Duluth Police Captain Mark McCluskey’s POV
Duluth, Minnesota
With the storm rolling in, the Chief had canceled all vacation and put the Duluth Police on mandatory overtime. I’d been working since noon, and it was now one in the morning. I tossed my jacket onto the hook on the door, and removed my gun belt and put it in my desk drawer.
We were no strangers to bad storms up here, but this particular storm was nasty. The winds now sustained over forty miles an hour, heavy snow, and dropping temperatures were making travel difficult. I’d just turned over to my night shift counterpart before returning to my office. I wasn’t planning to risk the drive back to my lonely apartment on the West Side of town, I was going to stay warm and sleep on the cot I kept for times like this.
I pulled a Subway sandwich and cookies out of the fridge behind my desk, along with a tall Diet Coke, and sat in my desk chair. Not everyone listened to the warnings to home, and the plows had been pulled off the roads at five in the afternoon. The snow now coated the steep roads leading up to the bluff above Lake Superior. Once you started sliding, there was no stopping; the storm was turning cars into balls and streets into Pachinko machines, bouncing off parked cars and curbs until you got to the bottom. We had responded to five dozen accidents since three in the afternoon, and nightshift was dealing with four ‘accident with injury’ calls when I handed over the duty.
I streamed the late local news on my computer, listening to the storm coverage as I ate my Spicy Italian sandwich. I was halfway through when the phone rang; it was the Desk Sergeant. “McCluskey,” I said. “I’m off. Kelly has the nightshift.”
“I know, Captain, but he’s busy, and this sounded important. Can you talk to her?”
I rolled my eyes; I was dumb enough to answer the phone, and now I was stuck. “Sure.” There were a few clicks. “Captain Mark McCluskey, Duluth Police,” I said.
“Hi Captain, this is Lucy Johnson, assistant manager of the Dew Drop Inn Motel up on 61? I think I have some, I mean they say if you see something, say something, you know? I’m not a racist or anything, but this isn’t right. The other guy brushed me off, but I had to tell someone, right?”
Great. I get the weirdos. “Why don’t you relax and tell me what you know, Lucy. Facts only, I don’t want to know what you think about them yet. Once we have the facts down, we can talk through your suspicions.”
“Sure. Where to start... OK, this morning just after eleven, a man came in to rent a room for two nights. He was in his thirties, Hispanic, and heavily tattooed. When he parked, the cameras showed there were another five guys out in the SUV he drove. I have to scan in his driver’s license and credit card, plus get his Colorado license plate number.” She gave me the information, and I wrote it down. “He was nervous; he wanted to pay in cash, but I told him we needed to hold a credit card on file. If he wanted, he could pay in cash when he checked out, and I’d refund the amount. He didn’t like it, but he took the room. As he turned around, I’m pretty sure I saw a pistol in his waistband, but I can’t know for sure, you know? He and the guys parked in front of their room and haven’t come out since. They had pizzas delivered, I mean a LOT of pizzas, about a dozen for six guys?”
“I’m not seeing anything criminal, Lucy.”
“There’s more. Four more groups like this showed up before two in the afternoon. One group from Houston, one from San Francisco, one from Las Vegas and one from Laredo. Each group in one car, four to six people, and rough looking. Tattoos, scars, and some of them looked ill-prepared for the weather. We’ve got a winter storm coming, and one guy shows up in a short-sleeve shirt and a leather vest. It looked weird, and when he turned around, I figured out why. It’s a cut, a motorcycle gang cut, turned inside out. I could see the stitching for the patches, and the label. He had this big tattoo on his left arm, a big spotted cat crawling down a branch, and words in Spanish on his right. I’ve been watching on camera as guys will run out of one room and go into another.”
“Why didn’t you call earlier?”
“I didn’t have any proof, you know? I can’t just call the cops any time I see someone who makes me nervous. I’ve been watching the cameras, though. When one of the guys went to another room about twenty minutes ago, I saw a man holding a rifle as he opened the door. I don’t feel safe, so I called.”
It couldn’t be. “Do you have information on those other men?”
“Yeah, I have it all right here.”
I gave her my email address and got her direct phone number back. “Send me copies of the driver’s licenses and the license plate numbers, and I’ll call you back.” I hung up and opened my computer, logging in to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database. I put the first man’s name in, and alarm bells started to go off in my mind. Lucy was right; he was a member of the Denver Sons of Tezcatlipoca, and the FBI had an active warrant for his arrest.
I saw the email notification, clicked on it, and printed it out. Checking the other names, each showed up as affiliated with the Sons or had active warrants out. I printed those out; all listed the contact number for the Sons of Tezcatlipoca Task Force the FBI was running. I leaned back, wondering why the hell a Mexican biker gang would be showing up in Duluth, in force, in the middle of winter.
I logged out and called Lucy back. “Lucy, I need you to listen carefully to me. You were right; those men are armed and dangerous. Do not go near them, and do not contact them. How many other people are in the hotel right now?”
“We’re full from the storm, have been since four,” she said.
Shit. Armed and violent gang members, hiding out after they avoided the coordinated FBI raids on their Clubhouses, now holed up for the storm in my back yard. This wasn’t good. “I want you to copy and send anything you can find on them to my email. Surveillance recordings, photos, anything you can get me without endangering yourself. Under no circumstances are you to seek them out.”
“What if they call or show up at the desk?”
“Remain calm and act like a manager. I’ll call you when I know more.” I hung up, then called down to the FBI field office in Minneapolis. That went as I expected; they didn’t have any agents in Duluth, but I should call the Task Force. Thanking the duty officer, I made the call to the number listed on the warrant.
“FBI, Special Agent Kinnick,” a woman answered.
“This is Captain Mark McCluskey of the Duluth Police Department. I’ve got a bunch of your fugitive Sons holed up in a hotel up here.”
“Wait, WHAT? Hang on.” I heard her yell for the office to be quiet and then the background noise changed. “You’re on speakerphone, Captain McCluskey. Deputy Commander Virgil Solozzo is the senior member present.”
“Short version is I received a call from a manager of a hotel at the north end of town off Highway 61, the Dew Drop Inn. She reported five separate groups of Hispanic males arrived during the day; the men who rented rooms looked dangerous, had extensive tattoos and one appeared armed, while another was wearing his cut inside out. Eight rooms rented, twenty-four men. She saw a man with a rifle on camera in one of the rooms, and she called me.”
I could hear a flurry of activity in the background. “Duluth, Minnesota? Holy shit, this is bad. Have you identified any of the men?”
“Give me an email, and I’ll forward what I have.” I typed it in and hit send. “I ran the names through NCIC, all showed affiliation with the Sons, and three have active warrants.”
“Let’s get Minneapolis FBI up there, Hostage Rescue Team, right now,” someone said.
