Heat Lightning

on one deal, twenty years ago, it’s now in its twelfth refinancing; the city’s still on the hook for eight million dollars, sixteen million if you count all the interest over the years, all so Ralph Warren could take out a mil. I mean, the guy—if you’d told me that he’s a killer, I’d say, probably. ”
    “Who’s he threatened? That you know for sure?”
    “Me,” Homewood said. “I testified for the Minneapolis Planning Board against a ridiculous, absurd proposal for low-income housing—and I’m in favor of low-income housing, don’t misunderstand me, but this was a fraud. A straight-out fraud. We came out of the hearing and Warren was laughing, and he came over to me, joking, and he said, ‘Don’t fall off no high bridges,’ like it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke. I kept a gun in my desk drawer for six weeks after that. Every time I heard a sound at night, I jumped.”
    “But he never did anything,” Virgil said.
    “People don’t believe me when I tell them what’s going to happen,” Homewood said. He shrugged. “Warren figured that out. If I’m not going to have any effect, why worry about me? People believe what they hope will happen, and that’s what Warren peddles to them—hope that something good will happen. Something good does happen, but only for Warren. And then the taxpayers wind up holding the bag, just like they have with Teasdale Commons.”
    “So he’s an asshole,” Virgil said.
    “More than that.” Homewood shook a finger at him. “He’s a criminal and a sociopath. How often do you have one of those, in the same . . . environment . . . as a bunch of crazy awful murders, and he didn’t have anything to do with them?”
    “That’s a point,” Virgil said. “That’s a point.”
     
 
JENKINS AND SHRAKE were throwing a Nerf football around the BCA parking lot when Virgil pulled in, and Virgil took a pass and the three of them threw it around for a few more minutes. The NFL preseason was around the corner, and as they headed inside, the three of them agreed that the Vikings were screwed this year.
    Inside, they borrowed Davenport’s office again and Virgil briefed them on Ralph Warren. “I’m going to get Sandy to research him, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re going to find anything in research. We’ll find it in some kind of action. He’ll do something. So we watch him. If nothing happens for a couple of days . . . we might try a sting.”
    “What do we have to sting him with?” Jenkins asked.
    “I’ve got some photos from Vietnam, of him raping a dead woman. Or a dying woman, anyway,” Virgil said. “If somebody were to call him, and offer them for sale, and if that guy were an out-of-town hoodlum like Carl Knox might hire . . . it might have enough credibility to get him to act.”
    “Yeah, and if he’s as bad a dude as you think, his action might be to blow somebody’s head off,” Jenkins said.
    “There’re ways around that. We could work that out,” Virgil said. “But we’d have to work it so that he talked about it.”
    “So let’s watch him for a while,” Shrake said. “Just the three of us?”
    “Just the two of you, for today,” Virgil said. “I’m running around poking sticks into things. You can talk to Lucas and see if he can give you somebody else.”
    “What’re you poking your stick into?” Shrake asked.
    “I’m going to ask a woman up to Davenport’s cabin for the day and I’m gonna try to get her on the couch so that . . .” He spun and looked at the big map of Minnesota on Davenport’s wall.
    Jenkins said, “You gonna get this chick on the couch so that . . . what?”
    “So I can betray her,” Virgil said. “I need to get some stuff out of her about her father. Without her knowing what I’m doing. So I can fuck with her old man.”
    They all thought about that for a while, then Shrake said, “Well, shit. We’re cops.”

18
    MAI WAS HAPPY to hear from him: “I’m standing outside an ice cream parlor on Grand Avenue, thinking about eating a giant ball of fat and sugar, so my ass will blow up to the size of a dirigible.”
    “Want to go fishing?”
    “Sure. Where?”
    “My boss has a cabin up north—two hours from here,” Virgil said. “It’s pretty far, but we could be there by early afternoon, go fishing, go for a walk, whatever, and be back here by bedtime.”
    “There’s this restaurant at Grand and Victoria that makes good sandwiches and desserts,” she said.