Highway 61 (18 page)

*   *   *

According to Denny Marcus’s
INFO
page, he was a freshman at Augsburg College in Minneapolis and worked part-time as a barista in a coffeehouse on East Franklin Avenue, not far from the campus. He even provided his work schedule. That’s where I found him, working behind the counter. I recognized him from his photograph. He was three inches taller than I was and thirty pounds lighter. If you ever needed someone to sweep your chimney, he was your man.

“What can I gitcha?” he asked.

I looked up at the menu written in chalk on the blackboard behind the counter.

“What would Vicki have, I wonder?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Vicki Walsh. She doesn’t drink coffee unless there’s chocolate in it, am I right? How ’bout a Café Mocha?”

He stared at me for a few beats before saying, “Would you like whipped cream with that?”

“Of course.” I cringed even as I said it. There was a wonderful man who helped raise me named Mr. Mosley who would roll over in his grave if he saw me drink coffee with additives of any kind.

Denny made the drink and set it on the counter under the
PICK UP
sign.

“How do you know Vicki?” he asked.

“The question is, how do you know Vicki?”

He took my money and rang up the purchase. I dropped all of the change into the tip jar.

“We’re friends,” Denny said.

“Close friends?”

“Who are you?”

“My name is McKenzie.”

“Why are you asking about Vicki?”

I lied. I said, “Her family asked me to help try to find her.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Vicki’s disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

“No one has seen her since the Fourth of July.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Do you know where she is?”

He thought about it before answering.

“Why would I?”

“You were close friends,” I said.

“I suppose.”

“More than close.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were romantically involved, weren’t you?”

Denny laughed out loud. “Don’t you think it’s possible for a man and a woman to be just friends without anything else between them?” he asked.

I thought about my own relationships.

“Not really,” I said.

“Well, we were just friends.”

“Friends with benefits?”

Denny laughed some more. “McKenzie,” he said. “Did you say your name was McKenzie?”

I nodded.

“McKenzie, I’m gay.”

Oops.

“Couldn’t you tell?” he said.

I thought about a guy I played hockey with for thirty Friday nights out of the year every year since I graduated college who was gay and how everyone in the locker room seemed to know it but me until he put purple laces in his skates and I said, “Tommy, that is so gay,” and he said, “What’s your point?”

“No, I couldn’t tell,” I said.

“Then I must be doing it wrong,” Denny said.

“When was the last time you saw Vicki?”

“Last summer.”

“When?”

“July something. Look, McKenzie, if Vicki’s disappeared”—he quoted the air—“it’s because she wanted to disappear. Have you met her mother?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then…”

“I just want to make sure she’s all right.”

Denny studied me carefully without speaking.

“Listen,” I said.

“No, you listen. Vicki is fine. I got a text message from her yesterday. I got an e-mail the day before.”

“Why doesn’t she use Facebook?”

“She said Facebook is too consuming. She hasn’t got time for it anymore.”

“These messages you received, what did they say?”

“Having a wonderful time, wish you were here—whatever they said is none of your business.”

“Where did she send them from? Where is she?”

“If it’s so damn important, Vicki is in Ithaca, New York. She’s attending Cornell University.”

*   *   *

Either Denny Marcus was lying to me, or Vicki Walsh was lying to him. In any case, Vicki was not at Cornell. That had already been established. Cornell was where she told people she was so they wouldn’t look for her.

I asked Denny to contact Vicki and have her call me. He said he would. I gave him the number of my prepaid cell; I watched him write it down. I didn’t know if he would make the call, though, and if he did, if she would respond. Or even if she could respond. If Denny was lying to me—and why would he be different from everyone else—then it was entirely possible that Vicki really was dead but none of her friends noticed because they knew she was planning to leave.

I started working the index of BFFs that Vicki had posted on her Facebook page. Nearly all of them listed contact information. I sent e-mails to those who gave addresses. I told them I had been asked by the family to find Vicki—when I find a good lie I stick with it—and asked that they reply with whatever information they had. I called those who listed cell phone numbers, yet didn’t get through to anyone, which surprised me. Isn’t instant communication the whole point of cell phones? I left voice mails using the same lie, only shorter. Some cell phone users had taped messages that said they did not accept calls, that they preferred texts instead, which also surprised me—I just don’t get out enough. So I texted them with an even shorter lie.

