off-the-books doctors and nobody has seen our guy, but we’re getting wind there’s a new guy in town that might have the ability to handle this. I was thinking you might know who this guy is.”
Charlie sat back in his chair, crossed his right leg over his left and stroked his beard with his right hand. “I think I know of whom you speak, Detective. Excuse me for a moment while I make an inquiry.”
Boone pushed himself out of his chair and left his office walking down the hall and they heard a door shut.
Wire leaned over and whispered, “He is a character.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Mac replied quietly. “And he is smart, and not only street-smart but business smart. He is a very wealthy man for a reason.”
They heard the door open and footsteps coming back down the tile-floored hallway and then Charlie strolled back into the room.
“Mac, the man you want is Dr. Michael Lupo.” Boone handed Mac a note with an address in Edina along with a phone number.
“What’s his story, Charlie?” Mac asked.
“One of my people mentioned him to me a few weeks ago. He was a doctor in New York City who offered his services to those engaging in nefarious activities, of course, and then he did some of that concierge doctoring like you see on that TV show.” Charlie walked over behind his bar and poured some Crown into his coffee. It was time to start the day. “Anyway, Lupo made a lot of money out east but was starting to feel the heat from your brethren in the NYPD. So about a year ago he skedaddled west and quietly settled in Edina.”
“Where is Edina?” Wire asked.
“Wealthy inner-ring suburb just southwest of Minneapolis,” Mac answered.
Boone nodded. “That’s right. I suspect once he got the lay of the land around here he started putting out feelers. He’s doing the concierge thing again for the beautiful people out in Cake Town, but word is he also is doing some surgical work if the price is right. Apparently for work like that you have to have six figures wired to an offshore bank account to get in his door.”
Lupo sounded like their guy.
Mac took one last sip of his coffee and pushed himself out of the chair. “Charlie, if this is good, I will definitely owe you one.”
Charlie Boone shook his head and gave a dismissive wave, “Mac, given the night’s events, this one is free of charge.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We have a plane waiting.”
Sometimes in an investigation you need a little luck and, even better, you need the other side to be unlucky, and when the two converge together, well, so much the better.
Mac called in Lupo’s name to the Edina Police Department who put an unmarked car on his house near Interlachen Country Club while Mac organized a party from St. Paul to come over and look things over. When the Edina detective arrived at Lupo’s a little after 5:00 a.m., the house was awake, lights on in several rooms. Ten minutes later the garage door opened and Lupo backed his Jaguar out of his garage and was on his way in a hurry. The detective carefully tailed him five miles west across Edina to Highway 169. Lupo traveled south on 169 to Valley View Road and then made his way west to the back end of a past-its-prime cinder block industrial park in Eden Prairie. Lupo went in the front door of an unmarked one-story building. The shades over the singular front window were drawn. The Edina detective found a good location a block back on the second level of a parking garage to keep an eye on Lupo’s car. That was at 5:25 a.m.
At 5:45 a.m., Mac and Wire met up with Rockford, Riley, Double Frank and Paddy McRyan in the parking lot of Braemar Ice Arena a mile to the east. A contingent from Eden Prairie and Edina arrived five minutes later. The lead officer, Detective Younkers from Eden Prairie, impressed Mac, arriving with a search warrant.
“How’d you get a search warrant on what we have?” Wire asked. She and Mac had discussed a search warrant on the way down and agreed that on what they had, the chances of getting the warrant would be, at best, one-in-five and more likely one-in-ten.
“Hennepin County Judge Kale is a former prosecutor,” Younkers replied, then with a devious smile added, “He’s our go-to guy and loves the late night stuff. He’d sign a search