I showered for the third time in twenty-four hours, dressed quickly, fed the ducks again, skipped my own breakfast, and hurried out of the house. I didn’t want to hang around. I wanted to be out and doing. Ten minutes later I was standing in the City of St. Anthony Village municipal building—don’t ask me why it’s called both a city and a village. I was trying to get through the secured door that led to the cop shop, only the receptionist wouldn’t push the button that unlocked it until she was given the high sign by Chief Casey.
“I called,” he told me.
“I didn’t get the message until late.”
“Yesterday you killed a man. Want to know why?”
“You’re volunteering?” This was a first for me—a cop besides Bobby Dunston who freely gave me information. What’s the catch? I wondered.
Casey led me to his small, cluttered office. I told him he could do
better but he blew me off. “I have gold braid on my hat. I don’t need a corner office with a view.”
I liked him more and more.
There was a file folder in the upper corner of his desk under a small trophy with the words TO THE WORLD’S GREATEST DAD etched into its base. Casey sat behind his desk, snagged the folder, and opened it. He began to read.
“Wait, wait,” I implored as I took my notebook and pen from my jacket pocket. “Okay.”
“Bradley Young, AKA Emilio, AKA Billy the Kid …”
“Emilio? Billy?”
“Emilio Estevez starred as Billy the Kid in Young Guns. Apparently there was some resemblance.”
Casey slid a photograph of the dead man across the desk. I didn’t see any similarity between the white actor and black gangster, but I didn’t look very hard. I don’t like looking at photographs of the recently deceased, never have. I like to think there’s a dignity in human beings that transcends the life they live, that gives them value no matter how cheaply they died and you can see none of that in a photo taken at the scene.
The chief kept paraphrasing. I set the photograph aside and wrote quickly, trying to keep up.
“Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, the only child of father Robert, mother Jo Jo. Both parents killed when the propane tank exploded in their mobile home, cause unknown.”
The chief tapped the file.
“This guy’s sheet is so long you could wrap it around a jury box, but only one conviction, second-degree burglary in Detroit. I spoke to the arresting officer, an old buddy. Two years ago he nabbed Young as he was entering an apartment building, a video recorder and a boom box under his arms, a pry bar, screwdriver, rubber gloves, and a stethoscope in his pockets. Search warrants were obtained. My guy found sixteen
stereos, eight VCRs, eight TVs, eleven ghetto blasters, four bikes, thirteen guns, some jewelry, and thirty-seven pawn shop tickets in Young’s crib. Young was arraigned in the Frank B. Murphy Hall of Justice, bail set at twenty thousand, trial date set for mid-October.
“Young couldn’t make bail and he didn’t want to sit in jail for a couple of months awaiting trial so he cuts a deal with the state attorney. He’ll cop to one count of second-degree if he can get help for his drug problem. The prosecutor figures what the hell, first conviction, Young will probably get probation and time served anyway, why waste the taxpayers’ money? So he goes for it, you know how it works.”
“Yeah.”
“Young pleads guilty and a hearing is scheduled, but rather than send him back to jail to await sentencing, the prosecutor asks the judge to release Young to a treatment center. The judge agrees and Young is given conditional release. As long as he reports for treatment he can come and go and …”
“I see it coming.”
“He boogies. A warrant is issued for his arrest, but c’mon. A property crime? No one exactly broke their hump looking for him.”
“How long had he been in Minnesota?”
“DMV issued a driver’s license fourteen months ago.”
“Where did he live?”
“Nine hundred South Fifth Street in Minneapolis.”
“Ahh, Chief. That’s the address of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.”
“Hmm,” he grunted. “Serves me right for not being a sports fan. But it makes sense. He worked a concession stand at the Metrodome for two months before he was fired for employee theft.”
“But not prosecuted. Big surprise.”
“There’s more, but the way the intel came to me makes me nervous.”
“In what way?”
“I was checking on a possible gang connection. Gangs and Guns Unit in Ramsey County, Minneapolis Police Gang Unit, the BCA—no one knew anything. Suddenly, I get a phone call from an officer who works armed robbery in Minneapolis, some guy I never heard of, says he heard about my problem, says I should call ATF.”
“Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms? Why?”
