Curse of the Jade Lily (14 page)

Finally I reached the Loring Park Community Arts Center. It was a long snowball’s throw from the Willow and Fifteenth Street entrance; I had circled nearly the entire park. I had no doubt the thieves had seen me clearly, although I had not seen them. The arts center was closed. It was only open from 1:00 to 5:00
P.M.
in the winter, although its rooms were available to rent anytime. There was a metal bench near the building, where I had been ordered to sit and wait. Fortunately, the bench was empty. I don’t know what I would have done if it had been occupied. You do not confront people in Loring Park, and if you witness a confrontation between others, you do not intervene.

I sat with the dolly and the gym bags positioned between my legs. My hand rested on the handle at the top. I did not remove my hand once, not even to flex my frigid fingers. People passed me. I nodded at those who nodded at me first. Most ignored my existence; no one spoke. My head was on a swivel, turning this way and that as I observed the people in the park. Most appeared merely as shapes in the darkness, becoming discernible only when they passed under a light. No one approached me. An hour passed, by my watch. My toes were becoming numb no matter how much I squished them together inside my boots. I was beginning to think that this was a trial run—the thieves putting me out there and watching to see if I followed directions, to learn if I was working with the cops to set a trap. That’s when I saw him.

A man dressed in black had been sitting on a bench about a hundred yards from me. I had noticed him before when he left the bench, walked a quarter way around the lake, and then came back. I thought nothing of it at the time. Now he was doing it again. I watched him intently. Distance and night hid his face from me, yet there was something about the cut of his clothes and the way he moved … My hand tightened on the handle.

He returned to the bench, sitting so that he was facing the arts center. I realized then that he was watching me watching him. I forced myself to look away, to keep scanning the park, to study the people who approached on the trail and then moved away. Yet my eyes kept coming back to him. Another half hour passed.

“C’mon, pal,” I said aloud. “It’s cold out here.”

He couldn’t possibly have heard, yet he rose just the same and started walking toward me. I forced myself to look away, examining all the approaches to the park bench to make sure he didn’t have accomplices closing in at the same time. He seemed to be alone. I looked back. He was eighty yards away and still just a dark form moving. I kept scanning the area. Sixty yards and he crossed a shaft of light that fought its way into the park from the streetlamp on Willow. I saw his face clearly, if only for a moment.

“Sonuvabitch,” I said. “What is he doing here?”

I stood up.

Lieutenant Scott Noehring of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Forgery Fraud Unit was now fifty yards away and walking purposely toward me. His hands were in his pockets.

“Sonuvabitch,” I said again.

Awareness of my vulnerability hit me like a sledgehammer. Noehring told me his plan was to kill the artnappers and steal the ransom, leaving me alive with the Lily.
Dammit, what was stopping him from killing me and stealing the money, blaming it on the thieves, screw the Jade Lily?

I did a quick three-sixty. No one was approaching my position, yet there were still plenty of people in the park. At least one person was walking close behind Noehring.

Start screaming,
my inner voice told me.
Scream Noehring’s name, his rank, his position with the cops.

If enough heads turned, I told myself, maybe Noehring would think twice about taking his hands out of his pockets. In the meantime, running was always a good idea. It’s harder to shoot a moving target.

I tightly gripped the handle of the dolly and half-turned toward the trail leading to the exit. Before I could move, before I could scream, Noehring’s hands jerked out of his pockets. His arms flew open and his back arched and twisted to his left as if he had been punched in the shoulder. He stumbled a few feet toward me. His head snapped violently forward, his chin bouncing off his chest, and he collapsed to his knees. His body kept twisting to the side as he fell against the ice, sliding a few feet.

The dark shape that had been following close behind Noehring quickly pivoted and went off in the opposite direction, not running, but not strolling either.

I had not heard a sound.

