He retrieved his arm. “Janey, I’m a little busy right now.”
Without missing a sniffle, she pointed to his left wrist, where he wore a bracelet of dark purple blood bruises from Mouse’s handcuff. “You should put some ice on that,” she said.
She got up, folded her arms across her chest, and paced.
“Twelve years of married life, for Christ sake. I thought maybe you could knock some sense into him? He always respected you.” She gulped several rapid breaths, then sipped some water to steady herself.
Broker protested, “Drew never respected me. He thought I was. . crude; a door ripper, lacking subtlety.”
“Well, just what are my daughter and I supposed to do? It’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry.” Broker’s voice backed up to try again. He tried again, and all he could come up with was the same. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all you can say is-you’re
Broker watched Janey stride toward her car and get in. She started the Lexus and lurched backing up, bumped a pile of firewood, and put a twelve-hundred-dollar scratch in her rear bumper. Finally, in a grind of gravel, she was gone up the drive.
Broker drank his beer and opened another; then he put some ice cubes in a dishrag and placed it against the bump on his head. Holding the ice with one hand, he washed down three 200-mg Ibuprofen. Then he lit a cigar.
He logged onto the laptop and checked his e-mail. NO NEW MESSAGES ON SERVER.
One-thirty in the morning the cell phone rang. Broker fumbled it to his ear and heard a disembodied voice caterwaul from way down in a whiskey wind tunnel:
“Goddammit, Harry,” Broker shouted.
Chapter Twenty-one
The rasping sound brought Broker stark upright. Skimming like a water bug, he’d barely made a dent in sleep.
He eased up on the bed, holding the shotgun that was slick with his sweat, looking around. Another night without the A/C, thinking he could hear better with the windows open.
It wasn’t quite fingernails screeching on a blackboard. But it was close. He oriented quickly on the sound of cat claws raking across a screen door.
Ambush wanted to go out.
When Milt got involved with Hank Sommer’s widow, he also inherited Hank’s cat, Ambush, who was now Broker’s responsibility for the summer. The cat was getting old, plump, fussy. She communicated her desire to go outside by pawing at the patio screen door, and now she had managed to get one of her claws tangled in the ripped wire mesh.
“Okay, just a minute,” Broker mumbled as he rolled from the sheets and padded barefoot across the kitchen to the door that led onto the deck. He freed the stuck gray paw from the abraded screen and slid the patio screen open. Ambush strolled across the deck and disappeared down the stairs.
He looked past the deck. The river had acquired a muddy Nile-brown complexion under an overcast gray sky. He stood there naked for a while and let the malarial dawn drip over him.
The thought formed that the Saint was out there, waking up in this very same heat. And Harry, the midnight crooner. Unless, of course, they were, as a third of the cops in the county believed, the same person.
Onward.
Sweat trickled from his scalp, streaked down his check, dripped from his chin, and splashed on the oak floor. Running in this heat would be an exercise in hydraulics. He’d have to grow gills. It would be absolute madness. Sort of like the general atmosphere in Investigations at Washington County.
Harry could be out there, could have put him to bed. Could be waiting to get him up in the morning. He considered lugging the Ithaca along on the run. Screw it. Broker sat down and pulled on his Nikes.
Five minutes later, he couldn’t tell where the air stopped and his sweat started. By the time he’d made it up the hill, he was back remembering his Camus from a literature class at the University of Minnesota-
He turned around and walked back down the driveway, skipped the plunge in the river, which was probably the temperature of warm spit, and went straight for a cold shower and a hot shave.
And he skipped making coffee; easier to grab some on the way into town. He did pay attention to the note he’d left under a magnet on the refrigerator, next to a snapshot of his daughter, Kit.
He dumped about a pound of dry Chef’s Blend into a large stainless steel mixing bowl and remembered to check to make sure the toilet seat was up so Ambush could get to water. Then he pulled on a pair of loose khaki’s, a light cotton polo shirt, and loafers. He debated about the shotgun and decided to put it back in the trunk. Loaded. Okay. He had the ten o’clock meeting with Jack Malloy, pastor at Redeemer in St. Paul.
Heading south down 95, he hit an open stretch, so he put the souped-up Crown Vic cop package to the test, easing off the gas just shy of one hundred miles per hour. Going fast didn’t change the fact that the morning air was turning to sticky gray vapor right before his eyes.
It was a little over half-an-hour drive time to St. Paul, so he figured he had time to stop by the Washington County government center for an unscheduled office call on Gloria Russell, ostensibly to get the deal machinery going for Ray Tardee.
In reality he wanted to get a close-up look and see if the Harry-Gloria-Lymon gossip really had legs.
He parked on the government side of the county offices, went in, and took an elevator to the attorneys’ offices on the third floor. He showed his ID to the secretary and asked the location of Ms. Russell’s office.
No, he didn’t have an appointment.
Broker found the office and rapped on the doorjamb.
“Yes?” Gloria Russell spoke without looking up from the paperwork on her blotter. She sat behind her desk in a gray sleeveless blouse that complemented her short black hair. There was enough definition in the muscles of her upper arms so that a discreet puddle of purple vein rested in the hollow of her elbows and disappeared up either biceps. Her office space was Doric, basic, unadorned; just shelves of a law books and law degree on the wall.
“I’m Broker,” he said. “I called you yesterday about Ray Tardee.”
Gloria’s tanned face came up like a bronze figurehead. Broker saw heat and danger but not a lot of warmth; Joan Crawford from 1940s noir. Not a bad face if it learned how to relax.
Lavender triangles of fatigue stamped the smooth tan below her lower eyelids. The eyelids quivered slightly. A faint stripe on the third finger of her left hand had almost completely faded into her tan. She took her heavy framed, black, plastic glasses from the desktop and put them on like a mask.
“Oh yeah, Broker. You’re Special Projects on the dead priest,” Gloria said. “John Eisenhower brought you in to spy while he’s out of town.”
“Nice meeting you, too,” Broker said, giving her his best empty grin.
“I checked around. The book on you is BCA left you out in the cold five years too long. A lot of people think
