After the Rain (19 page)

Broker nodded. “It’s just starting to hit Minnesota. Since they regulated the ephedrine, it’s harder to cook it down from commercial cold medications, like Sudafed. Can only buy two packs a pop.”

“Yeah,” Yeager said. “They have to cover a lot of territory to come up with quantity. Mostly it’s kids making it for their personal use. The real problem is the border.”

Broker saw a cluster of buildings. A flutter that could be flags.

“Maida,” Yeager said. “Port of entry.” He turned left on a less maintained gravel road. They bumped along in silence for a couple miles and then Yeager turned right into a rutted path. Just two tire tracks running off into the green, empty, treeless horizon. But they were well-worn tracks, no grass growing in them. Yeager drove slower now, the weeds swishing up to the windows of the cruiser. Finally he stopped the car. “Let’s get out, stretch our legs.”

They walked down the path. Yeager pointed to the ground that was damp enough to clearly show fresh tire treads. “Mulberry Crossing. Active.” They continued walking. A hundred yards further and the path turned and paralleled a slight road embankment. A yellow sign was set in the ground next to the tire tracks that climbed the embankment. It said:
ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSING
.

“See how easy it is,” Yeager said.

Broker nodded. “This is Canada.”

“Yep. And in good weather this prairie road will support a tractor-trailer. Pick a no-moon night. Turn off your lights. From here to the road we came up on,” Yeager pointed back toward his cruiser. “Maybe twenty seconds and you’re across. Like we were talking before, less and less people living out here now. And them that do, hell, they all shop in Canada, because the dollar buys more. They see somebody coming through here at night, it could be their neighbor
buying fertilizer at a forty-percent savings. Just come across, go east, in an hour you’re on the interstate.

“So,” Yeager went on, “ephedrine is still easy to get in bulk in Canada. Say, a case of seventy-five thousand pills might go for eighteen thousand bucks. Makes about eight pounds of meth that wholesales for around forty-eight thou. Figure a hundred cases of pills in a trailer. Adds up to serious money.”

Broker squinted back toward the customs station. “What about the border patrol?”

Yeager smiled. “They say they got sensors, but I don’t hear any alarms going off, do you? They started sending more bodies up after 9/11. Guys mostly with names like Martinez, from Texas. Right after they started showing up, that first October, it was about thirty-eight degrees out and I noticed them all out in front of the Motor Inn plugging in the tank heater on their shiny new Tahoes. So I go over and ask, ‘What’s up?’ ‘Getting cold,’ they said.” Yeager shook his head. “They come and go in thirty-day rotations, like R&R. Hell, I understand they need a break, they got some hairy duty down south. But the point is, they don’t stay long enough to know the ground. And they don’t patrol, anyway. They sit on the official crossings.”

Broker shifted from foot to foot. Thought of starting another cigar to keep his hands occupied. Clearly Yeager was laying foundation, leading up to something. Gamely, Broker tried to hold up his end of the conversation. “They just watch the crossings?”

“Yeah. Used to be, when the customs shut down the border and went home from ten
P.M.
to six
A.M.
they’d put orange plastic cones across the road. Of course, after 9/11 they geared up for heavy-duty action and built these little steel gates. Border patrol, they watch the gate. And, sure, there’s a few aircraft overhead from time to time.”

Broker decided to start that cigar. Yeager popped his Zippo, giving him a light.

“So,” Yeager said.

“So,” Broker said.

“Point is, the border patrol’s number-one priority up here ain’t to stop our meth problem. Not now. Like, say, take our friendly smuggler who usually drives a load of ephedrine pills, or kitchen cabinets, or flush toilets.”

“Toilets?”

“Yeah, we had a run on full-capacity flush toilets a while back. You know, we got all these environmentally correct toilets now that use less water—you gotta flush two, three times. They were bringing truckloads of the big five-gallon jobs down, some of them right through where we’re standing. Any rate, point is, one night our driver hauls a different cargo. Maybe he don’t even know what’s in his trailer.”

Yeager squinted down the rutted track back toward his cruiser. “Like, say, a full load of Stinger missiles. Or those Russian SA-18s. That’d play some hell with the air traffic pattern.”