“Why, indeed? But gift horses, right? I call ATF in Minneapolis. The receptionist hands me off to an agent named Bullert.”
“Did he know anything?”
“He knew plenty.”
“And he told you? When did the ATF become so forthcoming?”
“Since nine-eleven, I guess. Anyway, turns out that Bradley Young was a leading member of a street gang called The Family Boyz.”
“Never heard of it.”
“According to Bullert, this particular group is very tight, very small, and far less visible than Young Boys, Inc. or Pony Down or the Crips, Bloods, Gangster Disciples, El Rukns, White Knights, Vice Lords, Lower-town Gangstaz, Bogus Boyz—who have I missed?”
“Brown for Life, Vatos Locos, Surenos Thirteen,” I offered.
“The new kids on the block. Only these A-holes are much better organized from top to bottom than the other gangs. They operate like a corporation, what we call a CEO—a covert entrepreneurial organization. Very security conscious. They don’t wear gold chains or beepers, nothing to draw attention to themselves. More likely they wear ratty clothes and drive beaters. Family Boyz was one of the first gangs to stop wearing colors. They laugh at the gangs that still wear jackets and flags and tattoos. Something else. They have a very limited presence in the drug trade. Drugs fuel nearly every gang in the country, but not these guys.”
“What are they into?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does ATF say?”
“They don’t.”
“Is ATF investigating them?”
“I asked. Bullert wouldn’t confirm.”
I had to think about it. When I finished, I said, “If the Family Boyz is active in the Cities, I know a guy who can tell us all about it.”
“Cop?”
“Hardly.”
“Keep me informed.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
“The very least,” the chief said. “There’s one thing you should know, however. For what it’s worth, Bullert gave me the package like the file was open on his desk and he was waiting for me to call.”
I thanked the chief and headed for the door. Before I reached it, he stopped me.
“Are you busy, McKenzie?” Here it comes, I warned myself. The reason he had been so forthcoming. “Have a cup of coffee with me.”
To get the coffee, the chief led me through the maze that was the City of St. Anthony Village police department. I had a good look at dispatch, booking, the holding cells, squad room, even the garage, stopping for the coffee at the offices of the investigation unit, then out the back door. It was like he was giving me the grand tour but not once did he introduce me to anyone or say, “Look at this.”
Outside, he gestured at the impressive baseball, football, and soccer fields, the skateboard course, the park, the tennis courts, and, up on the hill, the St. Anthony High School and Middle School—all of it in the shadow of a huge, white water tower painted with the community’s name and logo.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.
“Bart. It’s the suburbs.”
“I love this town,” Casey said.
“You’re from Detroit,” I told him. “If I had been from Detroit, I’d love the suburbs, too.”
Casey seemed surprised that I knew where he was from.
“Earlier you said Young’s arresting officer was an old buddy,” I reminded him.
“Very good, McKenzie. Yeah, I’m from Motown, did seventeen years there, six in homicide. After seventeen years, nothing bothered me. Fourteen-year-old boy rapes and kills an eight-year-old girl, then torches her apartment house killing four more. Didn’t bother me. We take a drug dealer out of his place, his kids are standing there in diapers that haven’t been changed in three days. Didn’t bother me. Three black teenagers rape an elderly white woman to death then hire a high-buck activist lawyer to scream racism when we take them down. Didn’t bother me. Pretty soon my own kids are in trouble in school and that doesn’t bother me. My wife is threatening divorce, that doesn’t bother me.
“Then one day I’m doing shooters in this joint near the Renaissance Center and I realize something better start bothering me pretty damn quick or I’m gonna end up flushing my whole life down the toilet. That evening I saw an ad in the trades for a police chief in St. Anthony Village, Minnesota. Never heard of the place, but I apply—anything to get out of Detroit. They jumped me through some hoops, did the dog and pony show for the city council, gave me the job. That was twenty-seven months ago. Now my life is ordinary and predictable. My kids are happy. My wife is happy. And everything bothers me. I’m telling you this because I know you’ve been there. I checked you out and I know you’ve been there.”
“You checked me out?”
“Of course I did. After the shooting, you know I did. You used to be a pretty good cop.”
“Thank you for saying so.”
