their pet peeves at each other. Chris Matthews brayed on one stool, Bill O’Reilly on another. Sean Hannity off beating his meat in the john. CNN had less volume and droned in a thorazine monotone. PBS was different, a station that delivered its monotone with footnotes.
C-SPAN was okay, free of commercial breaks, it came at you in agonizing real time like a dogged AA group crusading to get the nation to go on the wagon of sober politics.
Broker retreated to the washer and dryer in the bathroom and reached in to haul towels from the washer, except the goddamn towels were tangled like wet pythons around the washer stalk, resisting him. Suddenly he yanked at them, jarring the machine. He stopped and stared at his hands. Close to shaking. The flash point idling hair-trigger…
Primed and ready, just a surge away.
Deep breath, center down. Slowly, he disentangled the twisted towels from the washer column. Looked up through the doorway, snuck a look at Nina, thinking how she’d always favored colors that complemented her hair and complexion; shades of green and amber. Harvest colors. Now she grabbed whatever came to hand first in the drawer or laundry basket. At this moment, under the green terry-cloth robe, she wore a gray T-shirt, a pair of red sweatpants. Purple sweat socks.
Kit was just beginning to be aware of her appearance and how to dress. She would avert her eyes from her mother’s outlandish costumes. Come to him with tops and bottoms, ask him if they matched…
Broker blinked, caught in mid-spiral; Nina was looking back at him. No,
Deliberately now, under the gaze of her increasingly alert eyes, he transferred the towels into the dryer, sorted another load into the washer, measured soap, set the control, started the water. When he went back to the kitchen, she continued to check him from the corner of her eye as she paced and chain-smoked and watched the Abrams tanks and the Bradleys rolling up the Euphrates River valley.
“So, what do you think?” she asked in a level voice, gesturing at the televised war just as some particularly sharp audio threw a rattle of shots into the kitchen. This distinctive whoosh, then an explosion.
“The AKs and RPGs sound the same,” Broker said, turning away. “I gotta go in town, pick up the flat, do some shopping before I get Kit,” he said over his shoulder, accelerating in an uninterrupted motion toward the door, stepping into his boots, grabbing his hat, gloves, carrying his coat, which he put on in the garage.
He didn’t have to check his wristwatch. He knew it was just after noon. Three hours till school let out.
As he wheeled down the driveway and onto 12, he decided he needed some drive time away from the house. He’d been living too close to her.
And her ghosts.
Janey, Holly, and Ace Shuster. The casualties from Northern Route. He repeated the names in his mind like a diagram of her condition. She blamed herself for Janey most, and then Ace. Holly had disappeared, vaporized from the face of the earth in the explosion at Prairie Island. Broker had been two hundred yards away…
He shook his head, focused on the road. Ghosts were mind games, just mental artifacts. Invisible.
Like radiation.
Broker had come to view Nina’s depression as an asylum where all the ghosts got out. Thing about ghosts. You had to keep them locked up.
Broker stabbed his right boot sole down, heavy on the gas. Maybe not the best time to call Griffin.
Chapter Nineteen
Gator was jangled on too much morning coffee, and now rubber-kneed from the bout at the sink, but when they entered the shop, he immediately started another pot. As the Mr. Coffee gurgled and dripped, he paced and watched Sheryl drift over to the cot in the alcove, tuck her knees under her, and start combing out her hair.
No afterglow booze. No drugs. He and Sheryl agreed. The first rule of the Great Monk Crooks was, they never used. Like Danny T. said in the joint: “You use, you lose the count.”
“So?” Sheryl asked, drawing the comb through her long hair, staring quizzically at the black kitten that emerged from a folded blanket under the desk and arched up against Gator’s shin.
“Jojo,” Gator said, picking up the cat, stroking it.
Sheryl’s eyes clicked around. “You mean…Danny T.’s Jimmy Jo?”
“Yep.” Gator gently put the kitten down, poured a cup of coffee, and handed it to Sheryl. She set down the comb, took the cup in both hands, blew on it to cool it.
“The bust in Bayport, what? Eight, nine years ago, she said. “I hear it still cuts Danny like a knife.”
Casually Gator opened his desk drawer and took out the sheets of paper. “No one ever figured out who snitched on Jimmy Jo. Gave him to the narcs.”
Sheryl nodded. “Eats at Danny. Gave him ulcers, losing his only kid like that.”
“Wasn’t a snitch. Was an undercover cop.” He tapped the paper.
Sheryl narrowed her eyes, taking the papers; she drew up her knees cross-legged, got comfortable. “This is a search warrant,” she said as she flipped up the blue memo stapled to the top page, raised her eyebrows.
“Read,” he said.
She put on her serious thinking face and carefully read the warrant. Then she scanned it again. He reached in the desk again and tossed her the Washington County letter, the Visa statement.
“Connect the dots. I don’t trust myself,” Gator said.
Sheryl took her time reading, turning the pages, going back and forth, sipping her coffee, the student in her engaged. Times like this, he was grateful she was onboard. His deep bench. She glanced up, her eyes luminous, impressed.
“This guy, Broker,” she said slowly.
“I figure he was an undercover they didn’t want to show in court.”
“Maybe.” They locked eyes. “How’d you get this? Where?”
Gator smiled, “Never mind how. I got it from a house, yesterday afternoon. Where he’s staying.”
Sheryl’s eyes popped. “Up here?”
“Yep.”
“A state narc is up here?” Showing lots of whites, her eyes darted around the shop. “Shit, man…”
“Relax. If something was up, I’da heard from Keith. In fact, I’m working on that, to make sure,” Gator said.
Sheryl wrinkled her nose. She didn’t entirely approve of the way he played footsie with his childhood buddy, the sheriff.
Gator hurried to reassure her. “Way it looks, I don’t think he’s on the job anymore. Just living with his crazy old lady and his kid.”
Sheryl uncrossed her legs, got off the cot, and paced the narrow office. “Let me get this straight. You just
Gator shrugged. “If I told you how, you wouldn’t believe it. Doesn’t matter. What’s it mean?”
As Sheryl pondered her response, the black kitten reappeared from under the desk and glided to a bowl of water, then poked its head into a second bowl of cat food.
“I think Danny T. had a contract out on whoever snitched Jojo,” she said slowly. “It never went anywhere.”
“So,” Gator tossed up his hands in a gesture of great abundance, “let’s renegotiate the contract.”
Sheryl inclined her head so her hair fell in this dark cascade, and their eyes batted the idea back and forth. She frowned. “You mean…?”
“Make an approach, propose trading this ratfuck narc for…”
“A reliable supplier of precursor,” Sheryl said.
Gator took her hands in his, pulled her up from the cot, and twirled her in a celebratory circle. Sheryl went along for a moment, then her face went beetle-browed with concentration. She released Gator’s hands.
“Easier said than done, making an approach. When I tried putting out feelers to Danny’s guys, they treated me like a retread throwaway bitch. They’re still pissed at me ’cause I walked away from cooking for them. Shit,
