Authors: David Housewright

Tags: #Mystery & Thriller

Tin City (16 page)

BOOK: Tin City

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Lantry gave me a crash course, demonstrating how to use the voice-activated recording function and adjust the volume. The bug was already transmitting. I could hear Pen washing dishes and humming a tune that I couldn’t identify. I guessed it was one of hers.

“Nice job,” I told Lantry.

“Now for the bad news,” he said.

“Bad news?”

“Someone else is also listening.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are at least two other bugs—one in her living room, one in her bedroom—and the phones are tapped.”

“What?”

“Someone is conducting an audio surveillance of your girl. Someone close. The equipment is very short range. Kinda shoddy, too, if you ask me. Nearly obsolete.”

“Who?”

“How should I know who? The bugs don’t have labels on them, you know.”

“Jeezus.”

The news forced me backward until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed and I sat down.

“You know, it’s always something,” said Lantry.

“Isn’t it, though. You left the bugs in? Didn’t tamper with them?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I mean no. I mean I didn’t touch the bugs.”

“Did they hear you?”

“They heard someone, but I doubt they knew what I was doing.”
Lantry showed me his perpetual smile. “Nothing personal,” he said, “but stay away from me for awhile.”

After Lantry left, I adjusted the volume on the receiver and stretched out on the bed. There was a lump in my stomach that felt like an unexploded Scud—I didn’t know why it was there, but it was.

I wondered who else was bugging Pen. It could be her suspicious husband, I supposed. He wouldn’t be the first to go to such lengths out of mistrust for his wife. But having met Pen, having enjoyed her company so thoroughly, I just didn’t see it. It could be the FBI—probably was the FBI. They could have found out about Sykora’s extracurricular activities and be in the process of reining him in. Certainly it made more sense. In any case, there was nothing to be done about it but wait and listen. I came off the bed, went to the window, and threw open the drapes, letting sunlight shine into the room through the white lace curtains.

If I was going to hang around all day, I decided, I needed supplies. I switched on the voice-activated recorder, left the room, and walked south to the Central Plaza strip mall. I bought a roll of masking tape and a few munchies in the supermarket—including a bag of Twizzlers strawberry licorice, my favorite—and picked up a six-pack of James Page in the municipal off-sale liquor store on the way back. I also bought two papers.

Mr. Mosley’s murder was still featured in both the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
and
Minneapolis Tribune
, although not nearly as prominently as a few days ago. I wasn’t surprised. Unlike in some communities—Los Angeles comes to mind—murder, any murder, was still news here. We don’t have so many that we quickly forget them. A local guy who won the Pulitzer a few years back wrote thrillers set in Minnesota. I read a couple—they’re not bad. But seriously, if there were nearly as many
psychopaths here as appeared in his books, we’d be sending our kids to school in armored personnel carriers.

I checked the recorder the moment I returned. Pen had finished her dishes in my absence and left her trailer—the door closing was the last sound on the tape. “Life is in the streets,” she had said.

After placing the beer inside the tiny refrigerator and stacking the rest of my supplies on top of it, I unrolled two six-inch strips of tape and pressed them firmly across the top of both the receiver and recorder. On the tape I wrote PROPERTY OF U.S. TREASURY DEPT.

I wasn’t uncomfortable in the motel room. I spent most of my adult life living on the top floor of a duplex off of West Seventh Street in St. Paul that was owned by a guy I played hockey with. It was small, but it suited me just fine. After I came into my money, I bought my house with the expectation that my father and I would live in it; it was far too big for just me alone. I would have put it up for sale after he died except for the kitchen. I love to cook and often throw elaborate dinner parties just for the opportunity to show off. I suspect that’s one of the reasons I have so many friends, because I feed them regularly.

I grabbed six sticks of licorice and sprawled out on the bed. The motel TV only received a dozen channels, but one of them was ESPN and another was CNN, so I was set. I watched the French Open with the volume off, so the noise wouldn’t interfere with anything I might hear over the receiver. Images of tennis players swatting a fuzzy green ball at each other made perfect sense without commentary. More, actually.

After a few minutes, Pen returned.

There were puttering sounds and then the telephone. The ringing was loud enough to make my fake landscapes shake on the walls, and I rushed to the receiver to reduce the volume.

“Hello,” Pen said.

“Hi, honey, it’s me.”

“It’s me who? My secret lover or my husband who usually calls this time of day to tell me he’s working late?”

“We’re not going to do this again, are we?”

I could hear tension in their voices like the static on AM radio stations during thunderstorms.

“You didn’t keep hours like this in New York.”

“It’s different here.”

“Why is it different here?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why can’t you tell me? You could tell me things before.”

“I know …”

“I feel like I’m living a life I know nothing about. Do you understand that? Do you know how painful that is?”

“C’mon, Lucky …”

There was a long pause before Pen said, “That’s something you haven’t called me in a long time.”

“You’ll always be my Lucky Penny.”

“Will I?”

“The reason I called was to tell you that I
won’t
be working late for a change.”

“Okay, now I feel stupid.”

“Don’t, don’t … Let me take you out.”

“I have an idea. Why don’t I make beef Stroganoff?”

“Isn’t that what you made the last time you seduced me?”

“You know me, Steve. When something works, I stick with it.”

