Warrior in the Shadows

by Marcus Wynne

  But what about the Australia connection? Could the money be originating there? Why take the risk of laundering it in the States? He didn't know enough about how that worked to say. And he was leery of talking to anyone else about it just yet. He had to build a murder case, not a money-laundering case.

  So what did he have?

  Two murder victims linked by computer evidence to possible money laundering with the funds originating somewhere offshore, possibly Australia, definitely Southeast Asia. That meant it was probably heroin proceeds, not cocaine. Both vics killed in a fashion that on the surface looked like the work of a lunatic, but professionally executed with entry past sophisticated alarm systems and without leaving any trace evidence to speak of. The posed crime scenes turn out to be linked to some kind of Australian ritual magic, and the best they could do with the evidence they had was that the killer might be Australian or a student of Australian Aboriginal art, was very strong and handy with a knife and a club. Other than the staged scene and the painting on the wall, the killer had left no significant trace: fingerprints wiped clean, no hairs, no fibers. This was a pro hitter, a real pro. Maybe this whole ritual killing thing was meant to throw off the investigators, get them to think it was a nut job at work.

  Now that he'd looked at it, he had more than he thought. But now that he had a better handle on the doer, how did he find him? He jotted down notes on Post-its. Use the press? That was too risky, especially when casting a wide net, and they always wanted too much. Forget about that. This Australian connection and what he'd learned at the strip club, those were good leads, good basic police work. He'd have to go back and work that a bit more, chase down that little stripper who'd talked to the Australian. Max would just love that idea, for sure.

  He looked up the stairwell at the thought of his wife, who'd gone to bed early, pleading a headache. He'd put his son to bed himself. Nicky was fighting a cold and had a headache, too. Bobby Lee put his paperwork down and went upstairs and peeked into the room where Nicky lay sprawled in the boneless sleep of a child, completely abandoned to the movements of his dreams. Bobby Lee crept silently into the room, then tucked the covers round his boy and just lightly touched the hair on his head, then went out silently and closed the door carefully behind him.

  In their bedroom, Maxine was curled across the bed like an elongated question mark, hugging his pillow to her chest, her long black hair spread like dark water across her pillow and the sheet. He stood over her for a while, and watched his wife sleep. Then he went back downstairs to his paperwork and the trouble there that kept him awake while his family slept safe.

  2.13

  Kativa tossed and turned in her dreams. Images from her past, pictures from the Laura rock art, strange meetings with men she almost recognized, and laughter blended with a weird cacophony of shrill voices, singsong chants, and the unmistakable drone of a didgeridoo. Then with a strange lucidity she felt herself fall into a familiar dream, one she hadn't had in many years:

  … She was running, driven by a strange sound to run through thorny brush, branches raking long cuts on her naked skin, vulnerable in her nakedness she felt as though there was a great eye watching her, red and rimmed with yellow, watching her with amusement as it drove her to and fro… she felt a presence behind her, steadily gaining distance and she ran even harder, crying out for help though no one was there…

  … but there was someone else now, someone, a man, running toward her from the front, not away from the sound but toward it, the dreadful wonk wonk wonk pushing her into the deepest part of the brush as though she might hide, trembling like a kangaroo pursued by a dingo pack… she looked at the man, tall and thin and naked and black, black as the space between rocks in the dark of the night, and he was someone…

  She came awake then, her T-shirt and boxers drenched in sweat, balled and knotted like her sheets were. She lay there blinking rapidly as the images faded, then she rolled out of bed and went into her bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face and looked at the haggard, lined face gazing back at her out of the mirror. She looked at the clock and it was after five in the morning. Going back to sleep was no option, so she showered and made herself eat breakfast and down the better part of a big pot of coffee. But even that didn't help, and she found herself grouchy and owly for most of the morning at the museum.

