Live Bait

by PJ Tracy

  ‘I have a present for you.’

  Magozzi’s spirits spread their little wings and tried to flap. ‘You’re not going to Arizona?’

  ‘Sorry, Magozzi. Annie flies in this afternoon, we all leave tomorrow.’

  Splat. Spirits squashed under Grace MacBride’s boot.

  ‘This is a different present.’

  ‘So it’s a going-away present. Goddamnit, Grace, that sucks.’

  ‘You’ll like it. I’ll be there at seven.’

  Magozzi closed his phone and decided that he didn’t give a damn if Grace MacBride went to Arizona or the moon. Gino was right. He needed a life. He needed a woman – preferably one who’d help him buy a sofa. Oh, he’d let her come over tonight, they’d eat a little, drink a little, and maybe he’d even bend her over backwards once and kiss her until her boots blew off, but then, by God, he’d kick her ass out. That’s what he was going to do.

  Gino looked over at him, brows raised. ‘Grace?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Magozzi growled, sounding like a real man, a man who didn’t care, a man who was taking charge. He wondered if the silly grin he felt on his face spoiled the image.

  Harley Davidson was behind the wheel of the custom-built forty-five-foot RV, his beefy, tattooed arms draped over the big steering wheel, his solid frame enveloped in a Connolly leather captain’s chair specifically designed to accommodate his size. It had cost twenty thousand to have the chair made; another thousand to air-express it over from the small Italian furniture company he’d commissioned for the job; another three grand to install the hydraulics. A white grin sliced through his black beard. It had been worth every penny. ‘Goddamnit, I love this thing. I’d drive her to hell and back and be a happy man.’

  The storklike man next to him folded long, scrawny arms over his bony chest and pouted. ‘It’s my turn. I want to drive it. You drove to the airport, I should get to drive back. So pull over.’

  Harley’s eyes darted right – you couldn’t look away from the road too long in this baby or you’d take out a subdivision. Roadrunner was in his customary head-to-toe Lycra, but today it was blaze orange. Harley felt like he was about to talk to a construction cone. ‘Roadrunner, you are never driving this machine. Get it out of your head.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Why not?’

  ‘Well, gee, lemme think. Number one, you do not, and never have had a driver’s license. Number two, the only thing you’ve driven for the past thirty years is a bicycle. The brakes are not on the handlebars in this thing, you dipshit.’

  ‘Would you guys quit fighting?’ Annie drawled petulantly from behind them, and Harley’s gaze jerked to one of the seven mirrors. He had three of them adjusted so he could see three different angles of Annie Belinsky sprawled languidly on one of the couches. She was wearing this skintight fawn-colored suede thing with fringe on the bottom and beads on the top and omigod, cowboy boots with spurs. ‘Christ, Annie, I can almost feel those spurs in my flanks.’

  Annie glared at his back. ‘Imagine that. I’ve only been gone for two weeks, and yet somehow I managed to totally forget what a disgusting pig you are, Harley.’

  ‘He missed you,’ Grace said. She was slouched on the opposite couch, booted feet stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. ‘We all did.’

  Roadrunner spun his chair around and faced Annie. ‘Did you bring me a present?’

  ‘Honey, I sure did. It’s in that little black bag right there.’

  Roadrunner’s face lit up, and he started digging in the bag until he found a tissue-wrapped parcel. He ripped it open and held up a lime green Lycra cowboy shirt, complete with piping on the yoke, mother-of-pearl snaps, and a cow skull appliqué on the pocket. ‘Oh, man, Annie, this is great. Where did you find a Lycra cowboy shirt?’

  ‘Let me tell you, Phoenix is a shopper’s paradise if you’re into the Urban Cowboy look. They put a cactus, a cow skull, or a piece of fringe on damn near anything. That came from a specialty bike shop a few miles out of town.’

  Roadrunner stood up, his head almost brushing the seven-foot ceiling, and peeled off his orange Lycra top.

  Harley glanced at him, then did a double-take. ‘Jesus Christ, Roadrunner, is that your chest or did you swallow a xylophone?’

  ‘A man with boobs your size shouldn’t be criticizing.’

  ‘These are not boobs, they are pecs.’

