The Devil May Care (24 page)

“Don't do that.”

“The Audi isn't in the shop because of car trouble. It's in the shop because he shot it full of holes.”

“I knew it. I just knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“The moment I said we should live together I knew you would try to find a way to get out of it. Shelby is right. You do have commitment issues.”

“I don't have … Nina. That's not it at all.”

“What is it, then?”

“I'm worried about you. I can't ask you to move in with me. I can't put you at risk. I just can't.”

“Bullshit.”

The word stung like a slap. Nina almost never cursed, and when she did, you had better pay attention.

“First of all, you're not asking me. I'm asking you. And since you brought it up, I've been at risk since the day I met you. How 'bout the time a man broke into
my
house and put a gun to
my
head, for God's sake, and then kept me there, prisoner, until you came over so he could shoot you?”

“That's what I mean.”

“How 'bout the time those guys rammed the back of
my
car,
my
Lexus—this Lexus—and threw a couple of shots at us for good measure?”

“That's my nightmare. I don't know what I would do if something happened to you. Especially if it happened to you because of me.”

“McKenzie, I told those stories for months afterward; told them to anyone who would care to listen. It gave me great pleasure to do so. Hasn't it occurred to you even once after all these years, after all the nuttiness we've been through together, that I might actually like living the devil-may-care life?”

No,
my inner voice said.
It hadn't.

We drove in silence for a few more miles. By then we were near Lake Pepin, about sixty miles downstream from St. Paul. Villa Bellezza Winery and Vineyards came up on our left and Nina told me to pull in. She said she wanted to get a bottle of Cinque Figilie and Sangua Della Pantera—she recited the names the way the rest of us might order a Dr. Pepper. I suspected, though, that she just wanted to get out of the car and away from me for a few minutes.

I parked in the lot near the door and she went inside the villa. A few minutes later, I said, “screw it” and followed her.

“Just in time,” she said when I approached the counter. She handed me the bottles without another word and went back outside while I stayed to pay for them. A couple of minutes later, I stepped into the bright sunshine. I couldn't find Nina at first, and then I did. The black Cadillac DTS was parked at the far end of the lot. Nina was using the roof to balance herself as she leaned toward the driver's window and spoke to whoever was inside.

“Sonuvabitch,” I said.

I set the wine bottles on the asphalt and reached for the Beretta holstered behind my right hip and moved toward the car. At the same time, Nina beat a quick rhythm on the roof of the Caddie, threw a wave to those inside, and started walking back toward where the Lexus was parked. She was smiling.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” I asked her.

“Chatting with the boys,” she answered in a cheerful voice. “Did you know, Arnaldo's leg was broken in four places, poor thing. I told them that we weren't actually looking for Juan Carlos just now, but if they wanted to keep following us to Illinois that was fine, too. I told them we would be staying at the AmericInn in Winona tonight, the one overlooking the river, if they should get lost. Hope you don't mind.”

I did mind and told her so in no uncertain terms.

“Don't ever do that again,” I said.

She shrugged as if she would think about it, but not too hard.

A few minutes later we were in the Lexus heading south and not talking. Apparently the Cadillac DTS had turned around and gone home.

Prudence Johnson, one of my favorites, was on the CD player. She and a handful of composers had collaborated to turn fourteen poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay into a stunning jazz album called
A Girl Named Vincent.
One of the composers, Laura Caviani, played piano on most of the tracks.

“I'm going to buy you a piano,” I said. “A baby grand. A good one. Wherever we live, you and I, there has to be room for a piano.”

“Well,” Nina said. “It's not a new car. Still…”

*   *   *

There was nothing particularly special about the AmericInn in Winona except for the view. It was on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi, and from our balcony we could see the sun dapple the river as it curved slowly around the bend and glisten off the steel girders of Main Channel Bridge—a cantilever bridge so old that it qualified for the National Register of Historic Places.

