Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

4

At about the time Detective Magozzi was rubbing noses with the dead jogger, Grace MacBride was turning her big black Range Rover onto Washington Avenue and heading for the warehouse district.

From her first day here Grace had pegged Minneapolis as a prissy city, an aspiring lady with her skirts held ankle-high to avoid the prairie mud. It had an underbelly, of course – the hookers and johns, the porn shops, the junior-high kids cruising for a hit of black tar or Ecstasy – but you really had to look to find it, and that it existed at all never failed to shock the stalwart Lutheran populace into action. It was one of the few cities in the country, Grace thought, where the self-righteous still thought you could shame the sleaze into redemption.

Washington Avenue, once the province of the homeless and dealers, had long since been scolded into submission. Old warehouses wore new windows and sandblasted brick; seedy diners had been polished and transformed into sparkling oases of nouvelle cuisine; and only the bad people, the very bad people like Grace, ever smoked on the street.

She parked in front of a small warehouse with a decidedly pink cast to the old brick, got out, and looked down the block.

Annie was just coming around the corner, sending a smile on ahead. She was wearing a bright red wool cape that flapped open as she walked. The hood clashed nicely with her hennaed hair, Grace thought. She was wearing it short this year, in a flapper’s bob. A ruler-straight row of bangs rode high on her forehead over unnaturally green eyes.

‘You look like Little Red Riding Hood.’

Annie laughed. ‘Big Red Riding Hood, sugar.’ Her voice was cane-syrup sweet, remembering Mississippi. ‘You like?’ She turned in a tight circle, a glorious scarlet hippo in a pirouette.

‘I like. How was your weekend?’

‘Oh, you know. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Same old, same old. How about you?’

Grace keyed open an innocuous door that was unmarked save for the relatively fresh coat of paint Annie derisively called Martha Stewart Green. ‘I worked a little.’

‘Hmph.’ Annie walked through the door into a ground-floor garage, empty except for a brand-new mountain bike and a mud-splattered Harley hog. ‘A little. What would that be? Ten, twelve hours a day?’

‘Something like that.’

Annie clucked her tongue. ‘You need a life, honey. You never go out. It’s not healthy.’

‘Not my thing, Annie. You know that.’

‘I met this really nice guy I could set you up with . . .’

‘Last time you set me up it didn’t exactly work out.’

Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Grace. You pulled your gun on him. He still won’t talk to me.’ She sighed as they walked toward the freight elevator on the far wall, the click of their heels echoing in the cavernous space. ‘We could go clubbing together after work tonight, maybe snag a couple of young farm boys if you put a bag over that ugly mug of yours.’ She inserted a key card that started the throaty growl of machinery overhead, then turned and gave Grace her usual morning once-over. The look was that of an exasperated mother, silently disapproving the mystifying raiment of a rebellious child.

To Annie Belinsky, a day without sequins was hardly worth living; a day without makeup was unthinkable. To have Grace’s Black Irish palette and refuse to paint it was surely a mortal sin. She reached over and lifted a thick black wave off her friend’s shoulder, then let it drop in disgust. ‘It drives me nuts that that stuff just grows out of your head like that. When you die I’m going to scalp you and make myself a wig out of that hair. It’s just wasted on you anyway.’

‘Keeps my head warm.’ Grace smiled.

‘That is so Cro-Magnon. Hey, get a load of this.’ She lifted the flaps of her cape and revealed neck-to-ankle rows of lime green suede fringe, which explained the new contacts. Annie’s eyes always matched her outfit. ‘Fat Annie is going to break some hearts today.’

‘You break hearts in burlap.’

‘This is true.’ She sighed and stared at the dented elevator door. A lopsided, cartoonish stencil of a monkey’s face leered back at her. ‘How the hell could Roadrunner have screwed this up? He uses a T-square to line up the tops of his socks and he can’t level a friggin’ stencil.’

Grace cocked her head at the monkey. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t just laser-print a decal with the real logo. This thing looks . . .’

