“You don’t look like a detective,” the old man told me. I hadn’t told him I was one. Like Nina Truhler, he connected his own dots.
“Who does?” He gave me a little head shake, suddenly embarrassed, so I answered for him. “James Garner? Tom Selleck?”
“Robert Mitchum,” the old man said. “And Bogart. He was good.”
“I always liked Alan Ladd. Remember This Gun for Hire?”
“He was a bad guy in that one. A hit man. ’Sides, Ladd, he was a pretty boy. And short. They made all his leading ladies stand in slit trenches.”
“Well, you can’t judge a book by its cover,” I said, which was another of Dad’s favorite clichés.
“No, I s’pose not,” the old man said, smiling slightly and patting his ample stomach. The old man was the proprietor of the Paradise Motel, the one I saw watering the asphalt a couple evenings earlier. After sitting in my car for an hour I decided the best thing I could do for my nerves was to get back to work.
I asked about Napoleon Cook. He spoke about the woman.
“The dark-haired lady, she comes in plenty, but I ain’t hardly never got no up-close look at her, if you know what I mean. She always parks at the far end, in front of sixteen. I keep the room empty for her cuz I know it’s her favorite.”
“She comes in often?”
“Couple times a week usually, never no trouble. Sends the man in for the key and to pay up. ’Course it ain’t always the same joe. This guy you’re askin’ about, this Cook fella, I seen him maybe two, three times, no more than that. What I figure, I figure the lady, she must rotate ’em. Like tires.”
I pulled a newspaper clipping out of my pocket, one that featured a photograph of David Bruder, and showed it to the man.
“Have you ever seen him?”
“Could be, can’t say for sure. He looks familiar but after a while, don’t they all sorta look alike?”
I folded the clipping and returned it to my pocket.
“How long has the woman been coming here?”
“A year, maybe. Good customer. Hardly ever messes the room. I figure she’s one of those nymphomaniacs you hear tell of. ’Course I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that except what I see on them there adult movies—we have adult movies here, you know.”
I wasn’t surprised.
“She probably ain’t right in the head,” the man offered. “But her money is healthy.”
I gave the man my card and told him to call me the next time the woman came in.
“You don’t have to wait for no call,” he said. “You want to see her, come by t’night or tomorrow ’round eight, eight-thirty. She’s due.”
“You don’t look so hot,” Nina Truhler said when I sidled up to her at the downstairs bar in Rickie’s. She was shuffling through a deck of time cards, a large calendar turned to the month of October set before her.
“How do you know?” I asked her. “I might never have looked better.”
“In that case, medical science has failed you.”
She had a point. It was just past noon, yet I felt like I had been up for three days and probably looked it. Nina, on the other hand, was stunning in a violet shirt and a steel-colored one-button jacket with matching trousers that set off her magnificent eyes.
“I’m sorry.” She set her cards down on the calendar. “I’m not usually such a smart aleck.”
“I’ve been known to bring out the best in people.”
Her mouth worked like it wanted to say something, but only “Arrrggg” came out. Nina pronounced it like a word.
“Nice command of the English language.”
“I’m frustrated,” she said.
“Emotionally? Physically? There’s a cure for all that which has nothing to do with medical science.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
“Are you flirting with me?” I asked.
“I’m trying to but it’s coming out wrong.”
“You should practice more.” I made a production out of adjusting my sports coat, shaking my head, flexing my shoulders and smoothing my hair. “Okay, I’m ready. Give me your best shot.”
“Hi, honey. Come here often?”
“Puhleez.”
“Baby, I’ve been looking for a man like you all my life.”
“Like I haven’t heard that a hundred times before. C’mon, make an effort. You meet me in a bar and you want to take me home. What do you say?”
“Nice butt.”
“Very good. That works with me.”
“It does?”
“Every time. So, your place or mine?”
“Depends. What do you think of children?”
“I’d like to try dating adults, first. See how that works.”
Nina laughed, which was my intention. Afterward she leaned in closer and said, “Seriously. What do you think of dating a woman with children?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“I have a daughter. I told you.”
“Erica, a.k.a. Rickie—boys bore her.”
