Pretty Girl Gone Read online

  “Inside,” he said calmly.

  “After you,” I told him.

  He gave me a gentle poke with the gun.

  “Well, since you asked nicely.”

  A few minutes later, we were on I-94, crossing the Mississippi River into Minneapolis—“Sin City” some of us St. Paulites call it, and not always in jest. A few minutes more and we were deep inside downtown Minneapolis, pulling into the parking ramp of one of the newer glass and steel towers. It was when we were on the public elevator with three other people going up that I realized the kidnapping was all for show and that I had little to fear.

  “You’re new at this kidnapping thing, aren’t you,” I told my escort.

  A panicked look spread across his face as our elevator mates glanced at him while pretending not to.

  “I gotta tell you, though, the trouble with shooting through your pocket? You can’t really be sure where the gun is pointing.”

  My escort’s face became a shade of red that you don’t often see in nature. Yet he didn’t speak. Nor did he take his hand out of his pocket. Instead, he stood motionless, watching the floor numbers change on the electronic display. Once the doors slid shut after our final companion departed the elevator, he turned toward me with an expression of snarling anger.

  “Uh-uh,” I grunted and pointed toward the upper corner of the car. My escort followed my finger to a small security camera.

  “You could end up on America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

  He faced the door again and said nothing.

  “Seriously,” I asked him. “What did you do before you got into this line of work?”

  Now Norman, my escort, was sitting in a chair against the wall, nursing his pride. The three men at the far end of the table were all leaning forward, waiting to hear what I had to say. Muehlenhaus was sitting back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest like he already knew. Donovan was pacing, his hands behind his back like he was an eighteenth-century naval commander bestriding the deck. There was a streak of vanity in the man, I decided. It was long and wide.

  “If the first lady is upset, I am unaware of it,” I announced calmly.

  Mahoney—he was the one wearing the politician uniform—grunted loudly and looked at me as if he didn’t believe me, as if he hadn’t believed anything anyone had told him in years.

  Donovan apparently agreed with him. He said, “I think you’re lying.”

  I said, “I don’t care.”

  The pain in his expression was so severe, you’d think I shot him.

  “Whom do you think you’re talking to?” he demanded.

  “I’ll tell you when I get to know you better.”

  The tension in the room was suddenly a thin wire stretched too tight. Just the slightest pressure and it would snap.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Muehlenhaus repeated in an attempt to calm us.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” I said. “Under what scenario can you imagine that I would betray the confidence of my friends to you?”

  “We know how to reward our friends,” Gunhus said.

  “I bet. But we’re not friends. We’re not even acquaintances, and if someone doesn’t start volunteering information in a hurry, I’m going to leave.”

  Coole, Gunhus, and Mahoney looked at each other to see who would speak first. Donovan beat them all to it.

  “Can we rely on your discretion?” he asked.

  “Not even a little bit.”

  They didn’t like my answer. I watched the five men discuss it with glances and gestures. Not a word was spoken—it was as if they communicated with ESP. I rotated in my chair and faced Muehlenhaus.

  “What is it you want of me?”

  He in turn made a nearly imperceptible gesture with his bloodless hand.

  Donovan read it and said, “Mr. McKenzie, we have an assignment to discuss with you. One that requires fine sensibilities and good judgment, one that requires the utmost in secrecy.”

  “You have already proven to us that you can keep a secret,” Muehlenhaus informed me.

  I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms and ankles. And people say I watch too many movies. I half expected the theme from Mission Impossible to begin wafting through the room from hidden speakers.

  “Do you know the governor?” Donovan asked.

  “We’ve never met.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “We’ve never met,” I repeated.

  “We have a great deal invested in Governor Barrett.”

  “A great deal,” Mahoney confirmed.

  “Just so,” said Muehlenhaus.

  “We made him governor,” Donovan added. “We would like to make him a U.S. senator.”

  “Why stop there?” I asked.

  “Why indeed?”

  Jesus.

  “We—as I’m sure you’ll appreciate—are prepared to protect that investment.”

  “When we say ‘we,’ we’re referring to the party,” said Muehlenhaus. “After decades of being in the minority, the party has made great strides in Minnesota,” said Coole. “Much of that is due to Governor Barrett. He’s comparatively young. Attractive. Charismatic. He’s well known in the state and becoming well known throughout the nation—a high school sports hero, a self-made man rising above small-town poverty to become successful in business, respected for his philanthropic activities. He has been a splendid standard-bearer. So much so, that many people are considering him for higher office, perhaps the highest office.”

  “He’s also willing to spend as much as twenty million dollars of his own money on his campaign,” added Mahoney.

  “There’s that, too,” said Coole.

  “So, what’s the problem?” I asked.

  “You tell us,” Donovan said.

  Muehlenhaus leaned forward.

  “The first lady asked you to do a favor for her—please, don’t deny it. The favors you perform for your friends don’t always bear up well to public scrutiny. We would like to understand what this particular favor entails, but we will no longer press you on the matter. We wish only to impress you with this one fact: If there is a problem with the first lady, we can make it go away. We are determined to make it go away. In that regard, are we not allies?”

