30

SATURDAY, JUNE 9
12:47 A.M.
NORTHEAST MINNEAPOLIS

A slash of light from the low moon angled into the alley off the street, illuminating it like the center stage spotlight Willy Dryer imagined it to be. Deeper in, the light tapered and disappeared. But where Willy stood, only a yard from the street end, it sparkled off flecks of broken glass, painting the brick with a soft white glow.

He loved this spot, just a few blocks from his friend’s apartment where he was crashing. Quiet. No stores or clubs nearby. The hint of an echo that made it perfect as a practice stage.

“‘Stars hide your fires,’” Willy muttered, pacing the narrow width of asphalt. “‘Let not light see my black and deep desires. The eyes wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears to see.’”

He stopped. “‘Yet let that be which the eye, when . . . it . . . is . . . done . . . fears to see,’” he corrected.

He shook his head, disgusted. How could he muff the lines? This was Shakespeare.

Footfalls approached along the street that crossed the alley’s open end. Willy looked up.

The overhead streetlamp was broken, leaving moon shadows of surrounding buildings stretching across the pavement like fallen pillars. Only a narrow strip of moonlight split the dark road.

The road had been empty a moment before. Now a man was moving up the far side of the street, half a block to Willy’s left. Wearing a disheveled suit, he was walking erratically. Like he was drunk, Willy thought.

Willy stepped into darker shadows out of sight. There, he began his lines again in a near whisper.

Heavier footfalls began on the street. Willy stepped close to the end of the alley again and peeked out.

The drunken man was nearer, but a second figure had appeared behind him. This one was big and walking with a limp, with one hand thrust into a pocket. The other arm swung like a pendulum to balance his awkward gait. He was closing in on the drunk.

A sound pulled Willy’s attention the other way.

A third man had appeared from the opposite direction, coming toward the drunk from the front. It was a skinny man holding something in his hand. Passing through a strip of moonlight, the object glinted twice, as though he was spinning it. It was a long, narrow knife.

Willy began whispering the lines again. “‘Stars hide your fires . . .’”

The drunk was almost directly across the street from the alley, his steps labored. He looked up and saw the third man nearing from the opposite direction. He slowed.

The big guy closed quickly from behind.

Twenty feet from the drunk, the big man pulled his hand out of his pocket. In a hefty fist he held a handgun.

“‘STARS HIDE YOUR FIRES!’” Willy shouted.

The big man’s head pivoted toward him.

Willy pulled from his pocket a short-barreled Smith & Wesson. The big man’s gun was angling toward Willy when it began filling the street with barrel flashes and explosions.

Willy squeezed the gun’s trigger, unleashing a deeper-toned thunder.

The big man gave out a short grunt. His bones seemed to melt, and he collapsed to the ground. Then he came to life again, pushing off the ground onto his one good leg. Thrusting his gun into a pocket, he hobbled away in the direction he’d come, a hand gripping his side.

Willy looked the other way. The man with the knife had halted, staring at the scene. As his companion limped off, he turned the other way, disappearing in a run around the corner.

Willy looked back to the drunk, who stood there frozen. The noise still ringing in his ears, Willy lowered his gun and crossed the street.

The drunk sat down on the edge of the moonlit strip that had become a harsh stage light. Willy squinted to make out the man’s face.

“He was surely going to shoot you,” Willy said. “Never fired my gun at anybody before. But I had no choice. It all happened so fast.”

The drunk looked up.

“Willy,” Ian Wells muttered, “as your lawyer, I hope you have a permit for that thing.”

The moonlight strip had slid farther up the street. Willy had returned the handgun to his pocket. The scene was so surreal, and Ian’s head so muddled, that he had to keep looking at his client to stay grounded.

“I always do my prep up here,” Willy was saying. “This alley, it’s perfect. And it’s only a block from the apartment I gave you the directions for, straight up the street. I figured I’d wait for you here.”

Ian nodded silently.

“So why were those guys coming for you?” Willy asked.

Ian shrugged. “Maybe a mugging. Maybe an angry client put them up to it. Trying to intimidate me.”

“Got somebody in mind?”

Ian nodded again.

“Hey, if this guy’s after you, you think it’s a good idea to go home?”

Ian’s thoughts were hard to assemble. What if he was being followed? He didn’t want to draw anybody to his mom’s place where he was staying. “You got somewhere I can sleep tonight?” he asked.

Willy ran a hand through his long, unruly hair. “Not where I stay, man. I sleep in a corner of a living room, but there are four of us as it is.”

Ian didn’t think he could drive just yet. “It’s okay. Maybe I’ll find a hotel downtown.”

“That’s silly, man,” Willy said. “Pay two hundred bucks for a few hours’ sleep? Hey, I’ve got a buddy in my acting group who’s got a place on Medicine Lake. His parents’ place, actually. They’re gone now. He told me I could crash there if I wanted to. It’d be safe. His parents are out of town and won’t be back till July.”

“Any chance you could drive me?”

“Not in my car. It broke down yesterday. Told you it wouldn’t have made it to California. I could drive yours, though.”

“Flat tire.”

“I’ll help you change it. Where is it?”

“A few blocks from here.”

Willy reached down to help Ian to his feet. Their slow walk to the car took fifteen minutes at a pace Ian could manage. When they arrived, the street around the Camry was silent. Ian popped the trunk.

In the middle of the empty trunk was the cardboard box with a red X on top. Ian looked up at Willy at his side, then took the box out and set it on the back seat while Willy began wrestling the jack from the trunk.

Nearly an hour later they pulled up a long gravel driveway leading to a two-story house surrounded by trees. The drifting moon cast sparkles over the surface of Medicine Lake, partly visible down a slope below. Willy got out and retrieved a key from under a rock near the front door.

“Bedrooms are upstairs,” Willy said.

Ian retrieved the box from the back seat and thanked him. “You take the car. I’ll call tomorrow about getting it back.”

Willy drove away as Ian unlocked the door and made his way upstairs, settling for the first bedroom he could find.

He didn’t bother to remove the covers or his clothes. Setting the box on a side table, he lay down, thankful that at least the spinning was gone.

He wanted to reach out to Brook. Or Katie. To confide in somebody. Get help sorting through everything.

But he shouldn’t, not yet. It could get either one of them in trouble. He should stick with the plan he’d made earlier, when he was thinking clearly. Meet with Callahan. Talk to Harry about how to drop the case. Return the money—or hang on to it and go to the prosecutors. Harry would help him figure it out.

He’d help figure it all out, including how to protect Mom.

He closed his eyes.

Dreams, schemes, money machines, in pieces on the ground. Connor . . . Dad. What in the world did you do? How could you drag the family into such a mess?

His surrender to sleep was laced with images of his dad before the fireplace, his mother confessing to her dead husband in the hallway, Brook’s disappointed eyes at Kieran’s, and a cameo of an Irish setter barking incessantly at an orange harvest moon.