Curse of the Jade Lily (3 page)

“Who gives a shit?” Anderson said.

“Derek, please,” Fiegen said.

“C’mon. We’ve already had this discussion.” Anderson gestured toward Donatucci, who continued to stare at the painting. “McKenzie, we’re not asking you to solve the crime or catch the thieves. As far as we know, you might be in on it.”

“Is that what you think?”

Anderson raised the palms of his hands toward heaven. “The thieves asked for you,” he said. “Why is that?”

I didn’t know, and not knowing was the only reason I didn’t get up and walk out of the room; maybe slap Anderson a time or two before I left.

“Well?” Anderson said.

“Kiss my ass,” I told him.

“Whoa,” he said. He pointed at me even as he turned to the man sitting next to him. “I like this guy.”

Perrin set her large hand on my wrist.

Fiegen leaned toward me. “Mr. McKenzie,” he said, “I hope you will forgive Derek’s outburst.”

“No, I won’t,” I said. “On the other hand, it is a question that needs asking, isn’t it? Look, this go-between business is all a matter of trust. You’re trusting me with one-point-three million bucks because Mr. Donatucci convinced you that I won’t take it to the nearest Indian casino and bet it on red; that I’ll use it to get the Lily back. I’m guessing that for some reason the artnappers trust that I’ll give them the ransom with no tricks; that they won’t end up with a suitcase filled with old telephone books and a face-to-face with a SWAT team. As for me, I have to trust that the artnappers won’t take the money and the Lily and leave me with a bullet in my back.”

“Isn’t that why we’re paying you a hundred and twenty-five grand?” Anderson asked, “To take that risk?”

“It’s a hundred and twenty-seven, and while I expect to be paid, if I do this thing it won’t be for the money.”

“What would trigger your participation?” Fiegen asked.

I shook my head slowly because I didn’t have a satisfactory answer for him. So far, I had been motivated by curiosity—but as the proverb says, curiosity killed the cat.

Satisfaction brought it back,
my inner voice said.

Cats have nine lives, I told myself. I have only the one.

“No hard feelings, McKenzie, huh?” Anderson said. “We just need to know—will you help us get the Lily back?”

The timing of the question couldn’t have been better, because a few seconds after Anderson asked it, the cell phone in Donatucci’s pocket rang. He answered it and listened for a moment.

“Ask him yourself,” he said. “He’s sitting right here.”

Donatucci set the cell on top of the conference room table and slid it toward me.

“It’s the thieves,” he said.

TWO

Lake Calhoun is the biggest of the twenty-two lakes found within the City of Minneapolis. When TV networks come to town to broadcast live sporting events, they usually set their cameras on the southwestern shore of the lake because it gives them a gorgeous establishing shot of the city skyline reflected in the water. That’s where I had parked, on the southwest shore, as the thieves had instructed. Now I was walking along the 3.1 miles of plowed jogging trail that circled the lake with a red rose in my hand—also as I had been instructed. The sky was brilliant blue and the sun was dazzling, but that was just for show. It was so damn cold that the petals of the rose froze solid a few moments after I left my Jeep Cherokee. My hands and feet nearly froze, too. I was dressed to endure the chill that I expected to encounter dashing between warm buildings and warm cars, not for the numbing cold that blew off a frozen lake in Minnesota in January.

The rose was for identification purposes. It meant that while the artnappers knew my name, they didn’t actually know me or what I looked like. Demanding that I carry it around the lake gave them a chance to get a good look at me. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish them from all the other men and women who nodded and smiled as we passed on the trail. Or maybe they were hiding in a snowdrift or camped out on one of the countless benches taking my photograph. It was unlikely that Tarpley would have risked being discovered—he had to know that I would have seen his photograph by now. Of course, it could have been just a test designed to see how well I followed instructions. They demanded that I give them the number of my cell phone when we spoke. Maybe they’d call and tell me to drive to the Mall of America. Maybe they’d tell me to jump in the lake. The only thing I knew for certain was that everything they’d done so far, including involving me in their affairs, smacked of deliberation.

