“No, but … he’s not actually a pervert,” the woman said. “Well, he is a pervert, but not a dangerous one.”
“They say they’re not looking for my stash,” Kline told the woman.
“Then they must not be,” she said. “The police never lie. It would be against their ethics.”
“You’re my witness,” Kline said to her. Then, to Lucas and Del, “You can come in, but you can’t search the place.”
“Okay, I’m your witness,” the woman said, and went on her way.
“Good-bye,” Lucas said, and she twiddled her fingers over her shoulder, but didn’t look back.
KLINE’S APARTMENT stank of tomato-based food-like products, ramen noodles, pepperoni, and maybe some spilled Two-Buck Chuck with an underlying whiff of ganj. Two wooden chairs faced each other across a tiny table in the compact kitchen; in the living room, a couch faced a huge television that was wired into three different game systems, the consoles of which sat on a plywood coffee table; and straight through, they could see the foot of an unmade bed.
Kline flopped full-length on the couch and said, “So, get the kitchen chairs.”
Del picked them up, handed one to Lucas, and they put them in the living room facing the couch, their backs to the TV, and Lucas asked, “Did you steal twenty-two million dollars from an account at Polaris National Bank through a back door you put into the system before you were fired?”
Kline looked from Lucas to Del and back, then said, “Noooo … Do they think I did?”
“Some of them do,” Lucas said.
“That’s right, blame it on the handicapped guy,” Kline said. Then, in what seemed a genuine question, “They lost twenty-two mil?”
“They didn’t exactly lose it,” Del said. “Somebody took it. We thought maybe it was you.”
“I confess, Ossifer, it was me,” Kline said. He waved his arm at his living quarters. “The first thing I did when I got the money is, I went out and rented this beautiful apartment, so I could live a life of leisure and luxury with a lot of high-price hookers.”
“If you didn’t do it, who did?” Lucas asked.
Kline pushed himself up, looked under the coffee table, came up with a pack of cigarettes and a Bic lighter, lit one, and blew smoke. “Good question. I mean, I didn’t do it, so it must be somebody else. But they’re all so fuckin’ straight … on the surface, anyway. I suspect Angela … have you met her?”
“No.”
“Blond chick, big headlights.” He cupped his hands on his chest, to indicate the size of the headlights. “One of the analysts down there. I suspect her of being a secret rubber freak. She denies it. Anyway, I don’t know who would take it. The money. I sort of can’t believe that anybody did. If somebody did, of the people who work down there, or used to work down there, it’d most likely be … me. That’s who I’d suspect. But let me tell you a secret: their security isn’t as good as it looks. You’ve got the cameras and the doors and all that, but if you’ve got administrator’s status, you can actually get in from a couple of places around the building. Did they tell you that?”
“Yeah, but we’ve got a pro checking it out, and it doesn’t look like that to her,” Lucas said. He hadn’t known about the other entries, and that worried him. “It looks like it took a pretty heavy programmer, who really knew the system. This wasn’t some casual hack from a secretary who took a college course in C.”
“Her?” Kline blew more smoke. “Would I know her? Your pro?”
Lucas said, “Ingrid—”
“ICE. Well, well.” Kline blew more smoke, and then laughed up at the ceiling. “They let little ICE into the security section, huh? Fuckin’ morons. They’ll be missing a lot more than twenty-two million before she gets out of there. She’s not gonna build in a back door, she’s gonna build in a fucking Holland Tunnel. How’d you ever hook up with a crook like ICE?”
“She used to work for me,” Lucas said.
“Oh, yeah,” Kline said. He shook a finger at Lucas. “Now I know the name. Davenport Simulations, right? Nice little gig. I heard you were a cop. Okay, I want to get really clear with you. A: I didn’t do it. Didn’t build a back door, didn’t take any money out. B: I don’t know who did it, but I find it hard to believe that it was one of my former associates, may their treacherous little souls burn in hell, anyway. C: I really need to light up a fatty, so if you guys are done…”
“I understand you’ve been a little depressed, from time to time,” Lucas said.
