Criminal Enterprise (6 page)

T
OMLIN SETTLED
INTO
a rhythm. A few days a week doing taxes for senior citizens, a couple contract jobs for friends at big firms. A robbery every few weeks, when the money got low.

Or, more and more, whenever the mood struck him.

It wasn’t just about the money anymore. Not even close. It was about the excitement, the power, the quick jolt of electricity he felt when the pretty tellers wilted at the sight of his gun. It was the same thrill he’d once felt when he walked through his office, watching the worker bees stiffen at their cubicles, knowing the room’s collective sphincter had tightened the moment he walked through the door. It was power. Control. Robbing banks filled the void while it paid off his mortgage. And nobody had figured him out.

Tomlin found a small office in Lowertown, east of downtown Saint Paul. It was an old, musty low-rise with patchy off-white walls and buzzing fluorescent lights, graffiti on the sooty façade. But Tomlin didn’t much care for looks. An office would provide cover. An easy way to launder the robbery money.

He hired a receptionist, a punk-rock college dropout he found through a classified ad. A pixie named Tricia with neon-pink hair. She came in two or three days a week, did Sudoku at her desk and answered the occasional phone call. Lent an air of legitimacy to the place.

Rydin came to visit. “Freelance,” he said, looking around. “You’ll either get very rich or go broke. Probably the latter, from the looks of this building.”

“Baby steps,” Tomlin told him. “It’s coming together.”

Rydin promised to talk to people at his office, find some work to throw Tomlin’s way. A couple other friends came through with leads, and Tomlin made up the difference hustling for contacts. Put an ad in the paper, another online. Craigslist. “Accounting Service. Your taxes done cheap.” He spent long hours hammering out income tax forms for old ladies, a hundred dollars a pop. Bored him worse than bingo, but the work kept him busy.

He slept in some mornings, ate long breakfasts, read the paper. Came home early one or two nights a week, enjoyed the home and the life he was trying to maintain. He spent hours with Becca, reading novels together and walking the dog. They holed up in the bedroom for endless afternoons, feeling like two high school kids who’d skipped out of class, emerging fresh-scrubbed from the shower just as Heather and Madeleine returned from school.

Heather came home one day and announced that her school needed someone to help coach the basketball team, and Tomlin figured,
Why the hell not?
Now he spent Tuesday afternoons in a public school gym, teaching a gaggle of teenage girls how to shoot a jump shot. Thursdays were game days.

In the evenings, he watched movies with the girls in the rec room, or stayed up late puttering with his model train setup. He cleared out the spare room in the basement and built a tabletop empire, a miniature world of mountains and cities and tiny plastic people.

He stashed the guns in the train room—the Ruger in its case under boxes of spare train cars and supplies, the assault rifle in an alcove behind a hollowed-out mountain. The shotgun he left lodged in the bracing underneath the table, and he hid the spare shells inside a factory on a spur line in the model town he’d patterned after Saint Paul. It could be a munitions factory, he decided. Schultz’s cocaine he hid at the office. Locked it away in his bottom desk drawer with the robbery money while he tried to figure out how to get rid of it.

Little by little, Tomlin rebuilt his life. Kept up with the mortgage payments, bought groceries, birthday presents, a new cell phone. Made love to his wife and went to bed happy almost every night.

And when the money started to dwindle, or he started to get bored, he dug out Schultz’s pistol and hit another bank. It worked out well, in the short term. It would work, anyway, until the accounting business started to take off.

Life seemed perfect again, almost. Until one day in January, when it all changed again.

H
E’D COME
IN
TO
WORK
early. It was about a month after he’d robbed Tony Schultz, four or five bank heists after that first Midway job. Heather had Spirit Club before school, and Tomlin dropped her off and drove straight to the office. Walked in and found Tricia with her nose in his bottom desk drawer.

She stood up, too fast, when he walked into the room. “What are you doing here?” she said. “You’re early.”

“I work here.” Tomlin circled around to where she stood and examined the lock. She’d jimmied the thing with a nail file. “What are
you
doing?”

“It was unlocked,” she said. “I was looking for staples.”

“Bullshit.”

She was silent for a minute or two. “I’m so sorry,” she said finally, her lower lip trembling. “My boyfriend just dumped me. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Tomlin glanced down at the open desk drawer. The cocaine and the cash. She had to have seen it. He studied her face, her pretty, scared eyes. “Get out,” he said.

“No.” She reached for his arm. “Mr. Tomlin, please. Please don’t fire me.”

He shook her away. “Get out of my office.”

She stared at him, tears in her eyes. Tomlin held her gaze until she looked down again, at the nail file on the thin carpet, the desk drawer still partially open. Something hardened in her expression. “What are you waiting for?” Tomlin asked her. “I said get out.”

