by Chuck Logan
“No. I spent most of the time in Education, was an assistant in the Vo Tech Shop.”
“Yeah, I spent some time down in the basement doing slave labor for MinnCor; built those goddamn hay wagons, some docks for the DNR. So you never met him, huh?”
“Just saw him at a distance, in the chow hall.”
Shank cut him with a hard look. “As far as you’re concerned, Danny’s watching you right now through my eyes. You with me?”
“Yeah, hell.” Gator shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever it takes.”
“You help me now, it’ll pay off later. But right now, first things first.” Shank crossed to the alcove, reached in his jacket, took out an envelope, and returned to the desk. He removed a stack of color photographs and spread them on the desk. “Your move,” he said to Gator.
Gator studied the pictures. Bunch of bikers hamming it up for the camera, including a younger Danny Turrie and Sheryl showing lots of tanned skin and fucked-up eyes. His index finger smacked down on the lean guy with the shovel. “Broker,” he said.
“You sure? The picture is pretty old,” Shank said.
“That’s him. I saw him close as you and me are standing, a couple days ago. That’s him. Those eyebrows…”
“Okay. This kind of thing, you gotta be sure. So, where is he?”
“In a lake cabin near town, about twelve miles south.”
“What’s it like, the layout?”
“Secluded, thick woods. There’s houses two hundred yards on either side, but hidden away. County Twelve runs right in front of the place, but people up here notice strange cars. This time of year, they’ll come out and look just to see who’s driving by. I’d go in through the woods, there’s a ski trail. Be real quiet, with the snow.” After a moment, he added, “Lake ain’t iced over. I suppose you could go in by boat, except I don’t have one.”
Shank reached to the fax machine on the desk, peeled off a sheet of paper from the tray, took a pen from the desk blotter, and handed it to Gator. “Draw it-the lake, the road, the trail, and whatever you know about the house.”
Gator stared at the sheet of blank paper like it was an entrance exam. Balked and said, “We should go in the house. I got a county map with the ski trail to scale.”
Shank nodded, retrieved his coat, and picked up his bag. “Let’s go.”
A few minutes later they were in the farmhouse, standing around the kitchen table, on which Gator had spread out the county map over the half-done puzzle. Shank summoned Sheryl, who stood off to the side, sipping a cup of tea. “C’mon, you’re part of this.”
Swiftly, Gator marked significant reference points; an X marked his house, a second X located Broker’s. He circled the trailhead turnoff of County 12, indicated the relevant portion of ski trail with arrows between the trailhead and Broker’s cabin. Then Gator stepped back and stood next to Sheryl, waiting while Shank leaned forward on his locked arms, like a general pondering over a tactical problem. Just then the kitten made an appearance, hopping lightly up on a chair, then onto the table.
“Fuckin’ cat,” Gator muttered, coming forward.
Shank slid a hand under the kitten, expertly palming it over and cradling it belly up along his forearm. “It’s okay. I like cats. Only animals I get along with.” He gently eased the cat back on the chair and watched it jump to the floor and pad into the next room. Then he looked back to the map. “Cell phones work up here?” he asked.
“Yeah. They built a couple towers for the summer people,” Gator said.
“Okay.” Shank reached into his bag and took out three cell phones, handed one each to Gator and Sheryl, kept one for himself. “These are cold-we lifted them from people who are on vacation. Let’s get our numbers straight.”
They turned on the phones. The displays showed normal service. Gator snatched a piece of paper and pen off the counter and made a list-Shank’s number, his number, Sheryl’s number. Then he copied it three times, folded the sheet, tore it in thirds, and handed out the individual lists.
“Now,” Shank said, “we do a dry run. Check the travel time going in on the trail, make sure the cell phones work. Make sure he’s there. Then we go back for real. You with me?”
Gator chewed his lip, unable to disguise the pained expression on his face.
“What is it? C’mon,” Shank asked.
