The Last Kind Word (15 page)

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It was a polite bar despite the smell of stale beer rising from the warped wooden floor—the kind of place where a restless woman could come in alone, survey what was available, maybe even sample the merchandise, and leave without necessarily being tackled in the parking lot or followed home.

I found Josie sitting at a small table just inside the doorway with a man who seemed to be in his midtwenties. It was hard to tell because he was hunched over his beer and the bar's lights had been dialed down to give patrons a sense of privacy. I let my fingers brush Josie's shoulder as I walked past just to let her know I was there. She surprised me by reaching back and giving my hand a squeeze without once taking her eyes off the young man.

“How's your mother?” she asked him. She asked the question softly with a concern in her voice that told me she had a natural and genuine sympathy for anyone who was in trouble.

I made my way to the end of the bar and found a stool. The Twins were on the coast playing the Angels, and the pregame show was on the flat-screen TV.

“What can I gitcha?” the bartender asked.

He didn't pour Summit Ale, so I ordered a Sam Adams that he served in the bottle.

“You come in with Josie?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Love that girl. Always cheerful, always cheers the place up. She knows, no one else seems to know but she does, acting all miserable all the time, it ain't gonna make the world a better place, is it?”

I couldn't argue with that, I told him.

“How's business?” I asked, just to be polite. I didn't expect much of an answer. The bartender gave me one anyway.

“If it improved one hundred percent it would still be lousy,” he said. “Since the big shock, since the mill closed, it's been deader than—I got my customers, my regulars, the truckers and loggers and guys from the mill, they still come in, but all they order is beer now.” He gestured at the bottle in front of me. “They buy a beer and nurse it all night long; taking no pleasure in drinking it, neither. The only reason they come in at all is because they can't stand being cooped up in their homes no more, you know?”

It was terrible, according to the bartender. Tough times all through the region. An economy in free fall. Everywhere you looked, men and women out of work through no fault of their own. Corporations, some of them founded when his father was a boy, were folding like carnival tents. Banks failed. Retailers from national chains to the ma-and-pa shop on the corner were locking their doors and throwing away the key. Yet even though it was happening to everyone, he said it was hard not to take it personally. Especially in small towns like Krueger and Babbitt that had been built around one company or one industry, towns whose very existence had been decided on the whim of overpaid, overpampered executives who had never even seen the place.

That was only part of it, the bartender said. Because of the lack of jobs, people were abandoning the area's small towns and cities. Which reduced their tax base. Which lowered their general funds. Which caused them to slash the services they could afford to provide the citizens who remained. Which encouraged more people to leave. Which lowered tax collections even more. Which put entire communities at risk.

“A city like Krueger,” said the bartender, “we're one disaster away from bankruptcy, and not a big disaster, neither. A roof collapses on the municipal building, a sewer pump burns out, a water main breaks—that's all it'd take.”

Listening to him and watching the men and women who sat in twos and threes at the tables and in the booths, I felt the despair of the unemployed. I began to wish that the bar would suddenly disappear along with all the other buildings in Krueger, and the people, too. I wished that none of the Scandinavians, Slavs, and Italians who had initially settled the region had come there and that it would all revert back to the wilderness from which it sprang. I wished we all could start over again knowing what we know now, hating fewer people and admiring others not so much. I wished …

I glanced Josie's way just in time to see her open her bag, pull out her wallet, peel off several of the bills she had helped steal in Silver Bay, and press them into the young man's hand. He didn't want to take them, yet she insisted. The gesture reminded me of a poem I was taught way back in St. Mark's Elementary School, something by Robert Browning.

'Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ:

Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

In that moment I felt the acid taste of guilt crawl up from my stomach into my throat; guilt because I didn't have the same needs that these people had, the same concerns; guilt because I was a millionaire who had done precious little to earn my money. The reason I couldn't be corrupted like Josie and the Bandits, the biggest reason anyway, was that I didn't need the dough. Assistant U.S. Attorney James R. Finnegan had been right about my finances. Yet if I had been wallowing in debt, if my child needed medical care, if my home was about to be foreclosed on, if my wife was threatening to leave me, I might have thought differently.

No, no, no, don't go there,
my inner voice told me.
These guys are criminals, and the why isn't important. Think about their victims. Think about how terrified they must have been to have guns pointed at them—an AK-47, for Christ's sake. The Bandits hadn't physically harmed anyone, yet that would change if they kept on—think about that. Coming around to Josie's way of thinking would be a very dangerous thing indeed. Stockholm syndrome, I think they call it.

Josie cupped the young man's cheek, then patted his arm before leaving the table and making her way down the bar to where I sat. I looked away so she wouldn't think I was watching her. I turned my attention to the baseball game. By then the starting pitcher was just finishing his warm-up tosses. Josie pulled up a stool. The bartender made her a vodka Collins without being asked, and she thanked him. He asked her how she was doing, and Josie said she was fine. Then he said, “Dave okay?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Dave, her brother,” the bartender said.

“I know who he is.”

“Dave's okay,” Josie said.

“Tell him, anything he needs…”

“I'll tell him.” To me she said, “I'm hungry. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“A couple of menus, please.”

The bartender said, “Sure Josie,” gave me a what's-your-story look, and moved down the stick.

“The bartender knows that your brother is hiding up here?” I asked.

“In a small town, people don't need a newspaper,” Josie said. “You only need a newspaper when stuff happens that people can't see or hear about for themselves. In a small town, it doesn't take long before everyone knows everything.”

“I do not find that comforting.”

The bartender reappeared, gave us menus, and disappeared again. The menu recommended Buckman's “World Famous Cheeseburger.” I had never heard of it, but then I didn't get out much.

After the bartender served us, Josie leaned in and whispered, “Are you sure this is going to work?”

