Vapor Trail pb-4

by Chuck Logan

  “Uh-uh. The question is, where are you?”

  Broker endeavored to comb the burrs of anger from his voice. Be cool, he told himself. It’s a game. “Driving east on thirty-six, heading into town.”

  “You know the Civil War statue in front of the old courthouse on the South Hill?”

  “Sure.”

  “Be standing in front of the statue at noon,” Harry said.

  “A meeting, Harry?”

  “Silly boy, I want you where I can see you’re alone. I’ll call. Noon sharp.”

  “Make it at one. I have a sit-down with Mouse,” Broker said.

  “Okay, at one. Don’t get smart on me. Be alone,” Harry said. The connection went dead.

  As he drove east on Highway 36, Broker entertained a fantasy replay of the last scene in Easy Rider. The black Ford Ranger would pull up next to him, and a leering Harry Cantrell would lean out the driver’s side with a shotgun cradled in his elbow. Then, after he pumped four rounds of.00 buck into Broker’s face, he’d drive away.

  At 120 miles an hour.

  Broker walked into Investigations looking for Mouse, who was in his cube on the phone. When Mouse hung up, Broker said, “We’re still on, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” Mouse said. “John called. Sally Erbeck’s calling every cop she knows in the county. The Star Tribune called, and so did Channel Four and Channel Five and Channel Eleven. Word’s out we got a dead priest. They all asked the same question: was foul play involved?”

  “And you told them?”

  “We’re in the initial stages of an investigation, and we’ll keep them informed. They’re closing the ring.”

  “Great. So where’s Lymon?”

  Mouse’s battered face conveyed a perfect Gallic shrug. But he got up and motioned with a jerk of his head for Broker to follow him. Benish joined them. They stopped at Lymon’s cube, which was along the outer wall and had a window that faced the lawn between the sheriff’s offices and the government center.

  Lymon kept his space orderly. Just one personal picture, an attractive light-skinned woman and a smiling toddler in a frame on his desk. Mouse pointed at the Levolor blinds on the window, which were tilted, the right side up at an angle. Then he summoned Broker forward to look out the window and pointed up at the government center.

  “Third floor,” Mouse said.

  Broker scanned along the third floor windows and stopped on one that had its blinds tilted in a position similar to Lymon’s. The county attorneys’ offices were on the third floor, where he’d been this morning.

  Benish stepped forward and said, “We’ve come to think of it as jungle telegraph. .”

  “Benish,” Mouse warned.

  But Benish went on. “Although now, since they have matching Palm Pilots, they tend to message each other. Like the ad says, there are times when text is better than talk. .”

  Mouse held up a key. “Why don’t you cruise by the gym downstairs and tell Lymon it’s time to meet.”

  Broker took the key and went down two flights of stairs, took a few turns, and opened the door to the gym. The room had blue cinder block walls, a blue carpet, and was too small for the thicket of stainless steel exercise stations. In among the crowded steel it was silent but not empty.

  Lymon stood on one side of the room with a sheen of sweat on his smooth face. He was methodically lifting dumbbells in alternating biceps curls. Not showy, he wore gray wind pants and an oversized white T-shirt. Thick grids of veins swelled in either forearm as he slowly hoisted and lowered the forty-pound weights.

  Across the room Gloria Russell sat at the pec fly machine, spreading her arms, aligning her back, and dragging her arms together, working her delts. She wore black spandex shorts and a black tank top. Broker could not see a hint of fold in the tanned belly above her waistband. Gloria’s eyes bored into the middle distance, concentrating on the reps.

  Tremendous fatigue streamed off both of them. Broker could almost see it, like smoke. Lymon couldn’t miss Broker coming into the small area, but his eyes didn’t register Broker’s entry. In the zone, his focus remained fixed elsewhere; his lips continued counting reps.

  Lymon’s lips mimed eight as he lowered the weight in his right hand. Then he repeated the silent eight as he lifted the barbell in his left hand, and his eyes moved across Broker and fixed on a point in space about a foot off Broker’s shoulder. No one spoke.