“You should have been promoted to sergeant. You should have been in
plain clothes. You would have been, too. You were first in line. Only you killed that kid in the convenience store and that ruined everything. Righteous shoot is what they tell me. The store’s security cameras filmed it all. The whole world could see the suspect waving his piece, could see what you did about it. Textbook stuff. Only—shotguns are controversial.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Shotguns are messy and citizens don’t like a mess. There was a lot of loud talk about excessive force that would have been only a whisper if you had used your Glock. Glocks are nice and clean.”
“Except I don’t like the grip.”
“Using the shotgun knocked you to the bottom of the promotion list—SPPD didn’t want to look like it was rewarding an officer accused of using excessive force. I’m guessing you figured that your career was over and that’s why you took the price on Teachwell.”
“Do you have a point here, Chief, or are you just auditioning for Peter Graves’s job on Biography?”
“Ever think of going back?” he asked.
“Going back?”
“Your arrest record is outstanding. The Ranking Officer’s Association made you Police Officer of the Year. You were given the citizen’s medal for that Minh Ha thing …”
“Are you offering me a job?”
“I have a budget for twenty officers, but I only have fifteen, including a one-man investigative unit that should be as least three, four guys. There hasn’t been a single day since I arrived here that I haven’t been shorthanded. I hire an officer, he puts in a few years learning the trade, next thing I know he’s taking a better paying job in St. Paul or Minneapolis or somewhere else. Small suburban departments like St. Anthony Village have become little more than training grounds for other, wealthier departments. My senior sergeant—you met him yesterday—suddenly he announces he’s taking a job in Brainerd, wherever the hell that is.”
“Central Minnesota. Great hunting and fishing up there.”
“Whatever. I’m having trouble keeping officers. Worse, I’m having trouble keeping veterans. I understand it. There are just so many slots in a small department like this. You could be here for twenty years and not move up. The only chance you have for promotion is if someone retires. Which brings me to you.”
“You are offering me a job.”
“I would bring you in through a lateral entry program I’ve installed. Which means you’d get credit for your experience. Eleven years and eight months in St. Paul makes you a sergeant in St. Anthony Village. Something else, and this is between you and me. The lieutenant running my investigative unit assures me he’s pulling the pin the day after he puts in his full thirty—at least he had the decency to warn me. If you sign up, I’ll give you a shot at the job. Chief of Detectives.”
Supervising a unit numbering only four—assuming it was at full strength—wasn’t all that impressive. Still, I immediately fell in love with the sound of those three words: Chief of Detectives.
“You don’t have to make a decision right away,” the chief assured me. “Think about it. We’ll have to wait and see what the county attorney does about the Young shooting, anyway—wait to hear what the grand jury has to say. And make no mistake, McKenzie. This isn’t a slam-dunk. I insist you go through a mini-academy, make sure the tools are still there. But think about it.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll think about it?”
“I will.”
“One more thing. Don’t ever call me Bart.”
Here I thought I had slipped it by him.
I was excited when I returned home. Chief of Detectives. I had considered going back to police work in the past couple years but never with such a grandiose title. I wondered what Bobby would think of it and called to ask, only he wasn’t in his office. I thought of calling Kirsten to learn if the new job would change things between us. But I didn’t. Never count your chickens, someone had once told me—probably my father, an immensely practical man. I didn’t have the job yet. I didn’t even know what it paid.
The thought of money made me pause. I didn’t know any millionaire cops. I wondered if it would make a difference. I pushed the thought away. Don’t buy trouble, I told myself, which was something else Dad used to say.
I decided to quell my anxieties by returning to the problem at hand—finding Jamie’s killer. I put Elvis Costello on the CD player and looked to see what the newspapers had.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press is trustworthy and rarely emotional. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune often seems to be written by closet suspense novelists who just love to tell a crackling good yarn. Naturally, it had the higher circulation of the two. Yet on this day, there seemed to be little difference. Both papers played Jamie Bruder’s violent death across the front page. Both used adjectives like “barbarous.” Both used the term “serial killer.”
I read the articles three times each and to my great relief they didn’t mention my name once. Instead, I was referred to as the “friend of the family” who discovered the body. The cops also managed to keep other pertinent details to themselves—that twine was used to tie Jamie to the bed frame, that duct tape was used to seal her mouth, the broom.
