The Last Kind Word (10 page)

“Tell them that,” Nina said.

“I'll need a table,” I said. “Not a booth. I want to be able to get up and walk away in a hurry.”

“Oh, McKenzie. You're not going to walk away.”

I had every intention of doing just that, though, if for no better reason than to demonstrate to Nina that I was captain of my ship, master of my domain, lord of my castle. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

The tall, well-dressed man was introduced to me as Assistant U.S. Attorney James R. Finnegan. As I shook his hand I said, “I bet your friends call you Finny.”

He seemed astonished by the assumption. “No,” he said. “They don't.” Then, “You have an interesting file.”

“I have a file?” I asked.

“Of course you do. I read that you've been involved in gunrunning before. That's how you met Chad and Harry.”

I looked at Harry. “Does everybody call you that now?”

“See what you've done?”

A moment later, Nina surprised me by appearing at the table to take our orders herself. Harry stood, bussed her cheek, and called her “lovely Nina,” which I found irritating, then introduced her around. Finnegan shook her hand, said he was delighted to meet her, and asked, “Is it true that this place is haunted?”

“Uh-oh,” Harry said as he took his seat.

I was tempted to look away, but it was like a traffic accident—you just have to watch.

Nina raised an eyebrow and smiled. Trust me when I say there was no mirth in it. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Finnegan?” she asked.

“Not necessarily,” Finnegan said. “The TV show…”

The TV program in question followed a team of self-described ghost hunters as they purportedly investigated paranormal activity around the country. Erica invited them to Rickie's without Nina's knowledge or permission. I suspect she was just trying to annoy her mother, who tended to take a flat-earth philosophy toward things like ghosts, ESP, UFOs, and government conspiracies.

“TV show?” Nina said. “What else forms your worldview, Mr. Finnegan?
Fringe
?
Lost
?
X-Files
?
True
freaking
Blood
?
The Vampire Diaries
?”

“I just—”

“Is this what the United States Justice Department has come to—getting its information from basic cable?”

Finnegan didn't answer, so Nina turned toward me as if I were somehow the cause of her frustration. I didn't so much as smile—I like excitement as much as the next guy, but I'm not suicidal. I pointed at Finnegan.

“Give him the bill,” I said.

She did, too, or rather Jenness Crawford did. Nina remained out of sight. It occurred to me that it was no coincidence that the morning after the TV program's camera crew arrived at Rickie's, Erica flew off to New Orleans.

The moment Nina left, Finnegan said, “I don't know about ghosts, but clearly she—”

I raised my index finger in warning and cleared my throat. Finnegan glanced at Harry, who was shaking his head slowly from side to side, an expression of dire warning on his face.

“Yes, well, a very nice club,” Finnegan said. “I hear the music is sensational.”

“So is the food,” Harry said.

Finnegan took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He didn't smile. I doubted he had much of a sense of humor—he had the look of a man who decided long ago life was a very serious proposition. He began speaking in that earnest, sincere way career politicians have.

“McKenzie,” he said. “It's just McKenzie, correct? Not Mr. McKenzie?”

“McKenzie will do.”

“McKenzie, normally I would attempt to appeal to your altruistic nature. I would tell you about all the people who will suffer if we don't get those guns off the border, the men and women—and children—who will be hurt or killed. I would tell you how the damage done to the Justice Department's reputation would make it more difficult for us to do our work, how it would compromise our ability to secure our borders and protect our citizens. However, I'm informed that Special Agents Bullert and Wilson have already addressed that argument.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Next, I would make threats. I would refer to that rather lengthy document we've compiled on you and your many, should I say, indecorous actions?”

Oh, let's,
my inner voice said.
Indecorous—my, my, my.

“I have been assured, however, that you are not a man who is easily intimidated,” Finnegan said. “I am also aware that you and your investment counselor—H. B. Sutton, I believe is her name—have grown the reward you accepted to nearly five million, so a bribe is certainly out of the question.”