The parking lot stretched out between the hotel and the river, and I also had a good view of the comings and goings of the guests. There were no red Sentras or black Cadillac DTSs in the lot and no one sitting in a different make or model of vehicle that I could see.

Nina, what were you trying to prove? I asked myself silently.

I sat on the balcony and sipped some of her Cinque Figlie from one of the plastic cups the hotel provided. After a while Nina joined me. She was wearing a silk nightgown beneath a silk robe cinched at the waist, her hair still damp from the shower. Her eyes—those riveting silver-blue eyes that captured my heart so long ago—caught the fading sunlight and held it.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“Again?”

“We need to have rules, you and I.”

“What rules?”

“Rule Number One—never try to prove how brave you are. Never. Fear is God's way of telling us to think before we do something stupid.”

“Like walk up to a car filled with gangbangers?”

“Exactly like that.”

“Okay. What else?”

“The rest we'll make up as we go along.”

We remained on the balcony not speaking until the sun was down and ribbons of light outlined the bridge. From the darkness I heard Nina's voice.

“Come to bed.”

*   *   *

Galena was a sparkling gem of a town located along the Mississippi River at the bottom of a steep hill. At one time it had been bigger than Chicago. However, the collapse of the lead-mining industry and the advent of a nationwide railroad system rendered the river port irrelevant until it reinvented itself as a tourist town mostly around the exploits of General Ulysses Simpson Grant, who actually lived there for only a couple of years.

We checked into the DeSoto House, the city's oldest operating hotel, where $250 rented us a Parlor Suite with a sitting room and gas fireplace for the night. While we checked in, a young man bounded down the winding staircase as if he were in a dreadful hurry. When he reached the bottom, he looked up to see his girl descending slowly, dragging her hand along the banister.

“What are you doing?” he asked her. His voice dripped with impatience.

“General Grant touched this banister,” she said. “So did Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Stephen Douglas, who else?”

“Teddy Roosevelt,” the desk clerk said.

“Teddy Roosevelt, “the girl repeated.

“So what?” asked the boyfriend. “Do you think all that greatness will rub off on you? I bet they polished the banister since those guys touched it.”

“You're such an idiot,” the girl said as she brushed past him and walked out the front door.

“He is an idiot,” Nina repeated after the boyfriend followed the girl outside.

It never occurred to me to argue with her.

After we claimed the room and unpacked our bags, Nina said, “What do we do first?”

“What do you mean, we?”

“You don't really believe I drove all this way just to sit in a hotel room while you go out and enjoy yourself, do you? This is a nice suite, by the way.”

“Nina, you and I are not Nick and Nora Charles, okay?”

“Okay, but what do we do first?”

I sighed dramatically and called the Galena Police Department. That's when I discovered that Chief Hasselback was out and wouldn't return until Monday morning—why she hadn't told me that when I spoke to her earlier I didn't know. Still, it gave us plenty of time to explore the town and its many century-old buildings. I found a store called the Root Beer Revelry that sold nearly ninety different varieties of root beer. I bought two cases of assorted brands with names like Iron Horse, Gale's, Jack Black's Dead Red, Sea Dog, and Frostie with the idea that I would gather a group of trusted and discerning confidantes for a taste testing to determine the world's greatest root beer. Nina told me to let her know how that worked out.

Meanwhile, she discovered Old Blacksmith Shop Mercantile, an 1894 blacksmith shop where, under the guidance of the resident smithy, she fashioned an ornate fireplace poker. I mentioned that neither she nor I had a fireplace. She told me that our new home would have one—it was a prerequisite. Again, who was I to argue?

We found a former movie theater where they filmed scenes for
Field of Dreams
that was now an antique store, and a former firehouse that was now a theater that was supposed to be haunted. And then there was the bar where I was told that the recipe for Red Stripe beer was actually developed in Galena and sold to an Englishman, who turned it into one of Jamaica's better-known exports. I drank a bottle; suddenly it didn't taste quite the same.

