Curse of the Jade Lily (13 page)

“Who is she?” Gillard asked.

“Oh, perfect,” I said. “Just perfect.”

“She just might be,” Gillard said.

“Oh, puhleez,” Jenness said.

Gillard turned just in time to see her sliding down to the end of the bar.

“What did I say?” he said.

Heavenly made her way to where we were sitting. She removed her coat and draped it over the back of a stool. Her smile reminded me of the promise on a package of lightbulbs I had recently purchased—“Lasts up to 10 times longer while using 75% less energy.”

“McKenzie, I thought I might find you here,” she told me. “Hello, Nina. You look good. Have you had work done?”

“Heavenly,” Nina replied. “You cause so much joy whenever you go.”

Heavenly smiled at that. “Good one,” she said.

“Heavenly,” Gillard said. “You just might be the most aptly named woman I have ever met.”

“Oh brother,” Nina said before she, too, left the area.

“You know something, Jer?” I said. “You deserve this, you really do.”

“Deserve what?”

“Heavenly Petryk, this is Jeremy Gillard.”

“Call me Jerry,” he said.

“Heavenly represents Tatjana Durakovic.”

“Where have I heard that name?”

“Tatjana Durakovic claims she is the rightful owner of the Jade Lily.”

“That’s right,” Gillard said. “She sent a letter to the old man a couple years ago. Whatever happened about that?”

“Nothing happened,” Heavenly said. “Tatjana’s claim was ignored.”

“Yeah, that sounds like the old man. So, what can I do for you?”

“Heavenly has assured me that if you do not give up the Lily, she is going to steal it,” I said.

“Why not?” Gillard said. “She’s already stolen my heart. Can I get you anything? A drink? Dinner? The number of my hotel suite?”

Heavenly took the stool next to him. She drew her hands behind her head and fluffed her golden hair so Gillard could get a lasting impression of what lay beneath her thin blouse.

“Baileys on the rocks,” she said.

Gillard conveyed Heavenly’s order to Jenness. Jenness served the drink, but she wasn’t happy about it.

Gillard smiled pleasantly. “More and more I find that I am spending time with what my father called the wrong element,” he said. “This is great.”

“Mr. Gillard, McKenzie was not joking earlier,” Heavenly said. “I mean to see the Lily returned to its rightful owner.”

“Well now, Heavenly. According to my attorneys, who are paid an ungodly amount of money to know these things, the Lily belongs to me. Want to see the bill of sale?”

“You purchased stolen goods,” Heavenly said.

“I didn’t. The old man did. The bastard. Say it with me—the bastard.”

Neither Heavenly nor I joined in.

“Ha,” Gillard said. “That’s okay. He was actually a pretty good guy, if I do say so myself.”

“A poor businessman, though,” Heavenly said. “He bankrupted his company.”

“Well, it was his to bankrupt.”

“Now you’re broke.”

Gillard thought that was funny. “Depends on how you look at it,” he said.

“How many ways are there?”

“When dear old Dad died, I thought I had inherited eighty million. A couple of weeks later, I was informed by a very serious man who spoke in a hushed tone that I had actually inherited only eight million dollars. Poor, poor, pitiful me. I had to give up the company plane. Listen, during the Depression—the old man told me this story. He said during the Great Depression, there was this businessman who was worth ten million bucks. When the market crashed, he lost eight million. The next day he committed suicide. He just couldn’t believe it was possible to get by on only two million dollars. And this was back when two million was real money. Kids, I’m not that guy.”

“Still,” Heavenly said. “If you lose the Lily…”

“C’mon, honey, I already told McKenzie. The damn thing’s insured. What do I care what happens to it? Listen—I really don’t care what happens to it. I’ll even make a deal with you right now. This minute. I have a lending agreement with the folks at the museum. They get it for two years. Assuming McKenzie here recovers the Lily, how ’bout this—after the lending agreement expires, we’ll sell the Lily at auction. I’ll take out what the old man paid for it; Tatjana can have the rest—providing you spend a weekend in Vegas with me. Whaddaya say?”

“Wait a minute.”

“Going once, going twice, three times.” Gillard slapped the top of the bar with the flat of his hand. “Oh, sorry, time’s up. Too bad, so sad.”