Staring at the tiny screen on the iPhone was starting to give me a headache. It became worse after I called Truhler. He didn’t say hello when he answered. Instead, he said, “Rickie’s here. Isn’t that nice?”

“Just swell,” I said. “Have you heard from our friends?”

“No, but…”

“But what?”

“You should know that I’ve been examined by a real doctor, not that nitwit who checked me in last night. The new doctor upgraded me to a Grade Two concussion, or maybe he downgraded me, I don’t know which.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means suddenly I’m having difficulty with my balance, I’m sensitive to light, I have blurred vision, they think I might have tinnitus, you know, ringing in my ears. They think I might have postconcussion syndrome. I might have headaches, fatigue, anxiety, irritability for weeks.”

“What does that mean?” I asked yet again.

“It means I can’t help you deal with the Joes,” Truhler said. “I just can’t. I’m not physically able. You’ll have to do it alone.”

“How convenient for you.”

“You are going to pay them the money, right? You haven’t changed your mind about that, right?”

“I’ll do what I have to,” I said. “Let me know when you hear from them. I’ll give you my number.” I recited the number for the prepaid cell phone, and Truhler wrote it down. At the same time my inner voice asked,
Why are you helping this guy? Why, why, why?

“Do you want to talk to Rickie?” Truhler asked.

“Tell her I’ll call later.”

*   *   *

Thaddeus Coleman possessed more entrepreneurial spirit than anyone I had ever arrested. He never let a business setback get him down. When his face became so well known that store security guards would greet him by name, he gave up his shoplifting ring for girls, running a small but lucrative stable on University and Western. When gentrification and the subsequent increased police presence forced him out of the neighborhood, he switched to dealing drugs around Fuller-Farrington. When a trio of Red Dragons objected to the competition and put a couple of slugs into his spine, he moved to Minneapolis, where he started a surprisingly lucrative ticket-scalping operation. That’s what he was doing when I entered his small office in a converted warehouse overlooking Target Field, where the Minnesota Twins now played baseball.

“Hey, Chopper.”

“McKenzie, you sonuvabitch.”

Coleman maneuvered his wheelchair from behind the desk and rolled out to greet me. He had earned the nickname Chopper because of the wheelchair, which he rode with the reckless abandon of a dirt-track biker. We engaged in an elaborate handshake dance that ended with me messing up.

“McKenzie, you so white,” he said, which is what he always said to me. I was the one who scooped him off the pavement and got him the medical attention that saved his life. He’s been a generous friend ever since, although he never did tell me what he knew about the three Red Dragons that we found executed near the St. Paul Vo-Tech a few days after he was discharged from the hospital.

“How’s business?” I asked.

I found a chair in front of the desk while Chopper rolled back behind it. There was a PC on the blotter and a dozen more set up on tables against two walls. Chopper would have associates sitting at every terminal when tickets went on sale online for concerts and ball games all around the nation; sometimes he’d pay people to stand in line outside of ticket booths to buy rare small-venue events. He then sold the tickets at highly inflated prices through eBay and other outlets or directly to customers who were “in,” like me.

“It’s good,” Chopper said. “It’s all good. It’s just—it’s not as much fun as it used t’ be, you know? ’Member when I used t’ cruise up and down Target Center or the Ex in St. Paul, sellin’ direct to customers—you want four, I got four—dodgin’ the cops, maybe slippin’ ’em a couple of Wild tickets to keep ’em from bustin’ me? ’Member that? Now I sit here all day, payin’ rent, keepin’ books—I pay taxes, man. What is that? Not even called scalpin’ no more. I’m a fuckin’ broker.”

“It’s the state legislature’s fault,” I said. “It made an honest man of you.”

“They shoulda never made scalpin’ legal. Took all the fun out of it. You know the governor. How come you didn’ help me out?”

“I know the governor’s wife. It’s not the same thing.”

“Ahh, man. So wha’ you doin’ here, McKenzie? You sure ain’t lookin’ for tickets t’ Smucker’s Stars on Ice.”

