Practice to Deceive

by David Housewright

Saterbak was on his feet now, his hands resting on my desk top.

  “Sit down!” I shouted at him.

  He did.

  I waited a few moments then asked, “Why?”

  “I had nothing to do with any of that,” Saterbak claimed.

  “Have it your own way.” I didn’t believe him, but that was OK. I had worked out my plan before Saterbak arrived, and whether or not he confessed to murder was immaterial at this point. I just needed to ratchet one more bolt into place before I turned on the machinery.

  “Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s how much Levering stole from my client to invest in your Willow Tree. That’s how much I wanted from him. That’s how much I want from you.” Saterbak did not so much as blink, so I added, “You have until noon tomorrow.”

  And then he blinked plenty.

  “Are you insane? You think I can get that kind of cash overnight?”

  “Yeah, I do.” I shrugged. “And if you can’t, ask Joan Dully. I bet she has the exact total all packed up in a briefcase and ready to go.”

  Saterbak studied me hard, like I knew he would, his lips drawn into an angry line. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, then turned and left my office, leaving the door open behind him. I was up quickly, the nine in my hand, went to the door, closed it, and locked it.

  NINETEEN

  I WAS WEARING a gray sweatsuit with the emblem of the University of St. Thomas emblazoned on the shirt and pants. Over the sweatsuit I wore a green-and-blue down vest. Hidden in the vest was my four-and-a-half-inch long .25 Beretta. I would have preferred something with a little more range, accuracy, and stopping power, but it was the only weapon I had that didn’t make the vest look like I had a gun in the pocket.

  I had chosen my ground carefully. I wanted a location that was secluded, where civilians were unlikely to be hurt—where a shooter would be encouraged to take his chances. Yet, I also needed a natural setting; a place where my presence would not cause suspicion. I did not want the shooter to know that I knew he was coming. And he was coming—between now and noon tomorrow. Carson Saterbak wasn’t going to pay me two hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars. No way. Not at this late date. Not after all the trouble he’d gone to to protect himself and the other Willow Tree investors. I knew that before he came to my office, before he even called my office.

  I had picked the time, and now I chose the place—the asphalt jogging path that hugged the modest lake in Central Park in Roseville—and waited.

  The lake was in the center of the park; the jogging path followed its shoreline. The east and west sides were open to playground equipment, tennis courts, softball diamonds, volleyball pits, a pavilion, and a band shell. They were usually populated, even late on a cold April afternoon with the sun about to set. But the north side of the path that ran between the lake and the railroad tracks and the south side that cut through a thick grove of trees were not. I dismissed the tracks. Michael Zilar could shoot me from the tall grass between the tracks and park, but then he’d have a lot of open space to negotiate before he could get to a car—all of it in the shadow of several apartment buildings. The grove was more secluded and was bordered by residential streets. It was not uncommon for joggers to park their cars along them.

  Yeah, he would try to hit me in the grove. I’d bet my life on it.

  I LEFT MY car in the lot off Victoria Avenue. Experience told me that that was the most populated area of the park and therefore the safest. I walked slowly down to the shore, stopping at the wooden pier that reached one hundred feet into the lake. A couple of white kids dressed like gang bangers, who knew only what they saw on MTV, were leaning against the railing, playing the part, talking loud, not caring who heard them.

  “You smokin’ too much grain, man!” the first shouted unnecessarily. “Your head is juiced.”

  “Don’t wanna hass, man,” answered the second. “Whaddya say we nee-go-she-ate? Maybe throat some beverage, do some sub if ’n you a mind. Talk it over.”

  I was stretching, my left leg propped on the top rung of the railing, my body leaning into it. I was trying hard not to be obvious as I scanned the area around me, my eyes everywhere at once, seeing everything, watching nothing. I must not have done a very good job of it because the first kid waved his companion quiet and moved down the railing to where I was standing. He didn’t say a word. Just locked onto my eyes with his, mad-dogging me, not moving, not even blinking, like a prize-fighter trying to put the fear of God into an opponent.

