A Hard Ticket Home (Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie Novels)

by David Housewright

  “I have money.”

  “Yeah, but she was born to it, she was raised by it. You just lucked into it. Answer me this. Would she have gone out with you if you were still a cop living in Merriam Park?”

  “I like to think so.”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I liked Kirsten when I met her. But the thing is, this is a girl who never rode on a city bus, not once in her life, while you and me, we’re the guys who tried to sneak on and off without paying, who slipped slugs into the doohickey that collected the fares.”

  He had a point.

  “You’ll find another girl,” he added.

  “You think?”

  “God, I hope. I’ve been living vicariously through your sexual exploits for years.”

  “What sexual exploits?”

  “C’mon, Mac. You’ve got it made.”

  “I do?”

  “All these women who put off getting married, who put off having families while they were establishing their careers, suddenly they’re our age and they’re looking around for eligible guys and there just aren’t any.” He pointed at me then. “Except for a few guys like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “You’re good-looking, not as good-looking as me, but presentable.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “Plus, you have money. But what makes you a catch is what you don’t have. You don’t have an ex-wife. You don’t have kids. You don’t have debts. You don’t have a chemical problem. You don’t have a criminal record. You’re not a jerk. Mac, you don’t have baggage. Intelligent, accomplished, independent career women like Kirsten, geez, Mac, they fall all over guys like you. I only wish I was in your place. You are so lucky.”

  I thought that was pretty funny. Bobby asked me why I was laughing. I flashed on Shelby and his two daughters.

  “Because I was going to tell you the same thing.”

  Merci Cole’s last known address was a dilapidated apartment building that looked abandoned except for the silver Lincoln parked in front. Several screens had been punched or kicked out, a few windows were broken, and the sidewalk was littered with broken glass. CRIPS, the name of an L.A. street gang transplanted to the Twin Cities, was written across the sidewalk with red spray paint. A black man dressed in a white silk suit, white silk shirt, and white silk tie moved along the sidewalk, boogeying to some private riff, not a worry in the world, oblivious to everything around him. You’d think a man in his line of work would be more careful.

  I once asked Colin Gernes why most pimps are black.

  “For the same reason most basketball players are black,” he replied, scarcely believing how dumb I was, wondering where the department found so many dumb rookies. “It’s an inner city game and there are more blacks in the inner city.”

  Oh.

  I saw no one as I locked my Jeep Cherokee and crossed the street to the apartment building, yet I could feel eyes from at least a dozen windows and I could hear them: Who is this white man with his expensive sport utility vehicle and what is he doing in our neighborhood? Good question.

  I opened the door to the building and hesitated. There were mailboxes just inside the hallway, all of them jimmied open. The overhead light had been broken recently and shattered slivers of bulb were scattered across the floor. There was enough light from the street to prove that the hallway was empty so I went inside. Most people will do anything to avoid a fight and the fear it produces. I’m one of them. On the other hand, you have to accept a certain amount of risk in everything you do. I started climbing the stairs, touching my hip where my gun would have been if I had thought to bring it.

  Along with the camaraderie, you know what else I miss about being a police officer? The backup.

  According to Bobby’s file, Merci Cole’s apartment was on the fourth floor. I never reached it. When I was midway between the third and fourth floors, a well-muscled black man wearing only blue jeans burst from his apartment, an aluminum Lady Thumper softball bat in his hands. He swung at my head and I jumped backward down the stairs, the barrel of the bat missing my chin by inches and smashing a hole into the thin plaster wall. I grabbed for the railing as he swung again. I lost my grip and fell, tumbling down to the third floor landing as his bat bounced off the wall where my head would have been if I had kept my balance.

  He followed close behind. I hit the landing with my shoulder, rolled, jumped to my feet. He pulled the bat back. I did a little hop and stomped his knee with the flat of my shoe. He cried out, an animal in pain, and dropped the bat. It rolled down the stairs, going thump, thump, thump as it fell to the next landing. He grabbed his knee. I hit him in the face. He threw a long, complicated, and entirely filthy curse at me. I hit him again. As I hit him I thought, This is what Kirsten must have meant by associating with “wrong people.”

  “No more, no more,” he moaned, doing a fair impersonation of Roberto Duran. Apparently, he didn’t like pain any more than I did.

  “Why did you come after me?” I was snorting, my breath coming hard and fast.

  “Are you a cop? You look like cop. You a cop you gotta tell me, that’s the rules.”

  “You swung on me because you thought I was a cop? What are you, a moron? The police would’ve blown your brains out you swing on them like that.”

  “No, no, man. They got new rules. They can’t just shoot people, no more. They gotta bring in counselors and shit. I read ’bout it.”

  “Hey, pal. Don’t believe everything you read. It’s healthier that way.”

  “You’re not a cop? You look like a cop.”

  “Have it your own way. Where’s Merci Cole?”

  “Hey man, you not a cop? Fuck you, then.”

  “Wrong answer.” I raised my fist menacingly, giving him a good look at it. Normally, I abhor violence, except I had a hard time getting past the fact the sonuvabitch tried to bludgeon me with a woman’s softball bat.

