by Marcus Wynne
He liked riding his bike like this at night, speeding on his own, with only his thoughts to keep him company.
He took Forty-fourth all the way down to the Lake Harriet Parkway, turned right and cruised along the one-way street. Minneapolis reminded him of Cairns, in Queensland, Australia. Like Cairns, there were lots of people out at night, walking with no worries or cares, and in the day plenty of people biking, roller blading, enjoying themselves. The big difference was the weather; Alfie always felt cold here, no matter how many layers he wore. In September, when Minnesotans were running around in shorts and T-shirts, Alfie wore long underwear beneath his street clothes, a heavy shirt, and his leather jacket.
"Freeze me balls off," he said under his breath.
He followed the parkway around to Lake Calhoun Parkway, then up Hennepin for a short cruise to Calhoun Square. He parked his bike right in front of the square and went inside, leaving his helmet strapped to the seat of his bike. There was a coffee shop he favored right inside the Hennepin entrance, across from the bookstore.
"G'day, mate!" Alfie called to the young girl working the counter.
"Oh, hi, Alfie!" the girl said.
She was thin and dressed in Goth fashion: a snug-fitting black dress, black hair with black lipstick and multiple silver necklaces, bracelets, and rings.
"We're getting ready to close, do you want a coffee?" she said.
"Came all the way down here for one, mate. Do me one, will you?"
"Double shot mocha in a tall cup, right?"
"That's right, heavy on the whipping cream, me sweet tooth is acting up."
The Goth girl, Susan was her name, smiled and hurried to make Alfie his drink. Alfie turned and leaned back on the counter, both elbows propping him up as he looked over the shopping center. It was late, the shops were closed, and there was little foot traffic except that coming from the bar on the other side of the center.
"Here you are, Alfie," Susan said.
"Cheers, mate." Alfie handed her a five-dollar bill.
"It's on the house, Alfie."
He favored her with a big grin, then loosened his partial plate that hid his knocked-out right incisor, and stuck it out on his tongue at her, then clicked it back into place. She laughed out loud.
"Then fold it twice and tuck it in yer brassiere, Susan gal," he said.
"It'll buy me a beer at the Uptown," she said, doing just that.
"That's the place, then?" He pointed at the busy club across the street with a long line in front.
"I heard the Replacements might drop by and jam tonight," Susan said. "I'm going over. Want to go with?"
Alfie smiled, nodded his head vigorously, shaking his ponytail. "You're on, sheila."
* * *
Alfie cut to the front of the line and said to the bouncer, "Hey, mate! You wouldn't leave an Aussie out here in the bitter, would ya?"
The big man in the leather car coat grinned at Alfie's accent.
"We even got Foster's in there," the bouncer said. He waved Alfie and Susan through the door.
"Right, then! Thanks, mate! Ta!" Alfie ushered Susan through ahead of him.
"I can't believe you did that," Susan said.
"How's that?" Alfie said.
"He never lets anybody jump the line."
"Ah, he's all right. Let's crack a coldie, eh?"
Susan laughed and took his arm, rested her thin hand on his hard bicep. "What's that mean?"
"Get a cold one, dearie. You do drink beer, right?"
"I'll have a Foster's. What are you going to drink?"
"Susan, Foster's is piss. Really. Down under we all have a laugh with it… that's how you can tell the tourist from the locals when they open up calling for Foster's. I like this Sam Adams you've got here, hell even Budweiser is better than Foster's."
"Really?"
"Fair dinkum, mate."
She laughed out loud. "Then get me a beer and a bump, mate."
"Forward, aren't you?"
She bumped him with her hip. "That's American for a beer and a shot."
Alfie laughed and nodded his head in time with the bass player of the blues band jamming on the stage. "Whiskey, is it?"
"No, tequila for me."
"Oh, you're just my kind of woman." Alfie worked his way to the crowded bar. Several people looked twice at the small bone piercing his septum, and the several ear hoops in his left ear. Several other multiple-pierced Goths nodded to him. He didn't have the heavy metal piercing everywhere; just his nose and left ear. He wondered what they would think if they saw his scarification.
