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

by David Housewright

  I decided to quell my anxieties by returning to the problem at hand—finding Jamie’s killer. I put Elvis Costello on the CD player and looked to see what the newspapers had.

  The St. Paul Pioneer Press is trustworthy and rarely emotional. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune often seems to be written by closet suspense novelists who just love to tell a crackling good yarn. Naturally, it had the higher circulation of the two. Yet on this day, there seemed to be little difference. Both papers played Jamie Bruder’s violent death across the front page. Both used adjectives like “barbarous.” Both used the term “serial killer.”

  I read the articles three times each and to my great relief they didn’t mention my name once. Instead, I was referred to as the “friend of the family” who discovered the body. The cops also managed to keep other pertinent details to themselves—that twine was used to tie Jamie to the bed frame, that duct tape was used to seal her mouth, the broom.

  The St. Paul paper said, “Bruder died violently,” that “she was found nude in the bedroom of her fashionable home,” and that “she was stabbed repeatedly.” The Star-Tribune was considerably more graphic, suggesting that Jamie was “sexually mutilated” and “possibly decapitated, according to a source close to the investigation.” I could see Bobby spoon-feeding that last bit to the media to help filter out the whackos who were probably already lining up to confess.

  Both papers speculated that Jamie and Katherine Katzmark were killed by the same assailant, but refused to actually come out and say so because the cops refused to actually come out and say so.

  Both papers also reported that a massive search for Jamie’s husband and son had begun, certainly a reasonable response by the cops, all things considered. But did St. Paul Deputy Chief Thomas Thompson need to claim that Jamie’s murder was a “domestic killing,” which the newspapers translated to mean Bruder did it? Did the Ramsey County Attorney, an elected official who had never tried a criminal case before a jury in her life, have to support that allegation during a press conference outside the county’s domestic abuse office, pledging, as God was her witness, that Good Deal Dave would be brought to justice?

  “Don’t you think you should prove he did it first?” I shouted at the CA’s photograph on page 5A. I admit that Bruder looked good for it, especially if he could be tied to Katherine Katzmark. Only Thompson’s and the county attorney’s public remarks were unprofessional, gratuitous, and sloppy. A good defense attorney would hurt them with it later.

  Along with the lead stories were the inevitable sidebars. Minneapolis ran an interview with a sociologist turned best-selling crime writer who compared Jamie’s and Katherine’s killer to Ted Bundy and warned readers to be alert. St. Paul ran a story pointing out that late summer was America’s “killing season,” the time of the year when we murder ourselves with the greatest frequency. Both papers also printed editorials speaking out against violence toward women with headlines like, WE MUST SAY ‘NO’ TO ABUSE OF WOMEN OR THE TRAGEDIES WILL GO ON AND ON and ABUSERS OF WOMEN: IS THERE A COMMON THREAD AMONG MEN WHO ATTACK?

  I looked for my own story and found it in the Minnesota Briefs column, three paragraphs under the bug with the subhead: MAN SHOT IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT. It read as I would have predicted:

  A young male was shot and killed early Wednesday morning during an armed robbery of the private residence of a former St. Paul police officer, St. Anthony Village police reported.

  Bradley Young, 23, a reputed member of a local street gang, had attempted to rob the house in order to gain money to pay for drugs, authorities speculated.

  Young had been sought by Michigan authorities for the past two years after he failed to show up in court for sentencing stemming from a conviction on a charge of burglary in Detroit.

  Drugs and street gang. The magic words. Now the world could dismiss Young, as if he had never existed. I wish I could do the same.

  The phone rang. I picked it up without checking the caller ID. Richard Carlson. He wasn’t happy.

  “A man called last night. He said my little girl was … Why didn’t you call?”

  The answer was simple. I didn’t want to be the one to tell the Carlsons that their child had been killed. It was the hardest thing I had to do when I was with the cops and I hated it. Suddenly I realized if I put a badge back on, I’d have to do it again.

  “The cops said they’d take care of it. They don’t want me involved anymore.” It was only partially a lie, I told myself.

  “I know my rights. You’re involved if I say you’re involved.” Carlson was not crying, but I could hear the grief in his voice. It was hidden under the anger. “I want to know where we stand. The man, the policeman who called, he said you found Jamie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Found her body.”

  “Yes, sir. I spoke to her Tuesday.”

  “The day before she was killed? Why didn’t you call?”

  “Jamie wanted to speak with her husband before she spoke to you. Apparently, he didn’t know about her family. Jamie said she would call me later to set up a meeting with you and your wife. When she didn’t call I went over and found out why.”

  “There was something about a child. A son.”

  “He’s missing. Along with Jamie’s husband.”

  “My grandson?”

  I didn’t reply. After a few seconds, Richard Carlson asked, “Do you know his name? The papers didn’t say.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “We have to find him.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I talked to a doctor. He said the child, my grandson could be a bone marrow donor for Stacy.”

  “I understand.”

  “Will you find him?”

  “The police have a better chance of doing that than I do, but I’ll try.”

  “This husband, this Bruder guy …”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Papers say he did it.”

