We had left Highway 52 and were now on Highway 61, still heading south. The city of Red Wing was receding in the rearview mirror. On our right was a cyclone fence that was both long and high, with the top curved inward to deter people from climbing over it. On the other side of the fence was a series of Romanesque buildings that reminded me of the kind of English boarding school that you only see in the movies.
“What is this place?” Erin asked.
“Minnesota Correctional Facility, mostly for juveniles and a few adults the system still believes it can save.”
“Maybe we should stop and I could check in, save everyone a lot of trouble.”
“You’re determined to be a pessimist, aren’t you?”
“I was still heavily in debt, McKenzie…”
* * *
Averill had paid Christine nearly $65,000, but she hadn’t used it all to pay down her student loans as she had originally planned. Instead, she bought a car and upgraded her wardrobe and moved to a better apartment. As a result, she still owed well over $50,000, and because of the apartment and car, she also had a higher overhead than when she started. After a few weeks, she decided to return to the house on Sheridan Road. She was welcomed there; Averill had sung her praises to his friends. Dates were arranged. Christine didn’t enjoy them nearly as much as she had enjoyed her time with Averill, though. Most of the men were more sexually aggressive than he had been. One in particular—his name was Len Grollman—had all but raped her. Afterward, he told Christine how much fun he had and said he hoped that they could do it again sometime. The contents of the envelope he gave her did little to assuage her anger. Or her despondency. The evening with Grollman made it clear to her what she had become.
The rational part of Christine’s mind told her to quit, told her that a lot of people had student loans and got by just fine. It told her to concentrate on her daytime job, make more of an effort, work herself up into a management position. But the dark side that she had tapped into when she returned to Sheridan Road after Averill’s death wouldn’t allow it. It was as if she were trying to punish herself. How else could she explain why she had subjected herself to a second date with Grollman, one that had left her both physically bruised and emotionally shaken? It might have been role-playing for him, yet it was real enough to Christine.
That’s when Carson Brazill approached her.
He was older than Christine by about fifteen years, which made him young compared to the men she had been seeing. Plus, he had an easy charm; there was nothing desperate about him, which was something else that was new to her. He asked if she had ever considered a life of luxury and deceit. It was an old Rodney Dangerfield line, something from one of his movies, and there was a time when it would have made her laugh. Only now she didn’t think it was particularly funny and told him so. Brazill said that was the response he was looking for. He said he knew about her relationship with Averill Naylor and with the other men she met on Sheridan Road; he said he knew everything about her, which Christine discovered weeks later to be untrue. He didn’t know her real name, for example. Christine asked him what he wanted. He said he needed a partner. Five hundred dollars an hour, she said. Not that kind of partner, he said. What, then?
“Lenny Grollman—we’re going to fuck him up.”
Christine liked that idea very much and asked him what he had in mind. Brazill told her she merely had to endure one more rendezvous with Grollman, only this time there would be audio, there would be video. Blackmail, she guessed. In a manner of speaking, he said. What was in it for her? Ten thousand dollars. Again her rational mind tried to warn her, telling Christine that ignoring whatever else she had been doing up till then, this was a real crime; she would be a real criminal. Looking back later, she was shocked by how quickly she said, “Okay.”
The last time Christine saw Grollman in person was when he was leaving a hotel room with a tourist’s view of Grant Park. He was upset that Christine wouldn’t stop weeping after he took her and said he didn’t think this relationship would work out; she didn’t have the proper attitude. She would, however, see Grollman’s photograph in the newspapers and his image on TV in the coming weeks as an alleged sex scandal forced him from his position on the Cook County Board of Commissioners—Christine hadn’t even known he was a commissioner. The sex scandal was “alleged” because it was something that anonymous sources whispered to the media; no details and no names were reported except for the name of the hotel on Michigan Avenue where Grollman’s assignations were supposed to have occurred. Certainly Grollman didn’t explain his abrupt resignation except to say that he wanted to spend more time with his family.
A short time later, the Board of Commissioners approved a real estate development along the North Shore by a head count of nine to eight. Grollman’s replacement had cast the deciding vote. On a previous ballot, Grollman had voted against the development.
Shortly after that, Brazill approached Christine again, this time with a small bag filled with the promised $10,000 in cash and a job offer.
