Hillary starts to say something but stops. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” she says.
“Baker,” I say. “Chase Baker.”
“Baker, ah, yes, well, a pleasure to meet you,” Hillary says. She stumbles on her words as if she’s running my name through her memory. “You see, Mr. Baker, our centerpiece exhibit is highly valuable, and we take certain precautions to keep out any unwarranted activity.”
Yep. Corporate America.
“Do you know when the exhibit will be back open?” I say.
“It depends, but we’ll make an announcement on our website. Do you know the address?” Hillary says.
How could I not? It’s plastered on every free inch of space in here.
“I know it,” I say. “Must be some maintenance you’ve got going on behind that door.”
Hillary nods in reservation. “You have no idea.”
My curiosity keeps me in the game, and this conversation is no different. Our talk isn’t ending here.
I stop Hillary before she turns to give the same speech to another gaggle of irked patrons.
“I happen to be in the maintenance business myself,” I say. If I had a business card, I’d be handing it over right now, but I don’t. “I specialize in antiquities.”
“You don’t say? What sorts of antiquities?” Hillary says. She looks me up and down. The bush jacket, jeans and steel-toe boots don’t lend any academic heft to my appearance, but the confidence in my voice should fill in the gaps in my résumé.
“The rarest of the rare,” I say with a wink. It’s cheesy, but it feels appropriate for a place like the Museum of the Bizarre.
“Is that a fact? Hmmm…,” Hillary says, tapping an index finger on her chin. “Wait right here. There’s someone I want you to talk to.”
So there’s something to this after all. Now I’ve got a good reason to stick around for some of that famous Texas barbecue.
I browse and re-browse the same row of the museum’s oddities, waiting on Hillary to come back. After 30 minutes, I start to think she forgot about me. Just when I’m ready to once again call this jaunt a bust, I spot her coming down a hallway toward me. She motions for me to follow her, explaining that “there’s someone you should talk to in my office.”
Her office ports over none of the kitschy charm from the rest of the museum. It’s hardly an office. It’s a sagging storage shed rusting in the dirt behind the museum. Hillary opens the metal door and hurries me inside. My gut instinct is too slow to warn me about going inside. I don’t like off-the-beaten-path places with only a single way in or out, but my feet lead me in anyway.
“This is your office?” I say, trying to make heads or tails of the dark interior. I smell old gasoline and paint.
Hillary says nothing. I hear her hands follow the shed wall and flick on a light switch.
No. This isn’t her office.
Once my eyes adjust, I make out dirt floors, a riding lawnmower, tools and several disassembled exhibits. Oh, and three bikers dressed in leather vests and scar tissue worthy of the Hell’s Angels page-a-day calendar. One-percenter types, the kind law enforcement actually gives a damn about watching.
I usually give the benefit of the doubt when meeting new people, but I make exceptions for storage sheds masquerading as office spaces behind sketchy museums. So I introduce myself the only way I know how.
“Howdy, gentleman, my name is Chase Baker,” I say and put my hands on my hips, brushing back the bush jacket so my shoulder holsters become visible. “Any friend of Hillary’s is a friend of mine.”
“We’re not friends,” Hillary says. Gone from her voice is the air of professionalism she exhibited in the museum. Here now is a malice that could cut me in half.
“You treat all your patrons this way?” I say.
“Don’t play coy with me. We know why you’re here, and we’re not about to play your games,” Hillary says.
“What do you want then?” I say.
“I want you to bring a message back to where you came from.”
“Albany?”
“If want to call it that, then yes,” Hillary says.
“What sort of message are we talking about here?” I say.
Hillary chooses sign language to close out our conversation. Which is to say she motions to the bikers to communicate with their hands. Whatever message I’m supposed to receive comes through loud and clear. I’m to have my ass beat. Thoroughly. And the bikers are excellent communicators.
7.