But then he didn't show his scars to everyone.
He ordered his drinks, handed the bartender a crisp bill from the roll he kept in his front pocket, and made his way back to where Susan stood, rocking her hips to the beat of the drums and the insistent bass line of the bass guitarist.
"Here then," he said, handing her a beer. He nodded at the band. "They're good, eh?"
"Some friends of mine are sitting over at that table. They're getting ready to leave to go to the CC Club. We can snag the table."
"Did you come to sit, darling? I came to drink and dance."
"Let's park our stuff."
Alfie led the way through the dancing crowd and the perimeter of standing people to the table she pointed out. A man and two women stood up as they got there, one of them brushing Susan's cheeks with the affectionate peck of friends who almost know each other.
"Thanks, Connie," Susan said.
Alfie nodded and smiled his big grin, then stuck his partial plate out at them. He loved the laughs that brought. He set his beer down and shrugged out of his heavy jacket and put it over the back of a chair, then turned to Susan and said, "How is it, then?" as he pulled her out onto the dance floor. They began to dance, Alfie throwing his big shoulders forward in a convulsive jerk, punctuated with a vigorous jerk of his hips again and again, his hands clenched in fists and his head thrown back, laughing out loud as he whirled around in circles. Susan laughed too as she watched the wild, uninhibited movements Alfie made, as though there were no one else on the dance floor. The other dancers made room for Alfie's wildly flailing arms and patent disregard for everyone around him. One big man, his head shaved close, with a goatee like that of a belligerent billy goat, danced with a tiny blonde with spiked blond hair who came up to his lower chest. He stopped and said to Alfie, "Make some room, man!"
Alfie ignored him.
"Make room!" the big man said.
Alfie nodded to the big man, took Susan's hand and spun her toward him once, then twirled her away. Alfie brushed against the big man, who pushed his shoulder, hard.
"Hey, mate, no worries, eh?" Alfie said, stepping back.
"I said make some room!"
"No worries, everybody just wants to have a good time, right?" Alfie said. He summoned up a fierce grin, his blood already hot and moving.
The big man looked at Alfie, the thickness of his shoulders and his relaxed stance and turned away, saying, "Aw right. Cool." He turned his back to Alfie and shrugged at his date.
Alfie turned back and took Susan's hand again and said, "Let's give the bloke some room, he's a tetchy sort."
They moved through the crowd to be closer to the stage, where the sweating bass player sprinkled the crowd every time he leaped up with his guitar. The floor vibrated with the heavy rhythm of dancing feet and the music.
They finished out the set, and while the band set down their instruments and left the small stage Alfie and Susan went back to their table to finish their beers and order a couple of glasses of water to rehydrate and wipe the sweat that ran down their faces.
"Can't remember the least bit of the time I last went dancing," Alfie said. "I think I had this much fun, but there's no telling."
"That guy was such a jerk," Susan said, nodding over at a table close by, where the big goateed man held court with several of his friends.
"No need for a bloody blue when we're having fun, is there?" Alfie s
aid. "He'll give heaps with his mouth, but why should we let him bother us?"
The bartender went to the stage and started a tape on the sound system. An old tune from the sixties started up, and Alfie began to dance by himself beside their table while he mouthed the words till it got to the chorus he liked:
"I am the god of hellfire! And I bring you… fire! I bid you to burn!" he shouted out, to Susan's amusement.
"C'mon, let's dance," he said, tugging her back out onto the dance floor and going into his version of the twist.
"You're crazy!" Susan shouted as she joined him. "Completely out of your mind!"
"Oh, hell," he said. "You should see me when I get warmed up."
* * *
"Last call for alcohol!" the bartender shouted out. The band was breaking down and the lights came up, the too early sign of closing time. Alfie blinked rapidly as his pupils dilated to accommodate the sudden brightness.
"One for the road, Susan?" he asked.
"Not me, stick a fork in me, I'm done."
"Right then, let's hit the frog and toad?"
"What?"
"Let's hit the road."
