by Mark Aitken
Gallen recovered but the moment was lost.
‘So,’ she said, ‘Kenny got a few days off?’
‘Kenny’s not working here no more,’ said Gallen.
‘Saw him at the supermarket last night,’ she said.
Gallen tried to act natural. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘He asked after you, Gerry,’ she said, dismounting. ‘Told me he had a new cell number, asked me to give it to you.’
‘Really?’
Yvonne reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out a piece of paper. ‘Yeah, he wrote it down.’
Gallen took the paper, still a bit flustered. ‘By eye-line, I meant you were lookin’ at the rail, not at the landing ground.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘I gotta work on that.’
Gallen flipped the stirrup over the saddle, undid the girth. ‘I didn’t know you were divorced.’
‘Well, I knew you were,’ said Yvonne, rubbing the horse’s nostrils.
Gallen went to talk but laughed instead.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ Gallen shook his head as he lifted the saddle and its blanket off the animal’s back. ‘Women seem to know all this stuff.’
‘Maybe we listen better,’ said Yvonne.
‘Sorry, what was that?’ Gallen turned for the barn.
Giving him a slap on the bicep, Yvonne flicked the hair from her face, becoming serious. ‘It was hard, living in that house, waiting to settle on my new farm, and here’s my ex-husband just walking in and out like I’m still his, his . . .’
‘Property?’
Yvonne’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, just like that. After you left with Kenny I thought maybe I should have told you about the divorce, but . . .’
‘It’s okay,’ said Gallen, walking to the tack room in the barn.
‘So how did you find out?’ Yvonne said, following.
‘Girls’ talk,’ said Gallen, heaving the saddle on the saddle rack.
‘Who?’
‘Frank Holst.’
‘Hmm. Frank the Octopus, huh? Not much changes in Clearmont.’
‘’Fraid not,’ said Gallen, pointing at a hook where Yvonne could hang the reins.
‘Least of all the music.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The Muskrats are still playing, down Arvada.’
‘Didn’t they play—’ His mind wandered back to a yee-haw band that played their prom night almost twenty years ago.
‘That’s them. Remember Katy Shanahan kept harassing them to play “Achy Breaky Heart”, and when they finally did, she slipped over in that spilled punch and knocked herself out?’
‘Yeah,’ said Gallen. ‘And that good ol’ boy finished the song and says, And that, kids, is why I don’t play no Billy Ray Cyrus.’
‘That’s the one,’ she said, looking at her feet. ‘So, you wanna . . . ?’
Gallen felt himself turning away from those brown eyes and clearing his throat. He wasn’t ready for dating.
‘Yeah, so I’m up tomorrow,’ said Yvonne, recovering fast. ‘You be here?’
‘I’ll be here,’ he said, annoyed he’d fudged the invite to the Muskrats.
Watching Yvonne peel out in her new red Dodge, Gallen leaned into the boot room and grabbed the keys to the truck.
The transmission behaved impeccably on the drive into Clearmont. The mechanics had used the reconditioned tranny that’d been on order for months and the whole job had come in at just under twelve hundred dollars, not a bad price for another hundred thousand miles of towing. Now all he had to worry about was the diesel, which had started losing power.
Pulling in to the dispatch compound at the rear of the post office, Gallen got out and walked towards the overweight man in the US Postal Service windbreaker who was tapping on a clipboard and talking to another man as a large van was loaded with mail bags.
‘You know that half of that bag is stamped day before yesterday?’ said the overweight man. ‘This is the US Postal Service, not a fricking river boat in Indonesia!’
‘Barry,’ said Gallen, giving the underling a break. ‘You old dog’
‘Gerry.’ Barry turned. ‘Aren’t you dead?’
‘Wishful thinking, dude,’ said Gallen, amazed at the jungle drum in small towns. ‘Got a sec?’
Moving away from the mail van, Barry Teague—a high school buddy—lit a smoke and offered one. ‘So that was you, that shit up in Canada?’ he said, exhaling as he put away his smokes. ‘That limp— that’s part of it, right? ‘
‘Don’t worry about me, Barry,’ said Gallen. ‘They won’t let me pass till I’ve paid my taxes.’
Barry was angling for good dirt, first-hand gossip. ‘You still doin’ that black ops stuff, GG? You are, aintcha?’
‘I told you, Barry, I drove a truck. Most danger I ever saw was dealing with the Marines equivalent of you.’
‘I’m a softie, Gerry.’ Barry jacked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘That’s why they walk on me. Had a no-show yesterday, now I’m taking attitude from some Mexican who talks like a gangster.’
Gallen cringed. Wyoming was the most Anglo state in the US and he never liked to have those demographics supported by bigoted attitudes. ‘They all talk like that, these youngsters. It’s just a pose.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Barry sceptically. ‘So what’s up?’
‘Need to borrow your phone. Mine’s dead and I need to make a quick call.’
