Escape Clause

28

Jenkins could barely remember what it was like doing surveillance before he got his phone-linked iPad, but he could remember the feeling: it was brutal. An overnight watch could still be deeply boring, but now he could prop the iPad on the steering wheel and browse the ’net while still keeping an eye on the target, and, in the end, get the BCA to pay for his Verizon text charges.

Until four o’clock in the morning, the target had been pretty quiet. After he’d stepped out on his porch to look for surveillance, Peck had gone back inside and hadn’t stuck his head out since. The television had gone off before two o’clock, though there was still a light in the living room. Then that went off, and a light in the back of the house had come on-bathroom or bedroom, Jenkins thought-and then that one went off, too.

Jenkins read a couple of investment forums, a news forum, a forum that specialized in Chuck Norris jokes (“What do you get when you play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backward? The sound of Chuck Norris banging your mom.”), and a gun forum and was browsing men’s Purple Label suits on the Ralph Lauren website when things began to pick up.

A few minutes after four, as Jenkins was checking out a white silk gabardine suit for $4,995, an RV pulled up outside Peck’s house and six heavyset men spilled out into the street.

Jenkins said, “Oh, shit,” and picked up the phone and called Virgil.

Virgil groaned when the phone went off, groped for it on the windowsill next to the bed, and asked, “What?”

Jenkins said, “The Simonians just arrived in their RV. They’re going up to Peck’s house. What do I do if they kidnap him?”

Virgil took a second to pull his head together, and said, “Ah, man-Jenkins, you gotta get over there and break it up.”

“You know, if they beat on him a little bit, it might encourage…”

“No! Daisy knows you’re sitting there. She’d know that you let them take Peck,” Virgil said.

“Ah, shit, you’re right. I’m going,” Jenkins said.

“Try not to shoot anyone.”

“Gotta go, they’re beating his door down.”

“Call me back!”

–

Frankie said, “Now what?”

Virgil said, “Tell you later” and fell facedown on his pillow and was almost instantly asleep. Peck, at that same moment, was knocked out of bed by what sounded like an earthquake. With the two Xanax holding him down, he didn’t notice that he was naked, and not only naked but sporting a substantial erection. He lurched out of the bedroom to the front door, which he yanked open. A crowd of men stood on his porch, and all seemed to step back when they spotted his hard-on pointing at them, then one of them tried to yank open the locked aluminum door and, when that didn’t happen, punched a fist directly through the screen.

Peck almost lost his balance and tried to turn to run, but then a siren bleeped in the street and an unmarked car pulled to the curb showing police flashers, and a large man jumped out of the car and shouted, “Get out of there. Simonians-get out of there.”

Peck slammed the door and stood in the hallway for a moment, wondering what he was doing standing naked in the hallway with an erection. Maybe he’d been masturbating? He didn’t think so. He stumbled back to bed and fell asleep.

On the porch, the Simonians confronted Jenkins, who said, “I oughta arrest every fuckin’ one of you guys. You can’t go driving around town kidnapping people, for Christ’s sakes…”

“He cut the arms off Hamlet and the legs off Hayk,” said Levon Simonian, their spokesman. “We gonna cut off his pecker and make him eat it.”

“That’s a worthwhile thought, but not here,” Jenkins said. “It’d cause all kinds of trouble. You guys get back in your RV and get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to see you back here again. If I do, I’ll kick your ass.”

“You think you can take all of us?” the youngest of the Simonians asked.

Jenkins did a quick survey-except for the youngest one, they were all middle-aged and fat, though they showed signs of having done a few million bench presses-and said, “Yes.”

They spent a few seconds in a stare-down and then Levon Simonian said, “We should complain to the police force in St. Paul that this man walks around free, while Hamlet has no arms and Hayk has no legs.”

“You do that,” Jenkins said. “First thing tomorrow morning. Right now, let me tell you about Mickey’s Diner…”

Five minutes later, he had the RV on its way to Mickey’s, and Jenkins called Virgil.

“What?”

“I ran them off. You want me to sit here some more? Peck saw me,” Jenkins said.

“No. Go home. Sleep. Don’t call me again,” Virgil said.

“You sound a little snappish.”

Click.

“And very un-Virgil-like,” Jenkins said to the dead phone.

He went home.

–

At seven-thirty in the morning, Virgil was getting into his second round of REM sleep when the phone rang again and he vaulted out of bed, grabbed it, and shouted, “What?”

After a couple of seconds of silence on the other end, a man’s voice said, “This is Rudd. I’m the highway patrol guy who helped you follow that Zhang Ferrari into Minneapolis?”