* * *
“Have you ever heard of Murder Incorporated, McKenzie?” Erin asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you know that it was an enforcement arm for organized crime in the thirties and forties. How it worked—if a boss needed someone killed in, say, St. Louis, he would contact the Commission in New York. If the Commission approved, Murder Incorporated would be given the contract. It would send a hit team to St. Louis to execute the contract while making sure that there was little or no collateral damage to both civilians and the local police. The killers were paid a regular salary as well as an average fee of $1,000 to $5,000 per killing. Their families also received monetary benefits. If the killers were caught, the mob would hire the best lawyers for their defense. Murder Incorporated killed a couple of thousand people before it was finally exposed.
“I learned during my meeting with Carson that he was a dues-paying member of the Outfit and that the Outfit had been so delighted with how well he had handled the Grollman situation that they agreed to let Carson assemble and manage Blackmail Incorporated—that’s what I called it. I don’t think it had a real name. Instead of killing their opponents, the Outfit tasked the group with finding nonlethal methods to compromise them—to get them to see things their way, if you know what I mean. Either that or frame them for some misdeed or another that would render them powerless to oppose the Outfit’s plans, whatever they might be. Carson wanted me to join his team. At the time, I was also so pleased with what had happened to Grollman that I said yes.”
* * *
Christine was surprised at how much fun it was, especially in the beginning. Typically the marks they targeted were smart—politicians, prosecutors, police officers, businessmen and women, journalists, even clergymen. Many of them also had people around who were looking out for their interests. That meant, for the most part, they were not susceptible to something simple like the badger game; they were not going to allow themselves to be lured into a motel-room tryst and then extorted. Only the long con would do, and that required preparation and research—something that Christine had always excelled at, one of the reasons she had become an economist. Blackmail Incorporated would scrutinize their targets with great intensity to learn their weaknesses, and then she and Brazill would create a character to exploit them that Christine would invariably play.
* * *
“I doubt Meryl Streep or Cate Blanchett ever prepared for a role as meticulously as I did,” Erin said.
* * *
Each role Christine performed was different because each mark was different. Yet they were all based on real people. If the character needed to be well versed in anthropology to appeal to the mark, Blackmail Incorporated would scour the alumni records of various colleges and universities until they found a woman with a degree in anthropology who fit Christine’s general age and appearance, and Christine would then claim that identity for her own. If a mark or one of his people checked with the school, the school would say yes, of course, Ms. So-and-So graduated on a certain date with a bachelor’s and/or master’s degree in such-and-such. More often than not, that was as far as the background searches would go, the marks deciding if one thing was true, then all of Christine’s story must be true. If they did look further, at her job or family history, for example, Blackmail Incorporated would have salted the internet with enough social media evidence to cover that as well.
For the duration of the con, Christine would become a different person—a New England Brahmin, Southern Belle, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, California Golden Girl, soft or hard, flirtatious or shy, pious maiden or promiscuous minx. It distracted her from what she had become so drearily, a woman without illusions.
* * *
“Should I tell you the secret, McKenzie?” Erin asked. “The secret is that you never, ever approach the mark. You make the mark approach you. You make it seem as if it’s all his or her idea. That’s how I justified myself. If the marks had kept their distance, if they had just said no, nothing bad would have happened to them. I told myself they had brought the misery on themselves—like I had.”
“You said you hit rock bottom.”
“I didn’t have an epiphany, if that’s what you mean. There wasn’t a specific moment when I saw myself for what I was and vowed to change my life. It was more like a general ache, a kind of throbbing pain that filled all of my days when I wasn’t working, when I wasn’t pretending to be someone else. I kept replaying the scene where Averill’s granddaughter thanked me for bringing happiness into his life. I hadn’t brought a moment of joy to anyone else since, not even to myself, and it was eating me alive. McKenzie, I lived in the gutter for so long …
“Finally, one morning, I got into my car, my rental car—we were working a mark in Raleigh, North Carolina, of all places. I got into the car and drove away. I didn’t tell anyone; I left no notes. Carson must have thought the mark had made me and took steps to protect himself. That gave me some extra time. I knew Carson would come after me when he discovered the truth.”
“He said you have something that belongs to him.”
“I’m sure he sees it that way, but the thing is—we were skimming, McKenzie. The Outfit would ask us to compromise a mark in order to convince him to appoint a certain person to a certain commission or support a specific candidate for sheriff or drop charges against one of its people or, I don’t know, plant a story in the Chicago Sun-Times; something like that. But we also took money. The Outfit didn’t know about that, though, the money. We had kept it all to ourselves. When I left, I took half of the cash we had collected, $680,000 and change. If I had known Carson was going to be such a prick about it, I would have taken it all.”
