by Mike Faricy
“I want LaZelle involved. Nothing personal, Hale, but he’ll make sure I’m safe.”
Hale nodded, “Makes sense to me, I’ll try and set it up. And thanks, maybe you’re not the total fuckup I was led to believe.”
“Then again,” I said.
Chapter 61
Two days later I was back sitting on Robert Street. Since I was newly carless, I was parked in some sort of pimped-out ride that had been part of a forfeiture agreement arranged through a drug dealer’s attorney. If I wanted to attract attention to myself I couldn’t think of a better way to do it. Sitting behind the wheel of a metallic chrome green Hummer H3 with black-tinted windows and Sprewell spinners for wheel rims, with a little over a quarter ton of chrome trim that probably glowed in the dark. I was getting more than a few stares.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I’d said to Hale when he had pulled this pimpmobile into the garage.
“Look at it this way, we won’t lose you in the crowd.”
“Shouldn’t I be wearing a full-length fur coat and a white fedora when I’m driving this bomb?”
“Yeah, well, just don’t scratch this thing, it’s a DEA loaner,” he’d cautioned.
So I sat and waited on Robert Street. Sweating in the heat and humidity, trying not to doze off. I limped out of the car periodically to toss more quarters in the meter then waited some more. In between times I did my stretching exercises right there on the downtown sidewalk, attempting to reduce the throbbing still in my back and butt. Nothing happened. Although at one point I think I spotted one of Aaron’s undercover guys leaning against Braco’s condo building looking nonchalant. At seven that evening I drove off, made sure no one but Hale’s crew was following me and returned to my bunk-bed dungeon.
“A number of spurts of activity from Braco’s cell,” Gary said over pizza. Tonight it was sausage with onions and extra cheese.
“’Course we don’t know what he was saying. Maybe he was just chatting with a girlfriend,” one of the Mikes said, I could keep all of them straight by now.
Hale tilted his head back and dangled a triangle of pizza above his mouth. It reminded me of feeding time at seal island.
“Let’s figure we got their attention today. If so, it would stand to reason they would set something up for tomorrow or the next day. We don’t have anything by the day after tomorrow we start back at square one,” he said, then gobbled the pizza slice in three quick bites.
“And do what?” I asked.
“God, I’m not at all sure,” he replied through a mouthful of pizza.
Chapter 62
Day two and the weather had changed it was even hotter and more humid. I could feel the effect from yesterday’s nine hours of sitting on my ass. I was on my donut cushion, and it wasn’t helping. My butt and back were throbbing uncomfortably.
“God, I’m sore from doing absolutely nothing,” I said.
“Why would that be different than any other day? Man, you oughta try hiding out on the damn floor back here,” Hale said. He was stretched out on the floor of the back seat with a dark sheet pulled over him. Hiding there, just in case trouble started. Aaron and a team of four were around somewhere, undercover. It was after the noon hour and I’d yet to see any of them.
“You know, it’s too bad you can’t take a look. The women out here are gorgeous today. I don’t know how they get away with wearing so little,” I lied. “I wonder how any guy could remain focused on his job working next to these beautiful things?”
Hale just sighed from the floor of the backseat.
I plugged the meter at hourly intervals. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and from about one-thirty on the sun beat down unmercifully on the Hummer, baking it oven-like. I ran the air conditioner periodically but the sweat still rolled off me. I drank a PowerAde, this one was blue, the previous one had been red and I couldn’t really discern much of a taste difference between the two.
“You okay back there?” I asked Hale, as much in an attempt to stay awake as anything else. My head had been nodding, and my eyelids felt like they had ten-pound weights hanging from them.
“What the hell, what’s happening? Anything up?” he murmured coming awake.
“God, you’re asleep back there? How come I have to sit here looking alert and wide awake?” I complained.
“We’re trying to fool people into thinking you actually know what you’re doing for a change. I doubt it’ll work. It’s pretty tough attempting to cover up someone as stupid as you are.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I said.
