Highway 61 (21 page)

“Are you willing to deliver the money? Alone?”

“I don’t want to,” Truhler said, “but if that’s what it’ll take to protect Erica and Nina, then that’s what I’ll do.”

That didn’t sound right to me, either.

“I think I should be there,” I said.

“No. I mean, they said I have to come alone.”

“For fifty grand they might change their minds. When they call back, tell them I want to be there. Tell them your concussion makes it impossible for you to do it alone.”

“My concussion?”

“Give them my number. Tell them if they don’t like it, they can call me.”

“McKenzie.”

“Remind them that I’m the guy with the cash.”

When Truhler started to protest I told him I’d talk to him soon, deactivated the cell phone, and dropped it in my pocket. I took my time walking to my car, once again making sure that the coast was clear.

Do you have any idea of what you’re doing?
my inner voice asked.

No.

Why should today be different from all the others?

Exactly.

*   *   *

Anita Malaska lived in Middlebrook Hall on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota—that’s the dormitory inhabited mostly by students enrolled in the school’s honors programs. Suffice to say I didn’t room there when I was at the U.

She agreed to meet me in Middlebrook’s lobby, surrounded by security cameras and student staff. She was a smart and cautious girl. I liked her even before we met. After we met, I liked her even more. Anita was wearing school colors—maroon and gold—that miraculously matched her eyes. She had red-brown hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial, a complexion from a soap commercial, and a smile that toothpaste marketers lusted after. She regarded me carefully as I sat across from her.

“You said you were looking for Vicki Walsh,” Anita said.

“I am,” I said. “I hope you can help me.”

“I don’t know how. Like I told you over the phone, I haven’t spoken to Vicki for months. I thought she was at Cornell.”

“She never made it.”

“What does that mean, she never made it?”

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

“I have.”

“You have? When?”

“Toward the end of August, the last weekend of August. My friends and I were hanging around the Minneapolis Riverfront. You know where St. Anthony Main is? They have restaurants and parks?”

“Sure.”

“It was like a last hurrah for all of us before we scattered to schools hither and yon. We bumped into Vicki on the river walk. I asked her what she was up to, because she hadn’t been responding to any of her Facebook postings, and she said she had been busy getting ready for school, which is what I was doing, too. Anyway, we ended up, the bunch of us ended up going over to Tuggs for cheeseburgers and to listen to the band that was playing in the courtyard. We pretty much stayed until they kicked us out. Anyway, that’s when I saw her last. August.”

“Was she alone?”

“No, she was with a friend. A girl. What was her name? Kate something.”

“Caitlin?”

“Caitlin with a
C.
” Anita laughed at the memory of it. “That’s how she introduced herself.”

*   *   *

To get from Middlebrook to the Twenty-first Avenue ramp where I’d parked my car, I had to walk between Rarig Center, where the university held most of its student theater productions, and Regis Center for Art, where the student art exhibitions were presented. I enjoyed walking across the campus, any part of it, the West Bank on the west side of the Mississippi, the East Bank on the east side, or the St. Paul campus near the State Fairgrounds. The campus always reminded me of my misspent youth and the wonderful women I misspent it with—a couple of JO majors, a theater major, a law student, a DJ working for the school radio station, Radio K. Ahh, to be young again.

My iPhone shook me out of my reverie. It played eight bars of “Summertime” before I answered it. No name was displayed, just a phone number. It didn’t belong to any of the precious few.

I spoke cautiously. “Yes?”

“Mr. McKenzie?” It was a man’s voice and old.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Walter Muehlenhaus.”

I stopped in the middle of Twenty-first Avenue. For the first time since all this began, I was frightened. Muehlenhaus had that effect on people.

“Mr. Muehlenhaus,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to call him Walter. Hell, up until that moment, I didn’t even know his first name was Walter.

“Mr. McKenzie, an acquaintance has arranged an informal gathering at his home this evening. I would deem it a courtesy if you were to attend.”

I paused before giving Mr. Muehlenhaus the answer I knew he was expecting.

“Yes,” I said.