I pulled the cell phone and battery from my pocket and gave them to Erin.
“Put that back together,” I said.
“McKenzie…”
“You can make sure the GPS is turned off, but I need the phone.”
“Why?”
“Because I can never remember anyone’s number, that’s why.”
Erin did what I asked. I took the phone, unlocked it with my thumb, and scrolled to my phone contact information. I tapped the icon for her business because Nina often leaves her cell in her bag when she was working. A woman’s voice said, “Rickie’s, how may I help you?” I recognized the voice.
“Jenness,” I said, “this is McKenzie. Let me speak to the boss.”
Half a minute later, Nina said, “Are you all right? I’ve been trying to reach you, but your phone keeps sending me to voice mail.”
“I’m fine. Why have you been trying to reach me?”
“You have that sound in your voice.”
“What sound?”
“That serious sound you get when you think I might be in trouble.”
“Why were you trying to reach me?” I repeated.
“You told me this morning that you were being followed, remember? Well, there’s a man sitting at the bar nursing a Heineken. All he’s been doing for the past thirty minutes is watching the door—and me.”
“Describe him.”
She did. It was the wool coat that clinched it.
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. Don’t go near him, and don’t leave the club.”
“Are you coming over?”
“No. I’m too far away and heading in the opposite direction. I’ll send somebody else.”
“Who?”
“You’ll know him when you see him.”
“McKenzie, should I be afraid?”
“No. The man in the wool coat is there to frighten me.”
After saying good-bye, I ended the call and used my thumb to find another contact on my phone list. I tapped his icon. He answered after two rings.
“McKenzie, what?” Herzog said.
“Nina’s at Rickie’s. So is Levi Chandler.”
“’Kay.”
“Herzy?” I said.
He was already gone. I returned the cell to Erin, who promptly took the battery out.
“We could go back,” she said.
“We will go back, just not right now.”
“If they’re threatening Nina—I don’t want anyone hurt because of me.”
My inner voice knew the truth. If it comes down to a choice between Nina and Erin, that’s a trade we’ll make in a heartbeat. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.
“Finish your story,” I said aloud.
* * *
Christine went on the run. It wasn’t a particularly difficult thing to do if you knew how. After all, there’s a reason why the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list hardly ever changes.
Christine knew you never tried to fake your own death. They had a name for that—pseudocide—and it brought out cops and volunteers and dogs and news crews and helicopters and questions about your remains. Faking sent up emergency flares.
She knew that you never tried to create a false identity, either. It might work for the short term, the length of a long con, for example. Yet it would never fool the cops, FBI, or customs agents. And if you shelled out the bucks for a black-market special complete with Social Security number, you might find yourself buying someone else’s bad debts and arrest record. Not to mention that the black-marketer probably sold the same ID to a dozen other people as well.
Instead, Christine knew that to disappear successfully, you needed to diminish the shadow you cast. You kept your identity, but you hid your location. You melted into the crowd—no sports leagues, no social clubs or networks, no Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, nothing that said, “Look at me.” You never snuck home to try to reclaim some of what you left behind. You never Googled yourself to learn what people were saying about you. You never visited the sites where information about missing persons was stored, because cops and skip tracers could be waiting to capture your IP address and trace your location …
* * *
“Oops,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s how Brazill must have found me. I looked up Christine Olson on the missing persons page of the Illinois State Police website.”
“I asked you not to research me, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“But you did it anyway. You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Now I feel bad.”
“I hope you do.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Damn, McKenzie…”
“The pics that were posted on the website—they weren’t of you.”
“Carson must have provided them. He doesn’t want anyone to find me but him.”
* * *
Christine had a plan. It involved leaving bread crumbs for Brazill to follow. She would make a phone call from Nashville, six months later send an email from Oklahoma City, and six months after that accidentally bump into a member of the Outfit she knew in Dallas. Slowly, meticulously, she led Brazill across the country. Finally she made it known that Christine Olson was working in a restaurant in Sierra Vista, New Mexico.
* * *
“Best salsa I ever had,” Erin said. “The owners of the restaurant made it themselves. I stole the recipe.”
“Of course you did,” I said.
