Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 8

"I can stay with my friend Michele-"

"I thought her name was Molly."

Angie pressed her mouth into a line and narrowed her eyes.

"Don't even try to bulls.h.i.t me," Kate advised-for all the good it woulddo. "There is no friend, and you don't have a place to crash in thePhillips neighborhood. That was a nice touch, though, picking a rottenneighborhood. Who would claim they lived there if they didn't?"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"I think you've got your own agenda," Kate said calmly, her attention ona memo that read: Talked wlsabin. Wit to Phoenix House-RM.

Permission. Odd Rob hadn't mentioned this in the mayor's office. Thenote was in a receptionist's hand. No time notation. The decision hadprobably come just before the press conference. All that subterfuge onher part for nothing. Oh, well.

"An agenda that probably centers on staying out of jail or a juvenilefacility," she went on.

"I'm not a-"

"Save it."

She hit the message b.u.t.ton on her phone and listened to the voices ofthe impatient and the forlorn who had tried to reach her during theafternoon.

Reporters hot on the trail of the government center shootout heroine.

She hit fast forward through each of them. Mixed in with the news houndswas the usual a.s.sortment. David Willis, her current pain-in-the-b.u.t.tclient.

A coordinator of a victims' rights group. The husband of a woman who hadallegedly been a.s.saulted, though Kate had the gut feeling it was a scam,that the couple was looking to score reparation money. The husband had astring of petty drug arrests on his record.

"Kate." The gruff male voice coming from the machine made her flinch.

"It's Quinn-urn-John. 1, ah, I'm staying at the Radisson."

As if he expected her to call. Just like that.

"Who's that?" Angie asked. "Boyfriend?"

"No, urn, no," Kate said, scrambling to pull her composure together.

"Let's get out of here. I'm starving."

She drew in a long breath and released it as she pushed to her feet,feeling caught off guard, something she had always worked studiously toavoid. Another offense to add to the list against Quinn. She couldn'tlet him get to her. He'd be here and gone. A couple of days at most, shefigured. The Bureau had sent him because Peter Bondurant had friends inhigh places. It was a show of good faith or a.s.s kissing, depending onyour point of view.

He didn't need to be here. He wouldn't be here long. She didn't have tohave any contact with him while he was here. She wasn't with the Bureauanymore. She wasn't a part of this task force. He had no power over her.

G.o.d, Kate, you sound like you're afraid of him, she thought with disgustas she turned her Toyota 4Runner out of the parking ramp onto FourthAvenue. Quinn was past history and she was a grown-up, not someadolescent girl who'd broken up with the cla.s.s cool guy and couldn'tbear to face him in homeroom.

"Where are we going?" Angie asked, dialing the radio to an alternative rock station. Alanis Morissette whining at an ex-boyfriend with bongos in the background.

"Uptown. What do you want to eat? You look like you could use some fat

and cholesterol. Ribs? Pizza? Burgers? Pasta?"

The girl made the snotty shrug that had driven parents of teenagers from the time of Adam to consider the pros and cons of killing their young.

"Whatever. Just as long as there's a bar. I need a drink."

"Don't push it, kid."

"What? I have a valid driver's license." She flopped back against the

seat and put her feet up against the dash. "Can I b.u.m a smoke?"

"I don't have any. I quit."

"Since when?"

"Since 1981. I fall off the wagon every once in a while. Get your feet

off my dashboard."

The big sigh as she rearranged herself sideways in the bucket seat.

"Why are you taking me to dinner? You don't like me. Wouldn't you rather

go home to your husband?"

"I'm divorced."

"From the guy on the answering machine? Quinn?"

"No. Not that it's any of your business."

"Got kids?"

A beat of silence before answering. Kate wondered if she would ever get

over that hesitation or the guilt that inspired it. "I have a cat."

"So do you live in Uptown?"

Kate cut her a sideways look, taking her eyes briefly off the heavy rush

hour traffic. "Let's talk about you. Who's Rick?"

"Who?"

"Rick-the name on your jacket."

"It came that way."

Translation: name of the guy she stole it from.

"How long have you been in Minneapolis?"

"A while."

"How old were you when your folks died?"

"Thirteen."

"So you've been on your own how long?"

The girl glared at her for a beat. "Eight years. That was lame."

Kate shrugged. "Worth a shot. So what happened to them? Accident?"

"Yeah," Angie said softly, staring straight ahead. "An accident."

There was a story in there somewhere, Kate thought as she negotiated thetwisted transition from 94 to get to Hennepin Avenue. She could probablyguess at some of the key plot ingredients-alcohol, abuse, a cycle ofunhappy circ.u.mstances, and dysfunction. Virtually every kid on thestreet had lived a variation of that story. So had every man in prison.Family was a fertile breeding ground for the kind of psychologicalbacteria that warped minds and devoured hope. Conversely, she knewplenty of people in law enforcement and social work who came from thatsame set of circ.u.mstances, people who had come to that same fork in theroad and turned one way instead of the other.

