A Hard Ticket Home (Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie Novels)

by David Housewright

“Don’t mess with me today,” I told him. “I’m in a real bad mood.”

  “I got this for your mood.” He reached under the bar and came up with a miniature baseball bat, the kind the vendors hawk at the Metrodome during Twins games. I didn’t wait to see whose autograph was on it. I yanked the Beretta from its holster—I’d be damned if I’d let someone hit me again—and slapped it down hard on the bartop. The noise startled him. The bartender dropped the bat and backed away, waving his hands in front of him like he was saying no to a second helping of pie.

  Merci stared at me, trembling with anger.

  “I think I know who killed Jamie and David and all the others and I think I know why,” I told her. “I need you to help me put them on the spot.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ll explain that later. Right now—look, you’re a businesswoman. You work for money. I’ll pay you one hundred dollars an hour. What time is it?” I looked for a clock. “Three-thirty? Start now and go until—call it midnight. Nine hundred bucks. Make it an even thousand. Plus, I’ll pay all expenses.”

  “What expenses?”

  “Gown, shoes, getting your hair done—we’ll have to hurry. We’re going to a fancy dress ball.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where the bad guys are. Are you in?”

  “I don’t know,” Merci said.

  “I’m going to get those sonsuvbitches. Are you in?”

  “I need to make a phone call first.”

  “Call whoever you like.”

  Merci went quickly to the pay phone attached to the wall between the two rest rooms. She returned five minutes later.

  “I have my own gown,” she told me. “With matching shoes and bag. It used to belong to Jamie. She gave it to me after TC was born.”

  Merci shouted at me through the door of what used to be my father’s bedroom.

  “Why are we doing this?”

  “You’ll see,” I told her as I fumbled with my black bow tie. What was I going to say? I’m using you for bait?

  “You know, I never wore this dress before,” she called out. I could relate. I had worn my double-breasted tuxedo only a half dozen times in the past five years—most of those times with Kirsten. I had never learned how to tie a bow tie and instead used one of those pre-tied jobs with a strap that winds around your collar and hooks under your throat.

  I shoved the Beretta .380 into the holster under my left arm then slipped the tuxedo jacket over it.

  “What time do we need to be there?”

  Ahh, damn. This was no good. I couldn’t use her, hooker or no, not like this. I went to the door. Rapped on it gently with a knuckle.

  “Yes?”

  I rested my head on the closed door while I explained what I thought I knew and why we were going to the party. I concluded by telling Merci, “It could be dangerous. Probably will be. Eight people have been killed already. If you want out, I’ll pay the grand I owe you and we’ll call it a night.”

  Merci didn’t answer. I called her name.

  “Come in.”

  I opened the door cautiously. Merci was on the far side of the room, staring at a woman in the full-length mirror. The woman staring back was modeling a long gown of iridescent raspberry lace that hugged her curves from shoulders to ankles. Long sleeves, scoop neckline, a thigh-high side slit that caused my heart to skip several beats. Merci tugged gently at the fabric.

  “It’s a little snug,” she said.

  “Works for me,” I admitted.

  “I’m pretty, aren’t I? I’m a pretty girl.”

  “More than pretty.”

  “I’m as pretty as Jamie was.”

  I saw it then. And wondered why I hadn’t seen it before.

  She spun around to face me. “My life should have been so different than the one I’m living. Jamie understood that. Better than anyone. She wanted me to have the life I had been cheated out of but it wasn’t hers to give.” Her voice cracked and a sob escaped her throat. Merci turned away from me, but only for a few moments. When she turned back her voice was steady and her eyes were clear.

  I thought of Stacy and said, “Let’s rethink this.”

  “No, let’s not.” In case I wanted to argue, she added, “When do we leave?”

  “I thought we’d have dinner first and arrive fashionably late.”

