Homefront pb-6

by Chuck Logan

  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 bunch 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.”

  “Hey, we’re ready.”

  “No more little jobs. No more sweating middlemen. All we do is cook and get paid. The big batch,” Sheryl said.

  “Biggest batch ever cooked east of California. Right here,” Gator said.

  “With the right support system, we could cook ten pounds a heat…”

  Gator shook his head. “Hell, with our setup we could do twenty pounds of ninety-nine-percent pure glass. Easy.” He couldn’t help laughing, picturing it as he shuffled toward her in a stilted Frankenstein stagger, jerking his arms. “Our stuff hits the street, it’s gonna look like Night of the Living Dead out there, all the dumb doomed tweakers lurching around the countryside.”

  His comic routine finally brought laughter to her eyes. Why she liked him; he had a sense of humor.

  “Okay, okay, cut the clowning. This is serious,” she said. “One heat a week, at twenty-five K a pound. But then there’s overhead and Danny’s cut. Still, shit, man…” She walked across the paint room and touched the beach photo taped to the wall. Then she turned to him. “There’s a lot of ifs; if they can deliver in volume and on time, if they don’t screw up washing the money, if you can get a new set of ID…” Finally his enthusiasm swept her up and she grinned. “Shit, Gator, in two months we could get free. Disappear.”

  “Say good-bye to winter,” Gator said.

  “Belize.”

  “Placencia, here we come. Build on that property. I could work on boat engines. Two-cycle diesel, not that different from tractors. Go straight, live on fish and coconuts.” He put his arm around her and walked her back into the mechanics bay. Then he gently pressed her forward against the disassembled bare metal of the old tractor, nuzzled her ear, inhaling the great hair. “Lean over, baby; grab some Minneapolis Moline.”

  “I guess this is what they call progress, huh,” Sheryl sighed as she unbuttoned her jeans.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Broker picked Kit up at school, their conversation consisted of three words.

  “Kitty?” Kit asked.

  “No kitty,” Broker said. After a glum drive home, they walked into the house, and it was immediately apparent that Nina’s morning rally had continued into the afternoon. She still wore the odd outfit, minus the robe, but she’d combed and gathered her hair in a ponytail. The weights were strewn around the living room in a circle that suggested she had been working out. More than circumstantial was the tone of her voice when she saw her daughter:

  “Young lady, you are vacuuming all the rugs, remember…”

  Broker left them debating over the sound of the vacuum cleaner-Kit trying to make a case that all five rugs were too many demerits to work off.

  Broker went into the backyard, making a vague reference to the woodpile. He walked far enough into the woods to verify that the ski pole and bunny were still in place.

  All afternoon he’d driven the roads, his thoughts accelerating. He’d lost something. A cushion between his skin and everything else in the world. More and more he felt pressed right up against days full of sharp edges. It was a new sensation for him. Life hurt.

  Wasn’t hard to figure out why.

  If she really was thawing out…then the truce that had existed between them as he nursed her would also melt away. They’d be right back where they were before Northern Route tricked weird-facing the unresolved issue in their marriage.

  Would she go back into the Army?

  Would he revert to dangling military spouse? Would Kit again become a bouncing ball between Nina’s duty stations overseas and Broker playing stay-at-home mom?

  Suddenly he was in a trip-wire region of resentments that had suspended, hang fire, during her bout of depression. When would they get aired? For starters, she had used Kit as part of her undercover ploy to penetrate the smuggling ring in North Dakota.

  So damn consumed by her goddamn mission, she put our daughter in the potential line of fire.

  The feud with Jimmy Klumpe was forgotten as he tipped into the pit of grievances he had been saving up.

  But.

  One day does not spell recovery. Go slow. She was still balanced on the lip of her own pit. So Broker stuffed the clamor back in his head. He carried an armload of oak into the kitchen, built a fire in the Franklin stove, and went through the motions of creating his perfect family hour.

  He boiled water for noodles, reheated spaghetti sauce, tossed a salad. Kit came into the kitchen, arms clamped across her chest, dagger-eyed. “Mom is getting mean,” she said.

  “No, Mom is getting better. You set the table.”

  He followed her as she placed the plates. Then made sure she got the fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right.

  Then he served the food and announced, “Mangia.” One of Kit’s favorite imports from her time in Tuscany.

  They took their seats.

  Kit, eyes down, stared into her spaghetti. The vertical intensity lines made deep dents in her brow.

  Nina raised her fork, chewed dutifully, and made an attempt to keep the new normal rolling. “This is good. I’m impressed.”

  Broker shrugged.

  She continued. “You know, I think Irene is right…”

  He looked up at the mention of his mother. “About what?” he said, not used to ordinary conversation with her.

  “Well,” she said, “Irene has this theory your stifled creativity gets expressed in odd ways; like in the kitchen, and in the role-playing of undercover work.”

  They studied each other in a perfectly routine way for two people who had been married for eight years, who had a child, who knew where all the hot buttons were.

  Broker averted his eyes, turned to Kit. “So how’s your food?”

  Kit let her fork drop, sat back in her chair, folded her arms tight, and planted her chin on her chest.

  “Kit, I asked you a question.”

  “If the wolves didn’t eat her, she’s gonna freeze to death.” Not looking up.

  “Not now. There’s other stuff we have to talk about, like what happened today at school. How’s the new homeroom?” Broker asked, a bit testy.

  Kit raised her eyes in full glower. “She’s the only friend
I got to play with. You won’t let me bring anybody over.”

  “C’mon, honey, you know it’s just for a little while.” Broker was speaking gently to Kit, but his eyes moved to Nina’s face, concerned the subject would rub her wrong.

  “You always say that. But it’s not a little while,” Kit said. Her eyes flashed up, shot an accusing look at Nina, ducked down again.

  Nina’s fork trembled in her fingers. Broker reacted. His hand a blur, he snapped the fork in midair before it fell into the plate.

  Broker’s sudden movement made his daughter snap alert, wary. Seeing her uncertainty, he slowly set the fork back on the table where it belonged on the left side of Nina’s plate. Then he placed his hands, palms down, on either side of his plate and spoke slowly. “Look, we’ve been over this. Mom needs to get better, okay…”

  Kit slowly bobbed her head and said, “Right. So when kids ask me over to play, I have to make excuses why I can’t because you don’t want to meet the parents or have them over here and then the kids don’t ask me anymore and I wind up playing alone on the playground. Dad! They think I’m weird.”

  Nina said in a calm voice. “She’s right, Broker. No surprise they’re starting to pick on her. We should have left her with your folks.”

  Broker shook his head and said firmly, “No, she’s been left with people half her life.”

  Kit grimaced. “It’s not my fault that Auntie Jane and those people died,” she cried, tearing up. “Why do I have to get punished for it?”

  Broker and Nina locked eyes; unspoken between them the charge they had robbed their daughter of innocence. Abruptly Nina pushed her chair back from the table. “This isn’t working. We should have left her with your parents,” she restated in a taut, hard voice.

  Broker put out his hands in a pacifying gesture. He was losing control of the situation. “Okay. Nina, calm down. We’ll start over.”

  That’s when the phone rang.

  Broker stared at the Bakelite relic on the wall. When he didn’t move to answer it, Nina got up, picked up the receiver.