  So Broker watched them progress gracefully through their compact jungle of iron and steel. After she finished with the pec fly, Gloria moved to the inclined bench press. She started with dime plates on the bar. Did a steady set of ten reps.

  Lymon had finished the alternating curls and continued his biceps work on a barbell. But now he was no longer staring into space. He monitored Gloria, who had added a pair of nickel plates to the bar for her second set. On her seventh rep her arms began to tremble but she maintained her form and was able to pump out the eighth rep. The barbell clunked into the weight stand; she sat up and stared, catching her breath.

  Broker intruded into the interval between sets and said, “Lymon, we have a meeting with Mouse.”

  “Ten minutes,” Lymon said.

  Now Gloria added another pair of nickels to the bar and locked her knees over the raised supports and lay back, resuming her head-down prone position on the inclined bench. She composed herself, carefully placed her hands, and lifted the weight. Smooth, concentrated; two, three, four. .

  At four she began to fall apart. She struggled.

  Lymon was there instantly, hovering, adding a light tug with his fingertips. His spotting made the difference, and she completed the lift. In that second, as she braced her arms and prepared to lower the weight, their eyes locked.

  Then, for the first time, they acknowledged Broker’s presence. As a pair, they looked back at him. Broker thought they appeared romantic, arranged there together among the benches and the barbells, which was to say they looked young, beautiful, and haunted. They also looked guilty of something.

  And doomed.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Broker, Mouse, and Lymon sat down to talk. Broker thought it ironic that Mouse chose the soft interrogation room to have their chat, the room where victims were questioned gently. They sat in cheap but comfortable easy chairs. A short child’s blackboard and a box of toys sat in the corner. Broker could clearly picture Harry interviewing Tommy Horrigan in this room a little over a year ago.

  Broker related his off-the-record talk with Malloy, underscoring Malloy’s obvious worry that someone was declaring open season on priests. Then he kept his mouth closed and listened.

  Mouse said, “Okay, here’s the deal. John’s not back till Friday night. We have to stall the media going into the weekend. Then, on Monday John will hold a press conference. If we don’t come up with anything by then, he goes public with the medallion. So. . if the press gathers, we avoid the front door. I’m telling everybody to enter and leave the building through the basement garage. The call takers in Dispatch are screening all the media calls.”

  Mouse turned to Lymon. “Get on the horn with Albuquerque PD and check out the family that accused Moros. See if they’ve done any traveling lately, like to Minnesota.”

  Lymon shook his head. “This is big,” he said. “We should call in the state guys right now. If we have a new player out there who’s going after priests. .” He stared like a man watching a tidal wave coming ashore. “These back-channel games, meeting Malloy on the sly, chasing after Harry, they amount to gambling with people’s lives.”

  Mouse said, “Go call Albuquerque.”

  Lymon narrowed his eyes but managed to keep his mouth shut. Without another word he stood up and left the room.

  Mouse turned to Broker. “He’s right, you know.”

  Broker nodded. “I agree about the gambling part. John’s gambling this is local, and that Harry has been sitting on a solid lead. I’m gambling that Harry will tell me what it is before he sneaks up and skull-fucks me in my sleep.�
�� Then Broker reached over and thumped Mouse on his dense chest. “And Harry is gambling, because he called me thirty minutes ago, and I heard the goddamn slots banging in the background. So get on those casinos. He’s driving in from one right now.”

  “How do you know?” Mouse said.

  “Because he wants me someplace where he can see me for a meet. Not in person. On the phone.”

  “Hell, where? We’ll stake it out.”

  Broker shook his head. “No way. This is Harry, remember. Anything looks out of place, he’ll spot it. The last thing we want is a confrontation. Did you call your pal in Hinckley?”

  “Called him and sent the faxes. It’s being put in place. C’mon.” Mouse motioned for Broker to follow him back to his cube, where he had a state map spread on his desk.

  “Okay, I sent stuff to every joint in the state; that’s sixteen in all. But we’re concentrating on these.” Mouse tapped place-names highlighted in yellow magic marker on the map that formed a rough circle around Minneapolis and St. Paul. “The Grand Casinos in Hinckley and Onamia, Mystic Lake in Prior Lake, Treasure Island in Red Wing, Turtle Lake in Wisconsin, and Jackpot Junction in Morton-but that’s getting way out there.”

