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

by David Housewright

  Not everyone approved of me. Two overweight women and an undernourished man sitting in a booth looked on with genuine disgust. You could bet that if they had hit the number they wouldn’t be wasting their winnings on a bunch of barroom layabouts, no siree. As it was, they were busy pulling tabs and discarding the losers in a plastic laundry basket. They had built up a sizable pile. Whenever they ran out of money, one of them would use the cash machine next to the rest rooms—it’s illegal in Minnesota to purchase pull tabs or lottery tickets with a personal check, so some joints install ATMs.

  All the while, I watched the door, waiting for Merci Cole.

  “A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar and the bartender says, ‘What is this? A joke?’”

  I had reached the subbasement of my joke collection and was rooting around for a trap door when Merci arrived. I recognized her by Molly Carlson’s description—tall, blond, with green eyes. She had gone to high school with Jamie which made her about twenty-five. But she seemed so much older than that, her cheeks puffy, her eyes flat and lifeless. Still, she was considerably more attractive than the usual prostitute. If you don’t believe me, punch up the St. Paul Police Department’s Web site. The SPPD regularly posts photographs of the hookers they arrest and you’ll never find a less enticing group of women—which is another reason prostitution baffles me. If hookers all looked like Julia Roberts and Laura San Giacomo, that I could understand. But why pay money to have sex with an ugly woman?

  I gestured toward Merci. “I want to meet her.”

  “Are you serious?” Cloris replied. “You would turn me down for her? I was ready to give it up for free.”

  “Cloris,” I said with mock indignation. “I do believe you have misunderstood my intentions.”

  “Screw you.”

  “That’s what I mean. Where would you get an idea like that?”

  Merci Cole sat at the end of the bar, chatting with the bartender. The bartender whispered something to her as I approached.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  “Busy?”

  “Depends,” she answered in a professional voice, waiting for the magic words that proved I wasn’t a cop.

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “If you say so, officer.”

  I set a fifty-dollar bill on the bar in front of her, a very uncoplike thing to do.

  “What do I get for that?”

  Satisfied, she went down the menu. “I get ten dollars for a hand job, twenty for a BJ, and forty if you want the motherlode. Anything else is negotiable.”

  “How ’bout conversation?”

  “You want conversation, dial a nine hundred number, two-fifty a minute.”

  I pushed the fifty closer to her.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Why not?” She snapped the bill off the bar.

  “Wait.”

  “What the hell … ,” she said to my back as I juked and jived to the table where the three hookers sat scanning the crowd. I peeled off three one-hundred-dollar bills and dropped them on the table.

  “Ladies, it’s been a pleasure,” I announced and waved bye-bye. I was about to become a part of hooker folklore. “Did you hear the one about the trick who paid three girls a hundred bucks each just for listening to bad jokes?”

  Merci Cole waited at the door, posing more than standing, a puzzled expression on her face. A few moments later we were walking.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Merci asked.

  “Why did you become a prostitute?”

  “What are you, a social worker?”

  “No.” I held up a second fifty. “But I have another one of these.”

  Merci reached for it, but I pulled it back.

  “You’re Merci Cole.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’m looking for Jamie Carlson.”

  “Who?”

  “Right, you never heard of her.”

  “I haven’t seen Jamie in seven years,” she told me. If it wasn’t for the description given to me by the brother with the Lady Thumper, I might have believed her.

  “Then who was the woman who drove you to the apartment on Avon so you could get your stuff?”

  “That was someone else.”

  Calling Merci a liar wasn’t going to get me anything, so I decided to cut to the chase. “I need to find Jamie Carlson and I’ll pay you to tell me where she is.”

  “My friends aren’t for sale.”

  “A hooker with a heart of gold.”

  She went for my face but I grabbed her hands before she could dig her nails into me.

  “Let me go,” she snarled.

  I stepped back, waiting for her to resume the attack. She didn’t. Instead she stared at me with eyes wide with hate.

