What the Dead Leave Behind Page 25

  “It is a man, right?” one of them asked.

  The bartender asked if he knew any.

  Another hoped that her leaving didn’t mean the Rathskeller was going to close early because he certainly didn’t want to go home early.

  The bartender assured him that Philly would soon be there to sub for her, which caused another commotion among the regulars, most of them wondering how the young man had been doing since leaving for the big city, specifically Chicago and Northwestern University. The news made me smile, too. It meant my research hadn’t all been in vain.

  I waved the bartender over.

  “Why don’t you let me settle my tab before your replacement arrives,” I said. “So you get the tip.”

  She made sure the regulars saw her pointing at me.

  “This is what we’ve been missing around here,” she announced. “Class.”

  I paid in cash, leaving her a twenty-five percent tip, which made her smile.

  “Who’s Philly?” I asked after we became friends.

  “Jalen Phillips. He’s the local fair-haired boy, although he really isn’t fair-haired.” She chuckled at her own joke. “Great baseball player for the Legion teams, and just the nicest young man. Him and his father. He works as a part-time bartender for us summers and when he’s back from school. You’ll meet him.”

  I did, about ten minutes later. The regulars shouted his name like they did Norm’s in the classic Cheers TV show. He seemed to remember all of their names as well. He gave the bartender a hug and she kissed his cheek and then she left, leaving him in charge. First thing he did was make sure everyone’s glass was filled with the beverage of their choice. I ordered another Snowstorm.

  “Be careful of that one,” a regular warned. “The way he was talking before, I’m pretty sure he’s a Green Bay Packer backer.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Do I call you names?”

  “You know where they hate the Packers even more than we do?” Philly asked. “Chicago.”

  “About the only good thing you can say about Chicago,” another regular said.

  “Man, that’s my home away from home you’re dissin’.”

  That launched a discussion about the many different places one might choose to live, with the general consensus being that the number of assholes one encountered rose dramatically the farther away one traveled from New Ulm.

  Eventually Philly returned to make sure I was happy with my beer.

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “New Brighton.”

  “Hey, I’m from…”

  And the smile ran away from his face.

  “Shit,” he said.

  *   *   *

  The night began to drag. More customers arrived, yet the energy that had been in the Rathskeller earlier seemed to dissipate. Or maybe it was just me. For a while, Philly was quite busy, although he did take time to make a call on his cell phone from a corner of the bar where no one could hear his voice. Eventually the crowd began to thin out, along with the regulars.

  “Supper’s on the table,” one of them said.

  I was nursing my fourth beer when Philly said, “There’s always a lull about this time on weekdays. It’ll get busier again after people have had their dinner, about the time the Wild game starts.”

  To emphasize his point, he aimed a remote at the HDTV in the corner and switched the channel to Fox Sports North. The Wild hockey pregame show was just starting.

  “Need another beer?” he asked.

  “I’m good.”

  “Bar menu?”

  “No.”

  He stepped away and busied himself with some glasses. He was waiting for something. I didn’t know what until the black man entered the bar and sat one stool down from me. Philly smiled at him, and the man smiled back.

  I said, “Mr. Phillips, I presume.”

  “Dwayne. Who you?”

  “McKenzie.”

  “You police?”

  “No.”

  “What you want with my boy?”

  Since he got to the point so quickly, I decided it would be better if I did the same.

  “I want to know what your son saw that day,” I said.

  “What day?”

  “Mr. Phillips…”

  “That was seven years ago.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Why anybody care all this time?”

  “Do you remember Frank Harris?”

  “Yeah, I remember him.”

  “Malcolm’s old man,” Philly said.

  “Prick,” Dwayne said.

  “Yes, he was,” I said.

  “Was?” Philly said.

  “Someone stabbed him in the head with a knife and left him to die in the snow.”

  “No way.”

  “When this happen?” Dwayne asked.

  “Year ago last Christmas,” I said.

  “Who did it?” Philly said.

  “No one knows.”

  “What’s this got to do with my boy?” Dwayne asked.

  “Probably nothing.”

  “Then what you want here?”

  “Jayne Harris asked me to find out what happened to her husband. Malcolm, too.”

  “She’s a nice lady,” Philly said. “Malcolm’s kind of a jerk like his old man, but he played a solid second base.”

  “This don’t answer my question,” Dwayne said.

  “Neither of them cares if anyone goes to jail. They just want to know the truth.”

  “People say that like it’s something you can hold in your hand; carry it in your pocket and take it out once in a while to look at. Don’t work like that.”

  “I never said it did.”

  “McKenzie,” Philly said, “do you believe that the person who killed that man in the park is the same one that stabbed Mr. Harris?”

  “I honestly don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I know how things work,” Dwayne said. “Citizen ain’t under no legal obligation to report a crime, and you can’t make him testify if he don’t want to.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Anything anyone says to you is hearsay; can’t repeat it in no court.”

  “That’s true, too.”

  “You ain’t no cop, anyway.”

  “No.”

  Dwayne was speaking to his son when he said, “What you want to do?”