Eventually we ended up at the Perry Street Brasserie for dinner. Throughout the meal—hell, throughout the day—I had the distinct impression that we were being watched. It whispered at me like a buzzing mosquito that I was unable to swat. Yet I couldn't identify the watchers.

Either you're being unduly paranoid,
my inner voice warned me,
or these guys are very, very good.

*   *   *

Chief Lori Hasselback was lovely in the way you'd expect a former high school homecoming queen to be lovely, with soft blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair that she twirled around her finger as she spoke. She didn't look like a police officer. She looked like an actress pretending to be a police officer—think Emily Procter in
CSI: Miami
. That she had somehow managed to rise from beat cop to chief of the Galena PD in seven years impressed the hell out of me—until I learned the entire department consisted of herself, two lieutenants, one investigator, six officers and two meter maids that only worked from 8:00
A.M.
to 4:30
P.M.
The Jo Daviess County Sheriff's Department answered calls after hours and on weekends and holidays. That's why I had to wait until Monday to meet with her. I had never heard of a part-time police department before.

We met the chief Monday morning on the first floor of a gray brick building on Main Street that the cops shared with the other city departments. The only building in downtown that seemed to have been built in the past half century, it was located between Fritz and Frites, a German and French restaurant, and Little Tokyo, a restaurant serving Japanese cuisine. She suggested that we chat where it was more comfortable and led us across the street to Kaladi's 925 Coffee Bar. After buying coffee, Nina and I sat on a black leather sofa beneath a colorful mural that I couldn't describe if I wanted to. Hasselback sat in a matching chair to our left. She dragged a lock of hair across her mouth, then let it fall as she began speaking.

“I remember Collin Baird,” she said. “Didn't need to review my notes, either. He was an asshole. Bully in a letterman's jacket. You know the type. He had good grades, but I suspect that had more to do with his ability to throw a tight spiral than his study habits. Some women had accused him of peeping their windows, but we never caught him at it. The deputies did catch him the summer after he graduated from high school with a fourteen-year-old girl. They were drinking in the cemetery around midnight; the deputies came along before things went too far with the girl. Probably they should have busted 'em both for trespassing or at least given 'em minors, but it's a small town and everybody knows everybody and the deputies didn't want to ruin the girl's rep, so they were let off with a warning.”

The way Hasselback spoke, especially the way she said “minor”—a citation for underage drinking that comes with a hundred-dollar fine and attaches to an eighteen-year-old's permanent record—made me think she was more of a cop than I had given her credit for.

“I was a rookie when he went missing. Caught the case. Good riddance, some might say, good riddance to bad rubbish—you hear that a lot from the old folks around here. Only you can't choose the vic, am I right? One of the first things you learn on the job. I worked the case with the county deputies. Interviewed the mother; the old man had taken off years earlier, and it was just her and the kid. She gave us diddly-squat. The college and the cops in St. Paul, they didn't give us anything to work with, either. My first thought: like father, like son—the kid simply took off just like the old man had. The fact that we couldn't get a handle on this David Maurell character was what made me think there was fuckery afoot.”

“Wait,” I said. “What did you say?”

Hasselback's head jerked slightly as if she were surprised to be interrupted.

“I said … I apologize for my language,” she said.

“No, not at all. I had an old friend in St. Paul homicide named Anita who used to say that.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Was she pretty, too?” Nina asked.

Hasselback's head jerked again, and she looked at Nina as if it were the oddest question she had ever heard. Nina pulled at the hem of her black skirt and the cuff of her blue shirt as if she were wishing she had worn something else.

“Anyway, we sent out bulletins,” the chief said. “I didn't expect much; the boss told me not to expect much. Then we got a hit. Laredo, Texas. The PD there spotted Collin Baird's car parked in a shopping mall lot near the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge that crosses the Rio Grande. Car was clean. Nothing to indicate”—the chief quoted the air—“foul play. Took a chance and contacted Mexican Customs, who are a helluva lot more cooperative than we give them credit for. Turns out they dinged Collin Baird's passport a week earlier. That told us the little SOB went to Mexico.”