The Shallows--A Nils Shapiro Novel Page 4

  He laughed, then realized our meeting had gone on for quite some time. He thanked me for coming in, shook my hand, and walked me out of Halferin Silver.

  6

  I left Halferin Silver and meandered the skyways to see if I could discover something new then find my way back without a map. It was a game I played as a kid and often lost. The theme of that game turned into my job. And my life. But I still liked trying to get lost in the skyways, and pretended my survival was at stake despite passing dozens of restaurants, sundry shops, and pharmacies.

  I had long given up at the game when I spotted her from the second floor of the IDS Crystal Court. The second floor is like a catwalk circumnavigating the block-large building. It’s lined with shops and restaurants and open to the granite-floored courtyard below. I’d just walked out of Starbucks sucking iced-coffee through a straw and had stopped at the railing to look down. The Crystal Court hadn’t changed much in thirty years. Trees grew out of big planters, fed by daylight filtered through the glass ceiling. Kiosks dotted the space as if it were the center of a shopping mall or a park in Manhattan.

  Micaela Stahl walked out of the store that sells Minnesota souvenirs—cutting boards shaped like Minnesota, candy named after and resembling wildlife droppings, wild rice, loon-embossed T-shirts, and other must-haves. Her strawberry-blond frizz was pulled back into a ponytail. That’s how she secured it on hot, humid days. She wore jeans, a cream linen top, and carried a paper bag, as if she were a tourist visiting from a distant land like North Dakota. She had told me she was going to New York for the day on business. Either there had been a change of plans or she’d lied.

  Micaela headed for the doors on Nicollet Mall, which is not an indoor mall but a street for pedestrians, taxis, and busses. No regular cars allowed. The game of trying to get lost was over. It was time to play a new game.

  I dropped my iced-coffee in a garbage can and jumped on the escalator, quick-stepping my way down, weaving through content standers-still. Micaela exited the building and took a left on the mall toward Eighth Street. I jogged to the door to catch up, got spit out of the revolving door, and spotted her waiting at the light to cross. I jogged a few more steps then slowed to a walk and hung back twenty feet, close enough to see her strawberry-blond ponytail but far enough to duck behind a giant Scandinavian if she turned around.

  The light turned green. Micaela crossed Eighth Street, passed Men’s Warehouse and Panera—maybe Nicollet Mall was like a shopping mall—then turned left into the Medical Arts Building. I followed. The building is a 1920s masterpiece. The first floor is stone and gold with a wide marble swirly staircase and hanging chandeliers. It’s art deco or a precursor to that style but it’s in mint condition and beautiful and maybe that’s why it hadn’t been knocked down and replaced by a big box filled with blue-white lights shining on disposable merchandise.

  Micaela turned a corner into a narrow bay lined with elevators. There were a dozen or so other people perusing the directory or waiting to go up. The space was too tight to blend in unnoticed, so I turned around, rounded the corner, and waited to hear the ding signaling an arriving elevator.

  My ex-wife and current bed partner was in town but told me she was going to New York. It was an unnecessary lie. We rarely talk during the day. I would have assumed she was working and if I happened to run into her downtown she could have easily said she had driven down from her Linden Hills office for lunch. Or a meeting. Or a doctor’s appointment. I wouldn’t have questioned it. Her lie made no sense.

  I heard a ding then peeked around the corner. Micaela entered the third elevator on the left with a scrum of others. I waited for the elevator doors to close, then walked toward it and looked up at the numbered lights above.

  The elevator stopped at floors 4, 9, 12, and 20 before heading back down. I made a note in my phone and headed over to the directory, took a picture, made sure it was readable when zoomed in, then headed toward home.

  Ten minutes later, my phone rang. It was Annika.

  She said, “Halferin Silver just called. They want me to come in at five.”

  “Good. Just treat it like a normal job. Straight investigation. I’ll check with Ellie to make sure he can stomach the questionable ethics of this. But we’ll do our jobs, and hopefully, both our clients will find out who killed Todd Rabinowitz, whether they like the answer or not.”

  “Got it.”

  “Tell Halferin we haven’t had a chance to talk. I’m on a stakeout and couldn’t be reached. See what he says. We’ll compare notes later.”

