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by Chuck Logan

  “So you gonna buy me a beer?” Teedo said with a trickster glint in his brown eyes.

  Griffin reached back, picked up the Linnies, and placed the bottle on the green felt with an emphatic thump. Teedo picked up the bottle and nodded at the rear booth. They put their cues back in the wall rack and sat down.

  “Thought you might come. Wasn’t sure you’d buy the beer,” Teedo said.

  “So you gonna tell me what you meant about Gator not being ‘true’?” Griffin said.

  “You ever been out to his place?” Teedo asked.

  “Drove by it a few times, during deer season.”

  “So think about it—he’s out there all alone now, huh?”

  “Yeah”—Griffin narrowed his eyes—“since his cousins got burned out.”

  Teedo tipped the bottle to his lips. “Kind of convenient. Them not being around. Kind of people who snoop, steal stuff. Could pry into your business, big-time.”

  “C’mon. What are you getting at?”

  “Kinda storybook, don’t you think?” Teedo said. “The way everybody gives Gator plenty of room, since the meth house burned? Made him into a local hero, their avenging angel, for Marci Sweitz. It’s an open secret Gator’s snitching for Keith. They busted those Mexicans. Fact is, in the last year, Gator’s run all the nickel-dime meth dealers out of the county, especially anybody setting up shop in those empty houses north of Z.”

  Griffin nodded—it was common knowledge. “The way people tell the story, Gator’s trying for a fresh start up here.” Hearing the words come from his mouth in the context of this conversation, they sounded too good to be true.

  “Yeah, right, he’s fuckin’ Robin Hood. Or maybe”—again, the sly smile—“he’s knocking off the competition, huh?” Teedo said it quietly, raising his eyebrows slightly, conjuring a depth of hard-knocks insight into the backwoods drug scene. He’d done six months in Beltrami County for selling grass couple years back before he cleaned up his act. Knew the players.

  Griffin leaned back, mulling over it. “Teedo, you got a suspicious mind.”

  “No,” Teedo said, “I got a cousin, Jerry, who brews that poison. Remember that cold snap last month, hit twenty below?”

  Griffin nodded.

  “Yeah, well, Jerry figured nobody’d be out in that weather, so he snuck into one of those old houses to cook. And Gator shows up, knocks him around, and chases him off at gunpoint. Jerry didn’t run far—he pulled off into the trees to watch what Gator would do. See, Jerry didn’t have a shopping bag from Fleet Farm and a few cans of solvent. He had a whole truckload of supplies, two big boxes of pseudoephedrine he smuggled in from Canada. Jerry was looking to cook a couple pounds of that shit.

  “So Jerry waits, freezing his ass, for the sheriff to show up. No sheriff. Instead, Gator loads all the chemicals and stuff in his truck and drives it north on Twelve, toward his place.” Teedo leaned forward and pointed his beer bottle at Griffin. “One of the ways you catch meth heads, is you follow them when they run their trapline, picking up supplies, huh? But if you’re fucking Robin Hood, you just steal from the meth heads and give to yourself.”

  “So—no exposure.” Griffin thought about it.

  “Plus, he’s got what amounts to police protection. Way Jerry tells it, Gator brings Keith in on the little fish, but if he finds a big stash, he keeps it for himself.”

  “So, say something. Anonymous tip, 911,” Griffin said.

  “Oh, right,” Teedo shook his head. “Uh-uh, not me, man, word’d get out. I believe those stories about Gator. He kills people and gets away with it, going way back. Some people even think the way his folks died was no accident.”

  Teedo drank a few swallows of beer in silence, smacked his lips. “But I did go out there to Gator’s and take a look.”

  “Hey,” Griffin said, “you’re the one blowing smoke about staying clear.”

  Teedo lifted a hand. “I had an excuse. This time of year, I go back in the woods near his farm. ’Bout two hundred yards in from one of the fields, there’s this grove of birches. Put in some test taps. Been so warm, I figured the sap might be early. Not as good as sugar maples, but you can still make syrup. Not bad if you cook it twice.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Teedo…”

  Teedo took another pull on his beer, stretching it out. “You know how to find Camp’s Last Stand?”

