“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Bam, bam, bam, and I drive away. No muss, no fuss. As for Bloom, who the hell is Bloom and why should I care?”
I stared at the gun barrel. It seemed enormous.
After a moment it disappeared into the darkness of Schroeder’s car.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “See you around, McKenzie. Oh, hey. Nice car.”
A moment later, he sped off, driving at least one hundred yards on the wrong side of the street before returning to the proper lane. I watched his reflection recede in my rearview mirror. I closed the window and set the heat at full. It took a few minutes before my teeth stopped chattering.
Maybe I should go home, I told myself.
The job’s not done, my inner voice replied.
What job?
You came here to protect Jack Barrett.
No, I didn’t. I came here to find out who sent an e-mail.
Have you?
Dammit.
I opened the glove compartment, slipped out my Beretta, chambered a round, engaged the safety, and set it on the bucket seat next to me. Next, I retrieved my cell phone and punched in a number I’ve known nearly my entire life.
A young girl answered.
“Hi, Katie. It’s McKenzie.”
“Thank you, McKenzie, for the sno-cone machine.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And the donut machine.”
“Kate?”
“And the popcorn machine. I’m supposed to say that.”
“You’re welcome, Katie. Is your dad around?”
“He’s watching basketball.”
“Let me talk to him, please.”
“But he’s watching basketball.”
“Katie.”
“Okay. Dad.”
There was a lot of fumbling before Bobby Dunston took the receiver from his daughter.
“I’m watching basketball,” he said.
“Why? It’s not the playoffs yet.”
“What do you want, McKenzie?”
“I need you to do something for me.”
“Why is it that whenever you agree to do these little favors for people, I end up doing all the work?”
“That’s the way I plan it.”
“What do you need?”
“I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”
“Tell me what I can do.”
“Thirty some years ago a young woman named Elizabeth Rogers was murdered here in Victoria. The autopsy was performed by the Nicholas County coroner. I need to know what’s in the report and I need to know right away. Can you help me out? Call the sheriff’s department? Take advantage of a little professional courtesy?”
“I can make a call, but thirty years? I don’t know, Mac.”
“Any help you can give me.”
“It’s getting late. If I can’t get hold of anyone tonight, I’ll try tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“Where can you be reached?”
“You have my cell number.”
“I do. So, what’s happening, Mac?”
“They wrecked my car, Bobby.”
“No. The Audi?”
“They smashed it all up.”
“How?”
“Some jerk in a pickup with a plow blade ran me off the road.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, but Bobby, they wrecked my new car.”
“What’s going on down there, McKenzie? What are you up to?”
“My neck, Bobby. I’m up to my neck.”
There was a sign on the door to the Korn Krib, the tavern attached to the Victoria Inn. NO GUNS ALLOWED ON THESE PREMISES. Signs like that have been cropping up at public places, even churches, all across Minnesota ever since Governor Barrett and the state legislature deemed it essential that any Clint Eastwood wannabe over the age of twenty-one who completes seven hours of training be allowed to carry a concealed weapon. I ignored the sign, carrying my Beretta in the inside pocket of my bomber jacket. Once I saw the karaoke machine next to the door, I was glad I did. Granted, no one was using it, but the night was young.
The Korn Krib was filling slowly. A pair of attractive women in high heels and dresses too thin for the weather were drinking and smoking cigarettes at the bar. They appeared to be waiting for someone. They could have been hookers. Or they could have been elementary schoolteachers from South Dakota. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. In the corner booth a man and woman in their early forties held hands across the table and spoke intimately to each other. They both wore wedding rings. I hoped they were married to each other but I wouldn’t have given odds on it. Three guys, working stiffs who labored where a suit was the uniform of the day, shared a pitcher of beer at a nearby table. They kept glancing at the girls at the bar.
I found an empty table, slouched in a chair, and propped my feet on another. I waved at the waitress, ordered a Sam Adams from across the room. She stared at my feet on the chair cushion and frowned when she served the beer. Since she didn’t actually say anything, I left them where they were.
I felt gloomy. Not Charlie Parker gloomy. Or even Billie Holiday gloomy. I was way down there at the bottom of the well with Tom Waits. I glanced back at the couple in the booth. They were still holding hands. I adjusted my chair so I wouldn’t have to look at them.
I could have stayed in my room, but I wanted a drink, and drinking alone in a bar seemed less emotionally unsettling than drinking alone in front of a TV set, less like Josie Bloom. Besides, there was nothing on and I had run out of things to do. After I had checked back in—the desk clerk refused to speak a word to me that wasn’t business related—I had taken up my notebook and started playing with what little facts I had gleaned during my time in Victoria. I played with them the way a child works with a Lego set, putting pieces together, taking them apart, rearranging them. I kept at it until the process had begun to repeat itself, yielding the same combinations and conclusions. Afterward, I had showered, dressed in the same jeans and shirt I had worn for the past two days, and jogged down to the Korn Krib.