  He brought his shoulder up to protect his face.

  “She’s gone, man.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “She got outta Shakopee a month ago, longer.”

  “Okay.”

  “Right after, she and another bitch come by lookin’ for some clothes and stuff she stashed here before she got busted. Then they took off.”

  “She didn’t say where she was goin’?”

  “She didn’t say nothin’ except scream ’cuz most of her shit was gone. What the bitch expect, man?”

  “Does she have any friends here?”

  “Nobody’s got any friends here.”

  “Where did she hang out before she went inside?”

  “Cheney’s. When she wasn’t workin’ she was there. Cheney’s, you know, like the vice president.”

  I was amazed he even knew who the vice president was.

  “Tell me about the other woman. What did she look like?”

  “A good lookin’ piece. Nice ass, tits out to—”

  I hit him again.

  “What the fuck, man?”

  “I don’t need an anatomy lesson.”

  “What you want me to tell ya?”

  “What did she look like?”

  “White girl, looked like Cole.”

  “Hair?”

  “Real blond, almost white.”

  “Eyes?”

  “Didn’t see ’em. She was wearin’ shades.”

  “Height?”

  “Same as Cole, man. Look, Cole stashed her stuff in the trunk and they split, that’s all I know.”

  “Tell me about the car.”

  “It was a Beamer, man. Fuckin’ white BMW convertible. Wait, now I remember. James Bond.”

  “What?”

  “Merci called her James, the other one. Called her James and I was thinking what the fuck kinda name is that for a woman. James. Then I see the license plate. It had a JB on it.”

  “JB what?”

  “Just JB, man
. You know, one of those vanity plates.”

  “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. Only listen. For what it’s worth, I do believe this life doesn’t suit you. You should work for the government, work for the state. Get one of those orange vests and walk along the interstate picking up trash. Think of the job security.”

  “Fuck you.”

  When I was a kid, the Midway Shopping Center on Snelling and University was just a dinky little thing. It had a Kroger’s where my parents bought groceries, a G. C. Murphy’s where I bought comic books, and a hobby shop where Bobby and I sometimes raced model cars on Saturday mornings. Now it was a huge, sprawling enterprise saturated with national retailers, grocery chains, and fast food joints that covered several city blocks. About the only thing that remained from the old days was a locksmith. I stopped off there to have copies made of the keys to my lake home. Since I was in the neighborhood, I also picked up a small gift.

  I knocked on the front door, opened it, and stuck my head inside.

  “Shelby,” I called.

  “In the kitchen,” she called back.

  Shelby was about an inch shorter than I was, only you wouldn’t have noticed just then because she was bent over a counter wrapping chunks of beef, cubed potatoes, sliced carrots, assorted spices, and a tab of butter with rectangles of pastry.

  “Hey, Rushmore. What are you doing here?”

  She raised her cheek to me. I kissed it and said, “I brought over the keys.”

  She straightened and brushed hair the color of butterscotch off her forehead with the back of her hand. Her eyes were the color of rich, green pastures at sunset.

  “What keys?”

  “For my lake home.” I set three keys on the counter in succession. Each was a different color. “Red is for the house, blue is for the boat house, and green is for the garage.”

  “Why are you giving me your keys?”

  “Bobby didn’t tell you? He wants to use my lake home after he clears the case he caught.”

  “He didn’t mention it.”

  “Perhaps he means to surprise you with a weekend of passion.”

  “That would be a surprise. He hasn’t surprised me for almost a month now.”

  “Okay, that’s more information than I need to know.” I was embarrassed by her remark and something else—the suggestion that my best friends were having marital problems frightened me.

  “Bobby didn’t tell you we’ve been having our ups and downs?”

  “There are subjects we don’t discuss.”

  “Politics and religion.”

  “Actually, we talk about politics and religion all the time. It’s what we do in the privacy of our own homes that we tend to keep to ourselves. Ahh”—I raised a finger, anxious to change the subject—“I have a present for you.”

  I handed her a small gift bag that I had kept hidden when I entered the kitchen. She took it gingerly. “Rush … ?”

  I flicked my hand at her.

  Shelby opened the bag and fished out a plastic snow globe of Mount Rushmore. She laughed, as I had hoped she would. She shook the globe and watched the tiny white specks fall around the plastic monument.

  “Whenever I look at it I’ll think of you.”

  “That’s the plan. Listen, I have to go. I’m doing a favor for a guy.”

  “Bobby told me. Don’t rush off. Sit down. Talk to me. Better yet, stay for dinner. The girls’ll be home from school in a few minutes. God knows when Bobby will be home.”

  “I can’t.”

  “The girls will be sorry they missed you. You’ve become their all-time favorite person.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Ever since you announced that they were the heirs to your fortune.”

  “Someone has to be. Besides, I’m not above buying affection from women.”

  Shelby held up the snow globe. “I noticed.”

  “I’ll see you later.” I kissed her cheek and made my way to the front door. She followed me. When I reached the door and opened it she was standing there, cupping the snow globe in her hands.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” she said.

