“And I get to meet them?”
“Yeah, Rodney, you meet them and deal direct from now on. I’m not real hot on this gun stuff.”
Rodney strutted to the lawn table, snatched up the bills, and counted. He stopped in midcount, staring.
“It’s all there,” said Broker.
Rodney’s eyes jittered on two mourning doves that delicately executed a feeding ballet atop a birdfeeder set into the lip of the ravine. Unlike everything else in the overgrown, eroded yard, the feeder showed a caring hand, sanded and varnished and shaped with an elegant flair for craftsmanship. A zigzag stuck in Rodney’s eyes as he tried to extract a thought. Out of place.
“Birds,” he said.
“I got nothing against birds,” said Broker.
2
Broker ate a bowl of Special K, drank a glass of orange juice, and filled his Thermos with coffee. Then he changed into a clean black T-shirt and pulled on Wellington boots, a Levi’s jacket, and a long-billed black cap. He threw a nylon hideout holster that held a Beretta compact into his glove compartment along with a cell phone. Then he clipped on his pager.
The sky was bright but burnished with an unseasonable chill so he grabbed a loose polo shirt to disguise the pistol if he had to strap it to the small of his back. He tucked Rodney’s rifle into the false floor of his truck bed and rearranged his tools.
He ran an ad in the local paper for landscaping and handyman jobs. Sometimes he cut and hauled firewood. He had a talent for landscaping and kept a Bobcat on a trailer up north. One of his big limestone jobs was even photographed for the St. Paul paper.
But…
People still had a line on him from the old days. So he augmented his income periodically, ferrying marijuana and speed from up north down to the river valley. It was the speed that got him onto Rodney. There was this lab up in Pine County run by some skinheads who had swastikas and machine guns on the brain.
Broker shook his head and studied his work-battered hands. A long time ago he had vowed to never get trapped working inside in an office. So now…machine guns.
He artfully rearranged his tool trove so that anything he needed was always in a steel tangle on the bottom. But it was good camouflage. Nobody would want to get dirty nosing around in the intimidating pile. He locked the rear door to his camper and got in and slowly drove out his driveway.
He pokeyed up the dirt streets at the city limits and climbed the North Hill until his tires picked up cement. He passed nicer homes that abutted the golf course and turned south onto North Fourth Street. He craned his neck when he passed the bed and breakfast that the movie star had just bought and was remodeling. She was nowhere in sight. Slowly, he rolled down a gauntlet of three-story woodframe homes with Rococo gingerbread trim. New tulips punched up in the flower beds. Lilac and bridal wreath were busting out. He passed the Carnegie Library, built in 1902, and the city hall and turned left on Myrtle and drove three blocks to Main Street.
He pulled into the FINA station and gassed up. With a dry hitch in his voice he asked the clerk for six pick-five lotto tickets. The Powerball drawing tonight was for 32 million bucks. He pocketed the tickets, a couple packs of beef jerky, and hit the road.
He drove north, up State 95, through cuts in the river bluffs and listened on A.M. radio for a weather report. The day would remain clear but with a kicker. Frost was possible tonight across the northern tier suburbs. His eyes were fixed beyond the tree lines ahead. Still cold up north.
North was more than a direction. As life in the Cities took a definite seedy turn, he could always count on one last clean place-deep winter up along the North Shore where he’d been raised. He replayed a memory from last November, during deer season. Strapped in snowshoes, he’d plodded the frozen shore of Lake Superior on a night so cold that sap exploded in the trees. Orion glittered down and solid bedrock buoyed him from beneath the clean snow and he had felt locked in place by a harsh beauty that was older than God. He wanted to get back to that moment. Leave the city lights behind.
He tapped in F.M. on the radio and listened to a luncheon program from the National Press Club on Public Radio: Andy Rooney reminiscing about World War Two. The Big One.
He had never thought big enough. His ex-wife, Kimberly, had diagnosed the problem on her way out of his life and on her way to the spa to read
Rodney had approached Broker at a gun show, six months ago, directed by someone with loose lips. Rodney had done his homework and had a description of Broker as a former large-quantity dealer who now had scaled down to a low-profile conduit for the “white man” dope-speed and grass-that traveled between northern Minnesota and the eastern suburbs. But the dope trade had gotten too rough and crazy. More and more he was mixed up in illegal arms.
Broker did credit Rodney with organizational skill. He had put together a group of reservists throughout the state. Like him, they were armorers who worked in supply. Like him, they over inventoried weapons parts. Slowly they were assembling their own illegal armory out of spare parts. What Rodney needed was a man who could connect him to a market. Quietly.
Like his ad in the Stillwater
He turned west on Highway 97, drove through Scandia, and hooked up with Interstate 35 outside of Forest Lake. Now he was rolling north at 65 miles an hour.
He drank some coffee and ate one of his beef jerkys and continued to think about Rodney, who had this idea about a big score at Camp Ripley when the guard went up to train for the summer. He had stoned dreams of villas on the Mediterranean, sailboats. Rodney wanted to sell tanks.
Broker shook his head. Once he’d barreled through the Black Hills with a semi full of grass and stolen Harleys. He wondered if a Bradley armored vehicle would fit in the back of a semi.
The people he was on his way to meet fantasized in such terms. But mostly they made do with semi- automatics: AKs, Mini 14s, and Colts. But this one guy, Tabor, the money guy, hinted that he had pieces of a.50 caliber and someday maybe he’d let Broker take a crack at getting that baby up and cooking.
It was business. He didn’t share in the dialogue with his clients. Tabor had hired Broker to rewire his house on the side. By the time Broker was done he’d fixed the washer and the dryer and built a screened porch. All the time Tabor was making with the far-right sounds.
Broker told him.
Tabor owned a Ford dealership and a ton of land in Pine County and regularly attended church. He didn’t approve of Broker selling dope. Broker pointed out that he’d been introduced to Tabor by a bunch of neo-Nazi wackos who cooked speed in the piney woods, so lay off the pious crap. And Broker wasn’t real comfortable hanging around with Tabor’s buddies, who dressed up in soldier suits and played with guns out in the sticks. After the Oklahoma City thing he’d seen those guys on
But Rodney and Tabor had agreed to a one-time gig to be connected. On a touchy deal involving military rifles Broker could expect $500 per piece. So three grand for six weapons. His toe eased off the accelerator. With a machine gun in the back maybe it was a good idea to drive the speed limit.