  “Merci.” I spoke soft and low, trying to sound sincere. What is it they say? Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you have it made. “Jamie’s parents asked me to bring her home.”

  “Yeah? Well screw ’em. Like they really care after all these years.”

  “Stacy is sick. She might die.”

  “Little Stacy?”

  I was astonished by how suddenly her manner changed from contempt to genuine concern. It was like she had flipped a light switch.

  “She has leukemia.”

  “Little Stacy?”

  “Her parents want Jamie to come home. They need her to donate her bone marrow. Otherwise, Stacy will probably die.”

  “Oh, I get it. They want to use her. Yeah, that sounds familiar.”

  “I don’t know why you’re angry about this and I don’t care. Just tell me where Jamie is.”

  “No way. I’m not going to tell you about her. I might tell her about you, though, next time I see her.”

  “Fine, do that.” I was getting nowhere fast and arguing would only make it worse. “You don’t have to tell me where she is. Just give her this.” I gave Merci my card. “Tell her about Stacy. Tell her to call me and I’ll explain. No problem. No hassle for anyone.”

  Merci read the card slowly.

  “Will you do that? There’s another fifty in it. Make it a hundred.”

  Merci smiled. And to prove just how concerned she was for Stacy’s well-being, she tore the card in half.

  3

  I hadn’t expected Merci to deliver my message, but you never know. Stranger things have happened. While I waited for Jamie to call, I listened to Curtis Mayfield and read the sports page. Jazzman Art Blakey once said, “Music washes away the dust of everyday life.” So does sports. I only wish more pro athletes were like trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. He once told an audience, “I want to thank everyone for their support and for helping me make a living,” then gave us two and half hours of pure, straight-ahead jazz. Could you see Barry Bonds doing that? Or Randy Moss? Or Shaq?

  I rarely eat breakfast—yes, I know it’s the most important meal of the day—and by ten-thirty my stomach was grumbling about it. I strolled down to Como and Carter in the heart of St. Anthony Park and had a cherry munkki and cafe mocha at the combination Taste of Scandinavia bakery and Dunn Brothers coffee house. On my way back I waved at a retired gentleman who was watering his lawn a couple blocks from my house. He waved back even though we had never laid eyes on each other before.

  I was back in the house by eleven forty-five. There were no messages on my voice mail, so I checked my e-mail. The Department of Motor Vehicles reported that “JB” was the registered license plate of a 2002 white BMW 330 Ci convertible owned by Bruder, David C., of St. Paul. I had heard the name before. It danced in the back of my head for a few moments, but I couldn’t place it.

  I now had a name and an address but no handle on Jamie. Was she married to this guy? His mistress? Employee? I was guessing wife. To learn for sure I drove to the Ramsey County Court House on Fourth and Wabasha in downtown St. Paul, first floor, room 110.

  The clerk there regarded me with practiced indifferen
ce. She was one of those faceless foot soldiers often found inside the bureaucracy who struggle above all else to remain anonymous, to avoid the attentions of supervisors, coworkers, and clients, who have no desire to distinguish themselves from their fellows, who are little more than government statistics and like it that way. When I asked about marriage records, she quickly led me to the county ledgers. “No smoking,” she said quietly. I thanked her and she moved away just as quickly, relieved that she didn’t have to make a decision.

  Marriage licenses in Minnesota are not available online. Nor have they as yet been gathered in a central location. Each county keeps its own and possibly some of them even use computers. Ramsey County was still living in the last century. To locate Jamie’s marriage license I was required to search several large and unwieldy ledgers—one page at a time. Of course, Jamie could have been married in Hennepin County, Washington County, Dakota County, or any of Minnesota’s other eighty-seven counties, for that matter. Only she apparently lived in St. Paul, which is in Ramsey County, so I took a shot. After ninety minutes and two paper cuts I discovered that Bruder, David Christopher had married Kincaid, Jamie Anne, on June 20th two years earlier.

