The Last Kind Word

by David Housewright

  “Don’t think for a second it’s going to be easy, either. It won’t be. Our job, if we’re going to get away with it, is to make it look easy. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I glanced at Josie. She was smiling at me. They were all smiling. I had no idea why.

  “You’re back,” Josie said.

  “So it would appear.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “I got halfway to the county road and realized I didn’t have enough money to fill the gas tank.”

  “Then you’re in the same boat as the rest of us,” the old man said.

  “I want fifty thousand dollars off the top,” I said. “That’s what I came here for. That’s all I came here for. More than enough to hide on until I can get to my own money. You can split the rest however you see fit. Don’t be surprised if it’s less than you expect. This is the Iron Range, not downtown Manhattan.”

  “What if it’s more than fifty thousand?” Skarda asked. “The split, I mean. What if our share is more than that?”

  “It won’t matter as long as I get my fifty.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Roy asked.

  I moved deeper into the living room and pointed at him. Jill was in the kitchen, my back to her, so I could only guess at her expression when I said, “Go home and make love to your wife.” I pointed at Skarda. “You, too.” He smiled; Elizabeth frowned. I pointed at Claire. “Since you’re reporting everything to your boyfriend anyway, tell Fenelon I want to meet.”

  “What about?” Claire asked.

  “He’s not her boyfriend,” Jimmy said.

  I ignored them both and pointed at Josie. “You come with me,” I said.

  “Any place in particular?”

  I went to the map and tapped the blue dot Jimmy had drawn near Lake Vermilion.

  “You know what it is, don’t you Dyson?” Josie asked.

  “I think so.”

  “What?”

  “The mother lode.”

  TEN

  “In the 1940’s the National Geographic Society declared Lake Vermilion one of the top ten most scenic lakes in the United States. And it still is today. With its 40,000 acres of water, 365 islands and 1200 miles of shoreline, it stretches 40 miles across the heart of Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region.” Or so it says on the lake’s official Web site. To reach it, Josie and I followed Minnesota Highway 1 west of Ely through the tiny town of Tower, the oldest Minnesota city north of Duluth, population 479, which owes its existence to the long-closed Soudan Iron Mine. Its current claim to fame is that it holds the state record for the coldest temperature on a single day at minus sixty degrees. All that’s on the Internet, too. What isn’t is the name of the road Jimmy found that jutted north off of Highway 1 just outside of town.

  Josie drove while I followed our progress on a state road map. We drove west away from Tower and then east back toward town. It was while driving east that I discovered the road. There was no street sign, fire department address marker, or road reflector. If I hadn’t already known it was there, I would not have seen it.

  Josie drove north at a slow speed. The road was hard-packed dirt and wide enough for only a single vehicle to pass. It was flanked on both sides by tall trees that kept the road in shadows. One tree in particular was both wide and tall enough to be mistaken for one of those sequoias in California. The road curved around it.

  We followed the road until it came to a huge clearing. In the center of the clearing was a large, white, windowless, one-story cinder-block building that reminded me of a warehouse. The bright sun made the walls shine like alabaster. There were no signs identifying it. A gray metal door had been built into the south wall of the building. A half-dozen vehicles were parked on either side of it, their bumpers nearly kissing the wall. In the center of the east wall was a metal garage door big enough for an armored truck to fit through. Well-worn tire tracks veering off the main driveway told me the trucks drove into the warehouse through that door and came out of a door in back that I couldn’t see, circling the building until they met the driveway again.

  A tall cyclone fence with razor wire strung along the top surrounded the clearing, not unlike at the truck terminal in Krueger. There were no trees or brush for fifty yards around the building inside the fence and nothing but flat ground for twenty yards between the fence and the tree line outside of it. We stopped just short of the gate. It had one of those long arms that you see in parking ramps that was controlled with an electronic keypad. The arm was down. There was a small gatehouse next to the opening; however, it was empty. I counted at least three cameras without turning my head.

  “Get out of the car,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I want them to get a look at us.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  I slid out of the passenger side of the Ford Taurus. I spread the map over the hood of the car and bent to it as if I were lost—certainly that was the impression I wanted to convey. Josie left the car without shutting her door. Instead of looking at the map, she looked at the building, the gatehouse, and the fence. I shouted at her and waved my arms.

  “You’ve seen what there is to see, now pay attention to me.”

  She did, a concerned expression on her face. “Why are you shouting?” Josie asked.

  “I want the guards to think that I’m commenting on your lousy driving.”

  “What guards?”

  “Don’t look now, but there are at least four cameras pointed at us.” I had spotted one more after I left the Taurus.

  “What cameras?” She turned away and started searching for them.

  “I said don’t look. Dammit, Josie.”

  She turned back and waved her arms at me. “Sorry,” she said.

  “You’re a terrible actress, too.”

  “Why are you being so mean?”

  I folded up the map and circled the front of the car. “That’s enough,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

  “Why?”

  “So the scene has a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.”

  “Who are you? Martin Scorsese?”

  “Get in the car.”