“Wait a minute,” Heavenly said again. “Are you serious?”

“As serious as a nuclear explosion.” To prove it, Gillard made a thunder sound from deep in his throat and mimicked an expanding mushroom cloud with his hands.

“Are you insane?” Heavenly said.

Gillard turned to me. “What is your diagnosis, doctor?” he asked.

“Certifiable,” I said. “No doubt about it.”

“Whaddaya say, Heavenly?” Gillard said. “Do you agree to my terms?”

Heavenly stared at him for a moment and then bent her head so she could look past him at me. “McKenzie?” she said.

“What did that water buffalo you told me about go for?” I asked. “Four million pounds?”

“Yes, but … Wait a minute.”

Gillard smiled brightly at her while she did.

I was interested in her response as well. Before she could answer, though, I heard Ella singing
“Summertime, and the living is easy”
from my cell phone.

“This is McKenzie,” I said into the microphone.

Less than a minute later, I hung up.

Gillard and Heavenly were staring at me.

“Let the games begin,” I said.

They both smiled, so I did, too.

SEVEN

Their opening move was the same as before—walk around a park, this time Loring Park on the edge of downtown Minneapolis.

The money had been neatly packed in three medium-sized gym bags that I strapped to a portable dolly, the kind you see travelers pulling behind them at airports, with bungee cords. I had emptied the bags one at a time in the trunk of my Audi when they were first given to me on the bottom floor of the parking ramp that served the Midwest Farmers Insurance Group. I was taken aback by how wide the eyes of the three armed security guards had become when they saw all that cash. Obviously, they had no idea what they had been hired to protect. I carefully searched each bag and the bundles of cash for ink packs and tracers before repacking them, because I knew that’s what the artnappers would do. Mr. Donatucci kept telling me that I could trust him. Maybe so, but a lot of hands had handled both the money and the bags besides his, and I vowed I wasn’t going to get killed because someone along the line decided to be tough on crime. Besides, Donatucci had missed the third thief, and I was still concerned that he might be too old for this kind of play.

I made my way out of downtown St. Paul to I-94 and drove west, crossing the river into Minneapolis. It was at the peak of rush hour and excruciatingly slow going. It didn’t help that the sun had set—only five forty-five and it might as well have been midnight. I watched carefully to see if any cars were following me. I decided they all were.

I could sit almost anywhere and be comfortable with my own thoughts, except in traffic. After a few minutes of going nowhere very slowly, I started fidgeting, started squirming in my seat, started craning my neck this way and that in an attempt to see past the vehicles in front of me and find out what was causing the delay. In moments like that, not even the jazz they played on KBEM or one of my own CDs could soothe me. I understood road rage very well. Why I had never succumbed to it myself was a total mystery. Especially then. What was the matter with these drivers? Didn’t they know I was taking $1,270,000 in cash to a godless horde of thieves and killers! Finally the traffic began to loosen and we all started moving forward, picking up speed until we nearly matched the posted limit. I passed no accidents, no road construction zones, no disabled cars on the shoulder; saw nothing to explain the snarl. Which only made it worse.

Then came the Lowry Hill Tunnel where the freeway narrowed. Scores of frustrated drivers were backed up once again, some staying on I-94, some shifting to I-394, and some, like me, carefully picking their way across several lanes of unyielding traffic to reach the exit shared by Hennepin and Lyndale avenues. It was as if the artnappers had deliberately chosen a time and place guaranteed to make sure I was in the best frame of mind for a gunfight, which certainly would have been one-sided since I wasn’t carrying a gun as per instructions.

Eventually I parked the Audi on Willow Street in the shadow of a brownstone apartment building on the east edge of the park, not far from a coffeehouse. I left the engine running but turned off the radio. Enter Loring Park at the Willow and Fifteenth Street entrance, they had instructed. Enter at 6:27
P.M.
Not 6:15, not 6:30, 6:27, which convinced me that the artnappers were purposely messing with me.

At 6:23, I left the Audi and its warm interior and heated seats. The wind and cold immediately reminded me that it was winter in Minnesota. I felt goose bumps up and down my body—even the most seasoned Minnesotan sometimes needs a moment or two to adjust—but they soon went away.