My instinct was to hasten to Noehring’s side. I fought against it. I was responsible for the money, and this could have been a diversion in an attempt to take it away from me. Instead, I looked around, never letting go of the dolly’s handle. No one was running, no one was behaving oddly; there were no neon arrows pointing at anyone and flashing
KILLER.
I started jogging toward the park’s exit, pulling the dolly and its weighty cargo behind me. I slipped several times going up the hill. I heard a woman make a low scream as if she were loosening up her throat for a much louder one. When it came—and yes, it was loud indeed—I glanced briefly behind me. A small group of people was gathering around Noehring’s prone body. I continued climbing the hill.

I paused when I reached the exit. It was much brighter there. Cars cruised through the intersection of Willow and Fifteenth Street. Pedestrians crossed at the stoplight. I glanced behind me. No one seemed to be following, yet that didn’t convince me to slow down. I jogged across Willow, dodging traffic. I rolled the dolly to the Audi, maneuvering between my rear bumper and the front bumper of the vehicle parked behind me. Once there, I hit the button on my remote. The trunk popped open; the inside light flared.

I did not realize anyone had been lurking there until a man appeared on the narrow path that cut through the mound of snow pushed up against the boulevard.

“Don’t move,” he said.

A gloved hand seized the handle of the dolly.

“I’ll take that.”

I saw the gun first. The trunk light reflected off a lightweight 9 mm manufactured by FN Herstal in the good ol’ USA, if that means anything to you. I always thought of it as a girl’s gun but kept the opinion to myself. Next I saw the grinning face of Tommy, Heavenly’s muscle, the one who had insulted me in the van. Screw it, I thought, the FNP-9
is
a girl’s gun.

Tommy shook the handle of the dolly.

“Let go, McKenzie,” he said. “I’ll shoot you. I will.”

When I didn’t release my grip he raised the gun so that it was pointed at my face.

I released the dolly and slapped his hand to the left so the gun was pointing at nothing. I punched him in the throat just as hard as I could. He made a gurgling sound as I followed with an elbow to his mouth. I grabbed his arm and yanked him forward. He fell against the dolly, knocking it over. Dropping his gun, he brought one hand to his throat and tried to punch me with the other. I ducked under the blow, grabbed his upper arm, twisted to my left, and used his momentum to heave him over my hip and throw him into the street.

He never saw the car that hit him, that drove his head against the ice-packed asphalt.

*   *   *

The 911 operator was confused. I tried to explain that I needed both police and an ambulance at Willow Street across from Loring Park. I gave her the address of the brownstone apartment building. I even told her where I was in relation to the coffeehouse. She kept insisting that someone else had already called about the incident in the park and police had been dispatched. I told her that this was a different matter and that it occurred outside the park. She didn’t seem to believe me. Possibly she was flustered by the young woman screaming a few feet away from me, the one who kept repeating, “It was an accident. He fell in front of my car.” Or perhaps it was the deep baritone of the brother on the sidewalk who was telling the woman—and anyone else who cared to listen—that it wasn’t her fault. “He didn’t fall. He was pushed.”

Finally, “Let’s try this,” I said into the mic of my cell phone. “An officer is down.”

“What?” the operator said.

“The man who was shot in Loring Park was a police officer. The man who shot him is lying in the middle of Willow Street.”

“Shit,” the operator said, which might not have been a very professional thing to say but hardly something you’d hold against her.

*   *   *

I had learned a long time ago to say as little as possible to as few people as possible in matters involving the police. Actually, I didn’t learn it so much as my attorney beat it into me. The people who had gathered around Tommy and the car that killed him were of no such mind, however. They had plenty to say. Some of it was even true.

The young woman who hit Tommy was nearly hysterical with grief. She kept telling the police officers that the accident wasn’t her fault, that Tommy had jumped in front of her car. “Maybe it was suicide.” I felt terrible about the part I had played in causing her anguish, yet I did not attempt to console her. A witness—the brother who spoke up earlier—testified that he had witnessed Tommy and me struggling after he pulled a gun on me and that I threw him into the street. I had nothing to say to him, either, although I was grateful that he remembered the gun. I ignored the other witnesses who, taking the brother’s cue, claimed I had deliberately shoved Tommy in front of a speeding car, even though they were nowhere near when the incident occurred.