“Well, the whole reason this happened, how I got the warrant is-Broker’s kid had a fight at school with my brother-in-law Jimmy’s kid. Then Broker and Jimmy got into it in front of the school. And the sheriff saw it. My sister asked me to kinda fuck with him, like payback. That’s how I wound up in his house and found the warrant. So if something happens to Broker, one of the first people they’ll look at is Jimmy and probably me.”
“And?”
“Jimmy’s no problem, he’s on the road all day picking up routes. But maybe I should be someplace public, like be seen having dinner in town, you know.”
Shank thought about it. “Makes sense. But you go in with me on the trial run, make sure I can find my way in and out. Make sure Sheryl can find the house when I call her to come pick me up.”
“Ah, if somebody sees your car-” Gator said.
“It ain’t my car. It’s like the phones. Stolen. It belongs to a Carlos Izquierdo, who lives in Excelsior. He’s in Ireland selling Snap-On tools. We took his car from long-term parking at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. We got this gal who works at a travel agency, gives us leads on people who are out of town.”
“Ah,” Gator said.
“And I don’t give a fuck if someone remembers seeing the car. I just don’t want anybody stopping the car and seeing me. Because if this goes off on schedule, I’ll be driving all night back to the Cities. Tomorrow morning when the sun comes up, that Nissan will be parked on University Avenue, in St. Paul, in front of the fuckin’ State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. With Broker smelling up the trunk.” The smooth demeanor changed as Shank smiled, curling his upper lip, showing his prominent canine teeth. “Gonna shoot the fucker in the mouth. What we do with snitches.”
“What about-” Sheryl started to say.
“You?” Shank interrupted. “I thought of that. You can stay here, or I can drop you in a town farther south, where you can rent some wheels. It ain’t your job to drive back with me.”
“That’s cool, but what about, ah…the guy’s got a wife and kid,” Sheryl said.
Seeing the strangled expression on Gator’s face when Sheryl said that, Shank raised a calming hand and said patiently, “This ain’t the time to be sentimental, Sheryl. What about the wife and kid Jojo never had-you think of that?”
“You got a point,” Sheryl said quickly.
“Any more questions?” Shank asked. “No? Then I got one.” He reached in his bag, withdrew a stumpy dense SIG-Sauer nine, and cradled it in his palm. “Where do snitches get it?”
“In the mouth,” Gator said, like he was reciting an oath.
“Good,” Shank said. “Remember that, and we’ll do just fine.”
As Gator changed into his long underwear and winter camos on the mud porch, Sheryl stood next to him, nervously smoking a Merit. “Probably shouldn’t a said that about the wife and kid,” she said.
“No shit. This guy’s got his own ideas.”
“I hear you,” Sheryl said between puffs.
Gator sat on a stool and pulled on his boots. When he’d laced them, he stood up, picked his cell phone off the workbench, selected Cassie’s number, and pushed send. When she answered, he said, “It’s me. Yeah. Look, where’s Jimmy today? Good, okay, he’s got the long route south of town. Then he’s back at the garage? How late? Is he there alone? Good. Johnny’s with him, washing down the trucks. No, ah, maybe I’ll drop by and see him at the garage, later tonight.” Then his forehead bunched. “Yeah, right. We’ll talk about that later, okay? Right now I’m busy. No. Not now. We’ll talk tonight.” He ended the call, shook his head.
“What?” Sheryl asked.
“No
thing. My fuckin’ sister.” He waved her off and went into the kitchen. Shank had changed into new Rocky boots, black Gore-Tex pants, a red parka, and red knit cap. Gator clicked his teeth together. “You know, we’ll have light the next couple of hours. That red’s gonna stand out against the snow cover big-time.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah.” Gator went back on the mud porch and returned with a winter camo hunting smock. “Pull that over the parka.” He tossed a black ski mask. “And this’ll be handy, hide your face.”
Shank slipped on the smock, bunched the mask on his head, and said, “Better?”
“Much,” Gator said.
Shank handed Sheryl his car keys. “Get the car out. You’re gonna be driving tonight.”
When she’d left, Gator said, “I was wondering, should I bring something?”
“Like what?” Shank asked.
“Like a gun, you know-usually carry a pistol in the woods.”
Shank grinned. “Wanna get your cherry busted, huh? Sure.”
