Curse of the Jade Lily: A McKenzie Novel

by David Housewright

  “Explain diplomatic immunity to me.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Internet? Invest in an online encyclopedia, why don’t you?”

  “I need an official ruling.”

  “Oh, please. Okay, um, diplomatic immunity—it’s an international law agreed upon during the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that ensures that diplomats are given safe passage across borders and are immune from prosecution under the host nation’s laws. It was enacted during the Cold War to keep rival countries from harassing each other’s representatives, accusing them of spying, that sort of thing.”

  “Who gets it?”

  “Official representatives of a sovereign nation and their families.”

  “What if a foreign politician who is not representing his country—let’s say he’s on vacation. What if he comes to the United States and commits a crime that is totally unconnected to his diplomatic role?”

  “I suppose that depends on where he’s from and what he’s done. Some countries will waive immunity if the guy’s a dirt bag, and some will bring him home and prosecute him there. In this case, I’m not sure if he’s covered. We are talking about our friend Branko Pozderac, aren’t we?”

  “Who has jurisdiction?”

  “We do. Is this about Branko?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Geez, McKenzie, you’re messing with international law now. Please, please, please, I’m begging you—don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Who? Me?”

  After I hung up on Harry, I went to my junk drawer in the kitchen and pulled out the Beretta.

  * * *

  Nicholas Garin had parked his cherry red Acura in the lot of the gymnasium located on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. From there he had a clear view of Hoyt Avenue where it intersected with Cleveland. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when I’m driving somewhere I’ll go through that intersection.

  Unfortunately for Garin, I wasn’t driving. I was on foot. Garin wasn’t looking for pedestrians, so he didn’t see me walking east on Hoyt dressed in a Timberwolves players jacket and a Vikings hat pulled low. Nor did he pay attention when I headed north on Cleveland past the tennis courts and then crossed the street at Folwell, although I was in plain sight the entire time. I made my way south on Cleveland and then cut through the parking lot until I was standing directly behind him. Even then, Garin didn’t see me, never glancing around, never checking his mirrors. He slouched against the driver’s door of the SUV, gazing more or less toward the mouth of Hoyt Avenue, oblivious to the world. For all I knew, he was sound asleep. Certainly he jumped as if I had awakened him from a pleasant daydream when I tapped the window with the nose of the Beretta.

  Surprise became terror became panic. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, and although I couldn’t see it, I knew his foot was stomping on the accelerator in an effort to escape. Only the SUV wasn’t running. He pounded on the steering wheel with both hands until he realized that the SUV wasn’t running and reached for the ignition key.

  “C’mon, Nick, don’t do that,” I said.

  I tapped the window again, only I was more forceful than I intended. The safety glass shattered into a hundred tiny shards that rained all over him. Panic became anger.

  “What are you doing?” Garin shouted.

  The guy is burning through emotions like an acetylene torch, my inner voice said.

  “Sorry about that, Nick,” I said aloud. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

  “You broke my window.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Have you any idea how expensive it is to fix a window on an SUV these days? On top of what it cost me to replace the tire you shot out?”

  “Don’t you have insurance?”

  “Yes, I have insurance. I also have a high deductible.”

  “Get your boss to pay for it.”

  “Like that’s going to happen.”

  For God’s sake, McKenzie, my inner voice said. You’re the one with the gun. Take charge.

  “Hey.” I rapped the frame of the car door with the barrel of the Beretta, where the window had been, sending more glass shards flying. “I’m the aggrieved party here.”

  “What did I ever do to you?”

  “Among other things, you frightened my girlfriend. On a bad day I’d shoot you just for that alone.”

  To prove it, I pointed the Beretta at Garin’s heart. Anger became anxiety. Garin backed away as far as he could while still remaining in his seat.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Fortunately for you, Nick—do you mind if I call you Nick? Fortunately for you, Nick, this is not a bad day, so I’m willing to negotiate. Here are my terms—you do exactly what I say and I won’t shoot you. Take it or leave it.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I know everything about you, Nick, including who you work for. What did Fiegen expect to accomplish by sending you out here, anyway?”

  Garin hesitated for a moment, his eyes narrowed, and he looked off to his left.

  “Who?” he said. “Fiegen?”

  “Nick, you have an MBA from the University of St. Thomas. Are you telling me you can’t lie any better than that?”

  “I’m not lying.”

  I raised my gun like I was going to hit him with it. He cringed and turned his head.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Tell me what your job was.”

  “Just watch. Don’t get involved, don’t interfere, just watch and report on what you do.”

  “Were you watching Wednesday night when I threw a man in front of a speeding car? Did you report on that?”

  Garin’s eyes widened. Anxiety became fear.

  “Does Alicia know what you’ve been up to?” I asked.

  Fear became something I couldn’t read.

  ”You’re not trained for this, pal,” I said. “Fiegen sending you instead of someone with experience, that’s amateur night. I expected more from him.”

  “He didn’t want…”

  “What didn’t he want?”

  “He didn’t want to go outside the company.”