  I left the Ramsey County Vital Records feeling pretty smug—Bobby Dunston had nothing on me. I sequestered myself in an old-fashioned telephone booth, the kind superheroes change their clothes in, and searched the St. Paul directory for Bruder’s number. I punched it up on my cell phone. A voice as pure as sunlight told me that David and Jamie were unable to come to the phone, but if I was kind enough to leave a message, they would call back. I declined.

  I was hungry again when I left the courthouse and I wasn’t in the mood to sit alone in a restaurant. Instead I stopped at the gleaming hot dog cart on 4th Street.

  The vendor was named Yu, a soft-spoken Korean immigrant, who wore a bright red T-shirt and a tan and black baseball cap with JOE’S DOGS spelled out above the brim. She knew me well enough to wave, but not to give me priority over the customers lined six deep in front of her cart. When it came my turn, she stuffed a Polish sausage into a poppy seed bun and dug out a Dr Pepper from the cooler without waiting to be asked.

  “McKenzie,” she said in her sweet accent. “Good see you.”

  “Good to see you, Yu,” I said as I handed her a five and told her to keep the change. “How’s business?”

  “Business good when weather good.” She looked up. The sky was a thin blue and empty of clouds. “Good today.”

  We chatted about the weather for a bit until several other hungry customers took my place in front of the cart. Six bites and a few swigs of pop later I was back in my SUV.

  The traffic was light and it took me only ten minutes to reach Highland Park. I drove west on Randolph, missed my turn, and ended up motoring past the sprawling campus of Cretin-Derham Hall, the private high school that was alma mater to Paul Molitor, Steve Walsh, Chris Weinke, Corbin Lacina, Joe Mauer, and several other professional athletes as well as many of St. Paul’s movers and shakers. I would have liked to have gone to Cretin, except I didn’t have the money and I couldn’t hit a breaking ball. I was forced to attend public high school, instead—not that I’m bitter or anything. I flipped an illegal U-turn, back-tracked to Edgecumbe Road and went south into the part of Highland Park that smelled most of money.

  A few more turns and I found the Bruder house, a large, brick structure shaded by a balanced mixture of birch and evergreens. In some places it would have been called an estate. The house was perched atop a small hill on a corner lot. I parked in front of a sidewalk that meandered from the curb to the front door. I drove a fully loaded, steel blue Jeep Grand Cherokee 4 X 4 Limited valued at nearly $40,000, yet I was sure if I left it there too long, it would be removed as litter.

  I followed the sidewalk to the door. I rang the bell. When no one answered, I circled the house, hoping the Bruders weren’t one of those families who believe in keeping off the lawn. As I turned the corner I was confronted by a thick wall of red, pink, and yellow roses, the wall nearly twenty feet high. The “wall” was actually a trellis made of thin wood set hard against the house. The branches of the rose bushes were tied to the latticework with twine. I stopped to admire the handiwork, amazed by the number of flowers that were still blooming this late into September. I wondered how the gardener had managed it—I admire horticulturists, mostly from afar.

  I turned another corner and found a long, curving concrete driveway that emptied into an east-west street. A white BMW convertible with license plate JB was parked outside a three-car garage at the top of the driveway. Between the garage and the house was a redwood fence. Inside the fence I found a swimming pool complete with diving board. Next to the pool was a quartet of lawn chairs surrounding a small table with an umbrella protruding through its center. A few feet to the left of that was a more modest trellis of roses. A young woman knelt before the trellis, her knees resting on a foam-rubber pad. She was scratching at the dirt with a three-pronged hand cultivator, pulling weeds and depositing them into a metal pail next to the pad, while she sang in a pleasant voice.

  I walked into the soda shop.

  There he was, sipping pop.

  My heart whirled like a spinning top.

  My, oh my, oh my.

  He walked on over to my side.

  “Be my bride, cherry pie.”

  Then he looked into my eyes.

