by Chuck Logan
Broker brooded under his thick eyebrows. "I'll bet if I toss the boyfriend he comes up dirty."
"If that's all you've got, you don't have much," Amy said.
"Actually I have less than that." Broker stood up and walked from the kitchen area through the main room to the coat hooks near the door. With a swipe of his index finger he speared Sommer's key
ring off a hook. "All I've really got is Sommer's Ford Expedition,
which I'm returning today. To his house. That means I'll get to go
in and pay my respects, check out the wife, check out the boyfriend,
and check out Sommer. What if I get in there later this afternoon
and he looks me dead in the eye? What then?"
Amy squinted at him suspiciously as he came back toward the
table. "I see what you're trying to pull."
Broker, aghast, held up his hands in protest. "What?" "You're trying to suck me into this project of yours."
Broker smiled. "How am I doing?"
Amy raised her chin. "Maybe I'll tag along just to prove I'm
right and you're full of shit?" "But what if I'm right?" Broker countered.
Amy's features conducted a mobile tug of war between practi
cality and curiosity. "And you can get me in to see him?"
Broker nodded. "Shouldn't be too hard. The wife never met
you. You could be anybody. Hell, you could be my girlfriend."
Amy smiled politely. "But what if the wife isn't dumb. What if
she sees I'm way too smart to get mixed up with some lame-duck,
middle-aged, half-married guy?" "Ha," said Broker, grinning. "Ha, yourself. If we take the Ford down, how do we get back?"
she asked. "I have a buddy who runs a farm near Sommer's place. He's got
my truck. I've been meaning to bring it back up north." "How long will we be gone?"
Broker shrugged, "A couple days?"
Amy thought about it and said, "I get one day at the Mall of
America; it'll save me a trip and I can get some shopping out of
the way." "Deal." "Okay, I'll go to keep you honest," Amy said. "Great. Let me throw some things in a bag, then we'll go to
your place and drop off your wheels," Broker said.
Amy's barely winterized rented cabin overlooked Lake Shagawa on the outskirts of Ely. As Broker came through the door he saw a
computer, lots of books, cross-country skis, snow shoes, a pile of busted-out running shoes. He also smelled something. Propane gas.
It never failed to amaze him how natives could ignore every rule of winter survival, from going out in sub-zero temperatures in tennis shoes to living with leaky gas connections on their stoves.
Immediately Broker went to the sink, mixed some dish-washing detergent with water in a glass, crossed to the stove, and dabbed the suds on the connector stem, and saw bubbles blister up in the suds. "Do you have any wrenches?" he asked
"What?"
"You're streaming gas. You're going to blow up."
And Amy, who had mastered the life-and-death complexities of an anesthesia machine, said, "Oh, the stove always smells a little." She pointed. "Wrenches are in the drawer to the right of the sink. There should be some Recto Seal there, too."
While Amy threw clothes into a duffel, Broker turned off the gas, unthreaded the valve, regooped the fitting, retightened it, tested it, and went to the bathroom to wash up. She'd hung a grotesque poster on the back of her bathroom door that showed the gross folds of a ridiculously obese human face. Mouth open, tongue out, its sex was impossible to determine. A hand-lettered caption over the picture announced: INTUBATE THIS!
As he dried his hand she moved in next to him, opened the cabinet, and removed several slim jars of various face oils and emollients. Then she picked up a palm-sized plastic wafer—her diaphragm— passed it under his nose, weighed it briefly in her hand, and dropped it in a cosmetic bag.
Broker frowned mildly at her clowning.
"I could always get hit by lightning," she said airily, spinning on her heel.
He bet she was a demon for detail in the OR, but she was lax in her bathroom. He snagged her elbow, pulled her back, selected the tube of Gynol vaginal lubricant from a shelf, and tossed it to her. "Just in case it's not greased lightning."
Amy pursed her lips. "And I had you figured for a prude."
Broker shrugged. "Hey, I was young once. You know how it goes: you drink too much, you wake up in a strange apartment with a lizard nesting in your mouth and her big scaly sister snoring in bed
next to you, so you stagger for the bathroom, grab for a toothbrush . . ." He made a face. "I've brushed my teeth with that stuff at least once in my life."
For the first time since they'd met, they laughed.
Broker relaxed behind the steering wheel of Sommer's big Ford and debated whether to empty the ashtray. He decided to leave it. The crushed cigarette butts were like Hank's cold fingerprints. They were just a few miles down the road when Amy asked. "So, did you go on hunches like this when you were a cop?" "I was a lousy cop," Broker said. "Really?" Amy raised her arms, reached behind her head, and pulled her hair back in a practical ponytail.
"I mean I was good at what I did but I was a lousy cop," Broker said. "Take Dave Iker, now he's a good cop: responsible, a demon on details, street smart—but." Broker poked a finger in the air. "Ninetynine percent of the time he'll get there after it happens. Then he'll follow procedure. If he's lucky, he'll squeeze a snitch or a suspect to squeal on somebody. It's worked that way since Cain killed Abel."