For the first time Gator felt a genuine flash of resentment at this smooth city fucker who had so much power over him, with his expensive pussy winter gear and stolen Jap car-going into the woods dressed like a Christmas tree to kill a guy. He opened the kitchen utility drawer and removed the Luger.
“Shit, is that a real one, like World War II German?” Shank asked, a gleam coming into his pale eyes.
“Yep, my dad brought it back from Europe,” Gator said, stuffing the pistol into his fanny pack, thinking, Fuckin’ bikers all go for that Nazi shit like little kids. “See these markings on the grip? That’s SS.”
“Like to look that over. But another time. Let’s go,” Shank said.
Chapter Forty-four
Sheryl Mott sat in the idling Nissan and watched Gator and Shank march off down the trail, past this sign of a stick figure on cross-country skis. Wearing those white-and-black patterned outfits. Kinda blending in with the scenery and blowing snow. So here she was. Sitting in a stolen vehicle. The guy walking alongside her boyfriend was a murderer on his way to work.
She looked again and they were gone, swallowed up in white.
Okay, they’d crept down the road to the green house with the tin roof and clocked it on the odometer-1.6 miles from the trail head. Hank made her write the number of the sign in the yard in ballpoint on her palm; the fire number, 629.
She cracked the windows, lit another Merit, and found herself thinking about the Las Vegas hooker’s observation that guys resembled their dicks. Shank, as near as she could remember, was white and bony, peeking out of a nest of wispy albino hair. And Gator, well, he had this sturdy handle. Get a good grip on him, and she felt she could move the world a little.
At least move a hundred pounds of ice. Fidgety, she extended her finger to the steamed windshield and traced “C10 H15 N” in the moisture, the chemical formula for methamphetamine…
Suddenly, like somebody had tapped the mute on a big remote, the wind stopped, the snow disappeared, and it was so quiet and still, she dialed the window all the way down. Leaned her head out, strained her ears to hear. How could pure silence be so…loud?
First she thought it was a radio playing, but the way the sound corkscrewed right down to the roots of the tiny hairs on the back of her neck told her, uh uh, that was fucking real, man. That was wild animals howling out there in the woods.
Ice. Snow. Trees everywhere, and now wolves. This place could use a few Burger King signs. She shivered and hugged herself, turned up the heater. Think about something else. Belize…
Didn’t work.
Shit, I hope we know what we’re doing…
“What happened?” Shank looked around. One minute there was snow like a burst featherbed. Then nothing.
“Lull,” Gator said. “Won’t last long.”
They trudged a few more steps, and Shank stopped again, head rotating around. “Hear that?”
“Yeah,” Gator kept walking. “Deer must be moving.”
“That ain’t deer.” Shank jogged to catch up.
Gator was starting to enjoy himself. The farther they got from a road, the more Shank, the heavy hitter, seemed to diminish in ferocity. Christ, they could see the lake through breaks in the trees. Houses.
“That ain’t deer,” Shank repeated.
“When a storm moves in, the deer do weird things. They can hunker down, or they can start moving. The deer move, the pack follows. Usually they stay farther north,” Gator explained like a guide on a nature walk.
“Yeah, the wolves,” Shank said. “Sheryl told me about that. They don’t attack people, right?”
“I read about this wolf in India. Some kids killed her cubs, and she went into this village and took forty kids, right out of the houses. They found this big pile of bones in the den. I don’t care what the tree huggers say. I wouldn’t want to be lying out in the woods bleeding, know what I mean.” Gator suddenly raised his hand. Stop. He pointed down the trail at a yellow No Trespassing sign. “We’re there.”
Shank checked his watch. “Not bad. Seventeen minutes.” He reached in his smock and took out his cell phone.
“Wait, let’s go in closer, so we can see the house,” Gator said. More cautious now, they followed the narrow connecting trail through the trees. Gator raised his hand again. “Hear that?”
“Yeah.” This clunky wood-on-metal sound.
