I tried to think my way through the situation, but I couldn’t get my head around it. Greer, I felt certain, did not have transportation, unless he’d somehow borrowed a car from one of his criminal acquaintances, or—and this was certainly a possibility—stolen one. Janice would have driven her own car downtown, and must have parked in one of the ramps near Murray’s. I crossed the street and spent half an hour wandering the levels of the garage nearest the steakhouse, but I didn’t stumble across Janice’s Honda.
My car was parked over on Washington Avenue, and I thought of moving it someplace nearer, but there was no metered parking anywhere around Murray’s. I figured I had perhaps an hour to hatch some plan of confrontation. A short time later, feeling increasingly desperate, I headed back down Hennepin to get my car. I have no idea how long I spent circling blocks on the maddening system of one-way streets that comprises downtown Minneapolis, but it felt like I trolled past Murray’s at least twenty-five times.
Finally, just as I was turning down 6th Street one more time, I saw Janice and Greer emerge from the restaurant. I immediately pulled my car to the curb and illegally parked. I didn’t have to wait long. They exchanged a few more words, Janice fished in her purse and handed Greer what was almost certainly cash, and then they embraced one more time and parted. Janice headed east along the sidewalk and Greer strolled west toward the heart of downtown. Sixth was a one-way going in the opposite direction, so I had to circle back around again onto Hennepin. At the intersection of 6th I saw Greer on the next block, and I drove up to 5th and wound my way back around to First Avenue. As I turned the corner I encountered Greer, perhaps fifty yards away, getting into a beat-to-shit blue Impala. I stopped and waited for him to exit his parking space, and then I followed him east through downtown and onto 35 south.
There was almost no traffic on the interstate at that hour—it must have been around 10:30—and Greer was driving at a surprisingly modest speed. I was trying to stay back at least several hundred yards, but I had to resist the growing urge to overtake him and drive him off the road. At the Crosstown Highway he turned off 35 and headed east again, toward the airport.
Holy shit, I thought. That fucker was going to climb on a plane and skip town, probably with money he’d received from my wife. Greer continued right past the exits to the airport, though, and steered the Impala south onto highway 52. I was in familiar territory—I’d once taught at a junior college out that way—but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Greer might have been headed in that direction. There was nothing much out there but drowsy suburban development, the grimy industrial sprawl beyond the airport, and a giant oil refinery, the gleaming spectacle of which was already visible in the distance.
Greer kept plunging further south, and I was blindly determined to stay on his tail, for what purpose I still had absolutely no idea.
He eventually pulled into the parking lot of a desolate-looking strip motel. The sign out front was faded and dark, and if it weren’t for the presence of several pickup trucks backed up to rooms, the place would have appeared abandoned. I passed it and turned into the first street that I came to on the opposite side of the highway. I swung the car around and parked. The motel was perhaps two hundred yards away, and I could still see Greer’s brake lights in the parking lot. The driver’s side door was half open, illuminating the car’s interior. Greer was clearly visible to me, and it appeared he was leaning over in the seat, studying something.
I popped my trunk, got out of the car, and fished a tire iron from the wheel well. Without thinking I dashed across the highway and crept along the edge of the service road toward the motel.
There was a cluster of scrub maples and weeds at the southern edge of the place, and I crouched in the darkness, breathing heavily, waiting for Greer to make a move. It seemed like I waited a long time. Greer remained slumped in the front seat. I could hear strains of rock music coming from the open door of the car.
Tiptoeing from the brush, I managed to get within perhaps twenty feet of the Impala, where I took shelter behind one of the trucks. I could smell marijuana, and peering across through the windows of the truck’s cab I could see Greer, almost reclining, his head tilted back and his eyes closed, taking a long drag from a joint.
