Madman on a Drum

by David Housewright

  Best keep your wits about you, my inner voice warned.

  After we ordered and before our food arrived, Karen said, “Middleton, DuWayne H., has been in and out of prison most of his life, charged with major felonies that he pleaded down to minor felonies and minor felonies that became misdemeanors. He was released from the level four correctional facility in St. Cloud to his mother’s custody three months ago.”

  “Any connection to Scottie Thomforde?” I asked.

  “Not that I could see. I’m sorry I didn’t think to download DuWayne’s record for you. From what I read, it was always different crimes in different cities at different times, different prisons, different release dates, different parole units. Scottie was in Ramsey County; Middleton is in Hennepin.”

  “And never the twain shall meet?” I asked.

  “Not through the system.”

  “Where can I find DuWayne?”

  Karen gave me an address in North Minneapolis.

  “Swell,” I said. I knew plenty of horror stories about the East Side of St. Paul, only they were like Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales compared to the North Side of Minneapolis. I felt my back tightening in anticipation of a visit; it hurt with every deep breath.

  Breakfast was served; I didn’t give it much attention. Karen attacked her meal with fervor. Good for her, I thought. I hate picky eaters.

  While we ate I reviewed my options. One of them was calling Greg Schroeder and the two of us busting in on DuWayne and putting a gun to his head. It worked with Dogman-G. Except I didn’t want a reprise of what happened in East Bethel. Another option was knocking on his door and asking politely for information. Except what was keeping DuWayne from putting a gun to my head? One shot and he could earn fifty large.

  “You say DuWayne is living with his mother?” I said.

  Karen said that he was in between bites of hash browns.

  “How does it work, probation officers?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can you visit someone else’s… you call them offenders?”

  “What do you have in mind, McKenzie?”

  “I go over there alone, someone is going to get shot. Probably me. But if you go with me—”

  “Wait a minute.” From the expression on her face, Karen knew what I was thinking and the idea didn’t appeal to her at all.

  “We knock on the door all calm and peaceful, you flash your badge—why should there be any trouble? Especially if DuWayne’s mama is there. I mean, you make home visits all the time, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of them end in bloodshed?”

  “None so far, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “All I want to do is talk to the man. Besides, if he is running a contract on me, that’s an illegal activity. Wouldn’t you want to know about that?”

  Karen paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. Slowly she lowered it to her plate and wiped her lips with a napkin.

  “What contract?” she said.

  I explained, making sure not to mention either Pat Beulke or Dogman-G.

  When I finished, she pushed her plate away, folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back in the booth.

  “I’m an officer of the court,” she said.

  “Exactly my point,” I said.

  Karen studied me for a long time. Finally she said, “If I do this, I expect a lot more in return than breakfast.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well,” she said, “maybe my badge will keep us out of trouble.”

  ’Course, it never worked that way when I carried one.

  We drove to a neighborhood on the North Side known as Harrison. It used to be called “Finntown” in deference to the Finnish immigrants who originally settled there. Today it attracted a lot of working poor, including Hmong, Hispanics, and Somalis. Along the way, we passed dozens of abandoned houses with lawns that resembled wheat fields. They were all victims of Minneapolis’s “North Initiative,” a program that was supposed to curtail the area’s rising crime statistics by forcing homeowners to take better care of their property. Dozens of building inspectors had swarmed over the North Side citing residents for everything from flaking garage paint and missing storm windows to worn-out roofs and crumbling driveways. Over twenty thousand citations were issued in the first ten weeks alone—and the inspectors weren’t even close to being finished. Homeowners were told that if they didn’t correct the cited problems immediately, they would face escalating fines (which the politicians claimed only coincidentally added millions of dollars to the city’s general fund). Except many of the residents were minimum-wage workers who couldn’t afford the improvements. Which is why the North Side now had the highest foreclosure rate in the Upper Midwest.

  As for crime—a group of teenagers was congregating on the corner when we turned onto DuWayne Middleton’s street. A kid who was standing apart from the others flashed a signal when he spied the Jeep Cherokee, and the group casually scattered.

  “Did you see that?” Karen said. “That was a drug deal.”

  “I saw it.”

  We drove another half block and parked in front of a house that was in need of fresh paint. The garage needed paint, too, and the asphalt driveway leading to it was crumbling badly; a few bare patches had been covered with plywood. Getting out of the car, I thought about the Kevlar vest in the back. There was just the one, though, and I didn’t think it was fair for me to wear it while Karen went without, so I left it there. And they say chivalry is dead.

  An old, small, thin black woman answered our knock. I said, “Mrs. Middleton—” She started in before I could speak another word.

  “I got the money,” she said.

  “Ma’am…”

  “I got the money, and I already talked to a contractor. Thirty-two hundred, he said. Thirty-two hundred to fix my driveway and the rest— eighteen hundred dollars is going to paint the house and the garage. I hired it done already. You can look at the estimates. I got written estimates, so you ain’t got no business bein’ here. You ain’t got no call to give me no more fines.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “You ain’t turnin’ me outta my house. This is my house. I’m going to live in this house and I’m going to die in this house and then I’m going to haunt whoever lives here next.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  That slowed her down. She examined Karen and me more carefully.

