American by Day

by Derek B. Miller

  She presses the throttle forward and pilots the Zodiac away from the dock, bringing the bow into line with the open waters of Lake Flower. She and the troll pull away from the pier, the sheriff’s station, and what will soon be at least eight angry men.

  She putters slowly past the two disabled boats; she tosses firebombs into those, too.

  Certain of her lead now, Sigrid shoves the throttle into the forwardmost position and hauls ass away from the police station, leaving behind her a small war zone.

  In her rearview mirror Sigrid sees Irving Wylie standing with his hands on his hips as the SWAT team and three other officers from the police station douse the fires with extinguishers retrieved from the van. That is all she can make out, though, because in a moment Irv and the others become nothing but wiggly lines and clouds of color in her vibrating mirror that become indistinguishable from the smoke and flames.

  The boat is easy to maneuver. At high speed it skims over the surface of the lake like a stone tossed by a restive god.

  Steady now, and on course, she familiarizes herself with the controls and sees that the commandos have helpfully mounted a dedicated GPS unit inside the windscreen of the boat. There is also a map of the lake district inside a waterproof plastic shield. It illustrates how Lake Flower orients almost due south and connects with something called Oseetah Lake; probably an Indian name she can’t pronounce.

  The wooded edges of the lake blur into a wall of greens and browns as she speeds along. The night’s storm clouds have broken into billowing mountains. They cast patches of shadow on the land below. They blanket the green hills like spilled paint.

  There is no reason not to do this, she tells herself. Only she can prevent Marcus from being harmed now. And the best way to do it is by getting there first.

  Sigrid watches the GPS coordinates draw closer to the number Irv was told by the camper. Marcus is—or was, anyway—camping near a place called Pine Pond. The pond is inland and not connected to another body of water. She needs to reach the southernmost point of Oseetah, secure or scuttle the raft, and head into the forest by foot if she stands any chance of reaching Marcus before they do. She presses the throttle forward as far as she dares.

  The Zodiac is stunningly fast. She has never been on a boat like this. She is partly protected from the wind blast by the screen, but her hair is lashing. A woman would have designed it all differently.

  She opens the throttle farther when the lake turns from blue to black. If the boat had wings she would be flying. Each ripple on the water lifts the boat and slams it back to the surface. She thinks of concrete. Of Lydia’s fall.

  Sigrid takes her hands off the wheel and ties her hair into a bun to keep the strands from whipping her eyes. She snakes the arms of her brother’s aviators over her ears and the lenses cut the glare. More comfortable, she glances down to the map to take her bearing.

  If the map is any good—and belonging to the SWAT team, it probably is—there is clearly no place to land a helicopter close to Marcus’s last-known location; no bare spots, no roads into the woods, no field wide enough to accommodate the diameter of the rotors.

  Even if they do manage to call in an airlift, they will have to fast-rope down into the forest, but that would be tricky and dangerous for anything but a properly trained team. Which they are unlikely to have available in the next hour. This is Saranac Lake, after all, not the Helmand province.

  It is more likely, she reasons, that the team will get a new boat. They’ll follow her route and—like her—make their way by foot through the forest at the edge of the lake.

  She looks at her footwear. They’re stylish and Italian.

  She should have worn combat boots.

  The Silence of the Hush Puppies

  Irv stands, a bit forlorn, with his hands on his hips as the other officers put out the flames. Surveying the impressive damage done by one angry Norwegian woman, he watches one of the six black-clad men pick up the remains of a bottle of truly terrible vodka with a fake Russian name. Irv had always wondered why people bought it. Now he knows.

  He probably should have locked the doors to the Wagoneer. That’s all it would have taken to avoid this.

  Frank Allman shuffles up next to Irv and wipes some sweat from his face with a napkin he used earlier to blow his nose.

  “Holy shit, Irv.”

  “I know. I didn’t see this coming.”

  “You realize this could be considered terrorism. Don’t you?” Frank says.

