The Last Kind Word (3 page)

“That hurt,” Chad whispered. “Now I know why stuntmen make so much money.”

“How's the deputy?” I asked. I was trying hard not to move my lips.

“Upset that you took him the way you did. I explained that we couldn't let him in on the scam for fear that he might give it away, but that we would tell his boss he agreed to cooperate with us so he won't be embarrassed.”

I took Chad's wallet and stood up so Skarda could see me rifling through it. I pulled cash out and tossed the wallet away.

“Lousy hundred and eighty-seven bucks,” I said. “What a schmuck.”

Skarda was watching me closely, looking as if he wanted to run away very fast. I bent down again, and he moved to the door of the SUV, slid behind the wheel, and reached for the ignition. I stood up again, this time dangling Chad's car keys from a ring around my pinky.

“Hey, Dave?” I said. “Going somewhere?”

“I was just—I was getting ready. We should leave.”

“Yes, we should.”

I glanced down at Chad, and he winked at me. I climbed out of the ditch, crossed the gravel road, and moved to the Explorer.

“I'll drive,” I said.

Skarda scrambled out of the SUV and went around to the passenger side. When he was safely inside, I told him to lock the loose cuff around the handle above the window.

“Why?” he asked.

“Good handcuffs make good neighbors.”

“Huh?”

“One of Robert Frost's lesser-known works. Do it.”

He did.

I fired up the Explorer, put it into gear, and headed down the road.

“Where are we going?” Skarda asked.

“To see a girl,” I said.

 

TWO

The girl lived in White Bear Lake, not far from the former church that now housed the Lakeshore Players Community Theater. The city used to be a popular haven for the well-to-do who would travel twenty miles by train from St. Paul to vacation on the scenic lake that gave it its name. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about it; James J. Hill stayed there, and so did Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker. Eventually the rich went elsewhere. Apparently they didn't care to rub shoulders with the many middle-class citizens who moved to White Bear Lake once the roads improved and car ownership became common. To reach it, we made our way down to Sandstone and crossed I-35 again, this time going from east to west. From there I drove south. Skarda wondered why we didn't take 35. I preferred to drive the succession of county roads that followed the original route of U.S. Highway 61, the legendary roadway that was made more or less obsolete between Duluth and St. Paul when I-35 was built. It was so much classier, although I didn't tell him that. Instead, I told him it was safer.

“The Minnesota Highway Patrol might be monitoring the traffic on 35,” I said.

It wasn't the only question Skarda asked. The man seemed incapable of being quiet for more than a few minutes at a time. He wanted to know what I had been busted for, why I was being transferred to Grand Rapids, if I had done time, where I was from, and so on and so on. I refused to answer. Nor did I ask any question of him, which was part of the plan. Still, when he wondered if the girl we were going to visit was the blonde who drove the red Honda Accord, I told him, “Actually, she's a brunette, only there's no disguising those legs, know what I mean?”

Skarda said he did, yet I suspected he was only being polite because a moment later he asked if “the girl” was “my girl,” the same one Chad had slept with. I told him it was.

“Are you going to kill her?”

“What the hell, Dave,” I said. “Do I look like a homicidal maniac to you?”

He assured me that I didn't, and I thanked him. Just the same, by the time we reached the White Bear Lake city limits, I was humming “Delia's Gone,” one of the last great songs recorded by Johnny Cash before he passed—the one where he claims if he hadn't shot poor Delia he'd have had her for his wife. If Skarda hadn't been cuffed to the handle above the door, I have no doubt that he would have jumped out of the car at the first stoplight.

We drove through what amounted to downtown White Bear Lake, reaching Stewart Avenue and driving south some more. I told Skarda what to look for—a white Colonial with an old-fashioned porch on the left side of the street. As we passed it, I said, “Sonuvabitch,” and tightly gripped the steering wheel.

“What?” Skarda asked.

“Cops.”

“Where? I didn't see anything?”

“That's because you were looking at the house when you should have been looking at the street.”

