“I’m sorry I’m not that woman, Harry. I wish I were.”
Harry leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“Close enough,” he said.
The way her eyes welled up, you’d think she had just received a Top Ten Rating from Consumer Reports. She didn’t allow the tears to fall, though. Instead, she brushed them away with her thumb.
We sipped bourbon for a while.
Erin had nearly finished her second glass when she announced, “We need to help Randy.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because he doesn’t deserve what’s going to happen to him.”
“Sure he does,” I said. I reached across the desk anyway. “My cell.”
“Oh, yeah.” Erin opened her desk drawer and removed my smartphone. I had given it to her right before she left Pipestone because I didn’t want it falling into Brazill’s hands. I found a number and tapped on it. I listened until the phone was answered.
“Marilyn,” I said, “this is McKenzie. Your son needs you.”
* * *
After I finished my conversation, a special agent I didn’t know poked his head into the office.
“We’re ready,” he said.
Harry extended his hand toward Erin.
“Let’s go,” he said.
She took it, and he helped her out of the chair onto her feet. He continued to hold her hand as we made our way into the corridor and headed for the foyer.
“Should I call my lawyer?” Erin asked.
“Why? Did you do something illegal?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take whatever’s coming to me.”
“You’ll be all right,” I said.
“Just tell the truth when you give your statement,” Harry said. “The truth and nothing but the truth. The statute of limitations will protect you.”
Erin nodded, but I don’t think she believed him.
“Don’t forget,” I said, “the assistant U.S. attorney will need your testimony to put these guys away. You hold all the cards.”
“What do you know about holding cards?” Harry said. “You are the worst poker player in the world.”
“People keep saying that.”
“That’s because it’s true.”
Erin said, “Yes, but—where did you learn to play chess?”
“Didn’t McKenzie tell you?” Harry said. “He was in the chess club in high school. Played when he was in college, too.”
“Really?” Erin sounded surprised. “A jock like you? How did that happen?”
“Well,” I said. “There was this girl…”
JUST SO YOU KNOW
As it turned out, Assistant United States Attorney James Richard Finnegan really did have political aspirations. Who knew?
You could tell by the way he handled the media. Half of the statements released by his office sounded like the opening paragraph of a campaign flyer: The man who smashed an international drug cartel that was bringing heroin into the Twin Cities. The Top Cop who thwarted the plans of an organized crime syndicate that was attempting to expand into Minnesota. The leader of a joint task force consisting of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the St. Paul Police Department Major Crimes Unit that squashed a gang war that had already taken the lives of four young men of Hispanic descent.
Bobby wanted to throw him off the Robert Street Bridge to see if he sank or floated in the river below. Harry was ready to elect him president. And as happy as Chopper was that I had helped him gain a measure of revenge against the people who put him in a wheelchair, he still insisted that I pay for his and Herzog’s dinner. Oh, well.
Still, you had to give Finnegan his props. Everyone went to prison on a potpourri of criminal charges including drug trafficking and distribution, conspiracy, extortion, first degree and second degree murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, assault and battery, even assaulting federal officers. Carson Brazill took the hardest fall, life without parole, mostly because he refused to identify the serious businessmen based in Chicago that he mentioned in the videotape that served as a virtual confession at his trial. The softest tumble went to Randy Bignell-Sax, who drew only twenty-seven months—paroled in eighteen—at the Level 1 minimum-security prison in Lino Lakes, about a forty-minute drive from Cambridge. His family’s exceedingly high-priced attorneys had a lot to do with it by convincing the court that Randy was merely a foolish and hopeless pawn of the drug lords—not a particularly hard stretch when you think of it. But I believe it was Erin Peterson’s impassioned plea for leniency that made the difference.
Salsa Girl was portrayed by Finnegan as a heroic victim who was betrayed by her partner, who nevertheless persisted against terrifying odds to defeat the bad guys, an assertion readily adopted not only by the juries she testified before but also by the media that adored her good looks and humble, innocent, little-girl persona—yes, she had that tool in her Swiss Army knife, too.
Christine Olson was never mentioned, not even by Brazill or Levi Chandler, who more or less adhered to omertà, organized crime’s code of silence.
Which isn’t to say that everything was sunshine and lollipops. Apparently Erin’s business deal with Central Valley International fell through. I say “apparently” because neither John Ripley nor anyone else at CVI would return her calls to make it official. Still, whatever disappointment she felt was short-lived at best, because a few days later, Marilyn Bignell, newly installed chairperson of the board of directors of Minnesota Foods and Bignell Bakeries, announced that the company had successfully concluded negotiations to purchase sixty-five percent of Salsa Girl Salsa with an option to buy the remaining thirty-five percent in three years. Bobby suggested that the deal was sealed when Erin petitioned the court on behalf of Marilyn’s son—and refused to speculate about who might have blown up one of her trucks—but he’s always been cynical like that.
After that, though, Salsa Girl disappeared. I thought she had taken the money and run until she reappeared at a gathering held at Dave Deese’s house holding Ian Gotz’s hand. They had spent about ten days together—they didn’t say where—during which she told Ian exactly who she was and what she had done. Ian’s response was to ask her to marry him.
Alice Pfeifer was to be her maid of honor. She was hoping that Nina and Shelby would agree to be her bridesmaids, a request that was met with much loud squealing—this after the somewhat less than generous things Nina had said about Erin when she saw what Brazill and his minions had done to my face and ribs.
Afterward, Erin spoke to me.
“I don’t have family,” she said. “I’m like you, McKenzie. My friends are my family. I was hoping, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition—would you give me away?”
I was shocked into silence. It was a condition that didn’t go unnoticed.
“Oh my God,” Shelby said. “You’ve left him speechless. I’ve never seen that.”
“McKenzie,” Nina said. “No quips? No witticisms?”
Bobby snapped his fingers at me.
“McKenzie, say something?”
I don’t know how, but I managed to choke out the words. “What are friends for?”
ALSO BY DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT
Featuring Holland Taylor
Penance
Practice to Deceive
Dearly Departed
Darkness, Sing Me a Song
Featuring Rushmore McKenzie
A Hard Ticket Home
Tin City
Pretty Girl Gone
Dead Boyfriends
Madman on a Drum
Jelly’s Gold
The Taking of Libby, SD
Highway 61
Curse of the Jade Lily
The Devil May Care
Unidentified Woman #15
Stealing the Countess
What the Dead Leave Behind
Other Novels
The Devil and the Diva
(with Renée Valois)
Finders
Keepers
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT has won the Edgar Award and is the three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for his crime fiction. He is a past president of the Private Eye Writers of America. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Just So You Know
Also by David Housewright
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LIKE TO DIE. Copyright © 2018 by David Housewright. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by James Perales
Cover photograph: bridge © Jennifer Photography Imaging / Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Housewright, David, 1955– author.
Title: Like to die / David Housewright.
Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2018. | Series: Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie; 16
Identifiers: LCCN 2017060155 | ISBN 9781250094537 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250094544 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: McKenzie, Mac (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Private investigators—Minnesota—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3558.O8668 L55 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060155
eISBN 9781250094544
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First Edition: June 2018