“Depends on how you look at it. Mom…”
“No, Erica, listen. McKenzie’s going to be fine. They’ll probably bring him out of the coma before you even get to the New Orleans airport so hold off on buying a plane ticket. Besides, you have finals coming up…”
“Next week.”
“Hold off. I’ll talk to the doctor today and then we’ll know what’s going on. I’ll call you back then.”
“Mom…”
“It’s silly for you to come all the way up here, maybe compromise your studies, just to watch McKenzie walk out of the hospital.”
“Will he walk out of the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise,” Nina said.
Was that so hard? her inner voice asked.
Erica paused before responding.
“Okay, I’ll hold off until I hear from you. Mom, who shot him?”
“Who knows?”
* * *
Roger Hodapp knocked on the doorframe of the cubbyhole Bobby called an office on the second floor of the James S. Griffin Building and leaned against it, his arms folded, as if he had just dropped by to say hello. He was dressed as befitting a Deputy Chief of the St. Paul Police Department charged with overseeing the Major Crimes Division, which included Family and Sexual Violence, Property Crimes, Homicide and Robbery, Special Investigations, Gangs, Narcotics, and Vice—crisp white shirt and blue tie, matching blue slacks and blue jacket, a gold badge glimmering off his right pocket, bars recognizing his commendations for valor and merit pinned above his left, and a single gold star fixed to each shoulder. The sight caused Bobby to wonder who he was going to have lunch with that day.
“McKenzie,” Hodapp said. “Any news on his condition?”
“They put him in an induced coma to rest his heart and his brain”—Hodapp grinned at the word “brain”—“other than that, the doctor told his wife that he’s going to be fine.”
“Do we believe the doctor?”
“No reason not to,” Bobby said.
“I was the sergeant he called when he pulled the pin to take the price on Teachwell, remember? How long ago was that now? Ten years at least.”
“Yes, sir,” Bobby said.
“Back when we were both working out of Central.”
“I remember.”
“Do you remember what I said at the time?”
“You said that you always knew McKenzie was a dumb ass.”
“Yet he’s been very helpful to us since he put on the cape and became Batman and no matter what I or anyone else thinks about his early retirement—he’s one of us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is the sixth shooting in St. Paul this month. Add that to the homicide up in Frogtown last week…”
“The suspect has already been arraigned.”
“And biker gang activity on the East Side last night. How’s the bouncer by the way?”
“Torn cornea. Both he and the bar owner have received threatening phone calls telling them not to cooperate with the police. They are cooperating, though, and so are a surprising number of the bar’s patrons. Apparently, starting a fight in the Haven was a serious breach of biker protocol. We’ve already identified three of the assailants, including the one who waved his piece in the air and threatened to shoot up the place.”
“My point being, the damn media has been calling it a crime wave. A columnist writing for the Pioneer Press this morning claimed the Saintly City was becoming Satan City.”
“Newspapers are declining; anything to build circulation.”
“It’s just that we don’t want it to look as if you are giving McKenzie’s shooting higher priority than all the others. You know what I mean by we?”
“Yes, sir.”
“’Course, what you do during your spare time … I don’t need to tell you any of this, though, do I? Not really why I came down here. I came down to tell you—put one of your people on the case. Don’t investigate it yourself. It’s like what they say about doctors treating family members or lawyers defending their loved ones. Sometimes their judgment gets clouded despite their best intentions. Bobby, I speak from personal experience. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
Hodapp pushed himself upright and made to leave.
“Anything you need, you tell me,” he said.
“Thank you, Chief.”
“For what?”
* * *
Riley Brodin-Mulally wore prescription reading glasses even though she was only twenty-eight years old. She claimed that all the computer, tablet, and cell phone screens she had been forced to read off of in the past few years had trashed her eyesight. She had requested that her employees and business associates send her printed reports, but that had proved to be largely impractical although word had spread—if you want to get on the boss’s good side …
Riley was reading a printed report sent to her by the new director of Muehlenhaus Industries Agriculture Division when Mary Pat Brodin-Mulally walked into the dining room.
“More coffee?” Mary Pat asked.
“Thank you,” Riley said.
Mary Pat filled Riley’s mug before setting the coffeepot on a warmer mounted near the center of the dining-room table.
“What has you so apprehensive?” she asked.
“What makes you think I’m apprehensive?”
“The way your brow furrows when something bothers you.”
“We have far too many cows.”
Mary Pat sat across the table and started paging through the morning newspaper that a maid had left there for her to read. The brilliant green emerald set in a white gold band on the ring finger of her left hand gleamed under the chandelier.
“We?” she said.
Riley pointed at Mary Pat, pointed at herself, then waved her hand back and forth a few times, the emerald in her identical ring also catching the light.
“Yes, we,” she said. “This report details the current and projected size of our livestock operation excluding dairy and poultry. Our position in cattle and calves is up two percent since last year. It makes sense, of course. Americans today are consuming more beef than ever before, forget all that talk about the environment and the demand for plant-based burgers and steaks.”
