Green Monster (2 page)

Chapter Two

Minneapolis, Minnesota—

Marcus Hargrove counted out “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!” and Sam Skarda hit the first ringing C chord of the Temptations' “Ain't Too Proud to Beg” on his Fender Stratocaster. A half-dozen couples pushed their chairs back, got up from their tables around the dimly-lit Boom Boom Room bar and jostled for position on the dance floor as Hargrove belted out the first line of the Motown classic.

Sam loved the grainy texture to Hargrove's voice, and he loved the way Hargrove worked himself and the crowd into sweating ecstasy as he prowled back and forth in front of the band like a caged panther. A couple of nights a month, Hargrove shed his Minneapolis Police Department identity by putting on his Otis Redding suit and vest and singing with Night Beat, the oldies band Skarda had formed when he, too, had been a member of the MPD.

It was a warm Friday night in mid-September, and owner Ted Tollefson, a hulking figure with a shaggy walrus moustache, had propped open the front door to the Boom Boom Room to allow some fresh air to circulate. If somebody complained to the cops about the noise spilling out onto Hennepin Avenue—well, everybody in the band was, or had been, a cop. In addition to Sam and Marcus, drummer Stu Winstead patrolled a beat in Nordeast; bassist Bear Olson was a vice cop; and keyboard player/singer Jean Dubrovna was an investigator with the juvenile unit.

Sam had been their colleague until resigning as a homicide detective in April. Thanks to a generous payment he'd received for some emergency detective work at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, he'd applied for a private investigator's license and opened a practice in White Bear Lake, an old-money beach town just north of St. Paul. There was no reason to ask clients to find a place to park in Minneapolis just so they could visit him in an overpriced downtown office building. Besides, most of the detective work people seemed willing to pay for was happening out in the suburbs.

He had some money now, but he still played the same '59 Strat through the same Deluxe Reverb amp, and he still lived in the same bungalow in South Minneapolis. Sometimes old things were better things. But after furnishing his office, he allowed himself two indulgences: He bought a new Mustang convertible, and he joined the White Bear Yacht Club, a 1927 Donald Ross golf course on the edge of the lake. It was the club where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald had lived in 1922, until being evicted for throwing too many drunken parties. His office was a five-minute commute to the golf course.

He performed two Friday nights a month with Night Beat at the Boom Boom Room, played golf three times a week at WBYC, and spent the rest of his time working on the stray cases that came his way—mostly divorce and missing-persons stuff. Nothing to get excited about, but enough to keep from using up the nest egg. He was not working all that hard at generating new business; he placed an ad in the Yellow Pages, let his former cop buddies know he was available for hire, then waited to see who rang the phone or walked in the door. At the rate it was going, he figured he could stay in business at least another year before he'd have to start hustling up clients or give up the White Bear membership. That would be incentive enough to work harder.

His knee—surgically repaired after a shooting while he was a cop—still hurt like hell on rainy days, but it was as good as it was ever going to get. He knew he should be working out more, but as long as he walked 18 holes three times a week, he was able to keep his weight around 180 and his legs in reasonably good condition. There wasn't a lot of running involved when you were staking out a cheating husband.

Now that he was no longer subject to the police department's rules, his sandy blond hair had grown out, as his cop pals continually reminded him. It wasn't rock-band long yet, but it was getting curly and harder to keep under his golf hat. He meant to go to the barber more often, but now that he didn't have to, it kept slipping farther down the priority list. He still kept himself clean-shaven, however. His golf tan accented his pale blue eyes and helped divert attention from the bridge of his nose, which was crooked from an old break.

He'd flown to Tucson in August to visit Caroline, the woman he'd met at the Masters. She'd gone back to using her maiden name after divorcing her golf-pro husband—a hopeful sign—but the rest of the picture was still cloudy. She had sold the ostentatious house at the private golf club that she used to share with her ex, and had stopped smoking—with a few backyard lapses—when she moved into her new house. She had a new job, too, working for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on border issues. Caroline was enjoying her life for the first time since long before her marriage broke up. She needed more time, she'd told Sam, to figure out what she wanted from life—and how a long-distance romance with an ex-cop fit into it. She said there was a chance—more than a chance, really—that he would be part of that life, but she wasn't ready to say when.

