Tin City (Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie Novels)

by David Housewright

  I came up fast behind him and swept his legs. He went down hard. His head slammed against the asphalt. But he was tough. He quickly rolled to one knee and looked up at me. The expression on his face was of pure astonishment. I was about to drive my own knee into his nose when the man with the baseball bat shoved me aside. I fell into the older woman, and we both went down. The man with the bat swung on the attacker and missed. Twice. The attacker got inside him and pushed hard. The man staggered backward, swung the bat again, and caught nothing but air. The attacker was in his truck now. He muscled it into gear and motored down the street without bothering to close his door. The man slugged the trailer bed with the bat as it moved away. I looked for a number, but the license plates had been removed.

  “Are you all right?”

  The man with the baseball bat was talking to Penelope, the bat resting on his shoulder. They had hung a label on me early in my baseball career that I was never able to shake—“good field, no hit”—but even at my worst I was better than this guy.

  Penelope smiled. It was a happy, trusting smile.

  Amazing, I thought.

  “Yes, I’m all right,” she said. Her voice had a breathless quality that had nothing to do with fear or exertion. She rubbed her wrist where Dirty Jeans had grabbed her. “But—what was he doing?”

  “I think he was trying to kidnap you,” said the man with the bat.

  Nonsense, my inner voice announced. He had been alone. He had no weapons. The attempt was made in the open, in broad daylight, before plenty of witnesses. And he couldn’t possibly have known that Penelope would be standing outside her trailer at that precise moment. Kidnapping? I couldn’t get my head around it.

  “Why would anyone want to kidnap me?” Penelope asked.

  “Because you’re pretty,” the older woman said. I was helping her to her feet. She shook off my arm. “I had him,” she told me.

  “Sure.”

  “I was going to put my boot through his groin—change him from a rooster to a hen right there. Then I was going to stomp his head.”

  “You’re awfully bloodthirsty, lady.”

  She was in my face, giving me the mad dog.

  “Who are you calling lady?”

  I liked her.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  I took a step backward before answering.

  “My name’s Jake Greene.”

  “What are you doing here?” Batman wanted to know.

  “You don’t live in Hilltop,” said the older woman. “I know all my neighbors.”

  “So what are you doing here?” Batman repeated.

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Rapid City.”

  “In South Dakota?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I work freelance.”

  “What are you writing about?” asked the older woman.

  “I’m writing about Hilltop.”

  “For who?”

  “Trailer Park magazine.”

  “I read that,” said the older woman. “But why write about Hilltop?”

  “You have to admit, it’s an interesting community. An oasis of mobile homes in a hostile environment.”

  The thing about lying, the more of it you do, the better you get.

  The older woman smiled. “I like that. ‘An oasis of mobile homes.’ That’s good. Usually, we get names like redneck reservation, hee-haw Hilton, tornado trap …”

  “Not from me.”

  “I’m Ruth Schramm.” She offered her hand and I shook it. Her grip was firm.

  “I’m Pen.” Penelope Glass extended her hand.

  “Pen?”

  “Short for Penelope. Penelope Glass. Thank you for helping me.”

  “You should call the police,” I told her.

  “Oh, sure,” said Ruth. “So you can report what a high crime rate we have.”

  “I don’t know what we can tell them, anyway,” said Batman. “There were no license plates on the truck.”

  “It was a gray 1988 Ford Ranger 150 4x4 with thick rust on all sides. The man driving it was five-ten, 170 pounds, brown hair, dark eyes, wearing dirty blue jeans with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his white T-shirt.”

  “You see a lot,” said Batman.

  “Occupational habit.”

  “I think I should wait about the police,” said Pen. “I want to speak to my husband first.”

  “Husband?”

  “He’s a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Is he?” I said.

  “Bet you thought trailer parks were filled with nothing but undereducated, minimum-wage hicks,” said Ruth. “Isn’t so.”