  Josie quickly moved to the passenger door and slid inside. While she buckled her seat belt, I maneuvered the car through a series of Y-turns until we were back on the narrow road and heading for the highway. Josie glanced through the rear window even though there was only empty road and trees behind us.

  “What is that place?” she asked.

  “It’s a remote vault. It’s where the bank—the bank Mesabi Security works for—it’s where it processes its largest transactions with its most cash-intensive customers in the region. The Mesabi Security trucks roll in early in the morning to get cassettes loaded with money that they’ll insert into ATM machines along their routes. Later in the day, they return with deposits—canvas bags filled with currency from the bank’s largest depositors—the casinos, check-cashing stores, bank branches, and grocery stores that we talked about before. Inside the building there’s a huge processing room with cafeteria-style tables. The cash is dumped out on the tables, and a small army of bank employees count it. Afterward, two of the armored trucks will return to Krueger. The third will take the deposits to the bank’s vault in Duluth.”

  “You’ve seen this—what did you call it, a remote vault? Have you seen this before?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Have you ever robbed one?”

  “No.”

  Josie didn’t have anything to say to that. Neither did I, although I was thinking as I hit the intersection of Highway 1, robbing a remote vault, damn, that would be something. The thought lasted only a moment before my inner voice started screaming, Are you out of your frickin’ mind? Still, the thought was there.

  * * *

  We drove east through Tower and back toward Ely. Traffic was light. WELY-FM, which promoted itself as “end of the road radio,” was playing an eclectic song list that included Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Mos Def, Bob Marle
y, Tom Waits, Janis Joplin, the White Stripes, Kool and the Gang, and Alberta Cross, plus a poem read by Noël Coward. It reminded me of “The Current,” a public radio station back home. I wasn’t listening that closely, though. Mostly I was wondering how I was going to get back home.

  The problem—or the solution, depending on how you looked at it—was Claire de Lune. I would use her to get close to Fenelon, eliminating the need to involve Roy or any of the other Iron Range Bandits. I’d place my order and then make sure the ATF was on hand when Fenelon delivered the weapons. ’Course, since Claire was so close to the operation, it meant I would need to continue my preparations to rob the remote vault right up until Bullert and the badge boys bagged Brian.

  Bullert and the badge boys bagged Brian, my inner voice repeated. Nice alliteration.

  Thank you, I told myself.

  I couldn’t really blame Jimmy for telling Claire everything. Well, yes I could. As Harry would testify, I was in the habit of spilling my guts to Nina. On the other hand, there was plenty that I kept to myself. For example, I knew I would never tell Nina about the woman who was sitting next to me in the Ford Taurus. Our relationship was complicated enough.

  It was because I was thinking about Nina while half listening to a remix of “Sympathy for the Devil” by Fatboy Slim that I didn’t see the county sheriff’s department cruiser until its lightbar started flashing in my rearview mirror.

  “What?” Josie saw me gazing into the mirror and turned her head to look out the rear window. “Oh, shit.”

  I leaned forward in the seat, reached behind me, and slipped the 9 mm SIG Sauer out from beneath my shirt. “Take this,” I said. “Put it in the glove compartment.”

  Josie took the gun reluctantly, holding it by her fingertips as if it were something she wanted to flush down the toilet.

  “Where did you get the gun?” she asked.

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t like the bartender at Buckman’s anymore. Put it away.”

  Josie slipped the handgun into the glove compartment. As soon as she did, I pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. By then the deputy had hit his siren. I stopped the Ford and engaged the emergency flashers.

  “Whatever happens, do nothing,” I told Josie. “Say nothing. Don’t even think of touching the gun.”

  Josie nodded in reply.

  I sat in the car and waited. There were two deputies in the cruiser. One tall and fat, the other shorter and thin. I recognized them instantly. The tall deputy approached from the driver’s side of the car, the short deputy approached from the passenger side. Both of them had hands resting on the butts of their holstered guns.

  “This just keeps getting better and better,” I said.

  I made a production out of placing both of my hands on top of the steering wheel. Deputy James seemed to like that. He smiled when he said, “Roll down your window,” and smiled some more when I returned my hand to the steering wheel afterward and said, “Is there a problem, Deputy?”

  “He wants to know if there’s a problem,” James said.

  Deputy Williams was leaning against the passenger door of the Taurus. Josie’s window was rolled down, and he was looking across her at me.

  “I don’t have a problem,” he said. “Do you have a problem?”

  “I don’t have a problem unless Dyson gives me one.”

  “Hmm, Dyson?” I said. “Who’s he?”

  “Oh, dang,” James said. “Now we have a problem.”

  “Here I was hoping for a problem-free day.”

  “Just goes to show.” James took a step backward and rested his hand back on the butt of his gun. “Outta the car, Dyson.”

  I reached down for the door latch. When I opened the door, Josie turned to do the same. Williams put an arm through the window, covered her breast with his hand, and pushed her back against the seat.

  “Don’t move, honey,” he said. He gave her breast a squeeze. “Mmm, nice.”

  Josie squirmed under his touch and tried to push his hand away. Williams grinned at her.

  “Atta girl,” he said. “Now, stay put.”

