Griffin squashed out his cigarette in the full ashtray and watched the sun rise thin over the lake. Okay. Be honest. Maybe the last one did get to him, the kid. There’d been a woman in St. Paul he thought he might marry, even start a family. Maybe Broker was right. He’d run away. After that scene in the woods, he’d quit his newspaper job and migrated up here. Do some honest work with his hands where there were fewer people.
Fewer people to hurt.
But there were exceptions. And possibly Gator Bodine was one them.
Quarter past nine Saturday morning Gator was dipping his toast in an egg yolk at Lyme’s Cafe, looking at a picture on the front page of
He looked up and saw Harry Griffin come through the door and walk straight to the booth where he was sitting. Stood there looking down with that shrink leather face, looking a little shaky with a wild aspect. Hadn’t shaved.
“We never been properly introduced, you and me,” Griffin said.
Gator tucked the toast in his mouth, chewed, then dusted the crumbs off his thick fingers. “That what this is, getting introduced?” he said, keeping his voice neutral, sizing Griffin up close. A real bad boy in his time, people said, but now he was starting to show his age. Still had this solitary yard-bull intensity to him, like a very few guys in the joint who stood their ground alone. With no group affiliation. The way you fought that kind of guy was, you caught him asleep with a club.
Griffin sat down in the opposite seat, casually leaned his elbows on the table, and said, “This is about proxies-you with me so far?”
“Like stand ins?” Gator nodded, working at keeping his face calm.
“Yeah, like for instance, if Jimmy Klumpe got into something he couldn’t handle and someone was to stand in for him. Say sneak into a guy’s house, steal stuff, and knife his truck tire. Chickenshit stuff like that.”
“You lost me,” Gator said, not real comfortable with the cold disquiet in Griffin’s ash-colored eyes. Sure had a lot of leftover balls for an AARP fart.
“Okay, let’s get you found,” Griffin said. “The house where Broker’s staying, that somebody was snooping in- it’s my fucking house. Anybody comes around, like in through the woods on skis, they’re gonna find me standing in.” Griffin paused. “What goes around, comes around.”
“Yeah, I recall reading that saying in a book about the sixties. And I think maybe you’re reaching a little, connecting the dots. What I heard,” Gator said carefully, “is they made up. No reason for anybody to do anything on it. Like dumping garbage.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Just so we understand each other,” Griffin said.
“Hey, you’re a badass old man, and I was brought up to respect my elders, what can I say,” Gator said with a straight face.
“You’re on notice; we’ll leave it there for now,” Griffin said, standing up. “Oh, yeah, and nice meeting you.”
“My pleasure,” Gator said in an icy fuck-you tone.
As Griffin turned to leave, he paused, raised his finger and pointed. “And, Gator?”
“Now what?”
Griffin smiled. “You got egg on your chin.”
Driving home from his weekly sit-down breakfast, Gator briefly entertained the notion of shutting Griffin off like an antique tractor. Then he calmed down and went over the story about Griffin beating up that bunch of drunks in Skeet’s with a pool cue. But that was three, four years ago. And he only
Had more important business to think about.
Griffin drove back to his cabin fast, drifting the Jeep around the turns with an almost adolescent glee. The whole aggravated knot of insult and age and punk-ass youth and past and present unraveled when you yanked one cord:
Don’t go off completely half-cocked. Wait for J. T.’s call.
And Teedo had given him directions how to come in on Gator’s place through the woods.
So go take a look for himself.
The notion toyed with him with a palpable prod of danger. Felt like this sleeping figure was waking up in his chest, unfolding its limbs, putting him on like a suit of clothes. Susan Hatch would counsel he was too old…
“No, I ain’t,” Harry Griffin said aloud. Hell, he’d always been at his best alone, on his own. Mindful that Broker was coming over in an hour, he decided to keep this one to himself. And if it turned out that Teedo’s story was true, he could tell Broker about it later.
Chapter Thirty-four
J. T. Merryweather woke up before the alarm on Saturday morning, and as his feet searched for his slippers on the chilly floor, his first thought was about Phil Broker.
Griffin didn’t specify in so many words, but J. T. was thinking this had to do with Broker being up north.
Moving quiet, so he didn’t wake his wife and daughter, he selected clothes from the closet and dresser in the dark. Then he padded downstairs, plugged in the coffee, and showered in the first-floor half bath.
After he dressed and breakfasted on a quick bowl of cereal, he retrieved Griffin’s license number request and made some phone calls, taking notes. Not entirely satisfied with what they told him on the phone, he decided to take it a step further.
J. T. stepped out on his front porch and studied the hazy dawn that cloaked his fields, the paddocks, and the fences in mist. He’d made it up to homicide captain in St. Paul before he took the early retirement and put his savings into 160 acres in Lake Elmo and tried raising ostriches.
The specialty meat was slow to catch on in a fast-food culture, so now he was trimmed down to breeding stock and covering his bets with beef. Never regretted farming. Not one bit. He started his town car, a Crown Vic he got at a police auction-interceptor package, good Eagle tires-and headed out his driveway into the fog.
His weather-wary eyes scanned the muddy fields to either side of the road; first the early rain, then the frost, now clogged with wet snow. Like his own land. How soggy would the spring be, how soon could he get in with a
