“What happened next?”
“Then he fell against me. Well, not fell. More like he was shoved. I screamed because—I heard the crack and he fell against me and I knew, just knew that he had been shot. I had never seen anything like this before except in the movies, yet I knew. It seemed so clear to me. He fell and I caught him and kinda lowered him to the ground. I screamed because it seemed like the thing to do. I wasn’t afraid. I am now. I can’t stop shaking. But I wasn’t at the time.”
“What happened next?” Gafford repeated.
“A couple of people walked out of the bar and a couple of people walked in. No one bothered to stop and ask what was going on. They must have thought McKenzie was a drunk who passed out or something. It seemed like we were there for a long time although I suppose it was only a couple of minutes before I heard the siren. The cop car siren. All of a sudden the sidewalk was filled with people. One of them called the cop a dirty name. I don’t know why. He was just trying to help.”
Gafford gave Nancy’s hands a shake and stood up.
“You’re a good person,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are what you do and you did good.”
“Should I be honest, Detective Gifford?”
“Gafford.”
“Forgive me. Detective Gafford. I’ll be honest. I came here tonight to get laid. I would have done McKenzie if he had let me, the way he smiled and said, ‘Good evening.’ My husband left me for a sweet young thing that worked as an intern in his office and for the past six months I’ve been sitting around the house feeling sorry for myself, telling myself that I’m old and ugly and no one wants me. Finally, I decided to prove that it wasn’t true. Or maybe that it was. That’s why I came down here. Alone. To Rice Street. I don’t know how I got up the nerve. Then I saw him, McKenzie. I saw him standing outside the club, this good-looking man who smiled and stared at me exactly the way I wanted to be stared at. Now look at me. I look hideous.”
“No, you don’t,” Gafford said.
Nancy’s eyes met his.
“My dress is ruined.”
“Like I said, I know McKenzie. If he pulls through, I’m going to tell him about you. I bet he buys you a new dress.”
“Is he married, do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m not.”
“Ooh.”
* * *
Before he left his house in Merriam Park, Bobby made a phone call. It was received by Nina Truhler. She was sitting behind her desk in her office at Rickie’s, the jazz club she had named after her daughter Erica, and doing something with her computer. She answered the phone without bothering to check the caller ID.
“Rickie’s,” she said.
“Nina, it’s Bobby.”
Something in his voice made her stand up.
“What is it?” she said.
“Hang on to yourself, honey—McKenzie’s been shot.”
“Shot?”
“Yes. He’s…”
“Is he dead?”
“No. No, Nina. He’s going to be fine.”
“Is that a promise?”
“He’s at Regions Hospital. I’m heading over right now.”
“I’ll see you there.”
Nina hung up her phone and stared at it for a few beats before forcing herself to move. Dammit, Nina’s inner voice said. Four months. We’ve been married for four lousy months, not even four months, and he does this to me?
Yet she reserved most of her anger for Bobby.
“You sonuvabitch,” she said aloud. “You didn’t promise.”
* * *
Thaddeus Coleman was an entrepreneur. He was currently managing a ticket-scalping operation out of an office in a converted warehouse with a view of Target Field, where the Twins played baseball in downtown Minneapolis. When I first met him, though, back when I was with the SPPD, Coleman was running a small but lucrative stable of girls around Selby and Western, a neighborhood in St. Paul that used to be rich with prostitution until patrons drifted to the next trendy hot spot. Afterward, he dealt drugs around Fuller and Farrington. Sometimes he sold the real thing; sometimes he passed laundry soap and Alka-Seltzer tablets crushed to resemble rock cocaine to the white suburban kids who drove up in Daddy’s SUV. I busted Coleman for that—representing and selling a controlled substance, whether it’s an actual drug or not, is a felony. Only, the judge threw the case out. I blamed the prosecutor.
While the court might have been lenient with Coleman, though, the Red Dragons not so much. They objected to his activities on what they considered to be their turf, and pumped two rounds into his spine as a way to express their displeasure, thus the wheelchair that he was now sitting in and the nickname he became widely known by—Chopper. I’m the one that scooped him off the sidewalk and got him the medical attention that saved his life. We’ve been friends ever since, even though six weeks after Chopper wheeled himself out of the hospital in a stolen chair, we discovered the bodies of three Red Dragons under the swings at a park near St. Paul College of Technology. We could never prove who did the deed; although the ME reported that the bullet holes had an upward trajectory as if the Dragons were shot by someone who was sitting down. Still, innocent until proven guilty is what the law says.
Chopper was sitting at his desk, and reviewing the latest computer gadgetry that would help him circumvent the online security systems employed by ticket sellers and allow him to buy bundles of the best seats in the house for whatever concerts and sporting events promised him a hefty ROI. His head came up when he heard my name.
“Go back,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Go back, go back.”
Herzog was relaxing in a leather lounger and pointing a remote at a flat-screen TV. He had been channel surfing, one of his favorite occupations, landing on one channel before moving to the next and the next, sometimes watching for a few minutes, sometimes only for a second or two, entertaining himself for hours. Chopper had taught himself to block out the distraction, except he had heard someone say, “McKenzie.”