  “Oh, knock it off.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “She’s trying to slow us down so we don’t kill her brother. Besides, the Feds never get to visit nice places. If you call that in, and if you bring them down here, by the lake, in the wealth of summer, they will not leave until the last leaf falls. Imagine the joys of federal involvement for a few minutes.”

  “You got to admit, though, Irv,” says Frank. “This really flips things around. I’m not going to say ‘turns up the heat’ or anything dumb like that but . . . it does.”

  “The facts of the case are the same as they were before she went all postal on us, Frank. I’m assuming no one’s hurt?”

  “No,” says Frank. “I should at least call the state police. And the insurance company. Hard to write this off as an accident.”

  “I shouldn’t have let go of the reins,” Irv concedes. “This is my fault. Goddamn politicians are going to have to learn that the people closest to a problem are the ones best suited to dealing with it. That’s why I became a Republican in the first place, but that’s not how things are working anymore. This election has got people all fired up. Now everyone’s pushing us locals around from up high. Democrat, Republican, makes no difference anymore. Fuckin’ Howard.”

  “It’s a job, Irv,” says Frank.

  “Yeah,” he agrees. “Listen, Frank, let’s go calm down the men with the machine guns. I don’t want them getting riled up over—”

  “Being firebombed?”

  “She sent them away first.”

  “I know, but this is not Beirut, Irv. It’s Lake Flower, for heaven’s sake.”

  “There are no lakes in Beirut.”

  “What do we know about Beirut?” Frank asks.

  “Nothing,” snaps Irv.

  They watch the smoke.

  Frank takes a piece of wintergreen gum from a white packet in his pocket.

  “So. Now what?” asks Irv.

  “Well . . . same thing as before, I guess, only slower,” Frank reasons aloud. “If we can’t make those boats start working again we’ll have to go over to Calypso Marine off the Three past Bloomingdale and see whether they’ve got a Zodiac in stock and whether we can take it on credit. Mr. Vance is not the kind of man who likes working with credit, so we may have an issue, because I don’t have a budget line for something like this and God knows I’m not plunking down my own Visa. And then, well, I guess these guys’ll go do whatever they were gonna do before.”

  “I’m going with them,” says Irv. “I’m not leaving this to Hogan’s Heroes over here. She may have gained some time on us, but now she’s got us mad, and that goes in the other column.”

  Frank pulls up his gun belt so that it nestles nicely under his gut in the way that annoys Irv. “I really don’t see why a normal person would do something like this,” he says, looking around at the smoldering boats.

  “She doesn’t trust us, Frank.”

  “Why doesn’t she trust us, Irv?”

  “I think it’s the cowboy boots, Frank,” Irv says.

  Frank looks at his own feet. “I’m not wearing cowboy boots. I’m wearing Hush Puppies.”

  “She may not understand Hush Puppies, Frank. She’s from a foreign land across a great ocean.”

  Sigrid’s phone rings in her pocket as she nears the far end of the lake.

  “Hello?” she says, without looking at the screen.

  “Sigrid,” says her father. “How are things with you and Marcus? You haven’t called.” />
  “I’ve been rather busy.”

  “What’s that sound?” Morten asks.

  “I’m on a boat. This isn’t a very good time.”

  “I’ve been doing some thinking since your last call. I need to ask you a question.”

  “Can this wait?”

  “Over the years, has Marcus talked to you much about your mother’s death?”

  “Pappa . . . this does not sound urgent.”

  “You know Marcus took it very hard. Very, very hard. Has he talked to you about it at any length?”

  “She was my mother too, pappa. I took it hard also. I was a little girl when she died. I really need to go.”

  “He took it harder.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she says, agitated. “I’m not simply on a boat, pappa, I’m driving it. I’m also running from men with guns.”

  “I think the correct term is piloting. You’re piloting the boat. Though I might have to look it up. Nautical terms in Norwegian are quite extensive and specific.”

  “Goodbye, pappa.”

  “I’m wondering if his last letter was alluding to your mother. I’m wondering if Lydia’s death isn’t somehow connected—in his mind, of course—to your mother’s. He said in his last letter that it was all happening again.”

