Tin City (26 page)
I returned fire at the same instant.
Danny dove backward into the grass.
I waited for him to attempt another shot. When he didn’t I rushed forward.
Only there was no need to hurry.
Danny had crawled about fifteen feet across the hard ground before
curling into a fetal position, both hands clutching his stomach. His gun was lying in the dirt just out of his reach. I left it there. Maybe he’d go for it, I told myself, and I could shoot him again and pretend it was self-defense. A quick glance at his wound told me that wasn’t going to happen. Danny was already dead, or would be within moments. Even if I wanted to save him, there was no way I could get him off the bluff and find medical attention before he bled out.
curling into a fetal position, both hands clutching his stomach. His gun was lying in the dirt just out of his reach. I left it there. Maybe he’d go for it, I told myself, and I could shoot him again and pretend it was self-defense. A quick glance at his wound told me that wasn’t going to happen. Danny was already dead, or would be within moments. Even if I wanted to save him, there was no way I could get him off the bluff and find medical attention before he bled out.
“I don’t want to die,” he told me.
I was pretty sure Mr. Mosley didn’t want to die, either, but I didn’t say so. What was the point?
Danny raised a bloody hand toward me.
“This ain’t right.”
He dropped his hand over his stomach. And he died.
As his last breath escaped his lungs, a thought flared deep inside my head.
This ain’t right.
I thought I would feel satisfaction, if not outright pleasure, from killing one of the men who had killed Mr. Mosley and raped Susan Tillman. Yet I didn’t. I felt instead like I sometimes did when I left the house, as though there was something important I had forgotten but couldn’t quite place it.
I crouched next to the body and rested two fingers against the carotid artery. There was no pulse.
Why was he different?
I had killed men before. Sometimes I felt sick and ashamed. Sometimes I felt exhilarated. Sometimes I felt overwhelming relief. But with Danny there was—what? Indifference? Apathy? I didn’t have a word to cover it. That, more than Danny’s death, made me think there was something terribly wrong.
What’s happened to me?
Me? No, no, no—not me. Think about it. I didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t me. It was Jake. Jake Greene killed Danny. McKenzie wasn’t responsible. McKenzie wasn’t even here. He’s in a shoe box in Merriam Park. It was the other guy. It was Jake—that crazy bastard.
Yes, I know it was a lie. Yet I believed it for as long as I could.
I left Danny where he fell—not a particularly noble thing to do, but there was no way I could explain him to a county attorney and expect to escape jail.
Later,
I told myself,
I’ll make an anonymous call to the Elk River Police Department.
Later,
I told myself,
I’ll make an anonymous call to the Elk River Police Department.
It took me a while to find my car and some time longer to discover a way off the service road that didn’t take me past the army of law enforcement types that had gathered at the entrance to the quarry. Apparently none of them had heard the shots from the top of the bluff.
Afterward, I drove more or less southwest, not caring one helluva a lot where I ended up. I needed time to think, time to decompress. The days were beginning to run together, and I was afraid there were things I was starting to lose.
Eventually I ended up at a small bar in Glencoe and wondered if this was the joint that Ivy Flynn had called me from a lifetime ago. It was a pleasant enough place, and the pretty blonde bartender knew how to flirt without making a guy think there was something to it. I had two beers and a sandwich before driving back to Hilltop.
I changed out of my dirty clothes, showered, dressed again, and stretched out on the bed, my fingers locked behind my head. The sun was just a sliver on the horizon, and the motel room was engulfed in gray, yet I kept the lights off. There was nothing I wanted to see.
Tomorrow,
I told myself.
Tomorrow I’ll call Harry and he’ll tell me I
can go home, and it’ll all be over.
Fuck Frank. Let Ishmael have him. What did I care? When he went down for messing with Granata, he’d go down for Mr. Mosley, too. It wasn’t the justice I had been looking for, but now it was justice enough.
I told myself.