  “Okay,” said Annika. “Hey, should I tell Ellegaard if I see him before I go over to Halferin Silver?”

  “Let me speak to him first. He isn’t going to like this, and I’d like to spare you the blowback.”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  My call-waiting buzzed. I glanced at the screen. “Shit. That’s him now. Consider him told.”

  I stopped in the skyway just past City Center, looked northeast up Hennepin Avenue, and took Ellegaard’s call. “Hey. Get some sleep?”

  He said, “Enough, yeah. Listen. I have to ask you for an unusual favor.”

  “Good. Because I’m about to ask you for one, too.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “It’s not that bad.” Then I told him what happened with Robin Rabinowitz and her suspicion of Halferin Silver, and how I helped get Annika hired there working the same case but for a different client.

  “Dang it, Shap. We’ll get in real trouble if they find out.”

  “Only if someone files a complaint. And if neither killed Todd Rabinowitz—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Ellegaard.

  “Hear me out. If neither murdered him, and we find the killer, they’ll both get what they hired us to do. And if one of them did it, the guilty client will be in no position to file a complaint, and the other client will have no reason to complain.”

  “Shap, you’re making my stomach hurt.”

  “You should be used to that by now.”

  Two cops rousted a sleeping vagrant on the street below. They sat him up and leaned him back against the wall of the ugliest building in town. One cop produced a pouch of juice like the kind kids drink, poked a straw into it, and handed it to the homeless man.

  Ellegaard said, “Why do you put us in situations like this? It’s like you don’t think.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Still does.”

  “That’s the kind of answer I get from my daughters, which is a perfect segue into the favor I’m going to ask you.”

  I said nothing and could feel Ellegaard’s hesitation.

  “Molly and I are having problems with Emma. She’s making some bad choices. It’s like she’s just not thinking. Sound familiar?”

  The cops helped the vagrant to his feet, handed him a bag of what looked like trail mix, and sent him on his way.

  I said, “How can I help?”

  “Sit down with her. Talk to her. She likes you. You two will communicate in the same language. Molly and I do not speak it.”

  “What do you want me to say to her?”

  “Does it matter what I want?”

  I saw my reflection in the skyway glass. I had a stupid smile on my face. Fucking Ellegaard. The guy knew me. “I’m happy to talk to Emma. I get the gist of what she needs to hear.”

  “Thanks, Shap. Molly and I need you on this. Our concern for Emma is number one. But she’s also the oldest of three girls and setting an example for Olivia and Maisy whether she realizes it or not. We have to get her straightened out.”

  “When’s a good time?”

  “Tonight. Take her to dinner. Anywhere you want. On me.”

  “You sure? We’re going to drink a lot of whiskey and you know I like the good stuff.”

  Ellegaard laughed. We talked a little more about Emma, then he agreed to look the other way when it came to how Annika and I investigated the murder of Todd Rabinowitz.

  I will
ruin him yet.

  7

  I walked back to the coat factory, opened my laptop, and looked up the offices on floors 4, 9, 12, and 20 of the Medical Arts Building. I found podiatrists, oncologists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, endocrinologists, ENTs, dentists, and everything in between. Micaela could have visited any of them, and I wasn’t even sure she visited as a patient. She could have gone to support a patient. She could have a doctor or nurse friend and was meeting him or her for coffee. She could have been meeting someone in the medical field on business.

  My chance sighting of Micaela Stahl had led to a dead end. If I wanted to know what she was doing in the Medical Arts Building and why she hadn’t gone to New York like she’d said, I’d have to flat-out ask her. But it wasn’t any of my business. I was her bed partner. Nothing more.

  I changed out of my big-boy clothes then threw on an old green T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and Stan Smiths. I don’t wear sandals. I’d rather have white feet and keep my toes to myself. Besides, I was going to visit a metal sculptor. Open-toed shoes could be a hazard.