“I worry that you don’t get out enough, Chopper. I thought I’d buy you dinner. Chinese. I know how much you like the gai ding they serve at Shuang Cheng in Dinkytown.”

“If you buyin’ it’s cuz you want somethin’.”

“What a suspicious mind you have.”

“I was watchin’ the Discovery Channel—don’ look at me that way. I was watchin’ the Discovery Channel, and the guy says the definition of crazy is doin’ the same thing over and over again but expectin’ a different outcome.”

“So?”

“So, if’n you invitin’ me to dinner it’s cuz you want somethin’. What?”

“Being that you’re such an honest and upright tax-paying citizen, I realize that you’re not wired the way you used to be.”

Chopper gave me a grin and a head nod. We both knew that ticket scalping might be his daytime job, but Chopper had plenty of enterprises to occupy his evenings, including smuggling brand-name cigarettes from Kentucky and selling them to independent convenience stores, making a hefty profit by dodging the state’s cigarette tax. He was better connected than an Apple computer.

“So you’re wantin’ intel,” Chopper said.

“Yeah.”

“You know, the cops, they pay their CIs.”

“I offered you dinner.”

“A ten-buck plate of spicy chicken almond ding.”

“You want a combo platter? I’ll spring for a combo platter.”

“You so cheap, McKenzie. You got all that money, too. Jus’ tell me what you wanna know.”

“I need something on a couple of lowlifes named Big Joe and Little Joe Stippel.”

“You fuckin’ kiddin’ me? The Joes? You messin’ wit’ the Joes?”

“You know them?”

“I know enough to stay away from ’em. Fuck, McKenzie.”

“Where can I find them?”

“I don’ know. I don’ wanna know.”

“Can you find out?” I could have asked John Brehmer, but I didn’t want to go on record.

“I’d have t’ be as crazy as you,” Chopper said.

“Something else. Do you know a couple of firestarters named Backdraft and Bug?”

Chopper stared at me for a moment, his mouth open, before he started to laugh out loud.

“Gettin’ kinda ambitious in your ol’ age, ain’tcha? These are fuckin’ bad people, McKenzie.”

“I heard that the firestarters have a feud with the Joes. I’d like you to put the word out that I might be able to help them.”

“Wha’?”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“See if I got this right. You goin’ up again’ the Joes and you’re wantin’ allies.”

“Something like that.”

“This is North Side shit, McKenzie. You don’ want none of that. The cops these days, I don’ know if it’s cuz of budget cuts or what, but most cops they ride solo, you know? Watch ’em on the streets, it’s one cop t’ every car. Except on the North Side. They ride in pairs up there. What’s that tell ya?”

“Can you help me or not?”

“You know I can, but McKenzie, I’d hate like hell t’ see the expiration date on your milk carton run out.”

“I appreciate that, Chopper.”

He stared at me for a moment. I stared back.

“You want somethin’ else, doncha?”

“If I wanted a young girl, who would I go see?” I said.

“Now you’re just messin’ with me.”

“I would never do that.”

“Wha’ happened to that nice lady runs the jazz joint?”

“I’m not asking for myself.”

“Tha’s what they all say.”

“Chopper…”

“Yeah, I’m jus’ foolin’. Wha’ you wanna know?”

“There’s an upper-class operation calls itself My Very First Time, run by a woman called Roberta.”

“Don’ know nothin’ ’bout that.”

“Apparently they use the Internet.”

“That ain’t surprisin’. Whorehouses, the brothel, tha’s long gone, man. Wha’ you call a quaint anachronism. You still got hookers workin’ outta bars, outta gyms, massage parlors that ain’t been closed down, and out on the street corner, you’re always gonna have that. More and more, though, they’re usin’ the Internet, includin’ amateurs just lookin’ for a thrill.” Chopper stared menacingly at his PC. “Fuckin’ computer takin’ the fun outta everything.”

“Anything you can get me, I’d appreciate it,” I said. “If you want more than a free dinner, let me know.”

Chopper smiled at me.

“Nah, no cash between us,” he said. “I know that in your world favors are coin of the realm. Let’s just say you gonna owe me one.”

Chopper smiled some more because he knew what I knew—owing him a favor was serious business.