TWELVE

I slept in the next morning and felt guilty about it, although I didn’t know what else I should be doing. I saw Marvelous Margot through my kitchen window while I was making coffee. She was standing on her side of the pond and throwing dry corn to the ducks. She was wearing a gray hoodie with the emblem of the Minnesota Vikings on the front and blue shorts. She had terrific legs for a woman her age. ’Course, I never said that to her—woman your age, I mean. A couple of minutes later I walked a mug of coffee out to her. She drank greedily.

“How come your coffee is so much better than mine?” she asked.

“I have a seven-hundred-dollar coffeemaker.”

“You and your gadgets. How long do you think the ducks will stay?”

“I spoke to my pal with the DNR,” I said. “He said they’ll stay until the weather changes.”

“When is that going to be?”

“Hard to tell. It’s an El Niño year. The central and eastern tropical Pacific waters become warmer, which translates into a warmer winter for the northern states.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea, but for a second there it sounded like I knew what I was talking about, didn’t it?”

“You should be very proud.”

Margot drank more coffee.

“How’s Erica?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“Is she? The other day she seemed pretty upset about her father.”

“What do you know about her father?”

“Only what Erica told me. She loves him; I don’t suppose there’s anything she can do about that. She doesn’t like him, though, and she doesn’t trust him.”

“That has to be tough, having a father you don’t like.”

“Not everyone can have an old man like yours.”

“He was an awfully good man, wasn’t he?”

“He reminded me of my father. That’s why I liked him so much. It’s probably also why I divorced all my ex-husbands. They didn’t remind me of Dad.”

“You know, Margot, that might be a little unfair, insisting all these guys live up to your father.”

“I don’t think it’s unfair to ask someone to be trustworthy, to be honest. Do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“You’re a lot like your father, McKenzie.”

“I wish.”

“It’s true.”

“Except for the time he was with the First Marines in Korea, my father never purposely hurt anyone. Ever. Instead, he spent most of his life helping others. If you ever needed a favor, my dad was the guy you went to.”

“That’s you.”

I slapped my chest with the flat of my hand.

“I’m wearing a bulletproof vest,” I said. “Kevlar. I’m carrying a nine-millimeter handgun on my hip. The round under the hammer is alive.”

“You’re helping people, that’s the main thing. You’re just doing it a different way than your father.”

“That’s what I used to tell myself, Margot. Only the more I do it—I’m just not sure anymore.”

Margot handed me the empty coffee mug and then gave me a hug, the coffee mug between us.

“I’m sure,” she said.

Then again, she didn’t know everything I knew.

Margot kissed my cheek.

“I’ll see you later, McKenzie,” she said.

As I watched her walk to the back door of her house, I heard my iPhone play “Summertime.”

*   *   *

Steve Ritzer was sitting on the front steps of his mother’s house when I drove up. He had a lighter in his weathered hands, one of those chrome pocket jobs that most smokers carried before plastic disposables became the rage. He opened the top and ran his thumb over the thumbwheel. The rough surface rubbed against the flint, creating a spark that ignited the fuel-saturated wick. He waited until the flame flared brightly before flicking his wrist to snap the top shut and extinguish the flame. He repeated the process over a dozen times while I watched from my Jeep Cherokee. Yet the show wasn’t for my benefit. He was taunting the two plainclothes Minneapolis police officers that were sitting in an unmarked car across the street and three houses down and watching Bug intently.

I would have preferred that there be no witnesses to any conversation I had with Bug, but I hadn’t noticed the cops until after I drove up, and by then it was too late. They were already running my plates. I could feel it.

I slid out of the Cherokee and approached Ritzer’s home. There were iron bars and reinforced screens mounted over every window as well as the front door. A low cyclone fence surrounded the tiny yard. I stopped at the gate and called to him.

“Mr. Ritzer, may I have a word?”

When Chopper called me earlier, he made it clear—“Do not call the man Bug. He doesn’t like it.”

“Who you?” he asked.

“McKenzie.”

“You Chopper’s friend?”

“Yes.”

He waved at me with the lighter to come ahead. I took a deep breath, pushed the gate open, and started moving across the crumbling concrete sidewalk toward him. I knew he was over sixty, but he looked twice as old. His clothes and hair were disheveled; his unshaved face carried the marks of a hundred street brawls; his breath reeked of stale beer. It was the eyes that got me, though. They were so hideously bloodshot they looked like they were bleeding. I felt better knowing that the cops were there.