The St. Paul paper said, “Bruder died violently,” that “she was found nude in the bedroom of her fashionable home,” and that “she was stabbed repeatedly.” The Star-Tribune was considerably more graphic,
suggesting that Jamie was “sexually mutilated” and “possibly decapitated, according to a source close to the investigation.” I could see Bobby spoon-feeding that last bit to the media to help filter out the whackos who were probably already lining up to confess.
Both papers speculated that Jamie and Katherine Katzmark were killed by the same assailant, but refused to actually come out and say so because the cops refused to actually come out and say so.
Both papers also reported that a massive search for Jamie’s husband and son had begun, certainly a reasonable response by the cops, all things considered. But did St. Paul Deputy Chief Thomas Thompson need to claim that Jamie’s murder was a “domestic killing,” which the newspapers translated to mean Bruder did it? Did the Ramsey County Attorney, an elected official who had never tried a criminal case before a jury in her life, have to support that allegation during a press conference outside the county’s domestic abuse office, pledging, as God was her witness, that Good Deal Dave would be brought to justice?
“Don’t you think you should prove he did it first?” I shouted at the CA’s photograph on page 5A. I admit that Bruder looked good for it, especially if he could be tied to Katherine Katzmark. Only Thompson’s and the county attorney’s public remarks were unprofessional, gratuitous, and sloppy. A good defense attorney would hurt them with it later.
Along with the lead stories were the inevitable sidebars. Minneapolis ran an interview with a sociologist turned best-selling crime writer who compared Jamie’s and Katherine’s killer to Ted Bundy and warned readers to be alert. St. Paul ran a story pointing out that late summer was America’s “killing season,” the time of the year when we murder ourselves with the greatest frequency. Both papers also printed editorials speaking out against violence toward women with headlines like, WE MUST SAY ‘NO’ TO ABUSE OF WOMEN OR THE TRAGEDIES WILL GO ON AND ON and ABUSERS OF WOMEN: IS THERE A COMMON THREAD AMONG MEN WHO ATTACK?
I looked for my own story and found it in the Minnesota Briefs
column, three paragraphs under the bug with the subhead: MAN SHOT IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT. It read as I would have predicted:
A young male was shot and killed early Wednesday morning during an armed robbery of the private residence of a former St. Paul police officer, St. Anthony Village police reported.
Bradley Young, 23, a reputed member of a local street gang, had attempted to rob the house in order to gain money to pay for drugs, authorities speculated.
Young had been sought by Michigan authorities for the past two years after he failed to show up in court for sentencing stemming from a conviction on a charge of burglary in Detroit.
Drugs and street gang. The magic words. Now the world could dismiss Young, as if he had never existed. I wish I could do the same.
The phone rang. I picked it up without checking the caller ID. Richard Carlson. He wasn’t happy.
“A man called last night. He said my little girl was … Why didn’t you call?”
The answer was simple. I didn’t want to be the one to tell the Carlsons that their child had been killed. It was the hardest thing I had to do when I was with the cops and I hated it. Suddenly I realized if I put a badge back on, I’d have to do it again.
“The cops said they’d take care of it. They don’t want me involved anymore.” It was only partially a lie, I told myself.
“I know my rights. You’re involved if I say you’re involved.” Carlson was not crying, but I could hear the grief in his voice. It was hidden under the anger. “I want to know where we stand. The man, the policeman who called, he said you found Jamie.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Found her body.”
“Yes, sir. I spoke to her Tuesday.”
“The day before she was killed? Why didn’t you call?”
“Jamie wanted to speak with her husband before she spoke to you. Apparently, he didn’t know about her family. Jamie said she would call me later to set up a meeting with you and your wife. When she didn’t call I went over and found out why.”
“There was something about a child. A son.”
“He’s missing. Along with Jamie’s husband.”
“My grandson?”
I didn’t reply. After a few seconds, Richard Carlson asked, “Do you know his name? The papers didn’t say.”
“No, I don’t.”
“We have to find him.”
“Yes, we do.”
“I talked to a doctor. He said the child, my grandson could be a bone marrow donor for Stacy.”
“I understand.”
“Will you find him?”
“The police have a better chance of doing that than I do, but I’ll try.”
“This husband, this Bruder guy …”
“Yes, sir.”