  “So he sent an MBA to do a punk’s job. Risk a dime to save a nickel. And people wonder why our economy is in a shambles. All right, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to contact your penny-pinching boss. You’re going to tell him that I know everything. Tell Fiegen to call me or I’m going to call the FBI. Tell him if I get bored waiting for his call, I might blow his deal with the Bosnians just for the fun of it. Are we clear on that?”

  Garin didn’t answer, so I rapped the door frame with my gun again.

  “Are we clear?” I asked.

  “We’re clear.”

  “One more thing, Nick. I don’t want to see you or your cherry red Acura ever again. If you think dealing with auto insurance guys is tough, wait until you have to negotiate with health insurance people. They’re sonsabitches. Do we understand each other?”

  “This wasn’t my idea,” he said.

  “I never thought it was.”

  * * *

  I was so pleased with myself when I arrived back home that I mixed a shot of bourbon into my coffee. A friend of my father’s who helped raise me, Mr. Mosley, used to insist that you should never add anything to either coffee or bourbon—“Take ’em both straight, like a man,” he’d say—so I doubt he would have approved. You should give it a try, though. It tastes good. I was thinking, in fact, of having a second cup when I heard my front doorbell ring.

  Instead of saying hello when I opened the door, Mr. Donatucci asked, “Are you alone?”

  “I am,” I answered. “Mr. Donatucci, what do you think of mixing coffee with bourbon?”

  “I think it’s a waste of two good drinks.”

  Okay, then.

  Donatucci waved at the cream-colored van parked in my driveway behi
nd Nina’s Lexus. A door opened and an armed guard stepped out. He looked slowly around him, his hand resting on the butt of the handgun holstered to his thigh, which I took as an amateur move. If he didn’t already know that the coast was clear, he should never have gotten out of the vehicle.

  He rapped on the frame of the van and a side door slid open. Another guard emerged and did a little pirouette, looking for danger in the same places as his partner. He, too, had his hand on his gun. A moment later, they pulled a dolly with three gym bags strapped to it from the vehicle. The two of them slowly rolled it to my front porch, banging the wheels against the wooden steps as they dragged it onto the porch while swiveling their heads in long arcs as if they expected an ambush at any moment.

  “I like melodrama as much as the next guy,” I said, “but honestly, Mr. Donatucci.”

  “Quiet, McKenzie,” he said.

  The two guards pulled the dolly into my house, rolling it across the living room carpet as if they didn’t care about the stains it made. Once inside, with the door locked, we stood in a circle, the money in the center of the circle, and stared at each other.

  “Now what?” one of the guards asked.

  “Now we wait,” Donatucci said.

  Everyone turned to look at me.

  “Have you guys ever mixed bourbon with coffee?” I asked.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, the guards dispersed with mugs of coffee sans bourbon. One went to an empty upstairs bedroom that gave him a clear view of the front of the house as well as both ends of Hoyt Avenue. The other found a perch in my dining room that revealed the whole of my backyard and the houses on my right and left.

  “Are those wild turkeys?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Huh,” he said.

  Mr. Donatucci and I sat at my kitchen table and reviewed the situation. He was as opposed to paying the ransom as ever.

  “Then let’s not do it,” I said.

  He shook his head sadly as if the decision were out of his hands.

  “You can tell your boss that I refused to cooperate,” I said. “Better yet—we can blame the cops. Put it on Rask. Say that he threatened to arrest us for obstruction of justice.”

  “They’d probably fire me.”

  “Let them. How old are you, anyway? You should have retired years ago.”

  “You know, McKenzie, some people like their jobs. They like going to work in the morning.”

  “You’re the second person to tell me that today, so I guess it must be true.”

  A moment later my cell phone sang. I answered it without wondering who it might be.

  “This is Mr. Fiegen,” a voice said.

  I had never heard anyone use “mister” as a title in the same way a doctor or governor might, and I said so aloud.

  “I do not like your tone,” Fiegen said.

  “If you had told me that yesterday, I might have cared. Hang on.”

  I gestured toward Donatucci. “Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I descended a flight of stairs just off the kitchen to my basement, which held my hockey equipment, my golf clubs, my camping and fishing equipment, and a treadmill that I hadn’t used since I bought it. When I was sure no one could overhear our conversation, I said “Okay,” into the cell’s microphone.

  “The young man delivered your message,” Fiegen said. His voice was angry, which made me smile. It was about to get worse.

  “You’re a sonuvabitch, Fiegen,” I said. “A rat, a liar, a hypocrite—I could probably think of a few other insults, but what’s the point?”

  “What do you want, McKenzie?”

  “How much is the garbage business in Bosnia and Herzegovina worth to you?”

  “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “Yes, I am. How much is it worth?”

  Fiegen inhaled deeply and answered with the exhale.

  “Bosnia and Herzegovina is an emerging country. As its gross national product increases, so will the amount of solid waste it’ll produce. We estimate that in ten years it will be generating as much as twenty-five percent more than it does now.”