  “It’s not relevant right now.”

  “If it’s relevant at all, Sigrid, it’s relevant to everything and definitely right now. If Marcus blames himself for Lydia’s death, the way he blamed himself for your mother’s death, he may be in a very delicate frame of mind. You are in a fragile situation.”

  “You may have a point, and I am impressed you can see all this from the farm. But I really am on a boat running from men with guns, so I’ve got to go. OK?”

  “Try not to antagonize them.”

  “For that you should have called an hour ago.” And she hangs up.

  The edge of the lake approaches her like a green wall. The natural run of the lake is to the east, where Oseetah splits like devil’s horns into Kiwassa Lake to the north and Second Pond farther south, but she isn’t going either direction. Instead, she runs the raft over the green algae that grows heavy and dense from the still water by the lake’s edge. She presses on at speed toward the line of trees where the land begins and hopes that the raft doesn’t run aground too soon, because her shoes are not waterproof and there is a walk ahead.

  Near the shore the weeds slap the rubber hull and a cold mist splashes over the Zodiac’s prow. Fifty meters from the edge she cuts power to the outboard and slows to five knots, easing the craft into a dark nook behind a clump of trees. A meter from land, she guns the engine and jumps the boat’s prow onto a patch of coarse grass that serves as a beachhead. Convinced the boat is secure, she turns the engine off and waits for the moment to settle.

  Behind her, the lake is still clear and blue. Her wake is already dissipating and mixing with the new ripples created by the easterly breeze. Her tracks through the weeds and algae will be visible if the police are attentive—especially by air—but there is still no sign of them and of course Irv has the same GPS coordinates that Sigrid does, so he doesn’t actually need to find her at all; he can go straight to the meeting point. She has the lead, though. Perhaps no more than minutes, but maybe long enough to find Marcus and move him to a new location. If she can talk sense into him, there might still be a way to turn him in publicly and without incident; maybe at a diner in the town or in a playground full of little human shields. Someplace the police wouldn’t risk a spectacle or scaring the locals.

  Not in a town as white as this, anyway.

  The SWAT team for Saranac Lake is commanded by Lieutenant Alfonzo Plymouth, who is nothing like Irv’s SERT captain, Pinkerton. Irv met Alfonzo once before—at a regional police convention a few years ago—and remembers liking the guy well enough. On the scorched pier by the police station, Alfonzo is wiping the sticky residue from the fire extinguisher onto his trousers as he calmly directs his men in taking inventory. They rummage through the black bags that were recently burning and now smell terrible.

  Calypso Marine confirms to Frank that it does not have any Zodiacs in stock. Thanking them, and hanging up his cell phone, he tells Alfonzo they’ll need to get the two remaining boats—such as they are—seaworthy again. Al steps gingerly onto the first and larger of the two boats. He hops up and down a few times on a blackened spot near the stern to test for integrity.

  “How does it look?” Irv asks.

  “Seems OK,” Alfonzo says. “I’d risk it. We won’t set any speed records, though.”

  “So . . . off we go, then. Right?”

  “Well . . . no,” says Alfonzo, examining the motor. “Your friend cut off the starter cord.”

  “Take it from the other boat?”

  “Cut that too.”

  “That can’t be a hard fix,” says Irv. “You take off the cowl, pop off the choke linkage, and wrap another cord around the motor. Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Yeah,” says Alfonzo, unconvinced. “Anyone got any cord?”

  “Can’t you use a shoestring or something?” Irv asks. “I think I saw that in a cartoon once.”

  Alfonzo looks down. “Mine are tactical boots. Zipper and Velcro. Why, what have you got?”

  Irv wordlessly looks at his cowboy boots and so does Alfonzo. Neither comments.

  “Frank?” Irv yells. “We need a starter cord from the hardware store.”

  “I got it, I got it . . .” Frank says, waving as he opens the door to his police car and wedges himself in like a cupcake into a packed lunch box. Rumbling up his eight-cylinder he sets off to find the missing component to modern law enforcement.

