Absolute Zero

by Chuck Logan

  For an ex-cop it was a no-brainer. “No way.”

  “Me either. But Hank believed people could change. He thought Jolene could change. So that was his lion-in-winter delusion—that he could help her change before she took him to the cleaners.”

  Broker rotated his coffee cup in his fingers. “So the accident up north just accelerated things.”

  Dorothy raised her eyebrows. “And tremendously upped the odds. Now she will reap a huge malpractice settlement. She won the lottery.”

  “You seem to have accepted all this?” Broker wondered.

  “He was guilty. He gave me a very generous divorce settlement. And, despite everything, I knew how unhappy he was. He wanted to be a writer, you see.”

  “I thought he was?”

  “War Wolf? My God, he did that as a joke. A satire,” she rolled her eyes. “The fact was, he just couldn’t tell a story that wasn’t totally encrusted in bullshit. Then this bizarre windfall of Hollywood money fell on him. He left me. Bought the river house, found a new group of friends, started drinking again, and went back to AA where he discovered Jolene. Don’t you see . . . “

  She leaned forward. “He couldn’t write a decent story so he bought one to live in. And now Jolene Smith—who never graduated high school, by the way—is writing the ending.”

  Broker looked Dorothy straight in the eye. “In the plane, coming out after the storm, he was raving. But he distinctly said to me, these exact words, ‘Tell Cliff Stovall to move the money.’ ”

  Dorothy shrugged. “I know Cliff’s wife. She told me Cliff was restructuring Hank’s finances off-limits to Jolene. She was already writing checks to Garf, the boyfriend.”

  Broker leaned forward. “But Stovall is dead in some weird scenario in the woods. The same week as Hank?”

  Dorothy apparently accepted Stovall’s death with equanimity. “Have you spent much time around drunks, Mr. Broker?”

  “No.” Only as much time as he had to. He’d gone through the treatment-therapy motions with some cops when they tanked. But no.

  “Do you subscribe to the disease theory of alcoholism?”

  Again he balked. And she finished for him.

  “No, of course, you’re old school. You might pay lip service to the fashionable babble but underneath you think it’s a moral weakness, don’t you?”

  “I think that if you’ve got a drinking problem and you don’t have good health insurance to pay for inpatient treatment you’re shit out of luck in the enlightened state of Minnesota.”

  “But is it a moral weakness?”

  “Yeah,” Broker said. “If you’re sick all you can do is get well. If you’re bad you can redeem yourself and be good.”

  Dorothy laughed. “You and Hank would have gotten along just fine. But whether you believe it’s a disease or a stigma, in the end, it kills people in very ugly ways. Hank, Cliff, and Jolene Smith met in an AA group. They were drunks. You know what they tell alcoholics in treatment? They tell them that one out of three will make it clean and sober. One will struggle back and forth between relapse and recovery. And one will die a pretty horrible death. And that’s exactly what Cliff Stovall did.”

  Broker nodded. It was a familiar description. “The guy on either side is going to get it.”

  Dorothy raised her cup in a salute and said, “Well, Mr. Broker; it certainly looks like Jolene Smith was the guy in the middle.” After a moment, she sniffed, “Probably not the first time she was in between two men with her ass and her mouth on the same axis.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Broker drove east on I-94 and tried to see Jolene as a lush who was one drink away from insanity and death. Dorothy was right; he didn’t have a lot of insight into conditions like chronic drinking. He’d been one of life’s shock troops. He’d met problems fast, in your face, on the street. He knew how to cuff them and collar them; how to stop the bleeding, clear the airway, and treat for shock. Other people toiled over the long haul, behind closed doors, to mend the collateral human damage.

  Dorothy’s barbed comment about men who marry younger women still quivered—right next to J.T.’s Peter Pan Principle remark—and he found himself wondering what happened to old shock troops.

  He turned off the freeway, drove aimlessly for a few minutes, and wound up on a desolate country road. The steering wheel jerked and the Jeep bounced around like a steel tray full of rocks, and the rusty suspension found every bump and pothole in the stiff gravel road, and each jolt was a shot of gravity reminding him that—although he’d lived an interesting life—right now he was on his way to turning into a statistic. He was joining the forty-five percent of American couples whose marriages would end in divorce.