Pulling out his cell phone, Barry sighed. ‘We should have a drink sometime.’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen, fishing Winter’s number from his jacket pocket.
‘Bunch of us heading down to the Spotted Horse tonight. Few brews, bit of a laugh.’
‘Sounds cool,’ said Gallen, dialling the number.
‘Pick you up at six,’ said Barry. ‘It’s wings night down there. We’ll get in early, grab a table.’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen, walking away as the number rang. As Winter picked up, Gallen could have sworn Barry said ‘the Muskrats’.
~ * ~
The hawk swooped again as Gallen made his way around the southern boundary of the farm and had his horse climb the snow-covered levee. Along the old dike that kept the swamp on one side and the hay fields on the other, Gallen let the horse walk, his foot still too sore for a lope. After five minutes he came up to the hunting hide that Roy had built almost fifty years ago, when he was still a kid growing up on Sweet Clover. It was a twenty-by-twenty shack, with a shooting porch that looked out over the swamp for duck season, and a mess of sticks and branches on the other side, where it overlooked a stand of cedars and aspens—the deer stand.
A wisp of smoke drifted out of the steel chimney into the still, cold air and Gallen tied off the horse and entered, thankful for a warm stove.
‘That mare’s sore, right rear knee,’ said Winter, looking up from the table. ‘Might take a look.’
‘I’ll tell Roy,’ said Gallen, pushing his fingers into the bullring on the trapdoor beside the table, pulling up to show a six-pack of Coors Lights in the cage. Pulling off two of the cans, he let the beers back into the snow and peered through the slit windows as he cracked the beer. ‘I gather we’re alone?’
‘Did a three-sixty,’ said the Canadian, dressed in a black Tough Duck and jeans, his socked feet aimed at the stove. ‘We’re alone.’
‘How’s the leg?’
‘In and out, through the thigh,’ said Winter. ‘Just a nick on the artery, but it was lucky the medics were there.’
‘Okay—’
Winter shook his head and looked at the floor, tough guy dissolving to sombre. ‘Thought we’d lost you, boss. Shit! That fireball!’
‘Don’t remember it.’
Winter looked at him. ‘The fuel tank ignited and bounced twenty feet in front of you, boss, then a piece of the fire breaks off, lands on your feet.’
‘I remember the smell of being on fire.’
‘Better than the smell of me shitting myself—I never saw a fireball hitting a man
before.’
‘It’s not something I recommend.’
‘I never liked that Aaron,’ said Winter. ‘But he came through. Not every man has the heart to jump on a fire with nothing but a blanket.’
Nodding, Gallen raised his beer and touched cans with Winter. ‘We still gotta job, believe it or not.’
‘Yeah, Aaron told me. You believe him?’
Gallen shrugged as Winter lit a cigarette. ‘My pay’s landing when it should.’
‘Same here.’
‘He wants me to lead the investigation, find these pricks.’
‘You want volunteers?’
Gallen looked into the eyes of a killer. ‘Kenny, it would have to be an investigation.’
‘Sure,’ Winter said.
‘I mean it. Once we start hunting these cocksuckers, we’ll leave a trail a mile wide and you can bet that the Mounties and the FBI have us as people of interest.’
Winter looked away. ‘You’re right.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘So let’s start with what we know.’
‘Mulligan hires us, Aaron puts tags on our stuff.’
‘Aaron’s tags are declared, they’re from the accountants.’
‘Okay,’ said Winter. ‘So we bodyguard Harry Durville and a dude called Reggie gives him a fancy Inuit BlackBerry. Turns out to be a bomb.’
Gallen sipped on his beer. ‘We survive and when the helicopters roll in to grab what they want to grab, they’re surprised that we’re running around and shooting back.’
‘So they send another helo: this time they try to clean us up along with the search-and-rescue team.’
Gallen leaned forward. ‘This is the part I’m confused about: Durville’s bag doesn’t have any documents in it. If the mercs weren’t sent to retrieve them, what was their job?’
‘To kill Durville and anyone else who saw the meeting,’ said Winter. ‘The bombing was a hit.’
Gallen wasn’t convinced. ‘Harry Durville was involved in something huge up in Kugaaruk. I can’t believe he wasn’t carrying at least one piece of paper from that meeting.’
‘You think?’
‘Not even a memo, minutes of the meeting?’ said Gallen. ‘This is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and he’s accompanied by his chief legal counsel. What kind of attorney comes out of a meeting to secure the largest oil deposits in the world without documenting it? ‘
‘So we’re back to that,’ said Winter. ‘Someone stole the documents from his bag before he died. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t you and I’m fairly sure it weren’t Mike.’
‘Someone who knew where the documents were and how important they were,’ said Gallen.
‘So that leaves Florita and Donny,’ said Winter.
‘What did you say?’
Winter recoiled slightly. ‘Whoa, boss.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gallen. ‘Donny?’
‘Just saying.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Gallen, slumping and drinking. ‘It could be Donny.’
‘You sure?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Gallen exhaled. ‘But Donny was secretly working for Paul Mulligan.’
‘What?!’
‘He was supposed to engineer a meeting between me and Mulligan when I went down to that fundraiser for Richards,’ said Gallen, massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘I assumed Mulligan had used Donny to get me into the Oasis gig. But given all this, it may have been deeper. Maybe he paid Donny to steal whatever documents came out of that meeting with Reggie.’
‘Donny woulda done that to you?’
Gallen nodded. ‘Donny wouldn’t have seen the damage. He’d have seen it as grabbin’ some lame-ass shit from some lame-ass corporate dude. No hurt, no foul.’
‘Well you know what that means, right, boss?’
Gallen put his elbows on the table, rubbing his temples. ‘Given that Durville sacked Mulligan the day before we flew north, it means we have an enemy who could be anywhere and who probably hasn’t secured those documents yet.’ He drank deeply. ‘It means we’d better make sure Florita doesn’t have them, because Mulligan might already be treating her as if she does.’
Winter tapped a big finger on the top of his beer can. ‘Wasn’t what I meant, boss.’
‘No?’
‘No. If your mission was to secure those documents, would you bomb the plane?’
Gallen’s left temple bulged with his pulse. ‘No. I’d want the documents, not a bunch of ashes.’
‘Okay,’ said Winter. ‘So whoever wanted the documents didn’t bomb the plane.’
‘And whoever bombed the plane wasn’t after the documents?’
‘Right.’
‘You’re saying there’s two crews, working separate?’
‘I can’t see it any other way.’
Gallen’s burns itched in his right leg. ‘Shit.’
Winter nodded. ‘I think we’re being sandwiched.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 37
They bought pitchers of beer and made pigs of themselves with the wings special, but it didn’t feel like old times. It felt like a bunch of guys in their mid-thirties in a sea of people in their early twenties.
Barry Teague wouldn’t shut up about his internal postal service politics and Murray Davis, who’d lost as much weight as hair since his senior year of high school, sat looking morose. Tony Eastman tried to get Gallen to support his post-divorce misogyny.
The Muskrats appeared on the tiny corner stage just after eight o’clock and Barry’s shepherd’s whistle sounded wrong in an atmosphere where the youngsters were pretending they didn’t care. Which they probably didn’t, thought Gallen, seeing how many of them were fiddling with their cell phones.
The four-piece looked like the kind of men that Roy used to employ in the old days: lots of moustaches and beards, non-ironic cowboy hats and old Wranglers with a new seat sewed into them. It was the same look Gallen remembered from the prom, except back then the Muskrats had turned up in their tuxedos and played a selection of songs that didn’t stray too far from Lynyrd Skynard, Garth Brooks and Hank junior, perhaps throwing in some Creedence and Chuck Berry to boogie it up.
Ensuring the waitress was happy with her tips, they kept the pitchers coming, and when Gallen turned to signal for another he saw her: Yvonne, dolled up, looking hot in jeans, boots and a down-filled vest. She saw him and waved, smiling. Gallen wondered if he should go to the bar and apologise for not taking her out, or sit and wait for her to come over.
Turning back to his buddies, he caught the smiles.
‘Jesus, look at Yvonne,’ said Barry, raising his eyebrows. ‘Shit, she gets better with age.’
‘She’s out of our league,’ said Tony, sneering.
‘Try telling GG that,’ said Barry.
Gallen smiled in his beer. ‘Cut it out.’
‘Yvonne’s back on the market.’ Barry winked at Tony. ‘She’s divorced. Know that, Tones?’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, another chance for the sisterhood to destroy us, right? Steal our balls, hide ‘em in a vice.’
The rest of them laughed and Tony put his beer down, looking betrayed. ‘You won’t be laughing when you wake up one day and they’re runnin’ the joint. Day’s comin’.’
The Muskrats were ending their first set and, leaping to his feet, Gallen decided to cut off the innuendo before Yvonne wandered into the ambush.
‘Thought I’d scared you off,’ she said. She was standing beside the bar with her arms crossed, smelling great.
Gallen smiled. ‘You did.’
‘So?’
‘So I was kind of tricked into this by a bunch of idiots,’ said Gallen, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Nothing like a wings night to get this crew off their asses.’
Behind Yvonne, a man in a sports jacket and chinos ordered chardonnay and was told all they had was white wine.
‘You know Rob—Rob Stansfield, a lawyer in Clearmont?’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen, shaking hands with Wes C
arty’s partner in law. ‘How you doin’, Rob?’
‘Good, thanks, Gerry,’ the lawyer said, trying to divert Yvonne to a booth at the rear of the bar.
‘You could join us,’ said Gallen. ‘Were up the front.’
