soda water. Bernie was constantly in motion, sliding up and down the bar
as if on skates, dispensing beer, screwdrivers, red hots, rusty nails,
salty dawgs, and, for one foolhardy table, Long Island iced teas all
around, after delivery of which, Bernie confiscated everyone's keys and
designated Old Sam Dementieff to drive them home in his pickup. Old Sam
got out his martyr look, but fortunately they all lived in Niniltna and
he accepted his assignment with minimal grumbling. Bernie returned to
his post, and Kate, folding straws into weird shapes for Katya, said,
"You hear about Dan O'Brian?"
"What about Dan O'Brian?" a deep voice said, and Kate looked around, to
find Alaska state trooper Jim Chopin towering over her. He couldn't help
towering, of course; he was six foot ten and she was five foot nothing,
but she disliked being towered over, and she let it show.
A weaker man might have been intimidated. Jim appropriated a stool and
sat down next to her, close enough to brush sleeves. At her earliest
opportunity, which was immediately, Mutt reared up, two enormous paws on
his thighs, and submitted to a vigorous head scratching, an expression
of bliss on her face that Kate considered extreme. Katya said,
"Jeeeeeeeem!" and made her usual aerial launch to her next favorite
person. The trooper fielded her like a bounce pass and settled her into
his lap. "How about a Coke, Bernie? And a Shirley Temple for my
girlfriend." To Kate, Jim said, "What's this about Dan O'Brian?"
301
Kate bristled. "What's it to you?"
Old Sam, sitting on the other side of Jim, looked into the depths of his
beer glass and shook his head. Bernie rolled his eyes, only because Kate
wasn't looking at him. Jim's face remained inscrutable, although his
blue eyes did narrow.
"They're trying to force him into early retirement," she said
grudgingly. "The new administration wants to bring in their own people."
"And you thought I wouldn't be interested?" Jim pulled off his ball cap
and ran his hand through a thick mat of carefully cut blond hair. "I
live here, too, Kate. And work here, and I work pretty well with Dan
O'Brian. He's a good man." His smile was meant to be disarming. "Plus, I
don't want to have to break in somebody new."
She owed him an apology. She would have walked over hot coals before she
offered it. "Do you have a useful suggestion to make, or are you just
talking because you love the sound of your own voice so much?"
A brief silence. She refused to drop her eyes, ignoring the heat
climbing up the back of her neck. Bernie brought Jim a Coke, took the
temperature of the silence lingering over this section of the bar,
decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and busied himself
with restocking the beer in the cooler.
Jim took a pull of his Coke. "Have you talked to Ruthe or Dina yet?"
She stared at him.
Old Sam thumped the bar. "Damn good idea."
Jim kept a steady gaze fixed on Kate's face.
Kate drained her glass and set it down on the bar with exquisite care.
"Good idea," she said, forcing the words out. "I'll take a ride up
there, see if they're home." She held out her arms and Katya flung
herself into them.
"Why?" Jim said, handing over the baby. "They're right over there."
302
Kate looked where he was pointing. "Oh." She gave a stiff nod. "Thanks."
The two men, three when Bernie sidled up, watched her very straight back
march off. "Woman sure is on the prod," Bernie said.
Old Sam raised his glass of Alaskan Amber draft and regarded it with a
thoughtful expression. "Yea-yah," he said. "Been thinking I'd have a
word with Ethan Int-Hout."
"About what?" Bernie said.
Old Sam took a long, savoring swallow. "Been thinking I'd tell him to
shit or get off the pot."
Jim turned to stare at Old Sam.
Old Sam, well aware of the stare, gazed limpidly at his own reflection
in the mirror on the wall at the back of the bar, what he could see
through the standing forest of liquor bottles. "Make things easier on
everybody all the way around when that broad has a man in her life."
Jim turned on his stool so he could look Old Sam straight in the eye.
"You mean she doesn't now?"
Old Sam cast his eyes heavenward. "Some men," he said to Bernie in a
withering tone of voice, "some men purely have to be taken by the pecker
and led." He shook his head and finished his beer. "How up are you on
your Bible studies, Sergeant?"
"Way down," Jim said.
"Read up on Jacob," Old Sam said, and moved to a table with a better
view of the game to continue his play-by-play. Michael Jordan was back,
and Old Sam was way more interested in that than he was in anybody's
love life.
He didn't look much like Cupid, but then, he'd never much cared for
Ethan Int-Hout, having been corked by his father a time or ten out on
the fishing grounds. In his eighty years on the job, Old Sam had had
some earned life experience in the dictum, Like father, like son.
And in Like grandmother, like granddaughter. Ekaterina had never been
one to go long without a man, either.
303 DANA STABENOW, award-winning author of thirteen previous Kate Shugak
mysteries, three Liam Campbell mysteries, and three science fiction
novels, also writes an acclaimed column for Alaska magazine. She lives
in Anchorage, Alaska, where she was born and raised.
Visit her Web site at www.stabenow.com
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead Page 38