  “Mr. McKenzie,” said Donovan. “We are not asking you to help us. We are asking that you allow us to help you.”

  “We’ll reward you well for your cooperation,” added Mahoney.

  A feeling of excitement grew in my stomach and a kind of hollow feeling, too, that I couldn’t give a name. I couldn’t do anything about the feeling and wasn’t sure I wanted to. Like most people, I have been on the outside looking in while men and women I didn’t know manipulated events and made decisions that affected my life, sometimes gravely. Now I was being asked to participate, albeit in a somewhat roundabout manner. It made me feel the way I had when I was a freshman in high school and the “cool” kids invited me to lunch at their table. It made me feel important.

  Then Donovan had to ruin it all by saying, “At the same time, we will not allow you or anyone else to devalue our investment in the governor.”

  Suddenly, I was a guy who found himself lost in an elaborate maze without a ball of string or a trail of bread crumbs to lead him to safety. The voice in the back of my head that I had learned to trust long ago was now screaming at me. These men can’t be trusted. ’Course, I knew that before I even walked into the room.

  “Gentlemen, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stood and rolled my chair under the table. “The first lady is my friend, that’s true. But if she has a problem, as you say, I am unaware of what it could be. ’Course, if I did know, I wouldn’t discuss it with you or anyone else. That’s a promise I make to all of my friends and I never break my promises. Just to prove it, I’ll make you a promise. You fuck with me or my friends, I’ll fuck with you. I won’t pretend that you and your resources don’t scare me. They do. But you know what? I can be pretty scary, too.” I pointed at the file i
n front of Muehlenhaus. “Ask around.”

  Coole, Gunhus, and Mahoney looked at each other to see if they were even remotely frightened by my remarks. Apparently not. Muehlenhaus seemed delighted. He clasped his hands together and laughed. Donovan laughed with him, just not as vigorously.

  I was astonished by their reaction and probably looked it.

  The old man said, “You’ll do, McKenzie. You’ll do fine.”

  The thought I had at the Groveland Tap pushed itself from the back of my brain right up front. You are a schnook.

  2

  Normally, I would eschew the Minneapolis skyway system. Only normally it wasn’t five degrees below zero and normally the wind that seemed to gain velocity as it was funneled between the downtown skyscrapers wasn’t powerful enough to lift you off your feet.

  The skyway system was a network of streets in the sky, connected to each downtown office building with an enclosed pedestrian bridge or skyway that spans the street below. The original purpose was to allow pedestrians to travel from one building to another without suffering the cold and wind of Minnesota’s winters or the heat and humidity of its summers—neither of which was nearly as brutal as their reputations suggest, although have you been outside lately? Yet, over time, the skyway virtually took over downtown Minneapolis as people abandoned the city streets for its artificially controlled environment. Most businesses followed the pedestrians. In fact, very few businesses other than restaurants and shopping centers still had entrances on the street. It had reached the point where one intrepid magazine writer of my acquaintance wrote how he was able to “live” on the skyway for an entire month—working, lodging, eating, shopping, dating, and generally entertaining himself—without once allowing the warmth of the sun or the cool of moonlight to touch his face. Personally, I don’t think the man’s been the same since.

  Muehlenhaus had offered me transportation back to St. Paul, but I didn’t want him to believe for a moment that we were partners. Nor did I trust Norman. The look on his face—call me paranoid, but I had a feeling he was the type who held a grudge. So, I decided to hoof it to a hotel where a cab could be found that would take me back to my Audi.

  It was getting close to the rush hour and most of the people in the crowded skyway moved relentlessly as they completed last-minute errands or rushed to parking ramps in hopes of beating the traffic. When I slowed to punch the numbers for directory assistance into the pad of my cell phone, and then later the first lady’s office, the human current jammed up behind me like debris caught against a rock in a fast-flowing river.

  I wanted to warn Lindsey that her cover had been blown. The Brotherhood knew exactly where we had met and when, which meant there was a leak on her end. Only he or she didn’t know what we spoke about, which meant the source wasn’t necessarily someone close to Lindsey. My chief suspect was her bodyguard or driver or whatever the big guy was. But I couldn’t get through to her. I was passed from a receptionist to an assistant to an aide until I finally connected with a senior aide who took my name and number. I had the impression that she took a lot of names and numbers without passing them on.

  I didn’t think it was possible to just show up at the front door of the Governor’s Mansion on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, but there was another option. I used the memory function on my cell to dial Nina Truhler’s number. She answered on the fourth ring.

  “Rickie’s, how may I help you?”

  “Nina, you answer your own phones now?”

  “I’ve even been known to sweep out the place. How are you, Mac?”

  I could hear music in the background. Hoagy Carmichael. “Stardust.” Nina owned and managed a jazz club on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul that she had named after her daughter.

  “Very well, thank you, especially now that I’m speaking to you.”

  “Oh, you sweet-talker. What’s going on? Anything interesting?”

  “Yes. Interesting. That’s a good word for it.”

  “You’re off on another one of your adventures, aren’t you? I can tell by your voice. It always sounds excited when you’re into something.”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “To me you are. What is it? Can I help?”

