The Last Kind Word (13 page)

A few moments later, Josie and I were in her car and heading toward the county road. She had an amused expression on her face. I knew she wanted me to ask her about it, so I did.

“You handled that really well,” she said. “You not only got Jill out of the robbery, you got Roy to agree with you. He doesn't even seem all that angry that you punched him. How did you do that?”

“I read a business book once,
The One Minute Manager.
It taught me everything I know about running a crew.”

“Did it teach you how to be a criminal?”

“No, that I learned reading Donald Trump's autobiography.”

*   *   *

Krueger was a “city” in name only. The entire community could have fit easily inside Target Field with room left over for an executive golf course. There was very little of it that I could not see from the road: an orange-brick schoolhouse next to an overgrown football field and an outdoor hockey rink, the boards still up even though the ice had been gone for months now; a gas station/minimart at the crossroads; a bar, restaurant, hardware store, bait and tackle shop; a building that looked like a barn with
KRUEGER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT.
painted above the door. A half-dozen businesses made up Krueger's downtown, with an abundance of empty parking spaces in front of them. Houses packed close together, some new, most old, surrounded the downtown. They thinned out as we drove; there were longer and longer stretches between neighbors until there were no neighbors at all. Yet I could see plenty of people living their lives—a mother with a stroller, young kids running through sprinklers, older kids playing baseball; a young man working a barbecue grill while his buddies watched, plates in hand; an elderly couple walking down the road, their arms linked.

“A great place to live, I just wouldn't want to visit here.”

I was speaking to myself. Josie heard me, though, and added, “Until the jobs went away.”

“Not much worth stealing.”

“No, not much. Do we have time enough for me to make a quick stop at my office?”

“Sure.”

Josie's office was also her home, located on the intersection of paved and gravel county roads. It was small and square and built to resemble a log cabin. A sign clearly visible from both roads read
LAKE DREAMS REALTY—SERVING ELY-KRUEGER-BABBITT.
She stopped for mail and then went through the front door. I followed. The office was all blond wood, including the large desk that sat at an angle in the corner. Next to the desk was a rack filled with brochures, most citing tourist attractions, area businesses, and financing options. One noted that “Ely ranks 12th on the
Field & Stream Magazine
2008 list of Best Fishing Towns in America.” Another stated that “Real Estate is an important element of any long-term investment plan.” Across from the desk four chairs surrounded a round table. A PC was in the center of the table; its screen saver read “Browse our listings of affordable lake homes.”

Beyond the office the house was set up like an efficiency apartment. A doorway behind the desk led to a kitchenette and tiny living room; a staircase in the living room allowed access to a second-floor bathroom and a large bedroom.

While Josie went to her phone and checked her voice mail, I clicked the mouse and skimmed the real estate listings. There were three pages of them. All of the listings had gorgeous photographs and enticing copy; a third were highlighted with the words “Recently Reduced Price” written in red. Josie hung up her phone and cursed loudly. I turned away from the PC to look at her.

“Client just backed out of a sale,” she said. “A hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars.”

“Sorry.”

“I needed that eleven-thousand-dollar commission.”

Josie sat behind her desk and sorted through the stack of mail. “Bill, bill, bill, flyer, request for money, request for money, bill, flyer, and one, two, three preapproved credit card applications. What am I going to do, Dyson?”

“I think you've already made that decision.”

“Am I a bad person?”

“Most bad people don't ask that question. We are not prone to introspection.”

“We?”

Stay in character, stay in character,
my inner voice chanted.

“I have no pretensions about what I am,” I said aloud.

“What are you?”

“A thief.”

“I googled the Iron Range Bandits last night. They're blaming the Silver Bay robbery on us.”

“Lucky you.”

“They don't seem to have any suspects, though. I mean, nothing to connect us to the robbery.”

“Sweetie, if they did, they wouldn't tell the newspapers.”

“They mentioned you, though, and don't call me sweetie.”

