by P. J. Tracy
But Marty was a cop. A narcotics detective, for God’s sake. He dealt with people like this every day of his life. He knew what they wanted. He knew how to handle them.
‘Take it easy, son. I’ve got almost fifty bucks in my wallet. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got, and it’s all yours. Just let her go.’
‘Money first. Toss it over here.’
‘No problem. I’m going into my inside pocket, okay? See? I’ll go really slow, I’ll throw down the money, then we’ll turn around and just walk away. Is that all right with you?’
The kid had blue eyes brightened by a hunger few would ever understand, and for an instant, just an instant, Marty thought he might be making a mistake. The kid’s eyes were too blue; too intense; too narrowly focused. Heroin didn’t do that; neither did crack. He began to think it might be something much worse, like one of the new lethal mixes that made nuclear explosions in burned-out brains.
He opened the lapel of his good jacket slowly, to show the pocket inside, the rectangular shape of a wallet against the silk. But he’d forgotten. Jesus Christ, he’d seen the knife against Hannah’s throat and he’d forgotten everything he knew. He’d forgotten to tell the kid about the gun he had to wear, on duty or off, and then he saw the shock and fear in the kid’s too-bright eyes, and then the flash and bite of the knife, and then the gush of Hannah’s life in a flood he wouldn’t have believed possible.
He held Hannah in his arms as her white dress turned red, frantically punching numbers into his cell phone, calling it in, then tossing the phone aside and rocking her gently. The gash across her throat was so deep it took her voice, but she managed to move her hand to her stomach and ask him with her eyes.
‘It’s all right, Hannah,’ he told her, one hand pressed as hard as he dared on her throat, trying to hold the life inside. ‘The baby’s all right. The baby’s all right.’
He kept telling her that, over and over, until her eyes went flat and her hand slipped lifelessly to the concrete.
The ambulance arrived within five minutes. It was only three minutes too late.
Marty had never even heard the smack of the kid’s footsteps as he ran away. But he remembered his face.
He stood very still in front of the closet for many moments, just breathing, coming back. The pictures of that night were always with him. To one degree or another, he visualized pieces of it every day. But never had the recollection been that complete, the images that cruel and vivid. He’d always known the complete memory would resurface eventually in all its horror, and he’d lived with the certainty that when it did, he would finally be able to pull the trigger.
It took his breath away when he realized that he’d been wrong. He had a gun in his pocket, and absolutely no inclination to use it. He’d seen the worst his mind had to offer, and now, miraculously, he felt himself letting it go.
Lily was sitting in her chair with a book in her lap when he got back to the house. She was bundled into a purple terry robe, sipping water from a glass with multicolored stripes. She patted the arm of the couch next to her chair. ‘Sit a minute. You were gone a long time. I worried.’
Marty settled onto the couch and sank into cushions that had been softened over the years by all the dead people he’d loved.
‘Minneapolis isn’t so safe anymore, that you can be out at all hours. Of course you probably have nothing to worry about with that gun in your pocket.’
Marty smiled a little. Lily didn’t miss a trick.
‘Then again, guns are dangerous. It could go off, you could shoot yourself accidentally.’
‘I’m not going to shoot myself, Lily.’
Lily cocked her head and stared at him for a moment. ‘That’s good to hear, Martin. Then all these months, I’ve been worrying for nothing.’
Marty looked into bright blue ageless eyes, and wondered what would happen if anyone in this family ever told the truth. ‘I thought about it,’ he said, testing the waters.
‘You must still be thinking about it if you’re carrying a gun.’
The truth thing seemed to be working out. Marty thought he’d try it again. ‘Jack asked me to go home and get it. He’s worried about the murders, and wants me to keep an eye on you.’
Lily sipped from her glass without looking at him. ‘He said that?’
‘He did.’
‘Hmph. So I have a bodyguard, now? You’re going to move in, stay here forever? That’s a very big suitcase you brought in.’
Marty gave her a tired half smile and looked down at the old tweed Samsonite he and Hannah had gotten for their honeymoon. ‘I’m going to stay until the cops find out who’s killing people.’