  “That’s not the answer I was looking for.”

  “MDR estimates gross profits at between one-point-three and one-point-seven billion euros in the first fiscal year, assuming we acquire all the territories we are bidding on.”

  “A tidy sum.”

  “Yes, it is. How much do you want?”

  “How big is the bribe you’re paying Jonathan Hemsted to steer Pozderac your way?”

  Another pause; another sigh.

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars if the deal is made,” Fiegen said. “Fifty thousand if it goes away.”

  “That’s pretty good money for government work.”

  “Hemsted is acting as a go-between in much the same way as you are. There is nothing unethical about it.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. Just making an observation. The bribe to Pozderac, though—how did you expect to deliver the Jade Lily to him?”

  “Oh, some legal hocus-pocus involving condemnation via eminent domain.”

  “Except the federal government isn’t actually taking title to the property, is it? Nobody would be compensated for their loss, would they?”

  “Your outrage is born of ignorance, McKenzie. This is the price of doing business, especially in that part of the world. Everyone does it, including our competitors.”

  “Then why keep it a secret? Why tell the mayor and police department in Minneapolis that Hemsted is acting on behalf of the State Department when he’s not?”

  “It’s the system we live under.”

  “Sure. It’s just business.”

  “That’s right. It’s just business.”

  “You’re a thief, Fiegen. Plain and simple. A lousy, second-rate thief. I have more respect for Patrick Tarpley and the crooks that walked the Lily out of the museum. They at least have the balls to do their own dirty work. You? You’re just a punk hiding behind a business title. I bet you the boys and girls at the Justice Department that enforce the antibribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will agree with me, too.”

  “What do you intend to do, McKenzie? Call Justice? Call the police? And tell them what? Show them what? You have no hard evidence. McKenzie, we both know you are just posturing. Just tell me what you want to go away?”

  “I want a letter,” I said. “A contract if you prefer, signed by you and notarized. I want it delivered to me by the end of the day. The letter will state clearly that you will pay Midwest Farmers Insurance Group one million two hundred seventy thousand dollars should the ransom be lost to the artnappers in our attempts to recover the Jade Lily. It will state that the City of Lakes Art Museum will make no claim in any way or fashion against the insurance company as a result of the theft. It will state that you—and I mean you personally—will compensate Jeremy Gillard three million eight hundred thousand dollars for the loss of the Lily. It will state that Perrin Stewart will retain her job as executive director of the art museum for five years with a ten percent pay raise each year.”

  “Why would I give you such a damning document?”

  “In exchange, when I recover the Jade Lily, I will give it to Jonathan Hemsted of the United States State Department with the understanding that he will pass it on to Branko Pozderac and the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina. You’ll get what you want. Everyone else gets what they want. No harm, no foul.”

  Another pause, this one much longer.

  “You surprise me, McKenzie,” Fiegen said.

  “Sometimes I surprise myself.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  I didn’t either, so I hung up.

  ELEVEN

  My phone rang at exactly 11:00 A.M.

  The guards each jumped about three feet when it did, which didn’t surprise me—they had been twitchy all morning. They crowded around me in the kitchen when I answered the phon
e pretty much as they had late Friday when a courier appeared at my front door with an envelope in his hand. One suggested that it might be a letter bomb, and the other actually sighed with relief when it didn’t blow up after I opened it. The letter was from Fiegen, and it contained everything that I had demanded, including the stamp and signature of a notary public. I folded it and placed it in my pocket while the guards stared.

  “Guys,” I said. “Relax.”

  Only they didn’t relax until they were relieved for the night by another pair of security agents with intense dispositions. The original guards returned at about 9:00 A.M. Saturday. I would have offered them coffee, but they already seemed overcaffeinated.

  The voice on the phone was very specific about where I was supposed to be and when. It did not threaten; it did not warn me about what would happen to the Lily if I were late.

  I hung up the phone and said, “Gentlemen, help me with this.”

  “This” was high-tenacity Kevlar XP bullet-resistant body armor that I strapped around my torso and camouflaged with an angora sweater. When I finished, I took the Beretta from my junk drawer, checked the load, and slipped it under my belt behind my right hip.

  “Are you supposed to be wearing a bulletproof vest, are you supposed to be carrying a gun?” a guard asked. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

  “What rules?” I said.

  He didn’t have an answer for that.

  I put on my leather coat. The money was still packed in the gym bags, the gym bags strapped to the dolly in the center of my living room. I grabbed the handle and started wheeling it to the back door of my house. I had a remote control hanging from the lock on the window overlooking my unattached garage. I used it to open the garage door.

  “There’s no reason for you guys to hang around anymore,” I said.

  The guards followed me out of my back door, across the driveway, and into the garage just the same. They stood by and watched while I loaded the dolly and the gym bags into the trunk of the Audi.

  “Nice car,” one of them said.

  If he had offered me ten bucks, I would have sold the Audi and all of its contents to him right then and there. Because he didn’t, I unlocked the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel.