Escape Clause

Jenkins, from the sidewalk, said, “Let’s go talk to Ms. Broda.”

  —

  I want to look in the side door,” Virgil said. He took the flashlight from Shrake and walked around to the side of the house and looked through the window on the side door. He could see a mop in a corner, dried out, no bucket.

  He turned the flashlight off and walked back to the front of the house and said, “Old lady.”

  As they walked across the street, the doors popped open on the TV trucks, and cameramen hopped out, and the lights came up.

  “Ignore them,” Virgil said.

  Across the street, the door opened as soon as they started climbing the porch. An old iron-haired woman in a dark brown sweater was talking on a cell phone. Her hair was neatly combed, and she wore dark red lipstick, though she hadn’t entirely managed to keep the lipstick inside the lines. “Yes, they’re here now. The blond one might be a cop, but the other two look like Mafia. Yes, yes, I know. Talk to you as soon as they’re gone.”

  Shrake said, “We do not look like Mafia.”

  “Yes, you do,” Broda said. “Can I see some ID?”

  “You do, kinda,” Virgil said to Shrake, as he showed Broda his ID. “But it’s a good look for you guys. They’d like it in Hollywood.”

  “That’s true,” Broda said. “Anyway, that house is owned by Chuck Dvorsky, who lives over in Highland Park. He rents it, when he can. He rented it to two thugs a month ago and he says they skipped on the next month’s rent. Don’t think they ever lived there—I only saw them a couple of times. Once when a UPS truck delivered a bunch of big cardboard boxes. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were full of drugs. Anyway, they were pretty heavy. They were driving one of those orange trucks you rent from Home Depot for nineteen dollars. They loaded up the boxes and took off—haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since.”

  “You know when this was? The date?” Virgil asked.

  “Nope. About a month, I suppose, give or take.” She scratched her chin, then said, “I take that back. Probably three weeks. Less than a month.”

  “Definitely a Home Depot truck?”

  “Oh, yeah. People around here rent them all the time when they’re moving. People here move a lot.”

  The cameramen were on the street, lighting up the front of the house, making movies of the interview.

  Jenkins asked Broda, “How come you’re all dolled up, hon? You going on TV?”

  “I thought they might ask,” she said. “When I saw the trucks arrive, you know, I walked down and asked what they were all about, and they said you’d be coming. About the tigers. I haven’t seen anything like a tiger, though.”

  Virgil asked for descriptions of the men she’d seen, and Broda described Hamlet Simonian in some detail, and another, larger man who she said resembled Simonian. Like the first woman, she thought they might be brothers. Virgil took out his cell phone, called up the Channel Three website, and showed the woman the Simonian mug shot. “This him?”

  She looked and said, “That’s him.”

  —

  When Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake finished with Broda, they thanked her and started back to the truck. The cameramen had been joined by reporters who pointed their microphones at the cops and one of them asked, “No tigers in there?”

  “Nothing in there,” Virgil said. “House is empty, as far as we can tell. I don’t know about tigers; we had reports of a defenestration and had to check it out.”

  “Defenestration? That’s a pretty big word for a cop,” one of the reporters said.

  Behind Virgil, Jenkins muttered, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

  The reporter said, “Hey, what?”

  Virgil said, “Broda. He said you should interview Mrs. Broda. She’s waiting.” They all looked at Broda’s house and saw her smiling through the screen door.

  —

  Back in the truck, Virgil took out the cell phone number for Levon Simonian and called it. Simonian picked up on the second ring, and Virgil asked, “Listen, did Hamlet have a brother?”

  After a moment of silence, Simonian said, “Hold on.”

  He then muffled the microphone on his phone; Virgil could hear speech-like sounds, but couldn’t tell what was being said. A full minute later, Simonian came back on and said, “Yes. He possibly had a brother.”

  “Big guy, powerful? Looked like Hamlet?”

  Another few minutes of silence, then somebody in the background blurted, “Oh my God. Did something happen to Hayk?”

