Escape Clause

17

Virgil looked at the six Simonians for a moment, then said, “I hope ‘justice’ doesn’t mean ‘revenge.’”

Their spokesman said, “They can be the same.”

“Revenge can be a crime-usually is,” Jenkins said. “Whatever your shoes look like.”

One of the other Simonians said, “We want to know what is being done to capture this killer of Hamlet.”

“Everything we can,” Virgil said. He did a little tap dancing; he didn’t mention he was the only investigator on the case full-time. “The three of us are on the way to do another interview in the case. In the middle of the night. We don’t take murder lightly in Minnesota.”

A third Simonian nodded and said, “This is good. We need to look in the face of this Hamlet Simonian you say is dead. We have Hamlet’s cell phone number, and the Apple company says it is presently traveling through Kansas City, Kansas.”

Virgil’s eyebrows went up: “Really? We could use the number for his phone. It’s possible the killer took it from him.”

The spokesman said, “We will give you that number. When can we see the supposed dead Hamlet?”

“Right now, if you want.”

The six exchanged a long series of glances and nods, and the spokesman said, “Take us to him.”

–

They were five minutes from the medical examiner’s office, more or less, and when they got there, Virgil didn’t bother to go in with the Simonians. Instead, he stood in the parking lot and briefed Jenkins and Shrake on the Frogtown address where the meat dryers had been delivered.

When he was done, Jenkins asked, “We don’t know who lives there, or even if they’re involved?”

“That’s right. Don’t start shooting until we’re sure,” Virgil said.

“Okay. But…”

“What?”

“What if we kick in the door and find out we’re in a roomful of tigers?” Shrake asked.

“I’ll tell you what-you shoot a tiger, you’ll have to move to Texas,” Virgil said. “Don’t wait for a moving truck or anything. Get out of the state.”

They all thought about a house full of loose tigers for a minute, then Shrake asked, “How’s Frankie?”

He told them and about Catrin Mattsson taking the case.

Shrake nodded and said, “Catrin. That’s good. The main thing is, you won’t be around to kill whoever did it.”

“If either of those guys gets killed by a BCA agent and anybody finds out that Frankie’s the girlfriend of a BCA agent… there’ll still be a shitstorm,” Jenkins said.

“Maybe a little less with Catrin,” Shrake suggested. Because of her history.

–

One of the Simonians who’d gone inside came reeling back through the door of the ME’s office into the parking lot, making gasping, crying sounds, his hands pressed to the sides of his head.

“Guess it was Hamlet,” Jenkins said.

All six of them were out in a minute and one said to Virgil, “They cut off his arms. They cut off his arms.”

Virgil said, “I should have warned you.”

The man said, “They cut off his arms.”

Another one agreed. “His arms, they cut them off.”

The first one asked, “What do I tell his mother? They cut off his arms?”

Shrake said, “There can be some… adjustments… in a good funeral home.”

“They cut off his arms…”

Virgil tried to empathize, talking quietly to the Simonians about how he’d run down the killers, devote his life to it, if necessary, but in his heart, he worried a lot more about his injured girlfriend than a dead Simonian.

The Simonian, in his view, was another asshole who’d volunteered for a Bad Thing and paid for it. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have chosen for that to happen, but neither did he really agonize over it. The other Simonians may have sensed that, turning away from him and back to each other. Their head guy gathered the others around him and said, “This cannot stand. We will avenge our brother, I promise you.”

Jenkins said, “Hey, chill out, there,” but they ignored him.

–

The Simonians never did calm down. Virgil took out his ID case, pulled out several business cards, shuffled through them, found the one he wanted, handed one to the lead Simonian, and told him to call with questions. They said they would check into a motel and the original spokesman said, “We will call you and you can call us if you find anything.” He gave Virgil what had been a blank business card, with the name Levon Simonian and a phone number written in pencil.

As they drove away from the medical examiner’s office, Jenkins said to Virgil, “Better you than me.”

“What?”

“Giving those guys your business card. They got nothing to contribute, but they’re gonna call you every fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t think so,” Virgil said.

“You saw them, how freaked out they are,” Jenkins said. “I got a hundred dollars that says they call you fifteen times a day. At least fifteen times a day.”

“You’re on,” Virgil said.

Jenkins examined him for a moment, then said, “You’re too confident.”

“Because I gave them one of Shrake’s business cards,” Virgil said.

Shrake, in the backseat, said, “What? What?”