* * *
By the time Brazill and his people arrived in Sierra Vista, however—poof—Chrstine had disappeared, leaving evidence that she had managed to cross the border into Mexico. That’s where the trail went cold until some self-important kibitzer decided to play detective.
* * *
“I said I was sorry. Besides, if you hadn’t used the name when you went to visit John Ripley from Central Valley International, I wouldn’t have even thought of Googling Christine Olson.”
“Nonetheless…”
* * *
Erin Peterson moved to Minnesota because the Outfit had no presence there; it was highly unlikely that she would ever encounter someone who knew her from her previous life. It was difficult at first because she had lived so long under the name Christine Olson that sometimes she didn’t respond to her own.
* * *
“Erin Peterson is your real name?” I said.
“Yes. I was born and raised in Naperville, Illinois. You can look it up. I was able to use my own birth certificate, my own Social Security number, and my own passport again. But just to be sure I was safe, I adopted the identity of a woman who majored in horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. She left after her junior year, so I had to as well.”
“She went back and finished her degree.”
“Good for her. But you see why I manipulated the facts the way I did. I had to salt my personal story with enough information that if anyone had checked, they would think I was her. It’s also the reason I invented Salsa Girl. This way the real Erin Peterson could hide in plain sight.”
* * *
So far, so good. Except it would be difficult for Erin Peterson who had a degree in economics from Northwestern to get a job while pretending to be Erin Peterson who had an incomplete degree in horticulture from Wisconsin. Fortunately, Erin Peterson had a plan fueled by her ability to create fact from fiction, a recipe for the best salsa she had ever eaten, and well over half a million dollars in cash.
Using the skills she had mastered as Christine Olson, she made herself familiar at the clubs and social meccas where Minnesota’s elite gathered. Eventually she identified the perfect mark—Randy Bignell-Sax. He thought he was smart but wasn’t, thought he was irresistible to women, which was also untrue, and was needy because his family had turned off the money tap.
* * *
“I lucked out with him,” Erin said. “At least I thought I did. Randy was a ditz, but he had an important name, one that nobody would question. He was also easy to manipulate. I pretended to give him the money that he pretended to loan me, and I used it to create the first production plant that made my salsa. I put his name on the building so his parents would be proud. When my salsa started selling, I pretended to pay off the loan. In exchange for his assistance, I gave Randy ten percent of the net profits. That guaranteed he would keep my secret; the man needed the money. Plus there was the fear of being arrested for aiding and abetting money laundering and tax evasion. The fact that he was able to help me gain access to Minnesota Foods was a bonus.”
“You were convinced that you had control of him, but Randy thought, because he knew some of your secrets, that he had control of you.”
“I realize that now. It’s what convinced the soulless prick that he could use my business to move his heroin, which impelled me to seek help from you, which brought me to this sorry state. Damn. So close to the finish line. But McKenzie, you need to know, everything that I did—this was all before I met Ian. He doesn’t know anything about it. I don’t want you to think that he was somehow involved. You can’t let him be involved.”
Me? my inner voice said.
“You told a convincing story about selling your salsa at farmers markets,” I said aloud. “Everyone believed it, including Ian.”
“Remember what I said about branding? What’s funny, I’ll meet people today who will tell me that they remember buying jars of my product on the Nicollet Mall. One woman told me that as much as she liked my salsa now, she claimed it tasted better when I was selling it in Madison. She said it was because I was using Wisconsin tomatoes back then instead of tomatoes grown in Minnesota.
“McKenzie, I don’t want to give all this up. I love being Salsa Girl. I love … from the day I said good-bye to Christine Olson until now, I have tried to live a life that would make up for the life I lived before. I don’t mean just giving money to charity. I mean trying to be kind, trying to be—I don’t know how to say it. The statute of limitations ran out a long time ago on all of my past crimes, my sins. I was hoping that meant now I could be the person I’ve always wanted to be, the person my parents raised me to be. If you can help me, please help me. If you can’t—I have everything I need to disappear again in my trunk. I can drop you off and … before, I was running toward something, though. I didn’t know what exactly, but I know now. I was trying to reclaim my humanity. But if I take off again I wouldn’t be running toward anything. I’d just be running from, with nowhere to go.”
“Is that what you think we’re doing?” I asked. “Running away?”
“What are we doing?”
“Position analysis. It’s a chess term. Right now we’re studying the board. We’re comparing our material to theirs, noting the position of the kings and the activity of the pieces, determining who controls the diagonals and the center, clarifying how much space we have to move in, who has the stronger pawn structure—all of which goes into determining not only what’s the best play for us but also for our competitors.”