“No, I’ve been a lot depressed,” Kline snapped. “It’s not what you think it is. It’s not being bummed out. It’s…”
“I know what it is,” Lucas said.
“Ah.” Something softened in Kline’s face. “Well then, you know like Snoop says, I need my medicine.”
They worked him for a while, recycling the same questions, looking for holes, pushing him on other suspects. “So where’re you working now?” Lucas eventually asked.
Kline said, “Same ol’ same ol’. Hennepin National Bank, doing the same old shit.”
“They took you after you were fired by Polaris?” Lucas asked, surprised.
“I wasn’t fired. I resigned, with a good recommendation,” Kline said.
“And if they hadn’t let you do that, you would have shit in their revolving door,” Del said.
Kline smiled. “So you heard that, huh? I thought it was colorful.”
TWENTY MINUTES later, they were back out on the street, walking past the mystery bookstore. Del said, “The guy is unhinged. But I think he might know something about the money.”
“Yeah. He was a little too unconfused about the questions,” Lucas said. “I’m gonna get Jenkins and Shrake over here. Keep an eye on him for a few hours. Let’s just sit for a while, see if he moves.”
They found a no-parking zone where they could watch both of the building’s exits. They were still watching, an hour and a half later, when Jenkins and Shrake pulled up behind them. Lucas got out of the Porsche and went and sat in Jenkins’s backseat.
“We got a photo, but we can’t find a car,” Shrake said. “He must either borrow one, or get around on buses. So what are we looking for, other than time and a half?”
Lucas told them, and gave them a thorough description to go with the photo: “Figure out where he goes, if anywhere. We need to know who he talks to, and where. You’ve got the camera?”
“Yeah.” Jenkins held up a compact camera with a super-telephoto.
“If he meets somebody, when they split, make sure you get the other guy’s license tag or take him home, or something. If Kline is on foot, maybe one of you can follow him on foot.”
“We can do that,” Jenkins said. “By the way, Shaffer says he’s calling his whole crew in. They’ll be meeting in a bit. You’re invited.”
WHEN LUCAS AND DEL got to the BCA, the meeting was over. Lucas stopped at Shaffer’s office, intending to fill him in on the morning’s developments, and was told by another cop that Shaffer had gone to Sunnie Software, where the DEA accountants were still at work, and planned to go to Polaris after that.
Lucas walked back to his office and found Martínez sitting outside the door. Shaffer had told her that Lucas was on his way in, and she’d decided to wait. “I hoped to speak with you.”
“Sure, but I’ve got to make a phone call. Come on in.”
She took a visitor’s chair, and he settled behind his desk, got Shaffer’s phone number, and when Shaffer came on, filled him in. At the end, he said, “It could be a wild-goose chase, but Shrake and Jenkins weren’t doing much anyway, they’re not real churchy, so they’ll tag him around for a while.”
“That’s fine,” Shaffer said. “And you think Kline knows something that we don’t?”
“Yeah, I do. I don’t know what, or how much,” Lucas said. “It’s also possible that he suspects a particular person, and maybe’s gonna ask for a piece of the action. I was told that he’s too lazy to steal, so … take it for what it’s worth.”
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When he got off, Martínez said, “My superior wishes that I stay here until we can send David’s body back to Mexico, and to come to the meetings in his place so I can relay the news back home. If that is okay. I am a certified police officer.”
“I don’t think anybody will have a problem with that,” Lucas said.
“You have been making progress, but I understand from this morning’s meeting that Agent Shaffer has not,” she said.
She already knew about the back door at Polaris, but not about Kline. He filled in what she hadn’t overheard in the phone conversation, then said, “It could be a complete waste of time. This guy is a slacker…. You know slacker…?”
“Yes, I know this,” she said.
“He’s a slacker and a depressive and he apparently smokes a lot of dope and doesn’t care who knows about it. He says this theft is way too ambitious for him, and I halfway believe him. But he’s all we’ve got, at the moment.”