  Animal rights activists were chanting slogans outside the entrance to the Minnesota Club in downtown St. Paul where the region’s best and brightest entrepreneurs had gone to celebrate themselves. It was an interesting performance. Minnesota protesters are way too nice to attack fur wearers with spray paint and plastic bags filled with blood. Here they’re usually content with polite heckling. “Get a flea collar.”

  The entrepreneurs taunted back. “Get a life.”

  “Do you know how many animals died to make your coat?”

  “Do you know how many animals died to make your lunch?”

  All in all, everyone was having a wonderful time.

  Beyond the protesters was a long line of limousines, some white, some silver, most black—a few of them actually parked legally. Devanter was leaning against the fender of one, cupping an unfiltered cigarette in his left hand, shaking his head at the southeast-Asian drivers who congregated around a limo identical to his half a block up. He was muttering loudly to himself.

  “You believe it? The gooks in this state. You’d think a good Minnesota winter’d send ’em back to the paddies.”

  When he saw us he dropped the smoke and took a step backward. Only it wasn’t me who startled him. He was staring at Merci.

  Merci turned her head to look at him as we passed by. Devanter tried to say something but nothing came out. We left him standing there, his mouth hanging open.

  The Minnesota Club was built in 1915 and remains one of the oldest structures in downtown St. Paul. It used to be an exclusive hideaway where rich old men would go to decide the future of the city and state over a snifter of brandy and a good cigar. Rumor had it that in the twenties the members maintained a tunnel that led to the back door of Nina Clifford’s elegant and terribly expensive bordello barely a block away. Personally, I believe the rumor to be true. Especially since a portrait identified as that of the lady in question—a black-haired beauty in a silver-gray dress—hangs prominently on the wall of the club’s main bar. And then there’s the plaque attached to a red-brown brick salvaged from the ruins of Clifford’s brothel that reads, “This brick from Nina Clifford’s house is presented to the Gentlemen of the Minnesota Club for their great interest in historic buildings.”

  Things have changed since the second decade of the last century, of course—for better or worse, you tell me—and now the Minnesota Club is available as a banquet hall for meetings, school proms, wedding receptions, and bar mitzvahs. The Northern Lights Entrepreneur’s Club had engaged four full floors of the eighty-seven-year-old building and still the yuppies were wall to wall. People flowed single file through the crowd, moving from floor to floor and ballroom to ballroom like a meandering river, searching for faces they knew and then stopping when they found some, forcing the river to alter course around them. The only comparatively empty space was in the center of the large ballrooms, away from the bars and power corners, an eye of calm surrounded by storm. That’s where Merci and I found ourselves, deposited by the current shortly after presenting my invitation to the tuxedo-clad security guards at the door.

  I like big parties, the bigger the better. No one asks personal questions at big parties. If you work it right, you can maintain a high degree of popularity without ever needing to reveal a single detail about yourself simply by trading one group for another whenever you exhaust your twenty minutes of humorous small talk.

  I spun slowly around, taking in the room. Every man wore a tuxedo, every woman was dressed in a gown. Compared to what some of the women wore, Merci’s raspberry lace dress looked like a dust rag. Merci remained unimpressed.

  “A lot of thousand-dollar-a-night wh
ores here.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Want me to introduce you to a few?”

  “No, thank you.” I didn’t quite believe her until a comely young woman holding up a strapless gold-lamé gown with her chest approached.

  “Moving up in the world, huh, Cole?” Her dark brown hair was cut in cascading curls. She shook it as she brushed past us, hanging onto the arm of a man who was a full head shorter than she was. Merci smiled and nodded in return.

  “Love your hair.” When the brunette flowed out of earshot she added, “I have a wig at home that looks just like it.”

  I continued to watch until the woman disappeared into the crowd. You can buy anything these days.

  “What do we do now?” Merci asked.

  “Locate our host.”

  “Are you sure he’s here?”

  “His ride is.”

