by Chuck Logan
“Me,” Lymon said.
“You sure?” Mouse said.
“Me,” Lymon said firmly.
“Okay. That’s it. I’m leaving,” Broker said. He turned to Lymon. “Welcome to the job, huh.” He extended his hand, and they naturally hooked thumbs, clasped wrists, did a finger snatch on the release.
“Where’d you come by this shit?” Lymon said.
“What, this?” Broker said, opening his hand.
“Yeah, the old Soul Brother dap shit,” Lymon said with some spark in his new tough eyes.
Broker flashed on Harry driving dead drunk from casino to casino past midnight. The wind rushing in his hair had sounded like helicopters on the phone. “It was something long ago,” he said.
They left Lymon on the job at the head of the stairs and went down and pushed through the crowd. Outside, Broker raised his head, as if to sniff the wind. But there wasn’t any wind; just the heavy air and too many cop cars. A few houses down, a surreptitious lawn sprinkler hissed, defying the watering ban.
Cody, the young narc, walked up, handed Broker a slip of paper, and said, “From Dispatch. Sorry to lay this nickel-dime shit on you, but you’ve been requested by name at a domestic downtown. Some woman named Jane Hensen. Says it’s personal.”
“Aw, shit.” Broker grimaced. He looked at the address on the slip of paper. Drew’s studio.
Mouse handed his car keys to Broker and said, “Go on, take my cruiser. I’ll be busy here all night. Bring it back tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Broker got in Mouse’s cruiser and left the crowd of people, vehicles, and equipment that had descended on Gloria Russell’s suicide.
A dark blue Stillwater squad was parked in front of the warehouse. Broker pulled in back of it, got out, went up the stairs, and walked into the studio.
The town cop was a young guy Broker had never seen before. He had removed his hat and wore his hair high and tight and was buckled and harnessed with gear. His mobile radio squawked in the center of the studio, calling attention to the place Broker had just left. The cop stood between Janey and Drew, whom he had positioned in separate corners—Drew at his drawing table, Janey on the couch. A tipped bookcase and about twenty books lay on the floor between them.
“You Broker?” the cop said.
Broker just nodded.
“You were in on the chase up the hill?” the cop said.
“Yeah, what a mess,” Broker said.
“I heard, on the radio. I would have been there, but I got this call first.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “Is it true it’s the Saint? They found a medallion in her mouth? And about the prosecutor?”
Broker nodded again. “So what have you got here?”
Janey and Drew began to speak at the same time. The young copper held up his hand. “People, we’ve been through this; you will speak in turn, you will not raise your voices, and you will listen to Mr. Broker. If I have to come back, we will continue this discussion at the county jail.”
Drew and Janey shut up. The cop said to Broker, “You know the Hensens. Right?”
“Yes, I do,” Broker said.
“Okay. The husband called for assistance. Said the wife was wrecking his studio. Reason I called you—their little girl, Laurie, is in the bathroom. She’s the only one with any common sense; she says she won’t come out until everybody stops yelling. The thing is, her hands are all cut up and bandaged, which looks like rough stuff I have to report—so naturally I have questions. They both said you could explain.”
Broker nodded a second time. “They had a fight; he walked out. Laurie’s way of dealing with it was to go in the backyard and dig up her dead cat. That how she tore up her hands.”
The copper growled at them, “If it was up to me, you’d have to pass a competency test before you’d be allowed to have children.”
“I can take it from here,” Broker said.
“Good luck,” the cop said, heading for the door. “I’ll be up the hill at the scene if you need anything.”
“Thanks, I think we’re good,” Broker said. He stood with his hands folded in front of him as the officer left. Then he went to the bathroom and knocked on the door.
“This is Phil Broker, remember? I let you take the cat home; gray, shorthaired?”
“I’m not coming out till they stop yelling at each other,” Laurie said.
“Okay. We’ll do something about that. You wait right here. I’ll be back in a minute,” Broker said.
