SEVENTEEN

The sound of two men shouting at each other woke me. I had been sitting in a chair behind the small table next to the motel room window. My Beretta was set on top of the table. My hand covered the butt of the gun, but I released it when I realized the voices were coming from the TV. Vicki was sitting on the edge of her bed and watching a Sunday morning interview program. The two men were pretending to discuss immigration reform. I say pretending because they were talking over each other, neither listening to the other, arguing vehemently about their own solutions, both of which seemed vague to me.

The sudden movement caught Vicki’s eye, and she turned to look at me.

“You slept in a chair all night when you had a perfectly good bed?” she asked. “I didn’t scare you that much, did I?”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” I said. “I was just resting my eyes.”

“Your eyes snore, then.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after nine. Do you want to get some breakfast? I’m starving.”

I glanced at the motel room door. The chair that I had braced against the handle had been removed.

“Did you go out?” I asked.

“I went for a run. I’ve been up for hours, McKenzie.”

Some sentry you are, my inner voice said.

“You’re supposed to be in hiding,” I said aloud.

Vicki put on a pair of sunglasses and pulled the end of her long blond hair across her mouth.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I was in disguise.”

Vicki was wearing her new jeans, her new white shirt, and her new light blue cardigan sweater; her hair had been tied behind her head. Nothing in her appearance suggested what she did for a living. Nothing in her smile indicated how she had spent the past eighteen hours. If you had told me that she was the lead singer in a church youth choir, I would have believed you.

“You shouldn’t take chances,” I said.

“McKenzie, it’s Hastings.”

I took the chair I was sitting on and braced it against the door.

“I need a minute to get cleaned up,” I said.

Vicki’s smile followed me into the bathroom.

She was still smiling when I returned. I had reclaimed my sweater. The Kevlar vest was secured beneath it.

“Where should we eat?” Vicki asked.

“Prescott.”

“Prescott? Isn’t that in Wisconsin?”

“Just down the road and across the St. Croix River.”

“Why there?”

“I want to keep moving. We’ll cross into Wisconsin, drive to Madison, maybe Milwaukee. Stay the night. Come back tomorrow. Go to your bank. Stop at your place—”

“There’s nothing there that I can’t live without.”

“Then get you on the first stagecoach out of Dodge.”

“And that will be that.”

“Unless you decide to go back to Thunder Bay. There’s a detective constable up there who wants to chat with you.”

“I think I’ll avoid Thunder Bay, although Canada is awfully big. A girl could easily get lost in Canada.”

“Send me a postcard.”

I crossed the motel room. I seized the chair and pulled it away from the door. That was as far as I got before my prepaid cell phone rang. I read the name off of the screen before I answered.

“Who is it?” Vicki asked.

“Jason Truhler.”

*   *   *

I did not want to leave Vicki Walsh alone in a run-down motor lodge that was about as secure as a box of corn flakes, especially since I knew she’d probably break her promise to me before I reached the city limits. Despite protests to the contrary, I was pretty sure she’d leave the room to get something to eat or go to the movies at the multiplex down the road or shop for clothes or play bingo at the parlor across the highway or all of the above. Despite everything, she just didn’t seem to appreciate the danger she was in. I kept telling her.

“Remember what happened last night,” I said.

“It’s Hastings,” she said. “Nothing bad happens in Hastings.”

I couldn’t imagine what made her think so.

Unfortunately, Jason Truhler’s situation seemed much more dire.

“It’s the Joes,” he said. “The Joes.”

I knew I’d have to deal with them sooner or later, and now seemed as good a time as any. I contacted Dailey and Moulton. I told them that the Joes were putting the arm on Truhler today and I would give them the time and place as soon as I knew it.

“You can charge them with felony coercion,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Dailey said. “Arrest the pricks for felony coercion.”

I drove Highway 61 north to west Interstate 494 and worked my way to Truhler’s town house in Eden Prairie. It took about an hour, and I found myself becoming more nervous as the minutes and miles sped past. Even with Dailey and Moulton backing me up, the Joes were not people you wanted to trifle with. I checked the magazine in my Beretta before I left the car. I made sure there was no one watching when I went up the walk to Truhler’s place—God knew where the Joes might be hiding. I rang the doorbell and then rapped heavily on the door when Truhler didn’t respond quickly enough.