“Papers say he did it.”
“Papers could be wrong.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I never met the man. I only know what they said about him in the papers.”
“You think maybe when Jamie told him about us, about who she really was … ?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“I don’t know. The fact he disappeared along with the child makes him look bad, but—I don’t know. If Bruder killed Jamie then he also killed another woman, Katherine Katzmark. Bruder could have done it, I suppose. Only it doesn’t feel right to me. Plus, there’s someone else involved.”
“Who?”
“A man named Bradley Young.”
“Who’s he?”
“A gang-banger who tried to kill me after I found your daughter. He’s dead.”
“You make ’im dead?”
“Yes, sir.”
Carlson paused to think about it.
“McKenzie, can you stay on this for me? Not just because of Stacy, but—I hope Bruder didn’t kill my daughter, but if he did I want to make sure he’s found and punished. I want to make sure whoever did it is found and punished.”
I knew what he was saying.
“I can’t be there, Mac. I have another daughter, remember?”
“I remember.”
“I want you to act as my representative, make sure the job gets done.”
“What job is that?”
I wanted him to say it.
He hesitated yet again, then answered. “I want revenge.”
If he had said “justice” I might have told him to go to hell. But revenge, that’s something a man can appreciate.
“We’ll see,” I told him.
“One more thing. Not important.”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever find Merci Cole?”
“Yes.”
“She’s in the Cities?” He seemed excited by the prospect.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Is she okay? Is she—is she okay?”
“Yes.” And again I said, “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just curious. Is there anything else? Yes, I almost forgot. The body. The medical examiner won’t release the body. He said he has to maintain control of the remains until all forensic work is completed. That means he’s gonna cut her up, doesn’t it?”
“Everyone is being careful. They don’t want your daughter’s killer to walk away because they weren’t careful.”
“Whatever it takes. I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
He hung up without saying good-bye. I didn’t fault him for that, either. We had been talking for several minutes. That’s a long time when you’re trying not to cry.
Richard Carlson was the kind of man who preferred to grieve silently. Yet that didn’t make his agony any less real than those who beat their chests and tear their clothing. As a culture, we tend to underestimate how deeply and completely people suffer from a tragedy of this proportion. Family and friends will surround us with a cocoon of love and support. They bring us food, they do our errands, they relieve us of our responsibilities. All they ask in return is that we weep loud and long and hard and when we no longer have any tears left to shed, that we return to normal. If we don’t give them a public display of grief, they wonder what’s wrong. Didn’t we care? If we don’t return quickly to normal, they become impatient. It’s a problem of perspective. Unless you’ve had prior experience you don’t know about acting like a robot, about going through the motions, about washing a dish ten times without realizing it. You don’t understand crying jags. You don’t understand unfocused anger. You don’t understand dependency.
Right now, Richard Carlson was hanging on by his fingernails to the prospect of revenge. Who knew, he might get it. Only it wouldn’t change
anything. Instead, you change. You invent a new personality, adopt new values. Think about the person involved in a car crash who must now spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. It’s the same with victims of extreme violence. To survive, you stop being the person you were and become someone else. That’s the long term. In the short term you grab hold of whatever you can, even the myth of sweet revenge, and hang on.
The busiest intersection in Minnesota is probably Hennepin Avenue at Lake Street, the heart of Uptown, a yuppified district in Minneapolis near Lake Calhoun where you can find designer ice cream, Oriental food for white people, bars with plenty of vegetation growing in them, overpriced arts and crafts, foreign movies, a pretty good comedy club, an overrated rib joint, and plenty of MTV wannabees, young men in fifty-dollar jeans torn at the knees and young women in black lace, the kind of women who carry toothbrushes in their purses.
This was where Chopper told me to meet him, in a fast food joint overlooking Hennepin.
I knew Chopper when he was Thaddeus Coleman and worked Selby and Western, an area of St. Paul that used to be rich with prostitution until patrons became bored with it, as they do with any trendy hot spot, and moved elsewhere. Coleman would put a girl on the street, wait for a john, then rob him, waving a blade at the john or making like he had a gun. That lasted until the pimps calmly explained to him why his behavior was bad for their business. He has two scars on his shoulder as reminders of the conversation.
