Vapor Trail

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Vapor Trail Page 9

by Chuck Logan


  “Is it?”

  “Yeah.” Lymon carefully twisted his lips along a fine line of irony. “You’re what they call Human Intelligence.”

  Broker tapped Lymon on the chest. “Meet me at the church.”

  He drove through town in Harry’s car, catching traces of Harry’s aftershave wafting off the fabric upholstery. His head throbbed, and the air-conditioning, cranked on full, hadn’t taken hold yet. The heat squatted on the day, pressing down. And pushing up. You could almost feel the humidity summoning the crabgrass and burdock up into gaps and voids. The toughest weeds had green muscle enough to crack the heavy slabs of city sidewalk.

  Like murder maybe. Just waiting for the right climate to rear up and bust through. Broker pictured this big nasty weed bursting right out of Harry’s chest.

  He was losing his distance. He was personalizing it. Damn, it was hot.

  After a wrong turn, Broker found the church. There was no good place to die violently, but St. Martin’s, abandoned and overgrown, would be way down on anybody’s list. The cops had kept the scene quiet. There was no stark yellow crime scene bunting to advertise what had happened here.

  Just Lymon Greene, who waited at the entrance looking like a deacon in his gray suit, shined shoes, white shirt, and quiet maroon tie. He stood next to a scrawled, six-pointed pentacle graffiti vandals had sprayed in black on the flagstones in front of the door.

  As Broker approached, Lymon moved to unlock the door and said, “There’s a small rectory around back where Moros lived; you want . . .”

  “Wait,” Broker said and nodded toward the rundown house across a vacant lot from the church. A scruffy broad-shouldered man sat in the shade of the narrow porch. Watching.

  “Is that Tardee?” Broker asked.

  “That’s him; he’s waiting on you,” Lymon said.

  “Okay, open it up,” Broker said. Lymon opened the heavy wooden door. Broker inspected the lock. It would fasten when he pulled the door closed. He didn’t need the keys to lock up.

  “Thanks,” Broker said. “Now I want to be alone.”

  Lymon began to say something like, Why the hell did you bring me out here? But he thought better of it and went toward his car. “I’ll be back at the office,” he called over his shoulder.

  Broker had brought Lymon out in the heat so Tardee could see them together. It would help establish that he was a cop—because he was traveling a little light in the credentials department. Because, you moron, you let Harry take your badge and gun.

  Broker watched Lymon’s blue Crown Vic lurch away down the unpaved street. Then he turned, studied the arched stone entryway, and stepped into the church. The raw limestone, old oak, and coarse stained glass closed around him. The temperature dropped. It was cool like a mausoleum. Or a morgue.

  He walked into the dank interior and found his way to the confessional. The crime techs from the BCA lab had left both doors wedged open.

  First he looked into the penitent chamber and saw the kneeling rest, the shattered wooden grille through which the penitent would announce himself to the priest.

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

  God’s work. That’s what Harry had said. Was the Saint doing God’s work?

  If pushed on the subject, Broker considered himself a serious but skeptical pilgrim who traveled without a declared belief in God. His eyes traveled over the altar, the old-world statues and pageantry. The roots of this power went back to imperial Rome; absolutely the longest-running show in the world. It occurred to him that if he were seriously trying to find God, he sure wouldn’t start in a building some men had built.

  Whatever.

  He moved a few steps and looked into the priest’s side of the confessional booth. A misshapen tape outline described where Victor Moros had lain in death. The bloodstain still looked damp in the middle. That was the humidity. Neither sweat nor blood were drying as they should.

  Harry was right. Broker had never acquired the investigator’s instinct to absorb telling detail from a crime scene. But even he could see the direction of bullets through the shattered wood grille, the bits scattered into the room. The killer had fired through the screen. The killer had been talking to the priest.

  This was no burglary gone bad. This was personal. Or psychotic.

  His eyes settled on the bloody carpet and the abstract taped image of the dead priest. So did you deserve it? Broker pushed sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and felt a throb of pain originate in the bump behind his ear and radiate through his head like a thought that Harry had put there.