“Okay,” she said, and stood up. “So now I go see your medical inspector, and they will tell me about the autopsy. You will call me if something happens?”
“Absolutely,” Lucas said.
HE CALLED ICE, who told him she couldn’t talk for a couple minutes. “I’m right in the middle of something. Call you back in three minutes.”
He looked at his watch, and again five minutes later when she called. “What I was right in the middle of, was a bunch of bank systems security people. The thing is, we cleared out the problems in the main system, and now that they’ve seen it, the security people can take care of the backups.”
“So you’re done there?”
“Pretty much. But you’ve got these accountants here, the DEA people?”
“What about them?” Lucas asked.
“Once we broke through on the back door, and the booby traps, I let the Polaris security people take it, and I started looking around the system. The thing is, I isolated at least some of the wire numbers where the thieves sent the money. The last of it went out three days ago, and it went to four different accounts in four different banks, all of it to either the east or west coasts, the big cities, LA, New York, Philadelphia. I don’t know where it went from there.”
“So get the DEA guys on it.”
“I told them, but that’s not what they’re here for,” ICE said. “They’re hot on the trail of this drug money, the big money, and they don’t give a rat’s ass about your twenty-two million. They say they do, but they don’t. You need to get your own people over here, or Bone’s people, or somebody, if you want to start running down where this money went, and who’s got it, and who’s going to get killed next.”
“Yes,” Lucas said. “That’s what I need to do.”
He called Shaffer, and Shaffer exploded and said, “Those fuckin’ feds … All right, I’ll get somebody there. I’ll get Specs over there.”
“Tell him to talk to Bone. Bone will help.”
“Listen, I heard two minutes ago—I swear to God, two minutes—the Roseville cops got the shooters’ SUV up at the Rosedale parking lot. I don’t think they’re shopping, I think they went there to get a new ride. I’m going up there. What about you? Heard anything back from Shrake and Jenkins?”
“No. They’re pretty good about updating me, so I suspect Kline is still holed up in his apartment.”
“Okay. I’m outa here,” Shaffer said. But just before he hung up, he said, “Things are moving.”
“Yeah, they are,” Lucas said.
MARTÍNEZ TALKED to the Big Voice a few minutes after she left Lucas’s office. She had known him when she was a child, and though his name was Sebastian, she’d always called him Sebas as a kid, and still did. “I think the money is gone,” she told him.
“Tell me why,” he said.
She explained about the DEA accountants and the two teams, one following the shooters and the stolen money, the other going after the main accounts where they’d been sending money for three years. “They know it is going through Sunnie, but they haven’t found the pathway yet. They will, it’s a matter of time. So, that is finished.”
“They won’t get the main money. It’s filtered three times, and then it goes poof, and disappears,” the Big Voice said. “The money stolen, this is a shame. I’ll talk to Javier, but I think you’re correct. It’s gone.”
“So, will you call back the children?”
“I’ll talk to Javier,” the Big Voice said. “To tell the truth, I think that since we’ve already made so much noise, it would not hurt to make a little more. To send the message. Also, this Kline. If there’s any chance…”
“They would have to be very careful. I know he is being watched,” she said.
“We will think about it,” the Big Voice said.
“So that’s up to you … and Javier,” Martínez said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Come back with the body. But be careful, Ana. This killing of Rivera, this was brilliant but dangerous. It frightens me. If we cut the money loose, there is no reason to stay.”
“Okay. I will go to these morning meetings, to hear what I can, and when they release Rivera’s body, I’ll come with it. You do want me to continue to work with the Federales?”
“I believe so. I will talk with Javier about this, also. If you wish to get out, we will consider it—this would not be a bad time to go, after Rivera’s death. You could claim that you are too frightened to continue.”
“I prefer to stay,” Martínez said. “A small raise would not be unwelcome.”
The Big Voice laughed and said, “Perhaps a big raise. I will talk with Javier.”