Sam wanted to be in Caroline's life. He was in his mid-thirties, and finding it lonely to be away from the police force. He had been used to not having anyone to greet him when he came home at night, but at least there'd been the crude jokes and camaraderie with his fellow cops during the day. Now he was thinking about getting a dog. When he was a kid, he'd had a German shepherd named Bart—a former police dog, brought home by his dad after it was injured in a chase. If he could find a dog as smart and loyal as Bart had been…but detective hours were unpredictable. Did he want to have to worry about running home in the middle of a stakeout to let the dog out? Or finding someone to take the dog when Sam had to leave town?

The band was his primary release, but not from job stress, like Hargrove and the others. Sam was battling boredom, and he didn't know what to do about it. He didn't want to be a cop again; he liked the freedom of being a private investigator. He could be relentless when a job had his full attention, and, working on his own, he didn't have to worry about being told to speed up or slow down on a case.

It was the cases themselves that were sucking the life out of him. When he was being honest with himself, he could admit that he didn't care whether Beth Cheslak was screwing Brian Johnson at their real estate agency, even if Beth's husband Bob was paying him $100 an hour to find out. It was tawdry work. But, it wasn't the prying and skulking that bothered him; it was the reason he was doing it. As a cop, he was Preserving civic order and Protecting the citizenry. He was helping a grieving wife, mother, or father find a small measure of relief by hunting down and locking up the murdering thug who'd ruined their lives. But catching Beth Cheslak coming out of the motel with Brian Johnson? That was a pay day, nothing more.

Marcus Hargrove brought “Ain't Too Proud to Beg” to its sudden ending, drawing cries for more from the dancers. He gave Sam and the band the signal for “Land of 1,000 Dances,” and they all hit and held a B-minor.

“One, two THREE!” Marcus sang into the mic, and then Sam and the band let a solid D chord hang in the air while Marcus sang “ONE, two, three…” Then Bear played the descending bass riff, Stu began hammering the snare and hi-hat and the band kicked into the set-closer—you couldn't follow Wilson Pickett's “Land of 1,000 Dances” with anything except “Shout,” and they always saved that one for the end of the night. When Marcus had finished screaming the final “ah, HELP me!”s, they put their instruments down, left the stage to the yells and applause of the exhausted dancers, and went to the bar for their beers—on the house.

“Phone call for you, Sam,” Ted Tollefson said as he poured him a glass of Bass Ale from the tap.

“When did it come?” Sam said. He wiped his sweating forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.

“During ‘Twist and Shout,' I think.”

“Did they leave a number?”

“No. It was a woman. She's still on the line. Said she'd wait.”

Sam took a deep gulp of his beer and then reached across the bar for the phone receiver that Ted held out to him.

“Hello?”

“Sam Skarda?”

“That's me. You'll have to speak up. It's real loud in here.”

“Are you…Boston…tomorrow?”

“What's that?” Sam said. “I didn't catch that. Louder, please.”

“…fly…tomorrow!”

“No, sorry, still not hearing you real well. Call me on my cell phone, and I'll take it outside.”

Sam gave her his cell number. He was pretty sure she said she'd call him back, so he let Ted hang up the phone and took his beer across the room and out the front door. Sam sat down at one of the wrought-iron tables on the sidewalk in front of the bar, sipped his beer, watched the condensation drops trickle down the glass, and waited for his phone to ring. Something about going to Boston. He hadn't been there in ten years. Who did he even know there anymore?

The cell phone rang, and he said, “Sam Skarda.”

“Hello, Mr. Skarda.” It was a younger woman's voice. “My name is Heather Canby. I work for The Kenwood Companies in Boston. We have a job for you, if you're interested. Can you be here by tomorrow?”

“Depends on the job, I guess. Who did you say you work for?”

“Louis Kenwood.”