“Go back,” he said again.
Herzog flicked the channels until he landed on a local TV reporter named Kelly Bressandes who was looking into the lens of a camera as if it were the best friend she ever had. She was wearing a tight sweater so her male audience would know that she had curves. I’d had dealings with her in the past. Believe me, she could be wearing a burlap sack and the world would know that she had curves.
“The third shooting in St. Paul in the past week,” she said. “Rushmore McKenzie remains in critical condition in Regions Hospital. Barry?”
The camera moved from Kelly’s face to that of her co-anchor, who began talking about a health care initiative that was being argued in the state legislature.
“See if he’s on any of the other news programs,” Chopper said.
Herzog switched channels. He found a male anchor who seemed put out by the story he was reporting.
“The shooting remains under investigation,” he said. “It should be noted that this is not the first time that police have been called to the RT’s Basement, located on Rice Street in St. Paul, because of a violent act. Over to you…”
Herzog knew what Chopper was thinking.
“Ain’t none of our business,” he said.
“Shooting remains under investigation means they don’t know who did it.”
“So?”
“We could find out.”
“How we gonna find out?”
“RT’s Basement—who we know down there?”
“C’mon, Chop. We don’t owe McKenzie nothin’.”
“Don’t we?”
“It’s St. Paul, man. That means fucking Bobby Dunston. He’d like t’ put us inside just for the fun of it.”
“He’s McKenzie’s friend.”
“He ain’t ours, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Cops always whining about not gettin’ no cooperation f
rom the African-American community. We just cooperating is all.”
Herzog shook his head and muttered a few obscenities before turning off the flat-screen and climbing out of the chair. He was the largest, hardest man I had ever met in person; you could roller-skate on him. He was also the most dangerous. He had done time for multiple counts of manslaughter, assault, aggravated robbery, and weapons charges, but was working hard to clean up his act. He’d been out on parole for the past four years with one more to go and had been Chopper’s right-hand man ever since they released him from the halfway house. He tolerated me—but just barely—because we both liked baseball and jazz and Chopper, and because I had arranged through Nina to get him and his date the table closest to the stage when Cécile McLorin Salvant sang at Rickie’s.
“Jus’ so you know, I think this is a really bad idea,” he said.
TWO
The Surgical Intensive Care Unit was damn near impossible to reach by a visitor using Regions Hospital’s overly complicated elevator and corridor system. Except Bobby knew a shortcut. He walked into the ground floor emergency entrance, flashed his badge, and announced that he was a commander in the St. Paul Police Department’s Major Crimes Division. Shelby stood by his side as if she had always been there and always would be. They whisked them both up to the third floor in no time.
That’s as far as they were allowed to go, however. A woman, who wore a white linen coat but no scrubs, said I was in surgery. Bobby had questions. Instead of answering them, the woman asked how they were related to me. Bobby showed her his badge. That bought him and Shelby visiting privileges but no answers; they were both escorted to a waiting area. Bobby said he wanted to see someone in authority. The woman said she would contact the surgeon in charge when circumstances permitted, turned, and walked away.
“You should have seen his face,” Shelby told me later. “Most people are afraid of Bobby, but this woman, she was an admin or something—I don’t think she was afraid of God.”
Bobby and Shelby settled in a couple of uncomfortable chairs and stared more or less straight ahead. They didn’t speak.
“What was there to say?” Bobby told me. “Same story, different room.”
I asked them later what they were thinking. Shelby said she was repeating a mantra in her head that she had learned in yoga class in an attempt to remain calm and composed. Bobby said, “I was thinking that you were always doing shit like this, getting in trouble, getting hurt, and I was goddamned tired of it.”
While they waited, Officer Jeremiah Healy appeared.
“Where the hell have you been?” Bobby asked him.
Healy raised a paper cup filled with black coffee and gestured toward the door.
“There’s a machine down the hall,” he said.
“What do you have for me?”
Healy set the coffee down and pulled out a small notebook. Good for you, Bobby thought as Healy started reciting facts—the time he received the call, the time he arrived at the scene, who was present at the scene upon his arrival, how long it took for other officers to arrive, the name of the supervisor who took charge of the scene, and that he had identified the vic by the driver’s license in his wallet, which he surrendered to the supervisor who immediately relayed the information to Major Crimes.
“We thought you’d want to know right away,” Healy said.
“Yes,” Bobby said.
Healy said a plainclothes from the Homicide Unit arrived just as they were loading me into the ambulance, even though the incident was still rated as an aggravated assault, but that he didn’t know who it was.
“I accompanied the vic to the hospital in case he woke up and said something, only he didn’t,” Healy said.
“Okay,” Bobby said.
“That’s him, isn’t it? McKenzie.”
“What do you mean, him?’”
“Everyone in the SPPD knows about McKenzie; I heard about him my first week on the job. How he won the lottery, what is it now? Ten years ago?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Some say that he sold his badge when he quit the cops to collect the reward on an embezzler he collared off the books. Got fifty cents for every dollar he recovered from the insurance company they say, made millions.”