  “I can’t tell you what it is. Truth is, I’m not exactly sure myself, yet. But yes, you can help.”

  “How?”

  “Can you get away tonight?”

  “I could be talked into it.”

  “Remember that $3,600 dress you gave yourself on your birthday.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like a chance to wear it?”

  Turned out she did.

  After arranging the logistics for our date, I said good-bye, deactivated my cell phone, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. Almost immediately afterward, a man grabbed me. Strong fingers closed around my right hand and yanked violently, twisting and pulling it up between my shoulder blades. The pain in my shoulder forced me to cry out, a moment of weakness I immediately regretted. At the same time another hand pressed hard against my spine, steering me out of the skyway traffic, driving so hard and fast I didn’t even think of ordering my legs to resist.

  He flung me up against the thick glass wall of an office that sold life insurance and leaned his full weight against me, pinning me there. My forehead was mashed against the glass and the point of my elbow was wedged between my body and his, making the pain in my shoulder even more excruciating.

  I couldn’t see his face, but I felt his lips close to my ear.

  “Do the right thing,” he hissed.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Do the right thing,” he repeated.

  “What is the right thing?”

  He stepped back and shoved hard again, using his weight and leverage to bounce me against the glass wall. He released me.

  I wasn’t thinking now, merely reacting. I spun around into a fighting stance, my legs wide apart, the outside edge of my heels more or less lined up with my elbows, my feet at forty-five-degree angles, my body sideways, my hands curled into forefists and held high in front of me. It’s called a “horse” stance and exposes few vulnerable targets to an opponent. Only there was none.

  I craned my neck searching for a target. A few pedestrians had stopped and were staring at me. I tried to look around and past them, spotted a man with brown hair and a dark blue jacket—it could have been a Minnesota Twins baseball jacket—swiftly bobbing and weaving away from me through the skyway traffic, and then he was gone.

  I brought my left hand up to massage the ache in my shoulder. Pedestrians continued to stare at me.

  “What the hell,” one of them said.

  My sentiments exactly.

  I kept the thermostat set at sixty-eight degrees. Even so, it cost a small fortune to heat my English Colonial and not for the first time I wondered if it wasn’t time to move on. It was big, something like 2,650 square feet of living space, including bathrooms and a finished basement. Yet just four rooms were furnished and I lived in only three of them. Shelby Dunston had once called it “the biggest, most expensive efficiency apartment” she had ever seen. I bought the house because, at the time, I wanted my father to live with me, and so he did, until he died six months later. Afterward, the kitchen, my bedroom, and what my father used to call “the family room”—where I kept my PC, TV, VHS and DVD players, CD stereo, and about a thousand books, some of them even stacked on the shelves—were all the space I needed.

  A few minutes after I arrived home, I settled in front of my computer with a coffee mug emblazoned with the logo of the St. Paul Police Department that Bobby Dunston had given me. It had not occurred to me to take souvenirs when I left the job, and Bobby had been supplying me with sweatshirts and other paraphernalia ever since. Sometimes I wished I could go back and get my own.

  I fired up the PC and began dragging databases. Kim Truong had taught me how. An ex-girlfriend named Kirsten had hired Kim to develop a specialized research program for Kirsten’s business. She introduced us,
mostly, I think, because she had wanted to prove that she was broad-minded when it came to hiring minorities. Kim didn’t like her. After a while I didn’t, either.

  Later, I hired Kim to teach me how to conduct computer investigations of people my travels brought me into contact with. She proved to be a persistent and uncompromising instructor. Under her tutelage I soon mastered the full spectrum of credit reporting, public records searches, database access, medical information retrieval, and how to explore the countless other nooks and crannies where personal information lies hidden. No amount of information—privileged or otherwise—was safe from my prying eyes. Kimmy’s massive tip sheet made it easier—I had had it laminated—along with other helpful hints on what to look for and how. Yet even without them, I soon became pretty adept at exposing an individual’s history with only a few strategic keystrokes and cursor movements. I am continually amazed by the depth and breadth of data available out there.

  Take John Allen Barrett. I didn’t have his social security number. Yet that didn’t prevent me from learning that he was born on November 30, at 01:13 A.M. C.S.T., in the State of Minnesota, in the County of Nicholas, in the City of Victoria, in Nicholas County Hospital to father Thomas Robert Barrett, age twenty-eight (at time of birth) and mother Kay Marie Barrett, age twenty-six (at time of birth), whose mailing address was 1170 County Road 13, Victoria, Minnesota. Or that C. T. Brown, M.D., certified that he had attended the birth of the child who was born alive at the place and date stated above. Or that, except for treatment of a sprained knee when he was a shooting guard coming off the bench for the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher basketball team, it was the only time that Barrett had ever been hospitalized for any reason.

  Nearly a quarter of the U.S. population has a criminal record of some kind, but not Barrett. According to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s database—which I accessed for only a $5 charge to my credit card—he had never been arrested for a felony or gross misdemeanor of any kind. Nor could I locate any juvenile police incident reports with his name on them. ’Course, if there had been, I was pretty sure his political opponents would have exploited them long ago.