  Griffin nodded. “Turn off Twelve east on County Z. Go in on the old logging road.” It was a local landmark set back in the woods.

  “Two miles past the crossroads. Clock it on your odometer, ’cause it’s grown over, hard to find. When you get to the stand, take the trail that forks to the left, that’ll bring you up to the grove, you’ll see some tin buckets I put out.”

  “Yeah?” Griffin hearing Teedo give him directions…like he’s sure I’m going out there…

  “You’ll be a couple hundred yards from his house. That’s where I was two weeks ago when I smelled it.”

  “Smelled what?” Griffin asked.

  “A smell like a big litter box full of cat piss and shit. This real stink. I went in closer and heard the generator running…”

  “Generator?”

  “Yeah, he’s got a big-ass generator going in the shop. Now why do you suppose that is? He’s got enough four-forty to run all his tools coming in on the line. Had the fans running in the paint shop. So I went in closer, along this windbreak of pines that goes from the woods, stops about fifty yards from the shop.” Teedo leaned forward on his elbows, taking his voice even lower. “You know how Gator is supposed to be out there all alone?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not that day. Jimmy Klumpe was there, bigger’n shit, sitting in his garbage truck, had Gator’s trash container up on the lift. Top open. Just sitting there, engine running…

  “Then this person comes out of the shop. Got this paint suit and breather mask on. When they took off the hood, saw it was a woman. Thought it was his sister, Cassie, at first. She had this black hair, same build.”

  “Really?” Griffin said, “I heard Cassie never goes out there, hasn’t been back since their folks—”

  Teedo shrugged. “Wasn’t Cassie, though. ’Cause little while later Gator and her brought these black heavy-duty garbage bags out from the shop and loaded them in the Dumpster. Jimmy hoists her up and drives off. But he goes north, not back toward the town dump. Goes into the woods. And Gator, he starts up his Bobcat and moves all these boxes and big plastic drums from the shop into the garage part of his barn. Then him and the woman went into the farmhouse…

  “Wind was right, could hear them in there. Windows musta been open. Was the bathroom, ’cause the shower was running.” Teedo flashed a grin. “Heard the kinda noise you ain’t suppose to make with your sister.”

  “So you think he’s cooking dope out there?”

  “Cooking dope?” Teedo laughed. “Man, when’s the last time you were on the streets?” He raised his beer. Before he got it to his lips, Griffin clamped his hand over the bottle top and looked Teedo directly in the eyes.

  “Why you telling me this?”

  Teedo shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re the only person around who’s crazy enough not to be afraid of the guy.” Then he set the bottle down and reached for his wallet. “Hey, and I got this.” Teedo took his wallet from his hip pocket and withdrew a salmon-colored slip of paper. An old Powerball lottery ticket. He handed it to Griffin. “That woman? She drives a silver Pontiac GT. Never seen that car in town. Had it hidden in the barn. Look on the back.”

  Griffin turned it over; three letters and three numerals printed in ballpoint. Set it on the table.

  “License plate on the Pontiac,” Teedo said.

  Griffin narrowed his eyes, waiting.

  Teedo shrugged. “You know people, those guys who come up from the cities to hunt sometimes, Broker’s pals. They’re cops, right.”

  “So? Keith Nygard’s a cop.”

  Teedo shook his head and said cryptically,
“Him and Gator’s high school buddies. When the meth house blew up and all Gator’s cousins burned, Keith, he looked the other way.”

  Teedo finished his beer, set the bottle aside, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “So. Jimmy was there, using his truck for something Gator’s up to. Just saying—if Broker was my friend, and he’s messing with Jimmy, the person who comes back at him might not be Jimmy. Might be someone who needs Jimmy. In which case it might not be about kids fighting on the playground.”

  Griffin exhaled, picked up the slip of paper, and turned it slowly, weighing it. He looked up at Teedo. “You willing to go back out to Gator’s farm?”

  “Nope. Ain’t my fight. No disrespect, but fuck a bunch of white guys. It would be interesting, though, to find out if the lady driving that Pontiac has a record, huh?” Teedo gave Griffin the barest smile as he stood up and put on his coat.

