After the Rain

by Chuck Logan

  “Well, what have we got?”

  “We got movement on your tip. Khari, the liquor dealer in Grand Forks, is planning a road trip tonight. Bugs got a parabolic mike on his house. Overheard a call to Shuster about the special pickup. It tracks with what you told Broker. Distinctly heard him say they’d meet at the RLS on 5. That’s missile talk for the deserted Remote Launch Site east of Langdon. So Bugs will be tailing him. Holly is standing by with the bird if we need him. We’ll follow Ace, in case the meet on the highway is a diversion.”

  After her awful scene with Ace, Janey’s upbeat voice was a blast of relief. Nina’s knees trembled, a little weak. “Great,” she said, “where do you want me? I’m out here all alone, walking down a country road half-dressed.”

  “Hey, I thought you liked that dress. And I got a feeling you won’t be walking alone for long.”

  Before Nina could ask Janey where she was, the call ended. Nina kept walking, looked back once. Okay. A deserted pole barn and some trees broke the line of sight to the Missile Park. If Ace was watching her she’d be lost in the roadside clutter now. She was almost to the airport. From Janey’s remark, she figured they were close. But where? She squinted down the road: patches of sunlight alternated with muggy afternoon shadows.

  Then she caught movement to the right, a figure stepping from a grove of trees, an arm whipping in a tight circle. About forty yards off the highway, standing in the thick stuff behind an abandoned Quonset. Hand signal: Rally on me. She hefted her travel bag and started up the rutted trap rock driveway. When she came closer and entered the trees, she saw it was Janey.

  “What’s going on?” Nina said.

  Janey stood casually in jeans and a dark pullover, one hip thrust out, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, like a B-movie moll. She said, “Watching Ace. He’s talking on the phone, to George. Like I said. I doubt he can see out the window and through this building. On the other hand, if you climb up top this Quonset you can get a fair view in through the living room window. With these.” She held up a pair of binoculars. “Quite a little striptease going on for a while there.” She handed over the smoke. Nina took a drag and handed it back.

  “How long you been here?” Nina grimaced.

  “We been here all afternoon. Since you and Ace rolled back in.”

  “We?”

  Janey yanked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “This way, darling. We is now a combined task force. Ad hoc, mind you.”

  “Ad hoc, huh?” Nina glowered, then said, “Sounds like…”

  Broker was standing deeper in the brush, spraying mosquito repellent on his arms and face. He handed the cannister to a husky man with short-cropped brown hair. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt. The shirt did not quite hide the dull twinkle of a pistol holstered on his belt. Broker’s truck was parked in the tall clump of Russian thistle.

  As she approached, Broker softly clapped his hands in a lewd take-it-off rhythm. Jane left them and scrambled up a makeshift ladder made of several old air conditioners stacked together. She leaned over the top of the building next to the boxy capola of an exhaust fan and trained her glasses on the Missile Park.

  Down on the ground, the guy standing next to Broker extended his hand. “Deputy Jim Yeager, Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department. It’s a real pleasure to see special ops in action.”

  Nina dropped her bag and shook his hand. Broker took a step closer and said, “We concluded the man is very fast, considering the brief amount of time elapsed from when you first showed some skin to when he booted you out the door,” Broker said with a straight face.

  “Fast on his feet, as it were,” Yeager said.

  “Right, strictly a vertical encounter. No reclining going on that we could see,” Broker added.

  Nina’s glare was wasted in the shadows. Broker and Yeager, however, were like two Cheshire cats, gleaming teeth floating in the gloom.

  Broker handed Nina her go-bag, which Nina snatched from his hands. “Assholes. How about you turn around.”

  “You’ll need this.” Broker handed her the can of OFF!. To their credit, Broker and Yeager let the ribbing die and turned around. Nina quickly sprayed a chemical bath, slipped out of the dress, and flung it at Broker’s back. It draped over his head. He raised the material in one hand and sniffed it, but said nothing.

  Nina opened her bag, pulled on a pair of loose jeans, a sports bra, a baggy gray T-shirt, and a pair of black cross trainers. As she strapped on her pistol belt, she took a deep breath and let it out. Beneath the raunchy banter and her gruff reaction she felt a palpable aura of relief. She was in and out unscathed, and something was up.

