Madman on a Drum (20 page)

“I know guys who'd do it for the cost of a Happy Meal,” the felon said. “Less if they're crackheads.”

“What are you guys, crazy?” I said. “A contract? On me?”

“You are McKenzie,” the felon said.

“Yes, I'm McKenzie.”

“Well, then.”

“A fifty-thousand-dollar contract on me?”

“You fuckin' quick on the uptake.”

“Listen—”

“I'm just sayin' what I heard.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where did you hear this?”

“Around.”

“Around where?”

“Around. Just around. It's in the fuckin' wind.”

I couldn't believe I was hearing it right. I turned back to Chopper for confirmation.

“Fifty grand, every douchebag in the world be gunnin' for you,” he said. “That kinda change, it's gonna attract your high-priced talent, too. Your serious professionals.”

I had no idea what to say to that.

“Man must really want you dead,” the felon said.

“What man?”

“Dunno.”

“Who's shopping the contract?”

“Dunno.”

“How are you going to collect if you don't know who's buying the hit?”

“I wasn't lookin' to collect.”

“Do you think you could find out?”

“Fuck no, man. I did my civic duty.”

“I'll pay.”

“Not enough, man. Not enough.” The felon stood. He looked down at Chopper. “We good?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I'm outta here,” the felon said. “That fuckin' music they playin' drives me nuts.”

We sat quietly at the table after he left, nursing our beers. After a few moments, I said, “Chopper?”

“I'll ask around, but there are people know we're tight,” he said. “Could be hard to get the intel, know what I'm sayin'? Then there's that guilt by association thing. I ain't sure I even want to know you for a while.”

I certainly couldn't blame him for that.

“I appreciate you calling me,” I said.

He nodded.

“What do I owe you?” I asked. Chopper was nothing if not entrepreneurial.

He surprised me when he said, “Nothin', man. Gratis.”

“My God, Chopper. Next thing you know, you'll be voting Democrat.”

 

They were playing Handel's
Rinaldo
when I stepped out of the bar and started walking up the street, only it barely registered. My head was down, my shoulders were hunched, and my hands were in my pockets—the perfect vic. I should have been more attentive, more aware. Still, if you had just been told that a person or persons unknown was paying fifty thousand dollars to see you dead, I bet it would throw you for a loop, too.

The kids outside the Vietnamese restaurant the night before now made sense to me, and so did the extra bullet hole in my Audi. Jeezus, they were shooting at me, trying to kill me, and I didn't even notice. How dumb was that? On the other hand, I just couldn't imagine what I had done—or to whom—to deserve such attention. I skimmed in my head the list of enemies I had given Harry. Nothing popped out at me. Probably the hit had something to do with Victoria Dunston's kidnapping, only that was just a guess, and it seemed even goofier to me than the hit itself. If I had just collected a million-dollar ransom, I'd take the money and run. Wouldn't you? “Damn,” I muttered. Then it occurred to me that if the kidnapper was behind the contract, he was using my money to pay for it.

“Damn!”

My head came up when I shouted the profanity. There were plenty of people on the street hopping from club to club and theater to theater. Most of them looked my way. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two young black men in satin Chicago Bulls warm-up jackets that didn't. Instead, they glanced down and away.

My Cherokee was parked at a meter on Eighth and Marquette. I knew I'd never make it. Instead, I turned north on Hennepin and joined the river of pedestrians, going with the flow, seeking safety under the blazing streetlamps. Only they didn't make me feel safe. Last week a gangbanger had attempted to shoot a rival with a .44 Magnum, missed, and killed an innocent bystander who had stepped out of a bar not ten feet from where I was now walking. There were plenty of pedestrians and bright lights then, too.

I thought of my own guns locked in my safe at home.
What are you doing walking around unarmed?
my inner voice wanted to know.
People are trying to kill you.
On the other hand, what would I have done with my weapons if I had thought to bring them along? Start a running gun battle on crowded Hennepin Avenue?
You should have listened to Schroeder; you should have hired someone to watch your back.

I kept walking. Traffic moved incessantly along the avenue. I tried to hail a cab. One stopped, but before I could reach it, it was seized by a young woman decked out in little more than a faux fur jacket and a belt.