She thought again of Quinn, even though she didn't want to.

The rain had thickened to a misty, miserable fog. The sidewalks weredeserted. Uptown, contrary to its name, was some distance south ofdowntown Minneapolis. A gentrified area of shops, restaurants, coffeebars, art house movie theaters, it centered on the intersection of LakeStreet and Hennepin. Just a stone's throw-and a worldwest of the toughWhittler neighborhood, which in recent years had become the territory ofblack gangs, driveby shootings, and drug raids.

Uptown was edged to the west by Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles, andwas currently inhabited by yuppies and the terribly hip. The house Katehad grown up in and now owned was just two blocks off Lake Calhoun, herparents having purchased the solid prairie-style home decades before thearea became trendy.

Kate chose La Loon as their destination, a pub away from the livelyCalhoun Square area, parking in the nearly empty side lot. She wasn't inthe mood for noise or a crowd, and knew both could be used as a shieldby her dinner companion. Just being a teenager was enough of a barrierto overcome.

Inside, La Loon was dark and warm, all wood and bra.s.s with a long,old-fashioned bar and few patrons. Kate shunned a booth in favor of* acorner table, where she took the corner chair, which gave her a view ofthe entire dining room. The paranoid seat. A habit Angie Dimarco hadalready picked up for herself. She didn't sit across from Kate with herback to the room; she took a side seat with her back to a wall so shecould see anyone approaching the table.

The waitress brought menus and took drink orders. Kate longed for astout gla.s.s of gin, but settled for chardonnay. Angie ordered rum andc.o.ke.

The waitress looked at Kate, who shrugged. "She's got ID."

A look of sly triumph stole across Angie's face as the waitress walkedaway. "I thought you didn't want me to drink."

"Oh, what the h.e.l.l," Kate said, digging a bottle of Tylenol out of herpurse. "It's not like it's going to corrupt you."

The girl had clearly expected a confrontation. She sat back, a littlebemused, slightly disappointed. "You're not like any social worker Iever knew."

"How many have you known?"

"A few. They were either b.i.t.c.hes or so goody-goody, I wanted to puke."

"Yeah, well, plenty of people will tell you I qualify on one count."

"But you're different. I don't know," she said, struggling for thedefinition she wanted. "It's like you've been around or something."

"Let's just say I didn't come into this job via the usual route."

"What's that mean?"

"It means I don't sweat the small stuff and I don't take any s.h.i.t."

"If you don't take any s.h.i.t, then who beat you up?"

"Above and beyond the call of duty." Kate tossed the Tylenol back andwashed it down with water. "You should see the other guy. So, anyfamiliar faces in those mug books today?"

Angie's mood shifted with the subject, her pouty mouth turning down atthe corners, her gaze dropping to the tabletop. "No. I would have said."

"Would you?" Kate muttered, earning a sullen glance. "They'll want youto work with the sketch artist in the morning. How do you think that'llgo? Did you see him well enough to describe him?"

"I saw him in the fire," Angie murmured, "How far away were you?"

Angie traced a gouge mark in the tabletop with one bitten fingernail. "Idon't know. Not far. I was cutting through the park and I had to pee, soI ducked behind some bushes. And then he came down the hill .. . and he was carrying that-" Her face tightened and she bit her lip, hanging herhead lower, obviously in the hope that her hair would hide the emotionthat had rushed to the surface. Kate waited patiently, keenly aware ofthe girl's rising tension. Even to a streetwise kid like Angie, seeingwhat she had seen had to be an unimaginable shock. The stress of thatand the stress of what she had been through at the police station,compounded by exhaustion, would all have to eventually take a toll.

And I want to be there when the poor kid breaks down, she thought, neverpleased with that aspect of her job. The system was supposed to championthe victim, but it often victimized them again in the process.

And the advocate was caught in the middle-an employee of the system,there supposedly to protect the citizen who was being dragged into theteeth of the justice machine.

The waitress returned with their drinks. Kate ordered cheeseburgers andfries for both of them and handed the menus back.

"I-I didn't know what he was carrying," Angie whispered when the waitress was out of earshot. "I just knew someone was coming and Ineeded to hide."

Like an animal that knew too well the night was stalked by predators ofone kind or another.

"A park's a scary place late at night, I suppose," Kate said softly,turning her winegla.s.s by the stem. "Everybody loves to go in daylight.

We think it's so pretty, so nice to get away from the city. Then nightcomes, and suddenly it's like the evil forest out of The Wizard of Oz.

n.o.body wants to be there in the dead of night. So what were you doingthere, Angie?"