“What?” Confused now, and quieter.

“I thought I should call and tell you, in case you hadn’t heard, the Minneapolis cops just pulled old man Zhang’s body out from behind a Dumpster at a strip club.”

“What?”

Rudd had gotten the news by monitoring his radio, and finally by a call to the Minneapolis cops because of his involvement with tracking the Ferrari. When he was told that Zhang was dead, he thought to call Virgil.

“Thank you,” Virgil said. “This is a big deal-this is the third murder in the tiger hunt.”

–

Frankie was awake now and she groaned and said, “Bad night.”

“I gotta go,” Virgil said.

“You okay?”

“I feel like somebody hit me on the head with a phone book.”

He stood in the shower for five minutes, switching between hot and cold, shaved, got back in the shower, and dressed. Frankie had eased out of bed while he was cleaning up and gave him a thirty-ounce Yeti Rambler container of coffee to take with him. Forty-five minutes after Rudd’s call, he was headed back north to the Cities; he’d had maybe four hours of sleep after a whole series of sleep-deprived nights and was feeling it. The coffee helped.

–

On the way north, he called the Minneapolis cops and talked to a homicide detective named Anderson Huber. “A garbage guy found him about five o’clock this morning when they were moving a Dumpster. Missing his wallet, a five-carat diamond pinky ring, and a watch that his kid says is worth a hundred grand, though that’s a little hard to believe. He said it was a Filipino something-or-other. My partner wrote it down, if you’re interested. Anyway, he’d been dead for several hours, but a good time of death might be hard to come up with because his body was superheated…”

“How’s that?” Virgil asked.

“He was behind the strip club, that’s the Swedish Bikini Bar, and they got a stove vent that comes out of a wall right above the Dumpster. Warm enough that you get bums sleeping back there in the winter. Last night, might have been a hundred and fifty degrees back there, so… he was superheated. On the upside, he smells like a whole lot of expensive cheeseburgers.”

“Shot?”

“No. Strangled. Rope was still around his neck, nylon rope, pretty small diameter, that parachute-cord stuff, you can get it anywhere,” Huber said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the killer has rope creases or bruises on his hands, because this thing really got dragged on.”

“What does his son say?” Virgil asked.

“We’re talking to him now. He’s pretty screwed up. He tried to file a missing persons report last night; he called 911 a couple of times, but you know… the old man was an adult, nothing wrong with him, not mentally ill or incapacitated, and the son told the 911 operator that his old man sometimes liked to go out and look at girls. We thought maybe he’d found a hooker and was getting his ashes hauled.”

“You look at the kid’s hands?”

“Yeah. Nothing there. I’ll tell you what, Virgil, it’s possible, I guess, that the kid killed him, because as I understand it, the Zhang guy’s got a lot of money, and the kid stands to inherit. But when he freaked, it’s hard to believe that he was faking it. Me and my partner went to tell him-we knew about him because of the 911 calls-and if he was faking, he ought to get an Academy Award. We had to sit him down to keep him from falling down, and he was bawling like a little girl. Not fake bawling, real bawling. Then when we took him to identify the body, he started all over again.”

“All right, I’m going to tell you who did it, or at least who knows who did it.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Virgil gave Huber everything he had on the tiger case and told him that he believed Peck was involved in at least two murders, and now, quite possibly, a third. “I believe if he didn’t do it, he knows who did. He does know the kid.”

“I’ll go ring his doorbell,” Huber said.

“Before you do that, ask the kid if he thinks Peck was involved in the murder. Sneak up on him, and then whack him with it. See what his face says.”

“Where are you at right now?”

“Highway 169 south of the Cities. I’ll be up there about nine-thirty,” Virgil said.

“How about we keep him here until then, and you whack him-since you’ve got the background, you might be able to riff on something we don’t even know about.”

“Happy to. I’ll see you then,” Virgil said.

–

Traffic was bad going into town, but Virgil found a police-reserved parking spot next to City Hall and put out his BCA dashboard sign, then hustled into what he believed might be one of the ugliest city halls in the country. He found Huber, who took him down to the office of a homicide lieutenant named Kevin Howser, where Zhang Xiaomin was sitting in a visitor’s chair, typing on a laptop, while the lieutenant was talking on his phone.

Zhang’s face looked raw, Virgil saw, as though he’d been weeping all night, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked up when he saw Virgil and his eyes shifted. Virgil thought, Okay, he knows who I am.