“So you guys been brainstorming scenarios, huh?” Broker said.

“You bet. Your wife’s caper has a terrorism angle all over it. And we wouldn’t have had a clue if she wouldn’t have used your kid as a prop. I don’t know if that was brilliant or just plain cold—but once your sheriff buddy called and asked us to get tight on the kid, we got onto you, and then we started getting pieces of the whole picture.”

“Look, Yeager. Nina and her crew are cowboying, way out ahead of something. I got a feeling the big-footed feds will roll into your shop any day with the official word.”

“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Broker. What good is some fancy helicopter full of commandos gonna do? Hell, they don’t know what it’s like out here on these prairie roads at night. Me and the boys grew up here. We can keep track of Ace and Gordy. It ain’t like they’re going to do anything with Nina along. Or didn’t she think it through that far?”

Broker thought about it. Yeager was right. But so was Holly.
Once the words
nuclear device
were put into the mix there was no telling how even steady-looking dudes like Yeager would bounce.

“Yeager, I just came up here to get my kid.” Broker didn’t sound convinced and Yeager sure wasn’t.

Sensing that Broker was weakening, Yeager remained patient. “Okay, come on. Back in the car. We got one more stop.”

They got in the cruiser and backed out of the trail and drove the roads on the American side. For Broker the empty monotony of these fields now took on a sinister sweep. There was just no way to stop a simple suitcase coming across.

After a mostly silent ten-minute ride, Yeager wheeled his cruiser into a weed-thick driveway and drove up to yet another deserted farmhouse. A windmill tower stood beside the house with just the gears up top, no blades. A collapsing barn leaned off to the side, and a rundown Quonset hut out back. This house had a narrow front and a high-pitched roof, its two upstairs windows empty of glass and the front door, torn away, looked like gaping eyes and a mouth.

Yeager leaned back in his seat and lit another Marlboro.

“This is where Ace Shuster lived when he was a kid.” He pointed south. “Our house was about two miles that way, and it’s in worse shape than this place.”

“What are we doing?” Broker asked.

“Figured I’d bring you up to speed on Ace, since he’s become the object of all this intense interest.”

Broker had to grin at Yeager’s style—laid back but relentless.

“What? You got something better to do?” Yeager grinned back.

“So you’re going to take your time, give me the county tour. Spend half the day out in the tullies and maybe my cell phone will ring and I’ll have to go somewhere and you’ll just have to take me there.”

“Hey, Broker, you got a suspicious mind. You should be a cop.”

“I already met Ace.”

“What’d you think?”

Broker thought about it. “At first he seemed like this aging hell raiser, and then…”

“Yeah?”

“His eyes. His eyes were…sad.”

Yeager nodded. “The whole family is just a little bit”—Yeager gently waffled his hand—“off center. His sister, Dorsey, was the one who showed it most. And then, I guess, the kid brother, Dale. The dad, Gene, he was crazy but disciplined. Always cooking these wild schemes to get rich, but always worked like hell. Now, Gene’s dad, Asa—he had the outlaw gene. A regular bomb thrower, back in the days of the Nonpartisan League…”

The term
bomb thrower
got Broker’s attention. He’d been sitting back, hands crossed in his lap. He came forward, opened his arms, draped one back on the rear seat. Put the other hand on the dash. More attentive now, he said, “Sounds like some family.”

“Yeah. I think their mom, Sarah, she just checked out and went on automatic pilot. Like one of those women you read about back in the old days: too much work, too much prairie. The wind gets to some people. The winters…” Yeager chewed at the inside of his cheek, looked off across the fields. “Ace, he was the oldest kid. Thing I respect about Ace is the way he fights to keep that outlaw gene at bay. Gets up every morning and has to choose twenty-four hours of not breaking the law. That’s a tough one. Another thing, he pretty much looks after everybody.”

“You saying Ace has
real
psychological hang-ups?”