  We collected a couple of glasses half filled with champagne from a silver tray that was being circulated by a woman who looked way too young to drink, and plunged back into the river. A band played country-western music on the lower floor, but no one danced—the guests all seemed more interested in the strategically placed bars. The huge main floor featured a rock-and-roll band that leaned heavily on golden oldies and everyone seemed to be dancing. The light and airy second-floor ballroom—which used to be the ladies’ dining room back when women were forbidden to eat in public with their men—boasted a Count Basie–style jazz orchestra. There seemed to be more people on the second floor than anywhere else. Charlotte Belloti was among them, grooving to the sound on the edge of the hardwood dance floor, spilling champagne in time to “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing ).”

  I found an unoccupied space against the wall and asked Merci to wait for me. “Try not to be conspicuous,” I told her. My fear was that Casselman would see her before we saw him. Several people had already looked long and hard at Merci as we passed through the crowd. I didn’t know if they recognized her as Jamie—looking like Jamie in Jamie’s dress—or as one of the few truly beautiful people at the party. In a previous life, with that gown, with her golden hair piled high, she might have passed for a 1940s movie star, she could have been Jean Harlow. At worst, she would have been a nice addition to Nina Clifford’s stable of elegant “sporting girls.”

  “Hi,” I said to Charlotte as she danced. When she didn’t hear, I loudly called out her name and tapped her shoulder.

  Charlotte swung around, stared dumbly, blinked a few times, recognized me, and cried gleefully, “McKennnnnnzzzzziiiiieeeee.” She hugged my neck and kissed my cheek like I was a long-lost friend at a high school reunion. “It’s so gooood to see youuuuuu.”

  I returned the hug and stepped back. Charlotte was wearing a short black velvet dress with an off-the-shoulder neckline bordered by ostrich feathers. The skirt ended at midthigh and had an off-center slit that revealed six more inches. Frankly, she didn’t have the legs for it, but just the same I said, “Looking good, Charlotte.”

  “Oh, this ratty old thing …”

  “I see you’re having fun.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not having fun at all. No one will dance with me. Dance with me, McKenzie.”

  “Maybe later. Is your husband here?”

  “Ohhh pooh,” she said. “Whaddaya gotta bring him up for? He ain’t never comin’ home.”

  “Never?”

  “Oh, he’s still up in Canada. He said he’s flying in with the commies later tonight. He said not to wait up, so you know what that means?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Goose for the gander,” she said.

  I was momentarily confused. “Excuse me?”

  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” She enunciated her words carefully even as she grabbed the lapels of my tuxedo jacket and pulled me down to her face. “Dance with me, McKenzie,” she whispered into my ear.

  “I’m looking for Casselman.”

  She bit my ear.

  “Let’s go outside and make love in a limo. Wouldn’t that be fun? I’ll let you call me Charlie.”

  Doesn’t anyone in this crowd sleep with their own spouse in their own bed?

  I bussed her cheek. “Come to me when you’re cold sober and we’ll discuss it.”

  “Ahhh, cripes, an honorable man. I don’t need an honorable man. I need a dishonorable man. That’s what Geno is. Dis-honorable. He’s cheating on me, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I lied.

  “Go away, McKenzie. Go, go talk to Warren, he’s …” Charlotte waved toward the back of the room, dismissing me and returning to her solo dance.

  After renegotiating the human traffic, I found Merci smiling brightly, her arms folded across her chest, her back against the wall. A man was leaning toward her, holding himself up with one hand, the hand planted firmly above Merci’s shoulder. He was talking earnestly and gesturing with the mixed drink he held in his other hand.

  “Honey, this nice man has just invited me to a private hot tub party at his townhouse,” Merci said when I reached her side.

  “Really? Can I watch?”

  “What? No! I mean—never mind,” the man stammered before turning tail and escaping into the crowd.

  “What was it you wanted to show me?” Merci called after him.

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “Just another man with money in his hand.”