  Broker ran head-on into Doubt on a lonely country road between two chilly, whispering cornfields.

  He couldn’t make the pieces fit for Sommer. Was he on a tangent, trying to relive an exciting part of his life?

  So maybe it was time to play the cards in his hand, which did not include a wife and a child or any particular detective brilliance. He’d chop some wood and stack it neatly. He’d look at Sommer one last time and make his gesture and bid farewell. He’d go home and wait for the phone to ring.

  There was Amy. Well, she had to live with it. There would be no closure on Sommer; there’d always be a place that hurt when you touched it. Like a dead child.

  Onward.

  Broker drove east toward the only landmark he could see, the tall NSP smokestack south of Stillwater, and found his way back to the main roads.

  After getting his directions straight, he pulled up into Sommer’s drive and parked the Jeep next to the Green Chevy van. Then Earl Garf stepped out on the porch wearing a big smirk and baggy skater pants, and all Broker’s good intentions went to hell, because if ever there was a wrong guy in the picture it was Garf. Look at him, so pretty and immortal.

  Broker got out of the Jeep and stalked up the steps.

  “Hey,” Garf grinned. “It’s the Tin Woodsman. How you doing?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Broker asked in a level voice, in no mood to be trifled with by assholes. Even assholes who went about 220 and lifted weights.

  “The Wizard of Oz, you know. It’s a little joke. You came to chop some wood, right.” Without waiting for a reply Garf sauntered down the steps and inspected the Cherokee. “Wow, what’d you do? Drive this through a rust storm?” Genial contempt caked Garf’s voice as thick as the gunk he wore in his hair, and Broker felt his shoulders loosen and drop slightly and his hands started to get hot and his fingers flexed open and closed.

  Reacting to Broker’s body language, Garf raised his hands in a mollifying gesture. “Hey, take it easy. Jolene and I really appreciate what you’re doing.” Smoothly Garf inserted two fingers in his jeans pocket and withdrew another of his hundred-dollar bills. “For your trouble, man.”

  Broker didn’t think. He reacted and snatched the bill and deftly stuffed it down the neck of Garf’s funky Calvin Klein sweatshirt. “Go ride your bike. Mug an old lady.”

  Garf’s smile crumbled and was replaced with a reluctant resolve as he shook his head and said, “I’m opposed to beating up old guys on principle, but . . .” He moved into a stance. “Just so you know. I’ve got a black belt.”

  Broker nodded. “Uh-huh. I heard of that. It’s for people who never learn to fight growing up.” A flourish of righteous anticipation swelled his chest and chased away the blues. Here, at least, was something he could understand: putting the hurt on this young asshole.

  “Earl.” Jolene’s voice shaped the name so it sounded like “bad dog.” She appeared in the doorway wearing jeans, a denim jacket, a light gray turtleneck tucked in, and scuffed leather shoes. No wrinkles or bulges showed anywhere unless they occurred naturally in material.

  “This guy . . .” Garf started to say.

  “Earl. Go inside and wipe Hank’s chin.”

  Garf grinned tightly. “Some other time, maybe.” He made an accommodating gesture,
skipped up the steps, and went past Jolene into the house. She closed the door and joined Broker in the drive.

  “He has a good side,” she said. “But you kind of have to lead him to it.”

  Broker said nothing and they observed his silence carefully. And he knew that she knew that a lot of guys would have left by this point.

  It was just nippy enough to encourage them to keep moving, so, after about thirty seconds of looking each other over, they walked around to the back of the garage. She took the lead. Broker approved of the way her jeans were not too tight, more like a comfortable second skin with a pair of leather work gloves tucked in the wallet pocket.

  Around in back, a tray sat in the empty wood lean-to built under the eaves of the garage. It held a fat thermos, two cups, a creamer, sugar, and two spoons. She poured a cup. Broker shook his head when she pointed to the cream and sugar.

