Madman on a Drum (Mac McKenzie #5)

Madman on a Drum (Mac McKenzie #5) Page 47

The way he inhaled made me think that he was as surprised by that as I had been. “Okay,” he said. “Get in the Toyota. Stay away from your car.”

I used the remote control on my key chain to lock the doors to my Audi and dropped the keys into the pocket of my sports jacket. I slid behind the wheel of the Toyota. “Now what?” I said again.

“The keys are under the floor mat.”

I found them there.

“Start driving,” Scottie said.

“Where?” I asked.

“I don’t care. Just drive. And don’t forget—I can see you.”

He hung up. I started the car; the engine roared to life immediately. The Toyota might have been thirty years old, yet it was well preserved. I put it in gear and drove out of the parking lot. I spoke into my chest.

“I’m driving a 1977 Toyota Corolla.” I recited the license plate number. I explained what had happened, emphasizing that when I left the Audi, I lost the car’s microphone and its GPS system, just as Harry had predicted. “I have no idea what Scottie is planning next. He might be running me around the Twin Cities to make sure I’m not being followed. He might be off to check on another location, take up a position where he can watch, and when he’s ready send me there. What do I know?”

I maneuvered the Toyota onto Hennepin Avenue and headed toward Uptown. Along the way I told the agents that the car had not been hot-wired; if the Toyota was stolen, it had been stolen with the keys in the ignition. “You should check to see if there have been any recent car-jackings,” I said. I knew that the FBI and certainly Bobby Dunston didn’t need my advice. It made me feel better to give it just the same.

It was twenty minutes later and I was circling Lake Calhoun for the third time, wondering once again if something had gone terribly wrong, when the cell rang.

The Franklin Avenue Bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul was officially named the Cappelen Memorial Bridge after the man who designed it, only no one ever called it that. It opened in 1923, and at one time it was one of the largest bridges to span the Mississippi River, but its four lanes didn’t carry as much traffic as they once did; the freeway bridge farther up the river now took most of it. Still, there were plenty of irate drivers stacked up behind me when I stopped the Toyota in the center of the bridge, put it in park, and activated the flashing emergency lights.

“I did what you told me,” I said into the cell phone. “Now what?”

“Get out.”

I did, but first I shut off the engine and removed the key just in case Scottie was planning a fast one—get me out of the way so he or his partner could boost the Toyota with the money in the back seat. He could have been concealed in one of the cars behind me. Why not?

A man was standing on the sidewalk and staring at me with angry eyes when I exited the car. He was wearing long brown hair in a ponytail and carrying a heavy backpack, yet he looked at least a decade too old for college. I wondered if he was a veteran who had paid for his University of Minnesota tuition by serving in the military; there was plenty of off-campus housing nearby. Or maybe he was a professional student who was studying everything at nearby Augsburg College except how to live in the real world. If he was a professor, I feared for the future of higher education.

“You can’t park here,” he said. I rounded the car and stepped on the sidewalk. “Did you hear me? I said you can’t park here.”

“Who is it?” Scottie asked. The cell was pressed hard against my ear.

“Some guy, don’t worry about it.”

“Get rid of him.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Hey,” said the student. “I’m talking to you.”

“Walk to the railing,” Scottie said.

I moved forward. The student attempted to block my path. I brushed past him.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“What?” Scottie said.

“Don’t push me,” the student said. He grabbed my arm. I nearly dropped the cell pulling it free.

“Get out of my way,” I told him.

“You can’t park here. Lookit.” He pointed at the avenue with his thumb. “Traffic is backing up.”

He was right. The few cars behind the Toyota had become a long line; they were shifting into the second lane whenever an opening appeared.

“This is an emergency,” I said.

I reached the bridge railing and looked down at the Mississippi River below. The bridge was only fifty-five feet above the water, but it might as well have been as high as Mount McKinley. My acrophobia kicked in, and I took two anxious steps backward. I’ve been afraid of heights since I was a kid. It doesn’t bother me much when I’m in a tall building looking out a window, or even when I’m on a plane. Yet in the open on, say, I don’t know, a bridge, it causes my heart to pound and my breath to grow short and gives me a feeling in my stomach that says I’m about to get hit by a really big meteor. My friends theorize my fear was triggered by some repressed childhood experience. They’re mistaken. The reason I’m afraid of falling from a great height is that I can’t fly.