“In that case, don’t we want a lot of cows?”
“The problem—do you really want to hear this?”
“Whatever causes your brow to furrow causes my brow to furrow.”
“The problem—we need to go back to 2014. U.S. cattle inventories had reached a six-decade low because of years of record-breaking drought. As a result, beef prices skyrocketed and consumers started switching from hamburgers and steaks to chicken fingers and pork chops. As a result, fewer cows were being slaughtered and fewer cow skins were made available to the leather industry for making hats, coats, gloves, whatever. As a result, leather prices reached an all-time high. Too high. It caused designers to switch from real leather to much cheaper synthetic substitutes. As a result, they became so good at producing synthetic leather products that today most people can’t tell the difference. One of the ironies of an interconnected economy—what you eat for lunch actually affecting what your shoes are made of.
“Eventually, the drought subsided and the cattle industry came roaring back. As a result, there is now an overabundance of cow skins on the market. However, the demand for leather hasn’t come back in the same way. Companies that switched to artificial leather when the prices were high have no incentive to switch back now that they’re low. Even at today’s rock-bottom prices, fewer companies are willing to pay for real leather hides.”
“As a result…” Mary Pat said.
“The U.S. leather industry might all but disappear within a decade.”
“Does Muehlenhaus Industries have a presence in the leather industry?”
“Not directly. However, if it disappears, we’ll not only be losing on
e of our revenue streams, the sale of cowhides after we slaughter our beef, we’ll be forced to take on the added expense of disposing of all those cowhides. I had hoped that an increasing demand for leather goods from the ever-growing middle class in China might offset our losses, but the on-again, off-again trade war and tariffs have decreased the export of hides to China by over thirty-five percent. As a result, prices for their leather goods are increasing. If there’s no end to it, I predict that designers over there will do the same thing as designers over here—find a more predictable alternative. What is causing my brow to furrow, as you say, is that the report doesn’t address any of that. I’m going to have to ask our new ag man why it doesn’t address any of that.”
“Are you telling me that all this about the leather industry, that’s off the top of your head?”
“It’s not like I think about it every day.”
Mary Pat smiled as she continued to page through the newspaper.
Riley removed her glasses, turned the report upside down, and pushed it away.
“I’m boring you,” she said.
“No. Well, yes. That’s not why I’m smiling, though. I was just thinking—The Muehlenhaus Girl. Remember when they called you that?”
“They still do.”
“They thought your grandfather was insane when he put you in charge of the family’s sprawling business empire…”
“They still do,” Riley repeated.
“They didn’t know what your grandfather knew, what I know, what everyone who does business with you learns sooner or later—you’re kind of a genius.”
“Hardly.” But now Riley was also smiling. “Come to Minneapolis with me.”
“To do what? Watch you move pieces around a chess board?”
“At least meet me for dinner. We’ll stay over at the apartment tonight; catch a play at the Guthrie.”
“What’s on stage?”
“Who cares as long as we get some us time.”
“I can’t,” Mary Pat said. “As much as I’m tempted—we’re in the process of opening the patio, the deck; giving customers access to our docks. The weather has improved so much that boat traffic on Lake Minnetonka is really starting to ramp up. Casa del Lago does nearly seventy percent of its business between May and October, you know that.”
“I’ll buy your restaurant. I’ll give you a million dollars. Then all you’ll have to do is hang out with me.”
“One million is a little low.”
“Five million.”
Mary Pat pointed an index finger at Riley.
“Write up a purchase agreement,” she said.
“Seriously?”
“No.”
“Two years we’ve been married and you’re already tired of me.”
“Oh, God, no.”
“I was joking…”
“Look at this.”
Mary Pat left her chair and circled the table, folding the newspaper as she went. She sat in front of Riley, who was quickly donning her reading glasses.
“What am I looking at?” she asked.
“It’s McKenzie. He’s been shot.”
* * *
Dr. Lillian Linder entered the waiting area outside the SICU and walked to where Nina was sitting. She was dressed in fresh scrubs, her clean hair pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes bright and rested, and Nina thought, What a bitch.
“Have you been here all night?” Lilly asked.
“No.”
At the same time, Nina’s inner voice said, I went home because there was nothing I could do. But you? Why weren’t you here all night? You’re McKenzie’s friend. You’re my friend. You said so yourself. She knew she was being unreasonable. Still …
“You’re dressed in the same clothes,” Lilly said.
Nina looked down at herself, wondering how that happened.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Lilly asked.
“More than enough.”
“Where’s your friend?”
“Shelby’s taking care of her girls.”
“Nina, go home and take care of yourself. McKenzie’s not going anywhere.”
“You said you were going to bring him out of his coma today.”
Lilly sat next to Nina and patted her hand.