  She spent the morning cataloguing a series of Japanese ink prints the museum had recently acquired. One of them was quite striking, an ink brush painting of a blade-thin samurai with a wild, white face dominated by two glaring black eyes, his sword held ready to chop over his head. For some reason it reminded her of Charley Payne. He always seemed ready for something to happen, some sort of violence that he was prepared for, and the feeling he left her with was an intriguing blend of apprehension and absolute safety. She put her mind back to the work at hand. Charley Payne was off-limits. She didn't poach from her friends. But it was almost time for lunch, and she'd been meaning to call Mara sometime, so she went to her office and called her.

  "Mara?" she said. "Would you like to come by the museum and have lunch?"

  "Hi Kat," Mara said. "I'd love to. I'm on my way out… is now too soon?"

  "No, it would be perfect. Meet you in the Café? I'll get a table, it gets crowded in there at lunch."

  "Perfect. Give me twenty minutes."

  Kativa straightened her office, then went upstairs to the Museum Café and got the same table she'd had when she met Charley for lunch. She wondered if her choice was deliberate or just another one of the freakish coincidences she'd noticed lately. She decided that her dreams had left her tired, and ordered a coffee black from the waitress and sipped it thoughtfully while she looked out the big pane of glass at the garden and the city.

  She saw Mara before Mara saw her and felt a little pang; Mara looked drawn under her normal serenity. Kativa waved her to the table, and Mara gratefully dropped her big coat and scarf into an empty chair and slid across from Kativa.

  "Is that coffee?" Mara said. "I would really like some."

  Kativa waved the waitress over and ordered another cup; the waitress set two menus down on the table and went away.

  "So how are you?" Kativa said.

  "I'm preoccupied with difficult men," Mara said. "Which is the whole species as far as I'm concerned."

  "Charley?"

  Mara took her cup of coffee from the waitress and went through a slow and deliberate dressing of the cup with Equal and two creamers before she said, "You're attracted to him, aren't you?"

  Kativa was nonplussed for a moment, then laughed and said, "Yes. Who wouldn't be? I just envy you. It's so hard to meet good men and the good ones all seem to be taken."

  "Charley's not taken," Mara said. She sipped her coffee slowly and studied Kativa over the rim. "Charley Payne couldn't be taken by anyone, he loves his freedom more than anything else. He's like a big alley cat: he's so used to rambling around that any sense of stability is a threat to him. He can get any woman he wants. It's the sticking around that gets to him."

  "Why do you say that? Did the two of you fight?"

  "Not really. I just know him. I'm a Pisces, I know things about people and I know about him. A big part of being with Charley is knowing I can't hold him, so I have to work on letting him go. The harder I want to cling to him, the more it drives him away."

  "What's his sign?"

  "He's total Scorpio."

  "That's a dark and twisty one."

  "He's dark and twisty," Mara said. "Is that why you want to go out with him?"

  Kativa forced a laugh. "I'm not poaching, Mara."

  "I'm taking a time out with Charley, Kat," Mara said, setting her coffee cup down on the table and leaning forward on her forearms. "I've been trying to work on nonattachment in my life and Charley is the perfect karmic problem for me to work through. I've never felt more attached to someone at the spiritual level, but he's just a visitor in my life. I suspect sometimes that he's just a visitor in his own life, no matt
er how hard he clings to it… I always have this sense that Minneapolis is just some kind of hiatus for him, a stopping-off place in some dark and twisted journey he's on."

  "You make him sound bad."

  "He's not bad. I know that. But he's dark and he's got a history he doesn't share with anyone. He's always got those knives on him, have you seen those? And he keeps loaded guns in his apartment. It seems so strange. He has these beautiful photographs on the wall— he's fabulous on the street as a photographer, he has an incredible eye— then he keeps these loaded guns right next to his bed. It's all very strange."

  Mara picked up her coffee and blew on it. "You met him for lunch, didn't you?"

  "Yes, I hope that was okay."

  "Of course it is. Like I said, I have to work on my issues around attachment. This is a good opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if he calls you again; he likes you a lot, I could tell that when we were together. There's some old strong karmic energy between the two of you, I could sense it."