Skarda turned in his seat and looked behind us.

“Don't,” I said, and then, “Too late.”

I stomped on the accelerator. The Ford Explorer surged forward. I pushed it up to fifty and took a hard left down a residential street. I did it the way they do in Hollywood movies and on TV—badly. I accelerated into the turn and braked to keep from losing control, which caused the back end of the Explorer to slide sideways and fishtail as I accelerated again. It was terribly inefficient but looked cool—that's why they do it in the movies—and gave Skarda the impression of desperate flight. I blasted through a right-hand turn and then another left, actually making the tires squeal.

Skarda got into it right away. “Unmarked cop car, a blue sedan, two blocks behind us,” he said.

I hung another left followed by a right. I actually put the Explorer on two wheels, which was insane. SUVs have a higher center of gravity—do you know how easy it is to flip over one of those suckers? It shook me up so much that I actually made the next turn properly, slowing into the turn and accelerating out of it. Skarda kept looking behind us and didn't seem to notice.

“See anything?” I asked.

“No, yes, a white van.”

I took a right followed by a second right, followed by a left, sometimes pushing the Explorer up to sixty. The streets were quiet, thank goodness, although I did have to lean on the horn to keep a Toyota from backing out of a driveway in front of us. I took another turn, this one more slowly. A block ahead of us I saw two cars idling in the middle of the intersection, one facing south, the other north, and my first thought was that they were a couple of neighbors chatting with each other, not worrying about clogging the avenue because only neighbors used it. Skarda didn't see it that way.

“It's a roadblock,” he shouted.

I hit the brakes, slowing just enough so that I could safely turn down an alley.

“The cops are everywhere,” Skarda said. “What are we going to do?”

“Hang on,” I said.

I managed a few more quick turns until we jumped onto White Bear Avenue. I made a big production out of weaving in and out of traffic at high speed until we crossed Interstate 694. The Maplewood Mall was on our right. I pulled into its massive parking lot and hid among the cars there. I turned off the engine. All we could hear was the ticking as it cooled.

“I think we're all right,” Skarda said. “I think we lost them.”

'Course, there was no “them”—it was just Skarda's imagination running on overdrive. As for the white Colonial, it actually had belonged to a girl I once dated, an actor who went to Hollywood to try her luck about fifteen years ago.

“Oh my God, Dyson,” Skarda said. Now that he thought he was safe, he was breathing hard and clutching his heart as if he were afraid it would leap from his chest. “That was close. When I saw the roadblock—I still don't believe you got us out of that.”

“It was nothing,” I said.

“You're a helluva driver, my friend.”

“I expected something like this might happen,” I said. “Still … this makes it difficult.”

“What do you mean?”

“My money—I can't get to it. With Chad gone I figured my girl—my ex-girl—wouldn't have the nerve to cross me again, only she did. She and Chad must have had a prearranged signal; probably he was supposed to call her, and when he didn't she called the cops. None of that matters. What matters is I can't get to my money now.”

“Where is it?” Skarda asked.

I gave him a hard look that suggested that was the dumbest question I had ever heard.

“It's safe, that's all you need to know,” I said. “It's safe. Only I can't collect it until things cool down. In the meantime, I have exactly a hundred and eighty-seven dollars in my pocket.”

“So, what are we going to do?”

I patted him on the knee. “Dave, I like that you said ‘we.'”

*   *   *

I gave it ten minutes, started the SUV, and began exploring the back rows of the mall's huge parking lot.

“What are you doing?” Skarda asked.

“Looking for a car to steal. This one's hot.”

“Why here?”

“Store managers want to save the best spaces for their customers, so they usually have their employees park in the slots furthest from the mall. These are the people who'll be last to leave once the stores close up, so we'll be long gone by the time they report the theft. Ah, here we go. Useful and unobtrusive.”

I slowed the Ford Explorer to a stop directly in front of a Jeep Cherokee with a swing-away tire carrier mounted on the back. After making sure there was no one nearby who could see us, I reversed a few feet, twisted the steering wheel, and eased forward until I nudged the Cherokee's bumper.

