Midnight Come Again

by Dana Stabenow

  Her jaw must have dropped, and it must have been a reaction he was used to, because the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. He took one of the hands lying limply at her side, raised it to his lips and met her eyes over the top of it. “How do you do, Ekaterina Sovalik,” he murmured, and his voice was deep and low and very intimate—they could have been the only two people in the room. “It is very nice to meet you.”

  She swallowed and stammered for what was probably the first time in her life. “Th—thank you, Mr.—?”

  “Nikolai Kamyanka. But please, call me Nick.”

  “Uh—er—of course,” she said. “Nick. I’m Kate—Kathy, I mean,” thereby nearly blowing her cover, another first.

  The smile deepened. He glanced down. “Your dog doesn’t seem to like me.”

  Kate looked down to see Mutt eying Kate’s hand, still clasped in Nick’s, a low, steady growl issuing from her throat. “Mutt,” Kate said. “Bad girl. Stop that.”

  Her voice sounded weak and unassertive even to her own ears. She looked up at Nick and was instantly snared again by that blue gaze. She knew an absurd concern about her hair; did it look all right? Had she dribbled Diet Coke down the front of her T-shirt?

  Captain Malenkov cleared his throat in a meaningful way, and color rushed up into her face and the spell broke. She tugged her hand free, not without difficulty, and said, “Yes. Well. It was very nice meeting you all.” She turned to see a sullen expression on Yuri’s face. “Thank you for the party and the tour, Yuri, Fadey, all of you.”

  She turned and, prudently avoiding catching Nick’s eyes again, stepped around both men and through the hatch, catching her toe on the raised lip for the second time and almost but not quite falling on her face. She didn’t breathe again until she was safely down the gangway and back on the dock. She tried very hard not to look back as she walked away. She couldn’t resist, though. She turned, and there he was outside the bridge on the catwalk, leaning on the railing, watching her walk away with that clear steady gaze.

  She found the nearest corner and went around it, only to slump against the wall and take a deep breath and blow it out again. “Whew.”

  A forklift putted up and stopped. “What were you doing on board that processor?”

  Kate looked up to see Casey scowling down at her. “None of your damn business,” she said. “Come on, girl,” she said to Mutt.

  Mutt lifted her lip at Casey, and they left. Casey watched the two of them walk away until they were out of sight. They moved together with the unconscious assurance of a long-time relationship, the way she’d seen some human partners move on the job, secure in the knowledge that competent backup was instantly available should it be required. The fangs on that hound had to be two inches long. Casey decided she’d rather face down a perp high on angel dust holding a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson than that hound when she was pissed off.

  From behind her Gonzalez said, “What’d she say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Think she’s in on it?”

  Casey chose to answer this obliquely. “Chopin seems to know her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “According to Zarr, one of the crew off that boat goes up to see her at the hangar every time he’s in port.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could be a connection. Handy to have a friend working at an airfreight outfit. Especially when you’ve got something to ship. So far, Zarr says, it’s been boxes of trinkets, toys, pictures, jewelry, like that. Tourist stuff.”

  “So far.”

  “Yeah. So far. Probably should keep an eye on her,” Casey said, as if the idea was new to her. In fact Casey and Gonzalez intended to keep a very, very close eye indeed on the trooper’s friend.

  “Might be a good idea.” Gonzalez got around to what they were both thinking. “Did you see the guy?”

  “Which one?”

  “Smartass. You think it’s him?”

  “Two bodies in forty-eight hours?” Casey smiled, a thin, cold smile. “Oh, yeah. I think it’s him.”

  “Chopin’s not dead.”

  “A mistake. A bad one. There will probably be another body shortly, in payment thereof, if he’s running true to form, and why not. It’s him, all right. He matches all the descriptions.”

  Gonzalez held up a cautionary hand, and wasn’t surprised to see that it was shaking a little. “We’ll need to be sure.”

  The smile vanished. “Yes. Better call Gamble.”

