After the Rain (22 page)

She reached down and firmly took hold of the elastic on her panties. With a little shift from foot to foot she peeled them down below her navel.

Ace said, “There
is
a scar.”

“What?”

He pointed at the faint cesarean incision peeking from the reddish hair just above the rolled waistband of her panties. “I figured you had a C-section. The narrow hips…” Then he said, in a different tone, “
Wait.
”

A drop of nervous sweat streaked down the puckered flesh on her belly. A squirm of nerves, gooseflesh.

“What happened there?” he said.

He was pointing at the deep-purple dent on her left hip. The entry. His hand moved around her hip, smooth across her ass, and felt the bumpy slick whorl of scar tissue where the Republican Guard’s Kalashnikov round blew a chip of pelvis out through her glutes.

“That’s a gunshot wound,” he said.

“I can explain,” she said.

The self-deprecating joke came stronger into his eyes. He raised a hand to quiet her. “It’s okay. I just had to find out how far you’d go. You would have gone all the way, right?”

“I don’t get it. What are we talking about? This? I told you, I can…” Indignant, she pointed at the bullet hole.

Ace shook his head. “I’m sure you can explain it. And the cut ear. And I’d probably believe you. That ain’t it. Every woman I ever been with in my life except working whores and country-club land sharks—they’re always a little bit vulnerable when they takes their clothes off, at least at first. You’re not exactly comfortable, but you’re miles from vulnerable, girl. You ain’t afraid one bit.”

Nina curled her lip, played it tough, and shot back, “So this is what happens after all the talk? You’re not even gonna fuck me? Just talk some more?” She shifted her stance, not sure what to do with her hands or the rest of her. So she reached for the whiskey on the desk.

And he said, “You probably don’t drink in your real life, do you?”

That brought her around sharp.
Too fast, Nina, too fast.

Ace smiled. But his sad smile was gone. This was a cold smile. Cold struggling not to turn into mean. “I wanted to believe we met for a reason. And I guess we did. The reason is you’re working.” Then his expression hardened. “Cover up your ass. And get your things. We’re through here. Take a walk. Back to your husband. If he is your husband.”

Dale had
a few errands. First, he stopped at the Alco Discount and bought several sets of heavy bungees. Then he bought some blank videotapes. He spent a few minutes looking at the digital gear. He would definitely have to upgrade, but later. He didn’t have time now to install a new TV, DVD player, and figure them all out.

He drove south, to the ruins of Camp’s Corners and parked in back of the buildings. The old gas station had a garage and he pushed open the rear door of the mechanic’s bay and went in. An eighteen-foot 2001 Dodge Roadtrek camper van was parked in the bay. He’d purchased it a month ago in Grafton.

He walked up to the boxy vehicle and inspected the new paint job. When he bought it, it still had the scorch marks around the windows from the propane fire that had gutted the inside. So he got it cheap. A body shop in Grafton fixed up the outside and finished it off with a new coat of light blue.

Then he gave it to Eddie Solce, who refurbished the inside and put in a cheap chemical toilet. Dale didn’t need a sink or refrigerator; a cooler with ice would do—he wouldn’t have the vehicle that long. He did have Eddie put new carpet down in the rear compartment, and Dale had set up his old wooden twin bed there.

Nowhere near as fancy as when it was new. But functional. Just a curtain behind the buckets seats now. And the bed, freestanding next to a makeshift closet with shelves. A TV and videocassette player that would run off the battery. Various other items were strewn around.

He placed the bungees and the blank tapes on the front seat. Then he opened the briefcase Joe had brought and sorted through the contents. An envelope containing cash. And two Minnesota license plates. He selected the license plates, went out, took a screw driver from a toolbox on a worktable, and removed the blue-and-gold buffalo-motif North Dakota plates. Then he screwed on the pale-white-and-blue Minnesota plates.

He got back in behind the wheel and started it up. Sounded good. And a full tank of gas. Joe had topped it off from two five-gallon cans now sitting empty in the corner of the shed.

He turned off the engine and took a tackle box from the floor under the passenger seat. It contained a number of different containers, several were plastic prescription drugs. One was written in German. Others were glass vials with rubber stopper tops for the insertion of a hypodermic needle. They contained a clear liquid. Dale held one of them up to the light coming in through the dirty windows, read the label, and smiled.