“Why did you do that?” Skarda asked.

“To check for a car alarm. Do you hear anything?”

“No.”

“Well, then…”

I got out of the Explorer and again searched the parking lot. Assured that we were quite alone, I walked around the Cherokee, trying all the doors. They were locked. I cupped my hands against the windshield and peered inside. After a few moments I returned to the Explorer. Skarda spoke to me through the open window.

“Don't we need tools? A screwdriver at least?”

“The pen is mightier than the screwdriver,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“Check the glove compartment, see if there's something to write with.”

Skarda opened the glove compartment with one hand—the other was still cuffed to the handle above the door—and found a pencil and a small notebook. I took them, returned to the Cherokee, and carefully wrote down the vehicle identification number that I read off of the metal strip attached to the corner of the dashboard. When I returned to the Explorer, Skarda said, “Now what?”

“Watch and learn,” I said.

Not far from the Maplewood Mall was a community of new and used car dealerships. I found one that sold Jeep Cherokees and pulled into the lot. I left Skarda waiting in the Explorer while I walked inside. I went to the parts and service desk and told the mechanic that yet again I had locked my one and only key—along with my wallet containing my ID—inside my Jeep Cherokee. I asked if they could contact the manufacturer, give them the VIN, ask for the specs, and cut a duplicate key. They said that they could, that it would take half an hour. Fifty minutes and fifty dollars later, I walked out of the dealership with a new key. That's the part I told a visibly relived Skarda when I returned to the Ford Explorer. The part I didn't tell him was that the dealership had demanded proof of ownership before they cut the key, which I was able to supply with a call to the Minnesota Department of Driver and Vehicle Services because, well, I actually did own the Jeep Cherokee.

We drove back to the mall, parked the Explorer, unlocked the Cherokee, slipped inside, and started the engine. Yes, I again locked Skarda's handcuff around the door handle before we drove off. Despite that, Skarda was impressed.

“That was the slickest bit of car stealing I've ever heard of,” he said. “I didn't know it was so easy.”

“Like most things worth doing, it requires audacity. In any case, it beats the hell out of pulling ignition wires and breaking steering column locks. And look, we have a full tank of gas. So, where are we going?”

“Why ask me?”

“Hey, pal. You're Plan B, remember. I deliver you to your crew and your crew pays me fifty thousand dollars.”

“Yeah…”

“You're not reneging on your part of the agreement, are you, Dave?”

“No, no, of course not. It's just … fifty thousand dollars.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “I'll settle for half; take it in cash. I'll scoot up to Canada and lay low until things cool down a bit, give it maybe a couple months just to be on the safe side, then come back for my money.”

“Ummm.”

“You had better not be messing with me, Dave. We had a deal.”

“I'm not, I'm not messing with you, it's just…”

“You might not know this about me, pal, but I have a volatile personality.”

“It's just that I need to make a phone call first, that's all.”

“Once we get out of the Cities we'll find a pay phone,” I said. “Do they still have pay phones?”

*   *   *

They did. We found one in the lobby of Tobies Restaurant and Bakery in Hinckley, about halfway between the Twin Cities and Duluth. Because of its location, Hinckley had been a popular tourist trap since World War II. Travelers traditionally stopped there for a pee break, to purchase petroleum by-products, stretch their legs, or grab a quick bite. Since '48, Tobies had been the main beneficiary of this tradition, at least until the fast-food chains set up franchises across the street. It was crowded—it was always crowded. Admittedly, the food wasn't all that memorable, the service was what you would expect in a tourist town, and the congestion was exasperating at best. On the other hand, Tobies bakery served astonishing caramel rolls; they were so light, sticky, and sweet that I swear to God, they could kill a diabetic in thirty seconds flat.

I had to remove Skarda's handcuffs before we went inside. After I did, I showed him the Glock that I concealed beneath my shirt and reminded him that I was an exceedingly desperate man.