  “We should go inside,” said Batman and nudged Pen toward her trailer.

  “And you are?” I asked, extending my hand.

  He looked first at my hand and then at me. He obviously didn’t want to reveal his identity but couldn’t think how to get out of it.

  “Nick Horvath.” He shook my hand as if he were afraid I was carrying monkey pox.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Greene,” Pen said.

  “Jake.”

  “Jake,” she repeated.

  “Perhaps you’ll allow me to interview you later—for the article.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  “And you,” I told Ruth.

  “You ain’t trying to make us look bad,” she said.

  “No, I promise I’m not.”

  “Well, then, you come by anytime. I’m always here.”

  “Thank you.”

  A moment later, Pen and Horvath entered Pen’s trailer. In another moment, Ruth disappeared into her own mobile home. I bent slightly, picked up Pen’s grocery bag by the handles, and carried it to the Neon.

  The Starlite Motel had a wonderfully tacky sign out front—red and bright with neon, topped by a huge star. It reminded me of a marquee for a drive-in movie theater. I nearly stayed there just for the sign. But a half dozen people were loitering in the parking lot, and I didn’t want to be noticed by any of them. Instead, I drove another five hundred feet to a second motel, the Hi—top Motel—the two L’s in its neon sign were burned out. I checked in using Jacob Greene’s American Express card. The manager, an elderly gentleman working past his retirement age, seemed happy to have my business and didn’t mind that I was vague about my checkout date.

  “Let me know each morning if you want me to hold the room,” he said.

  I told him I would.

  “My name’s Victor. If you need anything, and I mean anything”—I swear he winked at me—“just call the desk. I’ll be here.”

  I told him I found that comforting.

  The Hilltop Motel was smaller and not nearly as boisterous as the Starlite. It had sixteen units arranged in two cell blocks of eight units each, the cell blocks set at a forty-five-degree angle from each other, the parking lot between them. There were four units on the ground floor and four on top in each block. My cell block was facing busy Central Avenue. The mobile homes of Hilltop were behind it, just beyond a Cyclone fence. I could see a small patch of trailer park from the second-floor landing outside unit 8A, but it didn’t amount to much.

  It took about two minutes to unpack my suitcase. I set the grocery bag on a small desk fronting the room’s single window near the door—there were no back windows. There was a lamp on the desk, and I tried to move it to give myself room to work, only it was bolted down. Everything was bolted down—the lamp to the desk, the desk to the floor, the landscapes to the wall, the TV to the credenza, a small refrigerator to the floor, the radio to the shelf next to the bed. Only the TV remote was portable, that and the worn white towels in the tiny bathroom.

  I set the grocery bag on the floor next to the bed and began removing its contents one item at a time and arranging them into separate piles. The biggest pile consisted of cast-off Tribunes and a few back issues of Down Beat magazine. Next came
carefully collapsed boxes of food items—pasta shells, pizza rolls, a jambalaya mix, and cherry Popsicles, plus a box that used to contain wind chimes. I ignored both piles. It was the discarded mail that interested me. A third had been addressed to Penelope Glass, a third to Resident, and a third to Steve Sykora, the husband, I presumed. It isn’t unusual for women to keep their maiden names after marriage—about 20 percent do. But usually there’s a reason for it. I wondered what Penelope’s was.

  Included in the mail was a solicitation for Twin Cities Public Television, a pledge envelope from the Nature Conservancy, and several opportunities for Pen and Sykora to enjoy preapproved, no-annual-fee, fixed-introductory-APR credit cards. There was also a detached portion of a mortgage statement listing Pen’s and Sykora’s account number, how much they owed on the mobile home, and the details of each monthly payment, a health care copay statement that included Steve’s Social Security number, a bill from a local music store—Pen was leasing an electronic piano—and two credit card statements, one in Pen’s name and one in Steve’s. You’d think that being a law enforcement officer, Sykora would have been more careful. I could easily steal his identity with this information, make his life a living hell. Probably Phu had stolen Jacob Greene’s in the same manner.

