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Gator, they wanted to know if I’d do prison visits again.”

“But this is different,” Gator said. “It’s got a personal angle, like a favor to the great man. We start out humble. Give them the guy like a gift. Don’t go to street guys. Go right to the top, Danny’s lawyer…”

An authentic ripple of disgust distorted her face. She clamped her arms across her chest. “You go see Dickie Werk, you blow him.”

“C’mon, this is different,” Gator insisted. Then he took her hand and walked her through the shop, past the disassembled tractor and the partitioned area where he kept his paints, paint gun, two protective suits with state-of-the-art rebreather masks. They entered the paint room. Hooks dangled from the ceiling on which he hung tractor parts. It was an almost hallucinatory space, swirled with layers of spray from the paint gun-red, orange, green, yellow. Empty now, kept scrupulously clean. Just a long workbench, a wide elaborate fume hood, and a color photo taped to the wall; a view of Sheryl’s sand beach lot in Belize. Gator believed in visualizing goals.

“We’re all set up-we got an industrial-rated exhaust system, the glassware, the mantles, the generator,” he said. “Got the perfect location, a pig tank full of anhydrous in the barn…and I got pickup, delivery, and disposal all figured out.”

“Figured out in theory,” Sheryl said tartly, bringing him back to earth. “Or have you forgotten what a mess it was two weeks ago, just cooking two pounds? All thumbs, the country kids…you getting stuck in the woods with a truck full of precursor and chemicals you ripped off…” She raised her finger and wagged it. “You got it figured out on paper, honey; not in real life.”

“Okay, two weeks ago was hairy; but we needed operating cash. I owe my brother-in-law, remember…”

“Your brother-in-law the lush, your buddy the sheriff ”-she rolled her eyes, then clamped her arms across her chest-“fucking wolves howling all night.” Again the wagging finger. “No way I’m going back to those West Side Mexican creeps; I don’t need the exposure. To lay off that shit we took a fifty percent cut in price”-her eyes flashed-“and me digging around in the water tank of some crummy nightclub toilet for the bread…there was vomit on the floor, in the woman’s john.” Sheryl finished up fierce and indignant.

“You’re absolutely right.” Gator made calming motions with his hands. “That’s why we need a reliable organization that can assemble the chemicals in volume, discreetly. Dead drops.”

“Gator, I don’t even know if OMG has a network in Canada to bring stuff down. They’re still a bunch of fucking bikers, man.”

“Work with me, here, will ya?” Gator pleaded. “Not like we’re in hurry; this year’s shot. If it happens, it’ll be next winter. We got time. Long-term, remember?”

Sheryl’s tantrum passed. She unfolded her arms and paced the room. “Okay, maybe it could work.” She pirouetted and raised the stern finger for a third time. “You’re forgetting something,” she said, still beetly, still thinking. “If this guy checks out and they go for it, they’re going to kill him. We can get indicted as coconspirators in murder one. This won’t be like the last time. Your buddy, the sheriff, is going to have to investigate an ex-cop with a bullet in the back of his head. Says in the paperwork he worked for BCA. They’ll bring in the state investigators. And they’re pretty good.”

Gator made a quashing gesture with his hands. “I thought of that. We’ll make it part of the deal. He dies in a house fire. They put a plastic sack over his head or do him with a small caliber in the ear, huh-that ain’t gonna show if he’s burned up. Bad connection on the propane. Gas rises to the pilot light in the furnace. Boom. Happens all the time in old houses up here.”

Sheryl enlarged her eyes. “Another house fire, Gator? You just had one last year… And for starters, you don’t dictate to these guys…”

“Aw, c’mon, maybe they’ll do it somewhere else, huh? Let’s take a shot. Take the papers to the lawyer. He can talk to Danny on the phone, and no one’s listening; they turn the tape off, right, when he’s talking to his lawyer?”

Sheryl chewed the inside of her cheek, angling her head back and forth, weighing it. “So go in humble, serve them up this guy, then later we angle for an audition,” she said.

“There you go, think positive,” Gator said.

“They’d have a whole year to put it together. And they’ll want to check out the operation, send out an appraiser, like a bank doing a mortgage.”

“Hey, we’re ready.”

“No more little jobs. No more sweating middlemen. All we do is cook and get paid. The big batch,” Sheryl said.

“Biggest batch ever cooked east of California. Right here,” Gator said.

“With the right support system, we could cook ten pounds a heat…”

Gator shook his head. “Hell, with our setup we could do twenty pounds of ninety-nine-percent pure glass. Easy.” He couldn’t help laughing, picturing it as he shuffled toward her in a stilted Frankenstein stagger, jerking his arms. “Our stuff hits the street, it’s gonna look like Night of the Living Dead out there, all the dumb doomed tweakers lurching around the countryside.”

His comic routine finally brought laughter to her eyes. Why she liked him; he had a sense of humor.

“Okay, okay, cut the clowning. This is serious,” she said. “One heat a week, at twenty-five K a pound. But then there’s overhead and Danny’s cut. Still, shit, man…” She walked across the paint room and touched the beach photo taped to the wall. Then she turned to him. “There’s a lot of ifs; if they can deliver in volume and on time, if they don’t screw up washing the money, if you can get a new set of ID…” Finally his enthusiasm swept her up and she grinned. “Shit, Gator, in two months we could get free. Disappear.”

“Say good-bye to winter,” Gator said.

“Belize.”

“Placencia, here we come. Build on that property. I could work on boat engines. Two-cycle diesel, not that different from tractors. Go straight, live on fish and coconuts.” He put his arm around her and walked her back into the mechanics bay. Then he gently pressed her forward against the disassembled bare metal of the old tractor, nuzzled her ear, inhaling the great hair. “Lean over, baby; grab some Minneapolis Moline.”

“I guess this is what they call progress, huh,” Sheryl sighed as she unbuttoned her jeans.

Chapter Twenty

When Broker picked Kit up at school, their conversation consisted of three words.

“Kitty?” Kit asked.

“No kitty,” Broker said. After a glum drive home, they walked into the house, and it was immediately apparent that Nina’s morning rally had continued into the afternoon. She still wore the odd outfit, minus the robe, but she’d combed and gathered her hair in a ponytail. The weights were strewn around the living room in a circle that suggested she had been working out. More than circumstantial was the tone of her voice when she saw her daughter:

“Young lady, you are vacuuming all the rugs, remember…”

Broker left them debating over the sound of the vacuum cleaner-Kit trying to make a case that all five rugs were too many demerits to work off.

Broker went into the backyard, making a vague reference to the woodpile. He walked far enough into the woods to verify that the ski pole and bunny were still in place.

All afternoon he’d driven the roads, his thoughts accelerating. He’d lost something. A cushion between his skin and everything else in the world. More and more he felt pressed right up against days full of sharp edges. It was a new sensation for him. Life hurt.

Wasn’t hard to figure out why.

If she really was thawing out…then the truce that had existed between them as he nursed her would also melt away. They’d be right back where they were before Northern Route tricked weird-facing the unresolved issue in their marriage.

Would she go back into the Army?

Would he revert to dangling military spouse? Would Kit again become a bouncing ball between Nina’s duty