Twin Cities Noir

BUMS by William Kent Krueger West Side (St. Paul)

Kid showed up at the river in the shadow of the High Bridge with a grin on his face, a bottle of Cutty in his hand, and a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket. Kid was usually in a good mood, but I’d never seen him quite so happy. Or so flush. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a bottle of good scotch.

It was going on dark. I had a pot of watery stew on the fire—rice mostly, with some unidentifiable vegetables I’d pulled from the dumpster behind an Asian grocery store.

I held up the Cutty to the firelight and watched the reflection of the flames lick the glass. “Rob a bank?”

“Better.” Kid bent over the pot and smelled the stew. “Got a job.”

“Work? You?”

“There’s this guy took me up on my offer.”

Most days Kid stood at the top of the off-ramp on Marion Street and I-94 where a stoplight paused traffic for a while. He held up a handmade sign that read, “Will Work For Food.” He got handouts, but he’d never had anyone actually take him up on his offer.

“What kind of work?”

“Chopping bushes out of his yard, putting new bushes in. This yard, Professor, I tell you, it’s big as a goddamn park. And the house, Jesus.”

He called me Professor because I have a small wire-bound notepad in which I scribble from time to time. Why that translated into Professor, I never knew.

I wanted badly to break the seal on the bottle, but it wasn’t my move.

Kid sat down crossed-legged in the sand on the riverbank. He grinned up at me. “Something else, Professor. He’s got a wife. A nice piece of work. The whole time I’m there, she’s watching me from the window.”

“Probably afraid you were going to steal something.”

“No, I mean she’s looking at me like I’m this stud horse and she’s a…you know, a girl horse.”

“Filly.”

“That’s it. Like she’s a filly. A filly in heat.”

I watched the gleam in Kid’s eye, the fire that danced there. “You already have yourself a few shots of something?”

“It’s the truth, swear to God. And get this. The guy wants me back tomorrow.”

“Look, are we just going to admire this bottle?” I finally asked.

“Crack ’er open, Professor. Let’s celebrate.”

Kid and I weren’t exactly friends, but we’d shared a campfire under the High Bridge for a while, and we trusted each other. Trust is important. Even if all you own can fit into an old gym bag, it’s still all you own, and when you close your eyes at night, it’s good to know the man on the other side of the fire isn’t just waiting for you to fall asleep. Kid had his faults. For a bum, he thought a lot of himself. That came mostly from being young and believing that circumstance alone was to blame for his social station. I’d tried to wise him up, pointing out that lots of folks encounter adversity and don’t end up squatting on the bank of a river, eating out of other people’s garbage cans, wearing what other people throw away. He was good-looking, if a little empty in the attic, and had the kind of physique that would probably appeal to a bored rich woman. He was good companionship for me, always eager and smiling, kind of like a having a puppy around. I didn’t know his real name. I just called him Kid.

The next evening when he came back from laboring in the rich man’s yard, he explained to me about his plans for the guy’s wife.

“She’s got this long black hair, all shiny, hangs down to her hips, swishes real gentle over the top of her ass when she walks. Paints her nails red like little spots of blood at the end of her fingers and toes. Talks with this accent, I don’t know what kind, but it’s sexy. And she’s hot for me, Professor. Christ, she’s all over me.”

Dinner that evening was fish, a big channel cat I’d managed to pull from the river with a chunk of moldy cheese as bait. I was frying it up in the pan I used for everything.

“If this woman is all you say she is, she could have any man she wants, Kid. What does she want with a bum?”

That offended him.

“I’m not like you, Professor. The booze don’t have me by the throat. One break and I’m outta here.”

“Dallying with a bored rich woman? How’s that going to change your luck?”

Kid peered up from watching the fish fry. “I got inside today, looked the place over. They got all this expensive crap lying around.”

“And you’re what, just going to waltz in and help yourself?”

His looked turned coy. “She let me inside today when her old man took off to get a bunch of bushes from the nursery. Asked if I wanted some cold lemonade. Starts talking kind of general, you know. Where I’m from, do I got family, that kind of thing. Then, get this, she tells me her husband’s not a man for her. No lighting in the rod, you know? I tell her that’s a damn shame, all her good looks going to waste. She says, ‘You think I’m pretty?’ I tell her she’s the prettiest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. Then you know what, Professor? She invites me back tonight. Her old man’s going out of town and she’s all alone. Doesn’t want to be lonely. Know what I’m saying? When it’s dark, I’m heading over.”

“You’re spending the night?”

“Not the whole night. She don’t want me around in the morning for the neighbors to see sneaking off.”

“You sure you’re not on something?”

“Proof, Professor,” he said with a sly grin. “I got proof.”

From his pants pocket, he took a small ball of black fabric. He uncrumpled it and held it toward me with both hands, as if he were holding diamonds. “Her panties.”