“No, I said we might bring him out today,” she said. “People don’t always respond the same way to the procedure. Most of the time we’ll put a patient into an induced coma for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Sometimes it’ll take a little longer than that. We might wait three days to see how the cardiac arrest affected the brain. In McKenzie’s case, he’s always been a contrary SOB. I’d like to wait until at least tomorrow morning before making a decision.”
“Tomorrow morning? Why?”
“McKenzie’s brain is healing,” Lilly said. “The swelling is down. Just not down as much as we’d like to see.”
“You said he was going to be all right.”
“He will be, but we need to give him time. The man was shot. The bullet lodged very near his heart; there was a lot of damage. Nina, it seems like a long time to us, but he’s been here for less than twelve hours.”
“You said…”
“I simply want to give it another day or two, give McKenzie’s heart and his brain more time to reboot, more time to rest. My greatest fear is another SCA.”
“Sudden cardiac arrest,” Nina said.
“If it happens again—even if we’re able to bring him back, it won’t do his heart or his brain any good.”
“I understand.”
Lilly patted Nina’s hand some more.
“He’s going to be fine,” she said.
“Do you promise?”
“Go home. Get some sleep. If there’s any change, I’ll call you.”
Nina gathered her belongings and stood. So did Lilly. Nina pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder.
“I trust you, Dr. Linder,” she said.
Except what Lilly heard was, “I’m holding you responsible.”
“Thank you,” she said just the same.
“Can I see him before I go?” Nina asked.
“Of course.”
A few moments later, the two women were standing outside my room, the sliding glass wall between us.
“He looks so pale,” Nina said.
Lilly gestured at the monitor above my head.
“Pulse, respiration, all within acceptable parameters,” she said.
“Acceptable,” Nina repeated.
“The EEG, electroencephalography, that’s the blue lines on the monitor. It records electrical patterns in the brain. The waves you see, that’s good. That’s a good sign.”
“When McKenzie’s in a coma like this, can he dream?”
“Oh, yeah.”
* * *
Okay, I’m going to tell you about my dreams now. Is there anything more boring? It’s like a guy coming up to you and saying, “I’m going to tell you a fantastic story about something that never happened and doesn’t have a point.” Why would you listen to that if you weren’t being paid? In any case, I promise that this has nothing to do with the narrative. It’s what Elmore Leonard called “Hooptedoodle.” Feel free to skip ahead.
What happened is that after I was shot, I slipped into a kind of netherworld where I couldn’t differentiate between what was real and what was not. There was plenty that was real, too; plenty of times when I was aware of what was happening around me—the bright lights, noises from machines and people, nurses speaking in hushed tones like they were afraid of waking me, Dr. Lillian Linder. I knew her going back to when I was with the SPPD. She was very smart and I liked very smart women. ’Course, I had always been ambitious. I remembered calling to her, only she didn’t hear me. Instead, Lilly boarded the Green Line, the train that ran between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis, and I never saw her again.
She was replaced by a man in a white coat who looked a lot like Gert Fröbe, the actor who played Goldfinger in the James Bond movie. He was keeping m
e prisoner; chained to a metal table. There was a laser above the table and Gert would turn it on so he could slice me in half and I’d say, “Do you expect me to talk?” and Gert would say, “No, Mr. McKenzie. I expect you to die.” Over and over and over and over and over again. And I’d scream at him—“Fuck you, Gert!”—over and over and over and over and over again. Which is a sign of insanity, isn’t it? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Except, in my case, I didn’t die. Which was the outcome I was hoping for, so …
I was told later that the brain is always grasping for narrative, for understanding, even in a mostly unconscious state. In my long, rambling dream the narrative was my many attempts to escape, to get off that damn table. Sometimes I’d free myself and walk into Target Field and watch the Twins play baseball and never lose or find myself in a jazz club—never Rickie’s; it was always a huge club and I was always alone and Ella would be singing to me, or Louis, or Coltrane playing sax, or Hampton on vibes, or sometimes it was Nina sitting at her Steinway, the piano I bought her, playing soft and low and singing, “Summertime and the living is easy…” Sometimes I’d free myself and turn the laser on Gert and his henchmen, but that was never particularly satisfying and I’d see myself standing in the corner watching me attacking Gert and muttering, “C’mon, man. You can do better.” Mostly, though, I’d be lying on the metal table staring up at the laser and thinking, “Nah, uh-uh, not this time, bitch.”
I just thought you ought to know.
FIVE
Bobby paced in front of the conference-room table where Jean Shipman and Mason Gafford were sitting. Both of the detectives thought he looked tired yet neither was foolish enough to mention it.
Bobby carefully set a flash drive in front of Shipman.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Video of McKenzie being shot taken from the security cameras at RT’s Basement.”
Bobby didn’t ask Shipman why she didn’t get the video herself, yet she heard the question just the same.
“The club owner said he didn’t have security cameras,” Shipman said.
“A witness lying to the police, imagine that.”
What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel Page 6