“Okay,” Laurie said.
Broker turned back to Janey and Drew, who sat facing each other with their arms folded tightly across their chests.
“Okay, why are you yelling at each other?” Broker said.
“We have agreed to separate,” Janey said. “He wants to move out and live here. Fine. I just don’t want him to run his parade of bimbos past Laurie. Just keep it away from my kid, okay?”
“What? Lisa—a bimbo? C’mon Janey,” Drew said, “she has a master’s in child psychology for Chrissake.”
“Ohhh, a master’s . . .” Janey wiggled her fingers.
“So this is a custody dispute,” Broker said.
“Yes. I want Laurie to spend tonight here with me. Janey says she has to go home,” Drew said.
Broker jerked his thumb toward the bathroom. “What about her? She’s involved in this too.”
They were silent for a moment, then Drew sat back, refolded his arms, and said, “I promised to take Laurie to Camp Snoopy tomorrow.”
Broker looked at Janey. “Is that okay with you?”
“Of course. It’s tonight I’m worried about,” Janey said.
“There you go again; just settle down,” Drew said.
Drew was also staring at him. Broker looked down and noticed that his shoes were caked with drying mud from his night walk around Lake McKusick, his jeans and shirt were gritty from diving in the tomato patch.
Drew said, “It’s no big deal. I have to work. She can watch movies on the TV with the headset.”
“Where will she sleep?” Janey asked. “Certainly not back there where you . . .” She pointed at the alcove where Drew had his futon.
“No, no; I’ll take the small futon off the chair and make a pallet in front of the VCR.”
“I suppose that would be all right,” Janey said. Grudgingly, they nodded to each other.
“Okay, I’m going to bring Laurie out,” Broker said. He went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. “Fight’s over. Time to come out.”
Slowly, Laurie opened the door. “I heard,” she said as she squinted past Broker at her father. “Can I watch three movies?” Laurie asked.
“Not three movies,” Janey said.
So Broker watched them work out the details. Absently, as they talked, Janey began to pick up books and stack them back in the shelves. Immediately, Drew stooped to help. Broker thought the behavior bizarre, yet also comforting. Or saddening. He wasn’t sure which.
Finally, Broker and Janey left the studio and stood on the sidewalk.
“Hop in, I’ll give you a ride,” Broker said.
They got into Mouse’s car. As they drove away, Janey brightened with a forced eagerness. “Don’t take me home yet. Let’s take a drive. Now that we’re both separated persons, we could go somewhere and have a drink. A lot of drinks. In fact, we could get drunk,” she said.
Broker studied her across the front seat. Scraps of moonbeam caught on her teeth and the whites of her eyes. She was looking very warm and available. But the glimmers on her face reminded him of the tiny feathers stuck to Gloria Russell’s cold skin. “I don’t get drunk,” he said.
“Not even during a moment of weakness?” Janey said.
He had the windows open, and the night pressed in feeling foreign; Galveston, New Orleans—someplace else. So hot you wanted to take off everything to cool down, and not just your clothing—your normal restraints. Broker thought about it. For the second day in a row, bullets had zipped past his h
ead. He’d seen two dead women . . .
“Weak moment, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” Janey said.
“Separated,” Broker said.
“Uh-huh. You know, Broker, you’re, ah, all dirty,” Janey said.
“We were chasing somebody tonight,” Broker said.
“Did you catch them?” Janey said.
“Catch them . . .” He thought of his first wife, Caren; how after hunting season she would say, “Phil caught a deer,” not “shot” it, not “killed” it. “Yeah, I guess we did,” Broker said. “Okay, look; I’m going out to Milt’s and jump in the river. You want to come along?”
Broker floated on his back and stared up at the stars. He considered a world in which Diane Cantrell and Gloria Russell had to die while he and Harry continued to live.
Janey surfaced beside him, a gleam in the moonlight.
“Just relax, just let it happen,” she said.