Erin stared at me for a few beats as if I were speaking gibberish, which, let’s face it, I mostly was.
“You’re having fun, aren’t you?” she said. “This is some sort of game you’re playing.”
“Erin…”
“You like this. You like danger. It’s what you do instead of drugs.”
“If that’s what you think, you misjudge me.”
“What should I think?”
“You should be thinking about what our next move is going to be.”
Erin stared some more.
“Please tell me that you play chess better than you play poker,” she said.
* * *
The Anderson House in Wabasha, Minnesota, was built in 1850, so of course it was supposed to be haunted. Its most famous spirit was named Sarah. It was said that she committed suicide in the hotel because of her despair when she was told that her husband had been killed in a steamboat accident on the Mississippi River—which turned out not to be true, by the way. Apparently she didn’t hold that mistake against the living, though. The proprietor of the hotel says that she has remained quite friendly over the decades, often leaving the staff dime tips to express her appreciation for how well the hotel is being run.
I stopped the Solara on West Main Street in front of the hotel.
“Do you have something in mind?” Erin asked.
“Our opening move.”
“Is this going to be a thing—you talking in chess terms?”
“Come along, Mrs. Dyson.”
“Do you want me to get the suitcases?”
“Just the gym bag.”
“I’m going to need more than that.”
“No, Erin. We’re not staying.”
“We’re not?”
“Hell, no. The place is crawling with ghosts.”
* * *
I used my fake ID to register. The woman at the desk put us in the Queen Suite, which gave us a nice view of the river as well as the Wabasha-Nelson Bridge that spanned it, connecting Minnesota with Wisconsin. I sat on the bed. Erin removed her black fleece jacket, sat in a rocking chair, and watched me.
“Who’s Nick Dyson?” she asked.
“A real jerk.”
“So I’m married to a jerk, then?”
I retrieved my cell and its battery from my pocket and put them together again. Erin didn’t say a word when I made a production out of activating the GPS function. I called Nina.
“Hey, you,” she said.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
“What’s going on?”
“Herzy’s here. We’ve been talking about old movies.”
“Ask him if he’s seen The Magnificent Seven.”
“Herzy, McKenzie wants to know if you’ve seen The Magnificent Seven.”
Nina must have raised her phone to catch his voice, because Herzog sounded a long way off.
“Fuck ’im,” he said.
“Did you catch that?” Nina asked.
“I did. What about Levi Chandler?”
“He left a long time ago. Actually, he took off a minute after Herzy walked through the door. I watched him drive away.”
“Good.”
“You have that sound in your voice again.”
“Yeah, about that. I don’t want you going anywhere near the condo tonight. Stay with Bobby and Shelby instead.”
“All right.”
“And don’t leave Rickie’s until Greg Schroeder and his people get there.”
“It is serious, isn’t it?”
“We’ll see.”
“All right.”
“Nina, you’re amazing. How can you just say ‘all right’? How can you not ask me where I am or what’s going on?”
“Herzy has already told me some of it. I believe if you had the time, you would tell me the rest. This isn’t—what is it you guys like to say? This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“I’ll explain it all the first chance I get.”
“I’ll be waiting. Tell me one thing, though. Is Salsa Girl with you?”
“Yes.”
Nina hesitated before she said, “Be careful. Both of you.”
I ended the call and pressed the icon for another number. While it rang, I said, “Nina wants us to be careful.”
Erin chuckled.
“She didn’t mean it that way,” I added.
“Then she truly is amazing. McKenzie, you can’t put her in danger because of me.”
“Oh, I won’t.”
Erin looked as if she believed me.
Shelby Dunston answered the phone.
“Hi, sweetie,” I said. “Is Bobby around?”
“What? You can’t talk to me?”
“I’m sending Nina to stay with you tonight. She’ll be accompanied by a battalion of armed guards.”
“See? Was that so hard? Hang on a sec.”
A moment later, Bobby Dunston was on the phone. Unlike Nina, he asked, “What’s going on?”
I gave him a much-abbreviated version of the story.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Nothing yet, but with a little luck I’m going to help you cure your heroin epidemic.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Is Erin Peterson with you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her to be careful, too.”
I ended the call and started another.
“Bobby also wants us to be careful,” I said.
Erin nodded.
The cell rang three times before it was answered.