‘Maniacal?’

‘Exactly. Maniacal.’

Harley looked more like a Hell’s Angel than any Hell’s Angel Grace had ever seen – enormous, solid, tattooed, bearded, and intimidating. He was waiting to lift the elevator gate for them, a donut clenched in his teeth, a trail of powdered sugar leading back across the wooden floorboards of the second-floor loft. ‘Angels rising.’ He grinned around the donut, little powdery pieces falling to his chest.

‘Cretin.’ Annie pushed past him.

‘Hey, I opened the gate, didn’t I?’

Grace gave him a commiserative pat on the cheek as she headed for the jumbled maze of desks and computer equipment in the center of the otherwise empty loft space. She lifted a hand in greeting to Roadrunner, a beanstalk of a man in a yellow Lycra warm-up suit doing yoga stretches in a far corner.

‘Grace, Annie, thank God. Voices of reason. Harley’s still pushing for a chop and dice.’

‘Like I said, cretin,’ Annie grumbled, tossing her briefcase on her desk and glaring at a white bakery box resting on the slab of Harley’s right arm. ‘I told you not to bring that crap in anymore, Harley.’ She continued to stare at the box. ‘Got any lemon custard in there?’

He pushed the box in her direction. ‘Don’t I always?’

‘Prick.’ She snatched the lemon custard Danish.

Harley plucked out a bismarck and talked around his first bite. ‘You know, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. About killing this last guy? It’s gotta be messy, don’t you think, Grace?’

‘Nope.’ She hung her duster on a coat tree by her desk. The gun was properly in its holster now, riding low under her left arm. The black straps disappeared against the black T-shirt.

Harley plopped his bulk down in her chair and beamed up at her. ‘You look absolutely ravishing this morning. Downright beatific. Madonna-esque.’

‘Which Madonna?’

‘Whichever one you want.’

‘Don’t try to butter me up, Harley. We’re doing this guy just like the others.’

‘No changes,’ Annie agreed.

‘Okay, I expected this. You’re women, naturally squeamish creatures, but you’re just not thinking this through. This is the guy who started it all. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have had to kill the rest of them. If we’re punishing anyone with a violent death, it should be him.’

‘Maybe if we’d killed him first,’ Roadrunner piped up in mid-stretch, ‘but we didn’t. To tell you the truth, I’m so tired of this whole thing, I’d be just as happy if we didn’t have to kill another one at all.’

‘Are you out of your friggin’ mind?’ Harley bellowed. ‘We have to kill him.’

‘Duh.’

‘Horribly. Maybe with a chainsaw.’

Annie glowered at him. ‘You know what scares me, Harley? Your pervasive enthusiasm for this kind of thing.’

‘Hey, what can I say? I love my work.’

Grace nudged Harley out of her chair and sat down. ‘A .22 to the head, just like the rest of them.’

‘Come on,’ Harley complained.

‘Forget it,’ Annie said. ‘You’re outvoted.’

Harley threw up his hands. ‘You’re all a bunch of pussies.’

‘It has to make sense, Harley. We have to stick to the pattern,’ Grace said.

‘Mitch ought to have a vote. Where the hell is he?’

‘Airport,’ Grace reminded him. ‘And even if he voted with you, that would still be three against two.’

‘Goddamn pussies . . . oh, man . . .’ He was watching Annie take off her cape, getting his first glimpse of quivering lime green fringe. ‘Oh, man.’ He repeated, staring at her, pulling at the collar of his T-shirt. ‘Would you look at that stuff move? That’s gotta be sexual harassment.’

‘Are we done? Can I do it?’ Roadrunner was rising to his full height after touching his toes. It was like watching a stork unfold.

‘Go for it,’ Grace told him, watching as the man’s preposterously long legs and arms found their rhythm and propelled him over to his computer. There was a support beam just in front of his work station, six and a half feet above the floor. Roadrunner had to duck.