Howser got off the phone and crooked a finger at them and said, “Virgil, how you doing?”

“Could be worse,” Virgil said. Then: “Wait-let me think about that.”

“You haven’t found the tigers.”

“Not yet,” Virgil said. Zhang was sneaking peeks at him. “I’m hoping Mr. Zhang can help us with that. He’s good friends with our leading suspect who we think might also have murdered his father and a couple of other people. What about that, Mr. Zhang?”

Zhang pretended to be startled, but he wasn’t, and the three cops exchanged a quick flicker of glances. Zhang said, “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” Virgil said. “We met in the Cub supermarket, but I didn’t know it at the time. Who tipped you off? Was Peck out in the parking lot?”

Zhang’s head seemed to sink an inch or two into his chest, and he said, “I don’t know what this officer is talking about. I know this Peck man, but I only get medicine for my father.”

“Tiger medicine?” Virgil asked. “Was your old man the West Coast distributor?”

Zhang’s head seemed to sink an inch farther into his chest: “I don’t know their business. My father didn’t tell me. I only bought small medicine from Dr. Peck, for my father.”

Virgil said, “You’re full of shit, Zhang. I know you’re involved and I’m gonna put you in prison for it. The big question now is, did you help kill your father?”

Zhang’s head came up and he shouted, “I did not kill my father. I did not. You go away. Go away.”

–

Virgil jerked his head at Howser and Huber to get them out in the hall, and Huber said in a low voice, “Okay, I see him now. He’s involved.”

Virgil said, “Do me a favor. Get your crime-scene guys to take a look at his dirty clothes and the driver’s seat in his car. If they pick up a single tiger hair…”

“We can do that,” Howser said. “I agree with Huber-he knows something that he’s not telling us. I didn’t see that in him until now. Since we talked to you on the phone, we took a look at old man Zhang online, and there’s an article in Forbes that said that he got out of China with more than a hundred million dollars, and another small item from a Chinese American society rag from LA that says he’s about to get married again. His kid might think that money is going away.”

Howser asked Virgil to make a formal statement about his observations of Zhang; they could already go through the father’s belongings at the hotel because there wasn’t any question of a crime in his case, and because he’d ridden in a car under suspicious circumstances, they could also look at the car. What they needed from Virgil was anything that would allow them to look at the son’s possessions. Virgil didn’t have much, but with the right judge, they might get a warrant.

–

Virgil was making the statement when Catrin Mattsson called: “I think I found Blankenship. You still in bed?”

“No, I’m up at the Minneapolis PD,” Virgil said.

“Great. He’s at a biker friend’s house in Falcon Heights. I’m on my way up there. What are you doing up so early?”

Virgil told her about the murder of Zhang, and she whistled. “That’s three. The tigers don’t look so important anymore. You’ve got to get this guy off the street.”

“Yeah, I do. Did you hear about the fire?” Virgil asked.

“What fire?”

He told her about the fire, and the question of who might be behind it. “We’ll get Blankenship and squeeze his turnip-like head,” Mattsson said. “I got his location from his brother, who hates him. His brother got it from their mom, who also apparently hates him.”

“How far out are you?”

“I went through Jordan a few minutes ago,” Mattsson said. “What’s that, forty-five minutes?”

“I’ll meet you at the office in forty-five minutes. If this guy is with a biker friend, maybe I ought to get Shrake to back us up.”

“I’ll buy that.”

Virgil called up Jon Duncan, told him about the murder of Zhang and about the pending arrest of Blankenship. “I need Shrake, if I can get him.”

“I saw him here a few minutes ago,” Duncan said. “If you had to guess… how long before you wrap the tiger thing?”

“Tomorrow? The Minneapolis cops are going to squeeze Zhang the younger, and I doubt that he’ll hold out. Not completely hold out, anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives up Peck. I think Zhang will know about the tigers.”

“Good. That’s good,” Duncan said. “Man, three dead. This really turned into something. Virgil? Remember what I said about you and Blankenship. You can go, but let the other guys carry the load. We don’t need him walking around loose, but we don’t need him shoving a lawyer down our throat, claiming that you violated his civil rights or some shit like that. Don’t touch him.”

“I won’t even take my gun with me.”

“I wasn’t worried about you shooting him, Virgil. You couldn’t hit the side of a barn from the inside-”

“Hey!”

“I was worried about you breaking his face. Oh, yeah, I was supposed to remind you: you’re up to qualify again. Get your pistol and stop by the range as soon as you’re done with this tiger thing. So: day after tomorrow? At the range?”