try to keep track of Aaron Ross. He said he was going to start the tour in Bemidji but that was several days ago, so he could be most anywhere by now.”
“I haven’t seen anything in the paper about cities having local air pollution alerts,” I said. “That would be an easy way to track him.”
“Frankly, I don’t really care where he is,” Ann said. “The thought of having him in the governor’s office is almost enough to make me vote Democrat for the first time in my life. I know darn well that I won’t be working in that office anymore if he gets elected.”
“Sounds like there’s more than cigar smoke involved in that decision,” I said, hoping for printable tidbit about dissension in the Republican ranks.
“It’s just that he’s . . . oh, forget I said anything at all. Please. I can’t get into personal feelings in this job.” She turned and walked quickly away to another table.
“I’d like to know what that’s all about,” I said.
“She certainly has no love for our next governor,” Al said. “She wasn’t just blowing smoke.”
We returned to our cabin, and I e-mailed Don O’Rourke about the sheriff’s upcoming update, ending with the unequivocal statement that Al and I would be heading home immediately after the briefing.
Don’s reply said, “Upcoming update noted. Upstart homecoming note deleted.” And he complained about Al and me dropping an occasional smart-ass pun.
Al was reading our online edition on his laptop when I stepped outside, sat on the front steps and called Grace Wong. After wading through a series of prompts longer than Pinocchio’s nose, I reached a living human being who said, “Ms. Wong’s office, how may I help you?”
I gave her my name and asked if Ms. Wong was in. She asked if I was calling about a current problem or something new and I said it concerned a current case. After a moment’s pause, a familiar voice said, “This is Grace Wong. How may I help you?”
“This is Mitch,” I said. “I want to talk to you about the Mendes case.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “Do I know you?”
“Would it help if I said my name is Warren Mitchell and I’m an alcoholic?”
“Oh, Mitch,” she said. “I didn’t hear you clearly. What can I do for you? Aren’t you up north somewhere on a fishing trip?”
“I am up north somewhere on the fishing trip from hell, but I want to talk to you about a woman who is in St. Paul, has been in St. Paul for almost sixty years and is about to be sent to her certain death in Cape Verde.”
“You said the name is Mendes, right?”
“I did. She happens to be the grandmother of my fiancée and I’m hoping to persuade you to look for a way to avoid deporting her.”
“Martha Todd is your fiancée? The woman you rave about at our meetings as the most wonderful woman on earth?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“Oh, man, she is very nice but she’s also very persistent. I really haven’t been in charge of that case. I’ve mostly been the spokesperson. You know, the messenger that people want to shoot.”
And that people call “perverse,” I thought. To Grace, I said, “That’s because you’re the bearer of bad tidings.”
“That’s true, but I’m not the one who decides what the tidings will be.”
“Well, I’m not going to shoot you. I just want you to get the department to listen to reason and find a way to resolve this without sending Grandma Mendes to her certain death.”
“How is it certain death? No one is waiting there to kill her.”
“No one is waiting to
greet her, either. She has no family in Cape Verde anymore. No friends. No home. No place to live. She’s so frail that just the long plane ride could do her in.”
“I’m sure the people handling the case have heard all that,” Grace said.
“How about letting them hear it again? How about looking for some little crack in the wall to let her slip through? It was done for a president’s Kenyan uncle not too many years ago. I’m asking you to do this as a friend.”
“As a friend who helped save my life. Are you pushing that button here?”
“If that’s what it takes to get your help, I’m pushing it.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said. Before I could muster a reply she laughed and said, “But the department should also be ashamed to do this to an elderly woman who has harmed no one. I’ll do some checking and get back to you, Mitch. What’s your number up north somewhere?”
Thirty
No Suspects
Sheriff Val Holmberg found himself facing a smaller sea of faces, cameras and microphones when he stepped up before us at 11:00 a.m. All the network TV crews had gone in search of meatier stories and some of the smaller Minnesota newspaper, TV and radio representatives had decided to rely on second-hand sources for subsequent reports.
With the end of his bizarre climbing adventures, Ronald Jones had become small potatoes to national news outlets lusting for steak dinners. Simultaneously, the lack of investigative progress in the Alex Gordon murder had reduced public interest in online updates and live TV reports on that case proportionately. As I stood behind Trish Valentine, I was hoping my city editor’s interest would sag as well.
Holmberg opened with the news that Jones had been treated for a severely sprained ankle and a bruised shoulder in a Rugby hospital, after which he had been released into the custody of federal agents. The feds were taking charge because Jones had crossed a state line, which meant he was now residing in a much more secure facility than St. Joseph’s Medical Center.