“Greg Schroeder,” a voice said.
“This is McKenzie. I’m sorry to bother you at home.”
“What do you need?”
I would never take on a bodyguard gig, I told myself. It required that you set aside the idea that your life was more important than someone else’s; that you made yourself willing to get hurt, perhaps even killed, to protect a client. I could see myself doing it for Nina without hesitation. And Erica. And Victoria and Katie and Shelby Dunston. I would even do it for Bobby, although it would piss him off immensely. But no one else. Greg Schroeder, on the other hand, was the consummate professional. He would do it on principle alone.
I told Greg what I wanted. I told him why. He asked me where Nina was. I told him.
“I’ll take care of her,” he said.
“Greg—”
“Nothing will happen to her that doesn’t happen to me first.”
“I like the way you think, but that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say that Herzog is watching over her now.”
“The bruiser that hangs with Chopper Coleman? Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll have my people approach him with caution.”
“Thank you, Greg. I appreciate this.”
“Yeah, well, wait until you get my bill.”
I ended the call, turned off the phone, and removed the battery yet again. I put both in my pocket. Erin was still watching me from the rocking chair.
“You realize, of course, that Carson Brazill is not a stupid man,” she said. “You could argue that he taught me everything I know. What’s more, he has multiple resources at his disposal.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he and his people should be here in roughly ninety minutes.”
“What time is it now?”
Erin answered without looking at her watch. “Nearly four.”
“Plenty of time.”
“For what?”
“To grab something to eat and do a little shopping.” I gestured at my clothes. “This is all I have.”
“And then what?”
“In chess, they call this a silent move, a move that has a dramatic tactical effect but doesn’t actually attack or capture an enemy piece.”
“God help me.”
Erin closed her eyes and began rocking more aggressively in her chair.
“This is all on me,” she said. “I suppose I need to take whatever happens.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said.
“If you say so. McKenzie, ever since giving up Christine Olson I’ve worked very hard at trying to be a good person. I try not to lose my temper. I try not to swear. I try not to raise my voice, even. Only after everything that’s happened today…”
“Go ’head.”
“Goddamn motherfuck sonuvabitch!”
I waited for more, but that was all Erin gave me.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Not really, no.”
* * *
Wabasha had been the setting for the film Grumpy Old Men, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Several scenes took place in Slippery’s near the river. Except when we entered the place, we discovered that while the movie retained its name, actually filming took place in the Half Time Rec, a bar in St. Paul. Oh, well. Slippery’s served a decent walleye sandwich, anyway.
It was while we were eating that I explained my strategy.
“I’d argue with you,” Erin said, “but at the moment I don’t have a viable alternative.”
“All we need to do is convince them that they’re smarter than we are.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Actually, we need them to think that they’re smarter than I am. They already know you would never make a mistake like the one I made, using a GPS-activated cell phone to make a call from what they probably already know is a hotel in Wabasha. They’ll think I’m the weak link. That’ll be important later.”
“Why do we need to let them chase us around, though? And I’m begging you, McKenzie, don’t answer in a chess term.”
“We’re working a short con here. That’s more your business than mine; at least it was your business. Erin, what was the most important thing you looked for in a victim?”
“The men who were easiest to con were those whose emotional needs were closest to the surface, the ones who weren’t afraid to tell you how much they loved their wives and kids and grandkids and”—she was looking at me now—“their girlfriends. Those men weren’t thinking about whether or not they were being scammed. They were thinking, Here’s a fix for my problems.”
“Why men?”
“Despite what you might have heard, men are more emotional than women. They’re grandiose and full of ego. Most are driven by insecurity and a general feeling of inferiority.”
“And if I was frightened as well? If I had just escaped the bad men by the proverbial skin of my teeth?”
“Carson would think that you’ll be easy to crush or kill—those are the terms con men use for closing the deal, by the way. Although in this case, they could be literal.”
“So Brazill needs to see me being frightened.”
“I get it, McKenzie. I just don’t like it. I’m hoping we’re not making a blunder.”
“Ahh, good one.”
“What?”
“Blunder—in chess, that’s what they call a very bad move.”
* * *
At five thirty we were sitting in the Solara parked on the opposite side of West Main Street and facing the Anderson House. The sun was still high in the sky but did not reach us where we sat beneath the Wabasha-Nelson Bridge. It was cold, yet I didn’t start the car or its heater. Salsa Girl moved restlessly against the passenger seat, clinging to herself in an effort to keep warm. Either that or she was nervous. I leaned against the door and stared straight ahead.