Jenkins snorted and said to Virgil, “You’re my new role model.”

“You really couldn’t do much better,” Virgil said.

Shrake’s phone rang and Jenkins started laughing.

–

Frogtown was a low-income neighborhood in St. Paul, mostly built in the later nineteenth century for working-class families. Although a few old Victorians still spotted the neighborhood, the streets were dark and close and many of the houses were failing.

Virgil turned down one of the narrower streets, and Jenkins said, “What the fuck?”

Up ahead, not far from what Virgil supposed was the address of the target house, two white trucks were parked on the side of the street. Television trucks.

“How did they know?” Shrake asked.

“You know goddamn well how it happened,” Virgil said. “Somebody at the office tipped them off. Sandy must have mentioned it to somebody, and the word got around. I don’t think she’d have done it on purpose. Never has in the past.”

“That ain’t right,” Jenkins said. “If they were there, they’re gone-unless they’re inside waiting for us.”

“Doubt that they’d hang around,” Virgil said.

–

The address where the meat dryers had been delivered was worse than most of the houses around, a crumbling two-story with a narrow porch. Virgil stopped the truck a few houses away, and they all looked at the unlit windows of the target house until Shrake said, “Well, shit. Let’s go knock.”

“You guys got your guns?” Virgil asked.

“Does a fat dog fart?” Jenkins asked. “Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get yours.”

“You’re right,” Virgil said. “Shrake-pull up the other seat and hand me the safe.”

Shrake pulled up the backseat that he wasn’t sitting on, dug out the gun safe, and handed it to Virgil. Virgil punched in the safe’s combination and took out the pistol and the belt-clip holster.

Jenkins, watching, said, “You know, chicks don’t go for guys who carry Glocks.”

Virgil said, “Yeah, but they go for guys who carry what I’m carrying.”

“Hope you got a safety on it, whatever it is; unlike a Glock.”

“Let’s shut up now, and stop being all nervous, smile for the cameras, and go knock on the fuckin’ door,” Virgil said. “Shrake, there’s a flashlight in the door pocket. Bring it.”

They got out of the truck and Shrake muttered, “I hope a Glock can stop a tiger.”

As they walked down the street toward the target house, ignoring the TV trucks, a girl came out on the porch of a house they were passing and said, “Hi, policemen.”

Shrake said, “Hi, honey. Listen, who lives in the house two doors up? Not the next one, but the one after that? Who lives there?”

“That’s a rent.”

“So you don’t know who lives there?”

“Nobody, now,” she said.

An older woman came to the door, carrying a dish towel, and asked, “Janey, who’re you talking to?”

“Some policemen.”

The woman looked past the girl and said, “Oh. Oh, are you the policemen? We’ve been waiting for you. The television reporters said you were on the way, but that was a long time ago.”

Shrake: “Ah, boy.”

Virgil said, “We’re going to the house on the other side of your neighbor, here. Your daughter says it’s a rental?”

“Always has been,” the woman said. “Nobody there now. They moved out a couple of weeks ago.”

“How long were they there?”

“Not long, hardly ever saw them.”

They chatted for another couple of minutes: the renters had been two men, one large and one much smaller, but who looked alike-brothers, the woman thought. “You know who’d know better? Mrs. Broda. She lives right across the street from them, the house with the porch light. She’s an old lady, she watches everything.”

–

They continued up to the target house, moving slowly, looking for any movement at all. There was none, and while Shrake and Jenkins waited on the sidewalk, Virgil climbed two steps up to the narrow board porch, looked in the mailbox-it was empty-and knocked on the door. There was no movement inside. He knocked louder, still got no movement, and the house lacked the organic feel of an inhabited place. Virgil couldn’t have explained that feeling, but a lot of cops experienced it, and it was rarely wrong.

Shrake came up on the steps and said, “Window shade’s up over here.” They walked down the porch to the front window and Shrake turned on the flashlight and they looked inside.

The place was empty: no furniture, no rugs, no nothing. They could see the corner of a small kitchen: no glasses, no soap.

“Goddamnit,” Virgil said.

Jenkins, from the sidewalk, said, “Let’s go talk to Ms. Broda.”

–

I want to look in the side door,” Virgil said. He took the flashlight from Shrake and walked around to the side of the house and looked through the window on the side door. He could see a mop in a corner, dried out, no bucket.

He turned the flashlight off and walked back to the front of the house and said, “Old lady.”