  Annie put her head in her hands. ‘Are you two going to be like this all the way to Arizona?’

  ‘You should have heard them when they were putting this rig together,’ Grace said. ‘Couple of old bickering hens.’

  Roadrunner was beaming, now newly dressed in his southwestern finery. He posed in his blaze orange stick legs and his lime green shirt. ‘How do I look?’

  Harley glanced at him. ‘Are you kidding? You look like a goddamned carrot.’

  Annie rolled her eyes and looked at Grace. ‘How’d that thing you were working on for Magozzi turn out?’

  ‘Turned out great,’ Harley boomed, loath to be left out of any conversation within shouting distance. ‘Our Gracie cracked the case with that face-recognition software she put together.’

  ‘You go, girl. That thing’s going to make a jillion dollars when you get it down to idiot level and put it on the Web. So what was the case all about?’

  Grace closed her eyes. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘The lady wants to know,’ Harley said. ‘And I’m the man to tell her. You see, Annie, this is the way it went down. First the Nazis killed the Jews, right? So you know what happened right here in our fair city? Three old ass-kicking Jews got themselves a Nazi. Is that righteous, or what?’

  Roadrunner gaped at him. ‘I think that’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard you say.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Harleyey tied a ninety-year-old man to the train tracks so he’d get smushed.’

  Harley shrugged, genuinely baffled. ‘He was a Nazi, for chrissake. What’s your problem?’

  ‘Like most civilized men, Harley, I have this little problem with murder. They should have turned him in, sent him to The Hague. Courts, lawyers, fair trial, does any of this ring a bell? It’s not exactly a new concept . . .’

  ‘Ah, bullshit. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. You don’t believe me? Ask any German and they’ll tell you the same thing.’

  ‘How do you know what the Germans think?’

  ‘Because, Mr Chickenshit I Won’t Fly, I go to Germany at least once a year to buy wine and party with some of the most hospitable people in the world who happen to live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and that’s not even getting into the exceptional quality of their lager, or the cars . . . and those people hate Nazis.’

  Annie leaned across the aisle and whispered to Grace. ‘I am not riding all the way to Arizona with those two madmen.’

  Grace sighed and smiled, totally happy to be right here, listening to Harley and Roadrunner snipe at each other, Annie complaining – the absolute sounds of family, she thought. Sometimes she loved these people so much it hurt. And some days, when she was feeling really good about herself, she felt that way about Magozzi, too.

  Annie was reading her mind again. ‘You’re going to miss Magozzi, aren’t you?’

  ‘He’s a nice man, Annie.’

  ‘He’s a prince,’ Harley bellowed. ‘A hail-fellow-well-met. I love the guy. Every time I see him, I want to kiss him on the lips. How’s the old bastard doing, anyway?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘It’s been a bad week.’ She looked at Annie. ‘There was a shooting last night. All part of the Nazi-Jew thing, I think. He lost a cop, and had to kill a kid.’

  ‘Oh, Lord. Magozzi does dearly hate to kill people. Poor man.’

  Grace nodded. ‘I’m going over to his place tonight. Sort of a bon voyage dinner.’

  ‘You should sleep with him,’ Annie decided. ‘That always makes men feel better.’

  Harley actually turned his head around to look at Grace. ‘Are you kidding me? You have
n’t slept with him yet? I thought this guy was Italian.’

  ‘I think we should paint the name on this bus,’ Roadrunner piped up, changing the subject abruptly.

  ‘This is not a bus, dumbshit, but putting the name on it isn’t a bad idea. I can see it now. “Chariot” in big scripty letters on the front and sides . . .’

  Annie looked appalled. ‘You renamed the company Chariot?’

  ‘No, no, Harley named the bus that isn’t a bus Chariot. He names everything. You want to know what he calls his dick?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘And that’s not what I meant, anyway, Harley. We should paint the name of the company on the bus. Gecko, Incorporated. I see green letters, and maybe the g is a curled-up lizard’s tail.’

  Annie and Grace looked at each other. Harley just dragged a big hand down his face.

  ‘We are not renaming this company after a creepy little reptile,’ Annie said firmly.