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder. “That’s a lot of cocaine.”

“It’s not cocaine.” Tomlin slammed the drawer closed. “It’s none of your business. Get out.”

“Bullshit.” She turned to look at him slowly, a new look in her eyes. She wasn’t scared anymore, Tomlin realized. She was
smiling
. “So what are you, a drug dealer or something? Does your wife know about this?”

“For Christ’s sake.” Tricia’s smile widened. Tomlin rubbed his forehead, looked at her again. Then he looked down at the drugs. “So what?” he said. “I’m supposed to just forget this?”

Tricia shrugged. “If you want,” she said. She started for the door. Brushed by him, close. “We can pretend this never happened, if that’s what you want. I won’t say a damn thing if you don’t try and fire me.”

She could ruin everything,
Tomlin thought. He suddenly felt light-headed. Then Tricia stopped in the doorway. “But pretend is so boring.” She looked back at him again with that same funny smile. “Maybe we can have fun instead.”

D
OUGHTY WASN’T
AROUND
when Windermere arrived in CID the next morning. She wasn’t surprised; it was early, not even eight, and the office was skeleton-crew barren. Besides, Doughty never showed up before nine.

Windermere kept her coat on as she booted up her computer. She printed off every security cam still she could of the Midway suspect, the Prospect Park suspect, Robbinsdale, and Lowry Hill, and then she turned off her computer again and rode the elevator back down to the garage.

The drive to Saint Paul took twenty minutes, downtown to downtown on I-94. Windermere passed the turnoff for Midway en route. She looked up and out of the Interstate trench and tried to figure out why the guy had chosen Midway, when every other job seemed to confirm Doughty’s theory that the suspect was a Minneapolis local.

She picked up her phone and called Doughty’s cell. Rang through to voice mail the first try, but he picked up the second. “Doughty, it’s Windermere.” She could hear a baby crying in the background, another kid yelling something. “Got a lead in Saint Paul. Check it out.”

She explained her findings, Prospect Park leading to Midway and the E-Z Park receipt. “We’re watching this guy evolve, Bob,” she told him. “He’s getting more and more dangerous as he builds up his confidence.”

Doughty yelled something at the kid. Then he came back on the line. “So what are you saying?”

“I think we should broaden our search for this guy,” she said. “Midway’s his first score, from what I can tell. It’s a rookie job. Could tell us more about him than anything later.”

“Most of his scores are in southern Minneapolis,” Doughty replied. “I’m making good headway with my local contacts.”

“This first job, though, Bob, this is the big one. It’s probably closer to his home base than those Minneapolis banks. Someone in Midway might know him.”

Doughty gave it a beat. “You tell Harris?”

“No,” she said. “I just thought of it now.”

“And you’re in the car already. Driving to Saint Paul.” Doughty sucked his teeth. “You should have checked with me first.”

“I’m telling you now, Bob.”

Another pause. The baby wailed in the background. “That’s not the point, Carla. Everything on this investigation’s supposed to go through me.”

Windermere rolled her eyes. “So all right. What do you want me to do?”

“Come back to the office. We’ll talk this thing over.”

“I’m halfway to Saint Paul.”

“So you’ll get to CID about the same time as me. See you there.” Doughty hung up before she could reply. She stared at her phone for a second.
God damn it,
she thought. She let her foot off the accelerator. Then she pressed down again.
I can
see
Saint Paul up ahead. Damned if I’m turning back now.

She found the E-Z Park entrance beneath a high-rise office complex. It was a garage underground, and she parked in a no-parking zone at the top of the ramp.

Before she was out of the car, there was an employee bearing down on her. “No parking,” he said. “You have to keep moving.”

Windermere flashed her badge. “Your boss around?”

The man stopped like he’d touched an electric fence. Then he turned and hurried toward an office, pausing to look back at her twice. He returned a minute later with another man, slightly older, in a wrinkled brown suit. “Can I help you?”

Windermere introduced herself. Showed the man the photocopied Midway note. “I’m looking for a man,” she said. “He parked here once. In July.”

The man examined the photocopy. Shrugged and turned back to the office. “Don’t hold your breath.”

“I have some pictures, too,” she said. “Maybe they’ll help.”

The manager beckoned his employee over. “I spend my day in the office,” he said. “Sanjay works in the booth.”

Sanjay came over slowly, circling Windermere like a wary dog. Windermere held out the stack of security pictures, and the man paused before riffling through them. Then he shook his head and looked sideways at Windermere. “I don’t know.”

Windermere frowned. “Nothing?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She wanted to press him, but the manager had returned, holding the photocopy and another scrap of paper. “This account was paid for by a credit card,” he told Windermere. “The credit card belongs to a man named Carter Tomlin.”

“Carter Tomlin,” said Windermere. “You know who he is?”