“What the hell was that for?” I say through the blood, spit and snot after the bikers pause to rest their knuckles. How considerate. I returned the favor by not unloading the .45 into each of them. I’m not one of those shoot-first-ask-questions-later people. Those are for the movies. I’m not afraid to pull the trigger or crack a skull, but I need to know what I’m dealing with first. Don’t want to poke a hornet’s nest and wind up in even more trouble just because I enjoy dropping baddies. Which, for the record, I do enjoy, sometimes a little too much.
“Fuckin’ Russian commie bastard,” one of the bikers says from behind a cigarette.
“What was that?” I say.
“You heard what I said,” the biker says.
Hillary interjects, kicking some dirt into my face as I lay bleeding on the ground. “He doesn’t sound Russian, though. How long have you been in the States?” she says.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say. “I’m from New York.”
“New York? Just as bad,” one of the bikers says to the amusement of his buddies. “You probably fit right in there with your commie friends.”
Did I teleport back to the 1950s? What’s with the Cold War talk?
“Guys, I’m no Russian, and I’m definitely not a communist. I don’t get where you’re coming from with this,” I say, wincing in pain.
“Prove it,” Hillary says. “Prove you’re not with the Russians.”
‘With the Russians?’ This just got interesting.
“What’s there to prove?” I say, using the wall to shuffle to my feet. “All I wanted was to see the Minnesota Iceman. Next thing I know, I’m in here getting my ass kicked by you people. After my lawyer is done with you, the Russians will be the last things you need to worry about.”
For the first time since I stepped foot in here, Hillary’s expression turns concerned. Truth be told, I don’t keep a lawyer on retainer, and my literary agent isn’t licensed to practice criminal law. She doesn’t need to know that, though.
“But the way you asked those questions back there, you sounded like you were with them,” Hillary says with an oh-shit look on her face.
“Them? Them who?” I say.
“The Russians,” Hillary says. “They said they’d come back.”
I put the pieces together and nod a bloody nose toward the bikers. “I take it you hired the Hell’s Angels here for protection?”
One of the bikers grunts. He says, “The fuck you talking Hell’s Angels for? We’re Bandidos.”
Bandidos? I should’ve recognized the patches on their vests. No wonder they didn’t take the Hell’s Angels comment lightly. The two outlaw clubs went to war not long ago. I read about it in the newspapers when their conflict escalated into a tragically public shoot out. The club certainly lived up to its motto, “We are the people your parents warned you about,” on that day.
Other than the typical drug running, gun smuggling and human trafficking that accompany one-percenters, the Bandidos offer an extra dollop of scumbaggery with their fascist political initiatives. Members take an active role protesting anything that doesn’t fit within the perfectly square boundaries of the Confederate and Nazi flags they flaunt during the ripest opportunities. Racist. Xenophobic. Homophobic. You name the –ism, they’re for it. Which, I suppose, also makes them an excellent deterrent for keeping allegedly nefarious Russian activity at bay. Hillary probably pulled an Altamont and hired the Bandidos to provide protection from…actually I have n
o idea. But I bet the missing Iceman has something to do with it.
“Humor me,” I say and point a gnarled finger toward Hillary. “Russian agents stole the Minnesota Iceman from your museum and held it for ransom. You hired a biker gang, the Bandidos, to kick their asses when they came looking for the money. You mistook me for one of them. Did I get that right?”
“Club. We’re a club, not a gang,” one of the bikers says.
For a bunch of tough guys, they sure do get butt-hurt pretty easily.
“It wouldn’t be right for me to say,” Hillary says. “This isn’t any of your business, and I’d hate for you to get caught up in it.”
I’d laugh but it’d hurt too much.
“Your hired goons here just shaved six years off my life expectancy. The least you can do is offer an explanation,” I say.
Hillary gnaws this over, but I can tell it’s all for show. She’s not considering what I just said. She’s thinking about whether she can weather a lawsuit.
“Fine, but I have to warn you, Mr. Baker. What I’m about to tell you will sound strange. But I can assure you, it’s all true,” Hillary says.