  It was the kind of very good coffee that made you want to stay in her kitchen forever. So he sipped and surveyed the pile of wood. The rounds were uniformly cut from straight trunks. “This is really clean oak,” he said. “You found a good supplier.”

  “Hank cut it on his friend’s land.” She paused. “Late friend. I guess he committed suicide, but the cops didn’t call it that. The accountant. I told you, remember?”

  “I’m sorry,” Broker said, who definitely remembered. He was tempted to ask about Stovall but that would be out of character. Instinctively, he was back playing a role. He’d wait.

  “It’s pretty gruesome all around. See, Hank had two sets of friends: his old screwed-up AA buddies and his new poker-party friends who he goes on his extreme vacations with, mainly Allen and Milt. Cliff, the dead guy, was from the AA group.” Then she added, deliberately, eyes steady, “I met Hank in that group. He used to say AA was a spiritual journey.”

  Broker cocked his head at her language.

  She smiled briefly. “He’d say the difference between religious people and spiritual people is religious people are afraid of going to hell. Spiritual people have already been there and meet on the road back.”

  Broker nodded. “So you’re in the program?”

  “I don’t go to meetings anymore.”

  “Sounds like it wasn’t a real lucky group you were in,” Broker said.

  “I hear you. But, the fact is, I’ve been sober for fourteen months.”

  “It must be working, you look healthy; tired but healthy,” Broker said.

  She smiled bleakly and said, “Considering.” She put her coffee cup back on the tray and pulled on her work gloves. “I’ll stack.”

  It was turning into a nice afternoon. A residue of frost glistened on Broker’s boots and there was just a faint ghost of condensed moisture trailing off his breath. He pulled on his gloves, picked up a round, set it upright on the block, and hefted the maul.

  Jolene watched Broker work and saw how he was a natural, easing into a steady rhythm; each swing of the maul originating from his planted feet, bent knees, whipping up through his hips, and smoothly arcing into his arms. Whack. The oak split and flew apart. He set the halves up and gave them another lick, making each round into four pieces of kindling. When he positioned a new log, she picked up the split pieces and took them to the shed.

  After five minutes he striped off his jacket and she got a better picture of how he moved. He was like Hank—his body didn’t telegraph his age. He could be anywhere in his forties.

  And she thought how a lot of men self-consciously attacked work, among other things, with a jerky, almost angry, intensity; what Hank had jokingly called the need for man to demonstrate his mastery over nature. Broker had progressed beyond the amateur need to audition for her benefit. Or his own.

  He was just a little too good to be true, with his killer Wolfman Jack eyebrows.

  Given her experience, he should therefore be rejected out of hand as suspect. But this morning she had dressed carefully, choosing a practical look, just the simple jeans and shirt. She had caught herself starting to reach for a tube of lipstick and stayed her hand. Cosmetics were not appropriate right now, and she decided they were not necessary for Broker. In fact, she figured the opposite.

  And she had allowed her heart one skip against her rib cage when she saw him hose down Earl with wolf pee. But she’d tucked her heart back in its Valentine envelope and coolly appraised Broker. And she was thinking how maybe Earl had run into someone out of his league, someone who was quietly and competently dangerous. Clearly Broker didn’t get that way of moving on people in a gym.

  So why did he come back?

  Maybe, like Allen, he was lonely and had found a woman in a vulnerable situation. No. This was not simple boy-girl. So maybe, like Earl, he smelled the pot of gold at the end of Hank’s tragedy. If so, he was very good at concealing his intentions. Or maybe he was just performing a samaritan courtesy, putting up a winter’s wood.

  What intrigued her was that she couldn’t tell.

  And she sensed a hint of melancholy. The first thing she’d noticed yesterday was his newly naked ring finger; the dent of the missing wedding band still pressed into his skin. So that was the loose string she’d pull on when the time was right.

  So far he was looking good at chopping wood. She wondered how he’d be at trimming Earl down to size.

  Intuition told her Broker could accomplish that task. But the roots of her intuition were still soggy with booze. She had to be careful. And even if he could chase Earl off, at what price? So she’d see if Broker could be useful. So no double messages. No games. She’d just see if there was a next step.