Ketamine.

Joe had acquired a cache of the stuff. Before Joe, Dale had broken into a veterinarian’s office in Cavalier to get the drug.

A dozen fat yellow plastic pens were stacked with the pills. Another of Joe’s innovations. They were Epipens, prescription dispensers for epinephrine, first-aid injectors for people susceptible to anaphylactic shock. Joe had some people in Winnipeg remove the original contents and refill them with 100 mg doses of the ketamine.

Dale hefted one of the pens in his closed hand like a dagger. You just twisted the top. A sturdy needle extended from the bottom and you jammed it in a muscle group. The spring-loaded mechanism in the pen delivered the dose. When used as a general anesthetic during surgery, it
was fed directly into a vein through an IV. The intramuscular route was slower and let you feel the effects come on over a period of minutes. Ketamine totally paralyzed people for a short time. And for some people, it simulated the peculiar out-of-body sensation of dying.

He selected one of the Epipens and slipped it in his chest pocket. Then he looked around one last time, walked out, and closed the door. As he got back in his car, he felt a ray of sunlight poke through the clouds and warm his face.

It was a good sign. Joe was getting anxious to get on the road, was questioning some of Dale’s ideas. But Dale had zero doubts. It was gonna work out just fine.

He started up the Grand Prix and drove back to town. When he got into Langdon, he took a fast swing past the high school to get a little edge going. In twenty-four hours he would be on his way to a whole new life.

Outta here.

The Shusters had lived in a comfortable four-bedroom prairie rambler on the east end of town. The house sat on three lots, and Dale had always cut the lawn—his dad expected it since Dale had converted the basement into an apartment for himself.

Dale Shuster. Never been on his own, people said.

Now, with his folks two weeks gone to Florida, and all the rain, the grass was creeping up the post of the
FOR SALE
sign in the front yard. Dale had not cut the lawn since his folks left, and now it was so high it flipped over on top like a pompadour.

He parked in the garage and went inside. The main floor and upstairs were empty, just furniture runners on the floors that the movers had left. The kitchen table remained, and two chairs. The sink was full of dirty dishes.

His mother had left notes taped to the refrigerator and the cupboards about when to thaw and eat each meal she’d left stacked in plastic containers in the freezer. He opened the fridge, which contained nothing but Coca-Cola, twenty cans of it.

He snapped the flip top on a can of Coke. Took another along for backup, and went down the stairs into the basement.

The basement was stripped.

Dale had not so much packed as given everything away to the Lutheran church his mom had gone to, mostly alone, for the last thirty years. Except for his computer, which he’d smashed into a pulp and dropped in Devil’s Lake. All that remained was a desk, an arm chair, and hassock in front of the TV.

He still had the VCR set up. It was so old nobody would want one like that anymore. Just leave it when he…

No. He did not intend to
move
. He was going to
change
. Reappear as a totally new person. But first he had to do this favor for Ace. More of a favor than Ace had ever done for him.

Gordy. Dale smirked. Gordy had mocked and bullied him all his life. Well, Gordy was about to get his heads-up.

His barren desk set against the wall under an old
Star Wars
poster. Barren except for his high school yearbook. Dale sat down and flipped the pages to the senior pictures until he came to the picture of a younger, smiling Gordy Riker, looking like a toothy, hairy werewolf zit.

With a deliberateness of ceremony, Dale reached up to his chest pocket, moved the stubby Epipen aside, and grabbed the thick-nib Sharpie. His breathing came more rapidly, and a squeezy bubbly sensation started in his chest as he methodically blacked out Gordy’s eyes with the pen.

Then he turned forward a few pages and studied Ginny Weller’s picture. Her eyes, too, were blacked out.

Not so pretty now—huh, bitch?

Real funny. Ha ha. It was supposed to be a joke. For their senior trip, the whole class went for the weekend to a hotel in Bismarck. To see a play. He should have figured it out. How come the prettiest
girl in the class all of a sudden started seeking him out, sitting next to him? Paying him attention.

It happened the second night, late; Ginny had dared him to go skinny-dipping with her in the hotel pool, which was closed for the night but she knew a way to get in.