She set her glass down very carefully on the table, then pushed herself up out of the chair. ‘Then you might as well unpack that thing.’
Marty was hanging up his last pair of khakis in the bedroom closet when he heard a soft rap on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Lily entered with a stack of neatly folded clothes and set them down on the bed.
He looked uncertainly at the blazing white boxer shorts on the top of the pile. ‘Are those mine?’
‘All day I had to soak these in bleach. Have you heard of bleach?’
He walked over and held them up. There were razor-sharp creases in the front. ‘You ironed my underwear?’
She shrugged. ‘Are we animals? Of course I ironed them.’ She toddled over to the closet and examined the row of khakis he’d just hung up. ‘You can’t fold slacks like that,’ she said, pulling each pair off the hanger and refolding them along the crease.
When she’d finished, she turned to find Marty sitting on the bed, watching her with a sad smile.
‘What?’
‘Hannah used to do that.’
Lily folded her lips together, looked away, and nodded. ‘We all walk around with holes in our hearts.’ She looked back and met his eyes. ‘But we still walk around.’
‘Sometimes I’m not sure why we do that. Why we hang on when things get so bad.’ He glanced at the fading, bluish tattoo on her arm. ‘There had to have been times when you wondered if it was worth it.’
She squared her shoulders beneath the puffy purple robe and eyed him steadily. ‘Not once. Not for one single minute. Life is always worth it.’
Marty remained sitting on the bed for a long time after the door clicked shut behind her, a little shamed by this tiny old woman who was so much stronger than he was.
Finally he went to the old rolltop desk in the corner, pulled out the chair, and sat down. The top drawer was mostly empty, except for a legal tablet and a package of ballpoint pens. With great care, he centered the tablet on the desk, selected a pen, and then just sat there, waiting. Eventually his hand moved almost of its own accord, picking up the pen, drawing a circle with lines radiating from it, like a sun. In the middle of the sun, he wrote ‘JACK.’
An hour later, he leaned back and rubbed his burning eyes, and for the first time in a long time, he was craving coffee instead of scotch. He’d filled three pages with notes and questions, and still, jumbled thoughts ricocheted through his head, demanding transfer to paper.
This is what he used to do when he was working a particularly troublesome case, and the familiarity of it reminded him of many a late night when Hannah would creep into his office quietly, drape her arms over his shoulders, and chide him gently for leaving her alone in that big, cold bed. He could almost feel the weight of her soft arms, smell the lemony soap she used to wash her face, feel the tickle of her silky hair on the back of his neck.
An amazed smile formed slowly on his lips. For an entire year, his only memories of Hannah had been of her death. Now, for the first time, he was recalling a piece of her life.
I’m getting better, he thought, flipping over a new page.
25
The sun was just beginning to rise over the river bluffs when Magozzi and Gino crossed the Mississippi on the Lake Street Bridge. The streaks of pink and gold in the sky reflected on the dark surface o
f the water, rippling like shimmering ribbons of champagne.
‘Boy, would I love to be able to put that on canvas,’ Magozzi murmured. ‘Look at the water, Gino. It’s beautiful.’
Gino grunted. He had some serious bags under his eyes this morning, and his cropped blond hair looked angry. ‘Beautiful, my ass. You wouldn’t think so if you’d had my night. The Accident got into a box of that kids’ cereal with all the different-colored animals, and threw up rainbows for about three hours. Looked just like that water.’
‘The kid’s kind of young to be eating that stuff, isn’t he?’
‘The kid will never eat that cereal, if Angela has anything to say about it. It was my secret cache. You know those rubber-bandy things you kid-proof your cupboards with?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, they don’t work, or else the Accident’s a genius.’
‘You have to quit calling him that. He’s going to get a complex.’
‘I would never call him that to his little, sweet, drooling face. Man, I’m starving. Would you please tell me why traffic is stopped dead in the middle of this bridge at six o’clock in the morning?’
The legendary body of water they were suspended over was the geographical division between Minneapolis and its twin city, and after Magozzi had seen a repeat of Kristen Keller’s report this morning, he’d understood why Malcherson had chosen a hole-in-the-wall diner in St Paul as the venue for this morning’s emergency briefing. Word was that the press had already set up a full ambush at City Hall in Minneapolis. St Paul was the last place they’d be looking for them.