Chopper was right, Bug was bad people. After he gave me Ritzer’s real name, I paid the extra bucks to have my sources with the MPD pull his jacket. I could have done it myself for a lot less money. An individual’s record of arrests and contacts made by the Minneapolis Police Department can be purchased in person or by mail for twenty-five cents a page, five dollars for color booking photos. You don’t even need to identify yourself. However, it would have taken a lot more time, and I’m impatient by nature. Plus, the report would have been incomplete.

Yes, it would have given me a list of “Documented Steven Ritzer Fires (suspicion or arrest)” with twenty-six entries, seven of them before I was born. It would have told me that at least one of the fires resulted in death—apparently a security guard who had been drinking on the job was unable to escape when the office building he was watching over went up. Yet it would not have told me that investigators had a more comprehensive list of a hundred and thirty-seven fires that they feel certain Ritzer started, based on MO, either alone or with his partner, Max Lucken. Nor would I have learned that investigators knew—knew—that the two men had been operating a profitable arson-for-hire business for decades. Or that Bug and Backdraft had admitted to being arsonists many times in the course of interrogations and taped telephone conversations with investigators, yet always without implicating themselves in any specific fire.

“Mr. Ritzer—”

Bug cut me off.

“You a white man, that’s good,” he said. “I figured you might be with a name like McKenzie. Only these days you can’t ever be sure. ’Specially since you’re a friend of Chopper’s. Bad enough you got the Nig-rows and Messicans taking over everything without them taking our names, too.”

He lit the lighter, flicked it shut, and lit it again.

“You know, Mr. Ritzer,” I said, “there are cops down the street.”

“Shit yeah, I know. Why you think I’m doing this for, my health? Giving the ball-yankers something to think about is all.”

He smiled at me.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “We’re all friends here, me and the pigs. Sometimes I think they’re my only friends now that Maxie is—is—they fucking took a hammer to him. Hit him so hard they hurt his brain. Got him in an assisted living place, feed him, take care of him, shit! Who I got to assist me now? Couldn’t live in that apartment no more. Not alone without Maxie. Had to move back here with Ma, ain’t even the same place no more. Nig-rows and Messicans done took over the avenue long ago. I kept saying, Ma, you gotta get out of there, it ain’t no neighborhood for a white woman, only she won’t leave her home, so this is what I’ve come to, all my money going to keep Maxie in assisted living.”

“I heard the Joes were responsible.”

“Whole fuckin’ family, ain’t a white man among ’em doing Maxie that way. I wanted to kill that fucker myself, only the shithead got busted ’fore I could. Terrible what happened to True Joe in prison, ain’t it?”

“Terrible,” I said.

Bug smiled again. “Not all my money went to keeping Maxie in assisted living,” he said. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I know.”

“Cuz I ain’t ever gonna say it.”

Bug looked down the avenue at the unmarked police car and flicked his lighter.

“Ball-yankers just sitting there watching,” Bug said. “Been sitting there and watching ever since—I heard someone tried to blow up the Joes’ armored house. What did you hear, McKenzie?”

“I heard the same thing. I also heard that the Joes have been on the run ever since.”

Bug stopped flicking his lighter on for a moment and stared at me.

“Chopper vouches for you,” he said. “I done business with Chopper a while back…”

Don’t tell me that, my inner voice said.

“That don’t mean we’re brothers, though. Ain’t that what the Nig-rows say, you my brother? So you tell me, McKenzie, why should I believe you ain’t wired? Why should I believe you ain’t a pig?”

I tried to choose my words carefully.

“Mr. Ritzer, it would probably be safer for both of us if you do believe I’m police.”

Bug flicked his lighter on again and slowly waved the palm of his hand over the flame, feeling its heat. He never stopped smiling.

“Max would say that, too,” he said. “Anytime we talk business, he’d say, talk like there’s folks listening. What do you want, McKenzie?”

“I don’t want anything. I just wanted to drop by and say hello since we have so much in common.”

“What do we have in common?”

“You have a friend. I have a friend. Your friend was hurt up here on the North Side. My friend was hurt down in Eden Prairie. Could be they were hurt by the same people.”

“I’ve looked for ’em. Can’t seem to find ’em. Eden Prairie, you say? Where’s that?”

I was surprised by the question. Did he really not know where Eden Prairie was?

“A suburb southwest of Minneapolis,” I said.

Bug nodded as if he knew all the time.

“I don’t get around as much as I used to,” he said. “Them people, I’d pay a lot to meet up with them people.”

“No need for payment. I’d be happy to introduce you at the very first opportunity.”