  “Papers could be wrong.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “I never met the man. I only know what they said about him in the papers.”

  “You think maybe when Jamie told him about us, about who she really was … ?”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “I don’t know. The fact he disappeared along with the child makes him look bad, but—I don’t know. If Bruder killed Jamie then he also killed another woman, Katherine Katzmark. Bruder could have done it, I suppose. Only it doesn’t feel right to me. Plus, there’s someone else involved.”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Bradley Young.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A gang-banger who tried to kill me after I found your daughter. He’s dead.”

  “You make ’im dead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Carlson paused to think about it.

  “McKenzie, can you stay on this for me? Not just because of Stacy, but—I hope Bruder didn’t kill my daughter, but if he did I want to make sure he’s found and punished. I want to make sure whoever did it is found and punished.”

  I knew what he was saying.

  “I can’t be there, Mac. I have another daughter, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “I want you to act as my representative, make sure the job gets done.”

  “What job is that?”

  I wanted him to say it.

  He hesitated yet again, then answered. “I want revenge.”

  If he had said “justice” I might have told him to go to hell. But revenge, that’s something a man can appreciate.

  “We’ll see,” I told him.

  “One more thing. Not important.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever find Merci Cole?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s in the Cities?” He seemed excited by the prospect.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Is she okay? Is she—is she okay?”

  “Yes.” And again I said, “Why do you ask?”

 
“No reason. Just curious. Is there anything else? Yes, I almost forgot. The body. The medical examiner won’t release the body. He said he has to maintain control of the remains until all forensic work is completed. That means he’s gonna cut her up, doesn’t it?”

  “Everyone is being careful. They don’t want your daughter’s killer to walk away because they weren’t careful.”

  “Whatever it takes. I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

  He hung up without saying good-bye. I didn’t fault him for that, either. We had been talking for several minutes. That’s a long time when you’re trying not to cry.

  Richard Carlson was the kind of man who preferred to grieve silently. Yet that didn’t make his agony any less real than those who beat their chests and tear their clothing. As a culture, we tend to underestimate how deeply and completely people suffer from a tragedy of this proportion. Family and friends will surround us with a cocoon of love and support. They bring us food, they do our errands, they relieve us of our responsibilities. All they ask in return is that we weep loud and long and hard and when we no longer have any tears left to shed, that we return to normal. If we don’t give them a public display of grief, they wonder what’s wrong. Didn’t we care? If we don’t return quickly to normal, they become impatient. It’s a problem of perspective. Unless you’ve had prior experience you don’t know about acting like a robot, about going through the motions, about washing a dish ten times without realizing it. You don’t understand crying jags. You don’t understand unfocused anger. You don’t understand dependency.

  Right now, Richard Carlson was hanging on by his fingernails to the prospect of revenge. Who knew, he might get it. Only it wouldn’t change anything. Instead, you change. You invent a new personality, adopt new values. Think about the person involved in a car crash who must now spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. It’s the same with victims of extreme violence. To survive, you stop being the person you were and become someone else. That’s the long term. In the short term you grab hold of whatever you can, even the myth of sweet revenge, and hang on.

  The busiest intersection in Minnesota is probably Hennepin Avenue at Lake Street, the heart of Uptown, a yuppified district in Minneapolis near Lake Calhoun where you can find designer ice cream, Oriental food for white people, bars with plenty of vegetation growing in them, overpriced arts and crafts, foreign movies, a pretty good comedy club, an overrated rib joint, and plenty of MTV wannabees, young men in fifty-dollar jeans torn at the knees and young women in black lace, the kind of women who carry toothbrushes in their purses.

  This was where Chopper told me to meet him, in a fast food joint overlooking Hennepin.

  I knew Chopper when he was Thaddeus Coleman and worked Selby and Western, an area of St. Paul that used to be rich with prostitution until patrons became bored with it, as they do with any trendy hot spot, and moved elsewhere. Coleman would put a girl on the street, wait for a john, then rob him, waving a blade at the john or making like he had a gun. That lasted until the pimps calmly explained to him why his behavior was bad for their business. He has two scars on his shoulder as reminders of the conversation.

  Afterward, he moved to Fuller and Farrington and sold laundry soap to the suburban kids, soap and Alka Seltzer tablets crushed to resemble rock cocaine. I busted him for that. Representing and selling a substance as a drug—whether it is or not—is a felony. Only the judge dismissed the charge. He took one look at the complaint and announced from the bench, “Boys, we haven’t got time for this, not when there are assholes out their selling truckloads of the real thing.”

  “Nothing personal,” Coleman told me when he waltzed out of the courtroom.

  I didn’t take it personally, but someone else did. Two days later I scooped Coleman off the pavement of a parking lot at Dale and University. A person or persons unknown had put two slugs into his back. I saved his life that night, although the damage to his spine put him in a wheelchair. He refused to ID his assailants. “It musta been an accident,” he insisted. “Everyone gives me love.”

  Yeah, right.