Afterward, he moved to Fuller and Farrington and sold laundry soap to the suburban kids, soap and Alka Seltzer tablets crushed to resemble rock cocaine. I busted him for that. Representing and selling a substance as a drug—whether it is or not—is a felony. Only the judge dismissed the charge. He took one look at the complaint and announced
from the bench, “Boys, we haven’t got time for this, not when there are assholes out their selling truckloads of the real thing.”
“Nothing personal,” Coleman told me when he waltzed out of the courtroom.
I didn’t take it personally, but someone else did. Two days later I scooped Coleman off the pavement of a parking lot at Dale and University. A person or persons unknown had put two slugs into his back. I saved his life that night, although the damage to his spine put him in a wheelchair. He refused to ID his assailants. “It musta been an accident,” he insisted. “Everyone gives me love.”
Yeah, right.
You have to hand it to him, though. Coleman was one tough SOB. Six weeks after the shooting, he wheeled himself out of the hospital in a stolen chair. Couple days later we discovered the bodies of three Red Dragons under the swings at a park near the St. Paul Vo-Tech. They had each been shot numerous times. We never did learn who killed them, but the ME reported that most of the bullet wounds had an upward trajectory, as if whoever fired the shots was sitting down.
Later, Chopper moved his various enterprises across the river into Minneapolis. He was Chopper now because of the chair, which he wheeled about with the reckless abandon of a dirt bike racer.
I found him inside. He was sitting in front of the stainless steel counter wearing a battle-dress uniform and arguing with an older man who was wearing a paper hat and telling Chopper to either order something or wheel his sorry ass out of there. Chopper accused him of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act as I tossed a crumpled twenty on the counter.
“I’ll have a Cherry Coke,” I said.
Chopper scooped up the bill with an immaculate hand—some people are nuts about shined shoes, with Chopper it’s his fingernails.
“Your fries hot, man?” I heard him say as I retreated to a booth. “I ain’t buyin’ no cold fries.”
I sat in the booth and watched a woman stroll casually up and down Hennepin through the window. She could have been a working girl, but in Uptown you never know. Maybe she was just waiting for her boyfriend. Or girlfriend.
“Sex is easy,” I said aloud. “It’s affection that’s hard to come by.”
“Huh?” Chopper asked.
He wheeled himself to the front of the booth. The red plastic tray balanced on the arms of his chair was loaded with two Quarter-pounders, two large fries, some kind of apple turnover, four cartons of milk, and a small Cherry Coke. I took the drink.
“Want some fries?”
I shook my head.
He kept the change.
“McKenzie, you look gooder than shit.”
“High praise, indeed.” Ever since I saved his life, Chopper and I have been pals.
“So how you doin’? Still drivin’ that piece of crap SUV?”
“Are you kidding? It’s a chick magnet. Soccer moms love it.”
“I’ll tell ya what them soccer moms love.” He was pointing toward his lap but the tray was in the way.
“Are you talking about that Quarter-pounder? You get cheese with that?”
Minute chunks of potato flew from his mouth as he laughed. “You’re bad,” he told me. “You are soooo bad.” Chopper washed the contents of his mouth down with a carton of milk and asked, “So, whaddaya need?”
Most of the informers on television and in the movies are skinny black dudes with an encyclopedic knowledge of the streets and a mortal fear of the cops. I know no such people. Nearly all of the informers I
know fall into two categories. There’s the professional who trades information for money or favors and there’s the perp looking to score a deal. “Hey, man, get the charge reduced to third degree and maybe we can do some business, whaddaya say?” All of them are more terrified of getting caught by the individuals they inform on than they are of us.
Then there’s Chopper, who just likes to show off.
“What can you tell me about the Family Boyz?”
“The Boyz on your ass, McKenzie? Cuz if they are, you got trouble.”
“You know them?”
Chopper smiled and shook his head like I had just asked who was Michael Jordan. “Everyone knows ’em.”
“The authorities don’t.”
“Authorities.” He said the word like it was a punchline.
Chopper set down his sandwich and wiped his fingernails with a napkin. He took another sip of milk and started talking before he swallowed it all.
