Absolute Zero (16 page)

For five years J.T. had been putting his farm together; like most of the cops close to fifty in St. Paul, he took the early retirement. He’d dropped the twenty pounds he’d gained when he quit the cigarettes and his face had lost that puffy desk-bloat. Some men age into roundness. J.T. and Broker shared a genetic predisposition toward edges. And farm work and fresh air were putting the taut angles back into J.T.’s Ethiopian cheekbones.

“Hmmmmm,” J.T. said, big hands on his hips, as Amy came around the Ford and waited to be introduced.

“J.T., this is Amy Skoda,” Broker said.

“Uh-huh,” J.T. said, appraising Amy.

“It’s not like that,” Broker said.

J.T. nodded. “Far be it from me to judge people,” though in fact J.T. believed in enforcing the rules with the ardor of an Old Testament Jeremiah. He grinned and tipped back the brim of his hat with more than a little theater. “Hell, I’d fuck around myself except my wife would beat me to death with a number-twelve Weber cast-iron skillet when I was sleeping.” He extended his hand. “J.T. Merryweather. Pleased to meet you.”

Amy took the handshake, looked around. “So what’s it like going from law enforcement to ostrich farmer?”

J.T. grinned slowly. “Comes naturally. I keep them in cages.” Straight-faced, he added, “Actually, my family was heavy into agriculture for quite a while in Georgia, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

“Gotcha,” Amy said.

Denise Merryweather walked out on the porch in just a blouse and jeans, hugging herself. She was a well-put-together woman over thirty and under fifty, who was successfully playing hide and seek with age. She had a width of Cherokee blood to her dark face, strong brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and a cross on a chain at her throat.

As a general proposition, she had never approved of Broker.

“Phil Broker,” she said in a noncommittal tone. “Will you and your friend be staying for a while?”

“Hi, Denise, this is Amy Skoda. Amy, this is Denise,” Broker said.

The two women met on the stairs and shook hands.

“It’s not like that,” Amy said. “We are, like, friends.”

“I’m glad,” Denise said. “Because we only have the one spare bedroom. Broker, you get the couch.”

An awkward silence followed Denise’s remark. Amy cocked her head at a distinctive rattling rebound sound from the barn and changed the subject.

“Hoops?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” said J.T. “I tore out the milking stanchions in the back basement of the barn, poured a new concrete floor, and put up a backboard for my daughter.”

“You did, huh?” Broker said.

“Okay. You helped.”

“Come on inside, honey,” Denise said. “Let these two men whine about getting old.” Denise motioned Amy into the house.

“We are getting old,” Broker said.

“I’ll never unhook a 38D triple-eyelet bra one-handed in under three seconds again, cruising in a ’57 Chevy, that’s for sure,” J.T. said.

“Why, Jarret True Merryweather, I didn’t know you could count past twenty.” Denise flared her eyes as she disappeared through the door with Amy. When the door was shut J.T. scrutinized Broker.

“So who’s the woman?” he asked.

“That thing up north, the guy who got brain dead in the Ely hospital . . . Hank Sommer,” Broker said.

“This guy,” said J.T. pointing at the Ford Expedition.

“Yeah,” Broker said. “She was the anesthetist.”

“You fucking her?”

“No, of course not.” Broker was careful not to sound too indignant.

“So what are you doing?” J.T. asked.

Broker chewed his lip, furrowed his brow. “The guy nailed up in the woods by Marine . . .”

“Uh-huh. I made some calls. Stovall, the accountant.”

“Stovall was Sommer’s accountant,” Broker said.

J.T. moved his hands back and forth trying to make invisible pieces fit. “Yeah, so?”

Broker debated whether to go further.

J.T. said, “Uh-huh. You’re not quite sure what you’re doing but . . .”

“I got this feeling about something,” Broker said.

“I recall a conversation that started this way in eighty-nine. Two hours later I got whacked with a machete.”

“It was the flat of a machete,” Broker protested.

“It was a machete. It broke the skin,” J.T. insisted, starting to hitch up his coat sleeve.

“Look,” Broker said. “I have to take this car back.”

“You need me to follow you, give you a ride?”