“Most men, you tell them you have a child, a family, and they run the other way, guys who’d be all over me otherwise. I learned that the hard way. Now I’m right up front with it. I let them know before date one I have a daughter so not to waste my time.”
“Wise decision.”
“Well?”
“It doesn’t bother me that you have a daughter. I’d like to meet her. If she’s as pretty as her mother she must be beautiful indeed.”
Nina took a deep breath and said, “I told them you were here the other night, that you were following Napoleon Cook—that’s his name, isn’t it?” with the exhale.
“Yes.”
“Did you get into trouble?”
“No more than usual, but thank you for asking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You did the right thing. I would have done the same.”
“I’m sorry anyway. I wanted you to know in case this goes any further.”
“Since we’re being honest here, I should tell you that I’m coming off a relationship and I don’t know how I feel about that yet.”
“You’re afraid of getting involved again?”
“I’m afraid of getting involved with the wrong woman again.”
Nina cupped her chin in her hand and leaned toward me. I cupped my chin in my hand and leaned toward her. We were close enough to kiss. I should have kissed her. I don’t know why I didn’t. Instead, I told her, “I need a favor.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
“I want you to call me the next time Hester comes in. I need to find out about her.”
Nina pushed herself off the bar. “I can do that. But I also promised I’d call the cops.”
“Who?” I was thinking it was Bobby.
“Policewoman named Jean Something.”
“Oh.”
“Know her?”
“I’m told she’s young, beautiful, and smart as hell.”
She wagged her hand like she wasn’t sure she agreed.
“I don’t want to get you into trouble, Nina.” She opened both eyes wide in feigned shock. “I mean with the cops.”
“I promised to call when Hester came in. I didn’t promise I wouldn’t call you, too.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I slid off the stool.
“But what if she doesn’t come in again?” Nina asked.
“Then I’ll call you.”
Nina smiled bright and beautiful. “What does the telephone company say? ‘Reach out and touch someone’?”
I went home, checked my mail, checked my telephone messages, and made a pot of coffee—hazelnut, ground from fresh beans purchased
from the Cameron Coffee Company of Hayward, Wisconsin. While it brewed I stretched out on my sofa, Fleetwood Mac on the CD player singing “Then Play On.” I didn’t know which was more exhausting, my encounter with the Boyz or all that heavy flirting with Nina Truhler. I closed my eyes, which was a mistake. I didn’t open them again until the ringing telephone woke me about an hour later. I debated not answering it, coming up with five, six, seven good reasons to pretend I wasn’t home. Only the challenge of the unknown was too great. After all, it could be Dick Clark and Ed McMahon arranging to give me a cardboard check the size of my mattress.
“Mr. McKenzie, I need your help,” a voice told me instead of “Hello.”
“Who are you?”
“Dave Bruder.”
Bruder wanted to call the shots. I let him. That was my first mistake. But all I could think about was the look on Bobby’s face when I brought him in—the look on his face and Tommy Thompson’s.
Bruder wanted to come in, too—he was tired of running, of hiding. Only he was frightened.
“I need protection.”
“This isn’t East L.A., pal,” I told him. “The St. Paul cops aren’t going to beat on you with sticks.”
“It’s not just them.”
“Who else? The Family Boyz?”
“I’m afraid.”
Who could blame him?
“Why are you calling me?”
“I’m told you can be trusted.”
“Whoever gave you that idea?”
“Friends.”
“What friends?”
“Will you help me?”
I thought about it for maybe, oh, three seconds.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Meet me. Come with me to the police station.”
I could do that.
“Do you promise not to call the police?”
“Yes.”
That was my second mistake.
A half hour later I was sitting at a small table hard against the railing of the third floor food court of the City Center, looking down into the courtyard below. The City Center is a combination shopping mall and office building in downtown Minneapolis. Bruder insisted on meeting in Minneapolis. He figured the cops weren’t looking for him there. I should have set him straight, but I didn’t.
I watched him ride the escalator up. He was wearing a Pierre Cardin suit with sharp creases, black wing tips shined to a high gloss, a freshly pressed white cotton dress shirt and a perfectly knotted power tie. His face was clean shaven, his hair neatly parted. I didn’t know where he had been the past week, but he had taken good care of himself. He stopped in the center of the food court and glanced about. I recognized him, but he didn’t know me from the kid at the Orange Julius stand. I gave him a little wave and he came over.
