Scricchhhhh. .
The rasping sound brought Broker stark upright. Skimming like a water bug, he’d barely made a dent in sleep.
Scricchhhhhhhh. .
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.
Scricchhhhhhhh. .
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-The Stranger, Meursault, on the torrid Algerian beach absurdly killing a man purely because of the heat. Broker completely understood the condition as he jogged into entry-level heat exhaustion. He crossed the road to catch some patches of darker humidity disguised as shade. He took a long look down the road at the steamy licorice waves rising off the black asphalt. He made his first really smart decision in the last couple of days.
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. FEED CAT!
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 you migrated to the other side.”
“Yeah, well; I just did a fast migrate back. Can we talk, or do I go down the hall and talk to Jerry?” Jerry Hassler was the county prosecutor.
“And you know Jerry going way back to when he worked in St. Paul, I know. You know everybody. The Old Boys’ Club. That’s why the sheriff sailed you in here on a sky hook.” Gloria exhaled. “Fine. Come in, sit down, get comfy, and stay for about thirty seconds.”
Broker entered her office and sat at the stiff-backed chair in front of her desk. A stand-alone picture frame on the corner of the desk faced the visitor’s chair and held an enlarged block of type:
NO PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES SHALL, ON THE BASIS OF SEX. .BE SUBJECTED TO DISCRIMINATION UNDER ANY EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM OR ACTIVITY RECEIVING FEDERAL FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE.
Broker thought about it and decided to jazz her a little, to see where it went. He pointed to the frame. “So are you really the dark side of Title IX? Funny, you don’t look like that kind of feminist. .”
“Really.” Gloria inclined her head and raised her hand, a reflex to fluff hair that was no longer there. “And why is that, because I’m not ugly?”
“But, on the other hand, you could be an Amazon.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Sure, feminists talk; Amazons do.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Absolutely. I married an Amazon.”
Gloria managed a small grin on her drawn face and said, “That sounds like a good title for a weepy male memoir. So how’d it turn out?”
“She left me for a younger guy.”
“Good for her.”
He leaned forward. “We need Ray Tardee as a witness on the dead priest. John wants to deal him down to some light county time. No commit to prison,” Broker said.
“No way. Tardee is a scumbag repeater who sells dope to high school kids. He’s over the line on points. He’s on his way to a new career as a wifey and pole smoker in Stillwater Prison.” Gloria paused. “Unless you can tell me why you’re pulling a news blackout on this priest thing.” She pointed out her window, across a grassy plot at the LEC. “We’re all getting calls from our favorite reporters. Everybody in our shop is real curious just what you have going.” She leaned forward and said, “Motive? Suspect?”
Broker rubbed the bruise circling his wrist that was starting to look like a Maori tattoo. “You mean Lymon hasn’t told you?” If Patti Palen down in the patrol basement knew about the Saint’s medallion yesterday afternoon, this legal diva had to know too.
Gloria sat up straight in her chair. Her voice went dead formal. “Lymon Greene? No. As a matter of fact he hasn’t.”
“What about Harry-he tell you anything?” Broker said.
She narrowed her eyes. “I heard you were going to escort Harry to St. Joseph’s, and somewhere things went. . awry.”
Broker couldn’t put a fast comeback together and granted her the point. So he let his eyes wander past her shoulder to another picture frame on top of her bookcase that he’d missed when he first walked in the office. A small school picture of a smiling boy with freckles and a cowlick, maybe six years old. Besides her law degree, the picture was the only personal touch in the office.
“Your son?” he said, pointing past her at the picture.
“No. I don’t have any children,” she said. Then she stood up, turned, plucked the picture from the bookcase and put it in her desk drawer. Then she fussed with some papers on her desk, worried her lower lip briefly between her teeth, and said, “Look, I don’t know you. And I don’t like being dictated to by strangers. You have to give us a legitimate reason to back off on Tardee.”
Broker raised his hands in a reasonable gesture. “John’s orders. That’s really all I can tell you right now.”
She jabbed her index finger at him. “If-and it’s a big if-Tardee helps you make a case, we might consider a departure from guidelines. So let’s see the case.”
“When the time’s right.” Broker stood up and extended his hand. “Thanks.”
Gloria did not accept his handshake. Her face was gray beneath her tan. Her eyes were as flat as her voice. “Are we through?”
“Yes,” Broker said, heading for the door.
“Broker.”
He turned in the doorway.
“For your information: Mouse and Benish should mind their own business,” Gloria said.
Broker gave a noncommittal nod, then walked from the office, went down the hall, and stopped at the receptionist’s desk. “Tell me something,” he said.
The receptionist sized him up, looked down the hall in the direction he’d come from, then back at Broker. Apparently, she was not a neutral when it came to Gloria, because she enunciated in a hard, level voice, “Maybe, baby, but I kinda fuckin’ doubt it.”
Broker was unperturbed. “The kid in the picture on Gloria Russell’s bookshelf looks familiar. Who is he?”
“You’re new, huh?”
“Yeah, I’m new.”
“That’s Tommy Horrigan; he was the victim in the Dolman case.”
“You mean, alleged victim? Dolman was acquitted.” Broker chose the words to get a reaction.
She responded with cold, controlled hostility. “Yeah, right.”
Broker turned and walked from the office with what felt like a sheaf of daggers planted in his back. It looked as if the Dolman case had never stopped festering in the county, and now the dead priest with the St. Nicholas medallion in his mouth had ripped off the scab.
He took the stairs down, worked through the corridors, went out the door and hit the heat-Jesus-the fuckin’ heat actually throbbed, like the theme from Jaws. .
He hardly noticed a young woman who was smoking a cigarette next to a square brick column. He was absentminded, thanking his friend John Eisenhower for dropping him into the middle of this nutcase mess.
A sudden movement to his left rear had him crouching, hands coming up. Yikes. She darted in front of him; her breath smelled of tobacco.
“Jumpy, are we? You know, if you’re smart, you’ll talk to me,” she said.
Like most of the people who annoyed him these days, she was young; a little over thirty. Five-six or — seven. She wore loose white cotton pants, Chaco sandals, and an armless rayon blouse. The headband tied in her brown hair conveyed a certain fashion statement; it was July, so maybe she was showing solidarity with the Parisian mob that stormed the Bastille. She had brown eyes, freckles, and a spiral notebook in her hand. She would be attractive if you liked skinny reporters.
“Hi, I’m Sally Erbeck, with the Pioneer Press. You’re Broker, special assignment on the dead priest, right? “
“Excuse me, you’re in the way.” Broker put his head down and walked toward his car.
“Hey, you. . you’ve got a dead priest. I’m going with a lead that says he died Tuesday night in his confessional and foul play is suspected. You want to comment?”
“Better show me some ID,” Broker said, still walking. He was halfway to the car.
“Hey you, wait-I’m the Washington County reporter for the Pioneer Press.” She whipped a laminated card from her purse.
“Never heard of you.” Broker kept walking swiftly. He nodded at her identification. “And you can get one of those faked up anywhere. I saw it on the Learning Channel. If you’re really a reporter, get a letter of introduction from your editor.” Broker opened the car door and climbed in.
“If I was a guy, you wouldn’t pull this shit! I’m gonna remember this,” Sally yelled.
Broker popped the ignition and raced the engine. He cupped his left hand to his ear and leaned slightly out of the driver’s-side window. “What?”
Then he rolled up the windows, cranked up the air-conditioning, stepped on the gas, and fishtailed toward the exit, leaving Sally Erbeck in a patch of burned rubber.