Unidentified Woman #15

by David Housewright

  “That’s because he moved up to management.”

  “Jean questioned him but got nowhere.”

  “I might have something for you.”

  I told Bobby everything I knew about Commissioner Mattson.

  “Why didn’t you tell Jeannie all this?” he asked.

  “She didn’t ask.”

  “Dammit, McKenzie—it’s not a competition.”

  “You’re right, it’s not,” I said aloud, although my inner voice was smirking.

  She’s not even in the same league.

  “A former deputy sheriff who’s now a sitting county commissioner—just what I need,” Bobby said.

  “If it’s her, think of the interview you could give Kelly Bressandes.”

  “Funny. Mattson has a trophy from the National Police Shooting Championships, you say. Didn’t you win the individual handgun competition once?”

  “I missed my last two targets.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Kinda hard to shoot when you have both hands clutching your throat.”

  “So you’ve told me. Many, many times.”

  “You never even made it into the top ten after that, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Jeannie did. Twice.”

  “Good for her.”

  Bitch.

  * * *

  I was driving back to my condominium and feeling pretty good about myself when my cell sang a second time. I don’t like it when other people talk on the phone while driving, yet I found myself doing it more and more often.

  “McKenzie,” I said.

  “Hey,” Nina said. “Why don’t you come over and talk to me?”

  “At the club?”

  “Where else?”

  * * *

  I found Nina in her office. She was sitting at her desk and poring over a pile of what looked like receipts and invoices when I entered. She looked at me over the top of a pair of black-rim reading glasses. There had been a time when she would have been embarrassed to be seen wearing them. Until one day she announced, “I have a daughter in college. Who am I kidding?”

  I said the glasses gave her a sexy-librarian vibe.

  “Even better,” she said.

  There was a white coffee mug at her elbow. I reached for it as I sat and gave it a sniff.

  Hazelnut, my inner voice told me.

  “Really?” Nina said.

  I returned the mug.

  “Just checking,” I said.

  “I never mix caffeine and alcohol—unlike some people I could name.”

  “Why not?”

  “Caffeine is a stimulant. It jazzes the body, increases blood pressure and heart rate. It’s the equivalent of an adrenaline rush. Alcohol, on the other hand, is a depressant. It slows the brain and impairs your ability to walk, talk, and think clearly.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “Some people think when you drink the two together, they cancel each other out, only it doesn’t work that way. Instead, the caffeine masks the effects of the alcohol; people end up drinking way beyond their limits. That’s why you should never buy those alcoholic energy drinks. People call them a blackout in a can. It’s why Irish coffee is not on our menu.”

  “You’re a damned good man, sister.”

  Nina gave me a baffled what-the-hell-are-you-talking about expression. It wasn’t the first time I had seen it.

  “It’s what Sam Spade told Effie Perine in The Maltese Falcon,” I said.

  The expression remained on her face.

  “No one reads the classics anymore,” I said.

  “What do you want, McKenzie?”

  “You called me, remember?”

  “Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Nina searched the top of her desk, found a sheet of paper, and handed it to me. It was the printed copy of an e-mail sent to her by Mitch.

  If you still want the necklace we discussed, I can meet you today at the Como Park Pavilion at 3 PM. The asking price is $4,000. This must be an all-cash transaction. Please, no checks.

  “What do you think?” Nina asked.

  “You should know, things have changed since last evening.”

  I explained how they had changed.

  “Fifteen isn’t trying to kill them,” Nina said.

  “No, but they’re still trying to kill her.”

  “Should we go through with the transaction?”

  “I think so. The original plan is back in play. Get in close, see if we can discover who the Boss is, and take it from there.”

  “Just tell me one thing—is this going to be a gift from you to me?”

  “I’ll come up with the cash for the necklace, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Can I keep it?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re a damned good sister … Oh, never mind.”

  * * *

  Nina replied to the e-mail, agreeing to meet Mitch and promising to bring cash, although—and I liked this touch—she said if she wasn’t wowed by the necklace she’d take her business to Jared. Afterward, I gave her my best Groucho eyebrows and asked how she wanted to spend the next ninety minutes.

  “I need to go back to the condo anyway, to pick up a few things,” I told her.

  Nina gestured at the pile of paperwork on her desk. “You know, McKenzie, some people actually have jobs,” she said

  I told her my job consisted solely of making her happy.

  She suggested I wasn’t working at it as hard as I could.

  I would have argued the point, except for the lousy music that the burn phone in my pocket was playing. I checked the ID before answering. It was Mitch.

  “This is Dyson,” I said.

  Once again Nina’s eyes grew wide at the sound of the name.

  “Mr. Dyson, this is Mitch. I have the money you requested. At least I will have it. Can you meet me at three thirty this afternoon?”

  “Where?”

  “The Como Park Pavilion in St. Paul. You know it?”

  “I know it.”

  “See you then.”

  “Mitch, I appreciate why you want to meet in a public place, but you need to know—it won’t protect you if you screw me over.”

  I ended the call.

  “Do you believe it?” I said. “The man is going to use the money that you pay him for the necklace to help pay me and Herzog.”

