by Chuck Logan
“Awright, boss—awright!” Gordy smiled.
Finally.
“It’s me, I want to talk,” Nina said.
“So talk,” Broker said. He had been pacing in the motel room, watching the Weather Channel, mulling over his drive with Yeager and his missing pistol. Hearing her voice, he admitted to himself he had been waiting for the cell to ring, and now it had.
“Face-to-face,” she said.
“You had lunch?”
“No.”
“There’s a restaurant a block from the motel. Gracie’s. It’s right on the highway.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Did Kit get off home?”
“Lyle Torgeson and Doc Harris flew in and picked her up this morning. She’ll be with my folks later today. You should give her a call.”
“Not a good idea right now.”
“Right, I forgot. Mission over men.”
His remark killed conversation for several seconds. He imagined her mind maneuvering in the silence.
“Fifteen minutes,” she said finally in her clipped, hard voice.
Broker found himself sitting up, leaning forward, hovering over the tiny phone. “You need a ride?” But the connection had ended.
Broker heaved up off the bed, stripped off his clothes, peeled the bandage from his hand, walked into the bathroom, and ran the shower to revive himself after the long, hot ride along the border. All the shower did was concentrate the humidity into liquid jets. He stood under the needles of water, eyes shut. Then he held his injured hand up to the shower and let the spray irrigate the ragged flesh.
Jane’s salve worked. The swelling and redness were going down.
He got stuck, went blank, and then realized he was staring at a Barbie Doll, naked flesh-colored plastic, awkward jointed hips and arms, sitting on the soap tray like a crumb left behind by his daughter, part of a trail leading into the forest of his marriage. He picked up the toy and observed that Kit had cut the doll’s red hair short.
So it looked like Nina, or perhaps Jane. He put the doll with his toilet articles so he wouldn’t forget it.
One towel. Two. Trying to get dry. Then, gingerly, he tested the smaller, but still red, fan of infection radiating from the wound. Still tender. He applied the Bag Balm and taped on a clean dressing. As he took two of the Vicodin, it occurred to him that ten years earlier he’d have ignored the wound; it wouldn’t have slowed him down. He felt every one of his forty-eight years as a specific weight dragging on his body.
He shook his head and swore softly as he pulled on a pair of jeans, cross trainers, a T-shirt. The idea of finally sitting down with Nina brought on a snap of resentment—at finding himself caught up in another of her projects.
They had not planned on getting married. But, then, they had not planned on getting pregnant. Maybe she thought, given her chosen line of work, it would be the only shot she’d have at a child. Maybe he thought that having a kid would nudge her out of the Army. No, not maybe.
She thought he wanted her to get pregnant, his assigned role in the male plot to boot her out of the service.
No, Nina, I just think Mama, Papa, and baby belong under one roof.
So, you can come to Europe.
Or, you can come home.
So you can stick me in the kitchen with a kid and an apron.
Broker shook his head. Ten minutes after he’d met her he told her straight out she had a chip on her shoulder. And she fired right back:
That’s no chip. Those are captain’s bars, mister.
The fact was, she was a disaster in the kitchen.
He looked one last time at the Weather Channel, how the green mass of precipitation was finally moving out of the upper Midwest. The local report said scattered showers. He eyed his rain parka and decided to leave it. Then he clicked off the TV and left the room.
He grabbed a Styrofoam cup of motel coffee in the lobby and went outside, lounged against the hood of Milt Dane’s Explorer, and lit a another cigar. He assumed she’d come walking into town from that bar. Or maybe Shuster would give her a lift.
Ace.
Carefully he mulled the all-too-ready image of Nina waking up in bed with…
He dragged on the cigar a little too hard and got some smoke down his throat and coughed.
Shit. So here he was dead in the water, waiting for her to come down the highway. The Missile Park was about a mile west down Highway 5.
Broker remembered back to the beginning. He should have picked up on the clues when he visited her apartment in Ann Arbor—when he met her she was on academic leave from the Army, finishing up her master’s in business administration at the University of Michigan.