“What would you require in exchange?”

“Anonymity.”

“When and where would this meeting take place?”

I pulled a prepaid cell phone from my pocket.

“Is this yours, Mr. Ritzer?” I asked. “I found it just over there by the curb in front of your house.”

He took it from my hand and examined it casually.

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen it before,” he said.

“You should hang on to it. The guy who lost the cell might call looking for it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Bug slipped the phone into his pocket.

“I should leave now,” I said.

“I ain’t had anyone to talk to for some time,” Bug said. “Can’t talk to my ma, can’t talk to the ball-yankers. It gets frustrating. You come here talking to me like a person, talking to me like a white man. That goes a long way, McKenzie.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Ritzer.”

I left his yard, closing the gate behind me, wondering what it was I said that impressed Bug so much. I gave him a little wave as I climbed into the Cherokee. He smiled and waved back. He had resumed flicking his lighter as I pulled away from the curb.

*   *   *

I managed two blocks before the cops in the unmarked car pulled me over. They came at me like professionals, one to each side of the Cherokee, both officers resting their hands on the butts of their handguns—one carried a SIG SAUER, the other a Beretta like mine. I made a show of resting my hands on the steering wheel as they approached.

“Would you step out of the vehicle, please,” said the cop closest to me.

“Certainly,” I said.

I opened the car door and slid out of the Cherokee, again keeping my hands in plain sight. I turned my back to the cop and rested my hands on the hood of the SUV.

“Officer,” I said, “I have a nine-millimeter Beretta holstered to my belt behind my right hip. The gun is registered. I have a carry permit in my wallet.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” the officer said. He was not being sarcastic. He cautiously patted my hip, reached under my jacket, and removed the Beretta. I thought I heard his partner breathe a sigh of relief. The cop also took my ID. Minutes expired while everything was sorted out. Cars drove past. I expected to see expressions of curiosity on the faces of the drivers and passengers in the cars. That’s usually what you get in St. Paul. Only we were on the North Side of Minneapolis, and instead all I saw was anger and resentment. I don’t think it was directed at me. Finally the officers returned my possessions.

“We know who you are, McKenzie,” the first cop said. His name was Dailey. His partner was Moulton. They both worked out of the Arson Squad, an interdepartment unit of the Minneapolis fire and police departments. “What we would like to know is why you were talking with Bug.”

“Just old friends reminiscing,” I said.

“Bug doesn’t have any friends except Maxie Lucken,” Moulton said.

“He thinks you’re his friends.”

“He’s wrong,” Dailey said.

“Bug is a pyromaniac,” Moulton said. “Between him and Backdraft, it seems like they’ve set fire to half the city at one time or another. They’ve been doing it for decades. Up until now, it’s always been controlled. It’s always been about profit. Only one person was hurt in a fire they set, and that was more or less by accident. Now…”

“Bug’s slid a long way since Backdraft got hammered,” Dailey said. He grinned at his partner as if it were a joke they shared before. Cop humor—I understood it well. “Backdraft was Bug’s only friend. Now that he’s drooling in his oatmeal, Bug has become a lonely, frightened old man. He drinks. When he drinks, he becomes angry. When he becomes angry, he lights fires. At least a dozen in the past month alone. He doesn’t care where he sets them, either. Random targets. Most have been in the neighborhood.”

“I’ll tell you what his day is like,” Moulton said. “Bug gets up, sits at his mother’s kitchen table drinking beer until about noon, then he goes out and sets a fire somewhere close to home so he can see it when he goes back to drinking his beer.”

“You can’t put him away?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s going away,” Moulton said. “He set a fire up on Lowry, couple blocks away. We found a half can of beer at the scene. The numbers stamped on the bottom of the can matched a twelve-pack he had at home. We swabbed him and got a DNA match.”

“Bug’s gotten so careless, it was like he wanted to get caught,” Dailey said.

“He made bail, and he’s prolonging the inevitable by changing his plea, by changing his lawyer,” Moulton said, “but he’s going away. Probably he’ll get sentenced under the Dangerous Offender statute. Ten years, easy.”

“Question is, how much damage is he going to do first?” Dailey asked. “Which brings us back to the original question.”

“Why were you talking with Bug?” Moulton asked.

I considered the various lies I could tell, decided to hell with it.

“I’m trying to get a line on the Stippel brothers,” I said.

The two officers exchanged weary glances.

“What do you want with the Joes?” Dailey asked.

“They’re leaning on a friend of mine. I want to make them stop.”