I had been circling counterclockwise around the lake, walking at a brisk pace for no better reason than to keep warm. I hoped Donatucci wasn’t following me. The artnappers demanded that I come alone, and I said I would. I made Donatucci promise that there would be no surveillance of any kind, either at the lake or later when I delivered the money; nothing that would make the thieves twitchy. It might seem counterintuitive, but I felt I would be much safer without backup than with it. ’Course, I’ve been wrong before.

I passed the Thirty-second Street Beach and the sailing school, making my way toward West Lake Street and the edge of Uptown, an eclectic neighborhood of bars, clubs, restaurants, cafés, coffeehouses, retail shops, movie theaters, and one decent blues joint. I thought about the blues joint and the bars and restaurants as I made my turn around the top of the lake, telling myself how well a warm beverage would go down right about then. Like I said, though, the artnappers might have been testing to see how well I followed instructions, so I kept walking, moving past the North Beach and following the trail until I was heading south.

I was at about the 2.5-mile mark when they made their move, two men coming up fast behind me. I heard their footsteps and turned my head just as the larger of the men knocked me to the asphalt. The trail was icy and I skidded a few feet—I dropped the rose. The large man put a knee against my spine, pinning me down while he cuffed my hands behind my back. The smaller man pulled a black hood over my head. I protested.

“This isn’t necessary,” I said.

They didn’t care. They yanked me to my feet and half carried, half dragged me through the snow. A woman screamed. A man shouted, “What’s going on?” The two men paused. I heard the sound of a door being pulled back on rollers. A van, I guessed. I was shoved into the vehicle. The door was slammed shut. The vehicle started moving, picked up speed. There were a lot of sharp turns taken too fast. The van hit a patch of ice and fishtailed dangerously after one turn before the driver brought it under control.

“Anyone ever teach you how to drive in the winter?” I asked.

The driver didn’t respond. Perhaps he didn’t hear me through the hood.

Minutes seem like hours in a situation like that, so I couldn’t tell you how long we drove. I tried to remain calm. I reminded myself that the thieves needed me to get their money. They might try to frighten me to death, but they weren’t going to kill me. There was no profit in it.

I wasn’t kicked or punched or slapped around, although rolling about the van floor with my hands cuffed behind my back was hardly the most comfortable I’ve been. The kidnappers didn’t threaten or curse me, and I didn’t threaten or curse them. Nor I did I demand that they tell me who they were or where we were going or what they wanted. There didn’t seem to be much point. I just tried to maintain my balance and concentrate while we whipped around corner after corner.

Sharp corners meant city driving,
my inner voice told me.
No freeways; no long country roads.

Eventually the van slowed to a stop. The door slid open again. I felt the frigid wind blow into the cargo area. A woman said, “Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

A man answered, “I’m sure.”

“Did you search him?” the woman asked. “Did you check for a wire, for a GPS transmitter?”

“Oh shit,” the man said.

Suddenly there were hands patting me down, checking my pockets.

“I’m not wired, and I don’t have a tracking device,” I said. “I don’t have your money, either, so what the hell, guys?”

“I’m not interested in money, McKenzie,” the woman said. “I’m interested in the Jade Lily.”

A pair of hands pulled me off the floor and sat me upright so my back was resting against the wall of the van. Someone yanked off the hood. I blinked against the light. When my eyes focused, I found myself staring into the face of one of the loveliest women I had ever known—and the most treacherous.

“Heavenly Petryk,” I said.

She smiled her dazzling smile, opened her arms, the palms of her hands facing upward, and said, “Ta da.”

*   *   *

The door was closed and the van’s heater was working. Heavenly pulled off a knit hat, allowing her golden hair to flow over her neck and shoulders, and opened her coat to reveal a black turtleneck sweater that seemed awfully tight and not because she had put on weight recently. Her shimmering blue eyes reminded me of a half-wild feline; the kind that was well fed by doting owners who nevertheless allowed it to roam unrestricted at night. She knelt next to me on the floor of the van.

“Kidnapping, Heavenly?” I said. “Really? You couldn’t just pick up a phone and call?”

“I need you to know that I mean business,” she said. “The last time our paths crossed, I don’t think you took me seriously.”

“I took you very seriously, especially after your friends threatened to shoot me.”

“Oh, they were just fooling.”

