Madman on a Drum (15 page)

Porky's loomed up on my right. I drove past it.

“Maybe not.”

 

After Labor Day, the county pulls the lifeguards off the wooden towers at the various lakes it supervises. The rule was you swam at your own risk, but that didn't stop a half-dozen teenagers from frolicking on the beach at McCarrons Lake. Why they weren't in school, I couldn't say. There were also a couple of young women sprawled on blankets and jumbo-sized towels intent on catching what was left of the summer's rays. A middle-aged jogger leaned against the now-closed snack shack and stretched. He was wearing headphones; sweat stained the front and back of his shirt, and I thought he might be one of Honsa's agents. There was another man parked in an SUV near the entrance of the asphalt parking lot. He sat behind his steering wheel while reading a newspaper and eating a Dairy Queen sundae. I figured he might be an agent, too.

I was sitting in the Toyota in the parking lot where Scottie had told me to park, in the row nearest the beach and facing the water. Twisting in my seat I could see several other cars in the lot, but whom they belonged to I couldn't say. There were empty picnic tables scattered through the park and unused playground equipment near the beach. Traffic moved incessantly on Rice Street. There were two strip malls up near Larpenteur Avenue, plus a fast-food joint, a car wash, a pawnshop, a bank, a school bus depot, and a Dairy Queen that had not yet closed for the season. Modest houses ringed the lake. Scottie could have been anywhere, and after a while I stopped searching for him.

As before, I waited.

Finally the cell rang.

“Yeah,” I said.

“There's a Plymouth Reliant in the row behind you and off to your right,” Scottie said.

I found it easily enough. Tan, with plenty of rust, one of Plymouth's highly touted K-cars.

“I see it,” I said.

“Boxers or briefs?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you wear boxers or briefs?”

“Getting a little personal, aren't we?”

Scottie chuckled. “You're gonna love this, McKenzie,” he said.

“Love what?”

“I want you to get out of your car and walk to the lake and jump in.” “Jump in?”

“First you're going to strip down to your skivvies, then jump in.”

While I hesitated, Honsa's words came back to me:
Whatever Thomforde tells you to do, you do. No arguments. No discussion. If he tells you to jump in a lake, you jump. Understand?

“You hear me, McKenzie?” Scottie asked.

“I hear you.”

I stepped out of the Toyota and walked to the water's edge. The beach seemed more stone than sand, and the tiny rocks crunched under my feet. The teenagers didn't seem to notice me. I figured that was going to change in a hurry.

“Start stripping,” Scottie said.

I set the cell on the sand next to me. It was about seventy-three degrees, a comfortable temperature, I thought until I removed my shoes and socks and stood barefoot. Next came my sports coat. My polo shirt was going to be tricky. While facing the open water, I pulled the back of the shirt up and over my head so that it covered my chest. With my right hand I gripped the body wire through the material of the shirt and yanked quickly. The wire, tape, and a fistful of chest hair came off, leaving a red blotch between my nipples that I hoped Scottie couldn't detect at a distance. I tried not to wince as I dropped the shirt and wire on top of my jacket. Next came my jeans. I peeled them off carefully. The plastic box containing the GPS transmitter peeked out from under the hem of my blue boxers. The way the tape holding it was wrapped around my inner thigh, there was no way I could remove it without Scottie noticing. And if I could have, what then? I dropped the jeans on top of my other clothes, retrieved the cell phone, and stood with my legs close together.

“You're not embarrassed, are you, McKenzie?” Scottie asked.

“Do you care?”

Scottie thought that was funny. “Take off your watch, too,” he said. I did, dropping it on top of my jeans. He hadn't noticed the slight bulge in my shorts.

“All right,” he told me. “You know what to do. Jump in the lake.”

