Curse of the Jade Lily (8 page)

“If we could, we would. Unfortunately, the Lily is in the wind—isn’t that the criminal vernacular for an item that is missing?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Pozderac slowly edged to where I was sitting and looked down at me. “Lily must be returned,” he said. “Immediately. See to it.” He moved to the door, opened it, and stepped out. “See to it,” he repeated over his shoulder.

I guessed that he was speaking to Hemsted, because the man pulled out a chair and sat at the table directly across from me.

“McKenzie,” he said. “It greatly distresses me to be forced to speak to you in this manner. I had hoped you would embrace our cause out of a sense of…”

“Patriotism?”

“To be blunt, Branko Pozderac is not the first asshole that our government has had to appease in order to keep the peace. I cannot go into details. I can tell you that Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of three ethnic groups, constituent people they’re called—Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats—that were happily slaughtering each other not so very long ago. Each group has an equal share in governing the country. As you can imagine, the government is a fragile enterprise at best. So far it works. To keep it working, at least in the short term, means catering to Pozderac. He wants the Lily. He claims it’s a national treasure. We’re going to get it for him.”

“You mean I’m going to get it for him.”

“I’m not very good at threatening people,” Hemsted said, “but I can arrange an audit of your tax returns for each of the past seven years and every year from now until you die, at which time I’ll have your estate audited. I can arrange to have your name placed on the Do Not Fly list. I can arrange for you to have problems with your passport, your Social Security, your Medicaid, with any federal program. I can have men dressed in black interview every person you have ever met about your character, your love of country, threats you might have made against the government. I can have you detained and released over and over again as a person of interest in whatever interests Homeland Security at the moment. That’s what I can do legally. Give me time and I’ll think of a lot more.”

“I get it.”

“Illegally, well…”

“I get it.”

“I can make your life miserable.”

“You’re mistaken, Jon,” I said. “You are very good at threatening people.”

“Will you retrieve the Lily for us?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Please do.”

He smiled then, but there was no joy in it. In fact, I could detect a measure of pain in that smile, the kind of pain that comes from self-knowledge gained at a heavy price, and it occurred to me that Hemsted might have become a prick against his will.

“I’ll be in touch, McKenzie,” he said.

He stood and nodded at Rask. “I am sorry about all of this, Lieutenant,” he said. “I truly am.”

He left the room a moment later. Rask got up and carefully closed the door as if he were fighting the impulse to slam it.

“Our federal tax dollars at work,” I said.

*   *   *

Rask turned slowly toward me. The scowl on his face reminded me of the Tiger tanks that chewed up Tom Hanks and his men in
Saving Private Ryan.

“Tell me about Tatjana Durakovic,” he said.

“Didn’t I mention her last night?”

“It must have slipped your mind. ’Course, you have a history of withholding vital information from the police, don’t you?”

“I never actually met the woman.”

“Tell me.”

I did, giving up Heavenly’s name along the way, recalling our conversation without explaining the details of how we came to have it.

“You’re saying that this Tatjana is in Ontonagon, Michigan?” Rask said.

“I’m saying that’s where I was told she was from. I have no idea where she is now or where she was last night when Tarpley was killed. What time was that, by the way?”

Rask paused for a moment as if he were weighing the consequences of his next statement before he made it.

“I need a favor,” he said.

“A favor? From me?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m not promising anything, but you can always ask, LT.”

“Call me Clay.”

That made me pause. I’ve known the man for half a dozen years, and we’ve never had what you might call a warm relationship. Usually it was downright frosty. In any case, he’s never called me by my first name and I’ve never used his.

“No, LT, I don’t think I can do that.”

Rask nodded as if I had passed a test. He sat next to me and leaned in. His speech started slow and calm but increased in ferocity toward the end.