“Me?”

“You're the unidentified suspect that caused a traffic accident that allowed us to escape.”

“It's like I once told you, I'm a helluva guy. Did I tell you that? I'm sure I did.”

“Where are you from, Dyson? I mean, where is home?”

“I don't remember.”

Dammit, did you say that out loud?
my inner voice asked. Truth was, I couldn't remember where Dyson was from.
You should have done a better job studying his profile.

“I don't have a home, Josie,” I said aloud. “I had to give that up.”

She studied me from across her desk for what seemed like a long time. “Will I have to give up my home?” she asked.

It was a good question. My deal with Harry and Bullert was for information identifying the gunrunners. I made no promises concerning the Iron Range Bandits, and like Bullert said, I was under no legal obligation to report their crimes. It was possible I could do what I came there to do and leave them out of it.

But they're thieves,
my inner voice reminded me.
How many jobs have they pulled?

That's not my problem, I told myself.

Whose problem is it?

“I don't know, Josie,” I said aloud. “We'll see.”

*   *   *

A few minutes later, we were back on the road. We drove northwest until we reached Ely. Compared to Krueger, Ely was a teeming metropolis with thirty-eight resorts, twenty-seven outfitters, six bait shops, thirteen restaurants, twelve bars, nine motels, and two B&Bs, plus art galleries, museums, gift shops, golf courses, parks, and the International Wolf Center. Nearly all of its businesses catered to tourists lured to the area by the fabled Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It had a listed population of 3,700 people, although that number more than doubled during the summer months when people from the Cities opened their lake homes. Which wasn't to suggest that it was all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Many of the joys of Ely ended fourteen miles east in the charred remains of the Pagami Creek Forest Fire.

A lightning strike caused the biggest fire in state history, burning over a hundred thousand acres of jack pine, black spruce, white cedar, balsam fir, birch, aspen, ash, and maple trees in the BWCA and even threatened the tiny town of Isabella. Plumes of ash actually settled on the roof of Miller Park in Milwaukee over four hundred miles away. Despite that, the U.S. Forest Service—which allowed the blaze to burn unchecked for over three weeks before stepping in—was pretty much nonchalant about the situation, suggesting that a fire every now and again was necessary to clean up the forest. Josie, for one, was skeptical.

“Tell that to the people who rely on the tourist dollars that the BWCA brings to the area, the resorts and outfitters and whatnot,” she said. “As if the Range didn't have enough problems.”

Josie wasn't a particularly good driver. She tended to behave as if there were no other traffic on the road. Still, I had her drive back and forth and around Ely for nearly an hour. She became quite nervous when I had her motor past the county sheriff's department substation on East Chapman and Second Avenue East—twice. Eventually I found just what I was looking for.

“Hey, a Dairy Queen,” I said.

I made her stop, and we both ordered Blizzards; she had Cappuccino Heath Bar, I had M&M's. We ate them while sitting in the car in the parking lot. While we ate, a county sheriff's department patrol car parked two spaces down from us. Josie flinched and gave me a panicked look. I rested a hand on her thigh. Her skin was soft and warm beneath my fingers. I left them there while we watched the two deputies enter the DQ. One was short and thin with sandy, receding hair. The other was tall with a beer belly that rolled over his belt buckle and hung there as if it were looking for a place to sit. We could see them ordering through the store's large windows.

I did not move my hand, so Josie did it for me, taking my fingers and setting them on my own thigh. “Look,” she said. “They're paying for their treats with the free coupons they're supposed to dole out to the kids that they see wearing bicycle helmets.”

McKenzie would have been outraged by the sight; Dyson, not so much.

“Scandalous,” I said. Josie gave me a look that suggested she was disappointed in me. “We're not exactly Ken and Barbie ourselves,” I reminded her.

“These two—James and Williams—they stopped my father a few months ago. My old man, everyone up here knows he does grass. It's not a secret. So they stop him for no particular reason and search his car.”