I set the phone on my clothes and walked into the water. You would have thought that the lake would have retained some of its summer heat. It hadn't. Goose bumps formed all over my body, and I began to shiver. I was convinced my feet were turning blue. I plowed into the lake until the water was covering my knees. Half the teenagers had stopped what they were doing to watch me, probably wondering what that old man was doing. I dove in. The shock to my system was so great that for a panicky moment I convinced myself I was having a heart attack. Still, I stayed underwater as long as I could. I came up gasping; the cold had knocked the breath out of me. I turned and pushed through the icy lake toward the beach. The water had pasted the boxers to my skin, and you could easily discern the outline of the plastic box if you looked hard. I moved quickly to the cell phone and turned sideways so Scottie wouldn't look.

“What now?” I said.

“Cold, was it, McKenzie?”

“Invigorating,” I said. “What now?”

“Leave your clothes. Take nothing. Walk to the Toyota. I'm watching you.”

I did what Scottie said while holding the phone to my ear. I was shivering, and my teeth began to chatter. The teenagers had found something else to occupy their attention. The jogger near the snack shack had disappeared; the driver parked at the entrance to the parking lot had moved on.
So much for Honsa's agents,
my inner voice said.

When I reached the car, Scottie told me to remove the aluminum cases and transfer them to the Reliant. I carried a case in each hand and the third tucked under my arm. I walked so that one of the cases was in front of my boxers. The cell was in my mouth. The cases were heavy and the going was awkward, yet the effort seemed to warm me. I set the cases next to the car and returned the cell phone to my ear.

“This is where it pays for you to be real smart, McKenzie, cuz if you fuck up I'll kill both you and the girl.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Open the cases, remove the money one packet at a time, and set them inside the trunk of the Reliant. Listen to me, McKenzie. Are you listening?”

“I'm listening.”

“We'll bring the girl to you when we make the exchange. But there's going to be a gun pointed at her head. Now, we're going to take that money out of the trunk, one packet at a time, and if we see a GPS or listening device or any kind of bug, she dies and then you die. Ain't gonna be no discussion about it, neither.”

“I understand.”

“Be smart, McKenzie.”

The trunk wasn't locked; the lid was resting on top of the latch, and it came up easily. I got the impression that Scottie was positioned so that he could see into the trunk, which put him across Rice Street at a bar called the Chalet, or someplace near it. I made an effort not to look.

I worked the combination on the cases and unlocked them one at a time. I had forgotten which one contained the GPS transmitter, and I was careful when I handled each packet of money so that I wouldn't put it into the trunk by accident. I found it in the second case. I used my body to block Scottie's view while I unwrapped a packet of twenties from around the device. I put the money in the trunk and slid the box under the car. I was putting all of my trust into the GPS transmitter taped between my legs. I thought,
This damn thing had better be waterproof or I'm going to shoot Harry.

I finished the job, tossing the empty cases aside, and slammed the trunk lid closed.

“What now?” I said into the cell.

“That's a lot of money,” Scottie said.

“One million bucks.”

“For some reason, I didn't think there'd be that many bills.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get in the car.”

I did as I was told. The sun had baked the Reliant while it sat in the parking lot, and I was grateful for the warmth I found inside. The keys were in the ignition. The engine started hard; it was a decade younger than the Toyota, but the Reliant had not aged nearly as gracefully. The engine ran rough, and the exhaust was thick.

“Start driving,” Scottie said.

 

The address the kidnapper gave me was for a shotgun house located in the Badlands, not too far from Scottie's halfway house—not far from the St. Paul Police Department, either, for that matter. The house had once been yellow, but over time the paint had faded to the color of urine; the white trim was now gray. There was a
FOR SALE
sign in front of it. From where I was parked, I could see a half-dozen brightly colored Realtors' signs in front of structures up and down the street. Some of the houses were old with crumbling concrete sidewalks and frayed shingles. Others were new, freshly painted multi-family units. A white sixteen-foot moving truck, its huge doors open and its ramp down, was parked in front of a pristine duplex on the next block. I didn't see any movers, but I was willing to bet they were going, not coming. Despite attempts to revive the Badlands over the decades, the ancient neighborhood had been unable to shake off the distinctive aura of rust.