  Roadrunner pouted. ‘Well I don’t see any of the rest of you coming up with a new name.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ Grace said quietly, and everyone looked at her. ‘Let’s call it Monkeewrench.’

  No one said anything for a minute.

  ‘That name’s had some pretty bad press, Grace,’ Harley said.

  ‘So has the USA, and nobody suggested changing that name.’

  Annie mulled it over for a bit, then reached over and patted Grace’s knee. ‘I like it,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s who we are.’

  44

  Pleasantly warm days, cool, cool nights. That’s what the Canadian cold front had left behind when it had pushed the storms out of the state last night. By six-thirty the temperature had already dropped to fifty-five degrees, and Magozzi stood on his front porch in a heavy black sweat-shirt, wondering what it would be like to live in a place where the temperature didn’t leap or drop forty degrees in any twenty-four-hour period. Boring, probably. For a lot of Minnesotans, conversation would grind to a halt.

  Bodies sunburned by the weeklong heat wave were encased in sweats and windbreakers as they took their evening jog, or walked tongue-lolling dogs along the sidewalk before hurrying home. There was a stiff, chill wind tonight, and Magozzi could already smell wood smoke rising from nearby chimneys.

  It was a good night for a fire. He’d laid one in his own house earlier, then stood on the empty expanse of carpet in front of the hearth, trying to figure out where he and Grace would sit. He’d remembered to decant the red wine and chill the white, lay the table in the little kitchen, right down to forks, knives and spoons, even though he’d always thought spoons were pretty useless utensils, and then he’d imagined a cozy, languorous evening in front of a roaring fire. The one thing he’d forgotten was that he didn’t have any furniture to speak of, and he had never once seen Grace MacBride sit on the floor. She wouldn’t like that. It would take too long to jump up and shoot somebody if you had to, and Grace spent her life assuming she would have to.

  ‘Let me give you two words,’ Gino had said this afternoon when he’d learned Grace was actually going to visit Magozzi at his house for a change. ‘Bower birds.’

  ‘Thanks, Gino. I’ll cherish those two words forever.’

  ‘Don’t be a wiseass. I’m trying to educate you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The male bower birds – there’s a whole bunch of different kinds – build these elaborate nests on the ground, like little portable caves made out of twigs and branches and vines and shit like that, and then they go find pretty stuff, like flower petals, or sparkly bits of stone, and they scatter that all around so the place looks great. That’s how they attract females. The guy with the prettiest bower wins. Now the unhappy moral of this little story is that, Leo, my friend, you got the ugliest bower in town.’

  Magozzi sighed and looked out over his scabby lawn with the dying spruce, at the single chaise on the porch and the Weber grill with its duct-taped legs. He considered digging around in the dirt for a few sparkly stones, but in the end, he just picked up the roll of duct tape that was still lying next to the grill and went inside. It was the best he could do on short notice.

  At precisely 7 P.M. he opened his front door and looked at Grace MacBride standing on his porch, and felt pretty pleased with himself. He’d gotten her here without a single sparkly stone.

  She was wearing a full-length fringed buckskin coat he’d never seen before over her English riding boots, somehow making the clash of cultures look right. Black hair curling a little over her shoulders, blue eyes smiling at him, even though her mouth wasn’t.

  He took the grocery bag she was holding in one hand, and looked down at the laptop she was carrying in the other. ‘Are we going to play computer games?’

  ‘Later,’ she replied, striding in like she owned the place, taking possession of all the air. ‘I want to give you your present first.’

  He closed the door and faced her in the little foyer, which was fast becoming his favorite room in the house. It had a little table on one wall where he tossed his keys, and he considered it fully furnished.

  Grace set down her laptop, straightened, and gripped the front plackets of the coat, elbows out. ‘Ready, Magozzi?’

  ‘I don’t know. Are you going to flash me?’

  The smile made it down to her mouth as she opened the coat and let it slide to the floor, and in a way, Magozzi thought, she had flashed him. Even in her jeans, boots, and black silk T-shirt, she had to feel naked, because she wasn’t wearing the Sig.

  His eyes darted automatically to her ankle, looking for the derringer she strapped on whenever she didn’t wear the shoulder holster, but it wasn’t there. ‘All right, Grace, where is it?’