“Sounds like an impasse to me,” I said.

“On the other hand, perhaps you might be enticed by the age-old system of barter. That is your preferred method of exchange, is it not—favor for favor?”

“What do you have to trade?”

Finnegan took a business card from his pocket and slid the card, faceup, across the table to me. The top listed his name, title, and assorted means of contact under the crest of the U.S. Department of Justice. I turned it over and found the word “allegation” written there.

I repeated it out loud, and Finnegan grinned. “I love that word,” he said. “What was it that the Reverend Jesse Jackson once said? ‘I not only deny the allegation, I deny the alligator.'”

“What does this mean exactly?” I asked.

“Call my office day or night, use the code word, and the next voice you hear will be mine.”

“I don't get it.”

“It's a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Harry said.

“Let's face it,” Bullert said, “the way you live your life, sooner or later you're going to need it.”

“Your buddy Governor Barrett is not running for reelection,” Harry reminded me.

“So?” I said.

“So now we're your friends in high places,” Finnegan said. “And a man like you can never have too many friends.”

*   *   *

“I made myself clear to Finnegan,” I told Bullert over the cell phone. “I'm in until the bullets start flying. I'm in as long as no one gets hurt. If these guys shoot someone…”

“Let's hope for an uneventful criminal enterprise, then,” he said.

“Christ.”

“In the meantime, we'll check out this Roy Cepek. Could be he got the guns through a military connection, an army buddy turned merc, maybe.”

I ended the call, erased Bullert's number from the log just in case, deactivated the phone, and returned it to my pocket. Shortly after, my hands filled with cardboard coffee cups, I opened the café door with my shoulder and stepped into the parking lot. The Corolla was still there; the elderly man still inside, although Roy Clark had been swapped for Loretta Lynn—I guessed this was what amounted to Golden Oldies in Silver Bay. I returned to the Jeep Cherokee and handed Skarda his coffee through the open passenger window.

“You were gone so long,” he said. “I was starting to get worried.”

“I took a minute to use the john,” I said. I circled the SUV and entered through the driver's door. “Anything interesting happening?”

“Just the armored car.”

“What armored car?”

Skarda handed me the binoculars, and I studied the blue vehicle, the name Mesabi Security printed on its side. It was a decidedly old armored truck with streaks of rust along the wheel wells and rocker panels. The driver sat in the cab, the window rolled down, his elbow propped on the door frame. A second guard exited the supermarket carrying a nylon bag. He set it on the ground behind the truck where the driver couldn't possibly have seen him, opened the rear compartment, tossed the bag inside, and then climbed in after it.

“Very, very sloppy,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“The armored car guards. I could take those clowns with a slingshot. Okay, look—you had better contact Josie and have her call off the job.”

“I can't. I don't have a cell phone. What happened to the one we bought yesterday?”

“I tossed it. Look, we have to head them off somehow.”

“Why?”

“Because there's no money to steal. The armored car guys just drove off with it.”

“No…”

“What do you think they were here for? To buy Milky Ways and Slushies?”

“No…”

“Stop saying that.”

“Look.”

Skarda pointed. I followed his finger to a car that pulled to a stop directly in front of the grocery store. Jill was driving. Jimmy got out of the car. His jacket was hanging open as he nonchalantly walked into the store, pausing for a moment while a woman pushed a loaded shopping cart past him. Exactly seven minutes later a second vehicle approached from the opposite direction. The old man was driving. Roy stepped out holding his AK-47 in the port position again and scanned the parking lot like a hunter searching for game. Josie—the way she was dressed she looked to me like a woman who was trying hard not to look like a woman, not unlike the feminists who marched for the Equal Rights Amendment when I was a kid. She was carrying a shotgun when she emerged from the passenger side. Together, she and Roy entered the supermarket.

The sky suddenly seemed to grow dark and ominous to me, even though it remained bright blue with puffy white clouds to everyone else. I rested my head against the top of the steering wheel.

“Well, this is an unfortunate turn of events,” I said.

