Monkeewrench

by P. J. Tracy

  Red nodded. “It is, but all that does is control vehicle traffic.” He waved at the parking lot, which bled into adjoining riverfront property with no obstructions. “Anybody could walk in, so the real security is at the two gangplanks. I’ll have four men at each of them, and everybody gets swept again. No one boards with hardware unless they’ve got one of these.” He handed Freedman and McLaren lapel pins with the Argo logo. “How many people have you got coming?”

  “We’ll have a couple squads and uniforms in the lot. Only six plainclothes on board, including us,” Freedman said.

  Red dug in his pocket and came up with four more pins, handed them to Freedman. “We already checked out the boat. I assume you’ll be doing a walk-through of your own.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. We can double up checking in the crew and wait-staff and caterers; they should be showing up anytime now and there’s going to be a lot of them, plus the musicians, some asshole bunch called the Whipped Nipples.”

  “No shit?” McLaren asked. “The Whipped Nipples?”

  Freedman stared at him. “It scares me that you know who that is.”

  “Are you kidding? They’re incredible. All strings. Cello, bass, violins, dulcimer, some native instruments you never saw from countries you never heard of. You’re going to like this, Freedman.”

  “I am not going to like this because I do not like their name.”

  Red grinned. “Neither did Foster Hammond. Paid ‘em extra not to display it or say it.”

  Freedman gave his big head a what’s-the-world-coming-to shake. “Don’t know why anyone would want a name like that.”

  “One of my boys told me they’re a bunch of faggots—for real. You take that wherever you want to go.”

  McLaren shook his finger at him. “That was not politically correct.”

  Red grinned at him. “Can’t get anything past you, McLaren.”

  “That’s the second time somebody said that to me today.”

  “Well then, it must be true and we’re all in good hands. Now on board we’ve got three cans. Six, actually. A men’s and women’s on each deck. Rolseth said you’d want your people to cover those, but I’ll leave one man stationary in each of those areas just as backup. You think of anything else you need, let me know.”

  Freedman nodded. “Thanks, Red. Appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Cooperation, hell. Somebody gets blown away on this tugboat, doesn’t hurt to have the MPD around to share the blame. Why don’t you two come aboard and I’ll introduce you to Captain Magnusson. A real character, that guy. He’ll give you the nickel tour and then we can discuss tonight’s plan over tea and petits fours.”

  “I’d prefer a Scotch,” Johnny said.

  “Yeah, wouldn’t we all? This detail has been giving me nightmares for six months in the form of Foster Hammond. Didn’t think it could get any worse. How wrong I was. And so for our troubles, we get tea and petits fours. Not their job to feed us, of course, but as a courtesy …”

  “You were serious about the tea and petits fours?” Freedman asked incredulously.

  Red shook his head sadly. “There’s one thing I never joke about and that’s food. Stick with the pink ones—got a nice framboise custard in the middle. So just between the three of us, you really think this crazy SOB. is going to show tonight?”

  Freedman shrugged. “If he does, we get all the credit.”

  “Sixty-forty. I just bought a place in Boca Raton, so I could use the extra business. Property taxes are killing me.”

  Captain Magnusson was on the foredeck, standing by helplessly as he watched his ship being taken over by a lot of armed men in suits. He was a weathered-looking old man with ruddy, freckled cheeks and tufts of reddish-gray hair poking out from beneath his cap.

  “They pick him for the job based on appearance alone?” McLaren wondered aloud.

  “You could almost believe it,” Red agreed.

  “Hey, another redhead. Could be one of your relatives, McLaren,” Freedman teased his partner.

  “Not a chance. He’s Viking stock. You can tell by the paunch.”

  Freedman looked over at McLaren’s own paunch. “So you’re a Viking now?”

  “This is not a paunch. This is a Guinness gut, Freedman. You get a paunch from too much damn lutefisk.”

  “Nobody gets a paunch from lutefisk. It’s an emetic.”

  “You had it before?”