“Excellent.”

“When and where?”

“Arrangements will be made. Oh, and Mr. McKenzie? I would be delighted if you brought the lovely Ms. Truhler with you.”

*   *   *

“What else did he say?” Nina asked.

“That was it,” I said. “He didn’t say good-bye. He didn’t tell me how he got hold of my private number. He didn’t tell me what he wanted. He just broke the connection.”

“What a jerk.”

“Yeah, well, he can get away with it.”

“Why? Because he has more money than God?”

“That’s one reason. He also does favors for everyone, so everyone owes him.”

“The same as you.”

“No, not the same as me. I never ask for anything in return. It’s a lot more than that, though. He’s not just a mover and a shaker; he’s the guy who tells other people what to move and what to shake. If you think of Minnesota as an immense village, he’s the village wise man. He brings various parties together, settles disputes, weds interests, dispenses advice that you damn well better take, and plots, plots, plots, all the time plots. Some people whisper that he’s the reason we’re building a commuter train from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis and why the Minnesota Twins have a new stadium and the Vikings don’t—at least not yet.”

“What does he want from you?”

“Probably the same thing he wanted the last two times our paths have crossed.”

“He wants you to do
him
a favor.”

“Yeah. I can’t imagine what it would be, though, a favor he can’t do for himself.”

“Guess we won’t know until we ask.”

“We? I take it you’re coming to the party?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

THIRTEEN

Nick Moncur began searching for the fountain of youth decades ago. Now he insisted he had found it.

“There’s no single supplement,” he said. “There’s no individual herb, there’s no one thing that’s going to make us live longer. Nevertheless, there are many little things that when combined will add a decade or more to our lives.”

Moncur claimed he found these things while conducting exhaustive research in Sardinia, a large island off the coast of Italy, Okinawa, the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, a small town located between Los Angles and Palm Springs that was largely inhabited by Seventh-day Adventists. These areas were dubbed Blue Zones by scientists and demographers—regions where people live to be a hundred or more at astonishing rates. Moncur said he identified what these areas held in common and distilled their secrets into a recipe consisting of one part diet, one part exercise regimen, and one part Confucian-inspired philosophy. Someone suggested Moncur was looking to take a bite out of a thirty-billion-dollar industry that promises to make people look or feel young. He insisted, however, that profit wasn’t his motive for bringing his recipe to the masses.

“I’ve made a discovery,” Moncur said. “I want to give that discovery to the people. It’s like climbing a hill and seeing a beautiful sunset. It’s better if you have someone to share it with.”

All he needed was partners.

To get them he filled his Lake of the Isles home with well-heeled party guests. Black-clad waiters weaved among them, offering up twirls of scallops and skinny pasta spun onto silver forks and booze, plenty of booze. The red-walled foyer of the large house was already filled when Nina and I arrived. I recognized some of the guests—the Mound, Minnesota, actor who played Hercules on TV; an actress who went from the Chanhassen Dinner Theater to Broadway; the front man for a well-regarded country-western band, who was attired in Brooklyn cowboy chic.

’Course, the guests didn’t know they were going to be solicited until they arrived. Apparently they thought they were being invited to enjoy a cocktail or two before attending a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser for hunger relief that Moncur had also organized. They didn’t know about his plans to increase life expectancy until he circled the room like a practiced politician. I got the distinct impression that if there had been any babies present he would have kissed them.

Nina and I pressed forward. I was surprised by the amount of hors d’oeuvres she devoured and the champagne she drank. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed, but she was wearing a strapless regal-blue gown that made her eyes pop like searchlights, and I couldn’t keep my own eyes off of her. She made my heart flutter, and not for the first time.

“Isn’t that the governor?” she asked.

“Huh?”

She punched me in the arm.

“Pay attention,” she said.

I am, Nina. I am paying attention.

“There,” she said.

I followed her gaze to a section of the house where the gossip columnist for the
Minneapolis Star Tribune
newspaper was stalking a man dressed in a crisp white shirt, dark tie, and dark, well-tailored suit with a small video camera. John Allen Barrett kept dodging, first to his right, then to his left, but the columnist was relentless.

