The Taking of Libbie, SD

by David Housewright

  “If you say so.”

  “Look, I came here to do you a favor.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “I’m just wondering why you’re doing it.”

  “Because I don’t want Ed to lose his job, okay? Because I don’t want him to have to move away. Is that reason enough?”

  “So it’s about Ed.”

  “It’s about me. If he left Libbie, I would just die.”

  “If you’re so concerned, why didn’t you tell him about Rush when you first learned the truth?”

  “I tried. I told him that Rush couldn’t be trusted. Only I couldn’t tell him how I knew—I couldn’t tell him … I didn’t want him to know I had cheated on him. You’re not going to tell anyone, are you? About me and Rush?”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Ed.”

  Not her husband, I thought.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Thank you. I hope you find Rush. I really do.”

  Dawn rose from her chair and had started to move away when I stopped her with a question.

  “Why did you look in the wallet?” I said.

  She hesitated before answering. “I wanted to know if he was married. He said he wasn’t.”

  “Did he tell you he was going to take you away from all of this?”

  “Sure. Men always tell a girl what she wants to hear. If it’ll get them what they want, they’ll say anything.”

  I nodded as if I believed her.

  Sharren Nuffer waited until Dawn had left the dining room before she approached my table.

  “What did she want?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Who? Dawn Neske.”

  “Understanding,” I said. “She wanted understanding.”

  “Did you give her any?”

  “What are you so angry about?”

  Instead of answering, Sharren sat across from me and pointed at my meal. “How’s the steak?”

  “Quite good,” I said. To prove it, I consumed a forkful, and then another while she watched.

  “I was married three times, and not once did I cheat on my husband,” Sharren said. “Not once, although that didn’t stop them from cheating on me. I want you to know that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m like Dawn. Or Tracie.”

  “What did the Imposter tell you to get you to go to bed with him?”

  “Nothing. I had an itch and I let him scratch it. Simple as that. There was nothing dishonest about it.”

  “Sure.”

  Sharren stood abruptly.

  “Not all of us are lucky in love, McKenzie,” she said. “Some of us have to take what we can get.”

  When she left, she followed the same path from the dining room that Dawn had followed. As I watched her go, I had to admit that Sharren was right. Sex between unmarried consenting adults who don’t give a damn about each other isn’t necessarily bad. It just isn’t any good.

  What I wanted to do next was illegal. That meant I couldn’t call Bobby Dunston, or the sergeant in the Minneapolis Police Department gang unit that I sometimes paid for information. There was no way I was going to contact Chief Gustafson, either, the blabbermouth. That left only one contact.

  “Schroeder Private Investigations, how may I help you,” the receptionist said.

  “Greg Schroeder, please,” I said.

  “Mr. Schroeder is unavailable at the moment. May I connect you with—”

  “Tell him it’s McKenzie.”

  “Oh, Mr. McKenzie. Just a moment, please.”

  Greg Schroeder never answered his own phone, and he rarely took calls he wasn’t expecting, which was odd when you considered his line of work. Yet he always had time for me. The reason was simple. Most private investigations these days involve the use of computers, something old-school, trench-coat detectives like Schroeder disdain. I, on the other hand, have offered him work over the years that not only got him out of the office; it put guns in his hands.

  “McKenzie,” he said after the receptionist patched me through. “We were just talking about you.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah, me and some of the boys hanging around the ol’ watercooler. Rumor has it you were jacked by a couple of cowboys and you didn’t shoot either one of them. What’s with that?”

  “The boys” was what he called his operatives, men and women alike, most of them ex-cops, deputies, Feds, and at least one MP. The number he employed at any one time was determined by the amount of business he had, and lately business had been very good. The economy wasn’t what it could be, and that made everyone from housewives to corporate executives nervous. The more nervous they got, the better for guys like Schroeder.

  “What can I say, Greg? I’ve become more conventional as I age.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we thought, too. What do you need?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Favor? Is that a word?”

  “I meant I need you to do a job for which I expect to pay your normal rate.”

  “Now we’re talking.”

  “I want you to find a man named Nicholas Hendel.”

  “Okay.”

  “He has a credit card.”

  “Okay.”

  I told Schroeder the name of the credit card company.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “That’s it.”

  “What do you mean, that’s it?”

  “That’s all I have.”

  “C’mon.”

  “No, wait. He might be from Chicago.”

  “McKenzie—”

  “How long do you think it’ll take to get a line on him?”

  “This is just some damn paper chase. Ah, McKenzie. I expected more from you.”

  “You know, Greg, not every job can be a running gun battle.”

  “I appreciate that, but it’s been so long.”

  “What do you mean? I let you stick a gun in a guy’s ear just last May.”

  “Oh, gee, what fun.”

  “I promise, the next shooting I come across, I’ll give you a call. In the meantime—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll pass this off to the geeks, but it occurs to me, to get what you ask we might have to do some hacking. Might have to run a flimflam on the credit card company.”

  “Flimflam? Is that the new computer slang?”

