After the Rain (17 page)

They stepped inside and saw the woman sitting at Ace’s table at the back of the room, next to the pinball machine.

Gordy was standing at the front window, sipping on a Coke. Without turning, he said, “Christ. Here come both of them.” Then he spun on his heel and went past her up the stairs.

She heard them before she saw them; heavy footfalls on the porch. Then the creak of the screen door, the two men coming into the bar. The big one came in first—a Yogi Bear ramble of a walk, heavy in the middle, a long neck. Grinning. This would be Dale, Ace’s odd brother. She was prepared for him being a little off. But not the way he wore his shirt buttoned up to his neck and down to his wrists on such a humid hot day. At the moment, however, she was more interested in the Indian, Joe Reed.

He took her in as his eyes swept the room; dark eyes doing that cold burn. They shot a fast dagger thrust. Quick, sharp, and deep. Too quick to read, but Nina thought she felt contempt in his eyes, maybe even hatred.

She didn’t know a whole lot about the social range of disfigured Indians. She’d only had one acquaintance with a Native American for any length of time: Ranger Sergeant Norby Hightower, a Cheyenne from Wyoming. Nina worked with Norby in Bosnia. Strong as a bear, Norby’s handshake was child-soft, a dissimulation of his true strength. His whole style had been probing, cautious, indirect.

Not point-blank and icy, like this guy’s.

Joe peeled off, walked behind the bar, opened a cooler, and took out a can of Mountain Dew. He popped the top, shrugged at Dale, and walked out the front door.

It bothered Dale deeply that she was more interested in watching Joe than him. But he brushed the slight aside for the moment.

She was pretty.

Maybe not as pretty as Ginny Weller had been—she was older and she’d had a kid. But still pretty.

As Dale walked down the length of the barroom toward the table, she looked up. When he felt her eyes he knew she was acting. The lazy, slightly vague, expression on her face was a mask. Behind that pretend mask she was watching Joe go around the bar, get a can of pop.

Dale swallowed and stared. He could hear Gordy and Ace talking upstairs. Joe got his look and now he walked back out. They were alone.

He was close enough to smell her now; a clean, rain-in-the-forest scent, distinct in the musty air. He knew he should look away, look down, be humble, or at least polite, but he stared. Starting at the top of her head, where her short red hair was carelessly combed by her fingers, then her face.

Her coloring, freckles, the strong cheekbones, the shamrock eyes. The red of her lipstick, hair, and freckles brought to mind images of a lake trout—smooth and supple, but also spiny with fins and stinging to the touch.

She crossed her legs and, staring at the flash of thigh, he had the powerful recollection of holding a struggling fish, feeling its life squirm against his encircling palm, peering into the red spasm of the gills.

As this sensation shuddered inside his bulk his gaze dripped down over her body like greasy water, gathering in her hollows,
racing over her curves, marking every detail. Her strong body promised a lot of struggle.

She oozed confidence, like she wouldn’t bat an eye at the dirtiest joke. Like she’d seen it all before. She watched him walk up with a neutral expression in her eyes. She smelled like the Herbal Essence shampoo Ace kept in the upstairs bathroom.

She had this body that clothes always looked good on, lean and long-legged, but sinewy too. She was wearing a casual cotton-print dress with a green-and-amber pattern creasing down into her lap. The rounded neckline dipped low and he could see a only a suggestion of the firmness of her breasts, but what he saw looked more taut than soft. As Dale’s eyes drifted up, he mentally diagramed the apartment upstairs, all the rooms she had moved through, until he came to the bathroom shower stall. He imagined her naked up there, drawing a sponge across her stomach. “Hi,” he said, inhaling her.

Joe continued on across the road, finishing the soda in several long gulps. As he tossed the can, he noticed the green Ford Explorer was back, parked next to his van. He walked directly to it, tried the door. Locked. But the window was open a crack. Joe went to his van, rummaged in back, came back with a coat hanger, straightened it, hooked one end, slipped it through the crack, rotated it, and pressed the straightened end down on the lock button. He opened the door, ducked low, checked the glove compartment, the front seat. Almost immediately he found a holstered .45 under the driver’s seat with a Minnesota deputy sheriff’s badge. He took the pistol and badge, shut the door, got in his van, tossed them into the back. He started the van, pulled onto the highway, and removed a satellite phone from the glove compartment. He activated the phone and pressed in a number. When he had the connection, he said, “I delivered the message, but I’m not so sure about this.”

“Hi yourself,” Nina said.

Dale realized he was holding his breath and she was looking at him, taking in his appearance, assessing him, and being patient with him.
She knows I’m Ace’s brother, and all the rest. She’s patronizing me.
Finally in a burst of released air he said, “I’ll bet you went to the prom, didn’t you?”

She cocked her head and laughed, a feminine laugh that was pleasant to hear, like she was spontaneously amused.

“See,” Dale said, “I made you laugh.”

“I guess you did.”

“And you did go to the prom.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Were you the best-looking girl there?”

