by Chuck Logan
Should call Griffin. He knows these people.
But Griffin had a tendency to go from insult to breaking bones in seconds flat; once he got involved, it might be impossible to hold him in check. Have to think about that.
He went inside, and after confirming that Nina was sleeping upstairs, he resolved to work it off. Clean the house. Stow the clutter. Wipe down the surfaces. If not a solution, at least a distraction. First he moved all the unpacked boxes into the garage and arranged them neatly along one wall. Then he attacked the downstairs bathroom, where he got stuck for a moment staring at the cat litter box as Kit’s words from this morning washed back in a wave.
When I die, will I get to see Ditech again?
Like dying was a reasonable price to pay to be reunited with a cat? Did he think like that when he was eight? He stood, holding a scrub pad and Comet cleanser, peering at the lathered washbasin, trying to remember. The main thing he recalled was his mother yelling at him about wearing a hat and unthawing his fingers and toes after playing hockey until after dark in subfreezing weather.
He shook it off, removed the cat box, and put it in the garage. When he finished in the bathroom, he went into the living room and stacked Nina’s weights in a tidy row. Then he brought a basket of laundry from upstairs and loaded the washer.
As he stuffed in towels and washcloths, he speculated how Mrs. Helseth’s admonition to contact the sheriff would now be complicated by his ad hoc garbage dump at Klumpe’s office. Then he considered how he had not advised Nina about his engagement in low-intensity yokel warfare. How he had enlisted Kit as an accomplice in keeping mom out of the loop.
He revisited his talk with Susan Hatch, who had weighed in with more advice. Both Helseth and Hatch were suggesting he needed filling in on Cassie and Jimmy’s “local soap opera.”
That he was getting his foot into…
Twenty minutes later he left the bathroom in perfect sparkling order.
As he opened the hall closet and took out the Kenmore canister, he caught himself again and looked upstairs. Vacuuming would wake her. Take a break.
There was still coffee in the thermos on the kitchen island, so he poured some into a travel cup, put on his coat and boots, and went out on the back deck, where he sat down on the steps and lit a cigar.
Didn’t work. He found himself staring at his footprints in the snow, leading into the trees. Where he’d been out walking around last night with a loaded shotgun.
Okay. Klumpe was here. But he could have found the bunny in the truck when he knifed the tire.
If he knifed the tire.
There was even a chance Broker had not entirely closed the garage door and the cat had escaped on her own. But someone—Klumpe—had definitely removed the cat’s collar and strapped it on the toy and rammed it on the pole at the trail intersection.
Kit was still missing her cat.
With considerable effort, Broker tried to step back from the spiral of anger and evaluate motive. You humiliated Klumpe in front of his wife and kid. No need to slap the choke hold on him like that. The sheriff was getting out of his car. All you had to do was back up.
He’d always taken his ability to function under pressure for granted…
Broker sipped his coffee, puffed on the cigar, and watched the smoke dissipate in the wind. Kinda like Nina, always taking her iron will for granted.
Okay. So maybe it was time to back off. Reach out.
Broker actually grimaced at the idea of calling Griffin and asking for personal help. Help with Nina was one thing. But help for him personally…Jesus…
Up till now Griffin had provided a place to stay and the bare bones of a cover story. That done, he stayed at a respectful distance. How much did he know? Broker assumed Griffin gossiped with J. T. Merryweather and Harry Cantrell. They all used to come up here to hunt. He was one of the few “civilians” those two allowed into their confidence.
Face it. The problem with reaching out to Griffin—besides his tendency to overreact—was that he was a Vesuvius of advice waiting to erupt. He had almost thirty years saved up, twenty-five years of it stone cold sober. And Griffin tended to be blunt.
And even being longtime friends, they had some issues.
Broker finished his cigar and came back into the kitchen. He was still pondering making the call when Nina wandered in, doing her bathrobe shuffle but, Broker observed, with a little more swing than usual. She stopped, cocked her head to the side, and said, “Broker, you feeling all right? You don’t look so hot.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, backing up a step. Not used to her making and maintaining direct eye contact. Not used to seeing the hint of color in her cheeks. “Just cleaning the place up.”