  ‘At home in the gun safe. Both of them.’

  ‘You drove all the way over here without a gun?’

  Her eyes sparkled like a kid’s. ‘I did. But oh, Magozzi, I thought I’d die.’

  He was hugging the grocery bag hard, feeling something soft mush between his arms, grinning like a fool. ‘It’s a great present, Grace.’

  ‘I told you you’d like it.’

  Magozzi figured there probably wasn’t another man in the world who would consider it an amazing, hopeful gift when a woman agreed to have dinner with him unarmed, but they just didn’t understand. Grace had just given him a giant step.

  Magozzi poured the wine while Grace unloaded the grocery bag and turned on the oven. He eyed a shallow casserole dish covered with tin foil. ‘That smells fantastic.’

  ‘Beef Wellington.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Magozzi couldn’t remember the exact components of Beef Wellington, but figured it was some kind of hotdish with delusions of grandeur.

  ‘Why don’t you clear a space on the table and plug in my laptop. I’ll show you what I pulled from Morey Gilbert’s computer while we’re waiting for this to heat.’

  Magozzi hesitated, feeling like he’d been suddenly flung into another dimension. Mentally, the case had ended for him the minute he’d fired the first shot at Jeff Montgomery. He’d completely forgotten having Morey’s office computer sent over to Grace.

  Her fingers flew over the keys and pulled up a cartoon fish on a hook, with the legend Go Fish beneath it.

  Magozzi grunted. ‘Lily said he played computer games every night.’

  ‘I had to restore this. Probably Jeff Montgomery tried to wipe it out the day after he killed Morey Gilbert – but it’s not a game.’ Grace clicked the icon, and the page filled with three columns – names in the first, locations in the second, and a date column that was empty. Magozzi scanned the names, but didn’t recognize any of them from the list of victims they’d gotten off the pictures at Ben Schuler’s house. It took him a second to put it together. ‘Jesus. These are the ones they hadn’t hit yet.’

  Grace nodded. ‘That’s what I thought, so I cross-checked with Wiesenthal’s site. We need to send this out, Magozzi. Most of these guys are on their list as unfound.’

  ‘Then how the hel
l did he find them?’

  Grace’s fingers got busy on the keys again. ‘That’s the beauty of it – or the horror, depending on your point of view. I don’t know how he tracked the earlier ones, but the worldwide Web made his job a lot easier.’ What seemed like an endless series of Web-site addresses started to scroll by at high speed. ‘When I checked the logs of all the Web-site visits he deleted, it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Every single one of them was a neo-Nazi or white supremacist site – he spent hours in the chat rooms on those sites, Magozzi, and he posted the same message on all of them.’ She stopped the scrolling on a bold-faced message.

  WARNING! JEWS ARE KILLING OUR BROTHERS! PROTECT YOURSELF!

  Magozzi stared at the message, and then at the e-mail address that Grace was pointing to.

  ‘That was a blind account Morey Gilbert set up – password protected. And there are about a thousand replies on his hard drive. A lot of them are garbage, but some of them are the real thing.’ Grace leaned back in her chair and sighed. ‘They came to him, Magozzi. They read the warning, or someone told them about it, started a correspondence, and the ones who had reason to be scared eventually agreed to a personal meeting with the man they thought could save their lives. It’s all in the e-mails. He set himself up as the bait, and once they took it, he had them.’

  Magozzi rubbed at his forehead with his palm, almost more disturbed by Morey’s systematic stalking of his prey than he had been by the murders themselves. He wondered if his mind would ever be able to put that man, and the philanthropist the city mourned, in the same body.

  ‘Yin and yang,’ Grace said softly, reading his face, seeing his thoughts. ‘There’s some of that in all of us, Magozzi.’ She folded up her laptop, put it aside, and reset the table, giving him time. ‘Food or wine?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Wine.’

  They sat on the top step of the front porch as dusk deepened into twilight, letting the wine stave off the evening chill. Not that Magozzi needed it. Grace’s shoulder was actually touching his, and he didn’t think he’d ever be cold again.

  There were still a few people about in spite of the fading light. One of them paused in the shadows at the edge of Magozzi’s property, catching his eye.