I show her a bloody grin. “And I can assure you, it’s going to take a lot for me to think something is strange.”
With that, Hillary makes par and then some.
8.
While I snap my nose back into place, Hillary fills the gaps of what I already know about the Minnesota Iceman. She purchased the supposed creature from an anonymous source in contact with the Hansen family, who kept a tight lip about its true origins. After Hillary finished the final payment, she received one piece of advice: never thaw the creature out. So long as the Iceman rested within that block of ice, no one could prove or disprove its authenticity.
“Why’d you want the Iceman in the first place?” I say.
“This, pardon my French, shitty little museum was up for sale, and I always wanted to be a curator. So my partner and I cashed out our retirements and bought the place. The Iceman gave us a safety net. We knew we could get people through the door. With a steady source of revenue, the plan was to expand the museum into something bigger than an emporium of hokey stuffed animals and rubber aliens,” Hillary says.
“Partner? Where is this person?” I say.
“She prefers to invest her money from a distance,” she says. “Especially after the visits started.”
“Visits?” I say, stepping aside so the bikers can take a communal piss outside the shed.
According to Hillary, the first person through the door to see the Iceman wasn’t a tourist but a bald-headed man in a black suit with a thick Russian accent. He didn’t hide the fact he worked for the Russian government, and he insisted he be allowed exclusive access to the Iceman. Hillary, not about to risk the centerpiece of her investment, called the police. However, the man in the suit left before officers could arrive, promising Hillary he’d be back.
“Other than to keep the legend of the Iceman a mystery, there’s a good reason the Hansen family told me not to thaw the creature out. It’s to keep the wrong people from getting too close to it. Better to stick it in a museum full of hoaxes so that it can be dismissed as a fake,” Hillary says. “People said the creature went missing back in the day, only to resurface when I bought it. That’s only half true. The Hansen family wanted the creature out of sight, because they were becoming targets of these visits from Russian agents.”
I take it all back. This was worth the trip down here.
“What would the Russian government want with the Iceman?” I say.
“I don’t know, but this bald-headed man, he came back several times. He offered me money, real estate, anything I wanted. He always wanted the same thing in return: exclusive access to the Iceman. I called the FBI about it because this was all so strange, but they laughed me off the phone, told me to stop watching so much X-Files. I had no choice but to turn to the Bandidos for protection,” Hillary says.
“Let me guess: your Russian visitor stopped in after hours,” I say.
Hillary nods. “The Iceman and its freezer are gone. Happened a few nights ago when the Bandidos were away. I’d go broke paying for protection around the clock. It looks like I will anyway. Without the Iceman, the Museum of the Bizarre isn’t much more than a glorified gift shop.”
I grunt as I lean over to retrieve my .45 and the ESEE knife. At least the bikers didn’t walk off with them. That’s the thing with one-percenters. Are they violent, despicable people? Absolutely. But they’re also rational actors. They do exactly what you pay them to do.
That’s the difference between organized crime and a gaggle of idiots with inflated egos. The neo-Nazis I faced down while searching for a Viking runestone fell into the latter category. That’s why they’re all dead now and these bikers are presently urinating on the side of the storage shed. Focus matters.
I could say the same for myself. I need to know why I’m here in the first place.
“Now it’s my turn to come clean,” I say. I give her a bit about my background, where I’ve been, what I do and why Russian agents making off with the legendary Iceman is right up my alley.
“How did you know to come here?” Hillary says.
“The last words of a dying man I shared a hospital room with told me to come here. Older guy. Didn’t get a good look at his face, though,” I say, scanning her face for any recognition. “You know anything about that?”
Hillary looks puzzled. It’s not for show, according to my built-in bullshit detector.
“What about this partner of yours? Still alive and kicking?” I say.
“Of course. I just spoke to her yesterday on the phone,” Hillary says. She cocks her head to the side. “Wait a minute. You came all this way based on that?”
“Indeed I did,” I say. “You’d be surprised by both the frequency and horribleness of my decision-making.”