I rolled down the windows of the Reliant and waited. I listened to the engine ticking off its heat and the rumble of freeway traffic in the distance; I smelled the exhaust and burning oil that could have come from the freeway or the Plymouth or both; I watched the street. There were a half-dozen cars parked on both sides in front of me and a few more behind, yet I saw no one. Still, that didn't mean there weren't people watching intently from their windows. The possibility made me wonder if this was the end of the line or just another brief stop in the kidnappers' circuitous route. Yes, the location was handy to several freeways. It was also wide open to witnesses.

I waited.

And waited some more.

Nothing moved until a dirty red, late-model Pontiac Vibe station wagon approached from the opposite direction. It swept past and swung down on the wrong side of the street behind me. I watched in my rearview mirror as it backed along the curb until there was only a short space between my bumper and its tailgate. The Vibe was a small vehicle with a wimpy four-cylinder engine that had about as much pickup as a road grader, and I thought,
They're going to try to get away in this? Kids on skateboards could outrace a Vibe.

I stared at the back of the driver's head with such intensity that I didn't hear or see anyone approach the Reliant until the kidnapper spoke.

“Put both hands on the steering wheel,” he said.

His words startled me. I turned to look out the passenger window. A man dressed in white coveralls and a black ski mask was squatting on the cracked sidewalk about a yard away; I didn't know if he came from the yellow house or not. He had one arm wrapped around Victoria Dunston's shoulder and neck and another carelessly gripping a nine-millimeter automatic. He was pointing the gun at the girl's ear, yet she did not respond to it at all. She stood stoically, her jaw set, her eyes glittering.

“I said put both hands on the steering wheel.”

I did what the kidnapper told me while staring into Victoria's eyes. I found there exactly what I prayed I'd find—rage, pure and untempered by humiliation or embarrassment or disorientation or shock or fear. She was angry, but she wasn't hurt. The sight of her nearly made me smile.
She's all right,
my inner voice told me.
She's going to be fine.

“Here she is all safe and sound.” The kidnapper spoke as if he had cotton in his mouth. He was still trying to hide his identity, yet it was Scottie—I knew it.

“This is how it's gonna work, you listening, McKenzie?”

“I'm listening.”

“How 'bout you?” Scottie nudged Victoria. She didn't answer. “Now you're quiet. I gotta tell ya, McKenzie. This girl, she's got some mouth on her. The things she said to me—I thought you had to be married to hear girls talk like that.”

“Possibly she was upset,” I said.

“Oh, she's upset. Ain't that the truth, huh, honey?”

Victoria didn't reply.

“This is how it's going to work,” Scottie said. “I'm going to stand here with the girl and you're going to sit there with your hands on the steering wheel. My partner is going to transfer the money from your trunk to the back of the wagon, one packet at a time, like we said. He had better not see any kind of GPS or listening device. If he does, you're both dead.” I flashed on the device taped to my thigh. I squeezed my legs together, forced myself not to look down for fear of attracting Scottie's attention to it. “If it's cool, if we're satisfied, the girl, she goes into your car and the both of you drive away. We do the same. No harm, no foul. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Pop the trunk. There's a lever between the seat and the door.”

I did what I was told. Afterward, I gripped the steering wheel in the ten and two positions and worked to control my anger.

“This won't take long,” Scottie said.

I heard Scottie's partner get out of the Vibe and open the rear hatch of the station wagon, but I couldn't see him—the trunk lid of the Reliant blocked my view. I spent most of my time watching Scottie and Victoria. Scottie should have kept his eyes on me. Instead, he was watching his partner. Victoria stared straight ahead.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Scottie answered for her. “I said so, didn't I?”

Victoria remained silent.

I wanted her to speak. I wanted her to smile. I wanted her to tell me how lame I looked sitting there in my wet shorts. Maybe if I made a joke. Only nothing came to me. I sat in the car, watching Victoria's face, my hands gripping the steering wheel tighter and tighter until the knuckles were white. After a couple of minutes, I heard the hatch of the station wagon close.