  “Hell no. But my mother-in-law makes it every damn Christmas. Makes the whole house smell like a three-day-old corpse.” He let out a long, low whistle as they boarded the gangplank. “Nice-looking boat.”

  “That she is,” Red said, waving to the captain. “Permission to board, Captain?”

  Magnusson actually smiled. “Aye!”

  “So how do they get that paddle to move anyhow?” McLaren asked.

  “Squirrels.”

  “Good. I’ll tell the little sons of bitches that are eating the insulation in my attic that they should get a job.”

  Chapter 18

  Roadrunner kept his eyes front, focused on the asphalt a few feet ahead of his bike, alert for a new crack in the tar that could bite the narrow racing tire and send him careening into the traffic on his left.

  He felt the burn in his thighs and calves from pedaling hard up the hill by the river, but it didn’t hurt enough yet. He should have done it twice, maybe three times or four, until the pain blossomed and the world turned orange and all the noise in his head abruptly, blessedly, stopped.

  “Watch where you’re going, asshole!”

  He’d strayed over the yellow line that separated the bike lane from traffic, and was only inches from the sleek black finish of a late-model Mercedes. He turned his head slowly, put his light eyes on the red-faced man glaring at him from behind the wheel, and left them there. He kept pedaling to keep adjacent to the sedan, just looking at the man and nowhere else while bike and car moved side by side at twenty miles an hour down Washington Avenue.

  A wave of uncertainty rippled across the anger in the man’s face, moving the little pockets of flesh under his eyes. He jerked his head front, then back at Roadrunner, then front again. “Crazy son of a bitch,” he muttered, powering up the passenger window and increasing his speed, trying to pull away.

  Roadrunner pumped harder and came abreast, kept his eyes on the man, his face empty as they sailed through the green light at Portland Avenue. He downshifted to first gear to make it harder, almost smiled when he felt the burn in his thighs brighten and saw the uncertainty in the man’s face turn to fear.

  Quit staring at me, you skinny freak, you hear me? Quit staring or by God I’ll make you sorry …

  The voice in his head was so loud, so clear, it erased the years between then and now and slammed Roadrunner’s eyes shut so he wouldn’t see the hammer coming down, over and over.

  When he opened them again the Mercedes was long gone and he was stopped at a red light, straddling his bike, breathing hard, staring down at the crooked, lumpy fingers of a hand that looked like a bunch of carelessly tossed Pick-Up Sticks. “It’s all right.” His whisper was lost in the noise of cars and whistles and the grinding gears of a city bus. “It’s all right now.”

  He turned right and headed down toward the Hennepin Avenue bridge, saw the sluggish, autumn flow of the Mississippi slipping beneath the concrete and steel on its journey south. The water looked gray here, which seemed odd to Roadrunner because it had been so blue earlier. Of course that had been downriver at the paddleboat landing, and maybe the clouds hadn’t rolled in yet—he couldn’t remember.

  It was almost six o’clock by the time Grace pulled into her short driveway and butted the Range Rover’s nose up to the garage door. Less than an hour of daylight left; no time to take Charlie for his daily run down to the park on the next block. She wondered how she was going to explain it to him.

  She keyed a code into a pad on her visor and watched the steel-clad door rise in front of her. Inside the small ga
rage a bank of overhead floods turned on automatically and filled the space with light. There were no shadows, and there were no hiding places.

  “Be a lot cheaper if you just let me put the track for these lights on one of those crossbeams, miss. Hanging them up in the peak is going to be a bitch.”

  Stupid man. He’d never thought that if you hung the lights below the crossbeams, the space above would be dark, and that someone could hide up there, crouched on a two-by-six, ready to pounce.

  She’d been very restrained, and hadn’t told him what an idiot he was; she’d just smiled and asked him very politely to hurry with the garage; she had a lot of other electrical work for him to do before she could move in.

  Once the Range Rover was safely in the garage with the door closed behind her, she pushed another button on the visor and turned off the floodlights. There was only one window in the small building—a narrow one by the side door that admitted a slice of the fading light from outside. Other than that, the darkness was almost absolute.