Thong panties, barely enough material to cover a canary.

“She gave you those?”

“Reached up under her skirt and slipped ’em off where she stood. Said they’d tide me over until tonight.”

He went to his things and rolled the panties in his blanket.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Naw. I’m going to the Y, slip inside and wash up. I want to smell good tonight. Don’t wait up for me, Dad,” he said with a grin, and he walked off whistling.

He didn’t come back that night. I figured he’d got what he wanted from the rich man’s wife and the rich man’s house and I’d seen the last of him. What did I care? People come into your life and they go. You can’t cry over them all.

So why did I feel so low the next day? All I wanted was to get drunk. Finally, I headed to the plasma center on University, let them siphon off a little precious bodily fluid, and I walked out with cash. I headed to the Gopher Bar for an afternoon of scintillating conversation with whoever happened to be around. It was a place where Kid and I had sometimes hung out together, and I hoped he might be there.

Laci was tending bar. A hard, unpretty woman with a quick mind. She sized me up as I sat on a stool. “Starting the wake, Professor?”

“You lost me,” I said.

She threw a bar towel over her shoulder and came my way. “I figured you were planning to tip a few to the memory of your buddy. Not that a piece of crap like him deserves it.”

“Kid? Piece of crap? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

She turned, took a bottle of Old Grandad down from the shelf, and poured me a couple of fingers worth. “This one’s on the house.”

Then she told me about Kid. It was all over the news.

The night before, he’d been shot dead in the rich man’s house, but not before he beat the guy’s wife to death with a crowbar.

“Funny.” She shook her head. “I never figured him to be the violent kind. But anybody beats a woman to death deserves what he gets. Sorry, Professor, that’s how I see it.”

I swallowed the whiskey she’d poured, but instead of sticking around to get drunk, I walked back to the river.

That night I didn’t bother putting together a fire, just sat on the riverbank below the High Bridge, listening to the sound of occasional traffic far above, thinking about Kid. At one point I pulled out my notepad, intending to write. I don’t know what. Maybe a eulogy, something to mark his passing. Instead, I picked up a stick and scratched in the sand. A few minutes later a barge chugged past and the wake washed away what I’d written. I ended up crying a little, which almost never happens when I’m sober.

Two years ago I had a wife, a good job as a reporter with the Star Tribune,a house, a car. Then Deborah left me. She said it was the drinking, but it was me. I was never reliable. The drinking only made it worse. Not long after that I lost my job because I was happier sitting at the bar than at my desk trying to meet deadline. Everything pretty much went downhill from there. Somebody tells you they drink because they’re a failure, it ain’t so. They’re a failure because they drink. And they drink because it’s so damn hard not to. But as long as they have a bottle that isn’t empty, they never feel far from being happy.

That’s me anyway.

Near dawn, I stood up from the long night of grieving for Kid. I was hungry. I walked the empty streets of downtown St. Paul to Mickey’s Diner, got there just as the sun was coming up, ordered eggs, cakes, coffee. I picked up a morning paper lying on the stool next to me. Kid and what he’d done was still front-page news.

He had a name. Lester Greene. He had a record, spent time in St. Cloud for boosting cars. He had no permanent address. He was a bum. And he’d become a murderer.

The woman he’d killed was Christine Coyer, president and CEO of Coyer Cosmetics. Deborah used to ask for Coyer stuff every Christmas. All I remember about it was that it was expensive. According to the paper, she’d just returned from visiting family in New York City. Her husband had picked her up at the airport, brought her home, and while he parked the car in the garage, she’d gone into the house ahead of him. Apparently, she surprised Kid, who’d broken in with a crowbar, which he proceeded to use to crack her skull. He attacked her husband too, but the guy made it upstairs where he kept a pistol for protection. Kid followed and the rich man put four bullets into him in the bedroom. He was dead when the cops arrived. The husband knew the assailant. A bum on whom he had taken pity. A mistake he now regretted.

The story was continued on page 5A with pictures. I could tell already the whole thing smelled, but when I turned to the photos I nearly fell off my stool. There was the dead woman. She was fiftyish, nicely coiffed, but not with long black hair that brushed the top of her ass. She was a little on the chubby side, matronly even. Not at all the kind of figure a pair of thong panties would enhance.

If the article was correct, she’d been in the Big Apple when Kid had been given that delicate little sexual appetizer. So, if Christine Coyer didn’t give it to him, who did?

During my college days, my clothing came from the Salvation Army. I shopped there in protest against consumerism and conformity. I shop there now out of necessity. For ten bucks I picked up a passable gray suit, a nearly white shirt, and a tie that didn’t make me puke. I washed up in the men’s room of a Super America on 7th, changed into the suit, and hoofed it to the address on Summit Avenue given in the newspaper story.

