As it turned out, Assistant United States Attorney James Richard Finnegan really did have political aspirations. Who knew?
You could tell by the way he handled the media. Half of the statements released by his office sounded like the opening paragraph of a campaign flyer: The man who smashed an international drug cartel that was bringing heroin into the Twin Cities. The Top Cop who thwarted the plans of an organized crime syndicate that was attempting to expand into Minnesota. The leader of a joint task force consisting of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the St. Paul Police Department Major Crimes Unit that squashed a gang war that had already taken the lives of four young men of Hispanic descent.
Bobby wanted to throw him off the Robert Street Bridge to see if he sank or floated in the river below. Harry was ready to elect him president. And as happy as Chopper was that I had helped him gain a measure of revenge against the people who put him in a wheelchair, he still insisted that I pay for his and Herzog’s dinner. Oh, well.
Still, you had to give Finnegan his props. Everyone went to prison on a potpourri of criminal charges including drug trafficking and distribution, conspiracy, extortion, first degree and second degree murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, assault and battery, even assaulting federal officers. Carson Brazill took the hardest fall, life without parole, mostly because he refused to identify the serious businessmen based in Chicago that he mentioned in the videotape that served as a virtual confession at his trial. The softest tumble went to Randy Bignell-Sax, who drew only twenty-seven months—paroled in eighteen—at the Level 1 minimum-security prison in Lino Lakes, about a forty-minute drive from Cambridge. His family’s exceedingly high-priced attorneys had a lot to do with it by convincing the court that Randy was merely a foolish and hopeless pawn of the drug lords—not a particularly hard stretch when you think of it. But I believe it was Erin Peterson’s impassioned plea for leniency that made the difference.
Salsa Girl was portrayed by Finnegan as a heroic victim who was betrayed by her partner, who nevertheless persisted against terrifying odds to defeat the bad guys, an assertion readily adopted not only by the juries she testified before but also by the media that adored her good looks and humble, innocent, little-girl persona—yes, she had that tool in her Swiss Army knife, too.
Christine Olson was never mentioned, not even by Brazill or Levi Chandler, who more or less adhered to omertà, organized crime’s code of silence.
Which isn’t to say that everything was sunshine and lollipops. Apparently Erin’s business deal with Central Valley International fell through. I say “apparently” because neither John Ripley nor anyone else at CVI would return her calls to make it official. Still, whatever disappointment she felt was short-lived at best, because a few days later, Marilyn Bignell, newly installed chairperson of the board of directors of Minnesota Foods and Bignell Bakeries, announced that the company had successfully concluded negotiations to purchase sixty-five percent of Salsa Girl Salsa with an option to buy the remaining thirty-five percent in three years. Bobby suggested that the deal was sealed when Erin petitioned the court on behalf of Marilyn’s son—and refused to speculate about who might have blown up one of her trucks—but he’s always been cynical like that.
After that, though, Salsa Girl disappeared. I thought she had taken the money and run until she reappeared at a gathering held at Dave Deese’s house holding Ian Gotz’s hand. They had spent about ten days together—they didn’t say where—during which she told Ian exactly who she was and what she had done. Ian’s response was to ask her to marry him.
Alice Pfeifer was to be her maid of honor. She was hoping that Nina and Shelby would agree to be her bridesmaids, a request that was met with much loud squealing—this after the somewhat less than generous things Nina had said about Erin when she saw what Brazill and his minions had done to my face and ribs.
Afterward, Erin spoke to me.
“I don’t have family,” she said. “I’m like you, McKenzie. My friends are my family. I was hoping, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition—would you give me away?”
I was shocked into silence. It was a condition that didn’t go unnoticed.
“Oh my God,” Shelby said. “You’ve left him speechless. I’ve never seen that.”
“McKenzie,” Nina said. “No quips? No witticisms?”
Bobby snapped his fingers at me.
“McKenzie, say something?”
I don’t know how, but I managed to choke out the words. “What are friends for?”