  The hell with this. Better to talk to the living.

  He walked out, pulled the door shut behind him, went through a side gate in the sagging wrought-iron fence, and crossed a vacant lot snarled with weeds and wildflowers. Ray Tardee’s house was a single-story wood-frame 1890s shotgun; living room, kitchen, bedroom.

  Tardee sat in a slant of shadow on his front porch sipping a can of Pig’s Eye.

  He was in his midfifties, big shouldered, with not much belly. He wore a leg brace on his right foot, and even on this very hot day he wore motorcycle boots, grimy jeans, and a stained T-shirt from which the sleeves had been sliced out. His thick fingers and palms were intricately whorled in black lines, cured and callused in grease and gasoline.

  Closer in, Tardee had shaggy brown hair, wispy mustache, and chin whiskers. The fading eagle, anchor, and globe of a Marine Corps tattoo graced his left forearm, and he wore a thunderbird beadwork wristband below the tattoo that suggested some Native American action in his confused bloodlines. Unmoving, he watched Broker come up his overgrown sidewalk.

  “You Ray Tardee?” Broker called out.

  “Sorry. I’m the fucking sphinx. I ain’t suppose to talk to nobody about nothin’,” Tardee said.

  “Broker, Washington County Investigations. We just called you.”

  Tardee put down his beer can and folded his arms across his chest. “The sheriff said I ain’t suppose to talk to nobody about nothin’, and that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Tardee repeated.

  “Right. Sheriff Eisenhower told me; but he’s out of town, so right now you’re talking to me.”

  “All right. Let’s see some picture ID.”

  So Broker took out the brand-new ID that Harry had neglected to take off him. Tardee scanned it and grumbled, “Yeah, okay; I saw you at the church with that Selby Avenue Sioux.”

  Tardee studied Broker to see if he picked up on the racial slur. Broker got it. Back in the old days, before gentrification, when Broker had walked a beat in St. Paul, Selby Avenue was the main drag of the black ghetto.

  “You got enough skin to get on a tribal roll?” Broker asked.

  Tardee squinted.

  “Ojibwa?” Broker asked.

  “Net Lake.”

  Broker nodded. Net Lake was a poor rez, not blessed with gaming revenue. “Tough shit for you, no casino,” Broker said as he came up on the porch and sat casually on the rail. “So did you know the priest?”

  Tardee shrugged. “Mexican guy. He wasn’t from around here. I saw him in the yard once, putting down sod. I told him it was the wrong time of year to lay sod, that September would be better for the roots to take.”

  “You talk about anything else?”

  “Yeah, he said it was hot. I agreed.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Pretty much. I already been over this.” Tardee slipped his hand into his back jeans pocket and pulled out a business card. “With . . . Lie-mond Greene. Investigator.” Tardee grinned, showing decayed teeth. “Kinda makes you believe in progress, don’t it?”

  “Say again?” Broker asked.

  “Lymon Greene is progress, see. I asked him where he grew up. In fucking Golden Valley west of Minneapolis. He’s a new one on me. I’ve known some splivs, in the cities and in the crotch. But Lymon, he’s my first square black guy.”

  “Square, huh? Not hip like you and me?”

  “There it is.”

&nb
sp; Broker endured a moment of sun-induced dementia. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be here. “Like for instance, Lymon would never rough somebody up, you know, just because they’re a lowlife piece of shit. He probably never even says the word shit, huh?”

  They regarded each other like natural enemies, and their eyes agreed it was too hot to pursue it. Tardee shifted his feet. “You know, the sheriff and I had this talk about this little situation I got coming up.”

  Broker raised his face and took another long drink of too much sun. Working the deals was high on the list of reasons he had quit police work; herding the rats through the sewers with sticks and carrots, keeping them out of sight.

  Broker blinked and shook his head again. “Yeah, that was real smart, Ray; selling a bag of grass to an undercover cop.”

  Ray scratched his belly and grumbled, “Shit, man, it was self-defense; that fuckin’ undercover narc was on his knees begging. Dude was undoing my belt.”