Susan gathered up her purse and Alfie slung his jacket back on and they headed for the door. The big bruiser who'd given them a hard time earlier in the night followed them out the door. Alfie clocked him from the very moment and knew what was coming as they crossed the street to where he had his motorcycle parked and chained in front of Calhoun Square.
"Hey, Crocodile Dundee!" the bruiser called.
Alfie grinned, then let the smile drop away as he turned to see the bruiser, his girlfriend, and one other man dressed in snug leather. "Hey, mate, what can I do you for?"
"That your bike?"
"That's my trike, that's right, mate."
"You should learn the customs around here, mate. Like having some manners."
"No worries, mate. I'm not looking for a blue."
"A blue?"
"Any trouble," Alfie said. He noticed how the bruiser's buddy stood off at a ninety-degree angle to Alfie's right, ready to dive for him.
"Here, look," Alfie said. He reached for his pocket. "If it's any consolation I'll buy you a round, how about it?"
"I don't want your money," the big man said. He laughed. "Fucking Crocodile Dundee. I want…"
The time had come and Alfie was riding the crest just ahead of it, with perfect timing… he flicked his fingers out in a fan that struck the big man in his eyes, followed it with a quick cross square on the man's nose, then turned toward his friend, who started to close the gap, and jammed a low kick into the follower's knee, then grabbed his long hair and drove his face down into Alfie's leather-clad knee, pulping the nose, and then spun his head quickly round, just short of breaking his neck, and dumped him on his back. Back to the big man who stumbled back, his hands to his eyes, two quick stomping kicks to the outside of his right knee that brought him down, gave him the boot several times to the face and head, then onto the motorcycle with Susan clinging behind and starting it up and pulling a wheelie out and away, leaving the woman standing there screaming after him, "We're going to get you! We're going to get you!"
"Ah, bullshit," Alfie yelled back.
Susan laughed in drunken near hysteria. "That was great! You are absolutely insane!"
"Tell me where we're going, mate, 'cause I'm new in town."
"You're going to my place, Crocodile Dundee."
* * *
She was so drunk the sex was mechanical and perfunctory, which was fine with Alfie. It was all cover anyway. Her apartment just off France Avenue would be a good place to lay up for a while and spare him the exposure of a hotel room. He slipped a key off her key ring and quietly went out the door with a mumbled promise to the slumbering Susan that he'd be back.
He had a little reconnaissance to do before his next job, and Susan's place was a perfect staging point.
Time spent in reconnaissance is never time wasted. That was an ancient adage in the world of special operations, and Alfie Woodard had spent many years in that world. After a stint with the Australian Airborne, Alfie had passed the hellish selection course for the Special Air Services. He was one of the very few Aboriginals to work with the elite unit. He'd been a natural, something that the white troopers found interesting and more than slightly amusing. His performance in training and on the real world special operations deployments throughout Southeast Asia and while on secondment with the United States and other Australian allies had made believers, albeit grudging believers, out of his fellow troopers.
But Alfie didn't like to think of those days, preferring to leave those thoughts alone and remember them as the days of preparation for his real life, the life that had begun after his military service when he met old Ralph, the Aboriginal bush doctor who'd first shown Alfie the dark ways of the old magic. He called up a ritual, a simple piece of hunting magic that called for a long, low chant and a drone through his nose, made all the more sibilant by the air blowing through his pierced septum. And while he droned, he stilled his mind, letting his body go through the mechanics of steering his fast-moving motorcycle as he made his way closer to the target, and let the picture of his prey come up in his mind. Not his enemy, no, they weren't important enough to be enemies. They were prey, the prey designated by the man who bought his time with enough money to enable Alfie to pursue his study of the lost black arts of his people.
Harold Nyquist was a former running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who'd cashed out at the top of his game and started a restaurant that he later franchised with great success. The money he'd made from his restaurants he poured into real estate, anticipating the big boom the dot-coms and other computer intensive businesses would bring.