Yeager shrugged. “Hard to tell with German farm stock. Everybody keeps it in. Then they get behind with the bank, have a couple bad years, and we get a call from an anxious wife with supper cold on the table. Sometimes find the guy’s body out in the corner of a field with his shotgun next to him. Ace? He ain’t exactly your Prozac kind of guy, so he maintains with alcohol.”

The question was on his face so Broker went ahead and said it: “Not the bomb-throwing type?”

“Ace? Is that what they think?”

Broker decided to take the chance that Yeager was waiting for. “Okay, here we go…”

Now Yeager was sitting forward. “Yeah?”

“They got a picture of Ace standing near McVeigh at Waco.”

Yeager rolled his eyes. “They’re basing this whole circus on a fucking
picture
?”

“I didn’t say that. But they have a picture.”

“Hey, man, these people gotta do their homework,” Yeager said, getting more animated. “Remember I mentioned his sister, Dorsey? Well, she was wild as hell in high school and then did one of those come-to-Jesus flip turns. She started chasing religious cults. Word got back she was hanging out in this wacko compound in Texas. Turned out to be Koresh’s operation. So Ace went down there, just about the time the ATF did their famous ninja walk in their pretty little black suits.”

Broker braced himself. “So?”

“Once Ace got down there, he found out that Dorsey had been there but split a month before. Ace eventually found her in Seattle, working in a Starbucks coffee bar. Married some guy and is still there, as far as I know. A happy ending.” Yeager squinted at Broker. “If I was
you
, I’d put a little more faith in what people say over coffee at Gracie’s diner and less in the people who breeze around in black helicopters.”

“Okay, maybe he doesn’t want to blow up federal buildings—could he be the kind of guy who would run
anything
across the border for money?”

Yeager kind of sidled closer, on the scent. “Anything? Like something real dangerous?”

“C’mon, Yeager…”

Yeager wagged his finger in Broker’s face. “No. Ace wouldn’t do
that. But that little creep Gordy Riker would. In a fucking heartbeat.”

“Why you so sure Ace wouldn’t?”

“ ’Cause I’ve known him all my life. Look, we played Legion ball together. Jesus, could he hit. He was eighteen and people were saying he was another Maris. He had a shot at the majors, hurt his knee in a tryout camp, and never went back. Just bad luck. That’s the story of Ace’s life. Nothing ever worked out right for him.” Yeager shook his head.

“He killed a guy in a bar fight.”

“More bad luck. Goddamn loudmouth Bobby Pease down in Starkweather. Came at Ace with a beer bottle, and Bobby musta been loosey goosey flatfooted when Ace hit him. Broke his neck. Ace did eleven months on the state farm for involuntary manslaughter.”

“What about Dale, the equipment dealer?”

Yeager shook his head. “Jeez, I don’t know. Parts to that guy are missing. Like, the key to the ignition. Guy is gonna live and die in his folks’ basement. He’s gonna follow them to Florida.”

“And Gordy?”

“Cunning little fucker. And greedy. I been trying to catch him running meth precursor for over a year. He has grandiose dreams of being a big dope dealer.”

“Violent?”

Yeager grinned and eyed Broker. “You tell me. Story going round is he knocked you on your ass.” He paused, still grinning, then said, “That’s how we know you’re in on this thing. We figure it was for show. No way in hell a guy like you’s going to let a Gordy Riker put you on the ground, shot hand or not.”

As Broker was composing his comeback, the car radio squawked:
“Two-forty, where are you?”

Yeager keyed his mike.
“Six north.”

“Your ten-seventeen just showed up at the SO.”

“Ten-four.”

Yeager quickly wrote his cell phone number on the back of a card and handed it to Broker. Then he put the cruiser in reverse and backed out of the driveway. “We’ll have to finish saving the world later,” he said. “My wife just dropped my son off at the office. I gotta coach T-ball.”

Ace came down
the stairs two at a time; edgy, snapping his fingers, shaking it out. Gordy assessed him. Uh-huh. So much for mellow. Ace’s serotonin was definitely headed south. It was not a coffee day.

He tossed the cup of coffee he’d prepared and set a bottle of Wild Turkey on the bar with a glass. As Ace sat down and poured his breakfast, Gordy pointed to the
Grand Forks Herald.