  He removed his hand, stepped back from the window, and made his way to the rear bumper. I was already standing there, facing James.

  “This will go much easier if you just admit that you’re Nicholas Dyson, escaped criminal,” he said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  Williams drove his fist deep into my stomach. I lost my breath, doubled up, and went to my knees. It took me a few moments to regain my composure. While I did, I noticed the shiny bands of chrome-plated steel wrapped around the fingers of his right hand. No wonder he hit so hard, my inner voice said. I used the bumper and trunk lid to pull myself upright again.

  “Brass knuckles,” I said. “I thought that went out with Polaroid cameras.”

  “We’re traditionalists,” Williams said. “Something works for us, we stick with it.”

  “Let’s talk, Dyson,” James said.

  “My name isn’t Dyson.”

  Williams hit me again and again I went down. Loose gravel dug into my knees. To alleviate the pain, I fell backward into a sitting position, propping myself up with one hand while clutching my tender stomach with the other.

  “We can do this all day,” James said.

  “We?” asked Williams.

  “I’ll take a turn. Do you want me to take a turn?”

  “That’s up to Dyson here.” Williams nudged me with his toe. “Whaddaya say, Dyson?”

  “You can call me anything you want,” I said.

  “We can call him anything we want,” Williams said.

  “How ’bout dipshit?” James asked.

  “That, too,” I said.

  James squatted next to me. “You’re a smart guy, aren’t you, dipshit?” he said.

  “’Course he’s smart,” Williams said. “He’s from the big city. Way smarter than us good ol’ country boys.” He nudged me with his toe again. “Ain’t that right?”

  I continued to clutch my stomach. “I don’t feel smarter,” I said.

  “He doesn’t feel smarter,” Williams said.

  “Don’t know why,” James said. “Big-time criminal mastermind like him.” He circled a beefy hand under my arm and pulled me upright. “You are a big-time criminal mastermind, aren’t ya?”

  “No, actually, I’m not,” I said.

  “He’s not a criminal mastermind,” Williams said.

  “We’ve been misled,” James said.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “So, here’s what we’re thinking,” James said. His fingers dug into my shoulder and pain shot down through my arm, numbing my fingertips. “We slap the cuffs on you, drag you down to Duluth, we’re heroes. Might even get a commendation out of it.”

  “But then we’d have to make statements,” Williams said. “Explain how we caught you. Probably testify in court…”

  “All that paperwork.”

  “We hate paperwork.”

  “Actually, most everything is done on computers now, but you get the gist of it.”

  “Typing,” Williams said. “Ewww.”

  “We hate typing.” James held up both index fingers for me to see. “Never did get the hang of it.”

  “It is skilled labor,” I said.

  Williams rapped the side of my head with the brass knuckles. The blow wasn’t hard enough to break the skin, yet it made me regret the remark just the same.

  “The point is, we end up wasting all those man-hours in the office when we could be out here chasing real criminals,” James said.

  “Like the father of the honey you got in the car,” Williams said. “Have you done her yet, Dyson?”

  I ignored the question. “Is there an alternative?” I said.

  “Funny you should ask,” James said. “Don’t you think it’s funny?”

  “Hysterical,” Williams said.

  James gave my shoulder another squeeze, and I fought back a groan. “What we’re thinking, Dyson, i
s instead of paying your debt to society to, well, society, you should pay it to us,” he said.

  “That way you’re punished for your grievous crimes…” Williams began.

  “Grievous,” said James.

  “Society is spared the bother and expense of supporting yet another freeloader through the prison system.”

  “And we avoid all that typing.”

  “We don’t like typing.”

  “I gathered that,” I said. “How exactly would this work? I mean, what would be the amount of my fine?”

  “We’re not greedy,” James said.

  “Oh, no,” said Williams. “We want a lot less than the courts would take.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Half.”

  “Half of what?”

  Williams punched me yet again. I doubled over and fell like a small tree toppled by straight-line winds, landing first on my knees and then sprawling forward on my shoulder. I gripped my solar plexus. This time I thought he might have done some real damage.

  James squatted next to me. “We know all about your plans to rob an armored truck,” he said. “One belonging to Mesabi Security.”

  “Geez,” I moaned. Not because of what Deputy James said, but because of the pain. Williams saw it as a form of capitulation, though.

  “See, us country boys, we know a thing or two,” he said.

  “I won’t ask how you know,” I said.

  “He won’t ask how we know,” Williams said.

  “Told you he was a criminal mastermind,” James said.

  “When are you going to make your move?” Williams asked.

  “Haven’t decided,” I told him.

  Williams brought his foot back and up like he was preparing to stomp me.

  “No kidding. We’re still working out the details.”

  Williams set his foot back on the pavement.

  “Don’t wait too long,” James said.

  “We’re not patient types,” Williams said.

  “How would I get ahold of you once I decide?”

  “Oh, we’ll be around—partner,” James said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d recommend which armored truck to take,” I said.

  “Us?” Williams said.

  “Us?” James repeated. “You’re not asking us for help, are you, Dyson?”