As they walked across the street, the doors popped open on the TV trucks, and cameramen hopped out, and the lights came up.

“Ignore them,” Virgil said.

Across the street, the door opened as soon as they started climbing the porch. An old iron-haired woman in a dark brown sweater was talking on a cell phone. Her hair was neatly combed, and she wore dark red lipstick, though she hadn’t entirely managed to keep the lipstick inside the lines. “Yes, they’re here now. The blond one might be a cop, but the other two look like Mafia. Yes, yes, I know. Talk to you as soon as they’re gone.”

Shrake said, “We do not look like Mafia.”

“Yes, you do,” Broda said. “Can I see some ID?”

“You do, kinda,” Virgil said to Shrake, as he showed Broda his ID. “But it’s a good look for you guys. They’d like it in Hollywood.”

“That’s true,” Broda said. “Anyway, that house is owned by Chuck Dvorsky, who lives over in Highland Park. He rents it, when he can. He rented it to two thugs a month ago and he says they skipped on the next month’s rent. Don’t think they ever lived there-I only saw them a couple of times. Once when a UPS truck delivered a bunch of big cardboard boxes. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were full of drugs. Anyway, they were pretty heavy. They were driving one of those orange trucks you rent from Home Depot for nineteen dollars. They loaded up the boxes and took off-haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since.”

“You know when this was? The date?” Virgil asked.

“Nope. About a month, I suppose, give or take.” She scratched her chin, then said, “I take that back. Probably three weeks. Less than a month.”

“Definitely a Home Depot truck?”

“Oh, yeah. People around here rent them all the time when they’re moving. People here move a lot.”

The cameramen were on the street, lighting up the front of the house, making movies of the interview.

Jenkins asked Broda, “How come you’re all dolled up, hon? You going on TV?”

“I thought they might ask,” she said. “When I saw the trucks arrive, you know, I walked down and asked what they were all about, and they said you’d be coming. About the tigers. I haven’t seen anything like a tiger, though.”

Virgil asked for descriptions of the men she’d seen, and Broda described Hamlet Simonian in some detail, and another, larger man who she said resembled Simonian. Like the first woman, she thought they might be brothers. Virgil took out his cell phone, called up the Channel Three website, and showed the woman the Simonian mug shot. “This him?”

She looked and said, “That’s him.”

–

When Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake finished with Broda, they thanked her and started back to the truck. The cameramen had been joined by reporters who pointed their microphones at the cops and one of them asked, “No tigers in there?”

“Nothing in there,” Virgil said. “House is empty, as far as we can tell. I don’t know about tigers; we had reports of a defenestration and had to check it out.”

“Defenestration? That’s a pretty big word for a cop,” one of the reporters said.

Behind Virgil, Jenkins muttered, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

The reporter said, “Hey, what?”

Virgil said, “Broda. He said you should interview Mrs. Broda. She’s waiting.” They all looked at Broda’s house and saw her smiling through the screen door.

–

Back in the truck, Virgil took out the cell phone number for Levon Simonian and called it. Simonian picked up on the second ring, and Virgil asked, “Listen, did Hamlet have a brother?”

After a moment of silence, Simonian said, “Hold on.”

He then muffled the microphone on his phone; Virgil could hear speech-like sounds, but couldn’t tell what was being said. A full minute later, Simonian came back on and said, “Yes. He possibly had a brother.”

“Big guy, powerful? Looked like Hamlet?”

Another few minutes of silence, then somebody in the background blurted, “Oh my God. Did something happen to Hayk?”

Virgil asked, “How do you spell ‘Hayk’? And do you have his birth date?”

He got the name and birth date, called them in to the BCA duty officer, told him to run the name, and also asked him to find a phone number for Chuck Dvorsky, the landlord of the vacant house.

The duty officer put them on hold for a moment, then came back with Dvorsky’s home phone number. Virgil called it. A woman answered and said she was April Dvorsky, Chuck’s wife. She said, “Chuck’s in El Paso, Texas, buying a Porsche 928.”

She said she did the accounting on the rental units their company owned and that the man who’d rented the Frogtown house had moved out before he moved in. “He never did put any furniture in it and then he skipped out on the lease.”

“Big guy, small guy?”

“Kinda small. Not light. Short and a little stout.”

“Has anybody else been in it since?”

“No, nobody-I mean, except to clean and get ready to offer again,” she said. “I was over there this afternoon with the cleaning crew.”