SHRAKE CALLED Lucas a half hour after he talked to Shaffer and said, “Our boy’s on the street. He’s on foot, and Jenkins is tagging him. We’ll keep you up.”
He called back twenty minutes later and said, “He took a bus, and he just dragged his sorry ass into Hennepin National.”
“Didn’t talk to anyone?”
“Not unless the other guy was on the bus,” Shrake said.
“Wonder why he’s going in there today?”
“I do not know the answer to that question,” Shrake said. “But it’s a big bank. Maybe they have a Sunday crew?”
“All right. If he’s working, you might as well come back in,” Lucas said. “Pretty much a fool’s errand, anyway. We’re not going to take him like that.”
11
Two days after stealing the car from Ferat Chakkour, Uno abandoned it at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, in the hopes that if Chakkour was reported missing, his car would be found at the airport and the police would assume he was traveling.
After leaving the car in a long-term lot, Uno, wearing a suit and tie, and with a good Mexican passport, made a call to a number given him by Big Voice, then went and stood on the curb in front of the airport baggage claim.
Five minutes later, a Toyota Camry, with a blond man at the wheel, pulled over in front of him, and Uno got in.
The blond man, who had a dragon tattoo on his neck, said nothing at all; he was wearing black wraparound sunglasses, nodded at Uno, and drove out to a pancake house, got out, and walked away. Uno walked around to the driver’s seat, got in, and drove back to the Holiday Inn where they’d been hiding out.
Tres was waiting. He brought the bags out, threw them in the backseat, and they took off. They drove east on I-494, then south on Highway 61 to Newport, then through back streets until the refinery loomed in the windshield. The new house was little more than a cottage, with a one-car garage and a dark picture window looking out at the lawn. They got the garage door opener out of the mailbox and drove into the garage. They had no key, but the garage had a door that opened into the house.
The house was a step down from the last one, with one small television and no cable hookup, empty cupboards, a single bed in a back bedroom—nothing in the other bedroom except some scraps of paper—and a broken-down couch. The place smelled of beer and cigarettes.
They turned the televis
ion on, and found they could get three over-the-air channels pretty well, if they manipulated the rabbit ears. The television was full of talk about two small Mexican men. Uno’s mug shot was there, but Tres was still clear.
Uno said nothing about it, but he was afraid that Tres had become unhinged. He walked around muttering to himself, crossing himself, smiling and waving his arms, talking to unseen saints. He wanted another church, so he could pray, but Uno worried about being seen; when they were in the car, he made Tres slip down in the passenger seat so other drivers wouldn’t see two Mexican men together.
WHEN THEY’D carried their bags inside the new house, Uno took the satellite phone outside, told Big Voice about the problem with Tres. Big Voice asked if Tres was a risk. Uno confessed that he did not know. “He will do his work, but he … I don’t know him anymore. He is a different person. I’m not sure if I can rely on him. He says I can.”
“Watch him. If he endangers you, you may have to settle him,” the Big Voice said. “Do not just leave him, he knows too much about you, and he has seen Martínez.”
Martínez, they’d learned, was the name of the woman who’d saved them from the Federale.
The Big Voice also told them that the trip might be near its end—they should be prepared to run south to the border. “It may be that we’ve lost the money.”
“Very much money,” Uno said.
“Yes, but if it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s no point in crying over spilled milk: No llores por leche derramada.”
AT A LATER phone check, the Big Voice said that one of the thieves may have been identified. He told Uno, “It is possible, likely, that he is being watched by the American police. When you go after him, be very, very careful. Examine the ground, inch by inch. If you see anything, walk away from this man.”
The Big Voice gave him the address, and Jacob Kline’s name.
THEY WENT after him at dark. Spent an hour driving slowly through the streets around Kline’s apartment, looking at every car where a cop might be stationed, checking anyone who seemed to be loitering. After the hour, they decided that if somebody was there, watching, they wouldn’t find them.
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