“Nah, I’ll hang out with Sommer’s wife for a while. She’ll give me a lift back here.”

J.T. thought for a moment, then squinted. “You’re holding out on me,” he said.

“A little,” Broker said. He turned and walked toward the big Ford.

The Buddhists say—
the mind is a monkey chasing its tail, suffering and desire going round and round. Hank had that monkey scampering inside his skull, treating his brain like a television remote. Pushing buttons. Throwing it down. Picking it up, chewing on it, drooling on it. Peeing on it. A goddamn electrical shitstorm of neurons and electrons blazed behind his eyes
.

Then, something clicked. The static cleared and the picture came on.

Came on big-time. Snap, crackle, and zap. Digital high res, fiber-optic, surround-sound. ON.

Lights, camera, action. And what a picture. Almost like his perception and intelligence have become more acute in feverish overload. Burning up the wires. You and me, Jerry Lee.

Great balls of fire.

And he sees and hears.

His buddy, Allen Falken. Dead-Eye Doc himself.

A whole corridor of emptiness now filled up with detailed memory. The last face he saw before the icy black ink pumped out of his heart and down-flooded him inside until only his mind survived, hooked to the aqua lung of his heart and lungs and cast him into inner darkness to float in the nonspecific blackness inside his skin.

Last face. First face.

Allen. Smooth, Teutonic Allen, every hair in place and looking like a young, fit Billy Graham.

Handsome but not too handsome. Vain but in moderation.

There was some split screen going on, some interior backfill of images, the moraine of his life, the clutter of his personal album. But memory insisted on being very vivid, painfully boosting the resolution.

And it was like one of those Yogi Berra Zen pronouncements that illuminate a universe of everyday pain and comedy and hopes and dreams. The “This Is It” of your life.

Allen, sitting there, talking in his best bedside manner.

There was a sensation like when the roller coaster slows at the end of the ride, and Hank felt the loopy circuit of his eyes start to steady down, then stop. Hank rotated his eyes consciously, blinked consciously. Allen, absorbed in his casual soliloquy, missed it.

Missed it because Allen, good ole cautious, quiet Casper Milquetoast Allen, was saying that he finally took a chance.

No one’s looking. The syringe. Succinylcholine. A paralytic. Then turn off the monitor.

I see. At first it’s a mistake. Then it’s more like an accident on purpose. Uh-huh. Then it’s deliberate.

The nurse and the anesthetist take the blame.

The linx.

Blond woman. Young. Sharp and a little sassy. Liked her.

Allen. Fucker. Sitting on the bed. Patting my knee.

First you saved my life, then as an afterthought you killed me. I see. The first covers the tracks of the second.

Thought it would kill me. That’s the antiseptic thinking of the surgeon. But it’s hard to kill a man, Allen. Only sure way is to cut off his head.

Allen babbling on. Allen trying to come to terms with homicide. Didn’t mean to. Did. Didn’t mean to. Did.

She loves me. She loves me not.

Am I getting this right? And now the way is clear for Allen to court Jolene?

Allen and Jolene?

Think back to what he said. Okay. Jolene’s having lunch with Milt.

Now Milt must have a really big case.

Really big.

And Hank sees what Allen left out.

Whoever winds up with Jolene is going to get a lot of money.

It was information; and like Yogi said, it’s déjà vu all over again. The old wager he had with Allen and Milt. Is the information of your life a cage that imprisons you or raw material for change. Nature or nurture.

Can I take this cockney wretch and turn her into a lady.

My Fair Lady.

In a tight spot, Hank. Well, no shit. You have to make the right move.

It’s a gift.

Maybe, just maybe, you get one last fight.

As sneakily as he could manage it, Hank eyeballed the casual, smug Allen, let his demented eyes rest on him for one burning second.

I’m gonna come back from the teeter-totter and add you to my body count. I’m gonna find a way.

Okay. Can’t quit.

Gotta.

Go.

All the way.

But for now, he has to keep his eyes moving in the blinky, loopy pattern. Even though all the voltage in his mind screams to focus and use his eyes to let the outside world know he is in here. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done.

But if he focuses and winks and blinks consciously, then Allen will know he’s alert. And Allen has just confessed to him. Allen will turn him the rest of the way off.