‘Oh, man, would you look at this?’ Gino grumbled, getting out of the car. ‘There are people trotting around all over the road up there. Slap on the roof light, I’m going to go push my weight around.’ He stalked away up through the lines of motionless cars, and Magozzi said a silent prayer for all the motorists who had come between Gino and his breakfast.
He was back in under five minutes, sliding into the car, wearing a silly little smile. ‘That was pretty cool.’
Magozzi gave him a sidelong once-over. ‘You’ve got feathers on your shirt.’
‘Huh. How about that.’
‘You didn’t eat a bird or anything, did you?’
‘Nah. It was one of those suicidal mother ducks, leading her kids across the bridge like she owned the place. You got any idea how fast those little yellow buggers can run? We had a heck of a time catching them all. Some guy had an empty beer case in his truck, so we stuffed them all in there and he’s taking them to the other side. Traffic should start moving in a minute.’
Basil’s Broiler was a dimly lit greasy spoon that catered to all-night types, most of whom had already straggled home to bed if the empty stools and tables were any indication. The only person at the front counter was a spike-haired kid with an unbelievable amount of metal bristling from his ears, eyebrows, lips, and nose. He looked up briefly when Magozzi and Gino entered, then went back to staring into his coffee cup.
‘You see that kid?’ Gino whispered once they were out of earshot. ‘Get yourself a little red ball and you could play jacks with his face. I’m telling you, that’s what happens when you let your kid pierce her ears. They start out with a cute little gold button, then it’s a hoop, then it’s two hoops, and before you know it – jack-face.’
‘Helen got her ears pierced?’
‘Over my dead body.’
They found Malcherson at a far back table. He had a tablet, two cell phones, and one of those nasty red homicide folders fanned out in front of him.
He looked up when they approached and nodded once. ‘Good morning, Detectives.’
‘Good morning, Chief,’ they replied in unison, sounding like schoolboys greeting a scary headmaster.
‘You’re late.’
‘Mother duck and her babies on the bridge,’ Gino explained, earning a rare smile from Malcherson. Anyone who’d lived a single spring in Minnesota knew about ducks crossing the road, freeway traffic coming to a halt, and frazzled motorists who probably wanted to shoot each other morphing instantly into a happy group bent on animal rescue.
‘I trust you were able to get them across safely?’
‘We did, sir.’
‘Good.’ He gestured for them to sit, and nudged a metal coffee carafe toward them. ‘There is no menu. There is no waitress. There is, however, a hulking brute in the kitchen who said he would bring out three breakfasts. I have no idea what that might consist of.’
‘It’ll be great,’ Gino said. ‘Viegs told me about this place. They cook everything in lamb oil.’
Malcherson sighed. ‘How… unusual.’
Gino poured himself a cup of coffee, took a noisy sip, then studied the chief’s suit with a slightly puzzled expression. He was wearing the double-breasted dove-gray this morning with a pale blue tie.
Don’t ask, Malcherson told himself, pretending not to notice, but finally he couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘All right, Rolseth, what’s the problem with my clothes?’
‘Well, that is truly one of my favorite suits, sir, but… it’s not one of your murder suits.’
‘I see. I have murder suits. Which ones would those be?’
‘You know. The aggressive ones. The black for sure, and the charcoal, even the pinstripe works when you’re really hot to trot after some lowlife. But this one is kind of upbeat. Hopeful. You usually only wear the dove-gray when we’re wrapping things up.’
Malcherson released a weary sigh. ‘I find it strange that a man who wears food on forty-dollar sport coats takes such an interest in analyzing the psychology of my wardrobe choices.’
‘Well, you’re kind of my fashion idol, Chief.’
Malcherson’s eyes were the same color as his suit. He turned them toward Magozzi. It was simply too early in the morning to even try to talk to Rolseth. ‘I’ve been getting calls since last night’s late newscast. I thought we were going to try to hold back the information on the tattoos.’
