Dead Man's Mistress

by David Housewright

  “Officer Peter Wurzer.”

  Rask gave me another slow count, this time about ten seconds, before responding.

  “Close the door,” he said.

  I did.

  He gestured at the chair on the other side of this desk.

  I sat.

  “You trying to be an asshole?” Rask asked.

  “Who? Me?”

  “Why are you asking questions about Wurzer?”

  “You recognized the name so quickly.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s working as a deputy up in Cook County.”

  “That’s the North Shore, right? Grand Marais, Lutsen?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “I’m trying to get some intel on him. The sheriff up there told me Wurzer did eight years with the MPD before he was retired. The sheriff was a little vague about why he was retired. That was four years ago, which is why I’m surprised his name was so top of mind.”

  “This is important because…?”

  “Things have gone missing in Grand Marais.”

  “You’re not talking about those paintings, are you? You’re involved with that? Why am I surprised?”

  “Paintings, yes. Other things as well. Burglaries are up about one hundred percent countywide. It started going up after Wurzer was hired.”

  Rask sniffed like he was examining the contents of a long-forgotten Tupperware container.

  “They said he was dirty,” he said. “I still don’t believe them.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “They, they, they—you were a cop. You know who they are. Why am I telling you this?”

  “Because you like me?”

  “No, that’s not it. I liked Wurzer, though. I met him not long after he took the oath. He wanted to know what it would take to get into plainclothes; what he needed to do to work his way up to homicide. He was serious about it, too. It wasn’t just because he wanted to be a TV cop. So I gave him some advice.”

  “You were his rabbi?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I just kind of kept an eye on him.”

  “What happened?”

  “Remember that fence that works out of the Phillips neighborhood calls himself the Lord?”

  “El Cid?”

  “Aka Dave Wicker, yeah. He was involved in the Jade Lily heist if memory serves.”

  “I remember.”

  “A joint task force tried to build a case against him back in the day, take him down for receiving stolen property, flip him, see who else they could gather up. Someone tipped Wicker, though, and he skated. The brassholes were very unhappy about it. Apparently, there were a lot of man-hours invested in the case. They looked for someone to blame. Eventually, IAD fingered Wurzer, busted him for selective enforcement, if you believe that shit, and sent him on his way. I didn’t believe it, that he was taking from El Cid. Besides, the man was driving a unit out of the Third District at the time; he wasn’t even on the task force.”

  “What do you believe?”

  “Between you, me, and the closed door? I think Wicker was someone’s CI, probably still is, and that someone wanted to cover his asset without telling anyone he was covering his asset.”

  “Who? You said it was a joint task force. MPD? County? State? Feds?”

  “I don’t know. Could be anybody. I tried to look into it. Made some noise. I was told to keep quiet, that the MPD didn’t need the black eye. Keep it in-house, they said. Anyone ever tells you to keep the truth in-house, McKenzie, it’s because they’re more worried about the house than the truth. You know what I’m saying.”

  “You’re saying someone on the task force gave Wicker the heads-up, leaving Wurzer to hold the bag.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Then don’t go around telling anyone that I did. What’s your interest in Wurzer again?”

  “There’s an ongoing criminal investigation in Grand Marais that I got sucked into. Deputy Wurzer is adamant that I stay out of it.”

  “Why should he be different than the rest of us?”

  “I was wondering if he had a reason besides a dislike of kibitzers. Now I feel bad.”

  “Why? Because you thought he was bent? Hell, McKenzie, maybe he is. Maybe they were right. I’d like to think, though…”

  “Yes?”

  “You’d at least give him the benefit of a doubt.”

  “Wurzer, yeah. Not Wicker.”

  “I don’t need this to become a thing, McKenzie.”

  “If it does, LT, I was never here.”

  * * *

  The Phillips neighborhood, located more or less in the center of Minneapolis, wasn’t ethnically anything in that it was ethnically everything. African, Asian, Native American, Hispanic—you name it, Phillips had it. Forty percent of its population was born outside the United States, twenty percent spoke a language other than English; twenty-five percent lived below the poverty line. Unfortunately, wherever immigrants and the very poor congregate, you also have gangs, drugs, and a soaring crime rate. ’Course, if could have been worse. It could have been the north side.

  I parked across the street from a low-slung building with brown brick, closed drapes, and iron bars on the windows. I knew it was a bar because I had been there before, yet no one else would have. There was no name above the door, no neon lights flashing the logos of pasteurized beers from St. Louis or Milwaukee, no sign saying it was open. Only a black-and-white notification taped to the window that read NO FIREARMS ARE ALLOWED ON THESE PREMISES. I once ran the address through the Hennepin County property tax website to find out the name of the owner or at least who was paying the taxes on the property. It told me “no records found” and provided a list of tips to improve my search. None of them worked.