Hank makes his only move.

He rolls his eyes.

Keep the eyes moving. Blinking randomly. Drool. Run laps. Let Herr Doctor Falken think you’re the vegetable. His creation.

Gonna.

Come.

Back.

Motherfucker
.

Broker had always taken
back roads and harvest fields for granted, but now he saw that Washington County was running out of them fast. Not more than two miles from J.T.’s place the lumber skeletons of new houses haunted the farmland.

That was global warming for you. The Minnesota winters used to keep the population down and the riffraff out.

Getting closer to the river, he referred to Jolene’s directions, found the turnoff, and took it to a left turn. “It’s a dead end,” Jolene had explained without irony on the phone. The last leg of road was semiprivate and the lots were three hundred feet deep, butting on the river. Broker drove past two fenced tennis courts and a putting green, and came to the house number on the mailbox.

Sommer lived in his own small woods of mature white pines. As Broker came down the shadowed, twisting drive he estimated some of the trees were two feet in diameter. Hundreds of years old.

He approved of the way the sprawling cedar home blended into the trees and the river bluff, camouflaged in thick beds of hosta, ferns, and low evergreens. Seams of moss patterned the cobble paths through the shade garden.

A green van and a silver-gray sedan were parked in front of the three-car garage. Broker parked, got out, went to the door, and rang the bell.

Almost immediately, Earl Garf opened the door—like he’d been waiting and had watched him arrive. Garf was off his hygiene today, disheveled in a studied, expensive way, his hair thick with mousse and his beard stylishly grown out. He wore baggy jeans, a loose T-shirt, and bulky cross-trainers.

“Mr. Broker,” Garf said in a crisp parody of politeness. “Jolene’s expecting you, she’s in the kitchen. This way.” Courteously, Garf showed him through the hall into a long living room. This was a different Garf from the man who’d stood beaming in the snow outside Ely Miner Hospital. This was Garf playing butler with an actor’s conceit.

Sommer’s house still smelled of paint and sawdust—not quite lived-in. His taste ran to dark wood and shade inside, just like outside. Then they were in the brighter kitchen. Garf, the mannered joker, announced, “Mr. Broker is here.” Then he silently withdrew.

Broker was surprised to see Allen Falken sitting at the table with Jolene, hunched forward, talking over blue coffee mugs.

“Broker, hey,” said Allen, rising from the table. Allen looked more relaxed than Broker remembered, dressed in an open-collar beige oxford shirt and jeans. Jolene’s face was pale and blurred with strain. The thick Mediterranean hair was gone—with extreme prejudice. Christ, she looked like the French Resistance had cut it. She wore a gray dress, nylons, and she had kicked off a pair of low heels.

Allen stepped forward, and he and Broker shook hands warmly. “So how you been keeping yourself?” Allen asked, finding just the right tone of restrained familiarity. A more robust Allen, more centered.

“I’ve been all right,” Broker said. He placed the car keys on the table.

Jolene also got up and raised her hands, and when Broker extended his, she took it in both of hers. Her hands were unexpectedly soft, surface-cool melting to very warm in his palm and covering the back of his hand.

“Thank you so much,” she said.

“No problem,” Broker said. She smelled damp with nerves and very serious, like lilies, stained glass, organ music, and caskets in a church. She had pronounced lavender circles of fatigue and worry under her eyes. On her they looked good. A faint flush crept up his neck and into cheeks. Must be hot in here, he thought.

“Did you have any trouble finding the place?” she asked.

“Perfect, ah, the directions were . . . fine.”

“We were having some coffee,” Jolene said.

Broker made a stiff, waving-off gesture. “Stuff keeps me up if I drink it in the afternoon.” He shifted from foot to foot and placed his hands behind his back, winding up in an almost formal parade-rest position.

Allen and Jolene nodded sympathetically.

“Ah, Jolene just got back from her first serious meeting with Milt Dane,” Allen said, keeping the conversation going.

“The lawyers for the hospital will play a waiting game,” Jolene said.

“That’s pretty typical at the beginning,” Allen said.

Jolene twisted her lips slightly. “They’ll wait to see if Hank dies. Milt says if he dies, it’s cheaper for them.” She shook off the D word, worked at a smile.