  Virgil asked, “How do you spell ‘Hayk’? And do you have his birth date?”

  He got the name and birth date, called them in to the BCA duty officer, told him to run the name, and also asked him to find a phone number for Chuck Dvorsky, the landlord of the vacant house.

  The duty officer put them on hold for a moment, then came back with Dvorsky’s home phone number. Virgil called it. A woman answered and said she was April Dvorsky, Chuck’s wife. She said, “Chuck’s in El Paso, Texas, buying a Porsche 928.”

  She said she did the accounting on the rental units their company owned and that the man who’d rented the Frogtown house had moved out before he moved in. “He never did put any furniture in it and then he skipped out on the lease.”

  “Big guy, small guy?”

  “Kinda small. Not light. Short and a little stout.”

  “Has anybody else been in it since?”

  “No, nobody—I mean, except to clean and get ready to offer again,” she said. “I was over there this afternoon with the cleaning crew.”

  “So it’s been cleaned.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  Virgil asked her to stay out of the house; he was going to check to see if it would be worthwhile to have a crime-scene crew go over the place. “We can get a warrant, if you want,” he said.

  “That’s okay. I’ll stay out and if you decide to send CSI, I’ll meet them there and let them in.”

  “Thank you. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  —

  Shrake said, “Cleaned up, so probably no prints, especially since it sounds like they didn’t even live there. They rented the house to have an address where UPS would drop the dryers.”

  “Yeah,” Virgil said. Virgil got on his cell phone, switched it to speaker, and called the duty officer at the BCA, who said he had a response from the FBI on the Hayk Simonian inquiry.

  “He’s had a dozen arrests, mostly from working security at nightclubs around Los Angeles,” the duty officer said. “He beat up people. Sometimes, a little too much. He also did some jail time—not prison time—for receiving stolen goods. That was in Los Angeles, too. The feds picked him up on suspicion of distributing counterfeit bills in Glendale, California, but the witnesses failed to identify him.”

  “Not a good guy,” Jenkins said.

  “Not a good guy,” the duty officer said, “but a small-timer.”

  “Let’s get the best and most recent mug shots we can find and give them to Jon Duncan,” Virgil said. “We need to get them out to the TV stations and the papers.”

  “Too late for tonight,” the duty officer said. “The news is on now.”

  “Yeah, but let’s try to get them out for the early morning news, run them all day tomorrow.”

  —

  With nothing more to do, Virgil dropped Jenkins and Shrake back at the BCA building, thanked them for their time, and drove home. On the way, Daisy Jones, the TV reporter from Channel Three, called and asked, “Why’d you go to that house? I know it wasn’t because somebody got thrown out a window. I got about two minutes before I’ve got to go on the air. Tell me.”

  Virgil considered. His attitude toward information differed from the attitude of most cops. He figured if he knew something about a crime, and other cops knew it, and the crook knew it, who were they hiding the information from and why? S
ometimes, there was a good answer to that question; most of the time, there wasn’t. One reason for parceling it out carefully was to get reporters obligated to you, because sometimes they knew things that you didn’t, and if they owed you, they might cough it up. And sometimes, putting information on the air, or in the papers, stirred up new information . . .

  Daisy Jones was one of those willing to trade.

  “You didn’t hear it from me,” he said.

  “Of course not. Talk faster. I’ve now got one minute and forty-five seconds.”

  “If the tiger thieves are processing the animals for traditional Chinese medicine, then they need to process quite a bit of meat—internal organs, gallbladders, eyes, all that. They need to dry it. That house got an order for five jerky dryers. The two men who took the delivery never really lived there—they rented it for one month, took the delivery, and disappeared.”

  “That would mean that they were planning to kill the tigers. Might already have done it,” she said.

  Virgil considered for another moment, then said, “Daisy, you are going to owe me big. I don’t know how you’re going to pay me back, but I’ll think of something.”