There was more like that, and listening to the conversation, I felt a shudder of excitement that I hadn’t expected. There was something thrilling about eavesdropping on other people’s lives, and in that instant I understood the popularity of reality TV. I also felt a certain revulsion. Clearly I was no gentleman.

After hanging up the phone, Pen made a list that she read out loud. “Sirloin, mushrooms, onions, garlic, sour cream, white wine, tomato paste. Do I have beef broth? Yes, I have beef broth.” A moment later the trailer door opened and closed. I presumed she went to the nearby grocery store for ingredients.

I settled in, wondering what I would have for dinner.

Steve Sykora and his wife went to bed less than five minutes after Sykora returned home. I admit to a certain jealousy. And anger. I held Sykora partially responsible for the murder of Mr. Mosley and the rape of Susan Tillman—the bastard didn’t deserve to be loved by Penelope Glass. But that’s not why I switched off the receiver. I did it because I still believed I was a good guy, and there are certain things a good guy doesn’t do. Spying on people’s most intimate moments was one of them.

I wondered if the party or parties unknown who also were listening had switched off their receiver, too.

Victor, the elderly manager of the Hilltop Motel, was spraying water on the asphalt driveway with a hose when I left the room. I gave him a little wave and wandered north. The traffic on Central Avenue never stopped, never seemed to increase or decrease in volume. It remained constant, like a river polluted by exhaust, noise, and lights. I followed it until I found a Mediterranean restaurant that looked authentic. Unfortunately, the food had a North American taste to it, gyros, shawarma, and kabobs for a midwestern clientele, as bland as the suburbs. Still, it was a pleasant evening, and after dinner I went for a walk.

I walked for ten minutes with an odd feeling that something was wrong. I walked for another ten minutes before I realized what it was. I had no place to go and no one to talk to when I got there. Jake Greene didn’t have any friends, at least none I was aware of. Rushmore McKenzie had plenty, and although he spent much of his time alone—
for he had always been content in his own company—he was aware that they were out there and usually happy to hear from him. But Jake was worse than alone. He was lonely. And I wondered, did someone love him? Did he love them in return? Did he wish he could go home? Of course. But he had a job to do, so instead of returning to Rapid City, South Dakota, he walked back to the Hilltop Motel.

They were eating when I returned. The talk was small. Spring in Minnesota versus spring in New York. Was Sykora treating Pen’s beloved Matilda with the proper respect and consideration? Songwriters Glass and Heyward were still waiting to hear about some tunes the Indigo Girls had shown interest in.

The phone rang, and again I was forced to reduce the volume on the receiver.

Pen said, “Don’t answer it.”

“I wish,” said Sykora. “Yes?”

A voice said, “Goddammit, you said you were going to take care of McKenzie.”

I leapt for the tape machine and pressed the record button. The spools on the cassette began spinning a half beat later.

“Just a minute.” Sykora muffled the phone. “I need to take this in private.”

“Big surprise,” Pen said. “I’ll be in the bedroom. Let me know when you can trust me enough to come out.”

“Pen—”

There was movement followed by the slamming of a door.

“What did I tell you about calling here?”

“Did you want me to call you at the Federal Building?”

“What do you want, Frank?”

“Fuckin’ McKenzie. He found my boys.”

“The boys you sent to harass my wife? Those boys?”

“I told you I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

“Yeah, and you had nothing to do with raping that woman, either.”

“You know what happened. I sent ‘em over there to scare ’er, to slap ’er around a bit, get ’er old man off my case. They just got excited.”

“Did they get excited when you killed the old man, too?”

“How many times I gotta say it? I didn’t do the fuckin’ darky. He was gone when I got there.”

“Yeah, right.”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”

“Fuck you, Frank.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“How many times I need to say it? This isn’t goddamn Brooklyn. This isn’t Jersey. This is Minnesota. There’s no culture of violence here. You can’t hurt innocent people and expect everyone to forget about it in a few days, or when the next act of violence occurs. The cops just arrested a guy for killing a coworker eleven years ago who accused him of sexual harassment. Eleven years, Frank. Eleven years they kept after this guy. I tried to explain that to you when you broke the prostitute’s hand.”

“I made some mistakes, okay? I was wrong. When I’m wrong I say I’m wrong, okay? But that don’t address the problem with my boys.”

“You’re not supposed to have boys, Frank. You’re supposed to sit quietly in your house, not go running off to some goddamn roadhouse and recruit talent like you were a capo running a crew back home.”

“That ain’t the point, Fed. The point is McKenzie found ’em in that motel you stuck ’em in.”

“How?”

“How the fuck should I know how. He found ’em, that’s all.”

“I told you he was smart.”

“You told me you was gonna take care of him. Well, he ain’t taken care of.”

“Look, I issued a Seeking Information Alert on him. We’re watching his house, we’re watching his friends—”

“That ain’t good enough. You gotta put his face on milk cartons or somethin’. Put ’im on the news.”

“To do that I’d have to give my boss a better explanation for why we’re looking for him. You want to do that? ‘Well, sir, we lied before. The real reason we’re looking for McKenzie is because we killed his pal and raped his lawyer’s wife and now he wants revenge.’”

“We didn’t kill—ahh, fuck it. Look. We had a deal, okay? Protection for information.”

“That’s right. When are you going to keep your end of it?”

“I told you, the shipment will be here in a few days.”

“Where, Frank?”

BOOK: Tin City

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