‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘Say hello to Stan.’
He slipped the phone back into his coat pocket. Stood waiting. He liked waiting. Liked to see the darkness rise up from the ground, up from the Mississippi, climb up across the facades around him and over the glass walls. The cold came quickly. He’d read somewhere that cashmere is eight times warmer than sheep’s wool. Not a particularly precise way of expressing it, and maybe not even true, but that never stopped him advertising it as hard fact whenever anyone asked him about his choice of coat.
Lights came on in the skyscrapers. And in the sign above Bernie’s. Fifteen minutes later, Liza stepped out into the street. Stopped, as though surprised.
‘Again?’ she asked, acting exasperated. ‘This is... what? The third day in a row? Is this your famous siege technique in operation?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I just happened to be in the neighbourhood,’ he said. ‘And I needed someone to split the cost of gas with.’
‘You don’t say?’ she said and got in as he held the car door open for her.
‘I’ll accept payment in the form of a bit of kveldsmat,’ he said as he got in and started the car.
‘Kveldsmat? What’s that? Some kind of Norwegian thing? Like supper?’
‘Yep. You’ll get used to it.’
She laughed. ‘Now who’s flattering themselves? I take it back. You’re not a sheep in wolf’s clothing, you really are a wolf in sheep’s clothing after all.’
‘Speaking of sheep’s clothing, did I ever tell you this coat is eight times warmer than sheep’s wool? That it’s made of goat’s hair that has been combed from the bellies of goats living five miles above sea level? That each goat yields only three and a half ounces of hair per year, so that to make a coat like this takes—’
‘A lot of time and a lot of hard work?’ She gave him that exasperated look again.
Bob thought about her words. Nodded. ‘Exactly. A lot of time and a lot of hard work. If you want a cashmere coat then you have to will yourself to get a cashmere coat.’
‘I get it. And then, if you can be bothered, and if the coat fits?’
‘Then you’ve got a coat for life, baby.’
‘Oh my God, you are so full of bullshit.’
They drove for a while in silence. Then they started laughing. First her, then him. They laughed harder and harder. They didn’t stop laughing for a long time.
56
Departure, September 2022
The story ends there. Full stop. There is no more. Because stories aren’t like life, which always has more to offer.
So I don’t know what more life has to offer to Kay Myers, only that, six years on from the Mike Lunde case, she is now head of the Homicide Unit and shacked up with a younger colleague.
Nor do I know what life has to offer Brenton Walker. For a while he was a likely candidate as the city’s next chief of police until a diagnosis of cancer slowed him down.
Hector Herrer made a full recovery and now works for the governor of Minnesota.
Kevin Patterson wound up in Washington DC, not as a politician but as a well-paid lobbyist for the agricultural sector. He never made it to the House of Representatives, something some commentators attributed to the damage done to his reputation by NRA lobbyists in the wake of his change of stance on the issue of gun control.
But life has nothing more to offer Marco Dante. He was discharged from hospital a week after the dramatic climax of the Mike Lunde case. Two days later he walked to his car outside the Jordan projects. It was the middle of the day and there was no one else around when he unlocked his car. He didn’t notice the tiny jerk in the door as he opened it, nor did he see the two strands of fishing twine wound around the door handle on the inside. Attached to the other end of them were the two pins Dante had just jerked loose from two hand grenades, placed beneath the pedals in such a way that when he pushed down on them he would press on the levers. Dante started his car. He pushed down on the accelerator with his foot, felt a resistance and then felt the resistance give way. That was when he knew something was wrong. Looking down at the floor between his legs he saw one of his own hand grenades with its lever lying next to it. A thinner man than Marco Dante might perhaps have made it out in time. But to cut a short story even shorter: life had no more to offer him.
One who didn’t think life had much more to offer was Bob Oz. How wrong can you be? I push open the door to Town Taxidermy, and there he is. The red hair is a little thinner than in the pictures from back then, the face more lined. But the cashmere coat is the same, and for an instant it occurs to me that the man sitting motionless on a chair between a bear on its hindlegs and a leaping lynx has turned into the Bob Oz I wrote about in my story; stuffed, frozen in time, arrested in mid-movement. But then — as the bell above the door jingles — he looks over, his eyes light up and a smile spreads across his face.
‘Holger!’ he says as he gets to his feet.
Over the past two years Bob and I have exchanged hundreds of emails and spent hours of screen time in each other’s company. I’ve offered him a percentage of any royalties from the sales of my book, but he rejected the offer, said the conversations were free therapy for him. Bob has become what I would call a friend. Even though this is the first meeting in person it feels natural to give each other a warm embrace.
He and Liza have moved into a small house in — ironically enough — Chanhassen, just two streets away from where Emily lives. He’s left the police and now works as head of security for a tech company. Not just because the pay is twice as good, but because two years ago Liza gave birth to their baby boy, and Bob wanted a more structured life. And Liza has been offered the chance to take over a bankrupt bar in downtown for next to nothing. The brewers are actually going to pay her to get the place back on its feet again. Bob has admitted that there are times when he misses police work, but that his decision to leave remains one of the few he never regrets.
We sit down. We talk a bit about family stuff, and then I say:
‘So this is where you and Mike were sitting that last time?’
‘Right here.’
We fall silent. I look out into the street as the scene plays itself over in my mind.
‘You must have been afraid,’ I say.
‘Actually no. He was so calm. And it was all so quiet. Like in a... like in a church.’
‘I see.’
‘Have you been out to Lakewood Cemetery?’
I nod. Less than two hours earlier I had been standing in the company of his sister Emily by the grave where Mike and his family lie buried. A full stop carved in stone. Although in fact, for Mike, life had come to a full stop long before that.
‘You told me you remember Mike as happy,’ says Bob. ‘I never got to see that side of your cousin.’
I nod. ‘We used to go drinking in Dinkytown. Me, him and Monica, the love of his life. Sometimes Monica brought along a friend who I think they hoped I would fall for. I never met anyone with such faith in the existence of deep and lasting love. I don’t mean a naive faith, but a... well, an overwhelming conviction that it existed, despite the negative experiences of the majority.’
‘I know what you mean,’ says Bob with a wry smile.
‘What do you think of love?’
‘What do I think of love? I think...’ He scratches himself behind his ear. ‘...that just occasionally, in between all the little loves, a big one comes along. But it doesn’t necessarily look all that big on the radar, so you need to have your wits about you. And that sometimes a little love can grow, given the right kind of care and nourishment.’