I glanced at the three men in the van with us. None of them were holdovers from Heavenly’s previous band of miscreants, yet they all matched her criteria—they were young, good-looking, and well-muscled and watched her every move as if she were Aphrodite in earthly form. I doubted that the three of them together could have removed the childproof cap from a bottle of aspirin.

“Are you fooling now?” I asked.

Heavenly smiled and patted my knee. “It’s good to see you again, McKenzie,” she said.

“Gosh, Heavenly. It’s good to see you, too. How long has it been?”

I already knew the answer—twenty-six months. I reminded her that she and I and a fairly motley group of scoundrels had rummaged through much of St. Paul in search of gold bullion hidden decades earlier by the notorious bank robber Frank “Jelly” Nash.

“That was fun,” Heavenly said. “We made a lot of money. Not as much as we were hoping, but still…”

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Why am I here?”

“To hear my pitch.”

“Pitch?”

“I know the thieves want to sell the Jade Lily back to the museum. I knew they would pick a go-between to handle the transaction. I honestly didn’t know it would be you until early this morning.”

Early this morning?
my inner voice said.
She knew before I did.

“Are you saying you didn’t steal the Lily?” I asked.

“Of course not.”

“You’re not the one who sent me around Lake Calhoun with a red rose in my hand?”

“Why would I do that?”

Why, indeed? Heavenly wouldn’t need a rose to identify me. She already knew what I looked like, knew where I lived; she probably still had my cell phone number.

“Besides,” Heavenly said, “if I had stolen the Jade Lily, I sure as hell wouldn’t have involved you. You’re a dangerous man, McKenzie.”

I didn’t know if that was a compliment or not.

“Since we’re all friends here, why don’t you uncuff me?” I said.

Heavenly laughed at the suggestion. “Oh, you,” she said and patted my knee again. She gestured at her three thugs. “This is the famous Rushmore McKenzie I told you about. Do you think we should take off his handcuffs?”

The one nearest her said, “Yeah, go ’head. He doesn’t look like much.”

“Tommy, Tommy.” Heavenly shook her head at the insult and gave him a maternal smile; the kind mothers give their children when they say something foolish. “I think we’ll keep the cuffs on.”

“So, Hep, are you going to talk to me, what?” I said.

“You remembered my nickname.”

“Heavenly Elizabeth Petryk. Who could forget?”

She gave my knee another playful pat. “You’re sweet,” she said. “Okay, where should we begin? What do you know about the Lily?”

“Very little, I’m afraid,” I said. “Truth is, I haven’t even seen what it looks like.”

“It’s beautiful, McKenzie. Exquisite. It’s fourteen inches long, nine inches wide, six inches deep, and it’s carved from a single block of imperial jade mined in Burma, or whatever they call that country these days. That’s the good stuff, imperial jade—intense emerald green color and semitransparent. It was stolen from a Burmese artisan by a Chinese warlord around 1800. Now I admit that part of the story is a little murky. However, we do know for historic fact that the Lily was presented to Jaiqing Emperor, the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, in China in August of 1820, although we don’t know who gave it to him or why. On September second of that year, Jaiqing was struck by lightning and died. They say that’s when the curse began—the curse of the Jade Lily.”

I had to smile, not at the curse but at the obvious joy it gave Heavenly to tell me about it. The first time I met Heavenly, she was in the Minnesota History Center Research Library investigating everything she could find about Jelly Nash and the gangsters that resided in St. Paul when it was an “open city.” She lived for this sort of thing.

“Eventually, the Lily became the property of Empress Dowager Cixi,” Heavenly said. “It didn’t do her any good, either. The Empress Dowager ruled China during the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers were simple peasants who resisted the Western powers that wanted to carve China into colonies—France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Belgium, Russia, Japan, the Netherlands. The only countries that didn’t want to colonize China were the United States and Great Britain, although the British were intent on milking her for everything they could get.

“At first the Empress Dowager attempted to suppress the Boxers in order to appease the Europeans. When the German envoy was murdered on June 20, 1900, she realized that there was going to be hell to pay anyway, so she went all in. She committed the imperial troops to battle and declared war on all the Western powers. The foreign delegations that were in Beijing at the time—back then it was called Peking—took refuge in a fortified compound. They held out for fifty-five days under relentless assault and artillery bombardment until an army consisting of troops from eight different nations relieved them.