  “Sheriff says you got priors. You’re over the line. That’s a commit to prison.”

  “Fuckin’ guidelines,” Ray said.

  “Yeah, but maybe we can get them to go for a departure from the guidelines.”

  “The sheriff didn’t say maybe. He said be quiet about the woman in the Saints jacket going in the church, and he’d get me a deal.”

  “What I want to know is, could it have been a guy dressed like a woman?” Broker said.

  “She looked like Robin Williams,” Tardee said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, remember that movie Mrs. Doubtfire, where he dressed up in that padded costume and the wigs and shit? That’s exactly what she looked like. A fucking shim.”

  “Shim?”

  “A she and a him. An in-between.”

  “How tall?”

  “Too tall. About five eleven, but walking funny, like a kid in high heels. Like she was in built-up shoes. And, ah, she had a big ass.”

  “How so?”

  “Too big. I’m good on asses, but I’m better on pussy. See, I got hit in the war, and they put this steel plate in my head.” Ray thumped his skull. “Ever since, I got no sense of smell whatever; I can eat anything.” Ray grinned broadly and let his tongue loll inside his smile.

  “I’m impressed. So was there anything about her big ass that was distinctive?”

  Ray grinned. “Yeah, it was too big for the rest of her. And she didn’t move like someone who had a big ass. She moved like someone who had a pillow stuffed in the seat of her drawers.”

  “So it could have been a guy dressed up like a girl?”

  “Could of been, but probably not, unless you really want it to be,” Tardee said carefully.

  Broker let it go; he was getting personal again, trying to make it be Harry. He thanked Tardee and left the broken porch. As he walked toward the car, he heard Tardee whistling behind him. He was a good whistler. The Fat Tuesday lilt of “When the Saints Go Marching In” was unmistakable.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Easing from North End gravel onto city pavement, Broker remembered the book of matches he’d taken from Harry. He fished the square of cardboard from his chest pocket and rotated it in his fingers like prayer beads.

  He was starting to formulate a plan.

  He flipped open his cell phone, thumbed out Mouse’s card, and punched in his number. Mouse answered on the third ring.

  “So what are you doing?” Broker asked.

  “Driving back from federal court in St. Paul. They recessed on me. How’d it go with Harry?”

  “Not so hot; Ole’s was a setup,” Broker said. “He talked me into dropping by his place on the way so he could pack a bag. And he . . . slipped out on me.”

  “Slipped out on you,” Mouse repeated carefully.

  “Where can we meet away from the shop?” Broker said.

  “Is this, like, getting real fucked up?” Mouse said.

  “Where, Mouse? I want to talk.”

  “Okay, since you’re supposed to have all kinds of bread stashed away, you can buy me a drink at Club Terra in fifteen minutes.”

  “See you there.”

  Club Terra would not have been Broker’s first choice. It was a supper club with a log cabin exterior across Highway 36 from the Washington County Government Center, so it did a brisk business with county workers. But he needed Mouse to level with him on Harry. So he drove to the restaurant, went in, and got a table just as the place was filling up with the late-lunch crowd. Mouse came in a few minutes later.

  The weather was getting to Mouse. After being in court he’d exchanged his suit jacket, shirt, and tie for a baggy cotton polo shirt that covered his pager and holster. The shirt stuck to his ample belly in dark patches of sweat.

  “Some weather, hey; and, ah, you look like shit,” Mouse said.

  “Christ, Mouse; half the county is here. I wanted to get away,” Broker said, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Stay cool. You wanted to get down and dirty, right? This is the place.”

  A waitress appeared. They refused menus. Neither of them had an appetite in the heat. Broker ordered ice tea. Mouse ordered iced coffee.

  “Harry says he’ll help,” Broker said.

  “Really?” Mouse said as he took a toothpick out of his chest pocket, put it in his mouth. “So where’s my cuffs?”

  Broker reached back under his shirt, took the handcuffs off his belt, and slid them across the table.

  Mouse inspected them and said, “There’s pieces of woody shit ground in the grooves here.”

