by Chuck Logan
Okay. C'mon. Let's do it.
He left town and drove south on Highway 95. It had been more than a decade since he rode with a pair of manacles hanging from his belt. The thought of a take-down grapple to the pavement in this heat . . . Broker shook his head, leery. The fact was, he assumed the worst. It smelled like a setup; Harry making an overture like this, setting a time and place.
He stared out the windshield, and the day glared back. Crazymaking hot. The cars and trucks went by like brightly painted blisters. Even buttoned up in air-conditioning, he could feel the sweat puddle on his scalp.
Carefully, he reviewed the last time he'd seen Harry. At the Washington County Fair, last summer. A sweltering night perfumed with animal barns and sweat and cotton candy. Broker had been with his daughter, Kit, standing in line for the pony ride when Harry walked up.
He'd just looked at Broker, tried to smile, and said, "I heard you were married. Cute kid."
So they attempted to get a conversation going, but their small talk hobbled like stragglers through the no-man's-land yawning between them. When Harry awkwardly started to tousle Kit's reddish hair, Broker instinctively reached over and pulled her out of his reach.
"Must be reflexes, huh?" Harry had said. So the time machine had kicked in and they were back to it. They'd exchanged poison looks while his daughter unconsciously wrinkled her smooth broad forehead, soaking up the ambient hostility.
Harry half-turned as he was walking away. "You never had anything to lose before, did you, Broker?"
Broker once had heard a counselor describe alcoholism as a progressive disease, implying that just because you stopped putting alcohol in your mouth, it didn't mean the condition was cured. It continued to grow inside like an invisible vampire. Take a drink after ten years, and the vampire sitting on your chest was ten years older and stronger than he was the last time you saw him.
Broker figured the thing he had with Harry was like that.
He came up to his turnoff and spotted the building. Weeds grew in the broken asphalt of the parking lot. Fading blue lettering spelled Ole's Boat Repair on dirty white cinder block, and the showroom windows were boarded with plywood. An ancient sailboat was beached, unmasted and rudderless, on a trailer. The tires on the trailer were flat.
Broker drove around back and saw a dozen cars, SUVs mostly, and a brand-new shiny red Subaru Forester with a license plate that matched the numbers and letters on the clipboard on the seat next to him.
He parked, got out, and encountered the deeply locked-down feeling that was Diane waiting for him in the heat. Dark hair worn in a flip. The soft breathy voice.
Did you see her? She looks like Jackie Fucking Kennedy with tits. Harry's studied reaction the night he met her.
Years ago, the sensation would close off the light and last for whole days; now he processed it fast, working through the doubt and remorse to a bedrock determination.
He could never bring himself to say he'd done the right thing.
But he was confident he'd done what he had to do. So he took a deep breath through his nose to steady himself, walked up to the back door, and knocked.
The door opened a crack. A tubby guy with senatorial white hair and a melanoma golf tan peeked out.
"You have an invite? This is strictly an invitations-only party," the guy said.
"Phil Broker for Harry Cantrell. I need to talk to him," Broker said.
The guy squinted. "Oh yeah?"
Broker shifted his weight irritably from foot to foot. "Hey, c'mon. Get Harry out here."
The guy turned and called into the dark air-conditioned interior, "Harry, there's this guy here says . . ."
A deep, slightly slurred, but amused voice boomed, "Yeah, yeah, my fucking process server—bring him in."
The guy at the door thumbed Broker to enter.
Broker stepped inside and squinted. He was in a huge deserted workshop with a concrete floor and half-torn wooden racks. An industrial-strength chill churned from a dripping wall-mounted A/C unit. Stratas of cigarette and cigar smoke stacked up in a shower of light. It came from an oblong pool hall light that poured down on a round table covered with a green felt tablecloth.
Six men sat around it among a clutter of cards, chips, ashtrays, and drinks. Six or seven other guys lounged at a side table that held platters of sandwich makings, an ice bucket, some bottles. An old couch, some chairs, and a refrigerator rounded out the decor. Mouse had accurately called the crowd; ten years ago, in their late thirties, they'd probably taken some chances; now they looked as if they wanted to sit down a lot and mainly talk. Most of the guys at the card table were culturally correct, drinking from plastic bottles of spring water.
"Well, well, well," Harry said. He sat behind an ashtray, a whiskey tumbler, and a big pile of chips.
Same old Harry. He went five eleven, weighed around 175, and was fifty years old. As Broker came across the room he recalled that Harry always looked slightly smaller than he actually was. The illusion was created by the fact that Harry's clothes always fit him so well.
Today he wore gray stonewashed jeans and a green golf shirt. But even dressed in a white bedsheet Harry would still evoke a man-in-black persona. It was the thick dark curly hair, the sideburns, and the promise of dangerous excitement cocked in the slouch of his hips. His face was slightly flat, with Cherokee cheekbones and a chin that matched his brawny bone-prominent hands. The three red 7s were engraved on his tanned right forearm.