  I stepped inside. The lights were low. A young man was sitting at a table near the center of the room with an unobstructed view of the front door. The light from the tablet he was reading gave his pale skin an eerie sheen. I held my breath while his eyes locked on mine for a few beats. He grinned. I gave him a nod. I didn’t know his name but he knew mine and guessed why I was there. Just in case, though, he turned his head slightly and rested his eyes on the opened pages of the Minneapolis StarTribune that was lying on the table within easy reach, making sure I saw him do it. There was a sawed-off shotgun beneath the newspaper. I gave him another nod.

  There were a few other patrons in the bar, yet none of them noticed our little drama. Most were sitting in old-fashioned wooden booths, the kind with high backs that you can’t see over; working men and two women enjoying happy hour shots with beer chasers and free salted-in-the shell peanuts. A couple of shells crunched under my feet as I made my way to the booth just to the right of the table where the sentry sat.

  Dave Wicker was leaning against the wall of the booth and typing on a smartphone with one finger. I watched him do it. Like Lieutenant Rask, he ignored my presence for a good thirty seconds. At least this time I could hear Tony Bennett singing softly from invisible speakers.

  Finally, Wicker set the smartphone on the table next to the other three phones he was using. There was also a white mug filled with coffee. He picked up the mug, took a sip, set the mug down.

  “The fuck, McKenzie,” he said.

  “El Cid.”

  I used the name because Wicker liked it, the Lord; a nickname that he had given himself, pilfering it from Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Spanish knight and mercenary credited with driving the Moors out of Spain in the eleventh century.

  “I thought I made it clear the last time, I don’t like you,” he said.

  “How long are you going to hold a grudge, anyway?”

  “To the end of fucking time.”

  “All I did was present you with the opportunity to return some stolen property to its rightful owners. You didn’t spend five minutes in jail.”

  “That’s because I made a couple of deals.”

  “Isn’t that your life?
Making deals?”

  “It’s not the cops or the deals, McKenzie. It’s the principle of the thing. You gave me up.”

  “I didn’t give you up. Lieutenant Rask yanked your name out of me.”

  “You could have lied.”

  “Have you met Lieutenant Rask?”

  “You owe me, McKenzie.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, although I didn’t mean it.

  “Fuck you want, anyway?” Wicker asked.

  I slid onto the bench across the table from him.

  “Scenes from an Inland Sea,” I said.

  “You too, huh? I’ve had a dozen calls from all over the country since the story of the lost paintings went viral, calls from people who wouldn’t have given me the time of day a week ago. They all want the paintings.”

  “You are the most highly regarded facilitator between Chicago and the West Coast.”

  I said “facilitator” because I knew Wicker liked the word better than “fence.”

  “I take it you also want them, the McInnis paintings,” Wicker said. “What I would like to know—what makes you think I have them?”

  “Peter Wurzer.”

  “Who?”

  Wicker’s reaction to the name told me nothing. There are certain tells—facial tics, and eye movements—that reveal when someone is lying the same way they reveal when a poker player is bluffing. Wicker had none of them. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t lying, only that he was good at it.

  “Officer Peter Wurzer,” I said.

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “That surprises me considering the man took a fall for you.”

  “What are you talking about, McKenzie?”

  “I’ve been reliably informed that if it wasn’t for Wurzer, a joint task force would have punched your ticket to the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Oak Park Heights.”

  “When?”

  “About four years ago.”

  “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Maybe he doesn’t.

  “Wurzer is working as a deputy for the Cook County Sheriff’s Department based in Grand Marais. Rumor has it that he might have been involved in the theft of the Scenes from an Inland Sea. If that’s true, where would he take them if not his old friend?”

  Wicker found a spot on the table to stare at for a few beats while he came to a decision.

  “Should I tell you a secret, McKenzie? This Deputy Wurzer—I don’t know who he is. We have no relationship, professional or otherwise.”

  “He isn’t dirty?”

  “I don’t know what he is, only that I had nothing to do with him.”

  “So, you’re saying he was an innocent cop that someone tossed in the jackpot to protect you.”

  “Ain’t none of us innocent, McKenzie.”

  “Tomorrow morning the Randolph McInnis estate will publicly offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings no questions asked, $250,000. You’re welcome to try and collect.”

  Wicker thought that was funny.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll also let you have the Oppenheimer Blue for fifty bucks.”

  “Clean money. Easy profit.”

  “Tell it to the IRS.”

  I slid off the bench and stood next to the booth.

  “That it?” Wicker asked.

  “If you hear anything about the paintings, you’re going to call me.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m really pissed off about what happened to Wurzer.”

  “Don’t know why I should care if some mook…”

  “He was a cop.”

  Standing up for Deputy Wurzer? my inner voice said. Where the hell did that come from?

  “What do I care?” Wicker said.

  “Word on the street is that you’re a snitch.” I said it loud enough that more than one of our fellow patrons turned to look. Wicker noticed it, too. “The only question is, are you informing to the FBI or the BCA?”

  “You sonuvabitch.”

  “People are saying, your colleagues, your customers—they’re saying that’s why the joint task force failed to indict four years ago. That’s why you didn’t pay the price when the Jade Lily went missing two years ago. They’re saying you can’t be trusted.”