She nodded, “Uh-huh. How’d it go with the principal this morning?”
“Ah, they’re moving her to a different home base, away from the kid she hit. No recess for a week. They’ll keep an eye out,” he said, thinking, first eye contact, now she’s tracking and making conversation. Christ, she is coming back. Not used to being scrutinized by her green eyes, he had to remind himself that Nina coming back was a good thing.
Then she poured a cup of coffee and took up her position at the stove, flipped on the overhead fan, and lit a cigarette. Broker was actually relieved when she pointed the TV remote like an escapist wand. The set popped on, dropping an electronic curtain over the room and hopefully cloaking his agitation.
For once he didn’t mind.
Usually the cable shows reminded him of undercover work that had taken him into endless barrooms where it was always 11:00 P.M. The time when the smart people had long departed and only the drunks remained, yelling their pet peeves at each other. Chris Matthews brayed on one stool, Bill O’Reilly on another. Sean Hannity off beating his meat in the john. CNN had less volume and droned in a thorazine monotone. PBS was different, a station that delivered its monotone with footnotes.
C-SPAN was okay, free of commercial breaks, it came at you in agonizing real time like a dogged AA group crusading to get the nation to go on the wagon of sober politics.
Broker retreated to the washer and dryer in the bathroom and reached in to haul towels from the washer, except the goddamn towels were tangled like wet pythons around the washer stalk, resisting him. Suddenly he yanked at them, jarring the machine. He stopped and stared at his hands. Close to shaking. The flash point idling hair-trigger…
Primed and ready, just a surge away.
Deep breath, center down. Slowly, he disentangled the twisted towels from the washer column. Looked up through the doorway, snuck a look at Nina, thinking how she’d always favored colors that complemented her hair and complexion; shades of green and amber. Harvest colors. Now she grabbed whatever came to hand first in the drawer or laundry basket. At this moment, under the green terry-cloth robe, she wore a gray T-shirt, a pair of red sweatpants. Purple sweat socks.
Kit was just beginning to be aware of her appearance and how to dress. She would avert her eyes from her mother’s outlandish costumes. Come to him with tops and bottoms, ask him if they matched…
Broker blinked, caught in mid-spiral; Nina was looking back at him. No, watching him.
Deliberately now, under the gaze of her increasingly alert eyes, he transferred the towels into the dryer, sorted another load into the washer, measured soap, set the control, started the water. When he went back to the kitchen, she continued to check him from the corner of her eye as she paced and chain-smoked and watched the Abrams tanks and the Bradleys rolling up the Euphrates River valley.
“So, what do you think?” she asked in a level voice, gesturing at the televised war just as some particularly sharp audio threw a rattle of shots into the kitchen. This distinctive whoosh, then an explosion.
“The AKs and RPGs sound the same,” Broker said, turning away. “I gotta go in town, pick up the flat, do some shopping before I get Kit,” he said over his shoulder, accelerating in an uninterrupted motion toward the door, stepping into his boots, grabbing
his hat, gloves, carrying his coat, which he put on in the garage.
He didn’t have to check his wristwatch. He knew it was just after noon. Three hours till school let out.
As he wheeled down the driveway and onto 12, he decided he needed some drive time away from the house. He’d been living too close to her.
And her ghosts.
Janey, Holly, and Ace Shuster. The casualties from Northern Route. He repeated the names in his mind like a diagram of her condition. She blamed herself for Janey most, and then Ace. Holly had disappeared, vaporized from the face of the earth in the explosion at Prairie Island. Broker had been two hundred yards away…
He shook his head, focused on the road. Ghosts were mind games, just mental artifacts. Invisible.
Like radiation.
Broker had come to view Nina’s depression as an asylum where all the ghosts got out. Thing about ghosts. You had to keep them locked up.
Broker stabbed his right boot sole down, heavy on the gas. Maybe not the best time to call Griffin.