Just the two of them. The naughty taunt in her voice.

“Come on, you scared? Don’t you want to see me naked?”

At this point in his life Dale was considered shy; quiet but not that weird. He had a B-plus average. Played linebacker on the football team. Kept his turmoil carefully tucked away inside. Kept a certain distance from people, especially girls. He had this notion that if you kissed a girl—one of those open-mouth, slurpy French kisses—she might be able to see down your throat, right inside, all the way down to all your secrets.

Everybody left Dale alone because he was Ace’s brother. But halfway through senior year, Ace hit Bobby Pease, over in the bar at Starkweather. Ace spent the next year hoeing beans down in Jamestown.

So why was Ginny Weller flirting with him? He knew it had to be some kind of a game. Maybe she was trying to make Irv Fuller mad. When her talk didn’t work, she maneuvered him into a corner in the lobby and planted one of those French jobs on him, sticking her tongue between his teeth.

After that he couldn’t resist. Though he was scared plenty, because the farthest he’d been with a girl was messy hand jobs with dumpy Margie Block up in her dad’s hayloft.

He had to give it a try.

They met in the hall, at midnight. She showed him how she’d put tape on the lock to the door in the ladies’ room that led to the pool. Taped it on vertical, up the inside edge of the door, keeping the lock bolt from engaging.

They slipped into the darkened bathroom. Ginny told him to go
on in and undress. She’d meet him in a second and they’d go skinny-dipping.

“For starters,” she’d said.

A chance like this would never come again. So Dale went in, stripped off his clothes, and waited in the darkness. There were little lights along the bottom of the pool that cast wavy shadows on the ceiling. It felt humid and smelled of chlorine. The longer he waited, the more excited he got.

And when he had become real excited, and no Ginny yet—that’s when the lights exploded on.

And there was Ginny standing by the door with Irv and Gordy Riker. They pointed their fingers and rocked with laughter.

“Boy,” Irv sang out, “that’s what I call real hard.”

“And real small,” Gordy chimed in, moving forward and extending his hand. He wasn’t just pointing. He had a squirt gun and proceeded to squirt Dale in the crotch. Dale covered up and ran to the other side of the pool, to where they kept the towels, but there weren’t any towels.

To his chagrin, Dale discovered that Gordy’s squirt gun had been filled with cheap perfume. And for the rest of the trip, and all during the bus ride home, people kept saying: “You smell anything? I sure smell something.”

The nickname “Needle-Dick” became common usage.

Dale smiled, took the videotape from his desk, and fed it into the VCR. He pushed the play button on the VCR remote. As the screen flickered into focus, he settled down into his chair, raised his hips slightly, and unbuttoned his jeans.

“This is Jane.”

“Game over. Ace just gave me the boot,” Nina said.

“Not to worry. You got all your stuff?”

“Yeah, I’m doing my famous walking-down-the-highway-to-town.”

“Did you keep your legs crossed?”

“Turns out he wasn’t that kind of guy.”

“Nina, they’re all that kind of guy.”

“Well, what have we got?”

“We got movement on your tip. Khari, the liquor dealer in Grand Forks, is planning a road trip tonight. Bugs got a parabolic mike on his house. Overheard a call to Shuster about the special pickup. It tracks with what you told Broker. Distinctly heard him say they’d meet at the RLS on 5. That’s missile talk for the deserted Remote Launch Site east of Langdon. So Bugs will be tailing him. Holly is standing by with the bird if we need him. We’ll follow Ace, in case the meet on the highway is a diversion.”

After her awful scene with Ace, Janey’s upbeat voice was a blast of relief. Nina’s knees trembled, a little weak. “Great,” she said,
“where do you want me? I’m out here all alone, walking down a country road half-dressed.”

“Hey, I thought you liked that dress. And I got a feeling you won’t be walking alone for long.”

Before Nina could ask Janey where she was, the call ended. Nina kept walking, looked back once. Okay. A deserted pole barn and some trees broke the line of sight to the Missile Park. If Ace was watching her she’d be lost in the roadside clutter now. She was almost to the airport. From Janey’s remark, she figured they were close. But where? She squinted down the road: patches of sunlight alternated with muggy afternoon shadows.