I rested my elbow on the table and my cheek against my hand and slowly sipped the beer. Normally, I didn’t care that much about the NBA. Pro basketball was way down on my list of favorite sports, somewhere between tennis and World Cup Soccer. Yet I couldn’t get enough of the game being shown on the big screen mounted above the bar. I had no idea which teams were playing. Hell, the only reason I was sure it was pro ball instead of college was because instead of the girl next door, the cheerleaders looked like women I had once arrested for solicitation.
“You seem tense,” a voice said.
I looked up without adjusting my posture. Danny Mallinger hovered above the table. Instead of her uniform, she was wearing a green turtleneck sweater under a worn leather jacket that wasn’t too different from my own. Her hands were thrust into the front pockets of her jeans, her jeans tucked inside long leather boots. I liked her. Liked her face. Her eyes. Liked her hair and the way she pulled it back behind her ears. I liked the way she spoke, too, and some of the things she said that were close to witty. I liked the way she seemed to swagger even when standing still—a rare gift in a woman.
“I’m not tense,” I told her. “I’m just terribly, terribly alert.”
“I can tell.”
“Sit.”
“Thank you.”
Mallinger pulled out a chair opposite mine.
“There’re a couple of girls at the bar you could roust if you’re working,” I told her.
“I came looking for you.”
“Why?”
“To make sure you’re all right.”
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“Getting run off the highway, seeing a guy’s head half blown off—it shook me up. ‘Course, I’m small town. Might be you see a lot of that sort of thing in the big city.”
I raised my beer.
“All the time.”
And drank.
“
Drowning your sorrows, are you?” she asked.
“Did you come here to give me a lecture on sobriety, facing my demons, that sort of thing?”
“No.”
To prove it, she waved at the bartender. The bartender must have known her because he brought a vodka gimlet for Mallinger and another Sam Adams for me without being asked.
“I’ve been thinking about Chief Bohlig,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I believe him. I don’t think there’s a cover-up. I think he dumped the file because it was thirty years old. He dumped a lot of files.”
“You judge people according to your own behavior,” I told her. “You can’t imagine doing something like that, so you can’t imagine why someone else would. Like most honest people, Chief, you think everyone is basically honest, too. They’re not.”
“That’s a cynical attitude.”
I watched her out of the corner of my eye.
“You’re right,” I said. “You are small town.”
We sat silently, watching the game and sipping our beverages. After a few minutes, Mallinger asked, “What kind of music do you like?” I don’t think she really cared. It was just something to say.
“Jazz mostly, but also blues, some rock ’n’ roll. You?”
“You’re probably going to laugh.”
“Not even if I thought it was funny.”
“I listen to Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart . . .”
“Ah, the big bands. What’s funny about that?”
Mallinger didn’t say. Instead, she took another sip of her gimlet. Thus fortified, she said, “What happened today, do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
“No?”
“Talk, society tells us these days. Something upsets you, talk about it. Talk to family. Talk to friends. To qualified therapists. Whatever. Talk your problems away. Only the guys who fought World War II, the guys like my father who fought in Korea, who saw hell up close and personal, they didn’t talk about it. Yet they built a nation of astonishing strength and vitality. Talk is overrated.”
“That makes sense,” Mallinger said.
I watched her while she took a sip of vodka.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Me? No. It’s just . . .”
“Chief?”
“It’s just that I don’t know how to behave. No one ever taught me what I should do when I see—when I see things like that. Chief Bohlig, he never . . . I know you’ve seen things. I know you’ve done things.”
“Yes, I have.”
“The suspect you killed, with the shotgun . . . I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never even discharged my weapon except on the range.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“I’ve never even seen a man who was shot before—not until today. I thought . . .”
“You thought I could tell you what to feel?”
“Something like that.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel crappy.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I guess it’s okay as long as you feel something.”
“How did you feel? When you killed the suspect, what was it like?”
“Messy.”
“No. I mean, how did you feel?”
“I just told you.”
She thought about it for a moment, then said, “How do you live with it?”
“I remind myself that I did the right thing, that I saved lives by killing the suspect. I remind myself that that was my job, to protect and serve the public. I remind myself that the world is a better place because I did my job. I remind myself that I’m doing good, that I’m one of the good guys.”
“That works,” Mallinger said.
“It works for me, Chief. The thing is, there is no answer, no formula, no set of rules to follow. It’s like being an alcoholic. You deal with it day by day, some days being better than others, and any code, any philosophy that gets you from today to tomorrow is a good one.”
“That’s a hard way to live.”
“Yes, it is.”
We finished our drinks, ordered another round.