Harry had a Lucky Strike dangling at a sporty angle between lightly clenched teeth. But his eyes betrayed his jaunty smile, looking about as easy as two chunks of indigo dye melting in tomato juice. A clip of toilet tissue was nailed to his chin by a rusty dot. He blinked and raised a hand to knuckle at a runny nose. He was busted inside. Stuff was leaking.
"Is this guy here to play or what?" someone said.
Harry's eyes were fever brilliant but so very empty as he said, "Nah, he don't gamble with money, but he'll sure as fuck gamble with your life."
Chapter Nine
"Cash me in," Harry said, pushing back his chair. One of the guys came over from the side table, began counting chips and entering numbers in a small notebook.
Harry stood up, studied Broker, blinked several times, and tried to stand erect, but gravity was toying with his internal bearings. Harry was listing to port in Ole's Boat Repair.
He smiled. "So John gave you a badge and a gun and everything, huh? My own official escort to the booby hatch."
One of the guys said, "Aw, it ain't so bad; I been to St. Joseph's."
"I been there twice," someone said.
"The groups are fucked, though. They don't let you smoke anymore. Gotta go outside," someone else added.
Broker gauged the patter, which was along the lines of a reluctant but firm farewell. He shifted his weight, kept his hands at his sides. Waited.
Harry put his right hand behind his head and massaged his neck, stretched, turned, and looked at Broker.
"Look at you. Nothing ever gets to you, does it? You just keep going like the fuckin' Energizer Bunny. Why is that?"
"This isn't the time," Broker said.
"I mean, don't it ever bother you?" Harry said. Then he raised his hands in mock surrender. "I know, I know, it's not the time." He waved a hand in a cavalier farewell, turning toward his poker buddies, who came forward to gather in a group. Then he stopped, snuck a quick look at Broker, and said defiantly, "I want to finish my drink."
Broker shrugged. "Sure, what the hell."
Harry leaned over the table, picked up the glass, and raised it to his lips. But instead of downing it, he left half an inch in the bottom and hoisted the glass as if to say, See, I'm in control. He placed the glass down on the table with an emphatic thump and called out, "Well, guys; this is it."
A chorus of send-offs ensued, handshakes, a few hugs even though Harry was definitely not the hugs type.
As he started for the back door, Harry paused and grimaced. "Christ, kidneys
are shot. I gotta take a leak."
Broker made a stymied spontaneous gesture with his hand which someone in the crowd captioned accurately: "You gotta go, you gotta go."
Harry walked quickly toward a door inside of the room. As he pulled it shut, the gang of guys moved forward.
"Is he gonna lose his job over this?" one asked.
Broker shrugged. "Nah, it's not exactly routine, but in-patient is covered by insurance."
"Can he still, you know, hang out and play cards?"
"I suppose he could drink Sprite," someone speculated.
It suddenly occurred to Broker in the course of this amiable little chat how the card players were forming a circle around him, a cordon as it were. Surrounding him shoulder to shoulder.
"Wait a minute," Broker said, starting toward the door through which Harry had disappeared. The group, amoebalike, oozed along with him and separated him from the door.
Broker feinted left, shouldered hard right, burst through, and yanked open the door. Shit. It led to a hallway running the length of the building with an exit door going out the side.
He sprinted for the exit door as a scornful voice sang out, "Ha, you sucker. He's gonna get his whole two weeks before you pry the bottle from his cold dead hand."
Out the door fast. Then not so fast as his adrenaline floundered, the heat sapping his energy like quicksand. C'mon. Move.
Harry? There he is, crouched behind the wheel of the Forester, swearing and banging his shoulder at the door. Running toward him, Broker saw what he was swearing about. In his haste, Harry must have slammed the seat belt and buckle into the door well. Now the door was jammed shut and he couldn't start the car because the door wasn't all the way closed. And he couldn't get the door open.
Seeing him coming, Harry yanked and banged harder on the door, and, as Broker came within arm's reach, Harry broke the door free. As he disentangled the belt and leaned to turn the key, Broker thrust his arm into the half-open window and grabbed at the wheel.
Harry was giggling like a boy playing a game. "Let go, motherfucker." The engine quietly purred on, and the car started to move in a fitful circle because Broker was cranking on the wheel with his right hand as he ran alongside.
"Stop the car, Harry!" Broker yelled.
"Anybody but you; shit. I'd make the trip with Lymon Greene before you. John should have known . . ."
"HAIR REEEE!" Broker yelled, seeing the side of the building loom up and letting go of the wheel just before the front bumper, headlights, and grille crumpled into the cinder block.
The Forester did a quick steel-crunching rhumba motion, the
air bag engulfed Harry, and then the car settled. Almost the second it stopped moving, Harry scrambled out from behind the air bag and pushed out the door. He staggered over to where Broker was in a pushup position, getting up from the boiling asphalt. From the corner of his eye Broker saw the poker players coming out the back door. And something else. During the shock of hitting the pavement, his pistol had jerked from the holster and was lying about three feet from his head.
