Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

38

It was still dark when Halloran and Bonar headed down the steep hill at Hudson and over the bridge that crossed the St Croix River into Minnesota. Halloran was driving now, and considering that he’d only managed about an hour of sleep, he was feeling pretty good, pumped, like he was heading toward the end of things.

Bonar was sleeping like a baby in the passenger seat, and Halloran flashed back to the last time they’d driven across state to the Twin Cities with two cases of beer in the trunk and a couple of Springsteen concert tickets locked in the glove compartment. They’d been kids then, Bonar had been about a hundred pounds lighter, and the world had seemed such a benign place.

He caught himself wondering what Danny Peltier had been doing then – skinning his knees on a skateboard, probably – and then spent the next ten minutes trying to push the image out of his mind.

Minneapolis did it for him, when he took the downtown exit off 94. ‘Hey, Bonar.’ He nudged a plump shoulder and Bonar’s eyes opened immediately, clear and focused as a kid’s. There was none of that groggy transition state where every adult’s IQ seems to hover somewhere between zero and fifty before the first cup of coffee; Bonar always passed from sleep to wakefulness in a single heartbeat, alert and ready for anything.

‘How about that.’ He grinned as he leaned forward and peered up through the windshield. ‘They left the lights on for us.’

The skyline had changed a lot since they’d been here last. A dozen new buildings soared straight up from the roots of downtown, pillars of white and golden light vying with the old IDS tower for sky space.

Halloran had always thought of Minneapolis as a young city, a female city; pretty and modest and proper, trying hard not to be too intrusive. Now it looked as if the youngster had grown up, and he wondered if it would feel the same.

‘It’s gotten a lot bigger since we were here.’

Bonar reached for the thermos on the floor between his feet. ‘Yep. Cancer of the landscape, that’s what cities are, and the nature of cancer is that it just keeps growing. You want some coffee?’

‘Oh, come on, look at the lights. It’s pretty. And yes to the coffee.’

Bonar reached for the plastic Conoco cup in the holder and peered inside. ‘Did you put a butt out in here?’

‘No I did not.’

‘Well, there’s something in here.’ He opened his window and tossed the dregs of old coffee outside. ‘I don’t want to know what it was.’

They passed a bank thermometer that read twenty degrees, but from the cold air blowing into the car, Halloran thought that was pretty optimistic. He’d heard once that all the thermometers in Minnesota were calibrated ten degrees high, just to keep the population from moving en masse. ‘Close the window, would you? It’s freezing.’

Bonar stuck his nose out the window like a dog and inhaled deeply before he closed it. ‘Snow today. You can smell it.’ He passed over the filled Conoco cup and poured an inch or two in his own mug. Not that he needed the caffeine. He actually drank the stuff for the taste, which was a mistake in this case. He shuddered after the first sip. ‘God, this is terrible.’

‘It was a gas station, not a Starbuck’s, what do you expect?’

‘I would expect that a man with a gun could get better coffee than this, even at a gas station. Where are we? What street is this?’

‘Hennepin.’

‘You know where you’re going?’

‘Sure. City Hall.’

‘You know how to find it?’

‘I figured I’d just drive around until I found it.’

Bonar dug in his shirt pocket, pulled out a many-folded piece of paper, and smoothed it open on his broad thighs.

‘What’s that?’

‘A map of downtown Minneapolis, driving directions to City Hall. Turn right at the next light.’

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘Off Marjorie’s computer.’

Halloran turned on the map light and glanced over at the paper. It looked like a real map. ‘No kidding.’

‘No kidding. You type in where you are, where you want to go, and bingo. It prints up a map and driving directions. Pretty cool, huh?’

‘I don’t know. Kind of takes all the fun out of it.’

They parked at the end of a line of patrol cars in the middle lane of a side street wider than any road in Calumet, and walked around the city-block-sized stone building and went in the front door. A bleary-eyed uniform directed them down a hall to the Homicide office.

There were a lot of people around for this hour, Halloran thought, and all of them looked tired. Everyone they passed nodded politely, but they all eyed their brown uniforms with the quick, intense take of a cop, focusing particularly on their sidearms.

Just as they entered the Homicide division, Bonar leaned over and whispered, ‘Nobody stopped us. You dress like a cop, you could walk in here and take the whole building.’

‘Who’d want it?’ Halloran asked, looking around at the tiny, characterless reception room with a sliding glass window set in one wall. Through the glass he caught a glimpse of the larger room beyond, the gray government-issue desks, the unlovely walls and cubicles of an office space designed for business and nothing else.

A very large black woman, just shrugging out of a heavy winter coat, appeared on the other side of the glass and looked them up and down for a long moment before sliding open the window. ‘Halloran, right?’ she said, and Halloran recognized her voice from the phone.

‘Sheriff Mike Halloran, Deputy Bonar Carlson, Kingsford County, Wisconsin.’ They both put their badges on the counter and opened them up so she could see the pictures. ‘And you’ve got to be Gloria. You and I had quite a few conversations yesterday, if I’m not mistaken.’ He smiled at her.

‘Uh-huh. Haven’t had that many calls from the same man in one day since Terrance Beluda was afraid he’d knocked me up. Bonar. What kind of a name is that?’

‘Norwegian,’ Bonar said, still a little wide-eyed from her remark about being knocked up.

‘Huh. I thought I’d heard them all. And you people think black folks have weird names. Come on in, fellas. Find yourselves an empty seat while I give Leo a call.’

She buzzed them through the interior door as she picked up a phone, and a dozen pairs of eyes lifted from what they were doing and gave them the once-over. Halloran felt like a grade-school transfer standing in front of his new classmates. ‘Morning.’ He nodded to the one closest to them, a wasted-looking man with a prominent Adam’s apple, a scruffy beard, and a black woolen cap with a moth hole right in front.

‘Now why are you talking to that dirtbag?’ Gloria chided as she came up behind him.

‘Dirtbag? I figured he was undercover.’ Halloran turned to give her a sheepish smile, then quelled the impulse to reach for his sunglasses. Her dress was carmine red with bright orange pumpkin appliqués. It was a miracle, he decided, because somehow she made it work.

‘My, my, you boys are from the country, aren’t you? Looks like old Gloria’s going to have to take you under her wing.’

Bonar rocked back on his heels, smiling. ‘Praise Jesus.’

Brown eyes flashed at him, then softened almost immediately. Halloran saw it and shook his head. Didn’t matter what Bonar ever said to a woman, and half the time he had his foot so far in his mouth he nearly choked to death. It was something about his face – a gentleness, innocence, something – that made women forgive him damn near anything.

‘Leo’s on his way. You’ve got your slug, right?’

Halloran patted his pocket and felt his heart have a flashback to when Sharon’s hand had done the same thing.

‘Well, I can have someone take you to the lab now, or if you want, you can just cool your heels till he arrives.’

‘How about if you just bring us up to date on this case while we wait for Detective Magozzi?’ Bonar asked.

She arched a well-plucked brow. ‘You’re talking to a secretary, not a cop.’

Bonar grinned at her and Halloran gave her ten seconds before she started spilling her guts.

‘Well . . .’

So he was wrong. Five seconds.

‘You want to know what I’m supposed to know, or what I really know?’

Bonar’s grin broadened. ‘What you really know. But mostly I want to know how you get your hair in all those tiny braids. I’ve always wanted to know that. They’re really small, like Cinderella’s mice did it or something.’

Gloria rolled her eyes toward Halloran. ‘Has this man ever even seen a black woman before?’

‘I don’t think so.’