An experiment at playing skinny dipping in the dark. Pale flashes of skin, like fish, curving out of sight. Laughter. Splashing.
Then the bodies grazing, just nibbles of touch at first.
So just let it happen. Forget the death. Embrace the life.
Chapter Forty
You think you lose it, that it’s gone forever, worn to nothing by the drip of familiarity that breeds contempt. You resign yourself that it’s never going to happen again. Not happen like it used to, not heightened and intense, and then you discover it’s been there all along and that all you needed was the right person to bring it back strong. Flint and steel. Sparks, flame, inferno . . .
He was lost in his lovemaking.
God, it was like he was twenty-five again, and she made it all new. So good. Like secrets. All these cunning little physical secrets she revealed. Could she always do this? Or was it something kindled special between them?
Was it her? Was it them? It was like she was a mirror, and when he looked at her writhing in his arms, lips parted, eyes shut, slippery with sweat in this heat—all he could see was . . .
Himself.
But he wanted to please her; he wanted to slowly gather her in, then herd her, then push her into a run until they ended in a happy stampede.
Shhh, she said. We have to be quiet.
It’s all right; it’s all right, he said.
We’re making too much noise, she said. But then she began to really like it and then she began to whisper loudly, Oh God, oh God; it’s perfect, it’s perfect, and now I’m afraid I can’t stop. I’m afraid I can’t stop.
I don’t want you to stop, he whispered back.
Oh yes you do. Yes you do.
Drew Hensen was more than impressed. What a surprise Annie Mortenson turned out to be on a sultry Saturday morning. One minute he was waving to her from his studio porch, inviting her up for coffee. An hour later they were in bed.
Now he studied Annie as she began her transformation from wanton to quietly prim, drawing her knees together, sitting up, and pulling the damp sheet over her chest. She leaned back and fluffed her bangs.
While she was still wide-eyed and puffy-lipped, he reached over and ran his finger across her lower lip. “Is it true what they say about librarians giving the best head? I always wanted to know,” he said.
She mock-arched her eyebrows and briefly took his finger in her mouth, then slowly slid it out, turned it around, and wagged it at him. “But if I give you some, that’s all you’ll want.”
Drew actually had a little run of goose bumps with the temperature in the midnineties.
Annie laughed silently. “Is this how you give all the girls a tour of your studio?” she whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Drew said. It was nuts, with the racket the TV was making.
Annie grimaced and stabbed her finger at the sound of the TV on the other side of the curtain that was drawn over the alcove where the futon on which they lay was located. “There’s a little girl out there.”
“Oh, c’mon, she can’t hear anything. She’s OD’ed on Shrek for the second time this morning,” Drew said.
“It’s not funny.” Annie squirmed deeper in the sheet. “What if she would have pulled the curtain back?”
“We were under the sheet.”
“Not all the time we weren’t.”
Drew stood up and slapped his stomach. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Abruptly he reached for the curtain.
“What are you doing?” Annie asked.
“I got to take a pee,” Drew said.
“Aren’t you going to put some clothes on?”
“Hey, Annie; she’s six years old, she’s my daughter.”
“It’s not right to walk around like that. At least dry yourself off.” Annie flung a corner of the sheet at him.
Drew ran the cloth over his crotch and dropped it. “I’m not going to make my kid ashamed of her body.”
“We’re not talking about her body. We’re talking about your body.”
“Don’t be so uptight,” Drew said as he stepped past the curtain.
Annie hugged herself, stared at the space where he’d just been, and muttered, “That’s what my dad used to say.”
She’d thought he was going to be different. Heck, he drew pictures for children’s books; he should be different. That’s why she took a chance when she saw him standing on his porch this morning. He’d waved at her. He’d invited her a number of times before. But he was married then.