  Broker bit his lip. “It could work. We want to find him when he’s half in the bag, distracted in a public place. We want him in a goddamn trance staring at a blackjack dealer. That’s the way to approach him.”

  Mouse hitched up his belt, cleared his throat, and said, “Wonderful. This has become competitive between you two.”

  “Always was,” Broker said.

  Broker had forty minutes to kill before his date with the statue. He figured Harry needed a support system so he might turn to Annie Mortenson again. He drove out of the basement ramp, eased through the back streets, worked around to the west of town, came down Myrtle Hill, turned left on North Fourth, and parked in front of the Stillwater Library. From here it would be a quick hop up Third Street to the old courthouse.

  The Carnegie library was one of Stillwater’s jewels, with A.D. 1902 chiseled over the door. Broker picked his way through kids’ bikes that were strewn on the broad lawn like a snapshot from a happy childhood. He went inside, asked for Anne Mortenson at the curved front desk, and was directed downstairs to the reference desk.

  Broker came down the marble stairs two at a time and saw her standing behind the desk in jeans and a maroon paisley blouse. She was younger than he expected, midthirties. His initial impression was: medium, in height, in looks, in intensity. Her brown hair was clipped in straight bangs across her forehead and fell on either side of her oval face in a lank pageboy. Her bookish brown eyes did not entirely conceal a dynamo of spinster energy that suggested her trim appearance would not change for the next forty years.

  As he walked up to the desk, he sketched her quickly: She was independent, she owned a cat. She took long, solitary vacations and enjoyed them. She’d never marry. Men like Harry would always break her heart.

  Broker came in fast with a stiff cop edge to shake her a little. “Anne, I’m Phil Broker. We talked yesterday about Harry.”

  She blushed slightly. “My poor car. How could I be so dumb? The dealership gave me a loaner, which I will never let Harry Cantrell go near, ever.”

  “Good. Because Harry’s being difficult. It would be a mistake to offer him any kind of encouragement,” Broker said.

  She dropped her eyes, then recovered quickly.

  Broker stepped in closer and said, “Are you and Harry. .”

  “Close?” She furrowed her eyebrows. “As in, do opposites attract?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Not when he’s drinking.” She said it clear-eyed and emphatically, and she was lying through her straight, even teeth. “It’s a game with him, you know. Outwitting the sheriff. He thinks he can make a deal, get reinstated without going into the hospital. He doesn’t believe in alcoholism. The only thing he believes in, as far as I can see, is winning streaks.”

  Broker picked up a slip of notepaper from the desk and a short, sharp #2 pencil and jotted down a number. “This is my cell. If Harry contacts you, call me,” Broker said in his best cop voice. He turned and left without saying good-bye. But as he stepped back into the sun, he was smiling. Maybe he had learned something. Maybe Harry wanted to make a deal.

  Thinking he might actually be getting a break, he drove up South Third and parked next to the old Stillwater courthouse, a graceful storied building with Italianate arches and a cupola on the top. He walked down the sidewalk and up the steps and across the grass to the monument set in the corner of the lawn by the flagpole.

  Broker knew this place well.

  He reached up and patted the weathered bronze replica of a Civil War soldier who, rifle at the ready, leaned perpetually forward, advancing to the attack. Eighty-four years of heat, snow, rain, and cold had mottled the statue’s surface with pewter blues and grayish blacks and lacy green flourishes. Broker thought of the weathered metal as the color of history, like black-and-white photographs.

  His dad had first brought him to this spot when he was six years old. He remembered only a fragment of what his father had explained to him. Mainly he had acquired the powerful impression that this was a statue of his great-great-grandfather Abner Broker.

  Abner’s name was one of hundreds recorded on the broad plaque behind the statue. The names represented Washington County men who’d served in Minnesota regiments. Abner had left his logger job in the north shore pineries, moved to Stillwater, and joined up with the First Minnesota Regiment in 1861.