One of the things they teach you about surveillance is to never reveal that you're aware you are being followed until you can use the information to your advantage. While trying for the cab, I looked behind me. A mistake. The two black men saw me seeing them. They began gathering speed. I gave up on a cab and increased my own pace. They started running. I started running, weaving in and out of the foot traffic, crossing Sixth against the light. I had no idea where I was running to until I reached the parking lot on Fifth Street. The state had built a light rail train system connecting downtown Minneapolis with the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America. The Hennepin Avenue Station loomed in front of me. I cut across the parking lot at a gallop, juking and jiving around parked cars to reach it. I was dragging by the time I jumped the tracks—it was the second time that day I had run for my life and the second time I realized how badly I had let myself go.
Never again,
I told myself as I crossed the platform and headed toward the train. I figured I was home free until the transit cop standing in the doorway blocked my path.

“Do you have a pass?” he asked. He was smiling when he said, “You can't buy a pass on the train. You have to buy them—” He pointed at a vending machine on the platform.

Oh, for chrissake,
my inner voice shouted. I was too out of breath to say it aloud.

I dashed across the platform. I found two one-dollar bills in my pocket and was fumbling with them when my pursuers arrived, moving confidently, looking no worse for chasing me.
Bet they work out,
I told myself as I fed the bills into the vending machine.

One of them slid a hand under his Bulls jacket. The other reached behind his back.

“Hey,” I shouted.

They halted.

I pointed at the light pole. There was a security camera mounted there, and it was pointed right at the platform.

“Smile,” I said.

They looked at the camera and then at me. They didn't smile. I pointed at the transit cop standing in the doorway to the train and looking out. They didn't smile some more.

By then the machine had spat out a pass. I carried it just as casually as I could across the platform to the train. I stepped aboard and showed my pass to the transit cop.

The two black men stared at the cop. Possibilities flickered over their faces. The cop nodded at them. “The train's leaving in a few seconds,” he said. “You guys better hurry.”

The two men gave him a maybe-next-time shrug and turned away.

“Have a nice night,” the cop called to them.

One of the black men gave him a wave.

Minnesota Nice. Gotta love it.

I had never actually ridden the Hiawatha Line before and was surprised by how smooth and efficient the trip was. The train took me past the Government Plaza, the Metrodome, the VA Medical Center, and on to the airport. Once there, I disembarked at the Lindbergh Terminal and made my way to the cabstand. A porter asked if I had any alcohol on my person. About three-quarters of the nine hundred airport cabdrivers are Somali, most of them Muslim, and some refuse fares that are traveling with duty-free booze—it's forbidden in Islam to carry alcohol. “I wish,” I said. He hailed a blue-and-white, and I had the driver take me back to Eighth and Marquette in downtown Minneapolis. There was no one lurking in the shadows that I could see, so I paid off the driver, fired up the Cherokee, and drove to Falcon Heights.

 

I pulled into my driveway, triggering a sensor that set off a ribbon of light that led all the way to my garage in back of the house. Only I didn't park in the garage. Instead, I stopped parallel to my front door. My plan was to pack a bag and take the next stage out of Dodge. My address wasn't listed in the phone book, yet I knew it wouldn't be too difficult to learn where I lived. For fifty thousand dollars people would be willing to make the extra effort. I hadn't decided where to hide—certainly not Nina's. I'd call her, I decided, but not stay with her. Lead assassins to her doorstep? Not a chance, I don't care how many guards Schroeder put on duty.

I was pondering likely hideouts when I left the Jeep Cherokee and crossed my lawn to the porch. The porch stretched the length of the front of my house and was divided into two sections. One half was open and empty except for the wood and canvas chair that hung from thin chains attached to the ceiling. The other half was enclosed by a fine mesh screen to keep the mosquitoes at bay and was furnished with lounge chairs, wicker tables, and a sofa. I sometimes entertained there and on a couple of occasions spent the night. Which reminded me, I should bring the furniture in before the weather turned cold.

I climbed the concrete steps and crossed the porch to the front door. Mail, mostly credit card solicitations, was crammed into a black box. I removed it from the box and tucked it under my arm while I tried to fit my key into the lock. The key met with resistance. I examined the key in the light from the driveway and streetlamps beyond, thinking I had selected the wrong one by mistake or was holding it upside down. Only there was nothing wrong with it. I tried again and failed.
What the hell?
I rubbed my thumb over the lock. There was something there, a tiny sliver of wood protruding from the slot. Someone had jammed a toothpick into the lock and broken it off, and I thought,
Thieves do that.
It worked as a kind of burglar alarm for anyone inside the house, warning them if the owners came home early. Or perhaps the lock had been sabotaged to force me to go to my back door, where there was less chance of being observed by neighbors. Either way…

I dropped the mail, turned, leapt over the low wooden railing, and began fleeing across my lawn. A voice behind me shouted, “Stop.”

