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—
The Wabasha Credit Unionwas ten minutes away. When they got there, they were told by the manager that Lee was visitingher retired parents in The Villages, in Florida. With that dead end, they scouted Hess’s house, where they saw no sign of life, and decided that a stakeout of the house would almost certainly give them away.
“Why don’t we go to your house and get Ellen to make us some sandwiches,” Virgil suggested. “Something healthier than the crap we’ve been eating.”
“Good idea,” Lucas said. “We had ribs last night and there are leftovers. Sparerib sandwiches with a light drizzle of sparerib gravy. Home fries with ketchup. Couple Dos Equis.”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” Virgil said. “Health food.”
—
They did that.Weather got home ten minutes after they did, ate a sandwich with them, told Lucas that her tire alert had come on, on the way home, and he needed to increase the pressure in all four tires.
Right then.
Lucas had an electric tire inflator and he and Virgil spent fifteen minutes doing that and discussing the inaccuracy of inflator pressure gauges. At five-thirty, driving into another snow flurry, they left for the boxing club, leaving behind a satisfied, but not overwhelmingly grateful, Weather.
—
West Seventh wasone of the oldest streets of St. Paul, connecting the downtown area to Fort Snelling, the site of the earliest American settlement in Minnesota. The street was a jumble of low redbrick buildings and new tall glassy structures. Because of theproximity of the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild hockey team and host to music concerts, the street was dotted with restaurants and bars that gradually thinned out the farther west it went.
The Silver Star was just outside the entertainment area; while parking was easier there than farther east, closer to the Xcel Center, Lucas and Virgil, traveling separately, took a while to find spaces that would allow them to see the front of the boxing gym.
Once parked, they hooked up by phone, and both had binoculars that would let them see people coming and going from the gym. Ellen, the housekeeper, had offered them diminutive Halloween sacks of Fritos before they left, and they’d both helped themselves to four bags, along with Diet Cokes—the idea being not to eat anything that would make a toilet necessary.
Virgil was eating Fritos and watching the snow fall when he spotted Hess drive past. He called Lucas, and mumbled through a mouthful of corn chips, “Here he comes—silver Subaru.” Lucas watched as Hess turned a corner a half block from the gym. He hopped out of his Cayenne and hustled a block down to the corner, then around the corner, and saw Hess parking the car in a space down the side street. Hess got out of the car with a duffel, and without looking toward Lucas, walked around the corner and went inside the gym.
“The problem,” Lucas told Virgil on the phone, “is that he might walk to Maggie’s place. If we’re back here watching the car, and he goes out the front, we could miss him. I think you should come down here, and I’ll stay where I am on the street.”
Virgil agreed, though if Hess should go to the corner and thenturn toward Lucas, rather than away, Lucas would have to make an illegal and noticeable U-turn on the busy street to get behind him. Virgil, on the other hand, would have to wait until he was around the corner before he could turn on his lights and follow, and if Hess made another quick turn, it was possible that neither one of them would see him.
“I think we needed another guy to do this,” Virgil said.
“Nah. We good.”
The next two hours dragged by. The temperature was falling like a rock, and they had to turn the car engines on and off to stay comfortable. The snow got heavier, then quit for a while, and came back for another round.
At ten minutes to eight, earlier than they’d expected, Hess walked out the gym’s front door without his duffel, and started jogging away from Lucas, down West Seventh.
“Shit, he’s on foot! He’s wearing a sweat suit with a hoodie, he hasn’t put the hood up yet, he’s bareheaded...” Lucas called. “I’ll try to get ahead of him. He’s running, he’s jogging.”
Virgil pulled out of his parking space. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can’t go too slow, he’ll spot us. I’ll go by and try to get around the block, and come back, maybe you can switch in and track him for a while... Christ, it’s dark back here...”
“Where are you...”
“He turned off Seventh, I don’t know what street this is. It’s that corner by the Day by Day Café, he’s running down that street toward I-35...”
“I’m coming.”
“I had to go past him. We’re coming to the end of the street. Ah, goddamnit. There’s a sidewalk here going off to the south, but there’s no street, I can’t follow him, he’s running south...”
“I’m looking at my nav system,” Virgil said. “I’ll try to get ahead of him... Let me see...”
“Hurry!”
“He’s gotta come out at St. Clair Avenue,” Virgil called. “I’ll park on one of the streets there, maybe I can follow him on foot...”