“Hey, McKenzie,” he said. He spoke as if I were a guest he was expecting for an afternoon of beer, barbecue, and football.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Well, sure,” he said.

Truhler looked it, too. He was wearing a black chef’s apron with the name and logo of Iron Chef America embossed in red on the front and holding a red stir spoon. The apron was identical to the one Erica had given me for Christmas the year before. It had been one of my favorite gifts of the season, and seeing Truhler wearing it made me feel a twinge of jealousy.

“I’m glad to see that you’ve recovered from your concussion,” I said.

“My what?” Truhler asked.

“Didn’t the doctors diagnose you with a Grade Two concussion?”

Truhler waved the remark away. “That was so long ago,” he said.

Three whole days, my inner voice said. What a fast healer.

“C’mon in,” Truhler said. “I’m making jambalaya. It’s not exactly a Sunday brunch item, but I like it.”

He turned and casually walked into his kitchen. I followed after carefully locking the front door.

“Rickie said you make a pretty good jambalaya,” he said over his shoulder. “I bet mine’s better. You put in shrimp and crab, am I right? I use a classic chicken recipe straight from the bayou. Plenty of andouille sausage.”

Apparently a love for cooking was another thing besides music that Truhler and I had in common. I was beginning to seriously question Nina’s judgment in men, only I didn’t linger over it.

“Am I missing something?” I asked.

“What?”

“You don’t look frightened.”

“Should I be?”

“You said the Joes called. You said they wanted their money today. You said they would call later and tell you where to deliver it.” I tapped my own chest. “I’m frightened. Why aren’t you?”

“Did you bring the money?”

“I’m not going to give those bastards fifty thousand dollars.”

Truhler’s face clouded over for a moment, but it was an expression of disappointment, not alarm.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“The jambalaya needs to simmer for at least another hour. Do you want a beer?”

“Are you kidding me, Truhler? The last time we spoke about this you were damn near paralyzed with fear. What’s changed?”

“You’re not going to let anything bad happen, are you, McKenzie?”

There was a mocking quality in Truhler’s voice that I had a hard time getting my head around.

“Whatever happens, I promise it’s going to be bad,” I said.

Truhler went to his refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of Summit Extra Pale Ale, my favorite, brewed in St. Paul, my hometown. He twisted the cap off one bottle and handed it to me.

“The football pregame shows are on,” he said. “Do you want to watch?”

He is mocking you, my inner voice said.

“Talk to me, Truhler,” I said.

“Talk about what?”

“Have it your own way. I’m outta here. You can confront the Joes on your own.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I’ll confront the Joes on my own.”

He smiled when he said it, actually smiled. Then I knew.

“You made a deal,” I said.

Truhler’s smile became broader.

“What deal?” I asked. ”What deal did you make?”

“Relax, McKenzie. It’s all working out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I got us both off the hook.”

I carefully set my bottle of ale on the kitchen counter, reached out, grabbed a fistful of his apron, and pulled him close.

“What deal?” I asked.

“Don’t do that.” Truhler pushed against me, yet I held firm. “I did you a favor, man.”

“What favor?”

“I got you out of the motel room before the Joes showed up. Okay? Nobody gets hurt. You don’t get hurt, and we don’t owe the Joes anything. You should be happy.”

It took a couple of beats for it all to sink in.

“The Joes know where Vicki is?” I asked.

“Yeah, they know where she is. They know you were watching over her. I did you a favor, McKenzie. Now you’re out of it. They’ll get Vicki, and then they’ll forget about the thirty-five thousand we owe.”

“What about Vicki?”

“She’s a blackmailer. She’s a whore. What do you care about Vicki?”

“What have you done?”

“I’ve saved your ass, that’s what I’ve done.”

“Give me a second,” I said. I was talking more to myself than I was to Truhler. I released the apron and took a step backward.

Think it through …

“How did the Joes know Vicki and I were in Hastings?” I asked. “How did you know?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Why would the Joes make a deal with you?”

“That’s where it gets a little complicated.”

I grabbed Truhler by the apron again and pushed him backward until he bounced off the door of his refrigerator.

“Tell me,” I said.

“What do you care?” he asked. “It all worked out. That’s the important thing.”