  “Who’s saying that?”

  “No one, yet.”

  To survive much less flourish in his chosen profession, Cid needed to negotiate with the most dangerous thieves as well as the least scrupulous customers. The fear of betrayal, of being ripped off, of being arrested, was always present so it was important to demonstrate a certain amount of fearlessness. The name “El Cid,” the barroom office, the barely concealed bodyguard pretending to read his tablet while carefully watching me, was meant to convince associates that Wicker was not someone to trifle with. Yet there I was—trifling with him.

  “You’re making a serious mistake, McKenzie,” he said.

  As if to prove it, Wicker’s bodyguard carefully set down his tablet and rested his hands palm down on the table next to the newspaper.

  “You say I owe you,” I said. “Well, Cid, you owe for what happened to Wurzer. You owe big-time and I’m not the only one who thinks so.” I didn’t use the name Lieutenant Rask, yet I was sure Wicker heard it just the same. “You tell me something valuable about those fucking paintings, we’ll call it even.”

  I stepped over to the table and stood in front of the bodyguard like I was made of highly polished bulletproof glass. To this day I can’t tell you what I was thinking.

  “You got something you want to say to me?” I asked.

  The bodyguard glanced at Wicker sitting in the booth and back at me. He slowly shook his head.

  I turned and walked from the bar. I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath until I hit the street.

  * * *

  Nina had not been pleased to see me in my battered and bruised state. She added plenty of insults to my injuries, mostly along the lines of my inability to behave like a normal human being. It was a conversation we’ve had many times in the past. Most men probably would have become bored if not infuriated with it by now. I took it as an indication of how much she cared.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “Don’t change the subject,” she told me. “I’m angry.”

  I gave her fresh bakery from World’s Best Donuts.

  “This helps,” she said. “But only a little bit.”

  That was this morning, though, when I first arrived home from GM. Now it was early Monday evening and we were walking hand in hand from our condominium in downtown Minneapolis to the Stone Arch Bridge with the intention of crossing the Mississippi River and going to Pracna on Main, which billed itself as the “the oldest restaurant on the oldest street in Minneapolis.” More and more I’d noticed that Nina had been gravitating toward what’s old—antiques, vintage clothing, retro-style furniture. When we traveled, we rarely stayed at the best hotels unless the best hotels were built a hundred years ago. Not that I was complaining. If life expectancy for a male in the United States is seventy-nine, I’ve been on the downward slide for nearly half a decade now so, yeah, I hope she embraces what’s old and getting older like crazy.

  We were just about to enter Gold Medal Park off of South Second Street when a black Lincoln Town Car pulled to a stop directly in front of us. My first thought, El Cid.

  I grabbed Nina’s arm and pulled her behind me.

  A man got out of the driver’s side of the Lincoln and quickly circled it until he reached the back passenger door. He was dressed more like an accountant than a limo driver and looked young, a college graduate but just barely. He pulled open the door and said, “Get in.”

  I made sure I was standing between the car and Nina.

  “No,” I said.

  “Aren’t you McKenzie? Get in.”

  I moved Nina cautiously to my right and forced her down the sidewalk while continuing to keep myself between her and the Lincoln.

&
nbsp; “You never get into the car no matter how much candy the stranger offers,” I told the driver. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that? That’s what mine told me.”

  The driver looked as if that was the most ridiculous advice he had ever heard.

  We kept walking. My hand on Nina’s forearm was so tight that she forced me to release her.

  We were a good car length past the Lincoln when I heard a voice.

  “Mr. McKenzie, are you really going to make me chase you down the street?”

  An old man, dressed to impress, had emerged from the back of the Town Car. He used a cane to help propel himself forward. The driver attempted to steady him; the old man shrugged his hands away. For a moment I felt relief—Okay, not El Cid. Yet that lasted only for a moment.

  “McKenzie,” the old man repeated.

  I stopped while still making sure Nina remained behind me. The old man smiled as if he had won something and moved a few steps forward. Despite his age, he projected the confidence of a guy who didn’t feel the need to explain who he was or what he did to a single soul on the planet.

  “Do you know who I am?” he said.

  “I’m going to guess—Bruce Flonta.”

  “Very good. Now guess how I know who you are?”

  “Jeffery Mehren.”

  “I’m sure you now know why I’m here.”

  “You want me to audition for Jeopardy! I love that show.”

  “I’m a serious man, Mr. McKenzie.”

  “Of course you are. Why else would you accost me on the street instead of picking up a phone?”

  “I did. My calls went unanswered.”

  I glanced at Nina. Her shrug told me everything—in this age of caller ID, no one answers an unrecognized number.

  “You have my attention, Mr. Flonta,” I said.

  “Step into the car and I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”

  I gestured toward a bench in Gold Medal Park.

  Flonta spoke to me the way an exasperated parent might speak to a child while explaining yet again that there are no monsters in the closet or under the bed.

  “You are being unnecessarily dramatic,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”