She shook a cigarette out of a pack on the table, lit it with a blue plastic lighter, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. Then she tilted her head as if to let her mind roll backward. “Actually, I was about third or fourth in line for looks. I was on the skinny side.” She brightened. “But I’ll bet I was the smartest.”

Dale thought, but did not say,
Oh yeah? Then what are you doing in this nowhere place?
He studied her intently for several heavy heartbeats. He had no idea what a woman cop would really look like. All he’d seen were the ones on TV and in the movies, and they all had bigger chests.

He just nodded. “It’s good to be smart. But it helps to be pretty, too.”

She diplomatically didn’t answer that. She just shrugged her shoulders.

Dale smiled and said, “When Ace breaks your heart, I’ll take you out. I’ll be real nice to you.”

That amused her, too, because again she smiled a big smile, parting
her teeth. She had good even teeth. And a hearty laugh. “I’ll tell him to keep an eye out for the competition.”

“Oh, I ain’t the competition. In fact I don’t mind being the last in line. I don’t mind sloppy lasts.” He broadened his grin, showing his gums, as she adjusted to the remark. Drew herself up. Tensed. Like she could bound right out the chair and pound him through the floor with kung fu or something. He imagined what it would be like to have all that vitality under his control.

“Dale? That’s your name?” she said in a measured, no nonsense voice that gave away the lie of her act, the way it presumed to arrange life in straight lines, like she knew all the rules. He nodded his head, his smile oblivious to the warning in her tone.

“Dale, that crack was pretty obnoxious.”

He shrugged. “Just want you to know I’ll never lie to you.” He stared at her hard, marking her with his eyes.

“I guess we just ran out of things to talk about. So why don’t you move it on down the line.”

Dale wiggled his fingers. “Bye.” He walked past her and went up the stairs. As he went up, Gordy came down the stairs, smiled tightly, and went into the office.

Nina lowered her eyes and stared at the twist of smoke coming off her cigarette.
Jesus, what’s cooking with these guys?
Joe Reed was scary and Dale was creepy. Gordy was barely under control. And Ace—he was rowing across an ocean of booze, striving to maintain an even strain between mania and depression.

Dale walked into the apartment and said, “I seen your new girl.”

“Nina?”

“Uh-huh. Her husband came by the shed this morning pretending to look at my old Deere. You fuck her yet?”

“Nah, it ain’t like that. She’s going through a bad time breaking
up. We’re just sort of fellow travelers.”
The husband
, he thought, moving toward the front window.

“Losing your touch?” Dale said.

Ace stopped and regarded his brother with gentle eyes. He had never allowed himself to be angry with Dale, regardless of what he said. “What’s on your mind, Dale?”

“Gordy come and talked to me about her.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s nervous, thinks she’s here to snoop.”

“What do you think?’

“I think Gordy has reason to be nervous. More than you. That’s what I think.”

Ace clapped his brother on the shoulder. “So he’s got a reason to be nervous, huh?”

“Yep. Joe says Gordy’s running too much dope; Pseudoephedrine in bulk down from Winnepeg, some coke, and that hydroponic grass they got. Joe says he’s attracting sharks.” Dale pointed down the stairway. “Maybe federal sharks.”

“A fed, huh? I ain’t so sure. She just don’t strike me as a cop.”

“Has she been asking around, kinda snooping after something?”

“Mainly she’s been pissed from the minute she walked through that door. At her husband mostly, but I get the feeling she’s pissed at the world in general.”

“Still, you gotta be careful, brother. You gotta do something about Gordy.”

“Christ, Dale, Gordy does all the work around here, he keeps the books. How am I going to replace him?”

Dale shrugged. “Hell, I can keep books, you know that.”

Ace shook his head. “Nah, I don’t want you mixed up in this. You sell off the last of the junk across the road, padlock the door, and go to Florida.”

“I wanna help. What if I could get him to quit running dope. How about that?” Dale said. “You always looked out for me, except
when you were in jail that time. Just fair I do something to help.”

Another sore point. Ace’s easy smile masked a swell of remorse. Would it have made a difference if he’d been around during the end of Dale’s senior year, when he turned funny, inward, a little weird? Probably not.

“Sure. Talk to Gordy if you think it’ll help. But don’t take any shit. If he gets antsy, you tell me.” Ace continued to the front window, eased the curtain aside with his finger.

Dale smiled. “I’ll give him a talking-to he won’t forget.”

“You do that,” Ace said, facing away, looking out the window.
Hello. What’s this?
Across the road he saw Broker walking next to Deputy Jimmy Yeager. Broker got in a green Explorer that was parked in front of the Shuster shed. Yeager got in his cruiser on the road. Then Broker followed Yeager east toward town.

What do you suppose they’re up to?

Dale nodded and left him, went down the stairs, ignored Nina, who was still sitting at Ace’s table, smoking, drinking coffee, and reading the
Grand Forks Herald
. He walked up to the office door.

“Guess Joe’s pissed at me, huh?” Gordy said, looking up from the desk.

Dale said, “I can fill you in on where he’s coming from—say, later tonight. You got anything going on?”

“Maybe.”

“Mind if I come along?”