“So it’s been cleaned.”

“Yes, it has.”

Virgil asked her to stay out of the house; he was going to check to see if it would be worthwhile to have a crime-scene crew go over the place. “We can get a warrant, if you want,” he said.

“That’s okay. I’ll stay out and if you decide to send CSI, I’ll meet them there and let them in.”

“Thank you. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

–

Shrake said, “Cleaned up, so probably no prints, especially since it sounds like they didn’t even live there. They rented the house to have an address where UPS would drop the dryers.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. Virgil got on his cell phone, switched it to speaker, and called the duty officer at the BCA, who said he had a response from the FBI on the Hayk Simonian inquiry.

“He’s had a dozen arrests, mostly from working security at nightclubs around Los Angeles,” the duty officer said. “He beat up people. Sometimes, a little too much. He also did some jail time-not prison time-for receiving stolen goods. That was in Los Angeles, too. The feds picked him up on suspicion of distributing counterfeit bills in Glendale, California, but the witnesses failed to identify him.”

“Not a good guy,” Jenkins said.

“Not a good guy,” the duty officer said, “but a small-timer.”

“Let’s get the best and most recent mug shots we can find and give them to Jon Duncan,” Virgil said. “We need to get them out to the TV stations and the papers.”

“Too late for tonight,” the duty officer said. “The news is on now.”

“Yeah, but let’s try to get them out for the early morning news, run them all day tomorrow.”

–

With nothing more to do, Virgil dropped Jenkins and Shrake back at the BCA building, thanked them for their time, and drove home. On the way, Daisy Jones, the TV reporter from Channel Three, called and asked, “Why’d you go to that house? I know it wasn’t because somebody got thrown out a window. I got about two minutes before I’ve got to go on the air. Tell me.”

Virgil considered. His attitude toward information differed from the attitude of most cops. He figured if he knew something about a crime, and other cops knew it, and the crook knew it, who were they hiding the information from and why? Sometimes, there was a good answer to that question; most of the time, there wasn’t. One reason for parceling it out carefully was to get reporters obligated to you, because sometimes they knew things that you didn’t, and if they owed you, they might cough it up. And sometimes, putting information on the air, or in the papers, stirred up new information…

Daisy Jones was one of those willing to trade.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” he said.

“Of course not. Talk faster. I’ve now got one minute and forty-five seconds.”

“If the tiger thieves are processing the animals for traditional Chinese medicine, then they need to process quite a bit of meat-internal organs, gallbladders, eyes, all that. They need to dry it. That house got an order for five jerky dryers. The two men who took the delivery never really lived there-they rented it for one month, took the delivery, and disappeared.”

“That would mean that they were planning to kill the tigers. Might already have done it,” she said.

Virgil considered for another moment, then said, “Daisy, you are going to owe me big. I don’t know how you’re going to pay me back, but I’ll think of something.”

“No time, no time. Just tell me,” she said.

“Okay, you heard from local police sources and I’d appreciate it if you’d say it came from Minneapolis. One of the men seen at the house was Hamlet Simonian.”

“Oh my God, Virgil, you’ve nailed it down,” Jones said. “They’re killing the tigers or already have. I owe you big, thank you.”

Click. She was gone.

–

Virgil got to Mankato at eleven-thirty, washed his face, brushed his teeth, put a can of beer in his jacket pocket, and drove down to the Mayo.

Frankie was awake; Catrin Mattsson, Sparkle, and Father Bill were sitting next to her bed in side chairs, and the four of them seemed deeply involved in conversation. When they saw Virgil coming, Frankie said something to the others and they all stirred around and then Frankie asked, “Where you been, cowboy?”

“Trying to find those fuckin’ tigers,” Virgil said. He leaned over the bed and kissed her. “Got nothin’.”

“Now you’ve got a murder,” Mattsson said.

“Yeah, at least one.” He popped the top on the beer and told them about the missing Hayk Simonian and the Simonian justice crew.

“Interesting,” Mattsson said. “Could have two murders, with more on the way. I ought to be done down here in the next day or two at the most. If you haven’t found the tigers, ask Jon to let me help out. I’ve been working a cold case up in Isanti County and it’s not going anywhere. I don’t even think the dead woman’s from Minnesota.”

“Okay. I could use the help. It’s getting complicated,” Virgil said. He looked at Frankie: she was badly scuffed up, but the scuffing was superficial and would heal soon enough. “How’s your head?” he asked her. “I mean… headaches? Anything more about the concussion?”