  And she and her husband were finally doing something together. She smiled as she checked her .45 auto in the hideout holster, made sure that it was on safe. Not exactly dinner for two and theater tickets, but what the hell…

  She swatted at the bugs. “Damn critters are out in force.”

  “All the rain,” Yeager said. “If you got a long-sleeve shirt in that bag, I suggest you put it on.”

  Nina, stooped to her bag and pulled out a slipover and put it on. The mosquitoes hovered in close, probing, like little pin pricks of anxiety.

  “So,” she said, “does your boss know what you’re doing, Yeager?”

  “Let’s say I’m staying flexible,” Yeager said.

  “He’s flying by the seat of his pants, like you,” Broker said.

  “Anybody ever check out that Indian guy?” Nina asked.

  “I called the BIA police at Turtle Mountain,” Yeager said. “They got a Joe Reed on the tribal roll. But nobody’s been in contact with him for two years, since he went up to work the oil fields in Alberta. Story is he got burned in an oil-rig fire.”

  Nina shook her head. “Those scars on him are a lot more than two years old.”

  “You got a point,” Yeager said.

  “So now what?” she said.

  Broker toed the ground. “We wait.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Dale ran the tape over and over until the light in the small basement windows went from gray to black and then he watched it one more time in the dark.

  Then he went upstairs and microwaved one of Mom’s frozen suppers. Lasagna. A favorite. After his meal, he stacked his dirty plate in the sink, went into the garage, and took his bike off the hooks on the wall.

  It had been a while since he’d been on a bike, but his plan for tonight made it necessary. He rode a little shakily through town and took a side street that paralleled the highway, following a round-about route to the Missile Park. Just as he was approaching the intersection with State 5, he saw Ace’s Tahoe going east, toward town. He strained his eyes to see if she was in there with him, but the light was already too faint and he couldn’t tell.

  He continued on around back of the bar and saw Gordy’s Ford F-150, then Gordy, girded in his back brace, standing in a cone of light and swarming bugs under the utility bulb over the loading dock door. Gordy spotted him, eased off trundling the four cases of whiskey on his dolly, and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Dale said.

  “You on a bike.” Gordy squinted. “Where’s your car?”

  Dale shrugged as he got off the bike, dropped the kickstand, and parked it next to the truck. “Little exercise can’t hurt.”

  “You shoulda thought of that starting about ten years ago,” Gordy said.

  Dale gave him the finger, looked around. “So where’d Ace go just now?”

  Gordy grinned. “Working, for a change.”

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “Gone. He kicked her out.”

  Dale shook his head. Uh-uh. That can’t be. He fidgeted from foot to foot. Not part of his plan. She was supposed to still be here. “Maybe he took her along,” he said hopefully as he trudged up the steps to the dock. The woman had to be there at the end of the night; without her, it was gonna be a long couple days of terrible work. No play. Damn.

/>   “Don’t think so.” Gordy paused, yanked a red bandana from his hip pocket, and mopped sweat from his forehead. “We had this bet. I got a hundred says she’s a cop. At first Ace wasn’t sure. But don’tcha know it, I was right.”

  Dale shook his head, struggling to disguise his disappointment. “How did you find out?”

  “It’s not like she told me, man. All I know is she’s gone.”

  She’d be back, Dale was sure. He changed the subject. “So what are you sending to Canada tonight?”

  “The last forty cases in the basement, most of it Jack Daniels. I appreciate the help, but I figured you got more than being a helping hand on your mind.”

  Dale took the dolly from Gordy, went into the storeroom, worked the dolly under a stack of cases, tipped the cases back, and wheeled them outside. “Well,” he said, “I did talk to Ace, and he ain’t real pleased about the meth traffic. Especially if there’s cops snooping around. Maybe you could hold off till we’re outta here.”

  “For sure. The guys up north say there’s some kind of squeeze going on. And Ace says I got to be extra careful tonight. Play some hide-and-seek, keep the lights out,” Gordy said.

  Dale forced a grin. “Like in high school, drinking beer. Dodging the sheriff.” He wheeled the load into the truck and eased it off the dolly.