Now the name registered. Lucky Louie Kenwood, owner of the Boston Red Sox. Why in hell would he want to hire Sam?

“The Red Sox owner?” Sam asked, to make sure.

“Yes, that's right.”

“What you need is a young power hitter, not a detective.”

“This is serious, Mr. Skarda.”

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded all of about twenty-five. It sounded pretty, too. “Please, call me Sam. Now, what's the problem?”

“I can't talk about it on the phone,” she said. “It's…extremely delicate.”

“How'd you find me?”

“I talked to a Lt. Stensrud, at the police department.”

“Doug, my former boss. How'd you get my name in the first place?”

“You were recommended by a very good friend of Mr. Kenwood.”

That would almost have to be David Porter or Robert Brisbane, who had hired Sam at Augusta National. None of his contacts in Minnesota were pals with Lucky Louie.

“I guess I could catch a plane tomorrow,” Sam said. He took another long sip of his beer.

“We'll cover all your expenses,” Heather Canby said. “We'll put you up at the Taj Boston.”

“Where's that?'

“Just a few blocks from our downtown offices. It's the former Ritz-Carlton.”

“I know the place.”

“We have a day game tomorrow. If you could be at our office by eight tomorrow night, we'll explain everything to you.”

“You're in a hurry, aren't you?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Why not get a local guy?”

“Mr. Kenwood doesn't trust anyone here for a job like this. That's why he consulted with…friends.”

“David Porter?”

“That's correct,” she said after a moment's hesitation. “He said we could trust you with our lives.”

“Is it that serious?”

“No. It's more serious than that. Please call us the minute you arrive. We'll have Mr. Kenwood's chauffeur meet you at Logan and drive you into the city.”

She left the Kenwood phone number.

“Don't you want to know my rates?” Sam asked.

“That's not important.”

“It is to me.”

“Whatever you charge, Mr. Kenwood will pay you substantially more.”

“That works,” Sam said.

“One other thing,” she said. “You can't tell anyone you're meeting Mr. Kenwood. Don't even tell anyone you're going to Boston. I mean it. This has to be kept absolutely quiet.”

“I'll have to tell my faithful Filipino houseboy where I'll be the next few days,” Sam said. The beer was starting to have an effect.

“What?”

“Never mind.” She was too young to get the Green Hornet reference, or too serious to have ever read a comic book. “I won't tell anyone anything. That's one thing we private eyes are good at.”

“See you tomorrow, Mr. Skarda.”

Sam was supposed to meet with Bob Cheslak Monday morning to tell him all about Beth and Brian. He wouldn't mind blowing that off.

Sam went back inside the bar and saw the rest of the band heading for the stage. Time for another set. They blasted through a string of dance-party oldies: “Good Lovin',” “Walking on Sunshine,” “I'm So Excited,” “Authority Song,” “What I Like About You,” “Satisfaction,” and “Mony Mony.”

When the set was over, Sam's shirt was clinging to him as sweat trickled down the small of his back. He grabbed another beer and headed back out to the tables on the sidewalk in front of the bar. Marcus Hargrove got a beer of his own and joined him. They sat at a table with an Amstel Light umbrella and watched the cars go by, some headed north toward the lights of the theater district, the others headed south past the technical college toward Loring Park, maybe to Uptown, with its funky shops and restaurants.

“Good set, good set,” Marcus said, his head nodding in appreciation. “I still wish we could find a cop who played the sax.”

Marcus stretched his long legs out onto the sidewalk. He had a shaved head and a gold earring, which might have made him stand out in the Minneapolis Police Department ten years earlier, but not anymore. The other cops considered him a prima donna because of his fondness for the media, and his tendency to break into Prince songs and moves as he strolled through the office. But when it came to dealing with street gangs, he was the best cop the department had. Some cops didn't like to work with him because he got himself dangerously deep into the neighborhood gang culture, straddling a fine line between being a liaison and a target. Sam knew him mostly through the band, but he would have been happy to work with a cop who put as much into his work as Marcus did.