Broker cleared his throat. “I was wondering what he’s doing here at home. So soon, I mean.”

Jolene crooked her finger. “Come this way,” she said. “I’ll show you something.” He followed her through a doorway into the living room which was tiger-striped with Venetian-blind-filtered light. An alcove set off through an archway contained a long desk table which literally overflowed with paperwork. “Here’s where Hank pays the bills,” she explained.

Then she trailed a hand through the surface papers. Broker glimpsed a legal format.

Jolene said, “Somewhere in this pile are two or three premiums from Blue Cross he forgot to pay.”

“Ouch.”

“We found out an hour after we got him to Regions,” Allen said.

“Absentminded,” Broker said.

“Big-time,” Jolene said as she plucked a bill that was held to an envelope with a paper clip. “This one’s for the helicopter ride. St. Mary’s Life Flight out of Duluth. Fifty-five hundred bucks.”

Allen stepped in helpfully. “You recall the cell phone conversations?”

“Oh, yeah,” Broker said.

“We were fighting about these,” she said, pointing to the bills. “He didn’t like the way I was pushing to get them paid off, so he and his accountant moved all his money into a trust, to teach me a lesson, I suppose. He was the trustee and his accountant was the alternate trustee. Now Hank’s incapacitated. The accountant died. Two point three million dollars and I can’t touch a cent. Milt says it will take a month to bust open the trust in probate. And it was costing three thousand bucks a day to keep him in the hospital. So I brought him home.”

“Milt’s putting Hank in a nursing home next week,” Allen added quickly. “It just got off to a bad start.”

“I . . .” Broker searched for a word.

Jolene waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Yeah, I know. Un-fucking-believable.” She stepped forward and took Broker’s elbow. “Let’s go see Hank,” she said.

“I’d like that.”

“What do people call you?” she asked. “Phil?”

“No, ah, Broker, usually.”

“This way, Broker.”

A hall off the kitchen dropped into a tight circular staircase to the next level. Going down it, Broker thought of castle scenes. Someone should be carrying a torch. They came out into a master bedroom, king-size sleigh bed, dressers, armoire, all in cherry. Sweatpants and a T-shirt had been tossed on the bedspread. The faint lily scent was preserved in the damp towels in the adjoining bath.

“He’s just next door,” Jolene said. They went through another doorway into a large four-season porch that was bunkered with books. A cold fireplace was black with soot and smelled of ashes and neglect.

Solemnly, Broker stepped into the room and was immediately startled by Hank Sommer’s brilliant blue eyes and the gravitas with which they blazed point-blank into his own.

Broker.

Hank let his eyes focus for a second. Then he saw Jolene and Allen come through the door behind Broker and he forced his eyes to continue into their elliptical orbit.

The eyes rolled away, caught in the corner of the sockets, and slowly wandered back. Hank’s brow was furrowed, his hair furiously mussed, the eyes, two wobbling ice fires, his beard had been removed, and his chin was shiny with drool. Broker thought of paintings of famous angry men. Moses descending the mount, dashing the tablets. John Brown.

Hank lay on his side in a hospital bed cranked up like a recliner. A pillow was positioned between his knees and a baggy gray gown covered him. A heavy canvas strap buckled his chest and his hands were clenched beneath a large gray cat. Broker divined weariness in the twisted sheets on the narrow cot at the foot of the bed.

“Jesus,” his chest heaved. He’d anticipated seeing Hank sick, his body snarled in tubes and electrical monitors. There was just an IV tree that held a suspended sack of liquid and a tube that snaked into Hank’s gown. There was a bed table with a vase of fresh wisteria and a large TV and a radio tape player on a rolling stand. But basically it was just him, there on the bed. Looking almost normal.

With a cat in his lap.

The cat had avocado eyes and black diamond pupils and a wild, regal guardian demeanor. Vaguely, Broker recalled that the Egyptians worshiped cats.

He cleared his throat. “Kind of throws you, seeing him so normal.”

“He doesn’t need a tracheal tube, it’s the only reason he can be here,” Allen said.