  Griffin said, “Anything else you can tell me?”

  Teedo shrugged. “Every Saturday morning, nine A.M., Gator comes in town and eats bacon and eggs at Lyme’s Café.”

  After Teedo left, Griffin sat for several minutes studying the number on the slip of paper. Okay. This was something Keith should know about. He went out, got in his Jeep, drove into town, and pulled into a diagonal parking slot in front of the old two-story redbrick county courthouse. The snow on the barrel of the Civil War four-pounder cannon on the lawn had melted during the warm day. Since sunset, the temperature drop had formed a long fringe of icicles.

  Griffin stared at the icicles, organizing his thoughts. The sheriff ’s office occupied one side of the lower floor. He could see Howie Anderson, Keith’s chief—and only—deputy during the winter, standing in the well-lighted window, leaning over, talking to Ginny Borck sitting at the dispatcher’s desk.

  He knew they had a new computer and radio setup purchased with Homeland Security money; primarily to monitor Border Patrol and Highway Patrol advisories. Be easy to run a license plate check.

  Then he considered Teedo’s cryptic snapshot of Keith being Gator Bodine’s high school pal, how they’d teamed up, since the Marci Sweitz episode, to rid the county of meth. Remembered Susan’s remark about the cursory medical examiner’s report after the trash house fire. Accidental death. No arson investigation. The cursory autopsies.

  Griffin looked up and down the empty street; not much going on except the slush starting to set up and freeze. Everything seemingly hunky-dory—except that, just below the surface, the pollution cooking under Jimmy Klumpe’s property on Little Glacier might leak over into the big lake.

  And kill the summer trade that supported the town.

  Could that kind of hovering phantom cause a solid family man like Keith Nygard—wife, three kids, second-term sheriff, deacon in his dad’s Lutheran church—go into the drug business as a hedge against the future?

  Nah—he could see Keith getting blindsided, but the guy was just too rock-ribbed Lutheran to go over the line. It was time to slow down and think this through. All he had was Teedo’s hearsay story and a number scrawled on a lottery ticket. Walk in there with a bunch of bar talk, and he’d sound like an excited citizen who’d been watching too many detective shows.

  He needed a little more specific information before he approached Keith. One thing he could do was reach out to J. T. Merryweather, see if he’d run a check on the license number. His mind made up, Griffin backed out of the parking space in front of the courthouse and drove slowly out of town, slowing as he went past the lighted windows of Lyme’s Café.

  A few minutes later Griffin stood in his kitchen, phone in hand, tracing a number in his phone book with his finger. Teedo’s slip of paper lay on the open page. Without hesitation he tapped in J. T. Merryweather’s number, down on his ostrich farm in Lake Elmo.

  Denise Merryweather answered the phone, her voice tightening when she placed Griffin in the part of her husband’s life that involved Phil Broker. “Is it important?” Her tone was cool. “We’re eating supper.”

  “It’s important.”

  A moment later, J. T., St. Paul PD captain of homicide when he retired, came on the connection. “Griffin. What’s up? This about Broker and Nina? How’s she doing?”

  “Actually, Nina’s coming out of it. Broker? He’s stressed to the max, but he won’t admit it.”

  “Figures,” J. T. said.

  Griffin picked up the piece of paper with the number on it and said, “J. T., I need a favor…”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Sheryl spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon smoking, watching daytime TV. And watching the phone. She imagined Gator pacing in his shop, watching his phone. No sense talking about what they didn’t know. Especially since it would involve signaling on his pager with a phony number, which would send him on a half-hour drive to the pay phone at the grocery store. So she didn’t make the call. Finally, at one-thirty in the afternoon, her phone rang.

  “Country Buffet, in Woodbury, that mall off Valley Creek Road and 494, you know it?” said a calm voice without introduction. She knew the restaurant…

  …and the voice.

  “It’s a dump,” she said.

  “Correct, dress according. Wear a Vikings sweatshirt. Say in an hour. Two-thirty.”