Hillary laughs. It’s more out of relief than for my sense of humor. She knows I’m not there to cause trouble.
“Can I ask you to make another bad decision?” she says.
“It’s my specialty. Fire away,” I say.
“I can’t pay you right now,” Hillary says, showing me her empty palms. “But if you help me find the Iceman, I’ll give you a stake in the Museum of the Bizarre. Is 15 percent of the business enough for you?”
The entrepreneurial spirit runs deep with me, but I like cash jobs. Getting paid in stock feels a little like a scam, but in this case I can make an exception. I’ll find the Iceman, Hillary will get her business back in order and maybe I’ll figure out who that dead guy was back at the hospital. My curiosity is burning like the boot print in my groin.
“Passive income is the best income,” I say, quoting my father. “Make it 20 percent, though. There’s a surcharge for beat downs.”
“Deal,” Hillary says.
We shake on it, seeing as how it’s doubtful any of the bikers are notaries.
“I’d like to take a look at the spot where the Iceman was stolen,” I say. “But I need to know one thing before we get started.”
“What’s that?” Hillary says.
“Is the Iceman real or a fake?”
Hillary doesn’t miss a beat with her response. “I’ll let you know when you find it.”
Fair enough. So long as the check clears the bank, I don’t care if the Iceman is Jimmy Hoffa in a gorilla suit.
One of the bikers opens the door to the shed and sticks his meaty head in. In more of a grunt, he says, “I think he’s here.”
“The Russian?” Hillary says.
“Yeah.”
Hillary motions for me to follow her out the door.
“Let’s go give him a warm, Texas welcome,” she says.
9.
The visitors are gone from the Museum of the Bizarre. In their place, standing between a sarcophagus and a collection of moon rocks, is a bald man in a black suit holding a MAC-10. The bikers close in on either end of his exposed flanks, once again choosing
not to tie their manhood to the presence of firearms in their hands when tire irons, fists, clubs and chains will do.
I slip behind a sturdy, metal display case and watch as Hillary approaches the gunman. I don’t want to wait to find cover if the bullets start flying, and I can cover Hillary with the .45 from here. The bikers are on their own if they catch any lead.
“You should’ve taken my offer the first time,” the man in the suit says.
Hillary isn’t kidding about the Russian accent. He’s practically talking through a bowl of borscht.
“I’m done with your offers. Here’s one of my own. You either bring the Iceman back or I tell my friends to rip your arms and legs off,” Hillary says with crossed arms and a tone that doesn’t waver. She’s not messing around. Neither are the bikers. They perk up at the suggestion of tearing this guy’s limbs off.
“You mistake me for a fool. The Iceman is worth so much more than this…this…museum, if you could call it that,” the gunman says. “The time to negotiate is over. Now you must be wiped clean for the glory of the Motherland.”
Pivoting against the display case, I flip on the laser sight I recently installed on my .45 and plant a cherry on the gunman’s forehead. It’s not that I need help aiming. My Colt 1911 is practically a part of my hand. No, I tacked on this bit of hardware to scare the shit out of people so I don’t have to pull the trigger. That’s my way of being nice.
Unfortunately, the message doesn’t resonate with the gunman. He notices the laser sight, but laughs.
“Killing me won’t help you recover the Iceman,” the gunman says.
“Maybe, but I’ll feel a lot better about it,” I say from behind the .45. “Why don’t you put down your gun and we can discuss your options for remaining above ground?”
“You might consider them yourself,” the gunman says in his thick accent. “I left a little something behind when I took the Iceman.”
Hillary looks to the CLOSED sign. “A bomb?”
“Yes. You are, as you Americans say, a loose thread that needs to be snipped. All I needed to do was to get everyone in one spot to ensure an effective detonation,” the gunman says. He looks around the room at Hillary, the bikers and myself. “You Americans are so quick to play John Wayne, I knew you’d come running if I showed up with a gun.”
Chase Baker & the Humanzees from Hell (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 8) Page 3