"Dave says you were an adrenaline addict, that you never could go the speed limit."
"There you go, procedure. Most cops are rigid about authority, they like to enforce rules."
"And you?" Amy asked.
"I preferred to get there before it happens. That's what deep undercover is all about. If you're really going to catch monsters you go hang where the monsters live."
"And maybe become a bit of a monster yourself?" Amy asked.
Broker held her gaze for a beat, then held up his hand with his thumb and forefinger a measured inch apart. "Maybe just a little."
"Right, like a little pregnant," Amy said.
After that, they exchanged normal information about attending the University of Minnesota in different eras. Amy mentioned the doctor she almost married in Minneapolis. Broker skirted the subject of his first wife.
He drove Highway 169 out of Ely and crossed the Laurentian Divide just north of Virginia, Minnesota. He got on 53 and took that into Cloquet where he stopped and filled up the Expedition at
the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright gas station with its hovering witch's-hat roof.
They bypassed Duluth and stopped at the Black Bear Casino for lunch. Then back on the road, Interstate 35 fast-forwarded them toward the Cities at seventy-five-plus mph. The traffic thickened and the evergreens gave way to mixed hardwood and fields around Hinckley. The Expedition purred powerfully on eight cylinders, and soon they were running a gauntlet of billboards and tract houses.
Then they skimmed the northern edge of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro and angled off east and took 95 south along the St. Croix River through Stillwater.
Then they entered the Timberry mall-sprawl and cul-de-sacs with names like Hunter's Lane and Oak Ponds. Broker turned again, into the countryside west of the river.
"Where are we?" Amy asked.
"Lake Elmo," Broker said. "I'm going to drop you with J.T. and then I'll take the vehicle over to Sommer's. I assume somebody will give me a ride back."
"So who's this friend?"
"J.T. Merryweather. Ex–St. Paul cop. Used to be my partner a million years ago. Now he's into raising poultry."
Twenty minutes later they arrived. Amy laughed out loud. "Since when are ostriches poultry?"
"J.T. says they're the beef of the future."
The objects of her surprise drifted big-eyed, short-beaked, longnecked, and very long-leg
ged behind six-foot fencing. Flocks of gray-brown females and a few taller black-plumed males. They stood between seven and nine feet tall, and some of the males could weigh four hundred pounds. There were almost a hundred of them in the fenced paddocks, anomalous against the flaming maples and red oaks of the Minnesota countryside.
They turned into a drive past a country mailbox positioned on a setback so a snowplow wouldn't knock it down. They passed a sign that spelled out ROYAL KRAAL OSTRICH, J.T. MERRYWEATHER, PROPRIETOR.
The snug two-story farmhouse was separated from a red barn by weeping willows. The door opened and a tall denim-clad man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson walked out to greet them.
"He's a black guy?" Amy said.
"Makes sense, huh? Both J.T. and his birds originated in Africa."
Amy looked at the paradoxically ungainly but graceful birds floating across the cold afternoon shadows. "Those birds are a long way from Africa."
Broker threw open the door, got out, and walked to meet J.T. They clasped hands, locked thumbs, and dapped it down, old style.
For five years J.T. had been putting his farm together; like most of the cops close to fifty in St. Paul, he took the early retirement. He'd dropped the twenty pounds he'd gained when he quit the cigarettes and his face had lost that puffy desk-bloat. Some men age into roundness. J.T. and Broker shared a genetic predisposition toward edges. And farm work and fresh air were putting the taut angles back into J.T.'s Ethiopian cheekbones.
"Hmmmmm," J.T. said, big hands on his hips, as Amy came around the Ford and waited to be introduced.
"J.T., this is Amy Skoda," Broker said.
"Uh-huh," J.T. said, appraising Amy.
"It's not like that," Broker said.
J.T. nodded. "Far be it from me to judge people," though in fact J.T. believed in enforcing the rules with the ardor of an Old Testament Jeremiah. He grinned and tipped back the brim of his hat with more than a little theater. "Hell, I'd fuck around myself except my wife would beat me to death with a number-twelve Weber cast-iron skillet when I was sleeping." He extended his hand. "J.T. Merryweather. Pleased to meet you."
Amy took the handshake, looked around. "So what's it like going from law enforcement to ostrich farmer?"
J.T. grinned slowly. "Comes naturally. I keep them in cages." Straight-faced, he added, "Actually, my family was heavy into agriculture for quite a while in Georgia, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."
"Gotcha," Amy said.
Denise Merryweather walked out on the porch in just a blouse and jeans, hugging herself. She was a well-put-together woman over thirty and under fifty, who was successfully playing hide and seek with age. She had a width of Cherokee blood to her dark face,
strong brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and a cross on a chain at her throat.
As a general proposition, she had never approved of Broker.
"Phil Broker," she said in a noncommittal tone. "Will you and your friend be staying for a while?"
"Hi, Denise, this is Amy Skoda. Amy, this is Denise," Broker said.