“Inside section. They’re scaling back the search for Ginny Weller,” he said.

“Ginny was your basic land shark, but she didn’t deserve this,” Ace said, taking a drink. He produced a Camel from his chest pocket in a snappy display of dexterity, lit it, and inhaled. He pushed the newspaper aside, blew out the smoke, and looked around. “Okay, where’d she go?”

“Out front. On her cell,” Gordy said.

Ace took his glass to the window and saw her pacing on the trap rock with her head cocked over in the New American Silhouette: neck straining to cup a cell phone. Ace thought how a whole lot of orthopedic surgeons were going to make out in twenty, thirty years,
when all the crook-necked cell-phone casualties came walking into their offices bent over funny.

He took a long, slow swallow and felt the whiskey burn down his throat and rush out to the tiny capillaries in his fingers and toes. He watched the humid prairie breeze catch the summer dress and wash it up around her thighs and hips. A ripple of maroon and green. Alive against her body like a flutter of moths. Or a flag, maybe. A flag just for a woman. It wasn’t that she had smallish hips, just tidy and tight, like everything else about her—efficient, traveling light, no padding. And her shoulders were broad.

Those legs and that back.
I bet she swam butterfly in school,
he thought.

Probably had her kid by C-section, with those hips.

If so, there’d be a halfmoon scar under her belly button.

Just over her bush.

So am I gonna get to see that scar, or what?

Gordy came up beside him. “One way or another she’s going to fuck us up.”

Ace kept his eyes on her and thought,
Aw shit, Gordy is probably right.
So much for believing life could move like a soft, easy dance. Course, she was far from soft and easy. He was tired of slow dancing. It was time to make a call. “Don’t doubt it for a second,” he said. “Like you said, she don’t add up.” He cuffed Gordy on the shoulder. “She’ll be gone before dark.”

“ ’Bout time.”

“Yeah. Now, look, something’s going on. I don’t know what you all were doing downstairs but I just saw her husband meeting with Jimmy Yeager across the road.” He reached out, clamped his hand on Gordy’s shoulder, and pulled him in closer. “Tonight, you work your jigsaw extra special to see if you got a tail. I’ll do the same. If we got company we’ll run ’em through an old-fashioned snipe hunt.” Ace winked. “Let’s have some fun out on the gravel.”

“Awright, boss—
awright
!” Gordy smiled.

Finally.

“It’s me, I want to talk,” Nina said.

“So talk,” Broker said. He had been pacing in the motel room, watching the Weather Channel, mulling over his drive with Yeager and his missing pistol. Hearing her voice, he admitted to himself he had been waiting for the cell to ring, and now it had.

“Face-to-face,” she said.

“You had lunch?”

“No.”

“There’s a restaurant a block from the motel. Gracie’s. It’s right on the highway.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Did Kit get off home?”

“Lyle Torgeson and Doc Harris flew in and picked her up this morning. She’ll be with my folks later today. You should give her a call.”

“Not a good idea right now.”

“Right, I forgot. Mission over men.”

His remark killed conversation for several seconds. He imagined her mind maneuvering in the silence.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said finally in her clipped, hard voice.

Broker found himself sitting up, leaning forward, hovering over the tiny phone. “You need a ride?” But the connection had ended.

Broker heaved up off the bed, stripped off his clothes, peeled the bandage from his hand, walked into the bathroom, and ran the shower to revive himself after the long, hot ride along the border. All the shower did was concentrate the humidity into liquid jets. He stood under the needles of water, eyes shut. Then he held his injured hand up to the shower and let the spray irrigate the ragged flesh.

Jane’s salve worked. The swelling and redness were going down.

He got stuck, went blank, and then realized he was staring at a
Barbie Doll, naked flesh-colored plastic, awkward jointed hips and arms, sitting on the soap tray like a crumb left behind by his daughter, part of a trail leading into the forest of his marriage. He picked up the toy and observed that Kit had cut the doll’s red hair short.

So it looked like Nina, or perhaps Jane. He put the doll with his toilet articles so he wouldn’t forget it.

