‘That would be good.’ McLaren’s eyes followed the man as he hulked around the car suspiciously, probably looking for bombs or biological weapons or contraband cigarettes. ‘Man, he looks grim.’
‘That’s why we put him up front,’ Berg said. ‘Makes our clients feel real secure. The guy’s a puff ball, though. Raises cocker spaniel puppies.’
‘He probably eats them.’
Berg laughed and rolled his hand at someone in the guard booth by the gate, and two hundred square feet of cyclone fence unlatched and started to hum open. ‘Red’s on board, waiting for you. Some doin’s tonight, huh?’
‘Might be,’ Freedman agreed. ‘This the only access?’
‘For cars, yeah. We check everybody against the guest list here, and sweep them before they get through.’ He raised a handheld metal detector.
‘Mayor’s going to love that,’ McLaren said.
‘Him, I’m doing personally. Always thought he was a shifty bastard. Good to see you again, Freedman.’
‘You, too, Anton.’
McLaren waited until they’d pulled through the gate into the parking lot before whispering, ‘Anton?’
‘Don’t go there,’ Freedman told him.
The Nicollet rested at dockside, about ten times larger than anything McLaren had expected, three stacked decks gleaming white against dark gray clouds that were starting to shred in the middle. They’d be gone by dark, the weatherman had said, and clear skies would send the temperatures plummeting. Hell of a night to be on a riverboat.
‘Bitchin’ cold already,’ Freedman grumbled, picking up the pace. ‘There’s Red. You ever met him?’
‘Nope.’ McLaren looked at the man striding toward them across the parking lot. He’d expected a bulky, Minnesota homegrown kind of guy, but Chilton looked more like Clark Gable in his prime, right down to the little dark mustache and the million-dollar smile.
‘Lookin’ good, Red.’ Freedman gave him back a smile and pumped his hand. ‘Johnny McLaren, meet the fool who sold out the noble profession of public service for a measly few hundred grand a year.’
‘It’s always an honor to meet a man with real brains,’ Johnny said warmly as he shook his hand. ‘Especially when they saddle me with a guy like Freedman.’
Red gave a hearty laugh. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Johnny McLaren. You got a taste of gate security coming in, right?’
‘Looks tight,’ Freedman said.
Red nodded. ‘It is, but all that does is control vehicle traffic.’ He waved at the parking lot, which bled into adjoining riverfront property with no obstructions. ‘Anybody could walk in, so the real security is at the two gangplanks. I’ll have four men at each of them, and everybody gets swept again. No one boards with hardware unless they’ve got one of these.’ He handed Freedman and McLaren lapel pins with the Argo logo. ‘How many people have you got coming?’
‘We’ll have a couple squads and uniforms in the lot. Only six plainclothes on board, including us,’ Freedman said.
Red dug in his pocket and came up with four more pins, handed them to Freedman. ‘We already checked out the boat. I assume you’ll be doing a walk-through of your own.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay. We can double up checking in the crew and waitstaff and caterers; they should be showing up anytime now and there’s going to be a lot of them, plus the musicians, some asshole bunch called the Whipped Nipples.’
‘No shit?’ McLaren asked. ‘The Whipped Nipples?’
Freedman stared at him. ‘It scares me that you know who that is.’
‘Are you kidding? They’re incredible. All strings. Cello, bass, violins, dulcimer, some native instruments you never saw from countries you never heard of. You’re going to like this, Freedman.’
‘I am not going to like this because I do not like their name.’
Red grinned. ‘Neither did Foster Hammond. Paid ’em extra not to display it or say it.’
Freedman gave his big head a what’s-the-world-coming-to shake. ‘Don’t know why anyone would want a name like that.’
‘One of my boys told me they’re a bunch of faggots – for real. You take that wherever you want to go.’
McLaren shook his finger at him. ‘That was not politically correct.’
Red grinned at him. ‘Can’t get anything past you, McLaren.’
‘That’s the second time somebody said that to me today.’
‘Well then, it must be true and we’re all in good hands. Now on board we’ve got three cans. Six, actually. A men’s and women’s on each deck. Rolseth said you’d want your people to cover those, but I’ll leave one man stationary in each of those areas just as backup. You think of anything else you need, let me know.’
Freedman nodded. ‘Thanks, Red. Appreciate your cooperation.’
‘Cooperation, hell. Somebody gets blown away on this tugboat, doesn’t hurt to have the MPD around to share the blame. Why don’t you two come aboard and I’ll introduce you to Captain Magnusson. A real character, that guy. He’ll give you the nickel tour and then we can discuss tonight’s plan over tea and petits fours.’
‘I’d prefer a scotch,’ Johnny said.
‘Yeah, wouldn’t we all? This detail has been giving me nightmares for six months in the form of Foster Hammond. Didn’t think it could get any worse. How wrong I was. And so for our troubles, we get tea and petits fours. Not their job to feed us, of course, but as a courtesy . . .’
‘You were serious about the tea and petits fours?’ Freedman asked incredulously.
Red shook his head sadly. ‘There’s one thing I never joke about and that’s food. Stick with the pink ones – got a nice framboise custard in the middle. So just between the three of us, you really think this crazy s.o.b. is going to show tonight?’
Freedman shrugged. ‘If he does, we get all the credit.’
‘Sixty-forty. I just bought a place in Boca Raton, so I could use the extra business. Property taxes are killing me.’
Captain Magnusson was on the foredeck, standing by helplessly as he watched his ship being taken over by a lot of armed men in suits. He was a weathered-looking old man with ruddy, freckled cheeks and tufts of reddish gray hair poking out from beneath his cap.
‘They pick him for the job based on appearance alone?’ McLaren wondered aloud.
‘You could almost believe it,’ Red agreed.
‘Hey, another redhead, could be one of your relatives, McLaren,’ Freedman teased his partner.
‘Not a chance. He’s Viking stock, you can tell by the paunch.’
Freedman looked over at McLaren’s own paunch. ‘So you’re a Viking now?’
‘This is not a paunch. This is a Guinness gut, Freedman. You get a paunch from too much damn lutefisk.’
‘Nobody gets a paunch from lutefisk. It’s an emetic.’
‘You had it before?’
‘Hell no. But my mother-in-law makes it every damn Christmas. Makes the whole house smell like a three-day-old corpse.’ He let out a long, low whistle as they boarded the gangplank. ‘Nice-looking boat.’
‘That she is,’ Red said, waving to the captain. ‘Permission to board, Captain?’
Magnusson actually smiled. ‘Aye!’
‘So how do they get that paddle to move anyhow?’ McLaren asked.
‘Squirrels.’
‘Good. I’ll tell the little sons of bitches that are eating the insulation in my attic that they should get a job.’
18
Roadrunner kept his eyes front, focused on the asphalt a few feet ahead of his bike, alert for a new crack in the tar that could bite the narrow racing tire and send him careening into the traffic on his left.
He felt the burn in his thighs and calves from pedaling hard up the hill by the river, but it didn’t hurt enough yet. He should have done it twice, maybe three times or four, until the pain blossomed and the world turned orange and all the noise in his head abruptly, blessedly, stopped.