The two officers exchanged glances again, and I realized that they must have been partners for a long time. They were communicating the way Bobby Dunston and I often did, without words.

“We know the Joes,” Dailey said. “They haven’t been around for a while.”

“Gone from our jurisdiction, but not forgotten,” Moulton said. “As much as we want to put Bug away…”

“We’ve been trying to put those bastards in prison for ten years,” Dailey said.

“Or six feet under, depending on the circumstances,” Moulton said.

“The shit they’ve pulled up here,” Dailey said. “The people they’ve hurt.”

“We could tell you stories, McKenzie,” Moulton said.

“I’ve already heard some of them,” I said.

“We had three witnesses lined up to testify against them on felony arson and assault charges,” Dailey said. “They broke into the house of one of the witnesses, beat him, and then left him in the bathtub in a pool of his own blood.”

“They put a couple of rounds through the front door of the second witness,” Moulton said. “Next day both witnesses recanted.”

“Who could blame them?” Dailey asked.

“The third witness disappeared,” Moulton said.

“Missing in action, presumed dead,” Dailey said.

Moulton tapped his chest.

“That’s on us,” he said. “It’s all on us for not protecting them better.”

“Oh, yeah, we want the Joes,” Dailey said.

“Any way we can get them,” Moulton said.

“That’s good to know,” I said.

“Last we heard, they were wreaking havoc in Eden Prairie or thereabouts,” Moulton said.

“That’s what I heard, too,” I said.

“Should you have a conversation with the aforementioned parties, you might want to consider having it on the North Side,” Dailey said.

“Yes,” Moulton said.

“You’ll find that there are people up here who might want to lend a hand,” Dailey said.

“We don’t know who those people might be, mind you,” Moulton said.

“No, not at all,” said Dailey.

“We wouldn’t want to become involved in anything illegal,” Moulton said.

“But there are people,” Dailey said.

“Yes, people,” Moulton said.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, my inner voice said.

“That is also good to know,” I said aloud.

“See ya around, McKenzie,” Moulton said.

The two cops returned to their unmarked squad car and drove off. Dailey gave me a head nod as they passed.

“Wow,” I said.

I drove off a few moments later, down Central to Lowry and then east toward the Francis A. Gross Golf Course. As I drove I was reminded of what Bobby Dunston told me about crossing over into the darkness in order to get a job done. He was right—it’s no place to live.

*   *   *

I checked my e-mail and phone messages when I returned home. By then most of Vicki’s friends had responded to my inquiries. Nearly all had the same thing to say—they had not seen or heard from Vicki since the Fourth of July. A few of them seemed genuinely concerned. One of them was named Anita Malaska. She agreed to meet me. I was heading for the door when my prepaid cell rang. It had the tinny ringtone of an old-fashioned telephone.

“McKenzie, this is Jason Truhler. I don’t know what to say.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I mean, I don’t know what to do.”

“About what?”

“You know about what. About, about—the Joes called. I told them what you said about the money. They said they won’t take it, the thirty-five thousand, I mean. They said they want more, to cover their time and trouble, they said.”

“How much more?”

“They want fifty thousand. They said if they don’t get it they’d hurt Rickie and Nina.”

“How do they know about Erica and Nina?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know—but that’s not all. They said they don’t trust you. They said that you’re liable to do something stupid, that’s what they said.”

“They may be right.”

“The Joes said I have to deliver the money. They said I should get it from you and then deliver it to them alone.”

That didn’t sound right to me. From what I’d heard of the Joes, I was sure they would demand a pound of my flesh to go along with their money.

“When and where?” I asked.

“They said they’d tell me when the time was right. They said in the meantime you should get the money together.”

“What do you think about this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you willing to deliver the money? Alone?”

“I don’t want to,” Truhler said, “but if that’s what it’ll take to protect Erica and Nina, then that’s what I’ll do.”

That didn’t sound right to me, either.

“I think I should be there,” I said.

“No. I mean, they said I have to come alone.”

“For fifty grand they might change their minds. When they call back, tell them I want to be there. Tell them your concussion makes it impossible for you to do it alone.”

“My concussion?”

“Give them my number. Tell them if they don’t like it, they can call me.”

“McKenzie.”

“Remind them that I’m the guy with the cash.”

When Truhler started to protest I told him I’d talk to him soon, deactivated the cell phone, and dropped it in my pocket. I took my time walking to my car, once again making sure that the coast was clear.

Do you have any idea of what you’re doing? my inner voice asked.

No.

Why should today be different from all the others?

Exactly.

