Travis left him with a county map unfolded on the front seat and the route back to Valentino Lane marked in yellow Magic Marker. “Okay. I’ll call every day and be back in a week.
Give you time to settle in. Then we’ll go shopping for a computer. Slightest problem you call Travis.” He waved, turned, and walked away.
Danny put the truck in gear and drove from the hotel, turned up Ocean Street and traveled under mingled palm crowns and tall evergreens. El Nino was taking a lunch break.
The sun peeked out and rolled a blue cobalt sheet of sky in back of the scattering clouds.
People crowded the streets. Aging hippies on skate-boards with sparse ponytails, tourists, cyber millionaires, and Mexican lettuce pickers. And students showing lots of brown California skin. Shorts. Sandals. The clean air had been rinsed in the rain and mist, now the sun cured it. Dizzy on his freedom, he missed the turnoff from Highway 1 and had to backtrack. He stopped at a corner liquor store and bought a six-pack of Coors.
He found his way back to the locked gate at the end of Valentino Lane, got out of the truck, held the keys to the truck and the house over his head and shook them in his fist.
Like he’d been handed the keys to all the locks in all the prisons in the world.
Find James.
He cocked an eye to his rearview mirror to see if any butternut-gray Ford Rangers with tinted windows were behind him. All clear.
On his right, a flock of ravens descended on a snow-covered field like a shower of black arrows. Reflex thought.
Something dead over in those trees.
He continued his argument with Keith.
Then James had bounced weird.
So why find James?
Broker shook his head. He was running out of separate compartments in which to store things.
“You don’t look so hot,” said Jeff.
They sat in Jeff’s office. Kit hugged the Beanie Babies moose she’d acquired from Sally Jeffords. Broker debated whether he should turn in his badge and ID. He nodded his head in agreement. “Didn’t sleep much last night. Motel bed.”
“Well, it’s up to the FBI now,” said Jeff. “Maybe they can tie James to those letters.” His desk was piled with paper.
Petty crime and nuisance complaints go on. Jeff had other things on his mind. He didn’t mention the badge, so Broker kept it.
He reached down and wiped Kit’s runny nose.
“Cold going around,” said Jeff.
Broker went home and called Garrison’s office to see if the FBI had made any progress on the hate letters. An agent informed him that Garrison wasn’t working there anymore and gave no forwarding information. No one in the office knew anything about the letters. Good-bye.
His eyes drifted south, to the cabin on the point. The glow of a TV screen illuminated the windows. Come all the way up here and watch TV.
The next morning he watched the snow melt.
Saber-toothed winter was supposed to keep the riffraff out.
But January slogged into the North Shore like a muddy green tramp, reeking of April. In town, piles of snow dwindled to humps of black cinders.
The second day he was home, Kit woke up coughing, nose plugged. He spent a sleepless night holding her in his arms, fearful she couldn’t breathe lying down. In the morning he called the clinic, made an appointment and took her in. Ear infection. Amoxicillin, three times a day.
After another sleepless night, he looked out on a damp morning and saw more ground than snow. The next day it was mud.
Kit’s illness gave his mind a rest from thinking about Keith.
A powerful urge to go buy a pack of cigarettes befriended him in the middle of the night. He put on his bathrobe, sat in the kitchen and fought back with frozen yogurt.
Refilling his bowl, he opened the thick volume,
Four days of antibiotics reduced Kit’s infection, and Broker bundled her up to go grocery shopping. Returning home, as he flicked his right turn signal coming up on his driveway, he noticed the truck.
Hidden in the trees, a hundred yards down the road. Right on the edge of his property. New Ford Ranger 250. Tinted windows. Confederate brown-gray. He grimaced, glanced at Kit, who was doing her windshield wiper exercises half-speed in the car seat.
He slowed and passed the vehicle. Damn. No plates.
Dealer’s sticker in the window. He hurried into his turn, gunned the Jeep and nearly rammed the porch because he was reaching over in back, unbuckling her seat straps one-handed.
He swept her over the seat, and she squealed, thinking it was great fun. Up the steps. Plunged in his house key, turned the lock, was inside and reaching into the closet.
One hand in behind the coats, the other high, reaching for the box of shells. Kit stomped at his knee, a tiny Samurai figure armored in Patagonia fleece. Broker loaded the twelve-gauge with double ought buck.
Now what.
With no place to put her, he did the unthinkable, checked his house with her in one arm and the shotgun poised in the other, like an ancient dueling pistol. Satisfied the house was secure, he strapped her in the high chair,
put the chair in the laundry room, and closed the door.
Just for a minute, honey. Promise. She was screaming before he was out the back door.
Broker checked the garage, the workshop, and then ran into the trees. Winded. Even without the cigarettes, he hadn’t really worked out for months. Then he slowed. The truck was gone.
Boot prints led from the tire marks, down the slight slope into the trees. They stopped above the cabin the Chicago couple rented.
Okay. Get home. Breathing heavily, he dashed up the porch, heard her wails as he unlocked the door. Setting the shotgun aside, he freed Kit from the chair, pulled off her coat and tried to console her.
“I promise, I’ll never do that again.”
After he put Kit down for her nap, he tried to write a letter to Nina. “
Broker kept the letter to providing information about Kit.
Nothing about Keith. Nothing about snooping Ford Rangers.
Nothing about his curiosity about his new neighbors to the south. Nina had enough to worry about.