  “This is why I don’t want to combine our bank accounts.”

  * * *

  Como Park in St. Paul is one of my favorite places. It has a large zoo housing all manner of creatures large and small, including Sparky the Sea Lion and twin polar bears named Neil and Buzz. Next door, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory displays an astonishing array of plants and exhibits such as a Japanese garden and a fern room that always reminds me of Mirkwood. There is an amusement park with eighteen rides and a mini-donut stand, a hundred-year-old carousel, pony rides, an eighteen-hole golf course, athletic fields, a swimming pool, tennis courts, picnic shelters, and in the summer, paddleboats for rent that you can use to explore Lake Como.

  Nina stood at the second-floor railing of the lakeside pavilion where two hundred and fifty visitors often sat on benches to hear music and watch amateur theatricals and dance recitals. I studied her with the binoculars from my Jeep Cherokee in the lot south of the pavilion. Many vehicles were parked around me, their occupants scattered along the plowed path that circled the lake and the park’s three miles of hiking trails. Some of them gathered on the pier piled with snow and ice that jutted into the lake below where Nina was standing. Others moved up and down the ramp leading from the parking lot to the second floor, while even more people visited the coffeehouse—yes, another one—built into the structure’s first floor.

  I didn’t have to guess what Nina was thinking, because she told me.

  “I remember skating here when I was a kid.” Her voice, transmitted by the forget-me-not pinned to the lapel of her charcoal coat, was clear over my smartphone. “They’d scrape the snow off the lake, do some
thing to the ice to make it smooth and fast. Olympic speed skaters trained here. There was a green shack right over there where you could rent skates and cross-country skis…”

  “Pay attention,” I told her. Of course, she couldn’t hear me.

  “Now they have the oval in Roseville that’s suppose to have the best ice in the Cities, better even than the Xcel Center, but I don’t know. You have to be serious to skate there, and you have to pay. Seems to me you could skate here for free.”

  I saw Craig and Mitch long before Nina did. They parked near the gentle ramp that led to the pavilion. They carefully glanced around them as they exited their car, and kept at it as they climbed the ramp.

  “You guys don’t look suspicious at all,” I said to no one in particular.

  They had no trouble finding Nina. They moved to within twenty feet of her before she felt their presence and turned to greet them. From where I was positioned, I could only see the three of them from the waist up even with the binoculars.

  “Nina,” Mitch said as if greeting an old friend. “Good to see you.”

  “Mitch,” Nina said “I don’t believe I’ve met your friend.”

  “My partner, Craig. Craig, this is Nina.”

  Hands were shaken all around.

  “Can you believe this weather?” Craig said. “Cold, warm, cold, warm. It’s enough to give you whiplash.”

  “Yes, but mostly it’s been cold,” Nina said. “I read where this is our worst winter in over a hundred years.”

  “Kinda refutes all that talk about global warming.”

  “I don’t know about that. Global warming leads to climate change, and our climate lately has been pretty screwy.”

  “Excuse me,” Mitch said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but we have another appointment to get to.”

  Craig glanced at his watch. “We have a few minutes yet,” he said.

  “That’s all right, I understand,” Nina said. “Business is business. I need to get back to mine, too.”

  “What do you do?” Craig asked.

  “Let’s talk about a Japanese Akoya pearl necklace,” Mitch said.

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Why did you want to meet here anyway?” Nina asked.

  Dammit, honey, don’t improvise, my inner voice said. Pay the money, take the pearls, and get the hell out of there.

  “Since the garage sale in Apple Valley was canceled, we couldn’t meet there,” Mitch said.

  “Why was it canceled?”

  Nina …

  “Circumstances beyond our control,” Craig said. “We would have waited until we rescheduled, except we knew you were anxious about your pearls.”

  “It all just seems so … criminal.”

  Ahh, c’mon!

  “Would you have preferred that we meet at your home or office?” Mitch asked. From the sound of his voice, he seemed as frustrated with Nina as I was.

  “I guess not,” she said.

  “Do you have the money?” Craig asked.

  Nina reached into the bag hanging by a strap from her shoulder, hesitated, and removed her hand.

  “May I see the pearls?” she asked.

  I heard Craig chuckle.

  “Certainly,” he said.

  He handed Nina the box the store clerk had placed the pearls in when I bought them at Mall of America. Nina opened the box.

  “These are nice,” she said. “Four thousand dollars, though—I’m not sure about that.”

  I shouted, “Dammit, Nina, you’re haggling?” so loudly that I didn’t hear what Craig said in reply.

  “This is our buy-it-now price,” Mitch said. “If you want to take your chances when we make it available at our next sale…”

  “No,” Nina said. “I guess not.”

  She closed the box and tucked it under her arm. At the same time, she reached into her bag and withdrew an envelope. She held out the envelope for Mitch, yet he did not take it. Instead, all three of them turned to look at something I couldn’t see.

  A confusion of sounds and voices poured from the speaker of my smartphone.

  “What are you doing?” A woman’s voice.

  “You…”

  “It wasn’t our fault.”

  “Wait.”

  “No, no, no.”

  Pop-pop-pop—the sound of Bubble Wrap bursting.