  Drawing her weapon before she got out of the car was so much a part of her routine that Grace never thought about it. In the five years she had lived in this house, she had never once stepped out of the garage without the 9mm in her right hand, held close to her side in a rare gesture of consideration for neighbors who might not understand.

  She made her way to the side door, looked out the narrow window at the patch of yard between the garage and her house, then pressed six numbers on a keypad next to the door and heard the heavy clunk of a releasing latch. She stepped outside and stopped for a moment, holding her breath, listening, watching, every sense alert for something out of place. She heard the swoosh of a passing car stirring up dry leaves on the street; the bass throb of a sound system somewhere down the block; the muted chitter of sparrows settling for the night. Nothing unusual. Nothing wrong.

  Finally satisfied, she pulled the small door closed behind her and heard the soft beep of the alarm system signaling activation. Nineteen quick steps on a strip of concrete that led from the garage to the front door, eyes busy, palm sweating on the textured grip of the 9mm, and then she was there, slipping the red card into the slot, opening the heavy front door, stepping inside and closing it quickly behind her. She released the breath she’d been holding as Charlie came to her on his belly, head down in submission, the stub that remembered a tail trying to sweep the floor.

  “My man.” She smiled, holstering the gun before she went down on her knees to hug the wire-coated wonder. “Sorry I’m late.”

  The dog punished her with a spate of furious face-licking, then bounded away down the short central hall back to the kitchen. There were a few seconds of toenails scrabbling for purchase on linoleum, then Charlie returned at a dangerous gallop, leash in his mouth.

  “Sorry, fella. There isn’t enough time.”

  Charlie looked at her for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth and let the leash fall to the floor.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” she explained.

  The dog gave her his best crestfallen expression.

  Grace sucked in air through her teeth. “No walks after dark. We made a deal, remember?”

  The scruffy, gnawed-off tail wiggled.

  “Nope. Can’t do it. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  He never begged. Never whined. Never questioned, because whatever life Charlie had had before her had beaten those things out of him. He simply collapsed on the Oriental runner and put his head on his paws, nose nudging the discarded leash. Grace couldn’t stand it.

  “You are a disgraceful manipulator.”

  The stub moved, just a little.

  “We’d have to run all the way down there.”

  The dog sat up quickly.

  “And we couldn’t stay long.”

  Charlie opened his mouth in a wonderful smile and his tongue fell out.

  Grace bent to hook the leash to his heavy collar, feeling the excited quiver beneath her fingers and, stranger still, the seldom-used muscles at the corners of her mouth turning up. “We make each other smile, don’t we, boy?”

  And what a wondrous thing that was for them both.

  They literally ran the short block to the little park, Grace’s duster flapping in time with Charlie’s ears, her boots clicking hard on the concrete sidewalk.

  The last feeble light of a cold sun flickered between the closely set houses as they ran, flashing in Grace’s peripheral vision with the distracting jerkiness of an old silent movie.

  The neighborhood was quieting with the onset of cold and the dinner hour. Only two cars passed them on the way: a ‘93 teal Ford Tempo with a young girl at the wheel, license number 907 Michael-David-Charlie; and a ‘99 red Chevy Blazer, two occupants, license number 415 Tango-Foxtrot-Zulu.

  They’re just people, Grace told herself. Just normal, average people heading home after a workday, and if they slowed a little when they saw her, if they looked a little too long out their windows, it was only because they weren’t used to seeing someone walk their dog at a dead run.

  Still, she watched the cars until their taillights disappeared down the street, and she would hold the plate numbers in her phenomenal memory for days, perhaps longer. She couldn’t help it.

  It wasn’t much of a park. A small square of closely cropped grass, a few red oaks with crispy leaves clinging to naked branches, a rusty swing set, a pair of weathered teeter-totters, and a sandbox used more by neighborhood cats than children. Charlie loved it. Grace tolerated it because it was a relatively open space with a clear view in any direction, and because it was almost always deserted.