“Well, there’s a change,” Hale responded.
I searched for a clever comeback just as a blue BMW Z4 drove up the exit ramp, it was Kerri’s. There was no traffic coming so it could have easily turned left and driven off. Instead it waited for maybe fifteen seconds. I guessed she wanted to make sure I saw her.
“There’s our BMW on the ramp, looks like just Kerri driving,” I said to Hale.
“Unless someone’s hiding in there, but who’d be stupid enough to try that?” he said.
From the floor of the backseat I heard him on the radio alerting our cover guys to the fact we were moving. I was suddenly very thankful that I was driving a vehicle that stood out. We turned left on Seventh, drove maybe half a mile, then took a right on Kellogg going up the hill toward the imposing edifice of the St. Paul Cathedral. I passed on a description of our route to Hale still down on the floor of the backseat, relaying the information.
“We get to the top of this hill, I’m guessing we’re either gonna turn right onto the freeway or take a left and head down Summit Ave.”
“Which do you think?” Hale asked.
“I got five bucks says she’ll take a right and get on the freeway. To my way of thinking it’s the smart move, holds a lot more options for her.”
“I’ll take that bet,” Hale said.
On cue the blinker on the BMW signaled a left, up Summit Ave.
“Damn it, she’s taking Summit,” I said, following two cars behind.
“I knew it,” Hale laughed from the backseat.
“How’d you know?” I asked.
“No real surprise. I just figured the safe bet would be the opposite of whatever you thought.”
I continued down Summit, five bucks lighter. We drove for almost five miles.
“You know where she’s headed?” I said, a tone of surprise in my voice. “She’s going right down to the River Boulevard. You don’t think she’s going back to that same scenic overlook where Braco’s kid was shot, do you?”
“Wouldn’t be the smart move but then again…”
We took a left onto the River Boulevard. The road follows the Mississippi along the top of the river bluff. It snakes around, back and forth, turns and bends so at any given time you could be pointed south, east, or west. She traveled about fifty yards then made a right turn into a small parking lot next to a stone monument commemorating the First World War. It was just that, a parking lot, rather than a scenic overlook. A few cars had been parked by folks who walked along the miles of pedestrian paths overlooking the river. Like she had done before, Kerri climbed out of the BMW smoking a cigarette then leaned against the trunk of the car, arms folded, staring at the Hummer.
Across the street and up a gently sloping lawn stood buildings from the St. Paul Seminary and the University of St. Thomas. An occasional student drifted aimlessly along the sidewalk.
I remained a good thirty feet away, lowered my window and looked left and right up and down the River Boulevard as far as I could see. Then I studied the route we’d just traveled, examining the cars parked along Summit for two blocks to see if there was one stuffed with muscle-bound Russian thugs with the idea of filleting me into bite-sized pieces. I couldn’t see any.
“I think it looks clear, sorta.”
“That doesn’t sound all that reassuring,” Hale said. “Maybe pull alongside her, put your piece on your lap, just in case you need it fast.”
“A
lready there.”
“Stay in the vehicle, you need to get out of here. Just go, I got your back.”
I could hear him pull off the sheet cover, then shift position slightly while he muttered something into the radio.
I made a visible show of checking the cars on the road again. Kerri looked bored. She took a couple of dramatic drags on the cigarette in her left hand. Her right arm was wrapped across her chest, the hand tucked under her left elbow. If she had a pistol, and I was pretty sure she did, it could be in her right hand.
It was a cloudless, hot, humid, Midwestern summer afternoon. You couldn’t buy a breeze, and I could feel the sweat running down the sides of my face. Despite the air conditioning in the Hummer I had sweated through the back of my shirt. My senses were on high alert and I was aware of the overall background hum of insects. A dragonfly flitted up and down erratically over the top of a car parked just past Kerri, wings sparkling in the sunlight.