Jolene crossed the room to the bed, picked up a Kleenex, and wiped Hank’s chin. Quickly she ran the suction wand around his mouth. “I keep expecting him to just get up and want a cup of coffee.”

Hank, watching from
the moon, from Mars, was amused. Not coffee, Jo. What I’m dying for is a cigarette. He’d thought about this and he’d decided that if someone held a Camel to his mouth and closed his lips around it, he could manage a drag
.

And Hi, there, Broker. How you doing? You already know Allen, the assassin. And Earl Garf is lurking somewhere. Abe Lincoln had Earl in mind when he said a certain congressman would steal a hot stove. Right now I’m assuming Jo is a victim of circumstances, but the vote’s out on that, so I’ll just continue to snoop and poop here in the weeds.

The cat stretched on its side and extended its paws and flourished claws at Broker’s approach.

“Watch out, the cat has this habit of leaping out and scratching you,” Allen cautioned.

“Hey, kitty,” Broker easily reached down and tickled the cat under her chin.

“She only attacks certain people, isn’t that right, Ambush,” Jolene said, carefully lifting the cat off the bed. With the cat in her arms she started for the door. “Take as long as you want. We’ll be in the kitchen.”

Now there were two sets of lungs breathing air and two hearts pumping blood in the room. Broker understood he was alone. But he didn’t feel alone. Was that intelligence or just ambient electricity he had seen firing in Hank’s eyes when he first entered the room? Hank gave no clue, he just lay unmoving, blinking, as his loopy stare wandered out the windows.

Broker felt weight press his lungs. Hard to breathe. The air turned heavy. So he turned from the bed and inspected the room. A stiff-backed Shaker chair sat in a corner. Broker got it, brought it over, positioned it next to Hank’s bed, and sat down. Should at least say his name. But his voice balked and he began to sweat.

“This is hard for me,” he began.

“I need to thank you for saving my life. Which is funny because I figured I was there to take care of you.” He exhaled some of the heavy air and his voice sounded hollow and shaky, alone and not alone in the room. He laughed nervously. “Sort of what I did all my life, look out for people. So you surprised me. And the fact is, I wasn’t—am not—in the best shape. The fact is I’m going through this thing with my wife . . .”

Broker felt his lips start to tremble, and his carefully constructed, all-purpose mask of a face, the one he’d worn to hell and back a few times, began to crumble. The wave of failure and remorse welled up in his chest again and this time it threatened to rise through his throat and lap past his eyes.
Jesus. Talking to a dead man
.

“You see, I thought I had it all figured out. And then it turned out, I didn’t.”

He had to do something physical. Now. Or he would liquefy into a puddle.

His eyes tracked the room. Books, files, a computer, of course. And a few framed photos on the walls. Broker got up and walked the shelves. Scanned the pictures. Teenage Hank in a ducktail hairdo, lean and tan, standing in front of the obligatory ’57 Chevy. There was a black-and-white framed cover from
Life
magazine from the forties. And Hank again, a few years older, in faded jungle fatigues squatting with a group of soldiers who wore Screaming Eagle patches.

Then he walked to the black maw of the fireplace, where a damp log had drowned in a slush of ashes. Nobody had cleaned it. There was no room for oxygen to circulate under the grate, the wood couldn’t burn.

The wood box was empty. The least he could do was clean out the fireplace and bring in a load of wood. He took the ash bucket and a small shovel and brush from the fireplace that sat next to the hearth. Methodically, he shoveled out ashes, filled the bucket, and used the stiff wire broom to sweep out the hearth stones.

He took the bucket to the sliding patio door, opened the door, and stepped out onto the deck. Side stairs led to the lawn along the bluff and the back of the garage. As he carried the ashes toward the bed of frost-killed ferns and hosta next to the garage he walked past the kitchen windows and glimpsed Allen and Jolene, two shadows illuminated by the light over the table.

When he dumped the ashes he saw the heaped rounds of unsplit oak and the empty woodshed built along the side of the garage. Instinctively, his hand reached out and easily unfroze the heavy splitting maul with one hard slap and a yank. Then he kicked aside the damper sections of oak at the top of the pile and found several drier pieces. He put one on top of the chopping block, planted his feet, hefted the maul, and swung. The cold oak shivered and divided like balsa.