I didn't listen.

“Stop.” This time the word was punctuated by the sound of two gunshots.

I turned my head when I hit Hoyt. I was being chased by a man who looked an awful lot like the felon, Chopper's friend, the one who said he wasn't interested in collecting the fifty thousand dollars that was on my head.
Liar, liar, pants on fire,
my inner voice said. I kept running.

This makes three,
I told myself. Three times I'd been forced to run for my life on the same day. It was getting tiresome. I thought about screaming for help, see if I could rouse a neighbor to action. Only I had caused a ruckus two years ago when I shot a guy off my front porch, and many of my neighbors had signed a petition asking me to move. I really didn't want to get them involved.
Not to worry,
I told myself. This time I had a plan. I wasn't running from, I was running to.

I raced along Hoyt, north up Coffman Street, across Folwell, and over someone's sprawling lawn. All the homes in this area belonged to the University Grove Association. Each was unique, designed by committee-approved architects to house bigwigs from the University of Minnesota—professors, administrators, regents—including at one time famed football coach Bernie Bierman. Behind the houses was a rocky and heavily wooded ravine that stretched all the way from the water culvert under Cleveland Avenue to the Lauderdale Nature Preserve. It was quite narrow; at one time it had been a streetcar line, and you could still see abandoned railroad ties and a concrete platform with steps leading to it. Yet it gave homeowners the illusion that they were living on the edge of a wilderness. It was there that I decided to make my stand.

The felon was gaining on me when I plunged over the edge of the ravine—I couldn't believe he was in better shape than I was. I tripped over something and tumbled headfirst over jagged stones, tree roots, and brush. I recognized them solely by the way they tore up my body; I couldn't see a thing. I came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the gully, stretched across a hard-packed walking path. I waited for a moment to catch my breath and shake my head to get the chimes to stop; I might even have moaned once or twice. At the rim of the ravine I heard the felon. I couldn't see him, yet I knew he was being more cautious than I had been, easing himself into the ravine, moving slowly. Of course, he could afford to be cautious. He had the gun.

I went to my knees, still trying to control my breathing. It took about thirty seconds to gain my night eyes; shapes and shadows began to fill in. For the first time I noticed that the moon was full. The crazies always came out during a full moon. Crazies and werewolves. I rubbed my hands together. My fingernails weren't growing and hair wasn't sprouting from my knuckles, so I concluded I must be one of the former.

Beyond the ravine were the University of Minnesota intramural soccer fields, and next to that was a complex of well-lit condos. To make a run for either would be like carrying a neon sign on my back that said
FIRE AT WILL
. I gained my feet and scampered forward along the worn footpath, dodging rocks and low-hanging tree branches. I knew I couldn't remain on the path for long; footsteps on loose rocks told me the felon was close. I searched for a place to hide. There were several trees and high bushes off to my right that cast a shadow darker than the night that surrounded me. I crawled into it.

The felon had moved to the bottom of the ravine. Moonlight flickered off his clothing, his gun, his hands, his pale face, and I was able to follow his progress. He paused when he reached the narrow footpath and searched the ground all around him. He went a few steps in one direction, a few in another, while listening hard. Long moments passed. He picked up a large stone and threw it far to the left of me. It made a crashing sound as it hit the wall of the gully and rolled against a tree. The felon pointed his gun with both hands toward the noise, yet only silence followed. He turned slowly, moving the gun in an arc in front of him. He seemed to hesitate when he spied the trees and high bushes. He peered deep into the shadow where I was hidden.

I had hunted with my father when I was a kid—pheasant on farmland near the Iowa border, grouse and deer up north. He would talk about the animals' natural camouflage. The trick, he said, was to make them move. You could look right at an animal without seeing it, unless it moved. The felon was looking at me now. I didn't move, and he didn't see me.

The felon hesitated, then began creeping in the opposite direction. Each step took him farther away from me. Five yards, ten, fifteen, twenty. He halted, brought his gun up, and aimed at something in the darkness. “McKenzie,” he hissed. I crouched low against my tree, reaching out to maintain my balance. My fingers closed around a thick tree branch. I picked it up and determined that it was about two feet long. At the same time, the felon straightened up, letting his gun rest against his thigh. He turned and began following the path toward me.

He was moving casually now. I didn't know if he was continuing the chase or searching for a way out of the ravine. He stopped, stared at something, and continued walking. He stopped again when he reached my hiding place. Again he seemed to look straight at me. My fingers tightened on the tree branch. He kept walking, but only a few steps before he halted. He brought his gun up, aimed, and then lowered his gun.