“C’mon.” Gator lowered his voice and made a downward pushing motion with his palm. Time to go quiet. They moved forward in a crouch. The trees opened more, and they saw the source of the noise. A hundred yards away, a man wearing a brown jacket and a black cap was piling wood in the back of a green Toyota Tundra next to a garage. The garage was attached to a cabin, the siding painted green. It had a rusted tin roof and a deck wrapped around the back.
They scurried a few steps closer and hunkered next to a thick patch of low spruce. Shank dug in his pocket, brought out a small pair of Zeiss binoculars, and eased the snow-laded boughs aside. Lensed the guy.
“No shit, lookit,” he whispered. “It’s him. Right fuckin’ there.” He passed the binocs to Gator, who had a look and confirmed, “Yep, that’s him.”
“Right fuckin’ there, like low-hanging fruit,” Shank whispered. “It’d be easy, just walk up, say we’re lost or something. Whattaya say?”
Gator worried his lower lip between his lip. Not the plan. You hadda stick to the plan. “I ain’t supposed to be here when it-”
“Oh, shit, shit!” Shank moved up out of his crouch. The guy was getting in the truck, starting it. “He’s driving away. Sonofabitch.”
“Get down, be quiet, somebody could be in the house. What’s the time?” Gator said.
Shank pushed up his sleeve and checked his watch. “Almost two-thirty.”
“They only got the one truck. School’s out in an hour. Maybe earlier, with the storm moving in.” Gator thought about it, said, “He turned toward town, so he’s probably going to drop off that wood where he works, then pick up his kid.”
“How long?” Shank said.
“An hour, little longer.”
Then like a giant white mare rolling over above them, the wind squashed down on the trees and set them to rattling. The silence erupted into snowflakes.
Gator seized Shank’s shoulder and pointed with his other hand. “Check it out.”
A woman dressed in an oatmeal gray sweat suit appeared on the driveway beyond the house, walking toward the road. She tucked a red ponytail into her cap, paused to look up at the sky, then up and down the road. Then she pulled on gloves and started running. At the end of the drive, she turned right and ran down the road, in the same direction the truck had taken. Shank followed her with the binoculars.
“Bitch can run. She’s really moving,” he said, lowering the binocs. He turned to Gator. “Whattaya think?”
Gator looked up at the thickening snow. “This looks like the real thing. You up for hiking back to Sheryl, then coming back in whil
e she takes me home?”
Shank glanced back toward the trail in the woods, then at the house.
Gator said, “You could go in the house, be waiting for them.”
Shank shook his head. “Nah, too messy, people showing up piecemeal. I want them all together when I go in. But let’s go have a look at the house, want an idea of the floor plan, the doors.” He took out his cell, removed his glove, and made a call. When it connected, he said, “You hear me all right?”
“Yeah, it’s starting to snow like hell, what’s up?” Sheryl said.
“We’re going to check around a few minutes here, then Gator’s coming back to the car. You run him home and get right back. Call me the minute you get back.”
“How much time are we talking?” Sheryl said.
“Nobody’s home. We’re all waiting. Maybe an hour and a half, tops.”
“Okay,” Sheryl said.
Shank ended the call, stood up, took out his pistol, and said, “Okay, this is it. Once you take off, I won’t see you for a while. Then in a month or so, we’ll get together in the Cities and talk some business.”
“I’m for that,” Gator said.
“But first, let’s go have a quick look before the bitch gets back.” Gator rose to his feet and removed the Luger from his fanny pack. Then he pulled his ski mask down, covering his face. Shank grinned and did the same. Guns at the ready, they jogged toward the house.
Chapter Forty-five
Five minutes into her run, Nina was having doubts about being out in this weather. The wind doubled in velocity and tore through her cotton running suit and the flimsy silk-weight underlayer. The first tiny ice worms were forming in her eyebrow sweat. She could do ten miles in this stuff if she had to. Do it easily. But this was not a survival endurance test. She needed to unkink after cleaning the goddamn bathroom.
Then, as if she needed more convincing this was not a good idea, she slightly turned her right ankle on a rock under the snow. She slowed and tested her weight. Not that bad, not even a strain. But she’d make it worse if she continued.