Broker, Mouse, and Lymon sat down to talk. Broker thought it ironic that Mouse chose the soft interrogation room to have their chat, the room where victims were questioned gently. They sat in cheap but comfortable easy chairs. A short child’s blackboard and a box of toys sat in the corner. Broker could clearly picture Harry interviewing Tommy Horrigan in this room a little over a year ago.
Broker related his off-the-record talk with Malloy, underscoring Malloy’s obvious worry that someone was declaring open season on priests. Then he kept his mouth closed and listened.
Mouse said, “Okay, here’s the deal. John’s not back till Friday night. We have to stall the media going into the weekend. Then, on Monday John will hold a press conference. If we don’t come up with anything by then, he goes public with the medallion. So. . if the press gathers, we avoid the front door. I’m telling everybody to enter and leave the building through the basement garage. The call takers in Dispatch are screening all the media calls.”
Mouse turned to Lymon. “Get on the horn with Albuquerque PD and check out the family that accused Moros. See if they’ve done any traveling lately, like to Minnesota.”
Lymon shook his head. “This is big,” he said. “We should call in the state guys right now. If we have a new player out there who’s going after priests. .” He stared like a man watching a tidal wave coming ashore. “These back-channel games, meeting Malloy on the sly, chasing after Harry, they amount to gambling with people’s lives.”
Mouse said, “Go call Albuquerque.”
Lymon narrowed his eyes but managed to keep his mouth shut. Without another word he stood up and left the room.
Mouse turned to Broker. “He’s right, you know.”
Broker nodded. “I agree about the gambling part. John’s gambling this is local, and that Harry has been sitting on a solid lead. I’m gambling that Harry will tell me what it is before he sneaks up and skull-fucks me in my sleep.” Then Broker reached over and thumped Mouse on his dense chest. “And Harry is gambling, because he called me thirty minutes ago, and I heard the goddamn slots banging in the background. So get on those casinos. He’s driving in from one right now.”
“How do you know?” Mouse said.
“Because he wants me someplace where he can see me for a meet. Not in person. On the phone.”
“Hell, where? We’ll stake it out.”
Broker shook his head. “No way. This is Harry, remember. Anything looks out of place, he’ll spot it. The last thing we want is a confrontation. Did you call your pal in Hinckley?”
“Called him and sent the faxes. It’s being put in place. C’mon.” Mouse motioned for Broker to follow him back to his cube, where he had a state map spread on his desk.
“Okay, I sent stuff to every joint in the state; that’s sixteen in all. But we’re concentrating on these.” Mouse tapped place-names highlighted in yellow magic marker on the map that formed a rough circle around Minneapolis and St. Paul. “The Grand Casinos in Hinckley and Onamia, Mystic Lake in Prior Lake, Treasure Island in Red Wing, Turtle Lake in Wisconsin, and Jackpot Junction in Morton-but that’s getting way out there.”
Broker bit his lip. “It could work. We want to find him when he’s half in the bag, distracted in a public place. We want him in a goddamn trance staring at a blackjack dealer. That’s the way to approach him.”
Mouse hitched up his belt, cleared his throat, and said, “Wonderful. This has become competitive between you two.”
“Always was,” Broker said.
Broker had forty minutes to kill before his date with the statue. He figured Harry needed a support system so he might turn to Annie Mortenson again. He drove out of the basement ramp, eased through the back streets, worked around to the west of town, came down Myrtle Hill, turned left on North Fourth, and parked in front of the Stillwater Library. From here it would be a quick hop up Third Street to the old courthouse.
The Carnegie library was one of Stillwater’s jewels, with A.D. 1902 chiseled over the door. Broker picked his way through kids’ bikes that were strewn on the broad lawn like a snapshot from a happy childhood. He went inside, asked for Anne Mortenson at the curved front desk, and was directed downstairs to the reference desk.
Broker came down the marble stairs two at a time and saw her standing behind the desk in jeans and a maroon paisley blouse. She was younger than he expected, midthirties. His initial impression was: medium, in height, in looks, in intensity. Her brown hair was clipped in straight bangs across her forehead and fell on either side of her oval face in a lank pageboy. Her bookish brown eyes did not entirely conceal a dynamo of spinster energy that suggested her trim appearance would not change for the next forty years.
