“You should go down to the cathedral and light a couple of candles,” Lucas said.
“If there wasn't an election coming, Wentz might have told everybody to go fuck themselves and you'd have a hard road to go.”
“I'd have been convicted?”
“Oh… probably not,” Lucas said, taking a sip of lemonade. “With Flowers and me testifying for you, you'd have skated it, I think. Probably would have had to give your house to an attorney, though.”
She looked around her house, a pleasant place, mellow, redolent of the scent of candles and flowers and herbs of the smokable kind, and said, “I was hoping to leave it to Gabriella, when I was ninety and she was seventy.”
“I'm sorry,” Lucas said. And he was, right down in his heart. “I'm so sorry.”
At the end of the summer, a man named Porfirio Quique Ramнrez, an illegal immigrant late of Piedras Negras, was cutting a new border around the lilac hedge on the Widdlers' side yard, in preparation for the sale of the house. The tip of his spade clanged off something metallic a few inches below the surface. He brushed away the dirt and found a green metal cashbox.
Porfirio, no fool, turned his back to the house as he lifted it out of the ground, popped open the top, looked inside for five seconds, slammed the lid, stuffed the box under his shirt, pinned it there with his elbow, and walked quickly out to his boss's truck. All the way out, he was thinking, “Let them be real.”
They were. Two weeks later, he crossed the Rio Grande again, headed south. All but three of the gold coins were hidden in the roof of the trunk of his new car, which was used, but had only twenty-five thousand on the clock.
The Mexican border guard waved him through, touched the front fender of the silver SL500-the very car the Widdlers had dreamed of-for good luck, and called, smiling, to the mustachioed, sharp-dressed hometown boy behind the wheel, “Hey, man! Mercedes-Benz!”
Author's Note There are two people mentioned in this book who are not fictional.
Mentioned in passing is Harrington, the St. Paul chief of police. His full name is John Harrington, he is the chief, and years ago, when he was a street cop, he used to beat the bejesus out of me at a local karate club. One time back then, I was walking past a gun shop near the dojo, and saw in the window a shotgun with a minimum-length barrel and a pistol grip. I bumped into Harrington going in the door of the dojo-he was dressed in winter street clothes-and I mentioned the shotgun to him. He said, “Let's go look.” So we walked back to the shop, big guys, unshaven, in jeans and parkas and watch caps, and maybe a little beat-up, and went inside, and John said, “My friend here saw a shotgun…” The clerk got it out and delivered his deathless line as he handed it over the counter to Sergeant Harrington: “Just what you need for going into a 7-Eleven, huh?” In any case, my wife and I were delighted when John was named St. Paul chief.
He's the kind of guy you want in a job like that.
Karen Palm, mentioned early in the book as the owner of the Minnesota Music Cafe, is a longtime supporter of the St. Paul Police Federation and hosts some of the more interesting music to come through town; along with a lot of cops. Sloan's bar, Shooters, is modeled on the Minnesota Music Cafe.
Nancy Nicholson (who is not mentioned by name as a character) took a good chunk of time out of her busy day to show me around the most spectacular private mansion in St. Paul, and introduced me to such subjects as torchieres and butlers' pantries, the existence of which I hadn't even suspected, much less known how to spell. Thank you, Nancy.
Lucas used The Antiques Price Guide, by Judith Miller, when he was researching antiques. That's a real guide, published by Dorling Kindersley (DK), and I used it to get a hold on the values mentioned in the book.
– J.S.