Now he had taken off his wedding band. He said he and his wife were separated, that he had moved in here. But he was smooth. A different smooth than Harry Cantrell. Harry was rough smooth, Drew was smooth smooth. But Harry had lied. After Harry got her good a couple of times, he still pined for that bodybuilding bitch. Already Annie was starting to worry that Drew would pull the same stunt. She’d seen the wife.
She pursed her lips and scowled. She didn’t like the idea of him out there parading his pecker in front of a kid. Any kid.
Uh-uh. Not one bit.
The TV audio turned off, and she heard Drew talking with his daughter. “You’re covered with grease and crumbs from last night; you need a bath.”
“But I thought we were going to Camp Snoopy,” Laurie said.
“We are,” Drew said.
“Is she coming?” Laurie said.
“No, no, she’s going home. But you have tomato sauce stuck in your hair. You know what that means.”
“I know,” Laurie said. “It means consequences.”
“Consequences, right. You got to do what you wanted, and now you have to get cleaned up.”
“You have to wash me because of my hands,” Laurie said.
“Don’t worry, I will,” Drew said.
After a few beats of silence, Annie heard the bathwater running. Him peeing in the bowl.
Consequences, consequences, consequences.
The toilet flushed. He was in the bathroom with her, taking her clothes off. And him not wearing any.
She could feel the steam from the hot water billow like a sail in the heavy air. Snatches of their father-daughter conversation.
Like . . .
Slowly, Annie stood up and gathered her clothing, a pair of Levi’s cutoffs, a loose T-shirt with the arms and neck scissored out—hot weather gear. She pulled them on and walked barefoot through the studio, paused in front of the full-length mirror on the wall, and checked the tiny cuts and slight bruising on her knees. Not bad. Ice packs had helped a lot last night. She put last night from her mind and went down the wooden stairs to the street.
The late-morning sky seemed to be in motion; flickers of light illuminated deep, convoluted canyons of black and gray clouds. The world struck her as such a beautiful place. Why did it always seem she was watching it from the outside? Why couldn’t she step into it and lose herself? Be part of it.
Why did she have to go on cleaning up after other people, finishing what they started and left undone?
It wasn’t fair.
She thumbed the remote
on her key ring, and the door locks responded with a reassuring metal shh-chunk. She lifted the rear hatch, pulled up the floor cover, and removed the heavy saddlebag purse nestled in the concave bin in the middle of the spare tire.
When she returned to the studio, Drew was looking at himself in the mirror. He seemed to be trying to flex his not quite defined abdominal muscles. He had made a concession to modesty and slung a bright red towel low on his hips, sarong fashion. The towel had blue and green monkeys on it, and coconuts and palm trees.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
Annie held up the purse. “Went to get my toothbrush.” Among other things. Then she cocked her head toward the bathroom. She could hear Laurie talking in the tub. “Is someone else here? She’s talking to somebody.”
Drew shrugged and said, “She talks to her dolls.”
Annie walked a circuit of the studio, making sure they were alone. When she returned, she said, “I have a minor confession to make. I read about you in something.”
Drew acted interested, but his eyes wandered back to the mirror. “And what was that? A review of a book?”
“It was a complaint. You were accused of something; I thought of investigating you.”
Drew turned and smiled. “You can investigate me anytime,” he said, sashaying his towel around in a mock striptease.
“This is serious, Drew. I used to go out with this county cop, you know.”
“Uh-huh. You told me.”
Annie nodded. “Well, your name was on this list he brought over. Your neighbor complained about you walking around naked when her daughter had a play date with Laurie.”
Drew’s striptease ended abruptly. “Oh, Christ. Mrs. Siple. Are you for real? She tried to get us on a complaint about our fence encroaching on her yard. When that didn’t pan out, she tried character assassination. I talked to a cop about it. He saw it for what it was; case closed.”
“But you do walk around naked in front of kids,” Annie said, setting her jaw slightly.
Drew shook his head. “Not other people’s kids,” he said firmly. “Jesus, talk about mood swings. How can somebody screw like a mink one minute and be such a prude the next?”