Chapter Nineteen
Gator was jangled on too much morning coffee, and now rubber-kneed from the bout at the sink, but when they entered the shop, he immediately started another pot. As the Mr. Coffee gurgled and dripped, he paced and watched Sheryl drift over to the cot in the alcove, tuck her knees under her, and start combing out her hair.
No afterglow booze. No drugs. He and Sheryl agreed. The first rule of the Great Monk Crooks was, they never used. Like Danny T. said in the joint: “You use, you lose the count.”
“So?” Sheryl asked, drawing the comb through her long hair, staring quizzically at the black kitten that emerged from a folded blanket under the desk and arched up against Gator’s shin.
“Jojo,” Gator said, picking up the cat, stroking it.
Sheryl’s eyes clicked around. “You mean…Danny T.’s Jimmy Jo?”
“Yep.” Gator gently put the kitten down, poured a cup of coffee, and handed it to Sheryl. She set down the comb, took the cup in both hands, blew on it to cool it.
“The bust in Bayport, what? Eight, nine years ago, she said. “I hear it still cuts Danny like a knife.”
Casually Gator opened his desk drawer and took out the sheets of paper. “No one ever figured out who snitched on Jimmy Jo. Gave him to the narcs.”
Sheryl nodded. “Eats at Danny. Gave him ulcers, losing his only kid like that.”
“Wasn’t a snitch. Was an undercover cop.” He tapped the paper.
Sheryl narrowed her eyes, taking the papers; she drew up her knees cross-legged, got comfortable. “This is a search warrant,” she said as she flipped up the blue memo stapled to the top page, raised her eyebrows.
“Read,” he said.
She put on her serious thinking face and carefully read the warrant. Then she scanned it again. He reached in the desk again and tossed her the Washington County letter, the Visa statement.
“Connect the dots. I don’t trust myself,” Gator said.
Sheryl took her time reading, turning the pages, going back and forth, sipping her coffee, the student in her engaged. Times like this, he was grateful she was onboard. His deep bench. She glanced up, her eyes luminous, impressed.
“This guy, Broker,” she said slowly.
“I figure he was an undercover they didn’t want to show in court.”
“Maybe.” They locked eyes. “How’d you get this? Where?”
Gator smiled, “Never mind how. I got it from a house, yesterday afternoon. Where he’s staying.”
Sheryl’s eyes popped. “Up here?”
“Yep.”
“A state narc is up here?” Showing lots of whites, her eyes darted around the shop. “Shit, man…”
“Relax. If something was up, I’da heard from Keith. In fact, I’m working on that, to make sure,” Gator said.
Sheryl wrinkled her nose. She didn’t entirely approve of the way he played footsie with his childhood buddy, the sheriff.
Gator hurried to reassure her. “Way it looks, I don’t think he’s on the job anymore. Just living with his crazy old lady and his kid.”
Sheryl uncrossed her legs, got off the cot, and paced the narrow office. “Let me get this straight. You just stumbled on this?”
Gator shrugged. “If I told you how, you wouldn’t believe it. Doesn’t matter. What’s it mean?”
As Sheryl pondered her response, the black kitten reappeared from under the desk and glided to a bowl of water, then poked its head into a second bowl of cat food.
“I think Danny T. had a contract out on whoever snitched Jojo,” she said slowly. “It never went anywhere.”
“So,” Gator tossed up his hands in a gesture of great abundance, “let’s renegotiate the contract.”
Sheryl inclined her head so her hair fell in this dark cascade, and their eyes batted the idea back and forth. She frowned. “You mean…?”
“Make an approach, propose trading this ratfuck narc for…”
“A reliable supplier of precursor,” Sheryl said.
Gator took her hands in his, pulled her up from the cot, and twirled her in a celebratory circle. Sheryl went along for a moment, then her face went beetle-browed with concentration. She released Gator’s hands.
“Easier said than done, making an approach. When I tried putting out feelers to Danny’s guys, they treated me like a retread throwaway bitch. They’re still pissed at me ’cause I walked away from cooking for them. Shit, Gator, they wanted to know if I’d do prison visits again.”