  Broker didn’t answer, so Mouse ran his practiced eyes over Broker and stopped on the raw red marks on his left wrist. Then Mouse said, “You know, you’re, ah, wearing your hair shorter than you used to.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, it makes it easier to see things on your scalp, like, for instance, the black-and-blue goose egg behind your right ear.”

  “Shit.” Broker pursed his lips.

  Mouse raised his iced coffee, sipped, put it down, and said, “You gonna tell me, or do I have to torture it out of you?”

  “I turned my back on him,” Broker said.

  Mouse shut his eyes, grimaced, crossed his arms over his wide stomach, then raised his right hand and propped it under his heavy chin. “My fault. I shoulda come with you.”

  “No you shouldn’t have. It’s personal; this part at least.” Broker pointed behind his right ear.

  “You saying there’s more?” Mouse squinted and leaned across the table.

  Broker nodded. “Harry and I have this heavy private agenda we have to work through, right? But apart from that he wants to stay in touch. I think he feels left out.”

  Mouse shook his head, but he couldn’t entirely hide the admiration in his voice. “Fucking Eisenhower. When Harry’s drunk, he blames you for his wife’s death. Some people think he’s basically sworn to kill you; so John puts you next to him ’cause he thinks there’s some weird chemistry between you two that’s going to make him spill his guts.”

  “Kind of scary, huh? A man with a deviant mind like that being the sheriff in the fastest-growing county in the state,” Broker said.

  “So, did Harry tell you anything good?”

  “He told me that if the Saint isn’t”—Broker hooked the first two fingers of both hands and struck quote marks in the air— “doing God’s work, he might help with the catching part.”

  “Like he really knows something.”

  “There it is,” Broker said. “Of course he’d been drinking.”

  “Of course,” Mouse said as he rolled a toothpick across his mouth, fiddled with his napkin, and tapped his fingertips on the tabletop.

  An ex-cigarette smoker, Broker recognized the symptoms of the craving. In fact, he was starting to feel the nervous hankering toying powerfully with his insides. He made a mental note to buy some cigars, sort of as a tobacco methadone fix against the heroin lure of cigarettes.

  “He said that, huh?” Mouse said. Then he inclined his head and directed
his eyes across the room. Broker followed the direction of Mouse’s gaze, through the crowd. Three people were moving from the reservations desk behind a waitress, going toward a table. Two men and a woman.

  Perhaps in thrall to status, they wore suits in spite of the heat—a blazer and skirt for the woman. They were too young and fit-looking to be normal county apparatchiks.

  “Look like lawyers,” Broker said.

  “Uh-huh. County attorneys, actually,” Mouse said.

  Upon closer inspection, Broker saw that the two men were not remarkable. The woman, however, put out serious candle power. Black-framed glasses magnified a friction in her eyes that could ignite fires. She had very short razor-cut black hair and a sinewy athleticism. The calf muscles in her tanned legs clenched at every step.

  “Stillwater girl,” Mouse said.

  “Say again?”

  “My dad used to say you can always tell a Stillwater girl by her legs. From going up all the stairs on the hills.”

  There was only one female assistant prosecutor with a reputation for that kind of physical intensity. “Is that Gloria Russell?” Broker asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And?”

  “And, well, you know—the Saint case was this real nightmare; it went through the county like an emotional plague. People quit; people went on medication; some people had affairs. Old Gloria hit for the cycle; she turned in her resignation, only they threw it back at her. She went on medication, and she had an affair.”

  “She did, huh?”

  “Oh yeah. A real double-scream-back-crawler. You know, Harry never once denied he was the Saint. He’d sort of smile and he’d say, ‘Well, somebody has to carry out the garbage.’ But the one thing he’d always deny was . . .” Mouse inclined his head at the assistant prosecutor.

  “You mean . . .” Broker said, craning his neck now to get a better look at her.

  “Big time,” Mouse said as he curled his left index finger into the hollow of his left thumb to make a circle. Then he inserted his right index finger into the socket and pumped it.

  Broker raised his hand and flipped it over, palm up. “So connect some dots for me,” he said.

 

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