Her place looked like somewhere Dracula slept between night shifts. Spare and functional. TV dinners and beefed-up vitamin shakes in the refrigerator.
No houseplants. No cat. No paintings on the wall. The only personal item sat on her desk. A trophy from the national military competition pistol shoot at Camp Perry. Second place in the fifty-yard offhand with a .45.
Make a note. Never marry a woman who can outshoot you with a handgun.
When Nina barged into his life he had been dating a woman named Linda who worked at a nursery north of Stillwater, Minnesota. Linda had long black hair she pinned up with a turquoise clasp and always managed to look like she’d just stepped out of a grove sacred to Demeter. Always had her hands plunged in potting soil and wood chips. Good old Linda. Always listening to Minnesota Public Radio. Ripe as a D. H. Lawrence love scene.
C’mon, Broker, tell the truth. Linda would have bored you stiff after a while.
Never bored with Nina. Never once.
Broker spotted her. A stride of color coming at a brisk step down the gravel shoulder. He got up. Check it out. See. It was impossible to be bored and mad at the same time.
Okay.
The watery light licked her bare arms and legs. She wore this meager sleeveless summery dress that came down to mid-thigh and gave her the look of an R-rated Monet in motion. Red-painted toenails in Chaco sandals. And, naturally, she’d never worn a dress like that for him. Strictly jeans and shorts and working duds. Or a goddamn Army uniform. Seven years of married life and they’d been together less than three.
As he waited and sipped his coffee, his eyes swung up and down the highway, out of habit. He spotted Yeager leaning against the side of the county office building across the street. Ostensibly taking a smoke break. A moment later Yeager was joined by another cop in different uniform, a darker shade of brown on top, gray striped trousers below. The state patrol guy. Cute. Both of them playing cop face, affecting sunglasses on a sunless day so they could watch without showing their eyes. A boy, seven or eight came out of the building and talked to Yeager. They all went inside together.
A few minutes later she walked up and they stared at each other.
Broker drifted his eyes across the street to the county building. “We’re in a goddamn fishbowl here. They’re real suspicious about you over there.”
Nina scrunched her lips. “Yeah, so is the guy I’m with.”
“With,” Broker said.
They locked eyes. Let it sputter between them.
“Yeah,” Nina said. “Gordy bet Ace I’m a cop.”
“Great,” Broker said. He turned and they fell in step, walking east toward the restaurant.
“He’s a strange guy, Ace Shuster,” Nina said. “Not what you’d expect.”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Broker said.
“Bullshit. You’ve thought about it in great detail. Just like I thought about it when you told me about your fling with Jolene Somer.”
Snap and hiss in the close space between them. Like a live high-tension wire that got loose.
“Yeah, what about your Ranger captain in Bosnia—Jeremy,” Broker shot back.
“I necked with Jeremy once. You fucked that tramp Jolene.”
“So this is what? Payback?”
Nina smiled briefly. “Ace hasn’t
even tried to touch me.” She paused for effect and bored a look into his eyes. “Yet.”
They went into the restaurant. Nonsmoking booths on the left, counter front, tables and more booths to the right. They sat in an open booth to the right.
A waitress in tight toreador pants and a deeply tanned face brought them water and a coffeepot. Broker ordered a late breakfast: ham, eggs, no toast, no potatoes, oatmeal on the side. Nina ordered an omelette. She raised an eyebrow.
“Oatmeal and eggs? I thought you were strictly oatmeal. That’s all Kit will eat for breakfast since you brainwashed her.”
Broker shrugged. “Maybe that Atkins guy has a point. I’m checking it out.”
Nina grinned. “You had a birthday last week. The old waistline creeping up on you?”
“I’m doing fine.”
“I don’t think so.” In a completely disarming move she leaned across the table and laid the inside of her cool wrist along his forehead. “You’re running a fever and I’ll bet that hand is infected.”