  "Do you believe that?"

  "Yes."

  "I wonder what that's about," Kativa said.

  "He'll probably tell you when it's time," Mara said. "He believes there's a perfect moment for every action, we just have to see it when it's there and act only when it's appropriate and the right time."

  "Like Cartier-Bresson said. No wonder he likes him so much." Kativa paused, then said, "And what about you, Mara?"

  Mara picked up her menu and lowered her face. "So much that's good," she said. "Shall we order?"

  2.14

  William "Skunk" White, also known as Willy White, was a coal-black, blade-thin, skull cap and baggy jeans-clad gangster who ran an enterprising crew of crack dealers on the North Side. He was also one of the smartest gangsters on the street and Bobby Lee's prize street snitch. Bobby Lee liked to conduct his interviews under the guise of stopping and harassing Willy for matters connected to his dope dealing. He sat in the front seat of his unmarked squad car with Willy twisting uncomfortably in the front passenger seat and said, "So run it through for me one more time. Once more, with vigor."

  "They's cops getting free pussy from dancers at the club," Willy said, tugging at his skull cap. "Some of them getting something else from somebody else, I don't know what and I don't know what from. That's what I knows."

  "What kind of cop, Willy? Plainclothes, uniforms, patrol, crack team, narco, ERU… what kind of cop? You make a fine distinction among the police in everything else you do, make a distinction here for me."

  "I don't know no distinction."

  "What flavor cop, Willy?"

  "I hear they's plainclothes, supervisors. Maybe narcs, maybe SIU, I don't know. I know some of them girls complain, couple of those guys treat them like shit. One of them is some old fucker."

  "Some old fucker? What do you mean, old as in old? How old is old?"

  "I don't know how old is old. You're old, you figure it out."

  "Good one, Willy," Bobby Lee said. "What does the management get by giving pussy away? There something going on there?"

  Willy twisted and turned away from Bobby Lee, his body language eloquent in its denial.

  "Oh, we got something here, don't we, Willy?" Bobby Lee said. "You got a taste for something going on there."

  "I could get killed 'cause of this. I could get got for talking to you and somebody find out."

  "You could get killed for your stash, Willy. You know how to play the game. What's going on there?"

  "It's the green," Willy blurted out. He looked around in the car at the streets outside. "Money. They laundering money in the club. I don't know whose money, but it's big numbers, some of them girls know."

  "You got the names of the girls that know?"

  "One of them, she lives down Lyndale, her dance name is Typhaney. I don't know her real name, she's a sister."

  "Black female dances at the club now under the name of Typhaney?"

  "That's right."

  "Later, Willy," Bobby Lee said. "You got yourself a big pass— don't waste it on the small stuff."

  "Later, Officer Martaine."

  Willy slid out of the car and did his step and slide back to the corner where his crew waited to tap his fist and slap his hand and congratulate him on getting one over on the five-o.

  Bobby Lee watched him go and for a moment longed for the simplicity of street work. That was a world, even with its strange nuances and dangerous complications, that seemed brutally simple and easy to him right now. He didn't want to put his mind around the possibility that there were brother officers involved in this— and the whole thing was shaping up to be much, much more than a homicide investigation.

  He pulled away from the curb and drove back downtown and caught Fourth Street over to The Gentlemen Only. He parked in the NO PARKING zone and jogged up the stairs and was met just inside by the looming presence of Dave Nyser.

  "Detective Martaine," Nyser said. "How can I help you today, sir?"

  "Josie and Typhaney," Bobby Lee said. "They work together, same shift?"

  Nyser thought for a moment, then said, "Yes."

  "Typhaney still work here?"

  "Yes."

  "I need to talk to her."

  "She's working now. If you'd like to come in and take a seat, I can have her come to your table… there won't be anyone else around."

  "That'll do for a start."