  Arndt Kjellgren lived and worked in an orange-bricked building near the corner of Hennepin and Stinson in Northeast Minneapolis. It’s the kind of neighborhood where roads dip under metal train trellises covered in rust and graffiti. I parked the Volvo in a gravel lot and walked around back to enter the building near a loading dock not unlike the coat factory’s. Whatever the building had been—maybe a coat factory of its own—it wasn’t anymore. I walked in search of a directory and passed offices for small, trendy ad agencies, branding agencies, web developers, and other businesses I didn’t understand. I found one toward the front entrance. A TV monitor mounted on the wall listed the building’s tenants. It didn’t speak well of the businesses that they were listed on a monitor as if they came and went as often as airplanes.

  Arndt Kjellgren’s studio wasn’t listed, so I wandered the concrete-floored hallways looking for anything that resembled an art studio. I didn’t find it but spotted a guy hand-trucking two gas cylinders toward the loading dock near where I’d entered. He wore a Polaris trucker’s hat, solid in front and mesh in back, a long brown ponytail jutting out above the hat’s plastic adjustment strip, and a heavy beard. He wore blue coveralls, the sleeves pushed up revealing scars enveloping both forearms. Probably not uncommon in the welding business.

  It’s not polite to stare, so I looked up at the man’s smiling brown eyes. A welding gas delivery man is the perfect way to find a metal sculptor.

  I said, “Excuse me. You wouldn’t by any chance be taking those to a metal sculptor, would you?”

  He stopped and looked me up and down as if he was considering asking me out. “No, man. These are his empties. Taking them back.” His voice was hoarse and weak. Maybe he talked too much or took an iron bar in the larynx while welding.

  “Oh,” I said. “Do you know which space is Arndt Kjellgren’s? He wrote it down for me on a piece of scrap paper but I think I washed it—can’t find it anywhere.”

  “Been there,” he said. It sounded like it hurt him to talk. But he smiled, displaying a perfect set of teeth. Maybe it was time for me to try some of that tooth-whitening stuff. Even coveralls-wearing guys with trucker hats and beards were upping the teeth bar.

  “I checked the directory but Kjellgren isn’t listed.”

  “Yeah,” said the guy. “He’s a bit weird.”

  “Nothing against the arts, but they do attract their share of atypical personalities.”

  He chuckled. “No shit.”

  “My boss is a collector. We’re commissioning Kjellgren on a piece.” I laughed. “That is if I can find his fucking studio. Dude ever hear of putting up a sign?”

  The gas guy considered my plight for a few seconds then said, “Far northwest corner of the building. Gray door. Paper over the window.”

  “Thanks.” I navigated to the northwest corner of the building, where I found one closed gray steel door next to a sidelight window covered with newspaper from the inside. I saw no sign informing me who the door belonged to. No welcome mat. Nothing but a muffled blast of music from within. It was Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland, 45.” It made me pre-like Arndt Kjellgren, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  I knocked and waited. Nothing. Knocked again. Still nothing. I grabbed the doorknob. It turned. I pushed the door open. The music pounded clear from a hi-fi system against a brick wall. A stack of McIntosh electronics with their blue and green lights powered gigantic wooden vintage speakers. A turntable sat on top of the rack. Long, high shelves filled with record albums extended both left and right of the electronics stack. Thousands of records. Dude was analogue. The son of a bitch was making my job hard.

  He wore white jeans and a white shirt, both splotched with paint as if he were the mixing palette. His face hid behind a welding mask, torch in hand, connecting or cutting metal—I couldn’t tell which. I looked away from the flame made silent by the music. Then the song ended, the last on the record’s side. The man set down the torch and lifted his mask, revealing a thirtyish-year-old face, clean-shaven, shiny with sweat. He started toward the stereo, I assumed to change the vinyl.

  I said, “Excuse me.” He stopped, turned and looked.

  He said, “Hey, man,” then continued toward the turntable.

  “You got a minute?”

  “You the P.I.?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess.” He removed the vinyl disc from the turntable and returned it to its sleeve then slipped the sleeve inside the cardboard jacket. He said, “New York Dolls, Aretha, or Leonard Cohen?”

  “You got a few minutes first?”

  “Depends which one you pick.”

  Arndt Kjellgren insisted on playing a game on his field with his ball by his rules. And that’s pretty much all I needed to know about Arndt Kjellgren. He offered excellent choices, but that was part of the fix. I said, “I’d rather hear a little Hot 8 Brass Band if you got it.”