“Tell me.”

“The Joes knew you were looking for Vicki.”

“How did they know?”

“I told them. Okay? I told them.”

“When did you tell them?”

“The night they came to my place. The Joes wanted their drugs or their money. I knew Roberta had hired them to find Vicki because they had asked me about her before; they talked to everyone who was involved with Vicki. I told them that you were looking for her, too, and that you were pretty smart about that sort of thing and that when you found her I would tell them if they would forget about the money. The money they would make with Vicki’s files was so much more than the thirty-five thousand we owed they figured it was a good investment.”

“I told you that night that I wasn’t going to look for her anymore.”

“That’s why I had to—they didn’t really hit me that hard. Just hard enough, you know? Look, I know you’re upset, but it all worked out for the best. Now everyone’s happy.”

“What about Vicki?”

“Christ, McKenzie, why are you worrying about that slut? She’s getting what she deserves.”

“You sonuvabitch.”

I released Truhler’s apron and made for the front door.

“Where are you going?” Truhler asked. “Are you going back to Hastings? Are you crazy?”

I stopped only long enough to look into his mystified eyes.

“I’m not going to forget this, Truhler,” I said. “I’m not going to forget that you used me. I’m not going to forget that the Joes wanted thirty-five thousand for their shit and you tacked on an extra fifteen for yourself.”

I heard him calling to me out of the open door as I rushed to the Altima.

“Don’t be like that,” he said. “C’mon. It all worked out. C’mon.”

*   *   *

I threw a plume of dust and dirt into the air when I pulled too fast into the motel parking lot and hit the brakes. I had tried to call Vicki several times while speeding there from Eden Prairie, but her cell phone was not answered. Seeing that the door to the motel room had been left open made me believe the worst. I called Vicki’s name as I rushed inside just the same, shutting the door behind me. The drapes were still closed over the window, and I turned on the overhead light to see more clearly. I was half expecting to find Vicki’s body. I was relieved to see that it wasn’t there. The room had been torn apart—the drawers had been taken out of the credenza, the mattresses had been overturned and ripped open, the carpet had been taken up in some places, and Vicki’s green leather handbag had been turned practically inside out, its contents strewn everywhere. I searched carefully, but I couldn’t find her BlackBerry, either.

I slumped into the chair where I’d spent the previous evening, feeling completely and utterly defeated. I covered my face with my hands.

They had her, those sonsuvbitches, I told myself. They had Vicki—and her files.

My entire body began to tremble at the thought of it.

The Joes had Vicki. A beautiful young woman. I tried not to imagine what they were doing to her, laughing while they did it, but I kept seeing the photograph of Denny Marcus in my mind’s eye, and I couldn’t make it go away.

“Dammit. How did they know she was here?”

This is your fault, my inner voice told me. You should never have left the coffeehouse. You should have stayed there, protecting Vicki until the cops came. You should have turned her over to the police after you saw the news last night. You should have called Bobby Dunston. You should never, ever, ever have left her alone. What else should you have done?

Bobby’s words came back to me. Are you still a good guy, McKenzie? Are you on the right side of the line? Do you even know where the line is anymore?

“Oh God, what am I going to do?”

The walls of the motel room wouldn’t give me an answer, so I looked up at the ceiling. There was a crack that I hadn’t noticed the previous night. My eyes followed it. It ran from the center of the wall just above the TV all the way to the light fixture, disappearing under one of the sailboats painted on the cover.

I could see a rectangular shape outlined against the glass that had not been there before.

I stood and snapped off the light, and the rectangle disappeared.

“Vicki,” I said.

I hopped on the bed, reached over the glass cover, and pulled the shape out.

It was Vicki’s purple BlackBerry.

She knew how important it was to her survival. That’s why she hid it. She was buying time.

“Clever girl,” I said.

It made sense. The Joes had searched for Vicki’s files and didn’t find them; otherwise she would have been killed on the spot. They took her, and I guessed they would keep her until she gave them what they wanted. I did not find much solace in the thought, knowing what those bastards had done to Denny Marcus. Still, it meant Vicki was alive and would stay alive until the Joes had the BlackBerry. It gave me precious time.

Time to do what? my inner voice asked. How are you going to find her? Where are you going to look?

