“What about him?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“He’s gone. His shift ended a couple hours ago.”
“Was he here?”
“Yeah, he was here.”
“For his entire shift?” I asked.
Cousin pressed his lips together, a sign of determination. Or anger. Or both. “What did Scottie do?” he asked.
“I don’t know that he did anything,” Karen said. Her voice was carefully neutral, as if she wanted Cousin to know her presence in his store wasn’t personal. “I was conducting a home visit. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be. You know how that makes me nervous.”
“Karen, how many guys have gone through here over the years, ex-cons looking for a chance? Got to be forty or fifty. I should add it up someday. Of those guys”—he held up four fingers—“that’s how many violated. That’s how many couldn’t stay away from the bad thing.”
“You’re a shrewd judge of character,” I said. Again, I was trying to be complimentary. Again, he took it differently.
“If I pull your tail off, will it grow back?” he asked.
Karen stepped between us. “About Scottie,” she said.
Cousin was staring at me when he answered. “I gave Scottie the afternoon. He left at about one. You can check his time card if you want. He said he had some personal matters to deal with.”
“What personal matters?” Karen said.
“I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell.”
“Mr. Cousin, you know better than that.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“Would any of your other employees know where he went?”
“You could ask.”
We went through sound-resistant glass doors into the back. Three men were working on two cars. They were reluctant to help us for fear of jamming up their co-worker, or because they just didn’t like us, or both. I doubt they would have spoken to us at all if not for the encouragement of Cousin. We didn’t learn much except that Scottie tended to keep to himself—which was a lot different than the Scottie I used to know—and that he had the name “Sticks” stitched to the pocket of his work clothes. In between screeches from the air wrenches, a man with far too many tattoos that had nothing to do with art told us, “I saw him at Lehane’s a couple weeks ago. It was a Saturday.”
The name alone was enough to send a ripple of fear coursing through both Cousin and me. Lehane’s was a bucket of blood on the East Side that the city had been threatening to close for years. More murders and assaults with deadly weapons have occurred in and around there than in any other one place in the Twin Cities.
“What the hell were you doing at Lehane’s?” Cousin wanted to know.
“Do we need to spend more time discussing the terms of your release?” Karen asked.
The man shrugged and smiled the way some people do when they’re caught doing something they shouldn’t.
“I take it you’re not the head of the local Mensa chapter,” I said.
“What’s Mensa?”
“Never mind.”
“Shut up,” Cousin told me.
I shut up.
“Scottie at Lehane’s—was he with someone?” Karen asked.
The man grinned. “It’s not the kind of place you go into alone,” he said.
“Who was he with?”
“I don’t know. White dude. Had some size to him, like he did a lot of weight lifting, body building.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Not then, but the next day I said, ‘Hey, Scottie, who was that woman I saw you with last night?’ You know, tryin’ to be funny. Scottie said, ‘That was no woman. That was T-Man.’ ”
Cousin winced at the name.
“Something,” I said.
Turned out that around the same time, Cousin had invited Scottie to lunch only Scottie begged off. “I have to see the T-Man,” Scottie told him.
“T-Man?” Karen asked.
“Yes,” Cousin said.
“Do you have any idea who that is?”
“No, but…”
“What?”
Cousin said, “Back in the old days, when Elliot Ness was chasing Al Capone, that’s what they used to call agents of the Treasury Department. T-men.”
“That went well,” Karen said when we were back in the Audi. “Do you think you could have been any more condescending?”
“I thought I was the soul of restraint,” I said.
“Is that what you call it. God, once a cop, always a cop.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, McKenzie, there’s a big difference between being on parole and being on probation.”
“Is there?”