  Nina disappeared from view.

  “McKenzie, I’m shot,” she said.

  I dropped both the phone and binoculars and flew out of the Cherokee, not bothering to shut the door behind me. The SIG Sauer was in my hand as I crossed the parking lot. There was no slipping or sliding this time. I ran with purpose.

  As I moved to the ramp that led to the second floor of the pavilion, I saw her.

  Fifteen.

  She came down the ramp in a hurry.

  She was carrying a gun. My nine-millimeter Beretta.

  She saw me and stopped.

  I stopped, too.

  She brought the gun up with both hands and sighted on me, a pyramid stance—one foot in front of the other with about twenty-four inches between heel and toe, arms outstretched at the same level as her shoulders, leaning into the shot. Whether she knew what she was doing or just slid into it, I couldn’t say.

  I, on the other hand, knew exactly what I was doing when I went into a Weaver stance and sighted on the center of her chest with the SIG.

  We stood like that, two samurai waiting for the other to make a move.

  One beat.

  Two beats.

  You don’t have time for this, my inner voice screamed. Nina’s been shot.

  Fifteen lowered her gun and started running in the opposite direction.

  I lowered mine and let her go.

  I sprinted up the ramp.

  Mitch and Craig were coming down.

  They had guns in their hands, carrying them like they didn’t know what they were for.

  “Dyson, Dyson,” one of them said—I don’t know which. “Thank God you’re early.”

  “Did you see her?” said the other. “She tried to kill us.”

  I might have told them to shut the fuck up. I don’t remember. I remember only that I didn’t care if I blew my cover or not.

  The floor of the pavilion was crowded with benches. I dashed around them, making my way to the rear. I found Nina sitting down, her back against the railing, her legs stretched out in front of her. The box of pearls and the envelope filled with cash were lying next to her. Mitch and Craig had left them both.

  They left her, too, the bastards.

  I went to Nina.

  Knelt at her side.

  Set the SIG on the concrete floor next to the pearls and cash.

  Nina’s eyes were wet and shining, yet her face was pale. She smiled, an amazing thing to do, I thought.

  “It doesn’t hurt at all,” she said.

  I examined her wool coat. There was no blood, but I could see the hole on the right side—the worst side to be shot, because that’s where so many major organs reside. The heat of the bullet had singed the material as it cut through it.

  I cautiously unbuttoned the coat.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” Nina said.

  “Shhh,” I told her.

  “You didn’t want to involve me in your quests, but I insisted. What did I say? I liked living the devil-may-care? Serves me right getting shot.”

  “Don’t talk.”

  I finished unbuttoning the coat and gently peeled it back. I expected to find plenty of blood. Instead, her white blouse was unblemished where the wound should have been.

  I pulled the coat farther back and found a second hole.

  Somehow the bullet had entered the front of the coat and gone out through the back without actually touching her.

  Nina looked down.

  Her hand went to her side.

  She caressed it as if she wanted to see damage and was surprised that there wasn’t any.

  “I’ll be a dirty name,” she said. “The way the
bullet pulled at my coat … It actually knocked me down.”

  I sat back and pulled my knees up. I rested my face against my knees.

  “Hey,” Nina said. “Hey, McKenzie. Are you crying?”

  FIFTEEN

  It started drizzling at sundown. A half hour later it turned to sleet. Twenty minutes following that it became snow. The weather demanded my full attention as I drove my Jeep Cherokee north along Highway 169 at a cautious 35 mph—which was a good thing. It helped me get my head back in the game.

  I was as surprised by my reaction to Nina’s non-shooting as she had been. I hadn’t wept since my mother died, and that was when I was in the sixth grade; my father forbade even the appearance of tears at his funeral, and I had followed his instructions. Yet there I was, all misty-eyed, my throat closed, my hands shaking, and Nina hugging my heaving shoulders and telling me in a soothing voice that she was perfectly fine; better than fine, she was exhilarated by the experience. When the cops arrived, they thought I was the one in trouble.

  Explanations were made; Commander Dunston and Detective Shipman were summoned. Shipman smiled at my behavior but said nothing. Bobby, on the other hand, kept staring as if I were an old friend whose name he couldn’t remember.

  Nina insisted that El hadn’t actually shot at her. She had been walking toward them, said, “What are you guys doing?”—something like that. All of a sudden, Mitch and Craig had guns. And El had a gun. Nina didn’t know who fired first, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t El, and if it was El, she was defending herself. She was shooting at Mitch and Craig and hit her by mistake, probably didn’t even know Nina was standing there. Neither Bobby nor Shipman could see what difference that made. Neither could I. Nina thought there was a huge difference and said she would refuse to testify against El if she was arrested.

  “No harm, no foul—isn’t that what you guys always say?” she told us.

  This caused Bobby to throw up his hands like a parent dealing with a child who won’t eat her green beans. He thought—aloud—that she must be suffering from shock. Nina buzzed his cheek and said, “Sure.”

  Meanwhile, Shipman wanted to arrest both Mitch and Craig and sweat Elbers’s location out of them.

  Except that Mitch and Craig don’t know where she’s hiding, I told her.