  Alfonzo instructs the men to spray some kind of magical glop on the bottom of the blackened boat that supposedly will harden up and help prevent a leak from forming. They scale back their gear to raw essentials—including walkie-talkies and firearms—and set to the task of turning the small fishing boat into a small fishing boat filled with a tactical SWAT team.

  Frank returns thirty-five minutes later with a nylon cord and lunch.

  A Few Smartly Chosen Words

  The brass bell above the police door at the sheriff’s station rings, crisp and bright, before Howard Howard’s towering head muffles it with his coif. Howard has never visited Irv’s police station—at least not since Melinda has worked here—and no one knows him by sight. But when he opens his mouth to speak, Muppet the dog knows him by sound.

  “I’m looking for the sheriff,” says Howard, gliding into the office like a specter.

  Muppet, who’s been resting after an exhausting nap, springs from the floor of the kitchen, stumbles on the waxed linoleum, runs to the front door, and skids to a halt in front of an imperial God of a man who hovers above him with eyes of puppy-dog brown and eyebrows as expressive and inhuman as his own.

  “Who are you?” Howard asks the dog.

  Melinda can see that Muppet does not know the answer because Muppet does not speak English. But he wants to know. He wants to answer Howard.

  “Woof,” says Muppet.

  “And where’s the sheriff?” Howard asks the office more generally.

  Melinda had been in Irv’s office typing up numerous warrants for the county that have to be issued by the end of the week, and she stops working as soon as Howard starts to speak and Muppet shuts up.

  “I’m Deputy Melinda Powell, sir,” she says, rising and extending her hand. Standing close to him, she is dwarfed. While Irv has broader shoulders and generally more heft to him, Howard’s Lincoln-esque height, raised chin, and lowered gaze make him far more imposing. It’s like looking up at an angry Gandalf.

  “Where’s the sheriff, Deputy Powell?”

  “In Saranac Lake. The town, not the body of water. We believe that Marcus Ødegård may be in the general area based on a call we received. Irv is there with Frank Allman and the regional SWAT team.”

  “How many men is that?” he asked.

  “Maybe half a dozen, sir.
I’m not sure.”

  “How many do you have under your command here?”

  “We don’t have SWAT, we have SERT under Pinkerton. They’ve got fifteen including him, sir.”

  “Pinkerton.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s the one who successfully broke up that mob last night?”

  “No. That was Reverend Green . . .”

  “But it was Pinkerton’s team on site that was the thin blue line between order and chaos. Yes?”

  “I think that’s the wrong question.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Howard steps forward. The door closes behind him, trapping everyone inside with him. The bell that had been resting on his head now slides off and finishes its ring.

  Howard’s voice possesses a deep and chambered resonance like a Howitzer being loaded. She looks around the office for support but everyone, including Cory, has bunkered behind a desk.

  “All I mean, sir,” Melinda clarifies, “is that Reverend Green was the one who deescalated the situation. The SERT stood down on Irv’s instructions after Green solved the problem. I mean . . . there are still problems, obviously, but he averted an incident. It all worked out OK.”

  “Maybe we should send the Reverend Al Green—”

  “Fred Green, sir.”

  “. . . to apprehend the foreign fugitive who pushed an Afro-American woman out a window to her death. Is that a good idea?”

  “We’re wondering if it wasn’t a suicide,” Melinda says.

  “A few blocks from the Norwegian’s house? A suicide by an aunt over the death of a nephew? When does that happen? It wasn’t a suicide. Our job is to arrest the man and hand him over to the prosecutor, who—with his juris doctorate degree from Fordham, and his membership in the Bar Association, and his sworn duty to the state of New York—may be as philosophical about such matters as he likes. But that’s not our job. Is it, Deputy?”

  Melinda looks at Muppet. Muppet looks at Howard. Melinda gives the dog the evil eye and the dog doesn’t care.

  “The commissioner wants to send our team to Saranac to assist. That’s why I’m here. Seven officers is not enough. And they’re SWAT, not SERT, because they don’t have their own team like we do.”