“They say that looks okay,” Frankie said. “The boys were here. You’ve got to talk to Rolf. He’s been going around to bars, asking about who might have jumped me. You know he’s got a temper.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Virgil said.

“I already did,” Mattsson said. “I don’t know if it did any good.”

“Rolf has been known to engage in criminal behavior of a minor sort,” Virgil said to Mattsson. “Sometimes, with his mother. If I have to, I’ll bust his ass on suspicion of something and stick him in the county jail until we get this figured out.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Frankie said. “With his priors…”

“We’d let him go for lack of evidence,” Virgil said. “It’s better than having him find the guys who did this and then spending thirty years in Stillwater for killing them.”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “You know, there’s a little too much testosterone floating in the fishbowl. First you and then Rolf, and if Tall Bear was in town, he’d probably scalp them.” Tall Bear was her half-Sioux second son, who was on a towboat somewhere down the Mississippi.

“I’ll talk to him, too, if he comes back,” Virgil said.

–

Sparkle and Father Bill hadn’t said much, and Sparkle stood and said, “Come on, Bill, we ought to get some sleep while we can. Gotta be up early tomorrow.”

“What’s tomorrow?” Virgil asked.

“More interviews,” Sparkle said. “I’m almost done. I’d like to get inside the factory, but that’s not going to happen. Not unless I find a way to sneak in.”

“I wouldn’t allow that,” Bill said. “I’d tie you up and lock you in the trunk of the car if you tried.”

“Too much testosterone,” Frankie said again, and the other two women nodded.

When Father Bill and Sparkle had gone, Mattsson told Virgil that she hadn’t gotten anything solid on the men who’d attacked Frankie, but she had the names of a few possibilities.

“I leaned on Lucas for his asshole database and he gave me two names down here. I talked to them and they pointed me at a half-dozen guys who might do that sort of thing. I’ll be rounding them up tomorrow. If I find somebody who won’t show me his lower left arm, I’ll be going for a warrant.”

“Good,” Virgil said.

–

Mattsson left to get some sleep and Virgil asked Frankie what they’d all been talking about when he arrived. “Everybody looked pretty involved.”

“Well, you know Sparkle,” Frankie said. “She recognized Cat’s name and that whole case. Sparkle and Father Bill-they’re, I don’t know, effective bullshitters when it comes to psychology. They got her talking about it and it all kinda came out. Bizarre doesn’t even cover it; it was like a war crime, what that man did to her. Then Father Bill started doing therapy…”

“Oh, boy. I hope she doesn’t regret that. Or worse, start flashing back,” Virgil said.

“She already has flashbacks. She said so.”

“How about you?” Virgil asked. “How’s your head, aside from the concussion?”

They talked for a while, about the attack and what it meant. “The cops told the paper, and a couple of reporters tried to call, but the hospital pushed them off,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” Virgil said. “Do what you want-talk or not.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

–

Virgil’s phone rang and he glanced at the screen: BCA.

“Yeah?”

“Virgil, a guy called here and he wants to talk to you about that house up in Frogtown. He says it’s urgent.”

Virgil took the number and called it; finished his beer while the phone was ringing. The man who answered said his name was Joe Werner. “I work at the zoo. I wasn’t at your meeting, but I heard about it. I might have something you should know, but I don’t want it to get out that I told you.”

“If I can keep it to myself, I will,” Virgil said.

“Okay. It might not be anything…”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“I saw that TV thing about the house, where you went looking for the tigers, where they delivered the dryers, where that Simoniz guy lived,” Werner said. “There’s a guy here at the zoo, works here, named Barry King. He lives on the next block down from that house.”

“Huh. Interesting. What are you thinking?” Virgil asked.

“Well, uh, I really don’t want it to get out that I told you this, but Barry’s basically a jerk and he’s always got money problems. If you told me that you’d arrested Barry for stealing the tigers, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Anyway, I was thinking, if somebody asked Barry where you could get those dryers delivered… and if he knew a cheap place for rent…”

“Got it,” Virgil said. “You keep quiet about this, okay? I’ll be on it first thing in the morning. Thank you.”

–

Got the tigers?” Frankie asked.

“Not yet, but I might have a tail,” Virgil said.

His tip to Daisy Jones could have a nice payoff, he thought, and as far as Jones knew, she’d still owe him. A twofer.