Like a big park, Kid had described the place. His perspective was limited. It was the fucking Tuileries Gardens, a huge expanse of tended flower beds and sculpted shrubbery with a château dead center. The cosmetics business had been very good to Ms. Coyer. And to her husband, no doubt. So good, in fact, one had to wonder why a man would do any of the dirty landscape work himself. Or hire someone like Kid to help.

I knocked on the door, a cold call, something I’d often done in my days as a journalist. I had my notepad and pen out, in case I needed to pretend to be a reporter.

A woman answered. “Yes?”

I told her I was looking for Christine Coyer’s husband.

“He’s not here,” she informed me. “Do you have an appointment?”

No, just hoping to get lucky, I told her.

“Would you like to leave a message?”

I didn’t. I thanked her and left.

I headed back to the river thinking the woman’s accent was French, but not heavily so. Quebec, maybe. Her black hair when let down would easily reach her ass. And that body in thong panties would be enough to drive any man to murder.

What to do?

I could go to the police. Would they believe me? If I produced the panties, they might be inclined to look more skeptically on the rich man’s story.

I could go to an old colleague. I still knew plenty of press people who’d take the story and dig.

But the influence of money should never be underestimated. Everybody’s integrity is for sale if the price is right. So I knew that turning the information and the panties over to anybody else was risky.

I realized I was probably the only shot Kid had at justice.

I sat by the river, smelling the mud churned up from the bottom, but also smelling the perfume of the black-haired woman as it had come to me on the cool air from inside the big house. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining what she wore under her dress. I could understand completely why Kid had been so eager and disregarded the obvious dangers.

For a long time, I’d been telling myself I was happy with nothing. Give me a bedroll and a place to lay it, a decent meal now and then, and a few bucks for a bottle of booze, and what more did I need?

But the circumstances of Kid’s death suddenly opened the door on a dark, attractive possibility.

I thought about the lovely house and its gardens.

I thought about that fine, beautiful woman inside.

I thought about the deceased Christine Coyer and all the money she’d left behind.

I thought about all that I didn’t have, all that I’d fooled myself into believing I didn’t care about—a set of new clothes, a soft mattress, something as simple as a haircut, for God’s sake, nothing big really, but still out of my reach.

I was a starved man looking at the possibility of a feast. In the end the choice was easy. After all, what good did justice do the dead?

I got the telephone number from a friend still employed in the newspaper business. I kept calling until the rich man answered.

I identified myself—not with my real name—and told him I was a friend of Lester Greene.

He scraped together a showing of indignity. “I can’t imagine what we have to discuss.”

“A gift,” I told him. “One your wife gave to him. Only she wasn’t really your wife. She just pretended in order to lure Lester to your house to be murdered.”

“I’m hanging up,” he said. But he didn’t.

“Ask the woman with the long black hair,” I urged him. “Ask her about the gift she gave to Lester. Here’s a hint. It’s black and silky and small enough to be an eye patch for a pygmy. Ask your beautiful friend about it. I’ll call back in a while.”

I hung up without giving him a chance to respond.

When I called back, we didn’t bother with civilities.

“What do you want?”

Justice for Kidis what I should have said. What came out of my mouth was, “One hundred grand.”

“And for one hundred thousand dollars, what do I get?”

He sounded like a man used to wheeling and dealing. According to the paper, he was a financial advisor. I advised him: “My silence.” I let that hang. “And the panties.”

“You could have got panties anywhere,” he countered.

“She’s beautiful, your mistress. Who is she, by the way? Your secretary?”

“Christine’s personal assistant. Not that it’s important.”

“But it is important that she’s not very bright. She took the panties off her body and gave them to Lester. A DNA analysis of the residual pubic hair would certainly verify that they’re hers. I’m sure the police would be more than willing to look at all the possibilities more closely. Do you want to take that chance?”

“Meet me at my house,” he suggested. “We’ll talk.”

“I don’t think so. Your last meeting there with Lester didn’t end well for him. We’ll meet on the High Bridge,” I said. “I get the money, you get her panties.”

“The panties I can verify. What about your silence?”

“I talk and I’m guilty of extortion. Jail doesn’t appeal to me any more than it does to you. The truth is, though, you have no choice but to trust me.”

“When?”

“Let’s make the exchange this evening just after sunset. Say, nine o’clock.”

I wasn’t sure he’d be able to get the money so quickly, but he didn’t object.

“How will we know each other?” he asked.

We’ll have no trouble, I thought. We’ll be the only cockroaches on the bridge.

The High Bridge is built at a downward angle connecting the bluffs of Cherokee Heights with the river flats below Summit Avenue. Although it was after dark, the sodium vapor lamps on the bridge made everything garishly bright. I waited on the high end. Coming from the other side of the river, the rich man would have to walk uphill to meet me. I found that appealing.