The two women met on the stairs and shook hands.
"It's not like that," Amy said. "We are, like, friends."
"I'm glad," Denise said. "Because we only have the one spare bedroom. Broker, you get the couch."
An awkward silence followed Denise's remark. Amy cocked her head at a distinctive rattling rebound sound from the barn and changed the subject.
"Hoops?" she asked.
"Uh-huh," said J.T. "I tore out the milking stanchions in the back basement of the barn, poured a new concrete floor, and put up a backboard for my daughter."
"You did, huh?" Broker said.
"Okay. You helped."
"Come on inside, honey," Denise said. "Let these two men whine about getting old." Denise motioned Amy into the house.
"We are getting old," Broker said.
"I'll never unhook a 38D triple-eyelet bra one-handed in under three seconds again, cruising in a '57 Chevy, that's for sure," J.T. said.
"Why, Jarret True Merryweather, I didn't know you could count past twenty." Denise flared her eyes as she disappeared through the door with Amy. When the door was shut J.T. scrutinized Broker.
"So who's the woman?" he asked.
"That thing up north, the guy who got brain dead in the Ely hospital . . . Hank Sommer," Broker said.
"This guy," said J.T. pointing at the Ford Expedition.
"Yeah," Broker said. "She was the anesthetist."
"You fucking her?"
"No, of course not." Broker was careful not to sound too indignant.
"So what are you doing?" J.T. asked.
Broker chewed his lip, furrowed his brow. "The guy nailed up in
the woods by Marine . . ." "Uh-huh. I made some calls. Stovall, the accountant." "Stovall was Sommer's accountant," Broker said.
J.T. moved his hands back and forth trying to make invisible
pieces fit. "Yeah, so?"
Broker debated whether to go further.
J.T. said, "Uh-huh. You're not quite sure what you're doing
but . . ." "I got this feeling about something," Broker said. "I recall a conversation that started this way in eighty-nine. Two
hours later I got whacked with a machete." "It was the flat of a machete," Broker protested. "It was a machete. It broke the skin," J.T. insisted, starting to
hitch up his coat sleeve. "Look," Broker said. "I have to take this car back." "You need me to follow you, give you a ride?" "Nah, I'll hang out with Sommer's wife for a while. She'll give
me a lift back here."
J.T. thought for a moment, then squinted. "You're holding out
on me," he said. "A little," Broker said. He turned and walked toward the big
Ford.
Chapter Twenty-one
The Buddhists say—the mind is a monkey chasing its tail, suffering and desire going round and round. Hank had that monkey scampering inside his skull, treating his brain like a television remote. Pushing buttons. Throwing it down. Picking it up, chewing on it, drooling on it. Peeing on it. A goddamn electrical shitstorm of neurons and electrons blazed behind his eyes.
Then, something clicked. The static cleared and the picture came on.
Came on big-time. Snap, crackle, and zap. Digital high res, fiber-optic, surround-sound. ON.
Lights, camera, action. And what a picture. Almost like his perception and intelligence have become more acute in feverish overload. Burning up the wires. You and me, Jerry Lee.
Great balls of fire.
And he sees and hears.
His buddy, Allen Falken. Dead-Eye Doc himself.
A whole corridor of emptiness now filled up with detailed memory. The last face he saw before the icy black ink pumped out of his heart and down-flooded him inside until only his mind survived, hooked to the aqua lung of his heart and lungs and cast him into inner darkness to float in the nonspecific blackness inside his skin.
Last face. First face.
Allen. Smooth, Teutonic Allen, every hair in place and looking like a young, fit Billy Graham.
Handsome but not too handsome. Vain but in moderation.
There was some split screen going on, some interior backfill of images, the moraine of his life, the clutter of his personal album. But memory insisted on being very vivid, painfully boosting the resolution.
And it was like one of those Yogi Berra Zen pronouncements that illuminate a universe of everyday pain and comedy and hopes and dreams. The "This Is It" of your life.
Allen, sitting there, talking in his best bedside manner.
There was a sensation like when the roller coaster slows at the end of the ride, and Hank felt the loopy circuit of his eyes start to steady down, then stop. Hank rotated his eyes consciously, blinked consciously. Allen, absorbed in his casual soliloquy, missed it.
Missed it because Allen, good ole cautious, quiet Casper Milquetoast Allen, was saying that he finally took a chance.
No one's looking. The syrin
ge. Succinylcholine. A paralytic. Then turn off the monitor.
I see. At first it's a mistake. Then it's more like an accident on purpose. Uh-huh. Then it's deliberate.
The nurse and the anesthetist take the blame.
The linx.
Blond woman. Young. Sharp and a little sassy. Liked her.
Allen. Fucker. Sitting on the bed. Patting my knee.
First you saved my life, then as an afterthought you killed me. I see. The first covers the tracks of the second.
Thought it would kill me. That's the antiseptic thinking of the surgeon. But it's hard to kill a man, Allen. Only sure way is to cut off his head.