The day heaved when she did that. Broker almost wanted to stayed glued to her arm, but it moved away. She’s fucking that guy, I know she is and she’ll never admit it. Never should have told her about Jolene. Never.
Their orders arrived and Nina was all business. Broker struggled to give her his full attention, but between his smoldering anger, the mild fever, and the painkillers, the edges on things got blunted. Nina looked faintly screened, distant.
“Get in touch with Jane and Holly,” she said. She took a pen and a business card from her purse and wrote on the back. “Here are their cells”
She slid the card across the table. Broker turned it over and saw the pine-tree logo of his resort: Broker’s Beach.
Nina started to say, “They’re staying—”
Broker cut her off. “I know. One of the local cops told me. They’re at an Air Force radar site east of town. Along with some rough trade in a Black Hawk.”
“Aw shit.”
Broker pressed on. “Remember the famous Shuster-McVeigh photo op? Well, it’s total bullshit. Pure coincidence. Shuster was at Waco looking for his nutzy sister, who was reported to be in the compound. She wasn’t. He found her in Seattle.”
“You know this how?”
“One of the locals told me this morning.”
Nina stiffened slightly when the highway patrolman entered the café and started toward their table. He was snappy-looking in his uniform, duty belt, and Smoky Bear hat.
He passed their table smartly and inclined his head in a deferential nod, just as polite as can be. “Broker. Major Pryce.” He continued on and sat down at the counter, his back to them.
Nina sagged and stared at Broker.
“I tried to tell you. You’re wrong for this kind of work. All you guys are. Once Jeff back home heard our kid was stranded in North Dakota he called the local sheriff. Asked him to keep an eye out for her. That raised a flag. It is definitely not SOP for abandoned children to have sheriffs in other states immediately start calling and asking personal favors. It suggests I’m connected. So, Wales, the local sheriff, did some checking around with the Minnesota AG’s office and got an earful about me and then about you. The Vietnam trip in ’95. The rumors about the gold. And you being a big Army celebrity after the Gulf.”
Broker leaned forward. “You have a reputation. Some terms got thrown around.”
Nina’s glower was frayed at the edges. She was exhausted. Playing barfly with Ace was eating up her reserves of control.
Broker raised his eyebrows, questioning. “So the sheriff asked me what the Purple Platoon is.”
“There is no Purple Platoon.”
“Of course there isn’t. How can there be? It’s part of Delta and Delta doesn’t exist.”
“Are you through?”
Broker shrugged. “Just saying, you should have gone to these guys, they probably have some real undercover resources—this being their turf and all.”
Nina shook her head and looked out the window. “If we don’t run out this grounder, there could be…” Her voice petered out, exhausted.
It struck Broker that he had not taken the time to really study her face in minute detail since he’d hit town. He did so now and saw that she had acquired the streamline of sheer necessity; hollow, driven, almost like a haggard statue of a woman who had been pretty in real life. But now her human touches did not survive the translation into metal. Not his wife anymore. Not a mother. She’d turned into this fucking iron mask of…courage, duty, sacrifice…
Broker had seen that look on people’s faces before. People who were getting ready to die for something. It made him furious.
“So there it is,” Nina said.
Jesus, Broker, get ahold of yourself. This was serious, he told himself. Not personal. He tried. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Tell Holly something’s staging up with this George guy tonight.” She shivered, hugged herself. “But it’s weird because this Indian guy named Joe Reed made a point of letting me know Ace and George are going to meet at some old missile sight east of town. This Indian is all screwed up—missing fingers, face burned to hell…”
Broker nodded. “I saw him at the equipment dealer across the road from the bar this morning.” And I’m pretty sure he made off with my .45. But I ain’t telling you that.
“He’s real bad news. I get the feeling he’s been…trained. Then there’s Ace’s weird brother, Dale. God knows what he’s into. Gordy’s easy, he’s just a minor thug with delusions of grandeur. Holly needs to check them all out. There’s something about them as a group that doesn’t track,” Nina said.