I stepped behind my car. There was ample space between my bumper and the vehicle parked directly behind me. Because of the heaps of snow and ice thrown up onto the boulevard by the plows, we were both parked several feet away from the curb, which narrowed the roadway and put sideview mirrors in jeopardy. A narrow path through the mound of snow began where the other car’s front bumper ended and led to the sidewalk.

There was plenty of traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, much more than you would expect on what was ostensibly a side street. When I was sure there was none close at hand, I popped the trunk, using the remote control key chain, and muscled the dolly and the gym bags out, and I do mean muscled. The dolly, bags, and money together weighed over a hundred pounds, and as has already been established, I’ve been letting myself go lately. Looking carefully right and left, wishing I had ignored the instructions about the gun, I grabbed hold of the handle and wheeled the heavy dolly across the street to the entrance of the park.

Instead of shoveling or snowblowing the many trails that circled the small lake and traversed the park, the city had plowed them so they were much wider than they would have been normally and were covered with packed ice. The wheels on the dolly didn’t so much spin as they skidded behind me as I followed the trails. Sometimes the wheels found a rut or a chunk of ice and I had to yank the heavy dolly forward with both hands. Walk clockwise around the lake until you reach the Loring Park Community Arts Center, they told me, so I did.

Loring Park was established one hundred thirty years ago. It’s bordered on the east and south by expensive condominiums, apartments, office buildings, and that bastion of discontent, the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis. On the west, across Lyndale, are the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Lowry Hill, and, behind that, the very wealthy, very contented Kenwood neighborhood. On the north you’ll find a number of restaurants, art galleries, and clubs housed in a series of buildings that are nearly as old as the park itself, as well as the Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Looming above it all is the mighty century-old dome of the magnificent Basilica of St. Mary’s.

Yet despite its high-tone neighbors, Loring Park is more than a little creepy. The lights aren’t what they could be, and the shadows they cast hold a menacing quality despite the bright city skyline that hangs above them. Some people call it “whoring park” because of its reputation as a prime site for late-night hookups. When I was a kid, it was also known as a spot where gay men would cruise other gay men, especially after the bars closed. Suburbanites would drive up and down Willow and Fifteenth, point at a man, any man, and say, “There’s one.” That was a long time ago, though. The Twin Cities Gay Pride Festival is held in Loring Park now.

I once heard a story that when the city temporarily drained the lake a couple of decades back, they discovered the remains of at least twenty bodies settled in the soft bottom. It was said that most of them were allegedly deposited there by Isadore Blumenfeld, alias Kid Cann, who ran the rackets in Minneapolis until he was arrested for violating the Mann Act and jury tampering in the early sixties. I presume the story was exaggerated. On the other hand, last November they found a human skull in the marshy area around the dock that juts into the lake, and as far as I knew, forensic anthropologists still haven’t determined its age, sex, or race, much less who it had belonged to.

In any case, the people I encountered did little to contradict the park’s checkered past. I counted at least five meth addicts chilling on the metal benches that faced the lake. One kid strolled by cradling a bottle of Grey Goose vodka. “Time to get my goose on,” he said before disappearing up a trail that led to the park’s horseshoe pitch. In the distance I heard a flute—there’s always a white guy playing the flute, always.

Even the black squirrels in Loring Park are overly aggressive. They’re insanely obese because people give them food despite the signs requesting that park visitors please refrain from feeding the animals, and if you don’t have a snack to share when they saunter by, they can become downright hostile.

I did as I was told, circling the lake, my feet crunching on the ice beneath them. I passed the horseshoe pitch, crossed the concrete and metal bridge, and skirted the tennis courts, the fountain, and the park’s sleeping garden. Somewhere along the way I started to shiver. I had worn my Sorels, a thick leather coat, leather gloves, and a knit hat with the emblem of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, which I pulled down over my ears. I was still cold. Yet, despite the weather, there were a surprising number of people in the park. Individuals cutting through on their way to or from work. Couples strolling while holding hands. Men and women engaged in a brisk walk. Still others jogging, which always amazed me, people jogging in the cold, although—I patted my stomach—it wouldn’t kill me to go for a long run.