  “No time, no time. Just tell me,” she said.

  “Okay, you heard from local police sources and I’d appreciate it if you’d say it came from Minneapolis. One of the men seen at the house was Hamlet Simonian.”

  “Oh my God, Virgil, you’ve nailed it down,” Jones said. “They’re killing the tigers or already have. I owe you big, thank you.”

  Click. She was gone.

  —

  Virgil got to Mankato at eleven-thirty, washed his face, brushed his teeth, put a can of beer in his jacket pocket, and drove down to the Mayo.

  Frankie was awake; Catrin Mattsson, Sparkle, and Father Bill were sitting next to her bed in side chairs, and the four of them seemed deeply involved in conversation. When they saw Virgil coming, Frankie said something to the others and they all stirred around and then Frankie asked, “Where you been, cowboy?”

  “Trying to find those fuckin’ tigers,” Virgil said. He leaned over the bed and kissed her. “Got nothin’.”

  “Now you’ve got a murder,” Mattsson said.

  “Yeah, at least one.” He popped the top on the beer and told them about the missing Hayk Simonian and the Simonian justice crew.

  “Interesting,” Mattsson said. “Could have two murders, with more on the way. I ought to be done down here in the next day or two at the most. If you haven’t found the tigers, ask Jon to let me help out. I’ve been working a cold case up in Isanti County and it’s not going anywhere. I don’t even think the dead woman’s from Minnesota.”

  “Okay. I could use the help. It’s getting complicated,” Virgil said. He looked at Frankie: she was badly scuffed up, but the scuffing was superficial and would heal soon enough. “How’s your head?” he asked her. “I mean . . . headaches? Anything more about the concussion?”

  “They say that looks okay,” Frankie said. “The boys were here. You’ve got to talk to Rolf. He’s been going around to bars, asking about who might have jumped me. You know he’s got a temper.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Virgil said.

  “I already did,” Mattsson said. “I don’t know if it did any good.”

  “Rolf has been known to engage in criminal behavior of a minor sort,” Virgil said to Mattsson. “Sometimes, with his mother. If I have to, I’ll bust his ass on suspicion of something and stick him in the county jail until we get this figured out.”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” Frankie said. “With his priors . . .”

  “We’d let him go for lack of evidence,” Virgil said. “It’s better than having him find the guys who did this and then spending thirty years in Stillwater for killing them.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then said, “You know, there’s a little too much testosterone floating in the fishbowl. First you and then Rolf, and if Tall Bear was in town, he’d probably scalp them.” Tall Bear was her half-Sioux second son, who was on a towboat somewhere down the Mississippi.

  “I’ll talk to him, too, if he comes back,” Virgil said.

  —

  Sparkle and Father Bill hadn’t said much, and Sparkle stood and said, “Come on, Bill, we ought to get some sleep while we can. Gotta be up early tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?” Virgil asked.

  “More interviews,” Sparkle said. “I’m almost done. I’d like to get inside the factory, but that’s not going to happen. Not unless I find a way to sneak in.”

  “I wouldn’t allow that,” Bill said. “I’d tie you up and lock you in the trunk of the car if you tried.”

  “Too much testosterone,” Frankie said again, and the other two women nodded.

  When Father Bill and Sparkle had gone, Mattsson told Virgil that she hadn’t gotten anything solid on the men who’d attacked Frankie, but she had the names of a few possibilities.

  “I leaned on Lucas for his asshole database and he gave me two names down here. I talked to them and they pointed me at a half-dozen guys who might do that sort of thing. I’ll be rounding them up tomorrow. If I find somebody who won’t show me his lower left arm, I’ll be going for a warrant.”

  “Good,” Virgil said.

  —

  Mattsson left to get some sleep and Virgil asked Frankie what they’d all been talking about when he arrived. “Everybody looked pretty involved.”