  Off the leash Charlie ran hard for the first tree, lifted his leg and left his mark, then ran for the next. He hit each tree at least twice before trotting back, tongue lolling, to where Grace waited for him by the teeter-totters, her back pressed against the firm trunk of the largest oak, her eyes as busy as the dog’s legs had been.

  “Finished?” she asked him.

  Charlie looked startled by such a ridiculous suggestion and bounded away immediately to begin the tree circuit all over again. His paws shuffling fallen leaves into a new order was the only immediate sound that broke the breathless stillness of dusk in this quiet neighborhood. Life probably existed within the small houses that lined the streets around the park, but you’d never know it from the outside. Yards were empty, windows were closed, the city bears were snug in their dens.

  She tensed at the sudden slam of a door a few houses down, relaxed when she saw a definite kid shape run across the street and into the other side of the park. He ducked around a broad tree trunk and disappeared, and Grace imagined a nine- or ten-year-old reprobate coming out to sneak a smoke.

  Charlie suspected something more sinister and was at her side in an instant, pressing hard against her legs, his wet nose burying itself in her cold palm. He didn’t like sudden noises or sudden movement, unless he was making them.

  “My hero,” she whispered down at him, stroking his bony head. “Relax. It’s just a kid.” She started to hook the leash to Charlie’s collar for the run home, but then the door slammed again and her head jerked up to see three more shapes racing across the street after the first. These were bulkier, obviously older kids, and there was something wrong about the way they moved; something stealthy and predatory that made Grace go still and watchful.

  “Goddamn it, you little prick, you’re going to get it this time!”

  The enraged shout from across the park sent the poor dog down to his belly, nails furrowing the dirt as he clawed his way between Grace’s legs and the trunk of the oak.

  Little bastards, Grace thought, down on her knees instantly, stroking the trembling dog, murmuring reassurance. “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay. They’re just kids. Loud kids. But they won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t let them. No one will ever hurt you again. You hear me, Charlie?”

  His tongue swiped her cheek in a hot wash that chilled immediately in the cold air, but he still trembled. Grace kept stroking him,
fastening the leash by touch as she watched the three older kids cruise the far side of the park. It took them only moments to find the first one and drag him from behind the tree.

  “No-o …”

  It was a single word of desperation; a kid’s voice carrying an adult fear, cut off by the muffled thud of a fist hitting a soft body part. Grace rose slowly to her feet, eyes narrowing as they focused on the scuffle fifty yards away.

  Two of the older kids were holding the arms of the small one while a third danced in and out like a boxer, taking punches at his belly. Maybe the little kid had it coming; she didn’t know; but the basic rules of fair play were being violated here, and Grace just hated that.

  “Stay,” she told Charlie—a totally unnecessary command considering that the dog was still flattened against the ground like a doggy pancake. She did it more for his pride than anything else.

  There was little light left to reflect on the figure in the long dark coat striding across the park; and even if there had been, the three older boys probably wouldn’t have seen her coming. They were too intent on the task at hand. To them it simply seemed that one moment they were alone, and the next there was a quiet, even voice just a few feet away saying, “Stop.”

  Startled, the kid throwing the punches jerked upright and spun on the balls of his feet to face her. He was maybe fourteen, fifteen at most, with stringy blond hair, a narrow angry face, and acne eruptions that shouted puberty.

  Testosterone overload, Grace thought, her eyes flicking briefly to his two companions, who looked so similar they might all have been brothers. The three wore multi-pocketed baggy pants, the kind that sagged well south of a belt line, and cheap overshirts that hung down to their knees. Wannabe Scandinavian gangbangers. Clothes too thin to hide a gun.

  The little one they held pinned by his arms was the only one wearing a coat, and Grace suspected that if he ever took it off he’d never see it again. You didn’t get lambskin jackets like that at Kmart, or even Wilson’s Leather. Obviously the kid lifted at the best places. He was as black as the others were white, which was surprising. You didn’t see the two races mingling much in the city, in peace or war.