Tomorrow I’ll call Harry and he’ll tell me I
can go home, and it’ll all be over.
Fuck Frank. Let Ishmael have him. What did I care? When he went down for messing with Granata, he’d go down for Mr. Mosley, too. It wasn’t the justice I had been looking for, but now it was justice enough.
I closed my eyes.
The room was nearly pitch-black when I opened them again. The only light came from the parking lot and crept through a crack between my window drapes.
I had been awakened by Steve Sykora’s voice calling for Pen, wondering aloud where she could be. I hadn’t heard a sound coming from the receiver in my desk drawer since I entered the room and had forgotten it was there.
“Lucky. Where are you?” There was a wail in Sykora’s voice that was almost childlike. I guessed things hadn’t gone well for him during his meeting with the AIC, and the thought of it made me smile.
“Glad I could help,” I told the empty room.
I closed my eyes again but didn’t sleep. Instead, I continued to listen and smile as Sykora banged around his trailer. Yet after a few minutes I found myself pressing the tiny button that illuminated the face of my watch. Like Sykora, I was becoming concerned.
Where is Pen?
I must have asked that question a dozen times. Finally the phone rang. It rang only once before Sykora answered it.
“Yes?”
“I have her,” Frank’s voice said.
“What?”
“I have her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I snatched your wife, what the fuck do you think I mean?”
Sykora didn’t reply. I imagined him staring at the phone, his mouth open but words not coming out.
“You hear me?”
“Yes,” said Sykora.
“I have your wife.”
“What do you want?” Sykora was calm. A lot calmer than I was.
“You were always a guy to get right to the point. I like that.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you think I want? I want money.”
“How much?”
“Fifty large.”
“Where do you think that’s going to come from?”
Frank thought the question was funny. “From the FBI,” he said, and laughed some more.
Sykora said, “The FBI has placed me on administrative leave without pay. I’m being investigated for what happened at the quarry this morning and for harboring a fugitive. Guess who the fugitive is, Frank?”
“Well, shit.”
“What happened to the cigarettes, Frank?”
“Fuck if I know. Ask McKenzie.”
“McKenzie?”
“Fucker was there, watchin’. Look, that don’t matter. McKenzie don’t matter. I kept my end of the deal. Now you’re gonna keep yours or you ain’t never gonna see your wife again. Got it?”
“You hurt my wife, Frank, you touch her, I’ll kill you.”
“Fuck. You don’t think I heard shit like that before—threats? Forgetaboutit. I’m still here, Fed. I’ll always be here. So fuck that shit, okay? You can’t go to the FBI? Is that what you’re sayin’?”
“That’s what I’m—”
“Fuck it, then. What we’re gonna do is Plan B. Your wife says you have eleven-four in a money market account. I’ll do you a favor. I’ll only
take ten thousand. It won’t get me back to the Big Apple in style, but it’ll get me back.”
take ten thousand. It won’t get me back to the Big Apple in style, but it’ll get me back.”
“Into Granata’s waiting arms.”
“You let me fucking worry about Little Al, wouldja? Just get the money.”
“Banks aren’t open, Frank.”
“Banks open at 8:00 A.M. I’ll call back at ten o’clock tomorrow and tell you where to deliver it. And don’t fuck with me, Fed. You won’t like what happens you fuck with me.”
“I want to talk to my wife. I want to talk to her right now.”
“Sorry, she can’t come to the phone. She’s all tied up.” Frank thought that was funny, too.
“I don’t talk to her, you don’t get the money.”
“You can talk to her tomorrow morning.”
“I mean it, Frank. You hurt her—”
Frank hung up the phone.
Sykora screamed as if in great pain. I heard a crash. And then another. And then another. “Pen, Pen,” he wailed, followed by a moan that spoke of all the sorrow there was in the world.
I checked the load in both my guns and left the motel room.
Steve Sykora flung open the door of his mobile home after I knocked. My impression was that he was hoping I was someone else.