  You have to hand it to him, though. Coleman was one tough SOB. Six weeks after the shooting, he wheeled himself out of the hospital in a stolen chair. Couple days later we discovered the bodies of three Red Dragons under the swings at a park near the St. Paul Vo-Tech. They had each been shot numerous times. We never did learn who killed them, but the ME reported that most of the bullet wounds had an upward trajectory, as if whoever fired the shots was sitting down.

  Later, Chopper moved his various enterprises across the river into Minneapolis. He was Chopper now because of the chair, which he wheeled about with the reckless abandon of a dirt bike racer.

  I found him inside. He was sitting in front of the stainless steel counter wearing a battle-dress uniform and arguing with an older man who was wearing a paper hat and telling Chopper to either order something or wheel his sorry ass out of there. Chopper accused him of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act as I tossed a crumpled twenty on the counter.

  “I’ll have a Cherry Coke,” I said.

  Chopper scooped up the bill with an immaculate hand—some people are nuts about shined shoes, with Chopper it’s his fingernails.

  “Your fries hot, man?” I heard him say as I retreated to a booth. “I ain’t buyin’ no cold fries.”

  I sat in the booth and watched a woman stroll casually up and down Hennepin through the window. She could have been a working girl, but in Uptown you never know. Maybe she was just waiting for her boyfriend. Or girlfriend.

  “Sex is easy,” I said aloud. “It’s affection that’s hard to come by.”

  “Huh?” Chopper asked.

  He wheeled himself to the front of the booth. The red plastic tray balanced on the arms of his chair was loaded with two Quarter-pounders, two large fries, some kind of apple turnover, four cartons of milk, and a small Cherry Coke. I took the drink.

  “Want some fries?”

  I shook my head.

  He kept the change.

  “McKenzie, you look gooder than shit.”

  “High praise, indeed.” Ever since I saved his life, Chopper and I have been pals.

  “So how you doin’? Still drivin’ that piece of crap SUV?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s a chick magnet. Soccer moms love it.”

  “I’ll tell ya what them soccer moms love.” He was pointing toward his lap but the tray was in the way.

  “Are you talking about that Quarter-pounder? You get cheese with that?”

  Minute chunks of potato flew from his mouth as he laughed. “You’re bad,” he told me. “You are soooo bad.” Chopper washed the contents of his mouth down with a carton of milk and asked, “So, whaddaya need?”

  Most of the informers on television and in the movies are skinny black dudes with an encyclopedic knowledge of the streets and a mortal fear of the cops. I know no such people. Nearly all of the informers I know fall into two categories. There’s the professional who trades information for money or favors and there’s the perp looking to score a deal. “Hey, man, get the charge reduced to third degree and maybe we can do some business, whaddaya say?” All of them are more terrified of getting caught by the individuals they inform on than they are of us.

  Then there’s Chopper, who just likes to show off.

  “What can you tell me about the Family Boyz?”

  “The Boyz on your ass, McKenzie? Cuz if they are, you got trouble.”

  “You know them?”

  Chopper smiled and shook his head like I had just asked who was Michael Jordan. “Everyone knows ’em.”

  “The authorities don’t.”

  “Authorities.” He said the word like it was a punchline.

  Chopper set down his sandwich and wiped his fingernails with a napkin. He took another sip of milk and started talking before he swallowed it all.

  “Family Boyz, they weird, man. Blew in from Detroit City, dealin’ shit all over the place, good shit, too, Acap
ulco Gold just like the old days, straight from Mexico they say, undercuttin’ the competition with lower prices. There was some dust-ups with the Bloods and El Rukns, but that went away cuz the Boyz, all they doin’ is dealin’ grass and ain’t no one wants to go to war over that. Then all a sudden it’s like one of them stealth bombers, man, they off the radar, still dealin’ MJ but the volume way down, like they was runnin’ one of them hobby farms, you know, doin’ it for the fun. Last couple of years you hardly know they’re there, keepin’ a low profile, just goin’ about their business.”

  “What business is that if not drugs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Protection?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “I know enough not t’ go messin’ with the Boyz. A Disciple tried to put down a Family member a few months ago, somethin’ t’ do with some pussy—shit, these guys fightin’ over pussy, you believe that?—and the Boyz blew the flag right off his head, blue bandanna, all fuckin’ red now. I’m figurin’ it’s war, we’re gonna have a war, no fuckin’ shit, only it don’t happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause the Boyz, man, they pack some heavy ordnance, that’s why. They got machine guns. M-60s. German MG-42s. The Disciples are totally whacked, but they ain’t so stupid t’ go against that kind of firepower.”

  The weapons might explain the ATF’s interest, I figured. Chopper ate some more of his sandwich. I thought of Good Deal Dave and took a shot.

  “Know of any white guys running with the Boyz?”

  “Fuck, McKenzie. You think the Boyz is like some kinda equal opportunity employer? Man, with the Boyz you gotta be family, man, real family, that’s how they git their name. You look at a guy you say, ‘that’s my bro, that’s my cousin, that’s my blood.’ That’s how you git to be in the Family Boyz, man.”

  “Know where I can find them?”

  “You’re shittin’ me, right? You ain’t lookin’ for no Boyz, right?”

  “You don’t have to go with me, Chopper.”