Kerri was nodding her head ever so slightly up and down. I didn’t think she was giving a signal. It seemed to be more of a hyper sort of movement, the way you might tap your foot if you were bored. She was probably screaming inside her head, “Come on you idiot, move, pull up here!”
Chapter 63
I took a deep breath then exhaled.
“Okay, here we go,” I said. Hale didn’t respond, and I may have spoken so softly he never heard me, but he could sense the Hummer moving.
“So Dev, how have you been? Where did you get this, this car?” Kerri laughed once I stopped behind the BMW. Her right hand remained securely tucked under her left elbow. She took another drag from her cigarette.
I bit my tongue and thought, Gee the last time I saw you, you tried to shoot me, missed, and put a bullet through my windshield. When that didn’t work you guys placed a bomb in my car to blow me up. Instead I half joked, “Oh, you know Kerri, I just thought this sort of fit my personality a little better, and well, the time seemed right to get a fresh set of wheels. Like it?”
She nodded, took a final drag, and then ground out her cigarette with the toe of her heeled boot. Deja vu all over again. Just like before, she spent a long time grinding it into the ground. When she looked up her eyes seemed a little glazed. Was it possibly a tear, or just heartless determination?
“Have you have found Nikki?”
“Your sister?” suggesting by my tone she was anything but “Matter of fact I think I may have.”
I glanced up and down the road again, checked for vehicles, nothing looked out of the ordinary. I turned back to Kerri, I thought she was looking at me but her focus was a few feet beyond to the bluff.
From the bluff down to the river was parkland. The terrain was steep, wild, filled with deer, fox, raccoons, and the occasional gaggle of underage teens sneaking off to smoke dope and drink something memorable like root beer schnapps or strawberry-flavored vodka.
I saw the first shaved head struggling up the bluff, red-faced with heavy muscular arms and a thick upper body, some sort of inordinately large pistol in his hands. There were three other guys close on his heels, all armed. They were gasping and groaning, struggling to make the steep grade and pick up the pace in the final four or five feet and then they’d be virtually on top of us.
Kerri suddenly had her pistol out from under her elbow, with her right arm extended, the barrel looked to be about six inches wide and pointed right between my eyes. I hate it when I’m right.
It sounded like a slight clearing of someone’s throat, sudden, brief, not at all loud.
The first shaved head was picked up and thrown back over the bluff just as he was beginning to pick up speed. It was so sudden one of his compatriots yelled something in Russian. I couldn’t understand it, but the tone was more of chastisement than a warning to the others. Maybe something like What the hell are you doing? or Quit screwing around! It took them a step or two but then suddenly they all dropped to the ground.
Kerri quickly spun around and crouched down behind the rear of her BMW. I seemed to have suddenly become the least of her concerns. I accelerated out of the parking lot, back onto the River Boulevard and away. No one followed or shot at us.
Hale was suddenly up, crouched in the backseat with what looked like a MAC 10 clenched in his hands.
“I don’t think they’re following,” I said giving half a glance in the rearview mirror before screeching around the corner, back onto Summit Avenue and racing up a small hill. The Hummer swayed back and forth a bit as I accelerated.
“You see where the hell that shot came from?” Hale asked, then mumbled something unintelligible into his radio.
“I’m thinking the college parking ramp. No neighbors, it’s secluded, and she can just get in a car and calmly drive out like she’s heading home after a class.” I whipped around the corner, forced a handful of college kids crossing against the light to jump back as I leaned on the horn. Then I rocketed down the street past the science building at the university, heading toward the three-story parking ramp. There were already two squad cars with lights flashing blocking the entrance and exit ramps. In the distance I could see the flashing lights of at least two more police vehicles racing toward us. They’d be here in no more than fifteen seconds.
“Pull over, pull over,” Hale commanded.
I hadn’t even come close to stopping before he leaped out the passenger-side door, stumbled a step or two and then hurried toward the parking ramp, half running and hopping, shouting instructions into his radio as he moved.