“If everything is going according to plan, Jimmy has his gun on the store manager and is forcing him to open the safe.”

“Which is empty, now.”

“Roy is guarding the door while Josie moves from cash register to cash register, forcing the cashiers to empty their drawers into a grocery bag.”

I rotated in my seat and gazed out the window toward the Silver Bay Police Department. I saw no movement, but that didn't mean anything. More likely the department's patrol cars had all received the 911 by now and were converging on this very spot with the greatest possible dispatch. I started the Cherokee just in case.

Seconds seemed like minutes, and minutes—it felt like I was sitting through
Avatar
again. I listened intently, for what I wasn't sure. Terrified screams, I suppose. Gunfire.

“Here they come.”

Skarda was pointing again. Jimmy was first out the door, carrying a white tote bag by the handle with one hand and his clunky automatic with the other. He was followed closely by Josie. She was clutching a plain brown grocery bag to her chest as if it contained baby formula. Roy came out of the supermarket a moment later, backside first, training his weapon on the entrance as if he were expecting a swift counterattack. Jimmy was in Jill's car and the car was motoring halfway out of the parking lot before Josie reached hers. She shouted something as she climbed in, and Roy turned and jogged after her. He jumped into the car, and the old man stomped on the gas, spinning his tires like a teenager trying to impress his rivals.

That's when the Silver Bay PD arrived.

The patrol car came slowly up Shopping Center Road without siren or lights.

I saw it first in my sideview mirror and again when I twisted in my seat to look at it through the rear window. It was dark blue and scary as hell. At the same time, I saw the elderly man backing his red Toyota away from the café and steering it toward the entrance to the parking lot. At his current speed, I estimated that he would reach the entrance just before the cop car did.

“Hold on,” I said.

I cranked the wheel of the Cherokee and hit the accelerator. The coffee cups spilled out of the cup holders and fell to the floor of the passenger side, the tops popped off, and coffee splattered Skarda's feet and ankles.

“What are you doing?” he shouted.

I ignored the question and sidled up next to the Toyota just as it entered Shopping Center Road in front of the cop, its sideview mirrors nearly touching the Cherokee's driver's-side door. I leaned hard on my horn. The elderly man looked at me, panic etched across his face—and did exactly what I wanted him to do. To avoid a collision, he spun his steering wheel violently to the left away from me, stomped on the accelerator, and promptly crashed into the Silver Bay Police Department patrol car. There was no squealing of tires, no blaring of horns, just a satisfying crunch as the Toyota's fiberglass composite front end folded around the cop's high-grade steel push bumper.

I drove straight ahead, crossing Shopping Center Road, shooting down the alley between the public library and the police department, hanging a hard right on Davis Drive and then another on Outer Drive. I followed it at high speed past Blazers Northshore Auto, Silver Bay Municipal Liquor, and the City Arena to U.S. Service Highway 11. We were not followed. It wasn't until we were a good five miles out of town that it occurred to me that the Silver Bay cop might not have received a call about the supermarket robbery at all; he didn't have his lightbar and siren working. He might simply have been patrolling in the wrong place at the wrong time. Skarda, however, didn't see it that way. He was full of praise about how my superior driving skills once again not only made good our escape, they also delivered his family from sure arrest.

“You'd make a great Iron Range Bandit,” he said.

I started laughing out loud, but, of course, Skarda didn't get the joke.

*   *   *

It took several hours to return to Lake Carl, mostly because of the roundabout way I took to get there. The Iron Range Bandits were gathered on the deck when we arrived. None of them looked pleased. They were drinking beer from a cooler set beneath the picnic table; the empties suggested they had been drinking a lot. There were five stacks of U.S. currency on the table along with the white tote bag and paper grocery bag, both emblazoned with the name of the Silver Bay grocery store. A single rock had been placed on top of each stack to keep the bills from blowing away in the light breeze. Neither of the bags moved despite the wind, and I decided there must be something inside weighing them down.