“He didn’t sell his badge.”
“What do you call it?”
“He took an early retirement to help his father out. Unfortunately, his father passed six months later.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You can leave now. I want to see an incident report first thing in the morning.”
Healy glanced at his watch to see how much time he had before his ten-hour shift ended.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
* * *
Detective Jeannie Shipman hated my guts; she especially hated it when I called her Jeannie which I did because she hated my guts. She was “young, beautiful; smart as hell”—at least that’s how Bobby once described her to me, although I could never see it. She had been Bobby’s partner before they made him a lieutenant (all lieutenants were later named commanders, I have no idea what the SPPD was thinking), and remained his cohort of choice on those occasions when he stepped away from his role as a practicing bureaucrat and actually did some investigating. Shelby claimed that we don’t get along because we’re both jealous of each other’s relationship with Bobby, but sometimes she can be overly dramatic.
Shipman traveled to the crime scene because Bobby had said, “Everybody,” and she didn’t want him to think that my getting shot wasn’t worth her undivided attention even though she had way better things to do with her time. The first thing she did was debrief Gafford, who told her that he had been unable to locate a single witness who saw the shooting besides Nancy Moosbrugger. Or at least no witnesses who were willing to discuss the matter with a member of the law enforcement community.
“McKenzie couldn’t get shot in Macalester-Groveland,” Shipman said. “No, it’s gotta be on Rice Street.”
“Well, this part of Rice Street, anyway. The rest of the street isn’t…”
Gafford stopped speaking because of the withering look Shipman gave him, the one that asked, “Are you contradicting me?”
Gafford told Shipman that he had been able to identify the car I drove—a Jeep Cherokee parked up the street. Shipman quickly ordered it towed to the SPPD’s impound lot, where I would eventually need to provide proof of ownership, a valid driver’s license, proof of insurance, and a credit card to pay all towing and storage fees—no personal checks—in order to recover it. Don’t think for a second that the expense and inconvenience it would cause me didn’t cross her mind, either.
Shipman dismissed Gafford and made her way toward RT’s Basement, making sure to step around the bloodstain. While on her way, she was intercepted by a tech working out of the FSU.
“Hey, sexy,” he said.
“Sexy?”
Shipman glanced down at herself almost in self-defense. She was wearing what she nearly always wore on the job, jeans, button-down shirt, and a blazer long enough to conceal the Glock she wore on her hip.
“Everyone knows you’re the best-looking woman on the force,” the tech said.
“Brian, should I bring you up on harassment charges or just shoot you myself?”
The tech raised a clear six-by-nine-inch polyethylene evidence bag with a white write-on area that had already been filled out for Shipman to see. He was smiling like he had the winning ticket for the Daily Three. Shipman stared at the bag. It looked empty to her.
“What am I looking at?” she asked.
“Spent cartridge,” the tech answered.
That’s when Shipman saw the half-inch long brass case resting at the bottom of the bag.
“Thirty-two ACP,” Brian said. “Which means semiautomatic; a wheel gun wouldn’t have tossed it. Which means a pocket gun; the damn thing would fit in the palm of your hand. Which means amateur. I mean think about it. President McKinley was shot twice, once in
the abdomen by a .32, only it wasn’t that bullet that killed him. It was the gangrene.”
“Write it up,” Shipman said.
“What? You’re not going to give me some love, Jean? You guys from homicide, we solve eighty percent of your cases for you yet you never give us any love.”
“Do you know who shot the vic?”
“No, but…”
“Write it up, Brian. And don’t call me Jean.”
* * *
RT’s Basement promoted itself as a no-frills bar and lounge with live music Wednesday through Saturday, the music leaning toward hip-hop and R&B with a smattering of the blues. Shipman stepped inside the joint which, despite its name, was not located in a basement; she didn’t know if it even had a basement. She did see large windows facing the street and plenty of wooden tables, chairs, and booths facing an empty stage with huge speakers mounted on metal stands that were aimed at the tables, chairs, and booths. Most of them were occupied by people who were paying no attention whatsoever to what had been happening just outside the front door or to the flat-screen TVs mounted in the corners broadcasting what looked like post-game interviews with a couple of Los Angeles Lakers basketball players, the Lakers actually a Minneapolis team before it was moved in 1960, thus the name. Some of the people occupying the chairs and tables looked as if they were too young to drive much less drink.
A large black man was standing behind the bar. From his expression, Shipman decided he knew exactly who she was and what she wanted. She walked up to him while pulling a thin leather wallet from her pocket. She opened the wallet and gave the bartender a good look at its contents. Most people were impressed. The bartender glanced at the ID and badge and shook his head.
“Whaddya want?” he asked.
“What’s your name?”
He paused as if he didn’t want to give it out, finally said, “Richard Thomas.”
“Well, Dick…”
It was an old cop trick, using a suspect’s first name. It removes a suspect’s dignity and makes him feel defensive, inferior, and often dependent; it tells a suspect who’s in charge. Thomas had been around long enough to know that, though, and he didn’t let it bother him. It was the “Dick” that he objected to.
What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel Page 2