  Jesus. It was moving fast. “I’ll be there.” The call ended. Sheryl was impressed. That was fast. Which meant Werky’s “investigator,” Simon Hanky, was on the job. Simon wound up going by his first initial. There was a word in poetry, onimana something. Like when a words sound like the thing it describes. That was him to a T.

  Drop the Y.S. Hanky. Then drop the Y.

  Shank did some time for manslaughter after Werky pleaded him down from second degree for killing his ex-wife’s boyfriend. In the joint, Danny’s organization was impressed by his icy focus and recruited him after he decimated a bunch of Mexicans in the showers.

  He had matured in prison and never killed in hot blood again. Now he only operated with methodical planning. Some people were into beginnings, and some people like to stretch out the middle. Shank was an expert on endings.

  He killed people.

  This corkscrew sensation squirmed through Sheryl’s chest. Old tapes. She had been around a lot of dangerous men in her life, and most of them had made her nervous, mainly because they were unpredictable and had poor impulse control. Shank had zero impulses, barely a pulse.

  Wow.

  Shit, man, something must have clicked for them to trot out the Shank.

  At two-thirty sharp, Sheryl, face washed clean of makeup, hair gathered in a ponytail, stood at the check-in line at the Country Buffet chewing Juicy Fruit. She wore a pair of faded Levi’s, a brand-new, itchy purple Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt, scuffed tennies, and a cheap Wal-Mart wind jacket. Some Spanish was being spoken in the line, several gangs of Mexican laborers coming in for all-you-can-eat—a grotesque gallery of obese flesh fighting a losing battle against gravity. On top of which, excessive meat was apparently difficult to wash; the place smelled like an elephant house. Should hose them down, she was thinking when she heard the familiar voice behind her, in a loud whisper: “Hey, Sheryl Mott, long time no see.”

  She turned and saw Shank, icy smooth, standing behind her. Sinewy, six feet tall; he had white-blond polar bear hair and eyebrows and startlingly pale blue eyes. They’d been an item briefly, when she returned from Seattle, just before she quit cooking for Danny’s crew and took up her waitress career.

  The smooth pigment of his face avoided the sun and reminded her of the texture of mushrooms under cellophane in the produce section. He wore busted-out denim work duds and beat-up steel-toed boots to fit in with the crowd. Looked skinnier than the last time she saw him.

  “Shank. You lose some weight?”

  He heaved his shoulders, said, “I feel like a real heel—I shoulda called. You see, right after the last time we were together I tested HIV-positive…”

  Sheryl clasped his horn-hard hand, noting the manicured nails set like jewels among the call
us. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “Yeah,” he grinned. “It’s the South Beach diet.”

  She cast her eyes around, sniffed. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Let’s say I’m comfortable around real fat people. They eat like gamblers play slot machines. Totally oblivious to what’s around them.”

  Sheryl gave him an appreciative nod. She liked what she saw so far. They were treating her decent for a change.

  Shank paid admission, and they followed a tired-looking waitress who seated them at a booth, brought them glasses for their beverages, and said in a tone both cryptic and bored, “You can start now.”

  “You hungry?” Shank asked after the waitress left them alone.

  Sheryl rolled her eyes in mild revulsion at the shuffling feeding frenzy and shook her head. “Coffee black,” she said.

  Shank got them two cups of coffee, resumed his seat across the table, and spread his hands in a respectful preamble. “First, Werky says Danny says hello.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Sheryl took a deep breath, let it out.

  “And he says to treat you right. You’re the birthday girl. ’Cause, guess what—so far your end checks out. There was a dude name Broker who hung out on the fringe of things. Seems he was more into running guns around than dope. Though there is a story about him bringing in a semi flatbed from North Dakota; piled with hay bales on the outside, bales of weed on the inside. He fixed things, had a bunch of tools in a truck and some landscape equipment. You been out to Danny’s place in Lakeland?”

  “Yeah, before the feds took it away for taxes.”

  “So, remember the backyard, all the terracing, rocks and shit?”

  “Overlooking the river?”

  “Yeah, well, Danny told Werky this fuck, Broker, did all that. And one of the guys recalled he put in Jojo’s sound system in Bayport.”

  “Bingo,” Sheryl said.

  “Meets our probable-cause threshold,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have a picture?”