  Warren Casselman was not on the other side of the room as Charlotte Belloti had indicated. He was on a different floor altogether, the third floor, which was mostly taken up by offices and sleeping rooms and not generally open to the public. Still, there was a large knot of people gathered on the landing, presumably trying to escape the high volume of noise generated by the various bands for a few moments of quiet social intercourse. Casselman was at the far end, engaged in a feverish conversation with the other three surviving founders of the Northern Lights Entrepreneur’s Club.

  “That’s him,” I whispered to Merci. “The man with his back to us.”

  She nodded.

  “You’re on,” I said.

  “Wait, I need a prop.” Merci glanced quickly side to side, saw still another young woman toting still another tray of half-filled champagne glasses up the staircase. She took one. I moved away, stationing myself at the top of the stairs, hiding among the other tuxedos gathered there.

  Merci positioned herself five feet behind Casselman and stared at the back of his head. She stood like that for several moments. Eventually, the man I recognized as Brian Mellgren said something to Casselman and motioned toward Merci with his chin. Casselman spun slowly.

  “Good evening, Mr. Casselman,” Merci said.

  Casselman’s eyes swept over Merci’s body like a searchlight sweeping the coast. He smiled broadly and so did the other Entrepreneurs—all except Mellgren, who squinted suspiciously.

  Merci sipped the champagne.

  “Have we met?” Casselman asked in a quiet voice.

  “I don’t know, have we?”

  Casselman licked his lips. “You remind me of a friend.”

  “Jamie Carlson? No? That’s right, you would have known her as Jamie Bruder.”

  “Yes, Jamie.”

  “My best friend,” Merci said. “This is her dress. We used to swap clothes. Best friends do that. Something else best friends do, they talk. We always told each other everything.”

  “She told you …”

  “Everything.” Merci nodded to the other Entrepreneurs, reciting the names I had given her. “Mr. Kamp, Mr. Whelpley, Mr. Mellgren. Where oh where is Geno Belloti this evening? Still in St. Petersburg? No, he must be in Canada by now.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mellgren demanded to know. He moved toward Merci. Casselman grabbed his arm, restraining him. Merci didn’t budge an inch. She was playing her part extremely well. I was proud of her.

  “Temper, temper, Mr. Mellgren. There’s no need for that. I’d be delighted to tell you what I know. Only
it’ll cost you. ’Course, you’re not my only source of income. I understand the ATF and FBI offer rewards for information about people like you.”

  All four men stood perfectly still. I think they were in shock.

  “Gentlemen, do I hear an offer?”

  Mellgren made another move for her. Again Casselman held him back.

  “It’s a party,” he said.

  “And a very swank do, it is.” Merci was grinning, having just a wonderful time.

  “Only not conducive for conducting business,” Casselman said. “Perhaps we can discuss this matter later? Where can we find you?”

  “I’ll find you.” Merci tilted her head graciously—“Gentlemen”—and slipped back into the river of people. Mellgren wanted to follow her, but once again Casselman held his arm.

  “Now what?” Merci asked when I rejoined her on the second floor.

  “Now we wait.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “It’s very simple,” I told her. “They killed Jamie because they were afraid she told me something. They tried to kill me for the same reason. And now …”

  “They’ll come for me.”

  “That’s right. But this time I’ll be waiting.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll see.” So much violence in the past ten days and here I was, inviting more.

  Merci shook her head just as she had done earlier that evening when I explained my intentions. “Doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”

  “It has the virtue of simplicity,” I assured her—and myself.

  “Just so you know. I won’t die the way Jamie died.”

  “Amen to that.”

  I took Merci Cole’s hand and led her toward the stairway. Neither of us felt like remaining for the rest of the festivities. The way my back ached I could barely stand as it was. Only at the top of the staircase I was stopped by a female voice calling my name. I recognized it immediately.

  Nina Truhler was smiling at me. She wore a long, sleek, searing red tank-dress with tiny beads all over that glittered in the light when she moved, and for a few moments I forgot my pain, forgot where I was and what I was doing.