  There was a time you caught a kid goofing, you’d straightened him out, maybe cuff him upside the head. (It takes a village to raise a child, isn’t that what Hillary Clinton says?) Now when a kid gives you the business, you turn away, say nothing, for fear the kid will put a bullet in your heart. But this guy and his buddy? They knew the jargon, knew the look, but they weren’t bangers. There was too much life in their eyes. They were wannabes; kids who might actually be impressed—and fearful—at the sight of a gun.

  I did not speak to the kid. Instead, I showed him the inside of my vest, showed him the butt of the .25 sticking out of the pocket. When he saw it, he glanced back at his companion and said real low: “He’s packed.”

  The second kid asked me, “You iron?”

  I nodded my head. Public or private, a cop is a cop is a cop to them.

  The first kid asked, “You ever trace anyone?” There was a hopeful expression on his face. The idea that I might have actually killed someone excited the bejesus out of him. Man, just like TV! And it was that hopefulness that made me think he had a chance, that Mom or Dad or a teacher or coach could save him. Some kids you meet, they can be just twelve years old and you already know they’re history; no way to turn them around, no way to save them. It’s only a matter of how much pain they inflict, how much suffering they cause before we put them into a cage; out of sight, out of mind. But to these kids it was still cops and robbers; life was still a game with rules.

  I gestured with my head for the kids to vacate the pier. To my surprise, they did.

  I WAS RUNNING now, actually running. Not fast, not without pain, but I was picking them up and laying them down nonetheless. It would have given me great pleasure had I not been so totally scared to death.

  I was rounding the northwest corner, moving at a slow pace past the volleyball pit, heading east, nearly parallel with the tracks. I put my hand inside my vest, gripped the .25, then took my hand out again. Nobody runs with their hands in their pockets. I relaxed just a tad as I approached the area where the path and the track came closest. The grass was still lying flat, beaten down by the winter. I was right, it wasn’t a good place. Just the same, I picked up the pace as I passed it, which was hard to do, holding my breath as I was.

  The park opened up on my left as I moved around the northeast corner. It offered iron barbecue grills unused since last fall, another volleyball court, a few tennis courts, a pavilion and a maze of playground equipment. In the distance a pond, its water level low, sparkled in the setting sun. I continued on for another hundred yards, slowing my pace as I made the turn, my feet thudding against the wooden bridge that spanned the creek connecting the pond to the lake. It was not my intention to slow down, but it had been weeks since I last ran, and while the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. Besides, my leg had set to throbbing, and I was fearful of blowing it out.

  Three full strides past the bridge, and I was in the grove. The leaves were just buds on the trees, and the undergrowth was dormant, yet it was still thick enough to obscure the streets and houses that line the park and, in some areas, block out the lake. I went deeper. My breath was coming hard now, and not just from exertion. The pain in my leg had increased, and I found myself wanting to stop and rub it away. I didn’t. I stayed close to the right edge of the jogging path, the edge nearest the lake. I expected Zilar to come at me from the left. If he attacked from the lake side of the path, he would have to cross over to make hi
s escape, and for a few brief moments he would be visible to, say, another jogger. So I guessed he would stay on the left—“guess” being the operative word. I went deeper.

  Up ahead was another jogger, a woman, moving toward me at an easy pace, her hands inside white athletic socks. I gave her plenty of room. She nodded as we passed.

  The path climbed gradually up a hill, then just as gradually fell away into a small valley. There, I thought as I crested the hill. That’s where it’ll happen.

  I began my descent, and with each step I lost confidence. Are you out of your mind? I asked myself. Are you nuts? Do you have some kind of death wish? I couldn’t believe that I had actually thought this was a good idea, dangling myself as bait, daring a professional killer to shoot me. A professional! Man, I wasn’t going to see him coming. I wasn’t even going to hear him. He was going to pop me using his homemade suppressor, and I was going to fall, and some unfortunate jogger would find me laying facedown in a pool of my own blood, and Anne Scalasi would be called to investigate, and she would go, “Tsk, tsk, I wonder what he was thinking.”

  The pain in my leg grew worse, my steps shorter and slower.