  “You ain’t from the city,” she said. “You ain’t from Regulatory Ser -vices.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  Karen flashed her identification. “I’m with the Minnesota Department of Corrections,” she said.

  “You here to check up on my boy?” Mrs. Middleton said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” She flung open the door and invited us in. “D’Wayneeee,” she called. “Someone to see you.” She pointed us toward a small living room. “He’s watching the TV.”

  DuWayne didn’t look any bigger than a small church; I was impressed that the sofa on which he sat could handle the weight. He was a hard-ass con with a broken nose and scars and prison tatts, eating from a bowl of Cocoa Puffs; the bowl and spoon looked like small and useless things in his hands. He was watching The Price Is Right when we entered the room. He seemed to take no notice of us.

  “Mr. Middleton, I’m with the State Department of Corrections,” Karen said.

  DuWayne didn’t reply.

  “Sir, we would like you to answer a few questions.”

  He still refused to acknowledge our presence, just kept staring ahead, watching his program.

  Screw this, my inner voice said. I stepped directly between DuWayne and his TV. He didn’t seem to notice until I said something that made the lid on his right eye twitch just so: “My name is McKenzie.”

  DuWayne slowly ate a spoonful of cereal, dug into the bowl for another.

  “For a guy who’s paying fifty thousand to see me dead, you don’t s
eem all that concerned that I’m here.” ’Course, one look at his mother’s house and I knew he wasn’t buying the hit. “You’re just another errand boy, aren’t you?”

  “Wha’ you doin’ here?” DuWayne asked before shoveling another spoonful of Puffs into his mouth.

  “Dogman-G sent me.”

  DuWayne stopped chewing for a moment and his eyelid fluttered again. “Dogman,” he muttered quietly.

  He had nothing more to say, so I took the nine-millimeter from its holster, stepped forward, and pressed the muzzle against his knee. Karen hissed as if she were seeing something that alarmed her and said, “McKenzie, stop it.” DuWayne didn’t react at all. I could have been a character on TV for all I frightened him.

  Well, this isn’t going well at all, my inner voice said.

  “Okay, DuWayne, I get it,” I said aloud. “You’re a stand-up guy. I should be embarrassed for even thinking that I could scare you.” DuWayne smiled around a mouthful of Cocoa Puffs. “I was hoping we could do this without involving your mother. Guess I was wrong.”

  “What you talking about?” DuWayne said.

  I spoke to Karen as I slowly backed away from him. “Better call Mrs. Middleton. Tell her to bring a coat. It’s getting chilly outside.” I kept the Beretta in my hand, and from the way DuWayne reacted, I was glad I did.

  “You leave my mother be.” He pointed the spoon at me. I had no doubt he could have dug a hole in my chest with it. In return, I pointed the gun at his chest.

  “I’d love to, DuWayne,” I said. “I really would.”

  “You makin’ me angry. You don’t want me to be angry.”

  I doubt the guy playing the Hulk in the movie could have said it better. Hell, change his complexion and DuWayne could have been the Hulk.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “The money you gave your mother, the five thousand she’s using to fix up her house, it’s marked.”

  That caused both of DuWayne’s eyelids to flutter. “Wha’? Marked?”

  “I’m guessing the five K is a ten percent service fee that the contractor paid you to float the hit on me—ten percent of fifty thousand, that sounds right. It’s part of a million-dollar ransom paid three days ago for the safe return of a twelve-year-old girl who was kidnapped—the daughter of the cop who runs the St. Paul Police Department’s homicide unit, no less. Before the ransom was paid, the FBI marked every single bill. What did he pay you with? Twenties or fifties? I’m guessing the FBI will want to know how your mother got it. And if she says she got it from you…”

  “D’Wayneee,” Mrs. Middleton called from the hallway. I stepped farther away from DuWayne and hid the Beretta behind my back. DuWayne slipped his spoon into the bowl and resumed eating. Mrs. Middleton entered the room. “You want more cereal, hon?” she asked.

  “No, thank you, Ma, I’m good,” DuWayne said.

  Mrs. Middleton looked both Karen and me up and down. She didn’t offer us any Cocoa Puffs.

  “You gonna be here long?” she asked.

  “It’s all right, Ma,” DuWayne said. “We just talkin’. They be leavin’ in a sec.”

  Mrs. Middleton nodded her head and left the room.

  I brought the gun out from behind my back. I didn’t trust DuWayne as far as I could throw him, which admittedly wasn’t very far.

  “You gonna leave my mama be,” DuWayne said.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I won’t hassle you, either. All I want is a name. A location, too, if you have it.”

  “I don’t got neither.”

  “That’s not the answer I wanted to hear.”

  “Lookit. Man comes to me, white man. I ain’t lookin’ for him, he lookin’ for me. He says a mutual friend, man we both know, says I could help ’im. I says help ’im what? He tells me. I says that’s whacked, fifty large. He says he wants to make sure it gets done in a hurry. What am I gonna do, argue with him? He gives me five thousand. In fifties. A packet of fifties.” My fifties, I thought but didn’t say. “So I do what he ax, I spread the word.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I told you, I don’ know his name.”