  “What happened before is one thing,” Philly said. “But if it’s happened again, that’s something else, man.”

  “She’s your friend. You decide.”

  “If it makes it any easier,” I said, “whatever you tell me in New Ulm stays in New Ulm.”

  Philly hesitated for such a long time that for a moment I thought I had lost him. Finally he aimed the remote at the TV to increase the volume, leaned in close, and started speaking, his voice just above a whisper as if he were desperate that only his father and I would be able to hear him.

  “What you need to understand is that I didn’t actually see anything,” Philly said. “It was after school, and I was cutting across the park. We had a lot of rain the last couple of days and we couldn’t get on the field, so the coach, he wanted everyone to get to the ballpark early for infield and BP. I’m crossing the park and I look up and I see Katie—”

  “Katie Meyer?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Meyer, uh-huh, and she was walking toward this shed. I called to her because Mrs. Meyer, she was so nice to me. And to Sloane. Sloane Dauria. She was like—I didn’t have a mother growing up, McKenzie, because of what the drugs did to her, but if I had, I would have wanted to her to be like Mrs. Meyer. It’s important that you know that because … I called to her, but she didn’t hear or see me. So I ran toward her, toward the shed. By the time I got there she was already walking back to the field. That’s when I noticed that she was carrying a bat, one of Critter Meyer’s baseball bats. And then I saw the guy…”

  Philly paused as if he were seeing him again. I knew I was.

  Are you frickin
’ kidding me? my inner voice said. Katie Meyer beating someone to death with a baseball bat? How is that even possible?

  “I called the emergency number,” Philly said. “I told the operator what I found. She asked for my name. While she was asking, I could see Mrs. Meyer. She had already returned to the baseball field and she was setting the bat against the backstop, and I decided there was no way. I didn’t even try to reason it out. I wasn’t going to give her up. I just wasn’t. You know, that woman hugged me every time I saw her. Even my old man didn’t hug me that much.”

  Dwayne shrugged as if to say, “What do you expect?”

  “I hung up and turned off my cell phone,” Philly said. “I went to the field, and she must have seen that I was agitated because suddenly she was worried about me and wondering if there was anything she could do. She hugged me—again—and I could smell the scent of her shampoo in her hair and I vowed right then and there that I was going to protect her no matter what. I went five-for-five that game, too; two dingers and six RBIs. That’s how upset I was about my decision. Anyway, I thought that would be the end of it until this fat cop from New Brighton showed up at the house and started acting, well, that doesn’t matter. I denied calling 911, and he left me alone after that.”

  “Did you know that Katie had been raped?” I asked. I needed that to be the reason why Katie killed Raymond Bosh.

  “Yeah. We all did. It wasn’t a secret. It happened right before one of our games, and when I got to the field, the cops were already there investigating. Only it wasn’t anything we ever talked about. Man, we were thirteen, fourteen years old at the time. We didn’t want to talk about it. Mrs. Meyer didn’t want us to talk about it, either. She kept telling us it had nothing to do with us; that we should forget about it and play baseball. She didn’t want the season to be about her, you see? That’s the kind of person she was.”

  “Did you think that one thing might have been connected to the other?”

  “Not at first, but later it occurred to me. Why else would she have done it? That wonderful, caring woman? It had to be because he was the one who raped her. The police hadn’t done anything about it; it was like three, four weeks later, and that fat cop—honestly, it made me feel better about it all. Like justice was being served. But now … If she also killed Malcolm’s old man…”

  “She didn’t,” I said. I remembered Detective Downing’s supplemental reports. Among the fourteen New Brighton Hotdishers who were prepared to testify that Jayne Harris was with them when Frank was killed—Katherine Meyer.

  “Are you sure?” Philly asked.

  “I am absolutely sure. Tell me—does anyone else know what happened?”

  “Who d’you mean?”

  “I know you refused to talk to the police. What about the Hotdishers?”

  “The parents? Hell, no. Are you kidding?”

  “The other ballplayers?”

  That slowed him down.

  “It’s important,” I said.

  “Critter,” Philly said. “He was really upset about what happened to his mother, never seemed to get past it, the fact that the man who hurt her never got caught, and going into the championship game he was in tears even, so, what I did—I told him that he shouldn’t worry about it, tried to make him feel better. Sloane and Malcolm were there, too, and I tried to tell them what happened without actually telling them what happened; dropping hints, you know, until they sorta figured it out on their own, and then we vowed, the four of us, we promised to never speak of it again. I kept my promise. Did they?”

  “Yes, they did,” I said.

  “What happens now?” Dwayne asked.

  “I leave New Ulm and pretend that we never met.”

  “You’re not going to mess with Katie?” Philly said.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So you put us to a lot of bother for no reason,” Dwayne said.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Phillips.”

  *   *   *

  Only it wasn’t good-bye. After I settled my tab, Dwayne followed me to my Mustang.

  “Nice ride,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You say you’re not a cop, but I know the look.”

  “I used to be, in St. Paul. Not anymore.”