“Family Boyz, they weird, man. Blew in from Detroit City, dealin’ shit all over the place, good shit, too, Acapulco Gold just like the old days, straight from Mexico they say, undercuttin’ the competition with lower prices. There was some dust-ups with the Bloods and El Rukns, but that went away cuz the Boyz, all they doin’ is dealin’ grass and ain’t no one wants to go to war over that. Then all a sudden it’s like one of them stealth bombers, man, they off the radar, still dealin’ MJ but the volume way down, like they was runnin’ one of them hobby farms, you know, doin’ it for the fun. Last couple of years you hardly know they’re there, keepin’ a low profile, just goin’ about their business.”
“What business is that if not drugs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Protection?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“I know enough not t’ go messin’ with the Boyz. A Disciple tried to put down a Family member a few months ago, somethin’ t’ do with some pussy—shit, these guys fightin’ over pussy, you believe that?—and the Boyz blew the flag right off his head, blue bandanna, all fuckin’ red now. I’m figurin’ it’s war, we’re gonna have a war, no fuckin’ shit, only it don’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause the Boyz, man, they pack some heavy ordnance, that’s why. They got machine guns. M-60s. German MG-42s. The Disciples are totally whacked, but they ain’t so stupid t’ go against that kind of firepower.”
The weapons might explain the ATF’s interest, I figured. Chopper ate some more of his sandwich. I thought of Good Deal Dave and took a shot.
“Know of any white guys running with the Boyz?”
“Fuck, McKenzie. You think the Boyz is like some kinda equal opportunity employer? Man, with the Boyz you gotta be family, man, real family, that’s how they git their name. You look at a guy you say, ‘that’s my bro, that’s my cousin, that’s my blood.’ That’s how you git to be in the Family Boyz, man.”
“Know where I can find them?”
“You’re shittin’ me, right? You ain’t lookin’ for no Boyz, right?”
“You don’t have to go with me, Chopper.”
“Damn right I ain’t goin’ with you.”
“So where are they?”
Chopper gave me an address of an apartment building in Richfield near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
I thanked him.
“So you got any next a kin, Mac? Got an address? I want t’ know where to send flowers.”
“You’re a funny man, Chopper.”
I slid out of the booth, said I had to leave. Chopper said he had to scoot, too, and followed me out of the restaurant, one hand working his chair and the other balancing a carton of milk and an envelope of fries. I exited in front of him, holding the door open. That’s when I saw the black teenager striding toward me, walking with purpose, his hands wrapped around a twelve-gauge Mossberg pump gun with pistol grip.
You feel it in your stomach before you understand it in your head, the animal-like mixture of fear and confusion that makes you flinch, then freezes you in place until the brain has a chance to analyze the danger. If the brain takes too long, you’ll stand there, paralyzed with uncertainty, until the danger overwhelms you, like a deer in the headlights. But if the brain is well trained, with plenty of experience, you just might have enough time …
I dove headlong between two cars parked side by side in the lot. A shotgun blast took out a chunk of headlight. Another smashed a windshield. I ran forward in a crouch, fumbling for my Beretta, trying to get it out from under my jacket. A third blast sprang the trunk as I swung behind the far vehicle. I came up with the Beretta in both hands. The shooter was facing me, pointing the pump gun at me, yet he was looking at Chopper through the window of the restaurant door, Chopper just sitting there munching fries, watching.
I fired three times, hitting the teenager in the chest. Dead center.
I moved slowly toward his fallen body, breathing hard, my gun trained on his chest, my hands trembling slightly, waiting for him to move. He didn’t. I had won again. Yet you can’t win them all. Just ask the kid lying flat on his back, his right hand still clutching the pistol grip of the Mossberg.
Chopper pushed through the door. Now he was sipping from his carton of milk.
“Holy shit,” he said.
I bent over the teenager and put two fingers on his carotid artery.
Blood was forming a puddle under his body, spreading across the asphalt, but none was pumping through his neck. I felt nauseous and faint, like I hadn’t eaten in three days. I moved to the back of the parked car, set my gun on the trunk lid and leaned against the fender, sucking air through my mouth. I had managed to go all those years since the convenience store shooting without pointing a gun at anyone. What tough work was necessary I was able to perform with my hands. Now I’d killed two men in two days.
The air was loud with sirens as I emptied my insides onto the dirty asphalt.