Then she caught movement to the right, a figure stepping from a grove of trees, an arm whipping in a tight circle. About forty yards off the highway, standing in the thick stuff behind an abandoned Quonset. Hand signal:
Rally on me.
She hefted her travel bag and started up the rutted trap rock driveway. When she came closer and entered the trees, she saw it was Janey.

“What’s going on?” Nina said.

Janey stood casually in jeans and a dark pullover, one hip thrust out, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, like a B-movie moll. She said, “Watching Ace. He’s talking on the phone, to George. Like I said. I doubt he can see out the window and through this building. On the other hand, if you climb up top this Quonset you can get a fair view in through the living room window. With these.” She held up a pair of binoculars. “Quite a little striptease going on for a while there.” She handed over the smoke. Nina took a drag and handed it back.

“How long you been here?” Nina grimaced.

“We been here all afternoon. Since you and Ace rolled back in.”

“We?”

Janey yanked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “This way, darling. We is now a
combined task force
. Ad hoc, mind you.”

“Ad hoc, huh?” Nina glowered, then said, “Sounds like…”

Broker was standing deeper in the brush, spraying mosquito repellent on his arms and face. He handed the cannister to a husky man with short-cropped brown hair. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt. The shirt did not quite hide the dull twinkle of a pistol holstered on his belt. Broker’s truck was parked in the tall clump of Russian thistle.

As she approached, Broker softly clapped his hands in a lewd take-it-off rhythm. Jane left them and scrambled up a makeshift ladder made of several old air conditioners stacked together. She leaned over the top of the building next to the boxy capola of an exhaust fan and trained her glasses on the Missile Park.

Down on the ground, the guy standing next to Broker extended his hand. “Deputy Jim Yeager, Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department. It’s a real pleasure to see special ops in action.”

Nina dropped her bag and shook his hand. Broker took a step closer and said, “We concluded the man is very fast, considering the brief amount of time elapsed from when you first showed some skin to when he booted you out the door,” Broker said with a straight face.

“Fast on his feet, as it were,” Yeager said.

“Right, strictly a vertical encounter. No reclining going on that we could see,” Broker added.

Nina’s glare was wasted in the shadows. Broker and Yeager, however, were like two Cheshire cats, gleaming teeth floating in the gloom.

Broker handed Nina her go-bag, which Nina snatched from his hands. “Assholes. How about you turn around.”

“You’ll need this.” Broker handed her the can of OFF!. To their credit, Broker and Yeager let the ribbing die and turned around. Nina quickly sprayed a chemical bath, slipped out of the dress, and flung it at Broker’s back. It draped over his head. He raised the material in one hand and sniffed it, but said nothing.

Nina opened her bag, pulled on a pair of loose jeans, a sports bra,
a baggy gray T-shirt, and a pair of black cross trainers. As she strapped on her pistol belt, she took a deep breath and let it out. Beneath the raunchy banter and her gruff reaction she felt a palpable aura of relief. She was in and out unscathed, and something was up.

And she and her husband were finally doing something together. She smiled as she checked her .45 auto in the hideout holster, made sure that it was on safe. Not exactly dinner for two and theater tickets, but what the hell…

She swatted at the bugs. “Damn critters are out in force.”

“All the rain,” Yeager said. “If you got a long-sleeve shirt in that bag, I suggest you put it on.”

Nina, stooped to her bag and pulled out a slipover and put it on. The mosquitoes hovered in close, probing, like little pin pricks of anxiety.

“So,” she said, “does your boss know what you’re doing, Yeager?”

“Let’s say I’m staying flexible,” Yeager said.

“He’s flying by the seat of his pants, like you,” Broker said.

“Anybody ever check out that Indian guy?” Nina asked.

“I called the BIA police at Turtle Mountain,” Yeager said. “They got a Joe Reed on the tribal roll. But nobody’s been in contact with him for two years, since he went up to work the oil fields in Alberta. Story is he got burned in an oil-rig fire.”

Nina shook her head. “Those scars on him are a lot more than two years old.”

“You got a point,” Yeager said.

“So now what?” she said.

Broker toed the ground. “We wait.”