For the first time since they’d met, they laughed.
Broker relaxed behind the steering wheel of Sommer’s big Ford and debated whether to empty the ashtray. He decided to leave it. The crushed cigarette butts were like Hank’s cold fingerprints. They were just a few miles down the road when Amy asked.
“So, did you go on hunches like this when you were a cop?”
“I was a lousy cop,” Broker said.
“Really?” Amy raised her arms, reached behind her head, and pulled her hair back in a practical ponytail.
“I mean I was good at what I did but I was a lousy cop,” Broker said. “Take Dave Iker, now he’s a good cop: responsible, a demon on details, street smart-but.” Broker poked a finger in the air. “Ninety-nine percent of the time he’ll get there after
“Dave says you were an adrenaline addict, that you never could go the speed limit.”
“There you go, procedure. Most cops are rigid about authority, they like to enforce rules.”
“And you?” Amy asked.
“I preferred to get there
“And maybe become a bit of a monster yourself?” Amy asked.
Broker held her gaze for a beat, then held up his hand with his thumb and forefinger a measured inch apart. “Maybe just a little.”
“Right, like a little pregnant,” Amy said.
After that, they exchanged normal information about attending the University of Minnesota in different eras. Amy mentioned the doctor she almost married in Minneapolis. Broker skirted the subject of his first wife.
He drove Highway 169 out of Ely and crossed the Laurentian Divide just north of Virginia, Minnesota. He got on 53 and took that into Cloquet where he stopped and filled up the Expedition at the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright gas station with its hovering witch’s-hat roof.
They bypassed Duluth and stopped at the Black Bear Casino for lunch. Then back on the road, Interstate 35 fast-forwarded them toward the Cities at seventy-five-plus mph. The traffic thickened and the evergreens gave way to mixed hardwood and fields around Hinckley. The Expedition purred powerfully on eight cylinders, and soon they were running a gauntlet of billboards and tract houses.
Then they skimmed the northern edge of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro and angled off east and took 95 south along the St. Croix River through Stillwater.
Then they entered the Timberry mall-sprawl and cul-de-sacs with names like Hunter’s Lane and Oak Ponds. Broker turned again, into the countryside west of the river.
“Where are we?” Amy asked.
“Lake Elmo,” Broker said. “I’m going to drop you with J.T. and then I’ll take the vehicle over to Sommer’s. I assume somebody will give me a ride back.”
“So who’s this friend?”
“J.T. Merryweather. Ex-St. Paul cop. Used to be my partner a million years ago. Now he’s into raising poultry.”
Twenty minutes later they arrived. Amy laughed out loud. “Since when are
“J.T. says they’re the beef of the future.”
The objects of her surprise drifted big-eyed, short-beaked, long-necked, and very long-legged behind six-foot fencing. Flocks of gray-brown females and a few taller black-plumed males. They stood between seven and nine feet tall, and some of the males could weigh four hundred pounds. There were almost a hundred of them in the fenced paddocks, anomalous against the flaming maples and red oaks of the Minnesota countryside.
They turned into a drive past a country mailbox positioned on a setback so a snowplow wouldn’t knock it down. They passed a sign that spelled out royal kraal ostrich, j.t. merryweather, proprietor.
The snug two-story farmhouse was separated from a red barn by weeping willows. The door opened and a tall denim-clad man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson walked out to greet them.
“He’s a black guy?” Amy said.
“Makes sense, huh? Both J.T. and his birds originated in Africa.”
Amy looked at the paradoxically ungainly but graceful birds floating across the cold afternoon shadows. “Those birds are a long way from Africa.”
Broker threw open the door, got out, and walked to meet J.T. They clasped hands, locked thumbs, and dapped it down, old style.
For five years J.T. had been putting his farm together; like most of the cops close to fifty in St. Paul, he took the early retirement. He’d dropped the twenty pounds he’d gained when he quit the cigarettes and his face had lost that puffy desk-bloat. Some men age into roundness. J.T. and Broker shared a genetic predisposition toward edges. And farm work and fresh air were putting the taut angles back into J.T.’s Ethiopian cheekbones.
“Hmmmmm,” J.T. said, big hands on his hips, as Amy came around the Ford and waited to be introduced.
“J.T., this is Amy Skoda,” Broker said.
“Uh-huh,” J.T. said, appraising Amy.
“It’s not like that,” Broker said.
J.T. nodded. “Far be it from me to judge people,” though in fact J.T. believed in enforcing the rules with the ardor of an Old Testament Jeremiah. He grinned and tipped back the brim of his hat with more than a little theater. “Hell, I’d fuck around myself except my wife would beat me to death with a number-twelve Weber cast-iron skillet when I was sleeping.” He extended his hand. “J.T. Merryweather. Pleased to meet you.”
Amy took the handshake, looked around. “So what’s it like going from law enforcement to ostrich farmer?”
J.T. grinned slowly. “Comes naturally. I keep them in cages.” Straight-faced, he added, “Actually, my family was heavy into agriculture for quite a while in Georgia, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”
“Gotcha,” Amy said.
Denise Merryweather walked out on the porch in just a blouse and jeans, hugging herself. She was a well- put-together woman over thirty and under fifty, who was successfully playing hide and seek with age. She had a width of Cherokee blood to her dark face, strong brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and a cross on a chain at her throat.
As a general proposition, she had never approved of Broker.
“Phil Broker,” she said in a noncommittal tone. “Will you and your friend be staying for a while?”
“Hi, Denise, this is Amy Skoda. Amy, this is Denise,” Broker said.
The two women met on the stairs and shook hands.
“It’s not like that,” Amy said. “We are, like, friends.”
“I’m glad,” Denise said. “Because we only have the one spare bedroom. Broker, you get the couch.”
An awkward silence followed Denise’s remark. Amy cocked her head at a distinctive rattling rebound sound from the barn and changed the subject.
“Hoops?” she asked.
“Uh-huh,” said J.T. “I tore out the milking stanchions in the back basement of the barn, poured a new concrete floor, and put up a backboard for my daughter.”
“You did, huh?” Broker said.
“Okay. You helped.”
“Come on inside, honey,” Denise said. “Let these two men whine about getting old.” Denise motioned Amy into the house.
“We are getting old,” Broker said.
“I’ll never unhook a 38D triple-eyelet bra one-handed in under three seconds again, cruising in a ’57 Chevy, that’s for sure,” J.T. said.
“Why, Jarret True Merryweather, I didn’t know you could count past twenty.” Denise flared her eyes as she disappeared through the door with Amy. When the door was shut J.T. scrutinized Broker.