“It took a lot to just sit here and listen to those sonsabitches talk, pushing people around, making demands. Who the hell do they think they are? They come into my house and tell me which homicides I can investigate and which homicides I can’t? In my house? I don’t give a shit what the mayor says. I don’t give a shit what that politician he appointed chief of police says, either. Cooperate with federal authorities? If I don’t bend over and kiss my own ass for the FBI or the DEA or those incompetents at Homeland Security, I sure as hell am not going to do it for these miserable bastards. No, no, no.” He held the third “no” like it was the final note in a trumpet concerto. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to investigate this homicide. I’m not going to redline it just because these bastards find it inconvenient. I’m going to discover who killed Patrick Tarpley and why. You’re going to help.”

“I am?”

“You’re damn right you are.”

“Why would I?”

“Because you used to be a cop, McKenzie. Here’s your chance to be a cop again.”

“Don’t do this to me, LT.”

“You’re going through with the exchange. If the thieves call back, you make the deal.”

“You want me to steal the Lily?”

“What? What are you talking about? Did I say that? Did I say steal the Lily and give it to those assholes? I did not. Give the Lily to the insurance company like you’re supposed to. If those assholes want the whajamacallit so bad, they can go to court like civilized people. But, McKenzie, listen. When you make contact with the artnappers, you need to give me every scrap of information about them that you can. You know what to look for, what to listen for. You know people, too. Don’t look at me like that. The people you know, you can get information that I can’t. You do this for me, McKenzie. Meanwhile, I’ll pursue the investigation on the down low. When I get anything, I’ll tell you. You do the same.”

Like you would do that,
my inner voice said.

“In that case, when was Tarpley killed?” I asked aloud.

“The ME fixed the time of death at between one and four
A.M.
Monday,” Rask said. “He couldn’t narrow it down further because of the extreme cold.”

“The Lily was stolen at two…”

“Tarpley was probably clipped between, say, two thirty and four, then.”

“The artnappers first contacted the museum at eight. According to the museum’s security footage, Tarpley handed off the Lily to at least two accomplices inside an SUV. Maybe they clipped him later for his trouble. That would sever any identifiable connection between them and the heist and leave them with one less partner to share the ransom with.”

“Always an incentive.”

“But, LT—”

“What was he doing in Wirth Park, in the middle of the night, in the cold, in the snow?” Rask said, finishing my thought. “We spoke to his wife. Her name is Yvonne Tarpley, called Von. Twenty-two years younger than her husband. Pretty. At least she was pretty before we told her we found her husband—you know how grief can, what it does to some people.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“She claimed she hadn’t seen or heard from her husband since he left for work Sunday afternoon. She said he hadn’t answered his cell phone and she was starting to get anxious. She said she called the museum, but there was no answer. She refused to believe Tarpley had anything to do with the theft.”

“What about the murder weapon?”

“A 25.”

Despite what you might see on TV and in the movies, only amateurs use guns the size of howitzers. Professionals prefer small-caliber weapons, get in close, aim for vital organs. I didn’t express that theory out loud, of course. It would be like telling a landscaper that grass was green. Instead, I said, “I don’t suppose you were allowed to ask Hemsted and Pozderac where they were between two thirty and four yesterday morning.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“It would be fun to put them at the scene, wouldn’t it?”

“It would make my day.”

“I appreciate that. They hurt your pride.”

“Yeah, they hurt my pride. Coming in here and telling me
not
to be a cop,
Not
to do my job. Threatening me if I do. They threatened you, too, McKenzie. Are you going to let them get away with that?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I’ll tell you this much, LT. If I do what you ask—you follow baseball, right? When they list transactions, do you know what it means when Team A trades a guy to Team B for a player to be named later?”

“It means the quality of the player Team A gets in return will depend on how well the deal works out for Team B. You’re saying that the more you do for me, the more I’m going to owe you.”

“You might want to think about that before we become co-conspirators. I’m high maintenance.”