‘Yeah, well, that was a great idea, but Kristin Keller and her gang of henchmen were interviewing neighbors before we even zipped up Ben Schuler’s body bag,’ Gino said. ‘Besides, we knew from the get-go we weren’t going to keep that detail under wraps for long. Anyone who knew any of the victims knew they’d been in the camps. Hell, anyone who ever saw them in short sleeves would have seen the tattoos, and that’s the kind of thing that comes out when you get the media interviewing friends and neighbors.’
Malcherson assented with a slight tip of his head. ‘True enough. But now the pressure is on. As of last night, the entire city knows that we have three concentration camp survivors killed for no apparent reason, and every broadcast I listened to this morning – including CNN – was either implying hate crime, or suggesting it outright.’
Gino shook his head firmly. ‘We’ve been over that, sir. Hate crime doesn’t fit for a lot of reasons. Besides, two of these three people knew each other, and our feeling is that they were involved in something that got them killed.’
Malcherson smiled at Gino, which was pretty terrifying. ‘I can hardly wait. Tell me, Detective Rolseth, what sort of nefarious activities do you think these senior citizens were involved in that made them murder targets?’
‘Well… we don’t exactly have a handle on that yet…’
He was interrupted by the gunshot sound of the hulking brute’s boot hitting the swinging door from the kitchen. The closer he came to the table, the higher Magozzi had to lift his chin to see the guy’s craggy, scarred face. Seven feet minimum, he thought, with the coiled musculature of an ex-con who always got the weight bench in the exercise yard. He unloaded the huge tray he was carrying, setting a meat platter in front of each of them. Eggs, sausage, cottage fries, biscuits and gravy towered and steamed.
Gino licked his lips at the feast before him, then looked up at the man, apparently undaunted by his size. ‘Jesus, buddy, are those knife cuts all over your face?’
Malcherson and Magozzi both tensed. Gino was ha
ppily oblivious.
‘Yeah,’ the rumble came back. ‘Bunch of guys jumped me with shivs.’
‘Bummer. Inside?’
‘Yep. You?’
Gino stabbed an accordian of potato circles and stuffed them into his mouth. ‘Not yet. So far I’m on the other team… Omigod, these fries are amazing. Leo, try the fries, then ask this guy to marry you.’
The hulking brute beamed, and assuming that meant he wasn’t going to kill them all, Malcherson examined his fork, took a small bite of potato, then blinked. ‘Oh my. Fresh rosemary. Wonderful.’
‘Thanks. Nobody in this neighborhood ever notices the rosemary. You want ketchup?’
By tacit agreement, none of them spoke for a few moments while they ate. Magozzi and Malcherson had both managed to clear about a third of their plates, then pushed them away simultaneously.
‘You aren’t going to eat that?’ Gino asked, chasing the last skittering bit of sausage across his own barren platter. ‘Damn shame to waste it. Besides, I wouldn’t want to offend the guy.’
‘Good point.’ Malcherson nudged his plate in Gino’s direction, then glanced at his watch. ‘If you two really believe Morey Gilbert, Rose Kleber, and Ben Schuler were connected beyond their common experience as concentration camp survivors, I assume you’re examining their records, phone bills, bank statements, that sort of thing.’
Well, yes, they were, Magozzi thought; but not exactly through the proper channels. ‘We’re handling that, sir.’
‘Really. Handling it how? I haven’t seen a warrant cross my desk -’ He stopped abruptly and looked at Magozzi. ‘Never mind. Don’t answer that.’
Malcherson knew full well about Magozzi’s continuing relationship with Grace MacBride, who could hack her way into any supposedly secure database. He also knew that his best detective – a man who wouldn’t loosen his tie on the job because it violated department dress code – had developed a troubling impatience with privacy laws and civil rights and department procedure when he thought lives were at stake. Warrants took time. Checking records took time, and the temptation to take shortcuts was enormous for a cop who thought he was fighting the clock to find a killer. Malcherson understood the temptation as well as anyone, but also understood that once you started breaking the rules, it was hard to stop, and one of the most dangerous things in the world was an officer of the law who thought he was above it. ‘Detective Magozzi…’