The club was large, navy blue walls covered with cartoon characters from underground comics, the paint starting to rub off on some of them. Several women wore dancing dresses, but the weather had pushed most of them into pullover turtle-necked tops and wool pants, and the men were mostly dressed the same way, so White Ducks looked more like a ski resort than a dance club. The music was loud, the love child you’d get if hyperpop knocked up disco, with lights flickering to the beat.
Bernie elbowed his way to two women dancing together and got it going with them, as his escorts went to the bar where they both ordered Pepsi, on the rocks. The bartender knew they were feds, said nothing, pushed the drinks across the bar, no charge.
Bernie was hot, circulating, buying drinks, throwing cash on the bar. He’d taken his father’s stash, since his father was no longer there to object, and he had eleven thousand dollars in his pants pocket.
At five minutes to eleven o’clock, he told Droll and Haskins, “I’m gonna disappear for two minutes.”
“Where to?” Droll asked.
“Gotta pee. You wanna come watch?”
“Let’s face it, Bernie, you ain’t got that much to watch,” Droll said, one of the rare times in recorded history when an FBI agent said “ain’t.”
Bernie poked a finger at him: “Ha. Jealousy is always ugly.”
“Go pee,” Haskins said.
• • •
Capslock had hisface down in his parka when he felt the car stop at the curb, and the flashers come on. He looked up as a Minneapolis cop came around and poked him with a toe and shined a flashlight on his face and asked, “You all right, partner?”
Capslock said, “I’m not only all right, I’m a BCA agent staking out the White Ducks, and you’re stepping on my act. Take that fuckin’ light outa my face.”
The light went sideways. “You sure about that, partner?”
“Yeah, I’m sure about it,” Capslock said. “Step between me and the club so they can’t see you looking at my ID.”
The cop stepped between Capslock and the club and Capslock fished his ID out of a shirt pocket and stuck it out the neck hole, and the cop bent to look at it with the flashlight, then backed away and said, “Better you than me.”
“Go away,” Capslock said, and the cop walked back around his car, turned off the flashers, and went away.
Two couples had come out of the club and had seen the cop checking Capslock, and now they walked over and a man asked, “You all right?”
Capslock: “I’m all right.”
A woman said, “Give him some money, Jim.”
Jim fished in his pocket and gave Capslock a one-dollar bill. Capslock said, “Why don’t you keep it; you can’t buy a fuckin’ thing with a one. You can’t even buy a fuckin’ candy bar, for Christ’s sakes.”
The woman said, “He’s right, Jim. Give him a five.”
Capslock said, “A ten would be better.”
The man was thumbing through his wallet and said, “All I got is tens and twenties.”
“Give him a ten, the poor thing,” the woman said.
The man handed Capslock a ten and the two couples went on their way.
Capslock would have laughed if he wasn’t so fuckin’ cold.
• • •
Shelly White wasnot quite as cold as Capslock, because she was backed up to a metal door, and though she hadn’t known about it, behind the door was a collection of HVAC machinery and plumbing that kept the interior temperature in the 80s. Some of that heat warmed the metal door and seeped into her parka. Her feet would be warm as long as the sock batteries held out.
Her biggest problem was a lack of light: there was one small flickering lamp over the club’s back door, but that was it.
• • •