It was crazy. Broker watched his rising frustration appear like some brain-dead clown dancing in front of his eyes. He couldn’t throttle it. Couldn’t find a way to tell her he was worried sick about her.
He smiled tightly and pointed at the broad back of the highway patrolman, up at the counter. “If I was you I’d ask him to check out your Indian. Probably knows him by his first name.”
Nina scowled. “I can do this, goddammit.”
Broker narrowed his eyes and it jumped up between them—their marriage, their personalities, the whole rolling ball of wax jammed full of razor blades…“No, you can’t. You’re going to screw up. C’mon, Nina. Admit it. You’re not a soldier. Not really. Armies are human systems that depend on cooperation. You’ve always been a prima donna. A lone wolf.”
“Oh, right, and when did you turn into Mr. Cooperation! You spent so long out in the cold that half the cops in Minnesota think you migrated to the other side.”
It was coming apart at lunch, in front of maybe a dozen farmers and one state highway cop.
“Just saying, you should listen to me on this one.” Broker lowered his voice. But it was too late. She was frayed, nothing but bare wires.
She stood up and jammed her finger. “Stop trying to tell me what to do.”
Heads turned in the restaurant as Nina walked out. An older guy in a feed-store cap removed the filter cigarette from between his teeth and said, “Now, that girl was ticked.”
Broker stared at the egg yolk on his plate. When he raised his eyes he saw that the state patrol cop had swiveled in his counter chair and was watching him. Patient, like Yeager. Waiting.
Broker looked out the window, saw Nina striding back up the road. He looked down at the numbers she’d written on the back of the business card. She could easily have made the calls.
But you want me in the middle of this thing.
Chapter Twenty-three
“This is Jane.”
“How you liking that Air Force chow? As I recall, the zoomies always did have the best clubs…”
“Who is this?” Then. “Broker? Where the hell are you?”
“What a bummer. I know where you are. You don’t know where I am. What kind of show you guys running, anyway?”
He was pacing in front of the TV in his motel room hunched over with his cell tucked in the crook of his n
eck. On the Weather Channel, the green glob of precipitation was breaking up to the east over Minnesota and Wisconsin, still spotty over the Dakotas. Northern Minnesota, Kit’s destination, looked clear. Good flying weather. He clicked the picture off.
“I say again: Where the fuck are you?”
“On the job at the old Motor Inn, girlfriend.” Upbeat Broker. A tad raunchy, ramping up for it.
“This is not good. Where’s Kit?”
“Some friends flew in and collected her this morning. She should be home by now.”
“And you decided to stick around? This is not in the plan. You’re cluttering up the board.”
“Be advised, your plan is made out of Kleenex.” Broker walked to the end of the room, pulled the drape aside, and watched the raindrops start to splatter below, on the asphalt. “And, if you listen carefully, you’ll notice that it’s starting to rain.” He reflected that Jim Yeager’s T-ball game might be rained out.
After an interval of silence, Jane said, “So what do you want?”
“I just had a talk with Nina. She says to tell you it’s getting sticky, like something’s going to happen tonight between Ace and some guy named George. She also wants you guys to take a look at this Indian dude, Joe Reed.”
“Why am I getting this from you? She should call me.”
“But then I wouldn’t be in the loop, huh?”
“Aw, man, look—her Indian will have to wait. We’re more interested in Ace and George Khari. What else?” ”
“I want a meet with Holly. Face-to-face.”
“Holly’s busy.”
“I can imagine. Smoothing things out with the front office, huh?”
No response.
“You’ll do, then,” he said. He could practically hear her hackles snap to attention.
“Why should I?”
“ ’Cause I just went on a scenic tour with one of the indigenous personnel. And he ticked off some items. Like you and Holly hanging at the radar station down the road. And this Black Hawk landing there with a gang of knuckle walkers and some nerdy tech types. Oh, yeah, and he hears there’s this hoop by the hangar and you got a fair hook shot.”