  “Bananas is my name.”

  I cleared my throat. Immediately, she stopped singing and swung toward me, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “Bouncy melody,” I said, cracking wise. “You can dance to it. I’d give it an eighty-five.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jamie Carlson?”

  The question seemed to startle her even more than my unexpected presence. She stood and backed away from the trellis, giving herself plenty of room to run. She gripped the clawlike garden tool tightly, holding it like a weapon. I wondered why she was so alarmed. Had Merci Cole warned her that I was coming?

  I took the photograph from my pocket and looked at it and then back at her. It wasn’t a perfect match. A person can change a lot in seven years and I approved of the changes in Jamie. The sun had bleached her hair a lighter shade of gold and the face was thinner—tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and lips suggested she spent a lot of time smiling. Her breasts were full, her waist thin, and her legs were strong, tan, and well turned. She was wearing a white blouse that was tucked into black shorts, no socks or shoes. For a moment my heart raced. At age twenty-five, Jamie had blossomed like one of her roses into a truly stunning creation.

  “Ms. Carlson.” I returned the photograph to my pocket.

  “No. Bruder. Mrs. David Bruder. If you’re looking for my husband …”

  “Mrs. Bruder,” I repeated, making sure I got it right. “My name is McKenzie.” I held out my hand but she backed away from it. “I was asked by your parents to find you.”

  “My parents?”

  Apparently she was surprised to learn she had a couple.

  “It’s Stacy. She’s very ill. She might die.”

  “Little Stacy?” She repeated the name exactly as Merci Cole had.

  “Yes.”

  “Little Stacy?”

  She dropped the cultivator and moved slowly toward the table in front of the pool. She collapsed in a chair next to the small table and motioned to the chair on the other side. I joined her. There was a baby monitor on the table, the kind that parents use to eavesdrop on their children when they sleep. Jamie looked at a window on the second floor as she moved the monitor closer to her chair.

  “Hang on to yourself, Mrs. Bruder.” I told her the entire story, including Stacy’s visits to the Mayo Clinic and her doctor’s assessment of her chances for survival. The story seemed to impress her very deeply. Several times she rubbed tears from her eyes while glancing from the monitor to the second story window.

  When I had finished, Jamie said in a sorrowful voice, “The man who said
you can never go home again had it wrong. The truth is, you can never entirely leave.”

  “That’s a lot of philosophy,” I told her. “Too much for me.”

  I heard a muffled sigh. It came from the monitor. Jamie looked at the monitor and smiled a small, sad smile.

  “I’m told the procedure to determine if you’re a compatible donor is very simple.”

  “Nothing is ever simple, Mr. McKenzie. How did you find me?”

  “It’s like the poet said, if you want to escape your past, first learn to walk through freshly fallen snow without leaving tracks.”

  “Now who’s being a philosopher? Have you told Richard and Molly that you found me?”

  “Not yet,” I answered, wondering why children who are on a first-name basis with their parents rarely get along with them.

  “Please don’t. Not yet. I need time for this. Time to talk to my husband. He knows nothing about my past and I won’t get a chance to tell him until later. He’s invited a business associate for drinks by the pool.”

  “He doesn’t know you’re Jamie Carlson?”

  “He thinks I’m Jamie Kincaid. He thinks I’m an orphan.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “I worked as a paralegal for the law firm that handles his business accounts.”

  “What business is he in?”

  “He owns a string of used car dealerships.”

  That was why his name had seemed so familiar. Good Deal Dave, Bruder Motors, four locations throughout the Twin Cities to serve you. Outdoor boards featuring Bruder’s sincere smile were everywhere and his TV spots cluttered prime time.

  “How did you manage a new name, social security card, driver’s license …?”

  “There are ways,” the young woman advised me.

  There certainly are. “Did Merci Cole help?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want you to be here when my husband and his associate arrive.”

  “I understand.” I rose from the table. I gave her my business card after first writing my cell number on back.