  They worked in silence as they finished up the load. Gordy pulled a tarp and a cargo net over the cases, fastened it down, and then they sat on the loading dock and waited as the real dark inked over the fields. Dale watched the lights come on brighter in town, peered at every car that went by.

  “So, they could be watching us?” he said.

  “Yeah, and they could be anybody—deputies, state guys, who knows? But we’ll lose them in the dark.” He cuffed Dale on the shoulder. “Be fun, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Dale said, trying to cover how bummed he was inside. What if she was really gone? He had trouble seeing his way through what lay ahead without taking her along.

  The traffic quieted down, and after nothing went by for fifteen minutes, Gordy decided it was time to go. “It ain’t like we’re breaking any laws,” he said. “Just unloading this stuff in Phil Lute’s old garage, on the U.S. side.”

  Dale insisted on taking his bike, so he hooked it in the back of the truck, in the webbing of the net. Then they drove slowly across the highway and headed north until the lights of the town receded and they were the only set of beams poking through the fields.

  The way ahead was all black except for two faint farmyard lights. Gordy aimed at the solid blackness between them. When his tires left the asphalt and hit gravel he pulled over, killed his headlights, and parked. The smell of damp, ripening wheat and canola rolled in through the open windows.

  “Fuckin’ mosquitoes,” Gordy said, swatting his cheek. He leaned over, popped the glove compartment, took out a can of insect spray, and gassed the interior of the cab.

  Dale held his breath and didn’t protest. He’d grown up with this, sitting by his dad. They needed to keep the windows open to listen.

  They waited and listened for half an hour. When nothing unusual happened, Gordy eased the truck over the gravel road—no lights, methodically working off tenths of miles on his odometer. Then he finally turned and followed the skeletal gravel trace of a prairie road into the wheat. He had whole sections of the road grid memorized, and he counted as he drove—“…eight-one-thousand, nine-one-thousand, bang. There it is, right up there.”

  Dale got out and helped Gordy back up. He could just make out the mass of Lute’s swayback garage, backlit by a trickle of moonlight—all that remained of the old farmstead. They were sitting in the middle of a field, within fifty yards of the border. The Canadian pickup crew would creep down from the north along the same prairie road and load the booze later that night.

  Gordy came around from the cab and dropped his tailgate, then suddenly hissed,” Don’t move…freeze.” But Dale was already still, motionless. He saw the headlights knife the dark. But a good two miles away.

  “Cops?” Dale said.

  “Don’t know.” They waited until the lights went out. Then, ten minutes later, the lights came on again, this time headed back toward town.

  “Probably somebody just shopping in Canada,” Gordy said. He opened the garage door.

  Dale took a step inside, feeling his way, and knocked into a pile of light cardboard boxes. “Hey, what’s this?”

  Gordy flashed a tiny pencil light. “Boxes,” he said.

  Unmarked boxes. Dale hefted one. Light. A rattle of cellophane and tinfoil.

  “Okay. So it’s cold medicine. Ephedra,” Gordy said. “C’mon, ten measly boxes.”

  “This could get us all sent to jail.”

  “Get off it. Everybody from here on down through Montana to Idaho is cooking meth. Home brew, private use. A few boxes. C’mon, it’ll just take me a minute to stash it.”

  “Where you gonna put it?”

  “I thought maybe Irv’s old house.”

  Dale grinned. He liked that idea a lot.

  They worked quickly, Gordy handing down the whiskey, Dale stacking it. Then Dale passed up the flimsy cardboard boxes. They were light, practically empty, but Dale began to gush sweat. The night smothered him in green humidity rising off the dewy field.

  It was nerves made him sweat so bad, so he unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, carefully folded it, set it aside, and worked bare-belly in the dark.

  “You all right?” Gordy asked, a little alarmed to see the normally modest Dale throwing around his beefy white gut.

  “Fine,” Dale wheezed, using his hand to mop sweat off his face and sodden chest. Swat the bugs.