One towel. Two. Trying to get dry. Then, gingerly, he tested the smaller, but still red, fan of infection radiating from the wound. Still tender. He applied the Bag Balm and taped on a clean dressing. As he took two of the Vicodin, it occurred to him that ten years earlier he’d have ignored the wound; it wouldn’t have slowed him down. He felt every one of his forty-eight years as a specific weight dragging on his body.

He shook his head and swore softly as he pulled on a pair of jeans, cross trainers, a T-shirt. The idea of finally sitting down with Nina brought on a snap of resentment—at finding himself caught up in another of her projects.

They had not planned on getting married. But, then, they had not planned on getting pregnant. Maybe she thought, given her chosen line of work, it would be the only shot she’d have at a child. Maybe he thought that having a kid would nudge her out of the Army. No, not maybe.

She thought he
wanted
her to get pregnant, his assigned role in the male plot to boot her out of the service.

No, Nina, I just think Mama, Papa, and baby belong under one roof.

So, you can come to Europe.

Or, you can come home.

So you can stick me in the kitchen with a kid and an apron.

Broker shook his head. Ten minutes after he’d met her he told her straight out she had a chip on her shoulder. And she fired right back:

That’s no chip. Those are captain’s bars, mister.

The fact was, she was a disaster in the kitchen.

He looked one last time at the Weather Channel, how the green mass of precipitation was finally moving out of the upper Midwest. The local report said scattered showers. He eyed his rain parka and decided to leave it. Then he clicked off the TV and left the room.

He grabbed a Styrofoam cup of motel coffee in the lobby and went outside, lounged against the hood of Milt Dane’s Explorer, and lit a another cigar. He assumed she’d come walking into town from that bar. Or maybe Shuster would give her a lift.

Ace.

Carefully he mulled the all-too-ready image of Nina waking up in bed with…

He dragged on the cigar a little too hard and got some smoke down his throat and coughed.

Shit. So here he was dead in the water, waiting for her to come down the highway. The Missile Park was about a mile west down Highway 5.

Broker remembered back to the beginning. He should have picked up on the clues when he visited her apartment in Ann Arbor—when he met her she was on academic leave from the Army, finishing up her master’s in business administration at the University of Michigan.

Her place looked like somewhere Dracula slept between night shifts. Spare and functional. TV dinners and beefed-up vitamin shakes in the refrigerator.

No houseplants. No cat. No paintings on the wall. The only personal item sat on her desk. A trophy from the national military competition pistol shoot at Camp Perry. Second place in the fifty-yard offhand with a .45.

Make a note. Never marry a woman who can outshoot you with a handgun.

When Nina barged into his life he had been dating a woman named Linda who worked at a nursery north of Stillwater, Minnesota.
Linda had long black hair she pinned up with a turquoise clasp and always managed to look like she’d just stepped out of a grove sacred to Demeter. Always had her hands plunged in potting soil and wood chips. Good old Linda. Always listening to Minnesota Public Radio. Ripe as a D. H. Lawrence love scene.

C’mon, Broker, tell the truth. Linda would have bored you stiff after a while.

Never bored with Nina. Never once.

Broker spotted her. A stride of color coming at a brisk step down the gravel shoulder. He got up. Check it out. See. It was impossible to be bored and mad at the same time.

Okay.

The watery light licked her bare arms and legs. She wore this meager sleeveless summery dress that came down to mid-thigh and gave her the look of an R-rated Monet in motion. Red-painted toenails in Chaco sandals. And, naturally, she’d never worn a dress like that for him. Strictly jeans and shorts and working duds. Or a goddamn Army uniform. Seven years of married life and they’d been together less than three.

As he waited and sipped his coffee, his eyes swung up and down the highway, out of habit. He spotted Yeager leaning against the side of the county office building across the street. Ostensibly taking a smoke break. A moment later Yeager was joined by another cop in different uniform, a darker shade of brown on top, gray striped trousers below. The state patrol guy. Cute. Both of them playing cop face, affecting sunglasses on a sunless day so they could watch without showing their eyes. A boy, seven or eight came out of the building and talked to Yeager. They all went inside together.