  “Tell me something, Shel.” The words spilled out; I’m still not sure where they came from. “Just out of curiosity, if I had been the one who spilled the drink on your dress back when we were in school instead of Bobby, do you think you and I would have been the ones to get involved?”

  “We are involved, Rushmore. Don’t you know that?”

  A moment later I was in the Cherokee. She was still standing in the doorway. I waved to her. She waved back. I slipped the Jeep in gear and drove off even as I screamed at myself. What’s wrong with you, asking a question like that? What were you thinking? She’s the wife of your best friend. What a jerk!

  The e-mail from the Department of Motor Vehicles told me the same thing that Bobby had. The only Carlson, Jamie Anne, with a driver’s license in the state of Minnesota was a sixteen-year-old brunette living in Minneapolis. I put my four dollars down and requested another search, this time for the owner of a vanity plate with the initials JB.

  Just as I hit the “send” button, the telephone rang.

  “It’s me,” Shelby said.

  “Hi.”

  “I want you to know that you are my good friend and I love you, but you shouldn’t be asking questions like you asked and you shouldn’t be giving me gifts, even goofy little things like the snow globe, except on my birthday and at Christmas.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m married.”

  She’s married, she’s married, she’s married—to your best friend, you moron!

  “I know.”

  “Well, then, I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “Sure.”

  She hung up and I told myself: Don’t ever do that again, you dumb schmuck.

  If you believe the crime statistics—and we all know how reliable they are—there are about 150 full-time prostitutes in St. Paul and three times that many in Minneapolis. The bars, saunas, hotels, convention centers, and private parties—where a working girl can get shelter from the rain—belong to women with valid twenty-one-year-old IDs. The streets belong to the children. The average age of a street hooker in the Twin Cities is sixteen. You see them waving at the cars that cruise Frog-town, a decidedly blue-collar community north of University Avenue and west of the State Capital, and in East St. Paul, especially in the Arcade-Payne Avenue neighborhood where Cheney’s is located.

  “Are you looking to party?”

  Maybe they’ll hop in the cars and find an alley somewhere, or take their customers to the hot-bed hotel up the street renting rooms at twenty bucks a half hour. Or maybe they’ll walk the john around back, kneeling on the asphalt, slipping the wallet out of the john’s sucker pocket while he’s slipping it in—what’s he going to do, call a cop? A few minutes later they’ll be back on the corner, looking for another willing customer with clean blood.

  It’s a tough way to make a living. Yet while I can sympathize with prostitutes, johns are a mystery to me. I have no idea what motivates them. Especially those who buy young girls off the street, paying forty bucks to abuse a child. I only know that when it comes to prostitution, we usually arrest the wrong people.

  It was still early evening when I arrived at the bar. Three hookers sat together at a square table in the back where they could see the comings and goings of all of Cheney’s patrons. When they saw me, one of the women said something to the other two and stood. Time to go to work.

  The woman, wearing a short, tight, purple skirt and purple blouse with a plunging neckline, intercepted me at the bar.

  “You looking to party?” she asked, exuding all the charm of an X-rated movie.

  “Damn right,” I said, slapping the bar top with my hand. “Innkeeper! I just hit the Pick Three. Gimme the most expensive beer in the house.”

  The bartender took a Heineken from the cooler and approached with a wary eye.

  “Fine establishment you have here,” I t
old him nice and loud in case there was someone in the joint who hadn’t already noticed me.

  “We like it,” he said, placing the bottle and an empty glass in front of me. I poured the beer myself.

  “So, honey,” I said to the woman hugging my side. “What’s your name?”

  “What name do you like?”

  “Cloris,” I told her.

  “You’re kiddin’ me.”

  “Would I do a thing like that? So listen, Cloris, did you hear the one about the blind man who walks into a bar and starts swinging his dog over his head by its tail? The bartender asks, ‘What are you doing?’ And the blind man says, ‘Just looking around.’”

  “Oh, brother.”

  “I got a million of ’em.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. What’s your name?”

  “What name do you like?”

  “You’re a real peach, you know that?”

  “Peach is good, you can call me ‘Peachy.’ What are you drinking, Cloris?”

  “Rum and coke.”

  “Innkeeper,” I shouted and pointed at the woman. He nodded and moved toward us. “Did you hear about the woman who calls this guy one night? The woman says, ‘This is Mary. Remember me? We met at a party two months ago and you said I was a good sport. Well, I’m pregnant and I’m going to jump off the Lake Street Bridge.’ And the guy says, ‘Gosh, Mary. You are a good sport.’”

  It went on like that for a couple of hours, me buying drinks and telling completely tasteless jokes. After a while, the other two hookers joined us. Most of the prostitutes I’ve met have been very pleasant to talk to and these were no exception. I was actually enjoying myself and the women seemed to appreciate my company as well. Yet they did not let me interfere with business. They worked out a rotation and whenever they spotted a likely looking customer, one of them would leave, do a bit of work, and return. A woman with a tired face that might have been pretty once tried to join the party, but the others chased her off. She was an amateur, one of those women who gave it away, using sex like a prescription drug. It might have been good for what ails her, but bad for a working girl’s business.