“I’m not,” I said aloud.

By my watch the Joes had been holding Vicki for as long as two and a half hours. Given what I knew about them, if they hadn’t broken her yet, they soon would. Then they would be coming back here.

I put the BlackBerry in my jacket pocket and stepped outside. The harsh sunlight caused me to shield my eyes with the flat of my hand. I did a quick scan of the parking lot. Most of the cars were parked nose-in facing motel rooms. Others were parked along the perimeter.

That’s where you should be, my inner voice told me.

The Joes didn’t know I was driving an Altima. I could park across the lot, slump against the door, and wait. They would never know I was there. Sooner or later they would come for the BlackBerry. Most likely they would bring the girl with them. One would go into the room. The other would stay in their Buick with Vicki. I would come up from behind, using the Buick’s blind spot. When the Joe left the motel room, I’d shoot him. Then I’d shoot the Joe driving the Buick.

I glanced at my watch.

“Don’t wait too long, Vicki,” I said. “Tell them everything.”

I left the door to the motel room the way I had found it and moved toward the Altima. Again I scanned the parking lot. There was no traffic on this end of the strip mall. It was all up by the gas station and café. I put my hand on the door handle—and stopped.

There, at the door of the gas station, dressed in a white shirt, light blue cardigan sweater, and blue jeans, with golden hair tied behind her head, sipping a slush drink through a straw—“Vicki,” I shouted.

I ran toward her, calling her name. She looked up, smiled, and waved. When I was close enough to hear, she said, “That didn’t take long.”

I grabbed her by the arms, nearly knocking the drink from her hand.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“McKenzie, you’re hurting me.”

“Where were you?”

“Stop hurting me.”

Vicki twisted in my grasp. “What’s wrong?”

I hugged her close, surprising myself by the gesture.

“I thought they had you,” I said. “I thought—but you’re all right. You’re all right.”

“We could have done this last night if you had wanted,” she said.

I took her arms again and pushed backward so that I could look into her eyes. She was smiling broadly.

“The Joes know you’re here,” I said.

The smile went away.

“What?”

“They lured me away so they could take you. They broke into the room, but you weren’t there.”

“I went across the street to play bingo,” Vicki said. “I lost every game. Oh, no, my BlackBerry.”

“I found it. I have it. Why didn’t you take it with you?”

“What if I lost it? McKenzie, it’s my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“You didn’t take your bag, either.”

“Just my wallet.” Vicki showed it to me and put it back into her sweater pocket. “Did they wreck my stuff?”

I pulled the Beretta from its holster and held it low with both hands, the muzzle pointed toward the ground. I spun to face the parking lot. Vicki set her drink on the ground.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I just realized, the Joes didn’t get what they came for.”

“Do you think they’re still here?”

“Get behind me.”

“They are here.”

“I would be.”

Together Vicki and I worked our way back toward the motel room, moving cautiously, yet also quickly. I scanned the parking lot and the rest of the strip mall as we went, searching for a battered Buick, yet didn’t find one. I was surprised that nobody in the gas station or café seemed to notice us. When we were close to the Altima, I slipped the keys from my pocket and gave them to Vicki.

“I need you to drive until we get out of here,” I said. “You can drive, right?”

If she was insulted by the question, she didn’t show it.

“Right,” she said.

We had ten yards to go when they appeared.

Only they weren’t the Joes and they weren’t driving a Buick.

A black German sedan, its front end now in desperate need of repair, came to a screeching halt in front of us. It was stopped at an angle so the driver and the passenger could use the car doors for cover. Two men dressed in suits—suits!—hopped out with guns in their hands. I fired first, forcing them to duck. That gave me enough time to push Vicki down between two parked cars.

The suits came back up firing. Bullets tore through the Chrysler Sebring I was hiding behind; someone’s going to be pissed, I thought. Vicki sat on the gravel next to me, her back against the car, holding her hands over her ears.

“What are we going to do?” she shouted above the gunfire.

Before I could answer, another vehicle arrived, a Buick. This one stopped on the far side of the Altima. Big Joe and Little Joe parked at an angle just like the suits, using the Buick for cover. I threw a single shot at them. They threw a lot more back at me. Some of them whizzed past the suits, who promptly returned fire. I stayed down. Without Vicki and me as targets, the suits and the Joes seemed perfectly content shooting at each other. The air became thick with the pungent odor of nitroglycerin and graphite.

