18
THURSDAY, JUNE 7
4:45 P.M.
ST. PETER, MINNESOTA
Ian’s phone rang just as he reached St. Peter on his route back to the Twin Cities. He glanced at the screen’s readout, saw it was Harry Christensen, and pressed a button to answer through the Bluetooth. “Yeah, Harry.”
“Hey, I heard back from my man Ahmetti.”
“That was quick. What’d he say?”
“He’ll take a meeting with you.”
“When?”
“Tonight at eight. Doggy’s Bar on Hennepin Avenue.”
Not tonight, Ian thought. Not with the meeting at the bank at eleven and needing to see his mother. And really, not Doggy’s.
“C’mon, Harry. Doggy’s was probably a dive back when John Dillinger still came to town. How about a club in the Warehouse District? Any place that opened after Kennedy was president.”
Harry laughed. “It’s where he said to meet. I think he’s old-fashioned. And be prepared to negotiate. He said yes so quick I’m sure he’s got a price in mind.”
Another bark of laughter. “I described you. Scrawny lawyer, in over his head. He’ll see you coming, trust me.”
“Wiry, not scrawny,” Ian replied.
“Hey, confirm you got that retainer for me.”
Ian said he would, then ended the call.
Another long night. At least after the first meeting he could still sandwich in some time to spend with his mother.
The phone rang again.
“Willy’s here at the office,” Katie said when he answered. “He’s brought over the original charging papers and more information about his case. Says he can meet with you when you’re ready to talk.”
Not tonight, that was for sure. “Maybe tomorrow. Or tomorrow night. Maybe we can meet someplace. Ask him where he’s living now.”
Silence. “He’s living over on the northeast side.” She gave Ian an address.
It was near Larry’s Bar. “Okay. Tell him I’ll give him a call.” How much could he cram into a single night?
He accelerated the Camry as he left St. Peter in the rearview mirror.
4:45 P.M.
U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, FEDERAL COURTHOUSE
DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS
A knock on her doorframe pulled Brook’s eyes off the computer screen displaying the brief she’d been trying to write the last four hours since “lunch” with Ian. Brook looked up to the office’s newest law clerk from St. Thomas Law School, diminutive and fresh-faced, holding a stack of papers in her hand. Chloe something. Chloe Moore.
“I heard you were looking at ICR reports on a few people,” the young clerk said eagerly.
Brook flinched. She’d had her legal assistant retrieve the reports from a buddy at the Hennepin County Prosecutor’s Office, but it was supposed to have been confidential. How did the law clerk learn about it?
“Yeah. Doing a favor for someone. But keep it to yourself, will you?”
“Sure,” Chloe said. “But I saw the names you were checking and dug into anything the FBI or Federal Strike Force might have shared with us on the same names.” She held up the stack of papers.
Brook groaned inwardly at the expansion of this mess. “That’s great, but I’m good.”
“Oh . . . you don’t want these?”
Brook forced a smile. “Sure. Thanks. Leave them on the desk.”
Clearly disappointed, Chloe turned and slipped from the room.
She was getting nothing done, Brook fumed. All thanks to Ian. It ticked her off in a serious way that he was getting to her. Why should she be the one bothered about the scene at Kieran’s when it was Ian who was displaying the emotional intelligence of a maple?
Except it was she who’d turned a talk about ICRs into an autopsy of their friendship and its limitations—even bringing up Zach, for heaven’s sake. Stupid, stupid, stupid—
Another knock startled her.
“What is it?” she said, looking up.
Eldon Carroll, her boss, stood in the doorway.
“Brook Daniels! Glad to see you’re in.”
Brook forced another smile. So her long walk after lunch with Ian had been noticed. “Sorry for the outburst, Eldon. I’m a little . . . behind today. And I had a long lunch with a friend.”
Eldon nodded tersely. “Fine. Fine. You’re here now. Which is good because I want to bring you in on something.” He stepped into her cramped office and took a chair, a thick folder in his hands. “You may have gotten wind that I’ve put together a team on a new case.”
“Heard rumors, yes,” she replied.
“Well, it’s really not a new case. It’s actually a cold case that’s gotten new life.” Eldon’s eyes began to light up. “This one could get some attention. Certainly the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press. Maybe national.”
Emotionally winded, Brook had trouble mustering the expected enthusiasm. “Okay” was all she got out.
“Last week,” he went on, “the FBI let us know they’d learned of some bills being circulated. Twenties going back to a theft and murder at a small art gallery thirty-five years ago—in St. Louis Park.”
“How do they know the bills are related?” she asked.
“Because the gallery got some cash at the bank before the heist, and the proprietor noticed they were fresh bills—as it turns out, sequenced. He pocketed a few that didn’t get stolen, enough to put out a bulletin on any related twenties after the rest of his cash and some big-time art was stolen. Anyway, last week a Wells Fargo branch got an anonymous call about ‘hot twenties’ coming in. They started scanning all the Jacksons they were collecting and, lo and behold, half a dozen came up from the old watch list.”
Eldon looked at Brook as though awaiting a reaction.
“That’s pretty exciting,” Brook said, a little too late.
“Exciting? It’s a lot more than that. Then on Tuesday, we got another big hit of the bills.” Eldon shook the file in his hands. “This is serious business, Brook. The St. Louis Park job was, and still is, the largest art theft in Minnesota history. One that’s had everyone clueless for over three decades. We catch the bad guys on this, it’ll be a big mark for all of us.”
He sounded as though he was ready to measure the Minnesota Attorney General’s office for furniture, Brook thought. Or maybe even a Senate office.
But he was right. This could be a career maker. “Who are we working with at the FBI?” she asked.
“The stolen art section’s a little shorthanded for a couple of weeks, but we got a young agent assigned: Special Agent John Soukup. I said we’d pitch in. I’ve already got Cassidy Morrow doing legal research. You know Cassidy, right? And I want you to follow up on this.” He handed Brook a portion of the file.
She opened it. Inside was a multi-page FBI memo titled Deposits. “You say there was a tip about these deposits?”
“Yep. Somebody called it in.”
“Isn’t that a little strange? Who spends hot money, then calls in a tip about it?”
Eldon’s voice dropped a notch. “Could be a perp with a grudge. Maybe an anonymous store clerk who handled a bunch of old bills that still looked new. They got suspicious but didn’t want to get involved.”
That last one sounded like a stretch, Brook thought. Who suspected a crime just by seeing a handful of thirty-five-year-old twenties?
Still, she could hear the cracking of thin ice underfoot from her last question. “So you want me to follow up on trying to trace the depositors who might have handled the twenties?”
“That’s right,” Eldon said. “Reach out to them and see if we can narrow this down quickly based on the age of the depositor, businesses versus personal, that kind of thing. I’m also putting Cassidy to work combing the list of suspects from the investigation back in the day—seeing who’s still alive and in Minneapolis. We’ll then cross-reference with each one you find. As a starting point, Wells Fargo has helped by narrowing the deposits to two hundred seventy-seven potential cash depositors at three possible branches.”
Brook thought it over . . . 277, several days of grinding work at least. “Okay, chief. I’ll get on it right away.”
Eldon grinned. “Put your heart into it, Brook. This could be huge. For everyone involved.”
Brook nodded enthusiastically. “Got it.”
Only when he was gone did Brook let out a sigh. She reread the memo. The list of depositors had been broken down by branch. She scanned the list, wondering where to start.
The good news was that maybe this would get her focus off Ian in a way her brief hadn’t. Maybe.
Pushing aside the stacks on her desk—including the new one from Chloe—she spread out the depositor list and reached for her phone.