  “How’s he planning to pay off on the hit?”

  “He hears you’re dead, he contacts me. We work it out. Man’s bein’ real careful.”

  “You don’t even know his name? Or where to find him?”

  “No.”

  “You’re doing all this on the honor system?”

  “He don’ pay off, it gets real unhealthy for him. He know that.”

  “But how can you find him?” Karen asked.

  DuWayne shrugged. “There’s ways,” he said.

  Yeah, there are, my inner voice reminded me.

  “Who’s your mutual friend?” I asked.

  “Wha’ about my mother?”

  “The five thousand dollars that the contractor gave you, that was my money. If you give me a name, your mother can keep it, I don’t care. We won’t involve the FBI in her business, either. Does that work for you?”

  “You trouble my mama, you die hard.”

  “I got a whole list of people who want to kill me,” I said. “Your name isn’t even close to the top.”

  DuWayne just stared.

  “We’re on the same page here, pal,” I said. “I don’t want trouble for your mother. Or you. What we’re talking about, it’s just business, am I right?”

  “That’s right,” DuWayne said. “It’s business.”

  “Give me a name and I’ll give you another five thousand, in cash. Clean money this time.”

  “You got it on you?”

  “I can get it in five minutes.”

  DuWayne shrugged his massive shoulders. I took that as a yes.

  I led Karen out of the house and limped back to the Cherokee. I opened the driver’s door. It hurt my back, but I leaned in and pulled a packet of one hundred fifty-dollar bills out from under the seat. I limped back to the house. This time when I knocked, DuWayne answered. He filled the doorframe with his bulk. I gave him the cash.

  “Donny Orrick,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “St. Cloud.”

  “The prison?”

  “Why else anybody be in St. Cloud?”

  “Good enough,” I said. I turned away from the door, had a thought, and spun back again. “One more thing, the contractor. What does he look like?”

  “White dude.”

  “Big?”

  “He tryin’ to be.”

  Visiting hours at the state prison in St. Cloud were between 3:30 and 9:30 P.M., yet it was wasn’t even noon when I left DuWayne Middleton’s house and drove Karen back to her car parked in the lot outside the Copper Dome. It took me about an hour driving north from the Twin Cities to reach St. Cloud, and that left nearly three hours to kill, eating, bumming around, trying not to think too much. It wasn’t easy. You can see the huge water tower in the center of the prison yard from a long way off on Highway 10. It made me ponder some of the things that Karen Studder had told me about prison and what it does to people. I didn’t want to agree with her; still, I was left with the certain knowledge that Scottie Thomforde had been a good guy before he went inside.

  To reach the prison, I drove west on Minnesota Boulevard, crossing the two sets of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad tracks that ran alongside the forbidding red-gray walls. The tracks reminded me of “Folsom Prison Blues” and Johnny Cash singing about that train a-rollin’ ’round the bend.

  The song kept repeating itself in my head, following me to an uncomfortable chair in the visitors’ room. The room reminded me of the public lounges at the airport where passengers kill time while waiting for their flights to board. It was just as noisy, with children behaving the way children do when they’re asked to sit and do nothing for long periods, impatient adults raising their voices at the indignity of unexpected delays, and a barely understood voice calling names and giving instructions over a scratchy speaker system. The seats were all bolted to the floor and to each other
and arranged so that nearly everyone was looking at everyone else. I had to lean forward while I sat so as not to crack the skull of the woman sitting directly behind me. Even so, I was able to hear the instructions she gave her daughter. “Please, honey, tell him how well you’re doing in school, tell him that you miss him, be sure to tell him that you love him.”

  “I don’t love him,” the daughter said. “I don’t even know him.”

  When I hear that whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry.

  I didn’t want to feel compassion for anyone who was in prison—I had helped put some people there. I convinced myself that except for the extremely rare case of mistaken identity or judicial incompetence, everyone in the place was getting exactly what they deserved. Yet that damn song kept repeating itself. And I could imagine Scottie sitting in on drums.

  Finally I was directed to a metal stool behind a partition that isolated the visiting booths from the rest of the waiting room. The stool was one of ten, all bolted to the wall. It faced a cinder-block chamber about the size of a dining room table that contained only a wooden chair and a telephone. Steel bars and reinforced glass kept convicts and visitors apart. I sat on a stool and waited. A heavy door opened at the back of the chamber, and a man with pale skin dodged in sideways, one shoulder at a time, like someone afraid of being noticed. The door was sealed behind him. He took one look at me and decided he didn’t like what he saw. I reached for my telephone receiver and pressed it against my ear. Donny Orrick stepped forward. His prison threads hung on him like a label—this was a dangerous man.

  He snatched his phone from its cradle. “Who you?” he asked.

  “DuWayne Middleton sent me,” I said. I had no leverage with Or-rick. He was in prison, and all my money, guns, threats, and promises of favors joyfully returned weren’t going to persuade him to answer my questions. So I decided to do the next best thing. Lie.