Gordy shot a wary look at Nina in the other room, took a pen from his chest pocket, and wrote “
9
P.M.
., here
” on a notepad. Then he tore the paper in half, then in quarters, and tossed it in the trash can behind the bar.

Dale nodded and started for the door. As he left the bar he sang out, “Be seeing you, Nina…”

“She calls herself
Nina Pryce. Red hair, mid-thirties, and she’s competent. I don’t think she’s a cop. More like government. Maybe military.”

“How can you tell?” the Mole said into the telephone receiver.

“The way she watches things, the way she moves. Trust me on this. And then there’s her alleged husband…”

“Forget the husband, there are already too many distractions.”

“I’m just saying—”

“No, stay on plan, you understand?”

“Okay. But this is taking a funny bounce, the way she’s coming on to Ace, pretending to have drinking problem, marriage problems. Point is, they are definitely here.”

As the Mole listened, his eyes traveled across the deserted truck stop and fixed on the word
CLOSED
written in soap on the empty diner windows. Closed. Out of business. The end. Now
they
would be out of business if he didn’t act.

“We’ll see how it goes tonight,” the Mole said.

“You’re taking a big risk, cousin.”

“We’re after a big jackpot. You just get our friend out of there.”

“It won’t be easy. We’ve created some kind of monster. He’s getting harder to control. We might have to put him down and let it all go.”

“No. We’re almost there. Stick to the plan. We’ll get rid of him when it’s all over,” the Mole said. The calmness of his voice was at odds with the violence with which he slammed the phone down on the hook. Immediately he regretted the show of anger. The man he’d been talking to was family, a distant cousin who handled the Canadian end of the smuggling network. Now his cousin was having doubts, and the moment he decided the plan was losing its wheels, he would likely disappear back to Canada.

Shit. The Mole clenched his fists. He’d been too long out of play. His method of recruiting the American had been flawed, and now it had backfired.

Damn, it had all been so perfect.

At first, he had just agreed to smuggle Rashid’s shipment and had brought in his cousin for extra security. They’d met with Rashid to finalize the deal and lingered over coffee. Rashid revealed the depth of his background check. He knew that twenty years earlier the Mole had trained with the group that went on to hit the Marine barracks in Beirut. That he had been diverted from the front lines for this lonely work in America.

Rashid politely wondered if years spent living in the suburbs quietly smuggling drugs to finance Hamas and Hezbollah might have eroded his commitment to killing Americans.

“Try me,” the Mole said.

Some testing back and forth ensued. It was established that the Mole had been trained in the bombmaker’s art and that the contraband being negotiated was explosives. Not long after that, and after he’d made reference to jihad three times, Rashid confided that, yes, he was associated with Al Qaeda. But he was no zealot, he insisted. And being a practical man, he was willing to contract out work; especially in the current security environment.

Which was fine, because while the Mole and his cousin paid lip service to the Cause, basically their background was rooted in the criminal underbelly of the movement in the Bekáa Valley. They preferred their politics heavily flavored with money.

Then they returned to North Dakota to case the specific smuggling route for Rashid’s Semtex. That’s when they were found out by the strange American. The easy solution would have been to kill him on the spot. Instead they let him talk. In the man’s desperate babble the Mole discerned the essence of a plan that could dwarf the 9/11 attack.

The American understood he was in dangerous company. Instead of being intimidated, this fact encouraged him to talk freely, ultimately revealing his secret desires. It was, the Mole perceived, a marriage made in hell. In the end, they agreed to an exchange of favors. The American wanted to kill three people. But the Mole figured that three million dollars deposited in a Danish bank would be a fair price for the project he now envisioned. After thinking it through, he’d traveled to Detroit and sat down for coffee with Rashid a second time.

He told Rashid: “Your organization is under a lot of stress right now. It’s gotta be difficult to mount a large operation in the States. I, however, can offer you one-stop shopping.”

Rashid said, “Explain one-stop shopping.”

“None of your people would be involved,” the Mole began. “Just give me the ton of explosives you have in Canada. I’ll build the weapon and position it and execute the attack. If I succeed, you pay me three million dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money. What do you intend to attack?” Rashid asked.

The Mole explained the kind of target he had in mind, but not the specific location.

Rashid’s coffee cup trembled slightly in his fingers and he leaned closer. “What exactly is the weapon?”

The Mole briefed him with the aid of some photos and several pages of detailed diagrams.

Rashid licked his lips. “But how would you get inside?”

So the Mole told him.

Rashid leaned closer, thought for a moment, then whispered, “God in heaven. This could work.”

Eventually someone in a cave on the Afghan-Pakistan border thought so, too, and the deal was struck. Now, after a lot of work and a bit of luck, the weapon was in place. The Mole had his passport in his pocket, along with an airline ticket to Copenhagen.

He looked up into the clouds with a pained expression as a sprinkle of raindrops dotted his windshield.
Please, no more rain.
Forget the rain. He had other things to worry about. Like their “friend.” They had set him up for his first kill, thinking that by taping the crime they could always blackmail him if they sensed him slipping outside their control. The opposite proved true. He couldn’t get enough of the tape. Now he wanted more.

But first they had to get through tonight.