  When they’d tossed the flimsy boxes in the back of the truck, they waited and listened again. Dale put his shirt back on, making sure his Epipen was still secure in the pocket. Then they got back in the truck and drove slowly in the dark till they came to an intersection. Gordy cruised blind for a few minutes, then he pulled up a driveway.

  Dale began to smile, and with the smile came a flash of hesitation. He was remembering how, back during the missile time, they played here as kids. He pointed to a thick apple tree in the front yard. “Remember we used to climb that sucker, hide in the upper branches from Irv’s mother?”

  “Back when you could still climb, huh, Needle-Dick?” Gordy said, jabbing Dale in the side.

  You could always count on Gordy to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. His smart-ass remark wiped away the last quiver of doubt. Dale patted the Epipen in his pocket and stared at Gordy. “I told you, asshole.”

  “Yeah, yeah. C’mon, we’ll throw them in the root cellar.”

  They each grabbed two of the bulky cartons and walked toward the house. Gordy had a battery-powered light bar hooked over his thumb. He put down his boxes, opened the slanted door to the root cellar, and peered in.

  “What?” Dale said.

  “Stinks.”

  “Probably gonna get worse, too,” Dale said. He reached in his pocket and slid out a pair of Latex surgical gloves, slipped them on.

  Gordy went into the musty cellar. Horror-show cobwebs; wiring in the joists dating back to 1910. He poked around and stamped his feet in the sediment. He rested the light bar on a ledge in the uneven stone wall. Then, energetically, he put together a rough platform out of rock debris and old lumber, so the boxes would sit up off the damp floor. Then he waved a hand at Dale.

  “Dale?” he wondered aloud. “How come you’re wearing gloves?”

  Dale ignored the question and handed one of the boxes to Gordy, then paused and selected a board from a pile of loose lumber stacked on the rickety stairs next to the fieldstone foundation.

  “Lookit this old piece of oak. Bet this is a hundred years old.”

  “Yeah, yeah, gimme another box.”

  Dale turned the board in the pale light. “Got a big-ass spike in here. But it’s bent.” Dale studied the problem then hooked the bent spike on a ledge of rock and grabbed a piece of
debris that had fallen from the wall. Holding the rock like a hand hatchet, he banged down on the top of the board.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Straightening out this nail.”

  “Very cool, Dale, except that ain’t no nail. That’s a pole-barn spike. How about you hand me the boxes.”

  “Coming right up.” Dale whacked the board again and inspected the result: the rusty nine-inch spike was mostly perpendicular to the board. While Gordy shook his head, Dale set the board aside and picked up one of the boxes and passed it down.

  “By the way, what’s got Joe all pissed off?” Gordy asked.

  Dale smiled. “He’s done with you. Especially after that Sioux City business.”

  “Ah shit, I’ll make it up to him,” Gordy said. But he looked glum. “Sioux City was a bummer.”

  “Whole trailer packed with crates of full-capacity toilets down from Winnipeg. He runs the border, drives like crazy down to outside Sioux City. And then nobody’s there to unload them. He has to unload them himself and hide them in a barn. Not the ideal job for an eight-fingered Indian. Those toilets are heavy…”

  “Yeah, yeah. I owe him.”

  “Ah, I don’t know. You were right about Joe being sneaky. I did catch him in a lie once.”

  “Fuckin’ Indian, don’t surprise me.”

  “Yeah,” Dale said as he turned away and removed the Epipen from his pocket. He twisted the top, felt the needle engage, tucked it in his cupped hand, and turned back around. “Last April, Joe was loading cases in the storeroom at the Missile Park. He didn’t hear me come up on the dock. Thought he was all alone. He’s in a hurry and he tips the dolly and dumps these cases on his foot…”

  “Dale, c’mon.”

  “…Starts swearing like I never heard. Whole string of words, only a couple I could remember. One I sounded out: nik-o-mack. Another was zarba.”

  “Nikomak? Sounds kinda Indian,” Gordy said.

  “I thought so too, so, for kicks, I checked around on the Internet, and you know what?”

  “What?”

  “This was a surprise to me. I couldn’t find anything on Ojibwa, but I did get into a site about a Cree dialect that’s close to Ojibwa, and you know what? They got no cuss words. Got about twenty words for fuckin’ snow. But no profanity.”