Chapter 64
They got the parking ramp cordoned off quickly, more police arriving every couple of minutes. I saw Aaron a couple of times from a distance but never got close enough to talk with him. In the end, they never found Nikki in the parking ramp. They found her car or at any rate a car, a gray, 2006 Honda Accord, abandoned on the ground level of the ramp. The car was thirty feet from the exit, with the driver’s door left open. She must have fled on foot the moment she saw the police squad blocking the exit. A rifle with a scope rested on the floor of the backseat, buried beneath two twenty-four packs of newborn sized Pampers. A child’s car seat was belted into the rear. But no Nikki.
“Damn it, I can’t believe it. We must have just missed her,” Aaron said, clearly upset. We were standing on the top level of the parking ramp in the broiling sun. Waves of heat shimmered off the concrete. We’d just completed another walk through the entire ramp, uniformed officers checked each and every one of the vehicles twice for a redhead hiding inside.
Looking out of the ramp and down toward the river I could see where the area was cordoned off with crime-scene tape. A small tent was getting set up at the edge of the bluff not quite over the body. I thought I might be able to see the body or at least where it was with a shroud draped over it, but it must have rested just that much further down the bluff to be hidden from view. There was an EMT vehicle parked in the lot at about the same place where Hale and I had been when the shot was fired. To my knowledge neither Kerri nor any of the guys that had climbed up over the top of the river bluff were in custody. A number of police vehicles were parked around at haphazard angles. The medical examiner wagon was there. I wondered if Aaron’s friend Dr. Mallory Bendix was down there, but then figured her sort of arrogance probably suggested she wouldn’t work out in the field with common folk.
Hale was limping, cringing with each step, most likely injured during his jumping exit out of the moving Hummer, but I guessed he may have had larger problems on his mind at the moment. The last thing either he or Aaron needed was my meddling right now.
Aaron was the senior officer on site and as such it was his crime scene. So he was dealing with a very full plate. I had just finished writing out my statement, signed it and handed it to a uniformed sergeant. Hale limped over to me, said quietly, “Why don’t you get out of here? There’s going to be enough heat without you getting dragged into the meat grinder. We got your statement. I’ll square it with LaZelle soon as he gets a moment.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” he groaned, “not like we don’t know where to find you. Anything comes up I’ll give you a call. Jesus,” he groaned a second time.
“Look, why don’t I run you down to United? You might just have a bad sprain but I’m willing to bet you broke or tore something when you jumped out of the Hummer.”
“No, I’ll make it, just a little uncomfortable is all. Oh, my God!” he suddenly groaned.
“Okay, that’s it, you’re coming with,” I said. Hale didn’t argue, we did the walking wounded routine, with his right arm draped over my shoulder. Together we limped and hopped down the stairwell and across a parking lot to the Hummer.
There were news vans, three of them, parked on the far side of the crime-scene tape. Satellite dishes on top of the vans, call letters emblazoned on all four sides. Off to one side an attractive-looking woman with a microphone was wading through a crowd of casual college kids. No one paid any attention to us. The Hummer was parked on the street, just at the end of the parking ramp. There was a parking ticket beneath the wiper on the front windshield, par for the course.
I tossed the parking ticket between the front seats and pulled away from the curb. Two coeds looked the Hummer over as they passed, one raised her eyebrow and gave me an all-knowing wink then held a suggestive grin. Her companion said something to her and they both laughed as we passed by.
Hale groaned again.
“We’ll be at United Hospital in under ten minutes,” I said and drove away.
Chapter 65
I was thinking about Nikki, playing over in my head what I would do. She was probably dressed in unassuming clothes, just in case. She takes a shot, then as everyone scatters she tosses the weapon in the backseat of her car, pulls the Pampers down on top of it. Proceeds to drive out of the ramp, only the exit is blocked. The timing had to have been close. I guessed the police squad wasn’t quite there as she gets to the ground level in the ramp. She’s probably heading for the exit just as squad car pulls up and blocks it. She gets out of her car and calmly walks away.