  I studied the credit card statements. Each detailed Pen’s and Sykora’s purchases over the past month. Sykora had used his card mostly to pay for meals. Over half of the restaurants were within walking distance of the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis. Pen had done a lot of shopping, primarily at Target and Marshall Field’s. Both statements were dated a week earlier and didn’t help. However, at the bottom of the pile of recyclables was a receipt from a motel in Chanhassen, a city in Carver County just down the road from Norwood Young America. The room had been charged to Pen’s credit card.

  Why would she need a motel room? Was she cheating on her husband?

  I checked the date. It was the same day that I had punched out Danny.

  I had seen a lot of motels lately and had come to a conclusion: They’re all pretty much alike. The Chanhassen Inn might have been bigger and pricier than some; it had both a restaurant and a swimming pool. But the rooms were still stacked side by side and one atop the other. Half faced the parking lot and half faced the swimming pool, and I was willing to wager that everything in them was bolted down.

  I parked across the street from the motel and went into the lobby. I asked for Frank Crosetti’s room and was informed that he hadn’t checked in and there was no reservation in his name.

  “Hmm. He might have checked out already.” I asked the clerk if he had taken a room a few days earlier. She assured me that he had not.

  I went to the restaurant next. I didn’t see anyone I knew. My stomach was grumbling—“Hey, remember me?”—and I was tempted to get something to eat. The special of the day—chicken fried steak and gravy—looked a little too iffy for my taste, though, so I told my stomach to quiet down.

  I wandered to the pool. It was a large blue rectangle about six feet at its deepest point. Several signs warned NO DIVING just above several others that proclaimed NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY. USE POOL AT YOUR OWN RISK. About a dozen kids risked it, along with two adults who watched them like eagles protecting their young. A few more adults were sprawled out on lounge chairs getting a jump on their tans despite the spring chill in the air. From the look of their pale skin, they had plenty of work in front of them, but after all, it was May in Minnesota. I moved slowly among them, pausing to scrutinize a few of the women carefully. Nope, not Frank. Not Danny.

  I returned to the parking lot and debated my options. They didn’t amount to much. All I knew was that Pen had rented a room here the same day I had pummeled Danny. What did that prove? Not a damn thing. But it was the only clue I had, so I decided to stick with it. Sit, watch, and wait. What else could I do?

  I returned to the Neon and turned on the radio. I had a good view of the front lobby and the parking lot, and I watched both intently. After a while, the radio began to bore me. It was “drive time,” that period when working men and women were most likely to be driving home, and the DJs were all yukking it up. I’d like to have a short chat with the man who decided that people prefer talk and lame humor over music during morning and evening rush hours, but I didn’t know where he lived. Instead, I switched off the radio. I fantasized briefly about sneaking home to recover my CDs. I had enough that I could listen to music continuously for at least twenty-one days straight and not play the same CD twice. But why stop there? Why not grab my books—one a day for how many years? Three? Four? And movies—at least a month’s worth on videocassettes and DVDs. Better yet, I could just hang out there, eat sno-cones and mini-donuts, and watch Martin Scorsese films until the FBI dragged me away.

  You think too much, McKenzie.

  I pumped an additional half dozen quarters into the parking meter and waited some more. The chicken fried steak and gravy was just starting to look good to me when I saw him, Danny, walking with a pronounced limp, carrying a tan paper bag with the golden arches printed on it in one hand and a cardboard tray with two soft drinks in the other. He was just there, in the middle of the parking lot—I had no idea where he came from. I left the Neon and dodged several cars as I crossed the street. Danny was heading for a staircase that led to a dozen second-floor rooms. I ran toward him, even as my inner voice spoke to me.

  Why would Pen rent a motel room for Danny?

  She didn’t, you moron. It was her husband, Steve Sykora, using her credit card.