As he walked up to the desk, he sketched her quickly: She was independent, she owned a cat. She took long, solitary vacations and enjoyed them. She’d never marry. Men like Harry would always break her heart.
Broker came in fast with a stiff cop edge to shake her a little. “Anne, I’m Phil Broker. We talked yesterday about Harry.”
She blushed slightly. “My poor car. How could I be so dumb? The dealership gave me a loaner, which I will never let Harry Cantrell go near, ever.”
“Good. Because Harry’s being difficult. It would be a mistake to offer him any kind of encouragement,” Broker said.
She dropped her eyes, then recovered quickly.
Broker stepped in closer and said, “Are you and Harry. .”
“Close?” She furrowed her eyebrows. “As in, do opposites attract?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“Not when he’s drinking.” She said it clear-eyed and emphatically, and she was lying through her straight, even teeth. “It’s a game with him, you know. Outwitting the sheriff. He thinks he can make a deal, get reinstated without going into the hospital. He doesn’t believe in alcoholism. The only thing he believes in, as far as I can see, is winning streaks.”
Broker picked up a slip of notepaper from the desk and a short, sharp #2 pencil and jotted down a number. “This is my cell. If Harry contacts you, call me,” Broker said in his best cop voice. He turned and left without saying good-bye. But as he stepped back into the sun, he was smiling. Maybe he had learned something. Maybe Harry wanted to make a deal.
Thinking he might actually be getting a break, he drove up South Third and parked next to the old Stillwater courthouse, a graceful storied building with Italianate arches and a cupola on the top. He walked down the sidewalk and up the steps and across the grass to the monument set in the corner of the lawn by the flagpole.
Broker knew this place well.
He reached up and patted the weathered bronze replica of a Civil War soldier who, rifle at the ready, leaned perpetually forward, advancing to the attack. Eighty-four years of heat, snow, rain, and cold had mottled the statue’s surface with pewter blues and grayish blacks and lacy green flourishes. Broker thought of the weathered metal as the color of history, like black-and-white photographs.
His dad had first brought him to this spot when he was six years old. He remembered only a fragment of what his father had explained to him. Mainly he had acquired the powerful impression that this was a statue of his great-great-grandfather Abner Broker.
Abner’s name was one of hundreds recorded on the broad plaque behind the statue. The names represented Washington County men who’d served in Minnesota regiments. Abner had left his logger job in the north shore pineries, moved to Stillwater, and joined up with the First Minnesota Regiment in 1861.
He had caught the train right here in Stillwater to go to Mr. Lincoln’s war to save the union and free the slaves. His journey included the rough afternoon of July 2, 1863, on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The regiment had charged an Alabama brigade and stopped them in their tracks. Only a handful of Minnesota boys came back from that fight, including a limping Abner. But they had bought General Winfield Scott Hancock the five minutes he needed to rebuild his collapsing line and perhaps save the country.
So, as six-year-old Broker would remember it, Grandpa Abner won the war.
Broker sat down, rested his arms on his knees, and watched black ants boil in the thick green blades of grass. He thought of the picture of Tommy Horrigan sitting all alone on Gloria Russell’s bookshelf. What did Tommy have to associate with being six? For sure, something far less secure than swinging on the resolute unbending arm of Grandpa Abner.
His cell phone rang. He popped it on.
“So did the priest deserve it?” Harry said.
“No, Moros was hounded out of Albuquerque by gossip. The local cops cleared him,” Broker said.
“That’s what I thought. So you and John have a real problem. .”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “The Saint has returned with bad target information.”
Broker shivered. Mocking the heat, a cold needle of adrenaline jabbed through his heart. “You know this how?”
“I keep this personal log of anonymous tips, stuff too flimsy to file a formal Initial Complaint Report. I clear them and delete them off my computer. But last week I found a pile of printouts in this drawer in a desk. Somebody had gone into my computer and retrieved my notes from the trash. Moros was on top of the stack.” Harry paused a beat. “I always had a problem emptying my trash. .”
“Harry?” Broker was on his feet, squeezing the chunk of Samsung plastic in his hand as if he could force Harry’s voice back into the circuits. But the line was dead.