“McKenzie,” he shouted.

A desperate move, I thought. Did he really expect me to answer?

“McKenzie?”

Well, why not?

I stepped out of the shadow and moved to within striking distance.

“Here,” I said and swung the tree branch. All my anger and frustration, all my fear was in the blow as I hit him at the point where his shoulder and neck merged.

I could feel his body give under the force of the blow.

I could hear the sickening snap as his collarbone splintered.

That'll teach him,
my inner voice said.

He staggered forward and dropped to his knees. He brought both hands up to the injured area. He didn't start shrieking until his fingers felt the bloody tip of the bone protruding through the skin.

He had dropped his gun; I couldn't see where it had fallen, and that worried me. I grabbed a fistful of the felon's hair and yanked backward, pulling him well beyond reach of where the gun might be. He fell against his shattered shoulder and screamed even louder.

I was running short of time; surely the neighbors bordering the ravine would hear him and start debating over whether or not they wanted to get involved. The branch was still in my hand, and I jabbed the felon with it. “So you weren't looking to collect, huh?” I said.

Something resembling words choked out of his mouth. I could recognize only one—“Please.”

I jabbed him again, and his groaning and moaning increased in volume. “What's your name?” He answered, but I couldn't understand what he said. I crouched next to him and tried again. “What's your name?”

He managed to spit out, “Pat Beulke.”

“Who's shopping the hit on me?”

He said, “I, I, I—can't,” or something that sounded like that.

I pressed down on his shoulder with the flat of my hand, and he howled like a dying animal.

“Tell me.”

“Dog, Dog, Dog…”

“What?” I leaned closer so I could hear.

“Dogman-G.”

“Who's Dogman-G?”

“Used to be… gang… North Side… Minneapolis.”

“Don't ever let me see you again,” I said. “If I were you, I'd hide from Chopper, too.”

 

I tossed the branch away and followed the ravine to Cleveland Avenue. I climbed the hill to the sidewalk and followed it past the tennis courts, just a harmless homeowner taking a midnight stroll through the peaceful streets of Falcon Heights and St. Anthony Park, in case anyone stopped to ask. I probably should have felt guilty about what I had done to the felon, about leaving him unattended in the gully. I didn't. I didn't even feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I guess I'm becoming callous as I get older. People trying to kill you will do that.

I took the long way returning to my house, this time heading for the back door. The door was locked, and I took that to mean that the felon hadn't been inside. Still, I switched on all my lights and went from room to room searching for damage. It didn't take me long to find Tommy Thomforde. He was lying on his back in the middle of my empty living room. There was a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. I sat on the hardwood floor next to him. Going strictly by touch, it seemed to me that he had been dead for a long time.

“The neighbors aren't going to like this at all,” I said.

 

“Don't you believe in furniture?” Harry asked. I get that question a lot. My father and I moved into the house right after I came into my money, yet I had managed to furnish only a few of the rooms in all that time. No sense rushing into anything, I figured.

“I bought a dining room set last month,” I said.

Harry took a look at it: eight chairs, a table, and a matching buffet hand-carved from rich, dark wood in the 1930s. There was nothing else in the room, not even a painting on the wall. “Pathetic,” he said.

He had me there.

“Just so you know, we found the big white moving van on the East Side,” Harry said. “We found the small red Vibe station wagon inside the big white moving van on the East Side.”

“Did you happen to find my million dollars inside the trunk of the small red Vibe station wagon inside the big white moving van on the East Side?”

“We didn't, but you know, McKenzie, money can't buy happiness.”

“It sure hasn't so far.”

The forensic pathologist announced that they were ready to move the body. “There is no question that he was killed somewhere else and dumped here,” he said, confirming what the rest of us had concluded an hour before he arrived.

“So I've got that going for me,” I said.

“Quiet, McKenzie,” Harry said. To the pathologist he said, “Any idea about time of death?”

“Between twelve and twenty-four hours.”

“Geez, Doc, I could have told you that.”

“Do you have a medical degree, Agent Wilson?”

“No.”

“I see. So you're just guessing.”

“When will you have something more definite?”

“Call me later today. Much later.”

When the pathologist moved away, I said, “I'll be curious to learn if Tommy was alive when I was being shot at this afternoon,” I said.

“Did you think it was him at Joley's?” Harry said.

“I will if you will.”

“We asked Scottie Thomforde's co-worker and the bartender at Lehane's to identify the T-Man from a photo array that included Tommy's picture. Neither of them could do it.”