“I'm guessing that the first person to arrive at the terminal in the morning, probably the attendant, has the key. He unlocks the padlock, unwinds the chain, opens the gate to the enclosure, and then hangs the padlock on the chain without locking it because, why would he? That just makes extra work for himself later. The last person to leave, and maybe it's the attendant again, he closes the gate, wraps the chain around it, and locks the padlock. We're hoping he doesn't notice we switched locks. Later tonight, we'll sneak over there, unlock the padlock with our key, get inside, place the GPS loggers on the trucks, then switch our lock with Mesabi's again. Tomorrow they won't even know we've been there.”

“What if they have security cameras?”

“If they do, they're hidden pretty damn well, because I couldn't find them.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Nonresidential burglary for a woman like you without a record, they'd slap your wrist and make you promise not to do it again.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What will they do to you?”

“What can I say, sweetie? I've been living on borrowed time for years now.”

“Don't call me—”

“Sweetie, I know.”

“I wish I knew more about you.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Let's see. I like jazz. I like baseball. I like the ballet, believe it or not. I prefer whiskey if I'm going to drink to excess and beer if I'm not. When I read—and I read a lot—I'd rather have a real book in my hands instead of one of those electronic gizmos. I like to cook. I don't believe in saving money, and I'll never marry because I refuse to impose my lifestyle on anyone I care about. What about you?”

“Me? You'll think I'm making fun of you.”

“Give it a try.”

“I don't like jazz or baseball or whiskey or beer, and I've never been to the ballet. I'm a lousy cook. I don't read much that's not business related. I think everybody should save their money, and I desperately want to fall in love and get married.”

“Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Josie.” To prove it I clinked her glass with my beer bottle.

We sat at the bar and watched the Twins. I nursed the Sam Adams, much to the bartender's chagrin—hey, I had work to do—while Josie had multiple vodka Collinses. Possibly the drinks loosened her up, because she turned out to be a pleasant companion despite her refusal to accept the sacrifice bunt as a sound baseball strategy. “Why would you deliberately make an out?” At the bottom of the fourth inning I quietly announced I needed fresh air. I returned a few minutes later and informed her that that the third truck had yet to return.

“How long should we wait?” she asked.

“Until all of the trucks are inside and the place is locked up tight, probably sometime during the dark side of midnight.”

“That sounds fanciful.”

“My dad, when I was a kid, he would warn that nothing good ever happened after midnight. The dark side, he called it—stay away from the dark side. I was a
Star Wars
fan. It made perfect sense to me.”

“Speaking of the dark side.”

I followed Josie's gaze to a woman who was loitering at the front entrance. She stood alone, a woman built to be of service to men, drawing long gazes from male and female patrons alike, soaking in the awareness like a solar panel—it seemed to energize her. She swung her body as she walked the length of the bar. She expected the audience to follow her, expected to be gawked at.

“Hey, Josie,” she said when she reached us. Her short skirt slid up to there when she hoisted herself onto a stool and crossed her legs. Her legs were made for crossing. Being a gentleman, McKenzie would have averted his eyes. Dyson was no gentleman. “Seen Brian?”

“It's not my turn to watch him,” Josie answered. There was a chill in her voice that I had not heard before.

“I thought he'd be around,” the woman said. She motioned for the bartender, ordered a beer, and asked that he pour it in a glass. At the same time, she slid a pack of Marlboro Lights out of her bag.

“No smoking,” the bartender said.

“Shit,” the woman replied.

“Not working tonight?” Josie asked.

“I was, but the place is pretty dead, so I only did one show.”

Up close I could see that the woman had large brown eyes that looked a little sad, the way that all large brown eyes do, and that her strawberry hair was tinged with gray at the roots. Her smile was warm, although her teeth were dingy from tobacco.

“You're Dyson, aren't you?” she said.

“Hmm, Dyson?” I replied.

She reached past Josie and patted my hand. “It's okay. I won't tell anyone.”

I glared at Josie.

“Dyson, this is Claire de Lune,” she said. “Claire is Jimmy's fiancée.”

“He told me everything about you,” Claire said. “From what he said, I thought you'd be taller.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. I shook Claire's hand. It was stronger than you might expect. “I hope you can keep a secret better than Jimmy.”

She turned her attention toward the other customers in the bar even as she spoke. “Jimmy and me don't keep secrets.”

“I do.”

“Don't worry. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

A glance into Josie's eyes told me that it was an opinion not widely shared. “I hope…”

Claire gestured contemptuously as if the topic were undeserving of any further consideration and continued gazing around the bar. “I thought for sure that Brian would be here,” she said.

“Claire de Lune is a very pretty name,” I said. “It means ‘moonlight' in French, doesn't it?”

“I guess.”

“It's also the name of a piano solo by Claude Debussy.”

“I'll be right back.”

Claire took a cell phone from her purse and headed for the restroom.

“Lovely woman,” I told Josie. “Very gregarious.”

“She's an exotic dancer.”

“You mean a stripper?”

“Jimmy says exotic dancer.”

“No kidding? She's a little old for that line of work, isn't she?”

“How should I know? I only know she's a decade older than Jimmy. Her real name is Sandra Dawson, but I guess that didn't have any marquee value.”

“How did she and Jimmy—”

“How did they meet? They met in a strip club, of course. Jimmy saw her and…” She paused and shook her head as if the words necessary to finish the sentence were too dismal to speak. “That's not even the half of it. Claire got pregnant and told Jimmy he was the father. Jimmy agreed to marry her. The family demanded that she take a paternity test. Turned out the child wasn't Jimmy's. He insists on marrying her anyway. Actually put money down on a townhouse. I begged him not to. He did it anyway. He's already underwater and they haven't even closed yet.”