  “I don’t know from fucking computer slang. I’m just saying it’s illegal. It’s dangerous.”

  “Your point is?”

  “It’s gonna cost you more than the normal rate.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “This Nicholas Hendel, is he one of the cowboys that snatched you? Cuz if he is, we have a rate for that, too, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. I also knew the rate—five thousand dollars. In cash.

  “Call me when you have something,” I said.

  After dining, I went to my room. There was nothing on TV that interested me, so I turned to the clock radio provided by the hotel. The Minnesota Twins were on the West Coast, and I was hoping to pick up the game. I found a station that was part of the Twins network—KGFX, an AM station out of Pierre that called itself South Dakota’s Pioneer Radio Station. Only the signal kept fading in and out. I thought I’d have better luck in my Audi, but the reception on First Street was just as iffy.

  The buildings on the west side of the street cast shadows that touched the buildings on the east side. The sky was glaring yellow, and then—boom—as the sun set it became royal blue turning to purple, and stars appeared on the eastern horizon. It became perceptibly cooler, and I was glad I was wearing my sports jacket. Radio reception improved, and while I still couldn’t dial in Pierre, the signal from the ESPN affiliate out of Bismarck, North Dakota—KXMR-AM—was steady and clear. I sat with my windows down, listening to the pregame show, John Gordon talking up the Twins’ young pitching staff, while the town came alive around me.

  The lights of the movi
e theater glittered in the windows of the buildings around it. A couple of cars parked across the street from the theater. Teenagers, an older couple, and a family of four hurried inside. A small girl walked past my car between her mother and father, holding hands with each of them, pulling them forward. They, too, disappeared inside the theater. A few minutes later, a teenager came out of the theater and changed the movie poster in the display case out front. He went back inside and then returned with a long pole that he used to switch letters on the marquee, taking one down, putting one up.

  Traffic grew heavier. Most of the cars came into town and parked, and most of the drivers and passengers in them went into Café Rossini and another tavern down the street called Thorn’s Tap. Other cars came, went, and came back again. I saw a Chevy Malibu four times and a Ford Taurus twice. Two teenaged boys wearing leather jackets and T-shirts walked quickly past my Audi. A pickup screeched to a stop next to them. The boys climbed into the bed of the pickup. The tires screeched again as the vehicle pulled away; farm boys doing what farm boys—and city boys—all across the country do on a Friday night, cruising. A group of girls queued up in front of the theater but didn’t go in; another gathered in front of a clothing store that was closed. The vehicles always slowed when they drove past the girls. Two kids riding bicycles peeled out of the alley between the American Family Insurance and the H&R Block offices. They also slowed when they wheeled past the girls, but the girls chased them off.

  My cell phone rang. A familiar voice reminded me how far I was from home.

  “Hi, McKenzie,” Nina said.

  “Hey. What’s going on?”

  “I was just about to ask you the same question.”

  “I’m just sitting in my car catching the action in downtown Libbie.”

  “It sounds like you’re listening to the ball game.”

  “That, too.”

  Another car passed, driving slowly. It found a space farther down the block and parked. A lone female got out. Even from that distance, I was impressed by the shortness of her skirt and the tightness of her sleeveless shirt.

  “How are things in Libbie?” Nina said.

  “Do you mean here in sunny Sin City?”

  “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “The place is crawling with rascals and scoundrels.”

  The young woman moved slowly down the sidewalk on the far side of the street. She stopped outside the entrance to Café Rossini and looked into the window. A moment later, she turned and continued up the sidewalk. The pickup returned, and the two teenagers in the back called to her. She lifted her face, and for a moment I could see it clearly. Saranne Miller. She didn’t reply to the teenagers, and the pickup drove out of town.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Nina said.

  “Nothing,” I told her. “You know me. I’m a passive, go-with-the-flow, no-need-to-rock-the-boat kinda guy.”

  “McKenzie, you’re passive the way Chief Little Crow was passive, and he and his Sioux warriors burned down half the state of Minnesota.”

  “With good cause, I might add.”

  “Nonetheless.”

  Saranne continued along the sidewalk, moving as if she were window shopping, her thighs and legs and arms hard white in the moonlight. Two men stepped out of the Café Rossini. They paused in the doorway and watched her. Their heads tilted toward each other as if they were afraid of being overheard when they spoke, and then they began moving in the same direction.

  “It’s not my town,” I said.

  “How long are you going to stay there?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Are you any closer to finding the Imposter?”

  “I might have a lead, but I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere. I have Greg Schroeder working on it.”

  “Oh,” Nina said. She was a little afraid of Schroeder. Then again, so was I.

  Saranne paused. She glanced at the men. The men kept moving toward her. Farther down the street, a man stepped out of Thorn’s Tap, went to his car, started it up, and drove off. A car parked a few spaces behind him pulled away from the curve and followed. I couldn’t see the driver, but I did notice the emblem of the Libbie City Police Department painted on the door. So did the two men. They turned abruptly and moved in the opposite direction. That lasted until the cop car’s taillights became tiny red dots in the distance. Then they turned back. Saranne had disappeared into the mouth of the alley. The two men followed her.