Both men shook their heads.

“He still park here?”

The manager shrugged. “Perhaps you could check with the credit card company.” He shoved the photocopy back at Windermere, and the scrap of paper, too. He’d written Tomlin’s name on it in block letters.

Windermere studied his face. Thought about telling him to go back and check for himself. Then she decided, why not go to the source? “Okay, boys,” she said. “Thanks for your time.”

The two men watched her climb into the car and drive out of the lot. They didn’t move until she’d turned out onto the street and was pulling away. Windermere watched them in her rearview mirror. Hiding something, no doubt, but they didn’t know squat about the bank robber.

Her phone rang. Doughty. She let it ring for a minute. Then she sighed and picked it up. “I got a name. Carter Tomlin, he’s—”

“Where are you?” Doughty’s tone was ice.

“Did you hear me, Bob? I have a lead.”

“I asked you to meet me at the office, Agent Windermere.”

She sighed again. “What’s your point?”

“My point?” Doughty’s voice lost its chill, replaced with barely throttled anger. “I’m senior agent on this investigation, Agent Windermere. That’s my point. Come back to Minneapolis,
now
, and we’ll talk about what happens next.”

Windermere mouthed a curse. “I’m stuck in traffic,” she said. “I’ll be there when I can.”

T
RICIA SAID
SHE
had a friend, Javier, who could move the cocaine. “Good money,” she said. “No risk. He’s cool.”

Tomlin stalled her as long as he could. “He’s cool?” he said. “He’s a goddamn drug dealer. That’s cool to you?”

Tricia shrugged. “Why not?”

“How do you know this guy, anyway? I thought you were a student or something.”

“I’m a lot of things,” Tricia said. “What do you care? This guy, Javier, he’s my ex-boyfriend’s hookup. I used to see him three or four times a month, okay? We’re cool.” She cocked her head and smiled at him, confident. As though she brokered drug deals every other day.
Maybe she does,
Tomlin thought.
She could be the pink-haired Pablo Escobar, for all I know.

“We doing this or what, boss?” she said. “Come on. Let’s turn that brick into cash.”

Finally, he gave in.
Pull the trigger,
he thought.
Someone else finds those drugs and you’re looking at prison. Sell them to this guy Javier, and you’re paying your bills.

“Fine,” he told her. “Set it up.”

She smiled at him. “Great. Now, let’s discuss my fee.”

—

J
AVIER LIVED IN
an apartment by the university. He answered the door and smiled wide when he saw Tricia, kissed her on the cheek and ushered her inside. Then he looked at Tomlin.

Tomlin studied Javier as Javier studied him. The drug dealer was skinny, with a pockmarked face, probably in his mid-twenties. He had a scar above his upper lip, and though he smiled at Tomlin, his eyes were suspicious. “You’re Tricia’s friend.”

“Yeah.” Tomlin could feel the weight of the pistol in his coat, and he wondered how fast he could draw if he needed.

Javier squinted at him. “You a cop?”

“No. Hell, no.”

“Not that you’d tell me if you were.”

“He’s okay, Javier,” Tricia called from inside. “He’s my boss. The accountant?”

Javier looked at Tomlin again. “The accountant.” He laughed. “Fine. Come in.”

The apartment was empty except for a beat-up couch and a huge flat-screen TV. There were two men on the couch, watching a talk show. Neither looked up when Tomlin walked in.

Javier led them into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “Okay,” he said, watching them. “Let’s see what you got.”

Tricia opened her purse and handed him the brick. Javier looked at Tomlin. “Where did you get this?”

Tomlin shrugged. “Found it in a dumpster.”

“Whose dumpster?”

“What?”

Javier shook his head. “Save it. Just don’t tell them you sold it to me, got it?”

“Fine, Javier,” said Tricia. “Of course.”

One of the men from the living room walked into the kitchen holding a scale. Javier set the brick on the scale and waited a beat. Then he nodded. “One key,” he said. “As advertised.”

The other man produced a knife, and Javier split the package open. He dabbed a finger inside and tasted the powder. Then he looked at Tricia. “Ten thousand.”

Tomlin blinked. “Ten thousand dollars? It’s gotta be worth close to thirty.”

Javier turned and stared at him with his hard little eyes. “You can get thirty for it, go ahead. I’m paying ten.”

“Fifteen.” Tricia put on her ingénue smile. “Then we all go home happy.”

Javier studied her. Then he nodded. “For you only,” he said. “Fifteen thousand.”

His partner went back into the living room and returned with a bundle of money. Handed a thick stack to Tomlin. Tomlin flipped through it. “It’s all here.”

“Fifteen thousand dollars, my friend.” Javier looked at Tomlin and laughed. “Don’t forget to declare it on your taxes.”