He surfaced and his chest heaved, sucking in huge drafts of air, and he felt better. Back on the beach, he stood for a few moments letting the warm southerly breeze chase the water droplets from his body. Then he rubbed vigorously with a scratchy towel.
He watched enviously as Nina nimbly scaled a big hunk of Gabbro-his rock-and peered into the boulder- hemmed pool. “Can I dive here?” she asked.
“Just don’t go too deep. It’s cold.”
She dropped the robe and stood in the first purple flush of twilight. Broker usually referenced attractive women to the movie stars they resembled. His ex-wife Kim had reminded him of Faye Dunaway. Too late he realized she was the Faye Dunaway of
There was no precedent for Nina. She meant to set it. One of a kind, she sprang, a supple mercury-and- orchid jackknife in the magnificent light, and cleanly pierced the water with hardly a splash. Luminescent pools of bubbles marked the brisk sequence of her strokes. She swam out a hundred yards, turned, and swam back to the beach and strode from the surf. Broker took a second look. Water rolled off her skin like icy marbles.
He retrieved her robe from the rock and handed it to her. She dried her short hair with an end of the robe, tilting her head in a girlish pose and, at that moment, bright with cold lake water and with slippers of wet sand on her feet, she looked normal, a good-looking, very healthy young woman with her life ahead of her.
Then she said, “C’mon, I want you to try something.”
Tank stepped from the shadows and squired them up the path. A pitcher of liquid sat on the porch steps cooling.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Mom’s home remedy and Roto Rooter. I’ll show you.”
She picked up the pitcher and led him inside and held up the kettle the dandelions had boiled in. Broker could see his face reflected in the gleaming bottom of the pot.
“Huh?”
She poured a glass of murky liquid from the pitcher and handed it to him. “Your mom showed me. If it cleans that pot just think what it’ll do for you.”
Broker shook his head. Irene had a new hippie trick. He drained the concoction. Woody, like boiled toothpicks.
Through a break in the trees, he marked the blue and green of a patrol car trolling along the highway. He nudged Nina and pointed. She nodded. Okay.
Mike and Irene had potatoes in tin foil on the grill on the front porch. Slipping easily into tandem, Nina teamed with Mike. He pointed and she dragged. A heap of driftwood collected on the beach below the cabin. Then Mike threw on some venison steaks-just three. Irene, the vegetarian, sniffed her nose and tossed a salad. Talk was literally about the weather which was not idle talk next to the big water. Nina spoke little, carefully watching Broker. Tank lay at her feet on his back like a giant, hairy, dead cockroach with his legs sprawled out. Nina slowly petted him and picked wood ticks from his fur, split them on her thumbnail and tossed them into the coals. Their ears adjusted to the night sounds and the sunset flamed out and the air transformed itself into squadrons of fierce tiger mosquitoes that came straight in and stuck like darts.
Time to go inside for repellent.
Broker took Nina into his bedroom and, as he smeared on Muskol, told her to keep Irene in the cabin and to keep Tank with them. He unlocked his gun cabinet and quietly showed her where he kept the double-ought for the twelve-gauge. Then he removed his military issue Colt.45 from a drawer.
He disliked handguns. If it came to a real fight, give him a shotgun or a rifle. But the Colt was a heavy reliable chunk of American history, good for hitting, which was more his style. He cleared it, checked it, and loaded it, easing the slide forward. He tucked it into his waistband and pulled a hooded sweatshirt on to conceal it.
He figured this way: Cops were on the road and he’d only be seconds away down on the beach and the dog would alert him. In the dark, Broker trusted Tank’s instincts and speed more than two trained men. Nina queried him with her eyes, turning them toward his folks on the porch. Broker raised a hand in a calming gesture. She nodded and leaned the shotgun in the bedroom corner behind the door.
They had started standing closer together. “You sure about this?” he asked. For the first time in his life he wasn’t aware of their age difference.
“Don’t fight it,” she replied in a steady voice that matched her steady grave eyes. The sound of her voice tingled in his chest like danger.
Back in the kitchen he took out a glass, opened the icebox, fumbled with an ice tray, threw a couple cubes into the glass, dug a bottle of Cutty Sark from a cabinet and poured in a finger of Scotch. On second thought, Broker, usually a temperate man, poured in another three fingers. He’d need it to loosen his tongue.
Irene smiled a prescient smile as he came out on to the porch. She and Mike always sensed the difference in their son when he put on his gun. The big German shepherd sensed it too with the peculiar clairvoyance of his breed. He moved protectively to Irene’s side and nuzzled her thigh.
“Cops on the road. Something’s up,” said Mike casually.
“Uh huh,” said Broker. “In a little while I want you to take Irene into town, have a few drinks, and check into a motel on me.” Broker handed his father a fifty-dollar bill.
“Dirty movies on cable TV,” said Irene. Mike wiggled his shaggy eyebrows.
“Keep Tank close while we’re down on the beach,” Broker cautioned his mother. To Nina he said, “Don’t get carried away, it’s still early.” Then he and Mike took their beverages down the path to the water’s edge.
With his Spirits and his drink, Broker sat in an armchair of granite and listened to the murmur of the lake. Mike lit the firewood and removed his pipe from his chest pocket. Out on the water, a loon cried and Broker shivered, shriven by the haunting wilderness a cappella.
The bite of the Scotch and a smoke did not wash away the taste of the dandelion tea that curled under his tongue like an old root system. He raised his eyes up the column of flames and followed the stream of sparks up to the star-crazy sky and picked out the Big and Little Bear and the Pole Star and Arcturus and Vega-and right now it looked like a black target shot through with a million bullet holes.
16
“Dad, there’s one thing I want you to know. I never took, all these years. And my kind of work, I had chances.”
Mike sucked on his empty pipe and placed a stick on the fire. “Yeeaah,” he said slowly. “So?”
“I’m thinking of taking something.”
“You talking about straight-out stealing?” asked Mike.
“I don’t think so. See, the fact is…” Broker laughed and threw out his arms in an absurd posture. “I’m the only cop in Minnesota who’s blown up a jail to break the inmates out and who’s been investigated for robbing a bank of ten tons of gold bullion.”
“Ah,” Mike exclaimed softly like a man who had just been handed a key.
“Vietnam. I was the last swinging dick out. April 30, 1975.”
“This gold…?”
“National Bank in Hue City.”
“And you robbed this bank for the army?”
“No, I went in to break a Vietnamese guy out of jail. I was the diversion for robbing the bank, but, see, I didn’t
“Ha…” Mike exhaled.
Broker took a stiff pull on his Scotch. “All these years I thought that girl’s father had set me up. I trusted him. You might say it soured me on people. Now I’m not so sure I got it right.”
Mike carefully placed one knee on the other and grasped the top knee in both hands. “We always thought you had something big in you, Phil. Irene is of the opinion that you were born in the wrong century. Me, I worried you had one of those…syndromes.”
Broker leaned back and savored another mouthful of Scotch, letting it roll medicinally from one side of his