*   *   *

I stepped out of the front door of the Minneapolis City Hall and got slapped in the face by a hard, cold wind for my trouble. I pulled my scarf tight and zipped my leather jacket closer to my throat as I made my way to the Jeep Cherokee. The time on the parking meter had expired. Fortunately, there was no ticket under my windshield. I unlocked the vehicle, slid inside, and started it. I pulled my cell from my pocket and made a call while the engine warmed up. The phone was answered by Special Agent Brian Wilson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Hi, Harry,” I said. I had given him the nickname when we first met because he reminded me of the character actor Harry Dean Stanton. As far as I knew, I was the only one who called him that. “How are things?”

“Hey, McKenzie. What’s going on?”

“Same-old, same-old.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Just another day in paradise. So, Harry—how’s my credit?”

“I think you might be one or two favors ahead,” Wilson said. “Why?”

“I need information.”

“You are so high maintenance, McKenzie. What kind of information? Tell me it’s not confidential.”

“I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. I need to find out as much as I can about a State Department wonk named Jonathan Hemsted.”

“The State Department? Getting a little ambitious, aren’t you, McKenzie?”

“Just a few minutes ago, Hemsted asked me to do something that I’m pretty sure is illegal.”

“How illegal?”

“If I did it, you would throw me in the can without a moment’s hesitation.”

“Hell, McKenzie, I’d do that if I caught you littering. What exactly do you want to know?”

“How much trouble I’d be in if I told Hemsted to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, if you can get me anything on a politician from Bosnia and Herzegovina named Branko Pozderac, that would be helpful, too.”

“This doesn’t sound like one of your usual gigs. What’s going on?”

“I’ll be happy to tell you everything, Harry, once I find out how dangerous Hemsted is. After that, you might not want to know.”

FIVE

Chopper’s wheelchair was parked behind a small table in the center of the restaurant by the time I arrived, and a pretty waitress dressed in black was fussing over him. It wasn’t the let-me-help-you-because-you’re-handicapped sort of fussing, either. It was the kind that accompanied the question “Your legs don’t work, but what about the rest of you?”

I paused inside the front door to give him time to make his play. Even from his wheelchair, which Chopper operated with the fearlessness of a dirt-track biker, thus the nickname, he managed to have more fun—and pick up more girls—than anyone else I knew. I had known him since I found him lying in a parking lot in St. Paul with two slugs in his spine—this was back when I was a cop and he was a robber. He had insisted that I saved his life and therefore was responsible for it, although it seems like he has always done more for me than I ever have for him. Over the years he slowly but surely gave up the business of thievery for the far more lucrative and entirely legal occupation of ticket scalper. That’s what he insisted on calling it, “scalping,” although by act of the state legislature he was now a taxpaying “ticket broker.” What other enterprises he continued to involve himself in were kept secret—“the less you know, the more you’ll like me,” he once said.

After a few moments, an attractive hostess carrying menus as if they were stone tablets asked if I wanted a table.

I pointed at Chopper. “I’m with him,” I said.

“Oh, you’re Mr. Coleman’s guest,” she said. “Please come this way.”

Mr. Coleman?
my inner voice asked.

By the time we reached Chopper’s table, he had transcribed the waitress’s name and phone number into his iPhone and had even taken her photo. The waitress became flustered when the hostess approached, and I wondered if the restaurant had a nonfraternization policy.

“I’ll return with your bread in a moment, Mr. Coleman,” she said before hurrying away.

Mr. Coleman?
my inner voice asked again.

The hostess seated me and wished us both bon appétit. When she departed, I asked, “Mr. Coleman?”

“’At’s my name, don’ wear it out,” Chopper said.

“When I invited you to an early dinner an hour ago, you said you never heard of this place, and now it’s Mr. Coleman?”

“I told ’em to call me Thaddeus, but they said oh, no, they couldn’t, although…” He gazed at the waitress and raised and lowered his eyebrows Groucho Marx–style a couple of times.

“How do you do it?” I asked. “I’ve been in this restaurant a dozen times and they never called me Mr. McKenzie. They don’t even know my name.”

“When you friendly t’ everybody, everybody be friendly t’ you. You such a morose fellow, McKenzie. Gots t’ lighten up.”