  “St. Paul, you say. That’s where I’m from.” He named an intersection. “You know it?”

  “I know it,” I said.

  “I was standing on the corner when I was twelve years old and a guy drove by and shot me. Shot me twice. To this day I don’t know why. Did he mistake me for someone else? Did he just not like the way I looked? I spent four months in the hospital. Not once during that time did anyone come to visit me. That’s my childhood, McKenzie. The way I grew up. Five years later, I was standing on the exact same corner with a man owed me money over some coke he was ’spose to be movin’ for me. I shot him twice. Killed him. They put me inside for that. I had just turned seventeen, but it was adult time. Got out, went straight back to the life. Did another jolt for possession with intent. Got out. Went back to the life. Goin’ nowhere fast. Woman I was with, strung-out bitch got pregnant. Jalen born premature. You have kids, McKenzie?”

  I thought about Erica and said no anyway.

  “It changes a man—if he is a man,” Dwayne said. “I got outta the life. Tried to take my woman with me. She didn’t want to go. OD’d a few months later. Took Jalen to New Brighton. Don’t seem like that far, only twenty minutes by car from that corner. But it was a lifetime away. Tried to raise him right. Give him a chance. He took it, too. Scholarship at Northwestern University, man. He’s gonna be a fucking economist. Then this thing happened with Katie Meyer. All I could think about was that goddamned street corner. Right before school start, I got an opportunity to move to New Ulm and work for the brewery. Took it, man. Took it and ran. Now you show up, dragging the past with you.”

  “Mr. Phillips, the past is in St. Paul and New Brighton. Not here.”

  “You say that.”

  “I told this to someone just a couple days ago and I meant it—you’re known by your children. I met your son. You’re a good man, Mr. Phillips. Neither of you will ever have a problem with me. My word.”

  “You say that.”

  “Maybe in twenty years when nothing happens, you’ll believe me.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Rebecca Crawford had chosen a bar on the east side of St. Paul, a neighborhood not known for its geniality. The bar itself was nice, though—carpeted floor, padded chairs, rounded booths, lighted candles on the tables. Nonthreatening music was piped in, the volume low; no TVs, no jukebox. The waitstaff wore red shirts and black vests; the clientele seemed to conform to a self-imposed dress code that embraced sweaters and dark blazers and eschewed hats and anything with holes. It was the kind of place where you went before or after the theater, although I couldn’t think of any theaters located on the East Side. It made me miss the Rathskeller.

  We found Rebecca at a table with three empty chairs at about a quarter to eleven. Her expression went from impatient to alarm when she saw me enter behind Diane Dauria, yet she did nothing drastic about it like draw a gun or run for cover.

  “Diane?” she asked.

  “Sorry we’re so late,” Diane said. “I think you know McKenzie.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You tell me.”

  We sat without being asked, me across from Rebecca, and Diane at her elbow. Rebecca was drinking a dark cherry-colored liquid with ice from a squat glass that she slowly rotated a quarter turn at a time on the table in front of her.

  “So what do you want to talk about?” she asked.

  “Let’s start with McKenzie’s broken wrist,” Diane said.

  “How did that happen?”

  “Your friends didn’t tell you?” I said.

  “Hmm? Friends?”

  I decided to take a page from Dwayne Phillips’s playbook and get right to the point.

  “We didn’t come here to threaten you,” I said
. “No one is going to call the police. No one is going to sue for employee fraud.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “To make you a better offer.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “First, tell me—how much is Pamela Randall paying you to set up Diane?”

  “Why? Do you want to cut yourself in, too?”

  Too? my inner voice asked.

  “I just want to know where to start the bidding,” I said.

  Rebecca didn’t say.

  Diane leaned in close.

  “Becs?” she said. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “It isn’t personal,” Rebecca said. “It’s just business.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “I thought you had it all figured out.”

  “I do. But Pamela doesn’t. She made a huge mistake. I’m just trying to contain the damage to keep innocent people from getting hurt.”

  “Innocent people? Name one.”

  “Your mentor.”

  Rebecca flashed her eyes at Diane. “You knew what Jonny Szereto was doing and you didn’t help me,” she said.

  “I didn’t know,” Diane said.

  “You were the smartest person in the building. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t. Not until after he was killed. Not until the police started asking questions.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Becs, why didn’t you come to me when it happened? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Why didn’t you quit when you found out?”

  “I was trying to fix the company. Make it better.”

  “You and Evelyn Szereto?”

  “Yes.”

  “You actually believe that Evelyn didn’t know?”

  “Does it matter now? Jonny’s dead, Becs. Evelyn’s son is dead.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Ask McKenzie. He claims to have it all figured out.”

  I caught an expression in Rebecca’s eyes at that moment of absolute and total indifference, which was gone the moment I saw it, and I realized that I had met her many times before. She wasn’t a mystery woman after all. In fact, she was quite predictable and kind of dumb in that I’m-the-smartest-person-in-the-room way some people have that disregards everything someone might have to say except “I agree.”