  He had caught the train right here in Stillwater to go to Mr. Lincoln’s war to save the union and free the slaves. His journey included the rough afternoon of July 2, 1863, on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The regiment had charged an Alabama brigade and stopped them in their tracks. Only a handful of Minnesota boys came back from that fight, including a limping Abner. But they had bought General Winfield Scott Hancock the five minutes he needed to rebuild his collapsing line and perhaps save the country.

  So, as six-year-old Broker would remember it, Grandpa Abner won the war.

  Broker sat down, rested his arms on his knees, and watched black ants boil in the thick green blades of grass. He thought of the picture of Tommy Horrigan sitting all alone on Gloria Russell’s bookshelf. What did Tommy have to associate with being six? For sure, something far less secure than swinging on the resolute unbending arm of Grandpa Abner.

  His cell phone rang. He popped it on.

  “So did the priest deserve it?” Harry said.

  “No, Moros was hounded out of Albuquerque by gossip. The local cops cleared him,” Broker said.

  “That’s what I thought. So you and John have a real problem. .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “The Saint has returned with bad target information.”

  Broker shivered. Mocking the heat, a cold needle of adrenaline jabbed through his heart. “You know this how?”

  “I keep this personal log of anonymous tips, stuff too flimsy to file a formal Initial Complaint Report. I clear them and delete them off my computer. But last week I found a pile of printouts in this drawer in a desk. Somebody had gone into my computer and retrieved my notes from the trash. Moros was on top of the stack.” Harry paused a beat. “I always had a problem emptying my trash. .”

  “Harry?” Broker was on his feet, squeezing the chunk of Samsung plastic in his hand as if he could force Harry’s voice back into the circuits. But the line was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Goddamn you, Harry-where are you?

  Frustrated, Broker scanned the neighborhood. Just the still foliage of the trees and the shadows on the deserted streets. Harry probably wasn’t on foot. .

  Moving now toward the car. What about Annie Mortenson? She had been lying about helping Harry. . But by the time he reached the car, he’d decided he needed more help than Annie could provide. Annie didn’t really know Har
ry.

  Harry had only wrecked Annie’s car. But he’d wrecked Gloria Russell’s marriage.

  Ten minutes later, Broker was inside the government center, taking the elevator to the third floor. The receptionist, who had been hostile to him earlier, saw him coming, and her expression froze. Her eyes went wide, then filmed over, unfocused.

  Broker had seen this response before, as a young operator in MACV-SOG doing fast ugly missions with the Provincial Reconnaissance Units. He remembered sweeping into Vietnamese hamlets, the villagers numbing their faces into empty smiles. Their eyes had escaped inward as fear bred the hope they could make themselves invisible.

  When he slowed to take a good look at her, it struck him that she was a low-rent version of Gloria Russell. The same gym-rat tan. The same muscle tone. The same shortish hair, only hers was dishwater blond.

  He continued down the hall and into Gloria’s office.

  A slender guy in a blue shirt and tie was talking to her. He had a sheaf of manila folders in his hand.

  “Sorry, but I got to talk to Gloria,” Broker said.

  “Is this. .?” the guy said.

  “Yeah, this is Broker,” Gloria said.

  “I can come back.” The guy turned and left the room.

  Gloria pushed a Washington County edition of the Pioneer Press across her desk. “You see the paper?” she said.

  Broker shook his head.

  She handed it to him and said, “The story stripped down the right side.”

  Broker scanned the headline: “Priest Found Dead in Stillwater Mission Church.” Under Sally Erbeck’s byline, the lead sentence read: “Foul play has not been ruled out in the death of Father Victor Moros.”

  “The gossip jumped buildings this morning. Now I know why you want to deal Tardee up; he saw a woman in a Saints jacket go into the church about the time the priest died,” Gloria said. “You could have told me yesterday.”

  “I just talked to Harry,” Broker said, evading her remark.

  Gloria tensed visibly. “How is he?”

  “Drunk. He has these two forward gears when he’s drinking. One is lucid. The other is. .”