  “Well, you know Sparkle,” Frankie said. “She recognized Cat’s name and that whole case. Sparkle and Father Bill—they’re, I don’t know, effective bullshitters when it comes to psychology. They got her talking about it and it all kinda came out. Bizarre doesn’t even cover it; it was like a war crime, what that man did to her. Then Father Bill started doing therapy . . .”

  “Oh, boy. I hope she doesn’t regret that. Or worse, start flashing back,” Virgil said.

  “She already has flashbacks. She said so.”

  “How about you?” Virgil asked. “How’s your head, aside from the concussion?”

  They talked for a while, about the attack and what it meant. “The cops told the paper, and a couple of reporters tried to call, but the hospital pushed them off,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” Virgil said. “Do what you want—talk or not.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  —

  Virgil’s phone rang and he glanced at the screen: BCA.

  “Yeah?”

  “Virgil, a guy called here and he wants to talk to you about that house up in Frogtown. He says it’s urgent.”

  Virgil took the number and called it; finished his beer while the phone was ringing. The man who answered said his name was Joe Werner. “I work at the zoo. I wasn’t at your meeting, but I heard about it. I might have something you should know, but I don’t want it to get out that I told you.”

  “If I can keep it to myself, I will,” Virgil said.

  “Okay. It might not be anything . . .”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  “I saw that TV thing about the house, where you went looking for the tigers, where they delivered the dryers, where that Simoniz guy lived,” Werner said. “There’s a guy here at the zoo, works here, named Barry King. He lives on the next block down from that house.”

  “Huh. Interesting. What are you thinking?” Virgil asked.

  “Well, uh, I really don’t want it to get out that I told you this, but Barry’s basically a jerk and he’s always got money problems. If you told me that you’d arrested Barry for stealing the tigers, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Anyway, I was thinking, if somebody asked Barry where you could get those dryers delivered . . . and if he knew a cheap place for rent . . .”

  “Got it,” Virgil said. “You keep quiet about this, okay? I’ll be on it first th
ing in the morning. Thank you.”

  —

  Got the tigers?” Frankie asked.

  “Not yet, but I might have a tail,” Virgil said.

  His tip to Daisy Jones could have a nice payoff, he thought, and as far as Jones knew, she’d still owe him. A twofer.

  18

  Virgil left a phone message for Jenkins and Shrake and suggested that they meet at the BCA building at eight o’clock the next morning for another trip over to Frogtown. Jenkins was still up and sent a text back, saying that Virgil wouldn’t make it to the BCA at eight o’clock unless he got up at five o’clock in the morning—“No fast way to get across the south end of the Cities at that time in the morning.”

  Virgil thought it over, agreed, and changed the meeting time. “Nine o’clock or as soon after that as I can get there.”

  —

  Virgil made it to the BCA at ten after nine. He’d stopped at the Mayo before heading north again, but Frankie was asleep and he left her that way. Shrake, looking fresh and smelling of French cologne, said he and Jenkins hadn’t gone out the night before because the trip to the possible tiger den “broke our focus. You want to nail yourself a cougar, you can’t be thinking about tigers.”

  They drove in Virgil’s 4Runner to the same neighborhood they’d been in the night before, the two thugs giving Virgil a hard time about his vintage black “Hole” T-shirt.

  “I reject your ignorant criticism,” Virgil said. “Courtney Love had a terrific voice and a good band behind her.”

  “Wasn’t that hard to look at, either,” Jenkins conceded. “That doesn’t mean your shirt isn’t ridiculous. For one thing, it’s a size too small.”

  The conversation continued, but they got to the target house about two hours too late. When they arrived, a St. Paul cop car was parked in the street in front of the house. “I’m suffering from a sudden lack of confidence in our mission,” Jenkins said.

  “Ah, man. Let’s go see what’s going on,” Virgil said.

  —

  A St. Paul police sergeant named Random Powers came out the door as they walked up to the house. Powers knew Jenkins and Shrake and said he’d just taken a missing persons report from the girlfriend of a man who’d disappeared that morning, two hours earlier.