He was an inch or two shorter than I was—with light brown hair. His eyes were dark, and he was blinking at me like he wasn’t sure I was really there.
“I’m McKenzie,” I told him.
He lunged out of the doorway toward me, his fist leading the way.
I managed to get under the blow and attempted to counter with a
ridge hand to his solar plexus, but he was already behind me. I tried to turn, only he caught me in a headlock. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled back hard. At the same time I stomped his knee from behind. His leg folded, and I drove his knee to the ground. He kept rolling, taking me with him. Suddenly I was on my back and he was kneeling on my biceps. My wrist was pulled backward—he could have snapped it with a thought.
ridge hand to his solar plexus, but he was already behind me. I tried to turn, only he caught me in a headlock. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled back hard. At the same time I stomped his knee from behind. His leg folded, and I drove his knee to the ground. He kept rolling, taking me with him. Suddenly I was on my back and he was kneeling on my biceps. My wrist was pulled backward—he could have snapped it with a thought.
“I’m a friend of Pen’s,” I blurted. I didn’t know what else to say. “I’m here to help Pen.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know Frank kidnapped her.”
“How do you know?”
“I bugged your trailer.”
“You did what?”
“A UHF transmitter on your telephone line.”
Sykora added pressure to my wrist. I closed my eyes, steeling myself for the excruciating pain I knew would come—only he eased up at the breaking point.
“Talk fast.”
All the lies I had told in the past week and a half flashed before my eyes. None of them had done me much good, so I decided to try a different strategy—the truth.
“You’re a sonuvabitch,” I told him. “Frank and his thugs killed my friend and raped another, and you let them get away with it. I hope you all burn in hell. But Pen doesn’t deserve any of this. So I’m going to help you get her back. I only hope she leaves you when we do.”
“Leave me for you?”
“She doesn’t even know who I am. I only know who she is because I’ve been listening to her put up with your bullshit for the past week.”
“You’re the one who burned me with the bureau, aren’t you?”
“You bet your ass I am.”
Sykora chuckled, an odd thing to do, I thought. He released my wrist and abruptly stood up. As I rubbed first my wrist and then my arm, he wandered to the trailer. He tried to slam shut the door, but it bounced back open again.
“I’m supposed to trust you?” he asked.
I didn’t say if he should or shouldn’t.
“Penelope,” he moaned. “I don’t know what I’ll do if …”
The unspoken thought hung between us.
“Yeah, now you care,” I told him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Have you ever listened to her?”
“Of course I listen.”
“I mean really listened to her? Listened to what she had to say about people, about life? Have you listened to her laugh? Have you listened to her music?”
“Not for a long time.” His voice sounded far away.
“You and I—we deserve what happens to us. God knows Frank does. But Pen … not Pen. She doesn’t deserve this. None of it. She’s an angel come to earth. And she needs our help. So what’s it going to be?”
“An angel come to earth,” Sykora repeated. I admit it sounded way over the top when he said it. “You love my wife.”
“No, I don’t. But I could be talked into it real easy.”
I was surprised by the truth of my own words. But despite what Ruth Schramm had said, Pen wasn’t Audrey Hepburn and I certainly wasn’t Humphrey Bogart.
Sykora took hold of the door as if he wanted to slam it again.
“What’s it going to be?” I repeated.
He left the door open.
“Do you know where Frank is?” he asked.
“We can find him.”
“How?”
“There’s only one person in Minnesota who would help him. Guy called Brucie. I’m betting Frank’s with him.”
“And if he’s not?”
“You can always pay him the ten thousand and hope for the best.”
Sykora closed his eyes.
A moment later, he opened them again and started talking. His voice was brisk and sure, his words clearly enunciated. Yet he paced like he needed to urinate and the restroom was a long way off. His forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat. He reminded me of a poor poker player pushing chips into a pot he couldn’t afford to lose.
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