“For what it’s worth, Chief. I thought you behaved very well today. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“You can call me Danny.”
“I should have known Josie was on meth, Danny,” I said. “The way he kept scratching himself, how his teeth were rotting out. Those are pretty obvious signs, but I didn’t see them.”
“Would it have made any difference?”
“Probably not.”
We watched the game some more. At the same time, I was aware that something was happening between us. Something cellular. I felt my body vibrating like the strings of a harp. Suddenly, Danny seemed very sexy to me. It could be the alcohol, I knew. Or the incredible darkness that had seeped into my soul. I didn’t analyze it. I didn’t want to.
On the TV, a ref blew a whistle, signaling time-out. The game was replaced by a commercial.
“I’m not gay,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m not gay. I’m not married or engaged. Just in case you were thinking that.”
“Why would I think that?”
“Because I haven’t hit on you yet.”
“I noticed.”
“I thought you might be wondering why.”
“Why?”
“I figure everyone tells you that you’re lovely, that you’re beautiful. I figure everyone tells you that you could start a parade just by crossing the street and that you must get pretty bored hearing it all the time.”
“Exhausting,” she said, having fun with it.
“So I decided I would try to impress you with my maturity and intellectual depth. Only there’s a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t have any.”
Mallinger laughed. She couldn’t help herself.
I lifted my legs off the chair and swung them under the table, brushing her knee with my knee.
“Do that again,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Make me laugh.”
I did.
Yet it wasn’t enough. Almost, but not quite. Not the laughter or the drinks. The gloomy feeling remained, fed by tiny reminders of Bloom and high-speed duels and fights outside restaurants and Greg Schroeder lurking in the shadows. It was still there when I announced that I was going back to my room and Danny volunteered to walk with me and I welcomed her.
Outside my room, I kissed her on the right cheek. I didn’t say anything. I just reached my arm a little around her waist, not quite a hug, and I kissed her cheek.
She turned her mouth and kissed me back—on the lips. The kiss lasted longer than it had any right to, and near the end of it Danny moaned, not with passion or pain, but with relief. I broke off the kiss and examined her face—Danny’s face. Not Bloom’s. Not Elizabeth’s. Danny’s. It was a nice face. Without trickery, without guile or deceit. I kissed her again.
In my imagination, Mallinger’s body was mostly muscle. In reality, there was a fleshiness about her that could easily turn to fat if she didn’t exercise, and for a moment I actually considered telling her so before purging the thought from my head in horror. What was I thinking? You’re not thinking, that’s the whole thing, my inner voice told me. I felt giddy with excitement and at the same time felt that my excitement was somehow lewd, as if I was taking pleasure in a perversion—a thought probably caused by the knowledge that I was betraying Nina. I pushed that aside, too. Instead, I lost myself in the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings my heightened senses brought to me, the softness of Danny’s skin and the scent of her and the surprising strength of her and the heat of her body when I entered her. I felt sensations—sensations gamblers must feel, sensations I found immensely pleasurable—and they kept coming and coming—until tenderness turned to sleep and night became morning.
Danny was standing at the w
indow, looking out on the parking lot beyond. Early dawn circled her naked body.
“What is it?” I asked, just to be saying something.
“I should leave now.”
“You don’t need to.”
“It wouldn’t do for the chief of police to be seen leaving a strange man’s motel room.”
I objected to “strange man,” but said nothing. I slid out of bed and came up behind her. I rested my hands on her shoulders.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
“I can’t stay. I have to go home. I have to put on makeup.”
“I didn’t know you wore makeup.”
“I do. I do wear makeup. It comes with the job.”
She turned and kissed me just as she had outside the motel room door several hours earlier. When she finished, she said, “Go back to bed.” I did, but she didn’t join me.
12
I woke up feeling guilty as hell. Slants of sunlight fell across my face like the beams of interrogation lamps. I turned my head away. A song played in my brain, a song I knew as a child—the same song that was there just before I fell asleep after making love to Danny Mallinger. “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”
“You’re one sick puppy, McKenzie,” I told myself.
I went naked to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. That wasn’t going to do it, so I took a shower, first cold and then as hot as I could stand it. Afterward, I swiped the steam from the mirror and stared at myself.
“Who do you think you are?” I asked aloud.
I thought of Nina Truhler. She deserved better than someone like me.
My cell phone played its tinny melody and for a moment I was seized with panic.
It’s her. What should I say?
Only a glance at the numerical display told me I was wrong.
“Hi, Bobby,” I said.
A fist of cold air gripped me as I stepped out of the bathroom. Goose bumps formed on my naked flesh and my body shivered.
“Good morning,” Dunston said.
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine. Rough night, McKenzie?”
“Long night, anyway.”
“I have the information you need.”
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