Harold had also sunk big chunks of other people's money into the downtown Warehouse District, where fancy nightclubs and expensive restaurants mixed with cheap diners and coffeehouses. His work with foreign capital investors accounted for substantial sums in his offshore accounts resulting from his "consulting services." Among the minor services he provided were the pleasures of extremely beautiful and surgically enhanced dancers from the high-class gentlemen-only strip joint he owned through a front in downtown Minneapolis.
His activities brought him the money to build the finest house around, but it was characteristic of his Lutheran and Norwegian up-bringing that he preferred to live modestly in a good home in Plymouth. While the lot and the house— custom built to his wife's specifications— cost him close to half a million dollars, it was to all appearances just one more nice house on a quiet cul-de-sac that backed onto the W&O Rails to Trails bike path, where he could take his wife and grandchildren for walks.
Alfie needed to take a look at Harold's house.
He went for the bold drive-by first. His clothing, while completely in synch with fashion in Uptown or the artsy Warehouse District, stood out in the white, staid, and moneyed suburbs, especially at four-thirty in the morning. But he roared down the street, bearing in mind the old axiom that if you can't be discreet, be bold. He slowed when he passed Nyquist's home, mentally photographing the house, the yard, and the side yard that backed onto a low hill that rose up onto the highway's roadbed. He slowed at the end of the cul-de-sac, where a narrow walk-way allowed egress for bicycles and walkers, made note of the trail, then turned around and roared away. He rode to a larger major entrance to the W&O bike trail, beside a series of shops in a strip mall. Strip mall was too plebeian a description for this collection of upscale shops and restaurants, but what appealed to Alfie was the loading zone behind the mall had plenty of nooks and crannies to hide his bike in.
He crossed the street on foot, moving fast, as the Plymouth Police Department didn't have much to do and was known to respond very quickly to calls from their rich citizens, of which there were many. He walked quickly down the trail, then paused in the shadows by the entrance that led out onto the cul-de-sac where Nyquist lived. The street was well lit, and while it was the deadest time of night, w
hen most people were deepest in sleep, Alfie didn't want to risk making a simple walk up and across to the front door and window.
No, the back way would be best.
He continued down the bike trail for a short distance and saw that he could cut through the yard closest to the bike trail and then scale a low mesh fence to enter Nyquist's backyard. A better way would be to go down to where a small tunnel took the bike path under the highway, then cut along the sloping hill that came down from the highway pavement bed to the yards on Nyquist's street.
Alfie crouched in the bush, then slowly let himself stretch out full length on the chill ground, the weeds and sparse grass fading into brown, crisp stalks beneath him. The early morning chill seeped in around the layers of his clothing. He turned off the sensation of cold as he went inward in a way he'd learned long before his military service, in one of the many white foster homes he'd been in. He shut down his feelings and went inward, with a steady rhythmic chant in the back of his mind, and visualized the path he would take in to the target. He saw the whole line laid out in front of him, visualizing himself walking the line he hummed to himself, moving from cover to cover, hugging the shadows. He visualized so intensely that he could see an image of himself walking that path and when the image was perfect in his mind, he felt himself lifted up, as though he were leaving his body, and then his material body followed that dreamlike vision he projected forward, through the thin brush, the hiss of passing cars coming from overhead and behind him, carefully placing each foot down so cautiously, toe gingerly probing so as not to make noise, then the rest of the foot, toe, heel, toe, heel till he was crouched behind the low mesh fence and could see directly into the kitchen, illuminated dimly with lights from the oven hood and the other electric utensils there.
He could make out much of the house layout from there: kitchen, a short hall leading through into the front room, a space that was probably the dining room to one side. Alfie stilled himself even more, evened out his breathing, and let his pupils expand so that his peripheral vision might take in details that the conscious mind would miss and let the options for entry grow in his imagination. He let the stillness grow in him, and then he felt the sudden twinge that drew his attention to an important detail: on the sliding-glass door there was an unsecured security bar, but at the top corner of the door was a small square that was either a pin lock or an alarm sensor or maybe both. No sign in front alerting the passerby to an alarm system, but that didn't mean there wasn't one.