  Kamyanka watched the woman go around the corner, and heard someone come up to stand at his shoulder. “My apologies,” Captain Malenkov said. “The men are idiots.”

  “Yes.”

  “They actually took her on a tour of the boat. Do you think she saw anything?”

  “There is nothing for her to see.” Kamyanka turned and smiled, although this smile was nothing like the one he had given Kate. “Besides, she will be able to remember only me when she thinks of her visit here today.”

  “How much longer must we wait?”

  Glukhov came out from the bridge. “Until Monday, Captain. Our business will be done then.”

  “It’s a long time to stay in port at this time of year,” Malenkov said. “Especially when we have lost a crewman, which will cause the authorities to look at us more closely.”

  “Break something,” Kamyanka said.

  “What?”

  “Break something. On the engine. Something that will take two days to fix.”

  Malenkov’s brow cleared. “Yes. That will help.” He looked at Kamyanka again. “No longer, though. I cannot risk the authorities looking too closely at the Kosygin.”

  “Two days,” Kamyanka said. He looked at Glukhov. “We will be done then. One way or the other.”

  Glukhov smiled, and wiped surreptitiously at the sweat beading his temples.

  The bank was as busy as anywhere else in Bering this afternoon of the second of July, and Kate gave up her place in line several times to get the teller she wanted. No one argued, as it was four-thirty and everyone wanted their check on deposit before closing time. Banks didn’t used to be open on Saturdays at all, but if they had tried to close this one down there would have been a riot. There were five tellers and a sixth window, closed until the bank manager, a pudgy, genial man in his fifties, left his desk and opened it to accommodate the crowd of customers.

  There were approving noises all up and down the line, which now doubled back on itself twice and pretty much filled up the lobby. “About time,” someone said, and someone else said, “That Sullivan, always happy to take your money.”

  The manager heard both comments and looked up with a grin. “You bet I am, Dempsey. Hand it over.” He removed the NEXT TELLER, PLEASE sign and opened for business.

  Kate’s teller became free and Kate moved up to the counter. “How may I—” She looked up. “Hey! Kate! Kate Shu—”

  Before she could call Kate by name Kate held up a hand, forestalling her. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Hey, Alice.”

  “I didn’t know you were in town!” The teller’s voice dropped instinctively to match Kate’s own.

  “Here I am,” Kate said, trying to smile. She seemed to have lost all social skills, not that she’d ever had that many in the first place, so she said baldly, “I need to talk to you about something. Ask a favor, maybe.”

  “Oh? Sure, whatever, but—” Alice looked at the line. “Can you maybe wait until closing time?”

  “Sure.”

  Alice brightened. “Good, great. Grab a seat over there in front of the manager’s desk. We close in half an hour, but we have to take care of the people in line first.”

  “Not a problem.” She began to turn away, paused. “Alice?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is there a pay phone around here somewhere?”

  “Sure, there’s one on the wall outside.”

  “Thanks.”

  “May I help the next customer, please?” Alice said, raising her voice.

  Kate wal
ked out the door and found the phone. It was unoccupied. She stared at it from a distance of ten feet, thinking.

  Telephones wired into individual homes had still not made it into Niniltna, but the snake had slithered into the garden by way of the cell phone. Everybody had one now; George Perry, Bernie Koslowski, Auntie Vi, Billy Mike. His son, Dandy, had been first to sign up for a cell phone, and given his overactive social life it could be argued that he stood in more need of one than anyone else in the Park, but even Bobby and Dinah had one—Bobby, for god’s sake, who was a ham radio operator and pirated his own radio station every night, who was more in touch with the outside world than any ten Park rats Kate knew.

  “You gonna stare at that thing all day or you gonna make a call?”

  Kate jumped and looked around to see a whiskery fisher with red-veined eyes standing next to her. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you were standing there.”

  “So you gonna make a call?”

  “You go first,” she said cravenly.

  He shrugged and walked forward to insert a quarter and dial a number. “Hi honey, it’s me. I’m on my way. You want anything from the store?”