Unnecessary complexity as well as inattention to detail has ruined many a good plan. So I was careful to keep mine both simple and straightforward. First, I slowly drove the downtown Wabasha streets, taking note of high-traffic areas, pedestrians, the location of stoplights and how they were timed. I was particularly intrigued by the bridge that connected Wabasha, Minnesota, with Nelson, Wisconsin. It did not end at the river’s shore as expected but instead continued for several blocks, spanning the downtown area until it finally reached 4th Grant Boulevard and the sports fields beyond. What’s more, its entrance and exit ramps were flanked by high concrete walls, so it was not only impossible to view traffic on the bridge unless you were actually crossing it, you couldn’t see beyond the bridge while you were driving next to it. If I could lure Brazill and his boys onto the bridge, they wouldn’t be able to stop or turn around. They’d be trapped until they reached the far bank.
Highway 61 was on the other side of the sports fields. It was easy to see cars heading in that direction. If they didn’t see me, if they were sure I wasn’t headed that way, they might assume I was trying to escape to Wisconsin. Meanwhile, I could continue to follow 4th Grant to Allegheny Avenue, hang a left, and head back toward downtown. Allegheny was more like an alley than a street. A quick right, though, would put me in an actual alley that ended at the back of a Catholic church complete with steeple. There were plenty of places to hide a car back there.
If that didn’t work—Plan B. A couple of quick turns would put me on Hiawatha Drive that led directly to City Hall and the Wabasha Police Department. I figured if the boys were reluctant to shoot at us in Prospect Park, they’d be even less inclined to resort to violence in a cop-shop parking lot.
And then what? my inner voice asked.
Geezus, do I have to think of everything?
Finally, a black Nissan Maxima pulled to a stop directly in front of the hotel. I gave Erin a nudge, but she had already spotted it.
“You were right,” she said. “They must have plowed the Acura into another car when they were chasing us in Prospect Park, or they wouldn’t be driving something else now.”
Brazill and Chandler emerged through the front doors of the Maxima, and the two henchmen slipped out of the back doors. Brazill stretched. Chandler examined the street. There were plenty of cars parked there but none that interested him, including ours. He gestured at one of the henchmen to watch the hotel doors. Afterward, he, Brazill, and the second henchman entered the hotel.
“They’ll go to the front desk,” I said. “They’ll ask for my room. The woman will say that no one by the name of Rushmore McKenzie has checked in. They’ll try Christine Olson. No, the clerk will say, not her, either. How about Erin Peterson? By now the clerk will become anxious. She’ll start wondering who these guys are. She’ll ask them what they want. The boys might give her a convincing answer, but I doubt it. More likely they’ll resort to describing us, describing me and an attractive blonde who’s five-six and weighs about a hundred and thirty pounds…”
“One-twenty,” Erin said.
“Forgive me. There’s a small chance that the clerk might give us up—that she might say something about a man and woman checking in earlier, except that the woman had red hair instead of blond. I doubt it, though. Instead, she’ll probably point out that the hotel guarantees privacy to its guests and ask Brazill and the boys to leave. They’ll think about going over the desk, grabbing the clerk, grabbing the registration information off the computer. But Chandler has already proven himself to be a cool customer. He’ll thank the clerk for her courtesy and make the others back off, thinking he can stake out the hotel and wait for us to appear. They’ll leave the hotel—wait. Here they come. Get down.”
Erin slipped off the seat and sat on the floor of the Solara, her head well below the windows. I started the car and drove down the street. I slowed when I reached the hotel, an expression of astonishment on my face. Brazill was the first one to see me. He pointed.
Astonishment gave way to an expression of fear; at least I hoped it did. I dropped the transmission into first gear and stomped on the accelerator. Tires spun as I launched the Solara down West Main Street. I tried to make them squeal as I turned the corner onto Bridge Avenue.
I shot down the street, driving the two long blocks until I reached 4th Grant. I forced myself to slow down so that the Nissan had time to fall in behind me. I needed the driver to see me turning left onto the boulevard. I punched it again, driving another two long blocks past the bridge entrance ramp to Allegheny Avenue. I hung another left and then a right into the alley that led to the church.