  “What?”

  “Hot 8 Brass Band. You probably don’t have it. Throw on whatever.”

  He looked confused then turned toward the shelf, removed an iPad, and said, “Is that Hot or Haute?”

  “Hot. H-O-T.”

  He tapped the screen then changed the input on the pre-amp. A few seconds later the room filled with the rhythmic sounds of bass drum, snare, and tuba. He listened, nodded, then looked at me and said, “Dope band. Right on.” He lowered the volume then walked up to me and shook my hand. “Arndt.”

  “Nils.”

  “Kombucha?”

  “Why not?”

  Arndt Kjellgren had a makeshift kitchen like mine but with newer and better appliances. He walked over to a double refrigerator, removed two bottles of red kombucha, then led me to a sitting area of ultra-modern couches and chairs that looked like blocks but were upholstered in some kind of all-weather canvas. They surrounded a coffee table made of shattered glass over tangled metal. I guessed it was high-end patio furniture, probably to withstand the odors and potential friendly fire mishaps of indoor welding and painting.

  “So,” he said, “you probably want to know all about me and Robin. The police did when they were here a couple hours ago.”

  “The only difference is I work for Robin.”

  He laughed. “Really. I figured you guys all work for Truth and the Good of Mankind.”

  “You obviously don’t know many of us.”

  “Right. You’re in it for the money.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. But if I make some, I’ll let you know.”

  He smiled then wiped his cold bottle across his forehead. “Fire away, man.”

  I guessed he was ten years younger than Robin. Twenty years younger than Todd Rabinowitz. Arndt Kjellgren still had a lot of boy in him. He looked like a kid making stuff in his garage. Another mark in the plus column. I said, “How did you meet Robin?”

  “Charity event at the Walker. Rich people paid for a private tour and to meet a few artists.
I was in the sculpture garden with one of my pieces. We talked for a while. The tour moved on but Robin stayed behind.”

  “Love in the garden.”

  “Not at first. But I’ve been making sculptures since I was sixteen. The job’s got some perks and one of them is women who fantasize about being with an artist. I’m not a fucking priest or anything so if I’m interested I invite ’em over to see the studio.”

  “So this place is a Venus flytrap.”

  He sighed. “Dude, it’s not that predatory. I don’t lure women in. They’re chasing something. And I’ll be honest, most aren’t that thrilled after they catch it. But Robin’s different.”

  I twisted off the cap of my kombucha. A pink foam bubbled to the top. “How long ago did this chance meeting happen?”

  “About two years ago.”

  “So it’s a coincidence one of your sculptures is in the reception area where Todd Rabinowitz worked.”

  “Yeah,” said Kjellgren, “but not that big of a coincidence. My sculptures are all over this town. It’s not like I make Post-it notes, but my work’s in a lot of offices.”

  “All right. Tell me about Robin.”

  “So, wait,” he said. “She hired you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then why do you sound like you’re investigating her?”

  I sipped my kombucha. Strawberry. “Robin hired me because she knows you two will be suspects and she wants me to help clear your names by finding whoever killed Todd. The more I know about Robin the better I can do that.”

  “Ah. Like if she has a tendency to fuck artists, maybe any collectible asshole could have killed Robin’s husband.” The boyish twinkle was gone from Arndt Kjellgren’s eyes. I’d struck some sort of nerve, and it wasn’t a good one.

  I let whatever irked him simmer for a tick then said, “Yeah. Something like that.” He couldn’t hide his surprise. I didn’t give him the conventional Minnesota denial. I didn’t pretend we were all nice decent folks who didn’t understand ulterior motive. Yet, he still seemed to hold out hope for just that. Something to rebel against. Maybe Minnesota nice, or his rejection of it, fueled his artmaking. But he wasn’t going to get it from me. I knew when to play that card, and this wasn’t the time. I said, “If Robin’s fucking her way through artists, or if you have a habit of falling for wealthy, married Semitic-looking women ten years older than you, it’s good for me to know. Maybe Robin’s the one who finally stole your heart but she hadn’t worked up the courage to leave Christmas Lake and her Audi Q7 for something more Bohemian. And maybe you’d lost patience. It happens.”