  Bobby Lee followed the big man into the dark, cool interior of the club. It seemed warmer close to the T-shaped runway the girls danced on, and most of the occupied tables were within easy distance of the lunch buffet hot tables. Bobby Lee took a corner table far away from everyone else. Nyser returned a few minutes later with a tall lavishly endowed black woman in her early twenties. Her body was sleek and sculpted, and her breasts jutted straight out, defying gravity, and her sleek buttocks molded into legs almost too heavily muscled for a dancer. She reminded him of a professional ice skater he'd dated once upon a time, who had the same build, much stronger and thicker in the legs than most dancers.

  "You want a dance?" she said. She leaned down and whispered in Bobby Lee's ear. "If you want to talk to me about anything, you'll have to have the dance."

  "I don't want the dance. I want you to sit down here and tell me something."

  "It don't look right," Typhaney complained.

  "Let me worry about that."

  "That's what you cops always say, let me worry about it. It's me that catches the heat, not you."

  "Tell me about the other cops."

  The girl visibly stiffened, looked resentfully up at the looming figure of Nyser, then back at Bobby Lee. "What other cops?"

  At some other time, Bobby Lee might have laughed at her arch look of injured innocence.

  "The other cops you see in here and at home sometimes, Typhaney."

  "I don't know nothing about no cops and I don't want to know nothing about no cops. You all are trouble."

  "I know you've been sleeping with some of them. I want to know who they are. If they're using you, I can make that go away."

  Typhaney wouldn't meet his eyes. She stared off into space.

  "You got feelings for these guys?" Bobby Lee said. "Is that what the problem is?"

  "I gots no feeling for any man especially no policeman," Typhaney said. "They's only one thing they want from me and they make trouble for me if they don't get it. And they say they gonna hurt me if I tell anybody about it."

  "Who's to know you said anything. Lots of people in here see you talking to cops, give them a dance for free, no big thing. What you do outside the club and with who, that's your business. I respect that. This doesn't have anything to do with you. I just want to know who it is, so I can talk to them about something else, something you got nothing to do with."

  "Is this about that Crocodile Dundee they was bringing around? I hate that motherfucker," Typhaney spat.

  "They brought in an Australian guy?" Bobby Lee said. "Who brought in the Australian guy?"

  "I don'
t know his name, some Crocodile Dundee don't like sisters, don't like brothers, don't like anything black," she said.

  "Who brought him in?"

  "Don't gots to put up with no prejudiced motherfucker, plenty of white men put their money on me."

  "The cops," Bobby Lee said. "Tell me about the cops."

  "They both out of the bag, they working plainclothes, think they bad. One name Jerry, the other name Kirkendall. He tell everybody to call him Captain Kirk."

  Bobby Lee sighed heavily. He knew both of them, long-timers in Vice and Organized Crime.

  "Who else?" he said.

  "Some old guy, he like that white chick Josie."

  "Josie?"

  "She trick for him outside of here."

  "Josie. The one that don't work here no more?"

  "She didn't want to dance no more, so she work the door and them cops get her in trouble. They don't care a girl got to eat."

  "They're not going to know where it came from, but something is going to drop on their head from a great distance, Typhaney. I'm going to screw them over just like they tried with you," Bobby Lee promised.

  "Captain Kirk, he's okay. He's a little freaky but he don't treat me bad. That Jerry I don't want no part of, he don't like women, I can tell, he's that kind."

  "Tell me about the old guy, Typhaney. How many times you seen him?"

  "Just once. He look like somebody's grandpa. He always looking around, nervous. He nervous but he like that young pussy, that why he like that Josie so much, she give it to him for rent money. She say he good to her. She never say his name 'cause he told her not to, and he take good care of her."

  "Okay, Typhaney." Bobby Lee slid a folded twenty across the table and into her hand. "For your time."

  "You okay, Detective," she said. She stood up and said, "I can go now?"

  "I'll take care of that thing for you."

  "Thank you," she said, almost bashfully, before she pranced off, tucking the twenty inside the seam of her thong.

  Bobby Lee pulled out two twenties and slid it at Nyser, who ignored the money and said, "That's not necessary, Detective."