I was sure that the passengers in the Maxima could not have seen me. I was equally sure that they would see the empty streets around the sports fields, realize that I was not heading toward the highway, and decide that there was no smart place for me to go except onto the bridge.
I stopped in the alley behind a large white garage and turned off the engine. From where we were parked, we could see two side streets. Nothing moved on them for five minutes. Wabasha was a small town; I was convinced that if the Maxima were still in it I would have known by now.
I started the car, pulled out of the alley, and headed for Highway 61. Erin crawled back onto the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt.
“Where are we going now?” she asked.
“Pipestone.”
“Isn’t Pipestone way on the other side of the state?”
“Southwestern corner.”
“Okay, next question—why Pipestone?”
“Because it is on the other side of the state and because there’s a place called Lange’s Café that bakes the best pie I’ve ever eaten.”
* * *
Lange’s Café was one of the few places still open when we reached Pipestone four and a half hours later. Not that it was busy; only one booth was occupied when Erin and I rolled in. The place prided itself on never once locking its door in nearly sixty years. It also prided itself on its sour cream raisin pie, which had been featured on NPR’s The Splendid Table, among other places. Unfortunately, they were all out by the time we arrived, so I had to settle for Dutch apple. Erin inhaled a pecan pie à la mode, and I asked her if she was sure she weighed only 120 pounds. She gave me a look that suggested my life was in jeopardy, so I let it slide.
A half hour later, we drove to the Calumet Inn, one of the other few places open in Pipestone at 10:30 P.M., and checked in under the names Nick and Nora Dyson, using my fake IDs and credit cards. If things went sideways, I knew that Erin would need hers.
Like the Anderson House, the Calumet Inn was built in the nineteenth century and was supposed to be haunted. Each of the rooms had an evocative name like Sherwood Forest and Eden, except for 308. That’s where Charlie, the most celebrated of the resident ghosts, was supposed to reside. We were registered to Summertime. It featured a lot of Victorian furniture including a single queen-sized bed. Neither of us remarked on it while we unpacked.
Afterward, we retired to the Calumet Lounge on the hotel’s ground floor. The décor was pretty grand if you viewed it from a distance—ornate wooden bar, large windows, tin ceiling, brick walls. Up close it seemed middle-aged, like most of its customers, with no new work done for years, only maintenance. It was doing good business. There were plenty of Saturday night carousers, men and women, many divorced, not so much attempting to relive their youth as escape what they did with it.
We sat at a table next to a window with a good view of the Pipestone County Museum and shared a paper boat of free popcorn. I had ale. Salsa Girl drank bourbon. I told her that I’d never seen her drink anything but bourbon.
“I was never a white wine kind of girl,” she said. “What does Nina drink?”
“When she drinks, she’ll have something sweet like a Bailey’s or the adult milkshakes they serve at Ward 6 in St. Paul. She’s developed a deep fondness for the hard ciders that she discovered when we were in England, but they’re tough to get here in the U.S.”
We didn’t have much to say to each other after that. I had no idea what Erin was thinking. I was thinking about Sunday.
We finished our drinks and returned to the room. After locking the door, I propped a wooden desk chair against its handle. I moved another chair, this one with deep mohair upholstery and soft arms, so that it was facing the door. I pulled the nine-millimeter Taurus out of the gym bag and checked the load.
“You take the bed,” I said.
Erin stared at the gun in my hand.
“Are you sure?” she said.
“I’m sure.”
We took turns using the bathroom to get ready. Finally the lights were extinguished. Erin settled under the sheets of the bed, and I made myself comfortable in the chair. Ten minutes passed before she spoke.
“Your shoulder must be killing you.”
“It’s not too bad.”
“McKenzie, you’re welcome to join me.”
“Who would like that less, I wonder, Nina or Ian?”
“Just because we’re in the same bed doesn’t mean something has to happen.”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”
“What now?”
“Something the Reverend Billy Graham used to say.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ll quote Bobby Dunston, then—be careful.”
Erin chuckled at that. A few minutes later, she spoke again.
“Are you ever afraid?”
“Frequently.”
“I was never afraid. Not even when I was letting Carson chase me across the country. Yet I am now.”
“That’s because you have so much more to lose.”
“Ian—I love him more than I have words to say.”
“Is that why you’ve never told him, because you didn’t have the words?”
“How could I tell him one thing without telling him all the rest?”
I didn’t have an answer to that, so I said, “Good night, Erin.”
“Good night, McKenzie. Thank you for being my friend.”