“But this is different,” Gator said. “It’s got a personal angle, like a favor to the great man. We start out humble. Give them the guy like a gift. Don’t go to street guys. Go right to the top, Danny’s lawyer…”
An authentic ripple of disgust distorted her face. She clamped her arms across her chest. “You go see Dickie Werk, you blow him.”
“C’mon, this is different,” Gator insisted. Then he took her hand and walked her through the shop, past the disassembled tractor and the partitioned area where he kept his paints, paint gun, two protective suits with state-of-the-art rebreather masks. They entered the paint room. Hooks dangled from the ceiling on which he hung tractor parts. It was an almost hallucinatory space, swirled with layers of spray from the paint gun—red, orange, green, yellow. Empty now, kept scrupulously clean. Just a long workbench, a wide elaborate fume hood, and a color photo taped to the wall; a view of Sheryl’s sand beach lot in Belize. Gator believed in visualizing goals.
“We’re all set up—we got an industrial-rated exhaust system, the glassware, the mantles, the generator,” he said. “Got the perfect location, a pig tank full of anhydrous in the barn…and I got pickup, delivery, and disposal all figured out.”
“Figured out in theory,” Sheryl said tartly, bringing him back to earth. “Or have you forgotten what a mess it was two weeks ago, just cooking two pounds? All thumbs, the country kids…you getting stuck in the woods with a truck full of precursor and chemicals you ripped off…” She raised her finger and wagged it. “You got it figured out on paper, honey; not in real life.”
“Okay, two weeks ago was hairy; but we needed operating cash. I owe my brother-in-law, remember…”
“Your brother-in-law the lush, your buddy the sheriff ”—she rolled her eyes, then clamped her arms across her chest—“fucking wolves howling all night.” Again the wagging finger. “No way I’m going back to those West Side Mexican creeps; I don’t need the exposure. To lay off that shit we took a fifty percent cut in price”—her eyes flashed—“and me digging around in the water tank of some crummy nightclub toilet for the bread…there was vomit on the floor, in the woman’s john.” Sheryl finished up fierce and indignant.
“You’re absolutely right.” Gator made calming motions with his hands. “That’s why we need a reliable organization that can assemble the chemicals in volume, discreetly. Dead drops.”
“Gator, I don’t even know if OMG has a network in Canada to bring stuff down. They’re still a bun
ch of fucking bikers, man.”
“Work with me, here, will ya?” Gator pleaded. “Not like we’re in hurry; this year’s shot. If it happens, it’ll be next winter. We got time. Long-term, remember?”
Sheryl’s tantrum passed. She unfolded her arms and paced the room. “Okay, maybe it could work.” She pirouetted and raised the stern finger for a third time. “You’re forgetting something,” she said, still beetly, still thinking. “If this guy checks out and they go for it, they’re going to kill him. We can get indicted as coconspirators in murder one. This won’t be like the last time. Your buddy, the sheriff, is going to have to investigate an ex-cop with a bullet in the back of his head. Says in the paperwork he worked for BCA. They’ll bring in the state investigators. And they’re pretty good.”
Gator made a quashing gesture with his hands. “I thought of that. We’ll make it part of the deal. He dies in a house fire. They put a plastic sack over his head or do him with a small caliber in the ear, huh—that ain’t gonna show if he’s burned up. Bad connection on the propane. Gas rises to the pilot light in the furnace. Boom. Happens all the time in old houses up here.”
Sheryl enlarged her eyes. “Another house fire, Gator? You just had one last year…And for starters, you don’t dictate to these guys…”
“Aw, c’mon, maybe they’ll do it somewhere else, huh? Let’s take a shot. Take the papers to the lawyer. He can talk to Danny on the phone, and no one’s listening; they turn the tape off, right, when he’s talking to his lawyer?”
Sheryl chewed the inside of her cheek, angling her head back and forth, weighing it. “So go in humble, serve them up this guy, then later we angle for an audition,” she said.
“There you go, think positive,” Gator said.
“They’d have a whole year to put it together. And they’ll want to check out the operation, send out an appraiser, like a bank doing a mortgage.”