The lights of downtown St. Paul spread out below me. At the edge of all that glitter lay the Mississippi, curling like a long black snake into the night. The air coming over the bridge smelled of the river below, of silt and slow water and something else, it seemed to me. Dreamssounds hokey, but that’s what I was thinking. The river smelled of dreams. Dreams of getting back on track. Of putting my life together. Of new clothes, a good job, and, yeah, of putting the booze behind me. I didn’t know exactly how money was going to accomplish that last part, but it didn’t seem impossible.

The evening was warm and humid. Cars came across the bridge at irregular intervals. There wasn’t any foot traffic. I thought for a while that he’d decided I was bluffing and had blown me off. Which was a relief in a way. That meant I had to do the right thing, take the evidence to the cops, let them deal with it. Kid might yet get his justice.

Then I saw someone step onto the bridge at the far end and start toward me. I was a good quarter-mile away and at first I couldn’t tell if it was him. When the figure was nearly halfway across, I realized it wasn’t the rich man. It was the personal assistant. She stopped in the middle of the bridge and waited, looking up at the Heights, then down toward the flats, uncertain which way I would come.

What the hell was this all about? There was only one way to find out. I walked out to meet her.

I wasn’t wearing the gray suit, but she recognized me anyway.

“You were at the house this morning,” she said in that accent I decided was, indeed, French Canadian. Her hair hung to her ass and rippled like a velvet curtain. She wore an airy summer dress. The high hem lifted on the breeze, showing off her legs all the way to mid-thigh. Killer legs. Against this, Kid hadn’t stood a chance.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Who cares, as long as I have your money.” Her lips were thick and red around teeth white as sugar. I smelled her delicate perfume, the same scent that had washed over me that morning. It seemed to overpower the scent of the river.

“Show me,” I said.

“Where are my panties?”

I reached into my pocket and dangled them in front of her. “Where’s my money?”

From the purse she carried over her shoulder, she pulled a thick manila envelope. “The panties,” she said.

“The envelope first.”

She thought about it a moment, then handed it over. I looked inside. Four bundles of hundreds bound with rubber bands.

“Want to count it?” she said.

All I wanted was for the transaction to be over with and to be rid of this business. “I’ll trust you,” I said.

She took the panties and threw them over the bridge railing. I watched them drop, catch the breeze, and cut toward the middle of the river, swift as a little black bat.

“Gone forever.” She smiled.

“You didn’t even check to make sure they were the ones. For all you know, I could have bought a pair just like them at Marshall Field’s.”

“They would never let a bum like you into Marshall Field’s.” She turned with a swish of her long, scented hair and walked away, her dress lifting on the breeze.

I watched until she’d grown small in the glare, then turned and headed back toward the Heights.

I was ten feet from a new life when he spoke to me out of the shadow of the squat pines at the end of the bridge.

“I’ll take the money.”

He’d probably come across in one of the cars during my meeting with the woman. I couldn’t see his face, but he thrust a gun at me from the shadows and it glowed in the streetlights as if the metal were hot.

“I give it to you, I’m dead,” I said.

His voice spat from the dark. “You were dead from the beginning.”

I sailed the envelope at him like a frisbee. It caught him in the chest. The gun muzzle flashed. I felt a punch in my belly. I spun and stumbled into the street in front of an MTC bus, which swerved, its horn blaring. I fled toward the dark, away from the streetlights.

The bus passed, and he came after me on foot, a black figure against the explosion of light from the bridge. I ran, making my way along the streets that topped the Heights. I cut into an alley, across another street, then into another alley.

Suddenly, inexplicably, my legs gave out. They just went limp. I sprawled in the gravel behind an old garage. A streetlamp not far away shed enough light that I could easily be seen. I managed to crawl into the shadow between two garbage cans, where I lay listening. I heard the slap of shoes hard and fast pass the alley entrance and keep going. Then everything got quiet.

My shirt was soaked with blood. My legs were useless. I’d hoped to make it to the river, but that wasn’t going to happen. The end was going to come in a bed of weeds in a nameless alley. Nothing I could do about that.

But about the man and the woman who’d killed Kid, there was still something I could do.

I pulled the pair of panties from my pocket, the pair she’d given Kid and whose twin I’d found that afternoon at Marshall Field’s and bought with money made by selling my own blood. I drew out my pen and notepad and wrote a brief explanation, hoping whoever found me would notify the police.

I was near the river, though I would never sit on its banks again. I closed my eyes. For a while, all I smelled was the garbage in the bins. Then I smelled the river. When I opened my eyes, there was Kid, grinning on the other side. Like he understood. Like he forgave me. I started toward him. The water, cold and black, crept up my legs. The current tugged at my body. In a few moments, it carried me away.