*   *   *

Anita Malaska lived in Middlebrook Hall on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota—that’s the dormitory inhabited mostly by students enrolled in the school’s honors programs. Suffice to say I didn’t room there when I was at the U.

She agreed to meet me in Middlebrook’s lobby, surrounded by security cameras and student staff. She was a smart and cautious girl. I liked her even before we met. After we met, I liked her even more. Anita was wearing school colors—maroon and gold—that miraculously matched her eyes. She had red-brown hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial, a complexion from a soap commercial, and a smile that toothpaste marketers lusted after. She regarded me carefully as I sat across from her.

“You said you were looking for Vicki Walsh,” Anita said.

“I am,” I said. “I hope you can help me.”

“I don’t know how. Like I told you over the phone, I haven’t spoken to Vicki for months. I thought she was at Cornell.”

“She never made it.”

“What does that mean, she never made it?”

“No one has seen her since the Fourth of July.”

“I have.”

“You have? When?”

“Toward the end of August, the last weekend of August. My friends and I were hanging around the Minneapolis Riverfront. You know where St. Anthony Main is? They have restaurants and parks?”

“Sure.”

“It was like a last hurrah for all of us before we scattered to schools hither and yon. We bumped into Vicki on the river walk. I asked her what she was up to, because she hadn’t been responding to any of her Facebook postings, and she said she had been busy getting ready for school, which is what I was doing, too. Anyway, we ended up, the bunch of us ended up going over to Tuggs for cheeseburgers and to listen to the band that was playing in the courtyard. We pretty much stayed until they kicked us out. Anyway, that’s when I saw her last. August.”

“Was she alone?”

“No, she was with a friend. A girl. What was her name? Kate something.”

“Caitlin?”

“Caitlin with a C.” Anita laughed at the memory of it. “That’s how she introduced herself.”

*   *   *

To get from Middlebrook to the Twenty-first Avenue ramp where I’d parked my car, I had to walk between Rarig Center, where the university held most of its student theater productions, and Regis Center for Art, where the student art exhibitions were presented. I enjoyed walking across the campus, any part of it, the West Bank on the west side of the Mississippi, the East Bank on the east side, or the St. Paul campus near the State Fairgrounds. The campus always reminded me of my misspent youth and the wonderful women I misspent it with—a couple of JO majors, a theater major, a law student, a DJ working for the school radio station, Radio K. Ahh, to be young again.

My iPhone shook me out of my reverie. It played eight bars of “Summertime” before I answered it. No name was displayed, just a phone number. It didn’t belong to any of the precious few.

I spoke cautiously. “Yes?”

“Mr. McKenzie?” It was a man’s voice and old.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Walter Muehlenhaus.”

I stopped in the middle of Twenty-first Avenue. For the first time since all this began, I was frightened. Muehlenhaus had that effect on people.

“Mr. Muehlenhaus,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to call him Walter. Hell, up until that moment, I didn’t even know his first name was Walter.

“Mr. McKenzie, an acquaintance has arranged an informal gathering at his home this evening. I would deem it a courtesy if you were to attend.”

I paused before giving Mr. Muehlenhaus the answer I knew he was expecting.

“Yes,” I said.

“Excellent.”

“When and where?”

“Arrangements will be made. Oh, and Mr. McKenzie? I would be delighted if you brought the lovely Ms. Truhler with you.”

*   *   *

“What else did he say?” Nina asked.

“That was it,” I said. “He didn’t say good-bye. He didn’t tell me how he got hold of my private number. He didn’t tell me what he wanted. He just broke the connection.”

“What a jerk.”

“Yeah, well, he can get away with it.”

“Why? Because he has more money than God?”

“That’s one reason. He also does favors for everyone, so everyone owes him.”

“The same as you.”

“No, not the same as me. I never ask for anything in return. It’s a lot more than that, though. He’s not just a mover and a shaker; he’s the guy who tells other people what to move and what to shake. If you think of Minnesota as an immense village, he’s the village wise man. He brings various parties together, settles disputes, weds interests, dispenses advice that you damn well better take, and plots, plots, plots, all the time plots. Some people whisper that he’s the reason we’re building a commuter train from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis and why the Minnesota Twins have a new stadium and the Vikings don’t—at least not yet.”

“What does he want from you?”

“Probably the same thing he wanted the last two times our paths have crossed.”

“He wants you to do him a favor.”

“Yeah. I can’t imagine what it would be, though, a favor he can’t do for himself.”

“Guess we won’t know until we ask.”

“We? I take it you’re coming to the party?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”