“Are you going to run for president?” she asked.

“I haven’t given it much thought,” he said. “I already have a job.”

“Are you going to run for president?”

“Right now I am only concerned with passing a balanced budget here in the state of Minnesota.”

“Are you going to run for president?”

“After my term expires, Lindsey and I might think about it,” he said. “We’ll reach out to all of our friends around the country. We’ll decide if there’s a requirement as citizens that we run.”

“Are you going to run for president?”

Everyone seemed amused except Barrett. Finally someone distracted the columnist, and Barrett slipped away. That’s when I saw Lindsey Barrett. I knew her from the neighborhood long before she married the governor; I used to date her sister. We were friends right up until the time I did a favor for her that helped the governor out, even though he never knew anything about it. That she stopped being my pal then wasn’t particularly surprising. It’s like F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in
This Side of Paradise
—she disliked me for having done so much for her. I saw the dislike in her eye when she spied me from across the room. It had been nearly two years since we last spoke, though, and her resentment—if you could call it that—must have dissipated, because it changed then, the look in her eye. It became friendly, almost romantic.

Lindsey came toward me. I slipped between the guests to meet her in the middle of the room.

“McKenzie,” she said.

“Zee,” I said.

Her arms came around me and mine went around her and we hugged, lightly at first, and then with more vigor.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

“It’s good to be seen.”

We chatted for a few moments like the old friends we were, mostly about what brought us to the party. We both agreed that Nick Moncur was a hopeless narcissist who was desperate to land a spot on Oprah’s couch. We didn’t speak about the favor, and I knew we never would.

I introduced Lindsey to Nina. Lindsey remembered meeting her briefly at a charity function we all attended.

“What a beautiful gown,” Lindsey said.

That’s when Barrett showed up, having ditched the gossip columnist, at least for the time being.

“Is that my girl you’re hugging?” he asked.

I realized then that my arm was still around Lindsey’s shoulder and hers was around my waist. Instead of letting go, Lindsey tightened her grip.

“You remember McKenzie,” she said.

“I do,” the governor said, “and”—he offered his hand to Nina—“I remember Ms. Truhler. It’s good to see you again. How are you?”

Nina’s eyes sparked like a welder’s torch.

“I am very well, Governor,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”

I must say I enjoyed it. I liked that I was acquainted with the governor, that I was a friend to his wife. I liked that I rubbed shoulders with men like Mr. Muehlenhaus and Moncur. It made me feel important. On the other hand, I hadn’t been invited to the party because I could afford to donate the maximum to a politician’s campaign fund or because I had money to invest in snake oil. Barrett knew it, too.

“What brings you here, McKenzie?” he asked. “I didn’t think this was your kind of event.”

“It’s a very long story,” I said.

Barrett turned his head to look at the man who sidled up to me from behind. The man set a hand on my shoulder.

“Mr. Muehlenhaus will see you now,” he said.

“Hmm,” Barrett said. “Perhaps the story’s not so very long after all.”

*   *   *

Walter Muehlenhaus was sitting in a leather wingback chair in front of the fireplace, his ancient hands folded neatly on his lap. His face and hands were as pale as skim milk, and the flickering flames cast an eerie, almost alarming shadow across them. He reminded me of Mephistopheles in the legend of Doctor Faustus, but I decided that couldn’t be right. Mephistopheles was the demon who warned Faustus
not
to sell his soul to the devil.

Muehlenhaus spoke without turning his gaze from the fire.

“Good evening, Mr. McKenzie,” he said. “It is always a pleasure to see you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Instead of joining him by the fire, I stopped in the middle of the room. There were floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books on all four walls, a desk big enough to land small aircraft on, and assorted sofas, chairs, and tables, all of them made from dark, highly polished wood. Yet the room had a kind of unused vibe, as if no one ever spent much time there. I noticed a portable staircase that could be wheeled from one bookshelf to another so readers could reach the volumes at the top. There was a thin layer of dust on each step.