“Is this before or after your cousin decided to go into the drug business?”

“Before, and Jimmy—Jimmy was never in the drug business. We put a stop—do you know he had pictures on his cell phone? He went around showing people photos of his plants and fertilizer and equipment.”

“Gotta like a man who takes pride in his work.”

“But that was—ridiculous.”

“Go on with your story.”

“My dad, they stopped my dad. He wasn't carrying, okay; didn't have anything on him. That didn't faze James and Williams. They supplied a baggie of grass for him, pretended they found it in his trunk and told him—they were laughing when they told him, the old man said—that it felt like it weighed more than two ounces. In Minnesota if you're caught carrying less than one and a half ounces of grass it's a three-hundred-dollar fine. More than that, it's a felony starting at five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. As a favor, though, as a favor to my father, they said they'd call it one and a half ounces and he could pay them the fine, pay them the three hundred dollars. This wasn't a bribe, oh no—Dad said they were very clear about that. They claimed the law was being upheld and my father was being punished for his crime—which he didn't commit. The difference was they didn't have to do paperwork, didn't have to bother the overworked court system, and the old man wouldn't be going to prison, thus sparing the state the expense of another mouth to feed.”

“I bet your old man paid,” I said.

“Of course he paid. He was so frightened—going to prison. The odd thing is that Dad smokes a lot more grass, drinks a lot more beer, now than he ever did before it happened. Look, Dyson, it's not just him. Everyone pays. Don't tell me the county sheriff doesn't know about it, either. All the other county deputies, they ride one to a car. James and Williams, they ride together—they're always together. Makes it easier for them to intimidate people.”

“James and Williams, is that their first names or last?” I asked.

“Last. I think their first names are Eugene and Allen. Bullies with a badge.”

“Well, we all have to make a living,” I said—or rather Dyson said. McKenzie had been a cop for eleven and a half years. He wanted to beat the hell out of the two sonuvabitches and then make sure they never carried a badge again.

We remained in the car eating ice cream. At least I ate ice cream; Josie seemed to have lost her taste for it. James and Williams finished theirs before we finished ours and drove off down Sheridan Street, the name the locals gave to Minnesota Highway 1 as it passed through Ely. It was the main drag. Hell, it was the only drag.

“This isn't going to work,” I said. “Everything is on the same damn road, all the major businesses. If we stop and start along with the armored truck, I don't care how many car lengths we stay behind, how many times we pass it and then wait down the road for it to pass us, we're bound to be spotted. Especially if we're going to repeat it over a three-, four-day period while looking for the best place to hit 'em. We could run a three-car rotation in Ely, a city like Ely, only what about the long stretch of single-lane highway between Ely and Tower or Virginia? It would look like a frickin' parade.”

Josie stared at me. I wasn't sure she knew what I was talking about.

“Okay,” I said. “We'll go to Plan B.”

“There's a Plan B?” she asked.

“There's always a Plan B. I just don't know what it is yet. Call your cousin. Let me talk to him.”

A moment later, Jimmy was on Josie's cell phone.

“Jimmy,” I said. “I want you to look up the address for Mesabi Security.”

He did. “Their main office is in Duluth, plus they have a terminal in Krueger,” he said.

“A terminal?”

“That's what it says on its Web site.”

“Hang on.” I lowered the cell and looked at Josie. “Does Mesabi Security have an office in Krueger?”

“Not an office. Just a parking lot.”

“Parking lot?”

“They keep some of their trucks there.”

I stared at her for at least a half-dozen beats, marveling that this woman had made a considered decision to engage in a life of crime. She ate a spoonful of her melting ice cream to be doing something instead of staring back.

“You didn't think that might be pertinent information, JoEllen?” I asked.

She twirled a lock of auburn hair around her finger and dragged it across her mouth. “Please, mister. Don't scold me. I'm just a little girl from the Iron Range.”