  I hit the valley and immediately started to climb out of it and nothing happened. I tensed, anticipating the hard punch of a bullet, but there wasn’t one. No pop. No zing of a round buzzing past my ear. At first I felt relief. Then I was irritated. What the hell was he waiting for, an engraved invitation?

  I followed the path out of the grove. Again the park loomed before me. More playground equipment, more barbecue grills. In the distance a lone batter took hits at a Softball diamond, a half dozen guys in the outfield shagging his flies. The path curved with the lake, leading me past the band shell. I remembered the last time I had been in the park. It was the Fourth of July before my wife and daughter were killed. We had lolled on the hill surrounding the band shell with a couple of hundred other natives, listening to the local orchestra bang out march tunes while fireworks exploded above. But there were no fireworks today. Zero. Zip. Nada.

  He’s a professional, I reminded myself. Zilar isn’t going to hit me on my terms; he’s going to do it on his. He’ll take me when I go back to my car. Or maybe he’s waiting for me to pull into the driveway at home. How many other ways could he do it?

  I was past the pier, taking the turn at the volleyball pits before I realized it. “Well,” I decided, “one more time around. The exercise will be good for my leg.”

  Only my leg didn’t agree, and it told me so with each step I took as I recircled the lake, again meeting the female jogger, this time along the tracks. She smiled and nodded, and I smiled and nodded back. She wasn’t particularly attractive, but, man, was she in good shape. Better than me, anyway.

  The sun was sinking fast when I hit the grove. Again I ran along the edge of the path closest to the lake. And again my stomach tightened when I crested the hill and began my descent into the valley. But I did not expect Zilar to make his move there. And of course that is exactly what he did.

  WHOOM!

  I heard the explosion and knew instantly what made it—you hear the sound once and you remember. I dived off the path into the trees, rolled, and turned toward the sound. The deep, piercing pain in my leg convinced me I had been shot again, but I wasn’t. It was the old wound, protesting my shabby treatment of it.

  WHOOM!

  I rolled some more until my legs were in the lake, icy water soaking through my sweatpants. The 25-caliber Beretta was in my hand, for all the good it did me. I couldn’t see a thing. I thought about crawling toward the path but resisted the idea. Let him come to me. And he did. I detected movement out of the corner of my eye, up the path toward my right. He was squatting behind a tree wearing a black jacket zipped to his throat, jeans, and boots.

  How did he get over there? I wondered. I would have bet the ranch that the shots had come from my left side, from down the path.

  I lay in the water. I didn’t trust the .25 from that distance, but I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to reveal myself the way Zilar had. Besides, he was the one in a hurry. I waited. Finally, Zilar was on the move, dashing from tree to tree, keeping low, his eyes down the path. He stopped a few feet from the edge, leaning against a tree, giving me an opportunity. I lined him up, took a deep breath, let half out, held the rest, was about to squeeze the trigger.… But Zilar jumped. The woman jogger! She was closing in on his location, about to go past. Zilar turned toward her, the gun leveled.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Zilar saw me and double-clutched. I was on my knees now. He brought his gun up. I did the same.

  WHOOM!

  The tree Zilar was leaning against exploded just inches above his head, sending splintered wood flying everywhere.

  He instinctively pulled his head in.

  The woman screamed.

  I fired one round. The bullet caught Zilar high in his left shoulder. The force of the blow, even from a .25, was enough to bounce him off the tree. He lost his gun, which clattered on the asphalt.

  The woman screamed again.

  I was on my feet now, limping fast toward Zilar. I kicked his gun off the path—it was a .38—then drew a bead on his head.

  “Don’t shoot me again!” he begged. “I’m hurt. I’m really hurt. Don’t shoot me no more!”

  The woman screamed yet again. For someone dressed for running, she sure wasn’t going anywhere very fast. But I didn’t hold it against her. Fear has a way of paralyzing you.

  “Call the police,” I told her. But she didn’t move, so I shouted, “Get the cops!”

  She nodded and started running through the grove toward the houses hidden beyond.