  If she called Auntie Vi, she might get tears. If she called Bernie, the whole bar would be in on it. If she called George, he would insist on knowing where she was, which meant so would everyone else.

  If she called Bobby, it was entirely possible her eardrums would not survive the experience.

  The fisher hung up and looked at her. “Tough one, huh?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled, and his broad, tired face was suddenly lit from behind with a disinterested kindness. “Just call and get it over with,” he advised. “It’s never as bad as you think it’s going to be.”

  He walked away with a friendly wave.

  She swallowed hard and fished a quarter from her pocket. Bobby picked up on the first ring. “Yeah?”

  At the sound of his impatient voice barking out that single syllable, unaccustomed tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them back.

  “Who the hell is this?” Bobby said.

  She tried to say hello, failed.

  But he knew. “Kate?” His voice sharpened. “Kate, is that you?”

  Kate heard Dinah’s voice in the background. “Is it Kate? Bobby, is it Kate?”

  “Shut up, woman, I’m trying to listen here! Kate, is that you? Goddamn you, answer me!”

  “It’s me,” she whispered finally.

  “It’s about goddamn time!” he shouted so loudly that she winced and held the receiver away from her ear. “Where the hell are you? Are you all right? Say something, goddamn it!”

  “I will if you’ll shut up,” she said, gaining voice.

  “Where the hell have you been? We’ve all been scared shitless! You couldn’t pick up the phone before this, you couldn’t have set some minds at rest? Dinah’s been worried sick! I swear I’ll kill you when you get back, Shugak!”

  “Now there’s a great incentive for me to get on the next plane,” she said wryly, and surprised herself.

  “Yeah, whatever, just get your ass back so I can start. It’s gonna be long, Shugak, and it’s gonna be painful, and I plan on just purely enjoying the hell out of myself! Now when the hell are you coming home?”

  “Not yet, Bobby,” she said.

  “When, goddamn it? Give me a time, a day! Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? It’s your ass all over again if it’s next year! When?”

  “Sometime,” she said, unable to say anything else. “I just called to let you know I’m all right. I am, Bobby. Honest. Tell Auntie Vi, okay?”

  “Kate!”

  “And George, and Old Sam, and Bernie. Tell them all I’m okay. I’ve got a job, a place to stay. Tell Auntie Vi I’m eating. I’m okay,” she repeated, clinging to the belief that it was so.

  “Kate, don’t—”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Don’t hang up, goddamn you, Shugak, don’t—”

  She replaced the receiver and leaned her head against it for a moment, eyes closed. The anxiety and the concern in his voice nearly undid her. She was finding it hard to breathe, and almost regretted making the call. She heard again the distress underlying Bobby’s bellow, and could not. Jim had been right, she should have called before now.

  The thought of Jim lying in a hospital bed down the street steadied her, gave her back her sense of purpose and helped her regain her composure. She went back inside the bank, found a seat and read a six-month-old issue of Money magazine while the line grew shorter. Money told her to cut up all her credit cards. Money told her to start moving her stock portfolio from foreign to domestic holdings, warned against overinvesting in Internet stocks, and suggested some companies she might consider. Money told her to start a SEP, a self-employment retirement plan, something every self-employed person should have. Kate wondered if the two thousand and change left over from last year’s fishing season was still in the Darigold one-pound butter can on the kitchen table of her cabin. Her Baird Air paychecks were accumulating in a stained manila envelope in a daypack under her bunk out at the airport. She probably should have brought them in and opened an account in Alice’s bank. She was sure Money magazine would have said so.

  Promptly at five the manager locked the door to forestall any new customers, and by ten minutes after five he was escorting the last customers outside. He spotted Kate just as he was locking the door again. “Oh, I didn’t see you there.” His eye ran over her appreciatively. “Mike Sullivan. I’m the manager.”

  “I know, I heard. I’m a friend of Alice’s,” Kate said, avoiding giving her own name.

  “I’ll be right there, I’ve just got to balance my till,” Alice called.