The officers who responded to the call kept asking for a statement. I told them they should secure Tommy’s gun, which had slid beneath the back bumper of my Audi. Beyond that, I kept my mouth shut. By then, word of a cop killing had electrified the entire police department. To say the officers were angry at my refusal to cooperate would be like saying that the sun rose in the east—it really wasn’t open to debate. If there hadn’t been so many witnesses, I suspect I would have been “tuned up,” as they say. Instead, I was roughly cuffed and shoved in the back of a squad car.

Cops have protocols and procedures when dealing with criminal activities, and few of them are executed in a hurry. Policing is, after all, a civil service job and prone to bureaucracy. More and more officers appeared at the scene. Lights were erected. Measurements were taken. Photographs were snapped. Statements were recorded. All this was made even more cumbersome by the simple fact that the exact same thing was happening in the park around Noehring’s body. The ME appeared and then disappeared. Forensic specialists arrived and stayed for a long time. Vans with the call letters from WCCO, KSTP, KARE-11, and FOX-9 blocked traffic, their cameras and lights adding to the chaos. Crowds of bystanders gathered, lingered for a bit, and then scattered when they discovered there was nothing going on that was intriguing enough to keep them standing out in the cold.

Eventually Lieutenant Rask came up from the park and crossed the street. He glared at me for a moment through the passenger window before taking verbal reports from his men. When he finished, he had the officer open the rear door to the squad car. I didn’t wait for him to ask questions. Instead, I spoke as succinctly as possible.

“I was going for the Lily—the money is in the trunk of the Audi—the dead man tried to take it from me—he might have been the one who shot Lieutenant Noehring, I don’t know.”

“Did you witness the shooting?” Rask asked.

“I saw Noehring fall, but I can’t identify who shot him. Lieutenant, I need to contact Mr. Donatucci and have him secure the money.”

“What was Noehring doing here?”

I looked away and then looked back. Rask saw the answer in my eyes.

“Don’t say a word, McKenzie,” he said. “Just this once, keep your mouth shut.”

*   *   *

I eventually gave a detailed statement to Rask. I then repeated it to Rask, a second investigator, and a video camera. Afterward, I gave it a third time to Rask, a second investigator, a video camera, two prosecutors from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the chief of police, and Mr. Donatucci, who confirmed everything up to the moment I drove out of the parking ramp. I found myself sliding into a monotone while I spoke. Trust me when I tell you that I wasn’t bored. But I was feeling depressed, deflated. It was the inevitable fall after the adrenaline high, but knowing the cause didn’t change it. Several times I was asked to speak up. Nearly everyone had a question about Lieutenant Noehring, and each time I saw a look in Rask’s eye that told me to keep my opinions to myself.

“I have no idea why he was at Loring Park,” I said. “My guess is that he was there on a different matter and the thieves somehow made him, but I’m only guessing.”

Afterward, I was installed in the same interrogation room where I met Hemsted and Pozderac and told to wait. I did so, for nearly four hours. I did not complain. Rask had a cop killing on his hands. Nothing took precedence over that, least of all my comfort and convenience.

When he finally did arrive I was struck by the exhaustion on his face and the look in his eyes that suggested he was silently wishing the goddamned apocalypse would come already.

“Did Mr. Donatucci secure the money?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “So your problems are over. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I killed a man last night, LT.”

Rask pulled out a chair from under the conference table and sat down.

“One of mine was killed, too,” he said.

“So we’re both hurting.”

“I suppose we are.”

Rask leaned back in the chair, his chin pointed at the ceiling, and closed his eyes. “McKenzie,” he said, “sometimes I think I spend more time watching the sun go up and watching it go down than a person should, you know.”

“Did Tommy kill Noehring?” I asked.

“No,” he said without opening his eyes. “There was no gunshot residue on his hands or clothes. Plus, Tommy was carrying a nine-millimeter that hadn’t been fired recently. Noehring was shot with a .25.”

“The same caliber as the gun that killed Tarpley,” I said.

Rask glanced at his watch. “I should be hearing from ballistics at about—at about right now, goddammit.”

“Think it’s a pro?” I asked.