  “Nice ass,” Freddie said as he watched her scamper through the woods, fall, regain her feet, and hurry on. I didn’t answer, my gun still trained on Zilar’s head. “This the guy?” Freddie wanted to know.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Gonna shoot him?” he asked as if he wanted to know whether I preferred butter with my popcorn.

  “I’m thinking about it,” I admitted.

  “I’ll do it,” Freddie volunteered. “No problem.”

  “Don’t shoot me! Don’t shoot me!” Zilar pleaded. “You got me, man. You don’t need to shoot me no more.”

  “Who hired you?” I asked.

  “I’m hurt bad,” Zilar replied, his right hand pressed against his shoulder, both the hand and the jacket red with blood.

  “Who sent you?” I asked again.

  “G’ahead, take ’im out,” Freddie urged me. “We can tell the cops anything we want; who’s gonna know?” When I didn’t reply, Freddie added, “Man, what are you? A pussy?”

  I took Zilar’s left wrist, stretching his arm and causing great pain to his shoulder. I pressed the muzzle of the .25 to his elbow and said, “First this one and then the other. You don’t tell me what I want to know, I make it so you’ll have to ask strangers to unzip you whenever you need to take a whiz.”

  Zilar yanked his arm away. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph!” he said. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “And then tell the cops something else?” Freddie volunteered. “Shit, Taylor. Kill the fucker.”

  “Jesus, Mary, Joseph!” Zilar hissed again, slumping against the tree. “Oh, Jesus!”

  Freddie leveled his gun at Zilar’s face. “Say, Taylor?” he asked me. “Did I show you my new gun, yet?” He was holding a 50-caliber Desert Eagle, just like the one Zilar’s buddy had tried to use on me at Rice Park. Freddie—the man’s a slave to fashion.

  Zilar was shaking his head now with a calmness I found mystifying. “There isn’t any need for this. I get it,” he said. And apparently he did because he straighted up, his hand clutching his shoulder, and said, “I roll on Saterbak, turn—whaddaya call it—state’s evidence, and maybe they let me plead down to simple assault with a sentencing recommendation. You’ve got some nice, cushy prisons in this state. Clean. Modern. No gang rapes. No sodomy unle
ssin’ that’s your pleasure. Yeah, I can do a year in Stillwater or St. Cloud, no problem. So, tell me, what is it exactly you guys want to know?”

  I looked at Freddie. He looked at me.

  “I told you this was a good idea,” I said.

  SERGEANT JOHN HAWKS studied Freddie’s Desert Eagle carefully after unloading it, shook his head in disgust, and said, “Compensating for a small penis, are we?” I don’t know what he thought when he examined my tiny Beretta.

  We gave him a statement at the scene, after which he was kind enough to remove the handcuffs his patrolmen had wound around our wrists. He then took me, Freddie, and the female jogger to the Roseville Police Department, where the three of us gave our statements again, first to the city attorney, and then to a stenographer. After we signed them, the woman was offered a ride home. Freddie and I were asked to wait. And so we did, while Michael Zilar was treated at the St. Paul–Ramsey Medical Center. His wound wasn’t particularly grievous. My bullet had torn away part of his deltoid muscle just below the shoulder joint. It was what people who haven’t been shot call a “flesh wound.”

  After a couple of hours, Hawks loaded Freddie and me into a patrol car and drove us down to the Ramsey County Annex in downtown St. Paul. We were installed in separate holding cells and waited some more. Eventually the assistant Ramsey County attorney arrived. He watched me through the round peephole in my door, gave me a hard look, then left.

  When he came back—it was either early or late depending on your sleep habits—he informed me that Zilar had been true to his word. After negotiating a deal, Zilar spilled his guts about Carson Saterbak, starting with Saterbak’s original call to Chicago on behalf of Levering Field. He confessed that Saterbak brought him to town following Tom Storey’s untimely death in Rice Park, putting him up in a hotel near the Mall of America. He confessed that Saterbak had contacted him on what was now yesterday afternoon and promised to pay him twenty thousand dollars if I was dead by noon the following day. (Later that evening, after learning the price tag, Freddie would nudge me with an elbow. “See, I told you you were worth twenty.”)