  “Honey,” I said, “something just came up. I gotta go.”

  “Will you call me later?”

  “Sure.”

  Nina might have said more, but I deactivated my phone and didn’t hear.

  Outside of the Audi, with the radio off, I heard church music, a choir practicing, singing sweet and clear, although I couldn’t see a church. It took me back to St. Mark’s Church in St. Paul, my face washed, my hair combed, Mom on one side, Dad on the other, sun pouring through stained glass, the choir sitting in pews to the right of the altar, the organ in the loft in back of the church. The image disappeared as soon as I thought about the guns I had hidden beneath the false floor of my trunk. I hurried to the alley without them. It was Libbie, South Dakota, I reminded myself, not North Minneapolis.

  The alley was narrow and well lit at the front and back, but it was dark in the middle, and that’s where the voices came from.

  “Stop it,” Saranne said. “Stop it, please.”

  “Whaddaya mean stop?” a male voice replied.

  “No, no, please.”

  “Whaddaya mean, no?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  There was a brick on the pavement that didn’t seem to belong to either of the buildings flanking the alley. I scooped it up.

  “I said stop it,” Saranne said. “Please, don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what?” the second man said. “I thought you wanted to party.”

  “No,” Saranne said.

  Neither of the two men saw me approach. Neither heard me until I spoke.

  “Get away from her.”

  One of the men moved to intercept me.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  I spun counterclockwise, my right arm extended, and fired the brick into the man’s chest, throwing almost underhanded, thinking Dan Quisenberry, the best of the submarine pitchers. The brick caught him high and drove him backward and down onto the pavement. There was a thud and a low moan.

  “Jesus,” the second man said.

  He released Saranne and stepped back.

  “She wanted it,” he said.

  “Then why did she say no?”

  “She, she—”

  He brought his arms up to protect his head, so I drove a forefist deep into his solar plexus. The blow knocked the wind from him, causing him to clutch his stomach, double over, and fall to his knees. There was retching, but he didn’t vomit. Pity.

  I took Saranne by the shoulder and led her toward the light at the far end of the alley.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  I glanced back at the two men. They helped each other up and retreated to the front of the alley.

  “What were you thinking?” I said. “Did you want them to hurt you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Saranne—”

  “People treat me like a whore. My father treats me like a whore. I might as well act like a whore.”

  “Why? To justify their expectations? To prove them right?”

  Saranne thought that was funny enough to laugh over.

  “McKenzie, you want to protect my virtue. Well, now you know I don’t have any.”

  “Then why did you say no to those two? Why didn’t you let them rape you?”

  The question caused Saranne’s face to freeze. Or maybe it was the word “rape.”

  “You don’t need to be the town slut, you know,” I said.

  “What else can I be? If that’s how people are going to treat me, what else can I be?”
r />   “Have you ever read The Scarlet Letter?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hester Prynne had a child by a man not her husband, so the people in her town—we’re talking about seventeenth-century Puritans here—they shunned her and forced to wear the letter A on her bosom. Yet she was the most virtuous character in the book. She not only refused to rat out the child’s father, she protected him. Over time people began to respect her. They began to see her not as the person they thought she was but as the person she actually was; as someone they could go to with their problems, as someone they could trust.”

  “That’s just a book.”

  “Hester was a hero because she refused to be the person the townspeople expected her to be.”

  “It’s just a book, okay?”

  “You have, what, another year of high school? Tough it out, Saranne. Do that, then you can leave Libbie, go where gossip can’t reach you; go to college, go anywhere. Your old man, he isn’t going to live forever. Who is he going to leave his businesses to, his grain elevator and restaurant and crap? When you come back, if you decide to come back, you’ll be the one in charge. Or you can just sell it off.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “No. It’s simple, but it won’t be easy. Especially during that last year in high school.”

  “Like you know.”

  “Listen. I’ll tell you the only thing I know absolutely for sure. Living well is the best revenge.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m out of here.”

  I didn’t blame Saranne for dismissing me. I probably sounded like one of those TV phonies like Dr. Phil.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” I said.

  “Whatever.”

  We walked back through the alley. Saranne didn’t speak again until we were nearing the entrance.

  “The Scarlet Letter. Who wrote that? Hawthorne? I think it’s on the reading list next year.”

  I was pleased to hear that they still taught the book in high school.

  “Read it,” I said.

  “Well, I have to, don’t I?”

  “I suppose.”

  We were rounding the corner of the alley onto the sidewalk when she spoke again.

  “McKenzie, there’s something I want you to know. No one else believes me, but I want you to know because, well, just because. I didn’t have sex with Rush. He wanted me to. He tried to. He put his hands on me and he said things to convince me that it would be all right, but I wouldn’t let him. The truth is, I’ve never—I haven’t slept with anyone. Ever. Only no one believes me.”