  Why would he do that? The FBI has its own financial resources.

  It’s not FBI. Sykora is running an illegal op.

  Are you sure?

  No.

  Danny was already on the second-floor landing when I reached the block of rooms. I followed from below, matching his speed, waiting to see which room he entered. But something was speaking to Danny, some instinct. He halted abruptly and looked over the railing.

  I tried to conceal myself between four parked cars, two side by side in one row and two directly behind them. I failed.

  “You,” he said.

  “Hi, Danny.”

  Danny dropped the sack of food and tray of drinks. The lids popped off the drinks, and caramel-colored liquid flowed over the edge of the landing.

  He looked right at me, yet his eyes didn’t seem to focus. Maybe he thought if he pretended I wasn’t there, I’d go away. That lasted only a second. Then came panic. When Danny realized I couldn’t reach him, his battered face knotted into an expression of pure hatred, and I remembered: I didn’t just take away Danny’s gun in the parking lot, I took away the illusion that he was a tough guy, I took away his pride, and he’d hate me forever for it. My inner voice told me to kill him while I had the chance. Instead, I raised my hand and fluttered my fingers ever so slightly at him—“a microwave,” Victoria Dunston called it.

  “So how’s it going?” I chirped.

  “You motherfucking sonuvabitch.”

  “Hey, hey, hey—let’s keep family out of this.”

  “You bastard.”

  “What did I say?”

  Danny gripped the iron railing as if he wanted to throw it at me.

  “Fuck you.”

  Profanity, obscenity, vulgarity—they have become the bedrock of the English language. Just ask the scriptwriters at Fox.

  My rage at Danny wasn’t nearly as great as it had been. Probably it had something to do with his puffy, scarred, and black-and-blue face. I still wanted to blow his brains out for what he had done to Susan Tillman and Mr. Mosley, but there was something I wanted more.

  “Say, Dan-man”—Dan-man was what Bobby Dunston and I had called a kid we played hockey with—“have you seen Frank lately?”

  When Danny didn’t answer, I decided to go with the Big Bluff.

  “Special Agent Sykora of the FBI sent me.”

  Danny’s eyes grew wide.

  “You’re a liar.”

  He shoots, he scores.r />
  “Come on down, Danny. I won’t hurt you.”

  Danny didn’t believe me. He looked right and left, I don’t know what for—a place to run, perhaps. Go ’head and run, my inner voice urged. Show me where you live.

  Danny didn’t run. After a moment, he released his grip on the railing and stood up straight while continuing to look down at me. He smiled.

  Why would he smile?

  Why are you smiling, Danny?

  Oh, shit!

  I whirled just in time to see the blade slashing toward me. My arms came up as I dodged to my left, hitting a car door with my hip. The knife stabbed empty air beneath my right arm and chest. I danced backward.

  There are two of them, man. When are you going to learn?

  Danny’s friend had been surprised when I turned so unexpectedly. That’s why he had missed—I assumed. From the merriment in his eyes and the grin on his lips, he might have done it on purpose, choosing to toy with me a bit. A little boy with flies and no adult supervision.

  He advanced on me in a crouch, holding the knife close to his body, probing the space between us with his free hand. I hate knives. Normally I would avoid them at all costs, especially his—a seven-inch stainless steel combat knife called a “Yarborough” by the Green Berets. But trapped in the narrow space between the four cars, I had nowhere to go but forward or back. Forward was out of the question. Backpedaling wasn’t much better—I had no speed and I kept glancing off the cars. I didn’t dare turn my back to him. I thought about the Beretta pressed between my belt and the small of my back. By the time I reached for it, he would drive the blade of his knife through my heart.

  I let him get close.

  He feinted with his shoulder.

  I hopped into the air and drove my left foot into his chest. It bounced back like I had kicked a truck tire.

  “Stick ’im, Brucie,” Danny shouted from the balcony.