“Shit, with all the boats on the river tomorrow night, there’s sure to be trouble.”
“How many boats?” Rock asked as he sucked on a cigar he’d bummed off Lich, skillfully blowing smoke out through the gap in his front teeth.
“In Stillwater, around the bridge,” Ferm replied, “hundreds for the fireworks. Not to mention it’ll just be busy as hell up and down the whole thing all day. My wife and I love the river.” Ferm blew smoke and then shook his head, “but we never go out on the Fourth. The only place it’ll be quiet is up north, near the old railroad bridge and even then, with the fireworks in Stillwater, not to mention those that people just shoot off normally, it’ll be a raucous night. I just hope nobody gets hurt.”
Just then, the diminutive Hagen came through the doors with a pair of guards. He saw Riley and Rock and smiled. “I should have known it was you two fuckers.”
“Ooooo, it’s the hardened convict,” Rock said, smiling, pulling cuffs out of his pocket and dangling them in Hagen’s face before slapping them on the man’s wrists. The cuffs secured, Rock eased him into the backseat of the Crown Victoria.
Riley shook Ferm’s hand and got behind the wheel, pulled away and drove back east on I-94 toward downtown St. Paul. Once on the highway, Rock reached into the back and undid the cuffs. The cuffs were just for show anyway. Hagen was an unlikely flight risk.
Arrested last winter as part of the bust on PTA, Hagen, a computer whiz, was seduced by the money offered by the company to run their network and computer systems. The company, and in particular the vice president of security, a man named Webb Alt, noted Hagen’s computer skills and put him to work on operations that monitored company employees. Before he knew it, Hagen was working for former CIA operatives who had no trouble dropping bodies to protect a covert arms sales operation. When Mac and Company came down on PTA, Hagen was found in a basement bunker in the PTA building, running the computer operations for Alt’s crew. In an effort to shave years off his sentence, Hagen worked with the police and federal authorities to piece together the PTA operations and track down missing PTA personnel.
He was no hardened criminal. Small in size and about as far from intimidating as you could get, Hagen had been dragged into the whole thing without much choice. He could have been sentenced to years of prison time, but Flanagan, Mac, and the rest took a shine to him as he helped tie up loose ends on PTA. Sally successfully worked to get his sentence reduced and also have it served in the County Workhouse.
Hagen had another six months to go on his one-year sentence. Two times already, Riles and Rock had sprung him to do a little work for the police department. This was on top of all the computer work he did at the workhouse. It would cost the county millions to pay contractors for what Hagen was providing them in return for three hots and a cot. Now they were calling on him again.
“So what is it this time?” Hagen asked flippantly, rubbing his wrists.
Rock turned and gave him a serious look. “The chief’s daughter has been kidnapped.”
Hagen’s smile vanished.
“We need your help with that.”
“ Whatever you need,” Hagen answered. “Whatever you need.”
3:04 AM
Mac pulled his Explorer up in front of Fat Charlie’s place in north Minneapolis. The Fat Man had been cryptic with Lich, merely saying he needed to see them about some information that might prove helpful. Three large African-American men were waiting for them, all with their arms crossed and heads shaved, each sporting sunglasses and a skin-tight black muscle shirt — all in all, an impressive “gun show.” Fat Charlie needed good security in his game, and these guys looked the part. Mac gave them a quick scan and noted no weapons. The guns wouldn’t be far away, however, perhaps stored in the wheel wells of the Tahoe also parked out front. The one in the middle, slightly taller than the other two, spoke up in a deep yet poetically smooth voice. “Charlie sent us up to watch your ride while you’re inside.”
“Thanks,” Mac said. “Around the back again?”
The man nodded.
As they walked around the back, Lich couldn’t help himself, quipping, “What’s with the shades at three fuckin’ AM? Shit, it’s darker than their skin out here. That’s just…” Lich grappled for the right word and missed, “silly.”
Mac smiled. “Silly? Maybe. But I tell you what, you go tell that dude, all six-plus-feet, two-forty of him, that he looks silly. Christ. His upper arms are the size of my thighs. See what he does with you.”
“Ahh, I’d just pump a little of my Smith into him,” Lich said, touching his hip.
Mac snorted. “Anything out of your Smith would just bounce off those guns of his.”
Down the back steps, the door was already open and one of Charlie’s sons, attired in a white dress shirt and blue silk tie, was waiting for them, Deja vu set in as he walked them back into the barroom, where they found the same haze of cigar smoke and Charlie sitting in the same chair.
Dressed in a more subdued gray suit with a black and white striped tie, Charlie sat with a cigar in his right hand and a drink in his left, a bottle of Wild Turkey and a bucket of ice sitting on the table in front of him. His sons sat on either side of him. On the couch to the left of Charlie sat what looked like a homeless man dressed in dirty, work jeans, a soiled white T-shirt, and a black stocking cap. The man was eating a towering ham sandwich off a plate full of chips and coleslaw.
Mac took a chair in front of Charlie, and Lich stood behind him, both hands on the back of the chair. Mac could feel the time running down, so he skipped the pleasantries. “You said you had something for us?”
“And good evening to you, Detective,” Charlie replied, a little put off by the curt start.
Lich jumped in, always ready to soften Mac’s attitude. “Look, Charlie, we just don’t have a lot of time for chit-chat,” he said mildly. “We need to get right to it.”
“Pretty tough the last couple of days, huh?”
Mac nodded and exhaled slowly. “Although, we might be on something now that will help us and we need to get back to it. So…”
“We best get to it then,” Charlie said, nodding and pointing to his right. “This is the guy you need to talk to. Meet Ron.” The homeless guy acknowledged them with a nod.
“This guy?” Mac asked skeptically.
“Yes,” the drug lord replied. “I know he don’t look like much, but looks can be deceiving. Trust me. He provides an important service for me.”
“Which is?” Lich asked.
“He watches my competition.”
Mac understood immediately. “He looks like a junkie.” And then turning to Ron, “But I take it you’re not?”
“Correct, Detective,” Ron replied, looking up from his plate of food. He wiped the corners of his mouth neatly with a napkin. “I’m incognito,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, sounding nothing like a strung-out street raver.
“That’s great Ron,” Mac answered. “But why do I need to talk to you?”
“Before he speaks,” Charlie interjected, “we’re just talking here, right?” The drug lord wanted to help, but he didn’t care to be pinched either.
“I work St. Paul. I don’t care what you’re doing in Minneapolis,” Mac replied. “So what do you have?”
“This last week, I’ve been watching our competitors down along Lake Street,” Ron said. “There are a couple of good crews down along there, and I’m evaluating them.”
“So?” Lich said, rolling his hand.
“I was sitting in a vacant house a block north of Lake Street around noon on Monday, getting out of the sun and eating some lunch, when I saw a van pull up across the alley behind an abandoned building. It pulled up right alongside another van.”
Mac turned his chair toward Ron. Lich pulled up a chair of his own, taking out a notebook. “What happened next?” Mac asked.
Ron grabbed Lich’s notepad and pen and drew a diagram. “I was just casually looking out the window — I was at a bit of a distance away from the vans, which were across the alley and to my right at maybe a forty-five degree angle.” Ron drew a line from his perch in the vacant house to the vans across the alley. “But something about the movement looked a little odd to me, so I went to the window.”