A few minutes later she walked up and they stared at each other.

Broker drifted his eyes across the street to the county building. “We’re in a goddamn fishbowl here. They’re real suspicious about you over there.”

Nina scrunched her lips. “Yeah, so is the guy I’m with.”

“With,” Broker said.

They locked eyes. Let it sputter between them.

“Yeah,” Nina said. “Gordy bet Ace I’m a cop.”

“Great,” Broker said. He turned and they fell in step, walking east toward the restaurant.

“He’s a strange guy, Ace Shuster,” Nina said. “Not what you’d expect.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Broker said.

“Bullshit. You’ve thought about it in great detail. Just like I thought about it when you told me about your fling with Jolene Somer.”

Snap and hiss in the close space between them. Like a live high-tension wire that got loose.

“Yeah, what about your Ranger captain in Bosnia—Jeremy,” Broker shot back.

“I
necked
with Jeremy once. You
fucked
that tramp Jolene.”

“So this is what? Payback?”

Nina smiled briefly. “Ace hasn’t even tried to touch me.” She paused for effect and bored a look into his eyes. “Yet.”

They went into the restaurant. Nonsmoking booths on the left, counter front, tables and more booths to the right. They sat in an open booth to the right.

A waitress in tight toreador pants and a deeply tanned face brought them water and a coffeepot. Broker ordered a late breakfast: ham, eggs, no toast, no potatoes, oatmeal on the side. Nina ordered an omelette. She raised an eyebrow.

“Oatmeal
and
eggs? I thought you were strictly oatmeal. That’s all Kit will eat for breakfast since you brainwashed her.”

Broker shrugged. “Maybe that Atkins guy has a point. I’m checking it out.”

Nina grinned. “You had a birthday last week. The old waistline creeping up on you?”

“I’m doing fine.”

“I don’t think so.” In a completely disarming move she leaned across the table and laid the inside of her cool wrist along his forehead. “You’re running a fever and I’ll bet that hand is infected.”

The day heaved when she did that. Broker almost wanted to stayed glued to her arm, but it moved away.
She’s fucking that guy, I know she is and she’ll never admit it. Never should have told her about Jolene. Never.

Their orders arrived and Nina was all business. Broker struggled to give her his full attention, but between his smoldering anger, the mild fever, and the painkillers, the edges on things got blunted. Nina looked faintly screened, distant.

“Get in touch with Jane and Holly,” she said. She took a pen and a business card from her purse and wrote on the back. “Here are their cells”

She slid the card across the table. Broker turned it over and saw the pine-tree logo of his resort: Broker’s Beach.

Nina started to say, “They’re staying—”

Broker cut her off. “I know. One of the local cops told me. They’re at an Air Force radar site east of town. Along with some rough trade in a Black Hawk.”

“Aw shit.”

Broker pressed on. “Remember the famous Shuster-McVeigh photo op? Well, it’s total bullshit. Pure coincidence. Shuster was at Waco looking for his nutzy sister, who was reported to be in the compound. She wasn’t. He found her in Seattle.”

“You know this how?”

“One of the locals told me this morning.”

Nina stiffened slightly when the highway patrolman entered the café and started toward their table. He was snappy-looking in his uniform, duty belt, and Smoky Bear hat.

He passed their table smartly and inclined his head in a deferential nod, just as polite as can be. “Broker.
Major
Pryce.” He continued on and sat down at the counter, his back to them.

Nina sagged and stared at Broker.

“I tried to tell you. You’re wrong for this kind of work. All you guys are. Once Jeff back home heard our kid was stranded in North Dakota he called the local sheriff. Asked him to keep an eye out for her. That raised a flag. It is definitely not SOP for abandoned children to have sheriffs in other states immediately start calling and asking personal favors. It suggests I’m connected. So, Wales, the local sheriff, did some checking around with the Minnesota AG’s office and got an earful about me and then about you. The Vietnam trip in ’95. The rumors about the gold. And you being a big Army celebrity after the Gulf.”