Harry stopped and shook his head. He had a crazy bewildered grin on his face. He said, "Shit, man. That's twice in twenty-four hours I been kissed by a fucking air bag." Then he saw the pistol lying on the asphalt. His grin broadened to show wolfish canines, and he said, "Gee, and I thought you didn't like handguns? I thought killing people one at a time bored you. What was it you racked up in Quang Tri City back in seventy-two—something like six or seven confirmed kills? Course, by then they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, sending down half-trained fifteen-, sixteen-year-old kids . . ."
"Harry, back off," Broker said, getting up.
"More like child abuse than a war. Hell, I mean, we wasted all their real soldiers by seventy-one when I was there," Harry said.
Limping slightly, Broker retrieved the pistol, secured it back in the holster, and pulled the shirt over it.
"You all right?" Harry said.
"No thanks to you, asshole," Broker said.
"C'mon. It was fun," Harry said.
The poker guys were now assembled around the Forester.
"You saw the fucking squirrel, right?" Harry said.
"What's that?" they asked.
"When the tow truck gets here, a couple of you will be witnesses and mention a squirrel ran across the lot, and I swerved to miss him, and I hit the wall."
"Got it."
On full alert now, Broker waited at Harry's elbow while the call was made. Harry handed the keys over to the guy who kept track of the game in his little black book, along with instructions about where to take the car. Then he said to Broker, "Don't suppose you want to stick around till the truck gets here?"
"No, Harry. Right now let's get you separated from your support group here," Broker said.
Harry adopted a slightly wavering stance, eyed Broker, and said, "You used to have more hair, didn't you?"
"C'mon. Let's go."
"Okay, okay. Aw, shit. One last thing." Harry grimaced and slowly raised his cell phone. Entered a number. Waited. "She ain't home, got the machine." He paused, took a breath, and adopted a contrite tone. "I have some bad news, Annie; got in a small car wreck. I'm okay, but your Subi sustained a little front-end damage. I'm off to the lock ward at St. Joseph's to take the cure so check with Stillwater Towing. I told them to take it to the dealership in White Bear Lake." He gave the number for the towing company and then said, "I'm real sorry."
Harry tapped the phone off, inhaled, exhaled. "I suppose now she'll be pissed. Aw, I never got much past the missionary position with her, anyway." Then he fished a Lucky from his pocket, and a pack of book matches. Slowly, Harry tore out a match and drew it along the striker.
Broker could hear the individual teeth rasp in the friction as the match ignited. The flame was almost invisible, blending into the dense amber air. Harry took two quick drags, then flipped the cigarette away, tucked in his shirt, smoothed his belt line, and turned to Broker.
"Okay, okay. I suppose I can't put this off any longer, huh?"
Broker pointed to his truck. "C'mon, Harry; get in out of the heat."
Chapter Ten
Broker eased the Ranger from Ole's driveway into traffic on Highway 95. He actually felt better after the physical exercise of preventing Harry's escape. He felt a kinetic hum in his muscles. He was smiling as he waited for the A/C to kick in.
Harry came down with a fit of shaking and filled the cab with a meaty scent of sweat, alcohol, and Mennen's aftershave. Sweat dripped down his brow and streaked his cheeks. His eyes flitted. His nose began to bleed.
Broker reached over, opened the glove compartment, took out a small box of Kleenex, and handed it to Harry, who wadded some of the tissue and stuck it in his nose. Suddenly he looked like a sick kid. He said, "It had to be you."
"That's a song," Broker said.
"Yeah, an old one," Harry said.
Abruptly, Broker pulled to the shoulder in a spray of gravel. When the truck stopped, he rested his weight forward on his forearms against the wheel and slowly turned his head. "So what's it going to be? More fun and games?"
Harry shrugged. "What I meant was, John sent you to rub it in."
"Maybe a little," Broker said.
Harry shook his head. "Got to be more. John can be mean— but he ain't petty."
"You tell me," Broker said.
Harry's smile struggled to arrange his unreliable facial muscles and failed. Some blood dripped from his nose and streaked his neck. He reached for another Kleenex and said, "You'd like that, get me talking about the Saint, wouldn't you?"
"Yeah we would," Broker said. So Harry knew about the medallion along with everyone else.
Harry fumbled with his pack of smokes, and the shakes raced down his arms and spasmed in his fingers. Trying to extract a cigarette, he snapped it in half. More carefully, he took another one out. Then the book of matches defeated him. His agitated fingers couldn't manage the flimsy cardboard match and strike
r. Broker took the matches and gave Harry a light.
Broker hit the window controls to vent the smoke; the glass hissed down, and the lava air pushed in. The smoke just hung in place. He glanced at the matchbook, which had a red-and-blue Toucan on it: Treasure Island Casino. He put the matches in his chest pocket.
"Okay," Harry said, "one of the guys at the game told this joke. There's this couple on their way to get married, and they get in a fatal car wreck.
"So they're up in heaven at the Pearly Gates, and they get to talking, and when St. Peter shows up they ask if they can get married in heaven."