“This is crazy,” Vicki shouted.

I agreed.

“Stop it,” I said. “Stop it, stop it, cease fire.”

Amazingly, both the suits and the Joes stopped shooting at each other. I slowly rose from cover. Probably I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been wearing Kevlar. I held the Beretta by the trigger guard so they could see it wasn’t an immediate danger to anyone.

“What do you want, McKenzie?” Big Joe asked.

“What do I want? What do you want?”

Big Joe drew a bead on me. I waved my hands.

“No, no,” I said. “Listen to me, please listen.”

“Go ’head,” Little Joe said.

“We’re listening,” said one of the suits.

“You guys are making a terrible mistake shooting up the place,” I said. From their expressions, neither group wanted to hear that. “Now listen to me. You guys”—I was speaking to the suits—“you were hired to take Vicki’s files so you can protect the men she’s blackmailing, and you guys”—now I was talking to the Joes—“want her files so you can do the blackmailing yourselves. Am I right?”

At least they didn’t say I was wrong.

While I was speaking, Vicki crawled on elbows and knees away from the Sebring and edged her way toward the motel room. I thought she was looking for a better place to hide until, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her change course and move toward the Altima.

“So?” asked Big Joe.

“You guys know what a dead man’s switch is? Of course you do. Well, Vicki has one in place. An accomplice that you don’t know anything about, that I don’t even know. If Vicki is hurt or killed, the accomplice will automatically upload all of Vicki’s files onto the Internet and everyone is screwed. You guys”—I was talking to the suits again—“will be screwed because the johns you were hired to protect won’t be protected. Who’s going to pay you for that? And you Joes”—I gestured toward the brothers—“you’ll be screwed because the johns won’t have any incentive to pay you off. You guys will lose your big payday.”

“What are we going to do about it?” a suit asked.

Good question, my inner voice said.

“We can make a deal,” I said.

I had no idea what that deal would be. I was playing for time. After all, I was standing in a strip mall in Hastings. You would think the cops would show up sooner or later.

“It don’t matter,” said Big Joe. “Whatever you come up with, you can’t make a deal with both of us.”

He had me there.

“We’re tired of waiting,” a suit said. “Give us the girl and the files or we’ll kill you all.”

“Fuck you,” said Little Joe.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Who are you calling stupid, asshole?”

It was then that Vicki started the Altima, threw it into reverse, quickly backed as far away from the motel as she could get, shoved the transmission into forward, and gunned the engine. The Altima spit gravel and sand as it fishtailed out of the parking lot onto Highway 61 heading north. The four assailants raised their guns to shoot, and I yelled, “No, no, no, think of the money,” and they all lowered them.

“Shit,” said Big Joe.

“You dumb-asses,” a suit said. “Now look at what you did.”

“What we did?” Little Joe repeated. “If you assholes would mind your own business…”

The suits had holstered their guns and were settling back in their German sedan. The driver called to Little Joe out of his window.

“You guys are so fucking stupid you made that dumb blonde look smart,” he said.

Little Joe raised his gun and killed them both.

He probably would have shot me, too, except I was running as fast as I could past the motel rooms toward the gas station at the far end of the strip mall. They did not pursue. Instead, the Joes climbed aboard their Buick and drove off.

By then a sizable crowd was gathering. The question “What is happening?” was asked.

“I think a couple of guys just got shot over there,” I said and pointed at the German sedan.

No one seemed much interested in me after that. The crowd moved cautiously toward the car. The sound of police sirens seemed to come from everywhere. I extradited myself from the group and made my way into Hastings. No one stopped me when I walked past or pointed or asked where I was going. Eventually I found a chain restaurant that had an open booth. The Vikings football game was being broadcast on each of about a dozen TVs scattered throughout the restaurant. Despite what the taxi driver had to say the night before, they were actually playing pretty well. A waitress the same age as Vicki set a menu in front of me. I ordered a beer to start, and she went off to fetch it. It was then that I noticed my hands had stopped shaking.

Now what? my inner voice asked.

I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even have a car. Although …

Although what?

I did have Vicki’s BlackBerry.