  “Not a problem,” Sullivan said. He smiled at Kate. “Alice is our head teller. Very capable and reliable employee.”

  Kate nodded without replying, and after a moment Sullivan, disappointed at his inability to start up a conversation, went away.

  She wasn’t surprised to hear that Alice was a reliable employee. When they had attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks together, Alice had never been late for class, always had her homework done on time, always had her term papers finished by the due date, was always prepped and ready for every test. She should have been cordially hated by every classmate she had, but she wasn’t. She was too nice for that.

  She was a zaftig little brunette, even shorter than Kate, with a merry smile that nearly made her dark button eyes disappear in the round folds of her face, and a headlong manner of speech that made listeners want to breathe for her. She’d been trailed by a line of men that reached across campus from her first day there. She was merciless in dissecting their faults, and Kate remembered more than one night when the women of fourth-floor Lathrop dorm had gathered together to trash their latest boyfriends. Alice always had something to contribute, but it was always delivered with such rueful amusement and self-deprecation that even the men themselves, had they been present, could not have taken exception. Or not very much. Alice never hurt anyone’s feelings if she could help it, not on purpose, not even in absentia.

  There was a knock on the door and Kate looked around to see a man standing outside, nose pressed up against the glass and a hand shading his eyes.

  “Chris!” Sullivan said, sounding pleased, and went to the door to let him in. “I heard you were coming to give the Fourth of July speech. Great to see you!”

  “How are you, Mike?” Chris said, clasping Sullivan’s hand and grinning. It was was a wide grin, practiced, polished and produced for effect. It looked familiar to Kate, but she couldn’t place it or him. He wore a dark suit over a white shirt, and a bolo tie with a big ivory walrus nestled between the points of his collar.

  Mike murmured something, and the other man laughed and slapped him on the back. “Nothing to worry about, everything’s under control. We’ll be meeting with them in the next day or so. As soon as I get the confirmation from Dillon.”

  “Good to know.” The ba
nk manager looked over his shoulder. “Alice, would you close up for me?”

  She flashed her bright smile. “Sure, Mike, not a problem.”

  The two men went out. Kate waited as the rest of the tellers rectified their tills and departed and Alice went around checking the locks. “Let’s take a minute,” she said, plumping down in the chair across from Kate. “It’s great to see you. How long has it been? What are you doing in town?”

  One great thing about Alice—she never read the newspapers, and the local news on Bering’s only television station was erratic at best. The story had been eclipsed by one of the spasms over presidential misbehavior growing ever more common to the national media, and had never been broadcast nationally, which meant Alice could not have seen it on CNN, either. She would therefore probably know nothing about the events of the previous fall. Current affairs were not Alice’s forte.

  Kate could feel herself relaxing, and they spent ten minutes playing catch-up and do-you-remember before she got around to answering Alice’s last question. “I’m working out at the airport for Baird Air. Ground service.”

  Alice frowned. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear before. You’ve been here for a while?”

  “Since March.”

  Alice was hurt. “Why didn’t you come see me before?”

  Kate had known that question was coming since she had decided to contact Alice and she had no better answer for it now.

  Into the silence, Alice said, “Didn’t you know I was here?”

  Kate thought of lying and discarded the idea. “Yeah, the one time I had to come into town for supplies, I saw you working in the bank.”

  “Why didn’t you say hi? My folks would love to meet you. I told my mom all about Kate Shugak from Niniltna who almost flunked out first semester and then graduated with honors. She was impressed.”

  “Actually,” Kate said, “I’m working under another name.”

  Alice puzzled. “You aren’t here as Kate Shugak?”

  “No.”

  Alice’s eyes widened. “Oh wow, Kate! I heard a rumor you’d gone into business for yourself! Are you still being like a, what, a private eye? A detective?” She gave a little wriggle of pure pleasure. All was forgiven. “Are you, what do they call it? Undercover?” She sat forward on the edge of her seat, eyes wide and fixed on Kate’s face, determined not to miss a word.