skills. Problem is nobody we’ve talked to has a name. I was thinking if there was anyone who might know who this new guy is …”
Mac knew where this was going. “Looks like I need to find a payphone.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“He is a character.”
A police detective, homicide or otherwise, can’t really do his job without confidential sources, people who seemingly have access to otherwise unobtainable information. Sometimes they were the Deep Throat type, honest, hardworking people who just happened to have access to what was needed or were interested in blowing the whistle at that time. They were one time sources and helpful. But what you really needed as a cop were people who always had valuable tidbits of information. Of course, more often than not, the people who had the information a cop needed had it because they walked on the shadier side of life. They were people who occasionally fractured a law on their own. However, for a little quid pro quo, they were usually willing to share information. It was simply how things worked on the street.
McRyan had those kinds of sources around the Twin Cities, cultivated them, kept track of them, and it worked for him. But Mac had a source he could call on that nobody else had. This was a source who seemingly knew everything going down in town. On occasion, when the circumstances truly warranted it, and if he asked right, Mac could call on him.
The source: Fat Charlie Boone.
Back in the day, Charlie Boone ran the dope trade on the north side of Minneapolis. And he ran the trade with an iron fist. His people were disciplined, didn’t sell around schools, didn’t sell around churches, didn’t sell on Sundays and kept the trade low profile and followed the Boone Law: Never put a gun on anyone who was not in the game. That was his one hard and fast rule. If one of his people did that, that person’s fear was not the police, it was Boone.
After a number of years of maintaining a low profile and avoiding the Minneapolis Police, Charlie had made so much money that he’d been able to put several layers between himself and the street. These days, even if the street was kicking money up to him, Boone was so far removed from the action there would be no way to trace it back to him. His money was cleaned now several times over. Fat Charlie Boone was the bank. The Minneapolis Police had long given up on catching him, having been humbled far too many times in their pursuit over the years.
Now Boone was quietly making continuous investments in businesses all over the Twin Cities. He now lived in a thirty-third-story penthouse condo at The Chesterton, a thirty-five-story luxury high-rise condominium overlooking the Stone Arch Bridge and the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. He was healthy, wealthy and wise.
Yet Charlie Boone was still street. He was still plugged in unlike anyone else and he knew everything going on in town. However, as untouchable as he’d become, he did have one Achilles’ heel. Boone had an extremely big family, some of whom were still close enough to the street game. Those family members, usually extended family types, occasionally got into trouble, sometimes in St. Paul.
That’s where McRyan came in.
Sixteen months ago Charlie gave Mac a tip during a double kidnapping that helped him save Chief Flanagan’s life and that of his daughter’s. A few months later, one of Boone’s nephews found himself pinched in St. Paul on a drug charge. Boone reached out to Mac and asked for a little return on his previous investment. Mac went to Flanagan, explained what Charlie was looking for and that the chief’s own daughter was likely alive because of the man’s assistance. The chief gave the little legal maneuver his blessing, but with one proviso. “Let’s get something in return.”
Mac got something in return.
After Boone’s nephew was in the clear, Mac made a late night trip over to the north side of Minneapolis and Boone’s office. Over cigars and a bottle of Wild Turkey, the two struck a little deal.
Mac would never come to him on trivial matters, but if there was something big going on, he could call on Charlie. McRyan figured big would involve a double homicide, cop killing, large robbery, something along those lines. He never envisioned going to Fat Charlie on something big would involve presidential politics. However, if there was in fact a new off-the-books doctor