the squadroom. The tightness hairballed in his stomach. His ex, Kimberly, had wanted him to be a clotheshorse cop and play department politics. Wanted him to work in an office. Deputy chief maybe. Then run for politics.
He glanced around nervously.
J.T. Merryweather and Ryan were going over paperwork with a couple of Washington County detectives in a makeshift command post in a corner of the investigative unit. They’d nailed Rodney’s cohorts and the lab in Pine County at the same time that Earl and company went down. They looked like they’d slept in their shirts.
“In case you’re confused at your surroundings, this is a police station,” joked J.T. with his sharp features shuffled in a touchy mix of Caribbean and Saracen razor blades. “You notice the modular office spacers designed to promote efficiency, the tidy stacks of paperwork, the new computer system with which we try to keep cowboys in the field legal.”
Broker’s slightly feverish eyes roamed over the off-white computer plastic that packed the room. The stuff reminded him of the armor worn by the Imperial storm troopers in
He thrust his bandage, big thumbs up. “Two months medical leave. Without me out there, you guys will be breaking down the wrong doors. I can see it in the papers-Waco North.” A chorus of groans came from the tired cops.
J.T. rose to his feet and shook Nina’s hand. “Been a while, Captain Pryce.”
“Ten years, J.T., and it’s just plain Nina.”
“I was rooting for you when you were on TV. Other than having super bad timing yesterday, how’d you turn out?”
“Broker thinks I’m crazy.”
“Uh-huh. How’s that man going to know from crazy. C’mon, I’ll get your things from the property room.”
John Eisenhower appeared in the hall and motioned to Broker to join him in his office. The sheriff’s gun belt lay on a chair under a Norman Rockwell print of a Depression-era cop and a runaway kid sharing adjoining stools at a soda fountain. John had affected a folksy touch now that he was out in the eastern burbs. But Broker knew him from St. Paul, a cop right down to his depleted uranium heart. Broker sat down. This little color-coded laminated card with a fingerprint lay on the desk facing the visitor’s chair.
They talked shop for a few minutes. Would Rodney handle in a continuing sting? Ryan wanted to use him to check out the gang-bangers over north in Minneapolis. Broker was unsympathetic to the notion. Rodney was an infant monster. He should be chained up in a damp, leaky basement in Stillwater Prison and bricked over until he resembled a cavefish. Eisenhower’s china-blue eyes circled above the fruitless conversation, watching Broker. He ended by saying, “Sorry about the thumb, but you need some time off…” He paused, eyes probing.
Broker deflected the close attention to detail in the sheriff’s eyes. It was a game they had played off and on for more than a decade of working together. Eisenhower was an excellent administrator who’d never lost the touch of a field man. And he had the confidence to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of a brilliant subordinate, which he knew Broker to be. He’d brought Broker in as a deep undercover, unknown, in the beginning, even to his own investigative unit, answerable only to himself. But he didn’t
John had done his time working undercover. A good undercover man should be able to fool the assholes, who were not thinking too clearly to begin with. But Broker could fool anybody, even very smart people. And he did it by boldly being himself, which is to say, by being blunt as a locked safe. Sometimes John thought Broker was really presenting his true undercover act when he was in an office, like now. And this disquieted John.
Not even scary J.T. Merryweather, who had partnered with Broker in St. Paul, who was as remote and hostile as a man could be, and who was the only human that Broker minimally confided in, knew the whole story behind Phil Broker.
Several years back, in St. Paul, John had asked a sharp, no-nonsense, female FBI psychologist, who had dated Broker, why she thought he was a cop and where he got his style. The woman, who profiled criminal pathology for a living, had obviously thought about this before and took her time responding.
John Eisenhower, who had graduate degrees in criminology and sociology hanging on his wall, was still disturbed and intrigued by her answer, which he remembered almost verbatim: “Broker got stung somewhere in his background and will not discuss it. Period. As to why he’s a cop-that’s easy. Phil’s a fugitive from modern psychology. He’s a romantic primitive who loves to hunt monsters. He expects them. Monsters were in the fairy tales he’d been taught as a child. Grendel in
She’d thrown in a bittersweet spark of intuition: “In a world of monsters, boys can climb the beanstalk and sail for Treasure Island and contend for the hand of a princess. And what are monsters anyway…except adults as seen through the brave eyes of a child.”
The moment passed. Eisenhower resumed his practical gaze and said: “We pulled a background check on the girl. She won a Silver Star and a Purple Heart in the Gulf. So that’s Nina Pryce.”
Broker nodded. “I was in the army with her father.”
Conversation paused a beat. The only thing Eisenhower knew about Broker’s army time was typed in impressive blank verse on his DD214. “Just bad timing, the way she turned up, huh?” he asked, but his eyes said,
He rose to his feet and clapped Broker on the shoulder. “The girl and the thumb threw a funny bounce into things. Your act is blown.”
Broker shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Eisenhower nodded. Decided not to push it. “Get lost, heal up. You going up north?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s your dad doing?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll tell BCA to send your checks to Devil’s Rock. Rodney and his crew were good for thirty machine guns statewide. A new record for you. Good job, Broker.”
Nina and J.T. were waiting in the hall outside the office. Merryweather’s droll sneer approximated a smile. “Day is getting closer. Somebody like John’s going to put you in one of these office chairs, put you back in uniform, put you through die-versity training and get you trampled by the poe-litically correct pygmy armies like the rest of us.”
“I love you too,” said Broker.
“Don’t forget to write.” J.T. blew a kiss. He shook Nina’s hand and strolled back into the office.
Without comment, Broker walked directly to the police garage. Nina quick-stepped to keep up, dragging her luggage. He pulled a tarp from his Lincoln Green ’94 Cherokee Sport. In contrast to the house on the north end, the car was scrupulously clean.
“Are you in trouble?” she asked.
Broker shrugged and grumbled, “They all think I’ve been under too long, want to bring me in. Probably figure I’m suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Starting to identify with the assholes.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“We?” said Broker dubiously.
“Somebody followed me from New Orleans. Remember.”
“Okay…and what were you doing in New Orleans?” Broker recited in a tired voice, remembering the green nose of the Saturn peeking around the corner and its stealthy withdrawal, knowing full well that her personal devil, Cyrus LaPorte, lived in New Orleans.
“I guess Jimmy Tuna sent me.”
“Oh yeah?” Broker felt a sinking sensation that it wasn’t going away this time.
“We’re buds now that he’s dying of cancer.”
Broker raised an eyebrow. The Tuna he remembered had the constitution of an Italian mule.
“Bone cancer. Came on real quick. Real nasty. He, ah, sold me something, you could say.” She reached in her