“So, Mr. Bruder. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
He hushed me—“Don’t use my name”—and glanced around nervously before sitting.
“Seriously,” I told him. “You look nice. Why is that?”
He had no idea what I was talking about.
“I didn’t kill my wife,” he announced.
You sure look good for it, I thought but didn’t say.
“I didn’t,” Bruder insisted, as if he had read my mind.
“Okay.”
“Everyone thinks I did.”
“Do you blame them?”
He didn’t say if he did or didn’t.
“Mr. Bruder, where’s your son?”
“He’s safe.”
“Listen to me. I don’t give a shit about you. But your son, Jamie’s son, is a different matter … .”
“All you care about is Jamie’s sister.” Bruder sounded disappointed.
“That’s why I’m involved. Now tell me where he is.”
“With friends.”
“What friends?”
“When I’m safe, I’ll tell you. But only after I’m safe.”
“Is he with the same friends who said you could trust me?”
No answer.
Since Bruder refused to confide in me, I decided to tell him a thing or two.
“You had dinner with a woman at Rickie’s the evening your wife was slaughtered.”
That brought a high color to his face.
“You know about that?”
“Me and the woman on the psychic hotline. We know everything. What happened afterwards?”
“I went home and I saw, I saw what they had done to her. I took TC—he was asleep in his crib, thank God—and I ran.”
“What they had done to her. Who is they ?”
“I won’t talk now.”
“No?”
“When I’m safe I’ll tell you everything.”
I was wondering what it would take to make him change his mind.
He added, “This is—this is much bigger and more dangerous than you can possibly imagine.”
“I don’t know. I can imagine a lot.”
“I need to talk to the FBI.”
“Federal Building is only a few blocks away.”
“Should I go there or to St. Paul, first?”
“St. Paul,” I told him. Bobby was in St. Paul.
Young, beautiful, and smart as hell Jeannie took the call. Bobby was in a meeting with Tommy Thompson and couldn’t be disturbed.
I told her, “When he’s finished with his important meeting tell him that McKenzie called. Tell him I have David Bruder … .”
“What? How?”
“Tell him to meet me at the Tenth Street entrance next to the garage in fifteen minutes.”
“McKenzie?”
I deactivated my cell phone. This was going to be fun, I told myself.
While riding the escalator to the ground floor, I asked Bruder if he had a lawyer.
“I have a friend, Warren Casselman.”
The name triggered my memory’s replay button. David, this is Warren. Something’s gone wrong. Better call me ASAP. The message on Bruder’s telephone answering machine.
“Is he any good?”
“He makes a lot of money,” Bruder replied. I had to shake my head at that. Judging people by the money they make is like judging them by their height. I didn’t tell him so, of course. Bruder had enough problems.
“Here’s some advice, for what it’s worth,” I said. “When we get to the cop shop, don’t say a word. Don’t say yes, don’t say no, don’t say your name, don’t say anything. Just call your lawyer friend and keep your mouth shut until he arrives.”
Bruder nodded. I could feel his muscles tense where I held his arm. He was scared. I didn’t blame him.
“Why did you call me, really?” I asked.
“I ran out of options.”
Whatever that meant.
We exited through the door on Hennepin Avenue, emerging into bright afternoon sunlight. My SUV was parked in the lot across the street. To get there, we followed the wide sidewalk to the 5th Street intersection. While we waited for a green light, a black Chevy van peeled round the corner at 6th Street and accelerated hard toward us. The cargo door was open.
“Down!” I yelled.
Bruder didn’t move. He seemed transfixed by the rapid bam, bam, bam the heavy gun made just inside the door.
I dove to the pavement, landed hard on my shoulder, and rolled to the curb, finding cover in the gutter.
Explosions splattered on the sidewalk like large rain drops.
The heavy gun kept firing even as the van accelerated through the intersection against the light.
The street began to fill with screams. I shouted Bruder’s name over them. He didn’t hear me.