  So she stooped, picked up, carried, and stacked the kindling. She ignored the pain in her arms and lower back. She assumed he was like Hank and put a premium on the ability to perform manual labor with a minimum of complaint. A quality that was fast departing from the realm of TV babies and PC nerds.

  When half the shed was filled, Jolene straightened up, removed her gloves, and patted at a flush of sweat on her forehead. Broker put down the maul and said, “You’ll feel it tomorrow, using muscles in a new way.”

  She smiled and arched her back. “Coffee break. It’s in my union contract,” she joked. He nodded, removed his gloves, and reached for a cigar as she poured coffee into two cups.

  “You mind?” he asked, holding up the cigar.

  She responded spontaneously from the brief happy life she’d known before her dad left when she was seven. “Actually, I kind of like cigar smoke. It reminds me of my dad and the old Met Stadium. When I was a little kid we’d go see the Twins. It smelled like beer, peanuts, and cigar smoke.”

  Broker smiled, approving of the remark.

  They sat side by side in the unfilled half of the woodshed. She had taken pains to make sure the other half was stacked with industrial precision. Jolene took two sips of her coffee and made her move.

  She touched his left hand, the ring finger. “Kind of shouts,” she said.

  He held the hand up, fingers out, inspected it, then let it fall into a fist. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought of putting a Band-Aid over it.”

  Jolene raised her eyebrows eloquently, mocking, Does it hurt that much?

  He waved off her concern, “I married a younger woman,” he said.

  “A lot of that’s going around.”

  “There’s risks.”

  “Yeah. Younger men,” she said.

  He nodded. “In my case, about twelve of them.”

  That stopped her and it was his turn to grin. “She’s in the army, the only woman in a squad of guys.”

  “Oh.” Jolene didn’t see that coming.

  And their eyes tangled up in that specific way when two people know they are both thinking the exact same thing about losing a person. About being lonely.

  He held up his hand. “You know all about me. I don’t know anything about you,” he said.

  And she said, “All I know about you is that you used to wear a ring on that finger and it’s not there anymore.”

  He poured
out the dregs of his coffee, stood up, pulled on his, gloves, and nodded toward the woodpile. “Let’s finish this,” he said.

  “And then?” she asked.

  He looked into her eyes and they shared another quiet moment that began to throb in her temples like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And she thought, this guy is trouble and you have enough trouble, but she didn’t turn the music off.

  And after a Hallelujah Chorus worth of eye-fucking, he said, “And then we’ll see if you need any more help around here.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Hank toured hells he had known—Detroit got him ready for the hill, in the hammer shop at Huron Forge and Machine. Twelve drop hammers blowing out your eardrums in an acre of fiery steel forgings. The men and machines all hot, loud, dangerous, dirty, and sharp.

  Mainly he thought Sartre was right in No Exit; hell was just other people, especially if they were Jolene, Allen, and Earl Garf.

  Right now hell was Wisconsin, which was all he could see out his studio windows, and the Wisconsin river bluffs looked like a mass grave of dead technicolor porcupines.

  And then, along came Garfinkle. The made-up man who hated his name and his past and was trying to reinvent himself as Brad Pitt from The Fight Club or Keneau Reeves from The Matrix.

  He walked up to the bed and greeted Hank with the nickname he thought was so funny: “So how’s the Big Lebowski today?”

  All Earl’s wit came from the movies, and Hank figured that’s what Earl and his whole slacker generation had instead of experiences. But he had not seen The Big Lebowski, so he was at a loss. It was the least of his problems.

  “Know what?” Earl said. “Your old lady has another suitor. First Doctor Allen and now the canoe guy from up north . . .”

  The canoe guy.

  Broker’s back.

  “. . . he’s out there in back of the garage knocking the wood in little pieces. I think he’s practicing up to knock a piece off of Jolene. Just like Allen is. But, for my money, I think the sleeper candidate has the inside track. When I took her to Milt’s office yesterday, Milt kissed her hand. It was very suave.”