Impasse (7 page)

“I hope Clay knows what he's doing, because I know you certainly don't.”

“He dated an outdoorsy gal at Oregon. They went camping and stuff.”

“Screwing a girl in a tent isn't the same as taking on the Klondike.”

“There's a cabin. The floatplane drops us off at the lake, and we hike in a few miles. We suffer for a week. We hike out. The plane picks us up again. No worries.” Stu tacked on the snippet of the young clerk's vernacular to lend credibility to his faux outdoorsy confidence, but it didn't sound quite right coming out of his mouth, and Katherine was unimpressed. He tried a different angle. “Clay's new target client, Reggie Dugan, goes there all the time. He arranged it for us. He was at the party; Clay must have invited him. Land developer. You remember him?”

Katherine stiffened. “I think so. Big man, right?”

“Well, he's a man's man for sure, and a big game hunter. He keeps food and supplies in a hunting cabin for his visits. And he's a builder, so the place should be nice. I'm guessing it's a little open-beam number with a propane stove and a few mounted heads.”

“Lovely.”

“Clay says we have to catch fish and shoot cute furry animals to cook, or we eat beans.”

“There's a gun? You've never shot a gun in your life.”

“Can't be that hard. Point and pull the trigger.”

“You should probably leave that to Clay.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He seems more the type.”

“Type of what?”

“No offense. It's just … ‘Stuart the Great Hunter'? I don't think so.”

“I could kill … something.”

And then Katherine laughed. It was worse than if she'd outright said he wasn't man enough. It didn't make him feel annoyed or angry. Just sad. And old.

“I'm going to bring you something dead that I kill. You'll see.” Then he smiled. He was relieved when she smiled back.

Katherine gave him a smooch on the forehead. “Some frozen salmon fillets would be fine.”

*   *   *

Logan International Airport was what Clay called “a cluster,” which Stu understood to be a polite shortening of the term
cluster fuck
. Crowds of travelers hurried to wait in lines at counters and security checkpoints. Stu and Clay had finally checked in and were on their way to security. Stuart had been forced to check two huge bags and pay extra for each.

Clay smirked. “I think you overpacked.” He carried only one bag—a backpack that was a standard size and weight. Stu couldn't understand how he'd done it. Clay rubbed it in. “We're gonna need a sled for all your stuff.”

Stu frowned. “There won't be a lot of snow this time of year, will there?”

“Alaska pretty much invented snow, pal. But it shouldn't be bad where we're going for a couple more weeks. When you turn fifty, we can go back and do the Iditarod if you like.”

“Let's just get through this.”

Clay held up their tickets. “Alaska Airlines to Seattle, then on to Fairbanks. A hired car will take us from there to the private airstrip. Our pilot will have rifles for us.”

“Wow. Sounds first class.”

“Dugan is rich. This is what happens when you run with the big dogs.”

“Maybe this trip won't be so bad after all.”

A wolf whistle came from Clay's pants, and he stepped out of the security line to fish around in his pocket, eventually producing his cell phone.

“Excuse me for a moment, partner.”

Stu watched as Clay paced back and forth a polite distance away from him and the other travelers. It was hard to determine the nature of the call. Clay looked both pleased and upset at the same time—a difficult expression to read. Finally he hung up and came marching back to the line.

“Dry cleaning done?” Stu joked.

“Dugan wants a meeting. He'd like to talk about jumping ship from Lambert and McClure.”

“Dugan? Really?” Stu knew Clay had been wooing the developer, and he knew the stakes.

“Yep. We're his first call, thanks to your and your wife's hospitality.”

“Next week is good. We should see him as soon as possible, before he visits other firms.”

“I agree. But next week is not as soon as possible. He'll schedule other firms in the interim. He's a man who makes decisions and takes action.”

“We don't want to do it over the phone. That's not a good idea. The phone is very impersonal.”

“We need this, Stu.”

“I agree it's a good opportunity.”

“Cut the crap. This is the biggest recurring client we've ever had interested in us. And I've been working him for months.”

Stu felt his heart flutter. “You want to cancel the trip? Because I'm okay with that.”

Clay paced again, debating. “No. In fact, hell no. You need this.”

“I
don't
need this. Besides, I can need it next year. We'll reschedule.”

Clay shook his head. “No. You go. I'll stay and take care of Dugan.”

“What?”

“The directions are all in this packet, and your pilot will get you where you need to be. Done.”

“No, no.
Not
done. We should meet with Dugan together. He had a firm of ten lawyers. We're only two. Without me, we're only one.”

“I can handle it. You know I can. I'm the one who's been working this. I'll dazzle him, and when you get back, you'll calculate the rates and do all of the paperwork and boring shit.”

“Thanks.”

“That's what you're good at. This is what I'm good at. Look, this is exciting. You're getting the best of both worlds here. You go, you clear your head, you become a new man. When you get back, we kick our practice into a higher gear. It's all good. Besides, I'll be able to tell him that you're out blasting crap at his cabin. That will give him a boner for our office for sure.”

Stu's head swam. The idea of heading into the woods alone was significantly different than going with Clay. It felt like a bad decision, rash and rushed. The sort of decision he didn't make. Ever.

“Come on,” Clay said. “Don't be a pussy.”

“This isn't the ninth grade. You can't shame me into going.” But he did feel shame. Caution's birthplace was fear; he was scared. There was no other way to analyze it. Katherine would nod knowingly and say the she'd known he wouldn't go through with it. His own woman would think him less a man than Clay or Dugan. Dugan himself would think he was a coward. And Clay would probably make a joke about it at the meeting.

To Stu's surprise, however, Clay's expression softened. “Sorry,” he said. “If you want me to go with you on the trip, I'll schedule Dugan for next week. I just have to call him back.”

“No,” Stu said suddenly. “I'm going. You stay. Get the deal done.”

“You're sure?”

“Yeah. I'm sure. In fact, hell yeah. You're right. I've never done anything like this.”
A week in a cabin,
he thought.
How hard can it be?
A professional pilot and not too much snow. Couldn't be worse than law school or the bar exam, and he'd survived those lower planes of hell. Besides, he had Edwin's five-hundred-page guide to everything the wilderness could throw at him. He hoisted his carry-on to his shoulder with a manly grunt. “Actually, I'm psyched. I'm going to split wood and shoot shit and not take showers, and it's going to kick ass.”

 

CHAPTER 9

The turnaround in Seattle was quick, and Stu had to take a mini-train to a satellite terminal to catch his Alaska Airlines flight to Anchorage. His last connection would be a regional carrier to Fairbanks. He fretted over whether his luggage would make the transfer, and the annoyingly chipper counter agent couldn't reassure him. She would only say that the ground crew would “do their best,” which sounded suspiciously like the phrase's less polite cousin “no promises.”

He'd been skimming the
Edwin's
survival guide. It made everything seem easy enough. A lean-to was apparently a mere matter of leaning a couple of poles in the crooks of branches and stacking sticks on them. Simple. Starting a fire was, likewise, an easy step-by-step process, it said. And if he needed to hike anywhere, he had one goddamned expensive pair of boots to do it in.

A few disturbingly short hours later Stu stood in the Fairbanks International Airport terminal. He retrieved his two bags without any of his imagined troubles and put them on a cart with a loose wheel, then wobbled off looking for his ride. He wasn't sure what to look for, so he kept an eye out for a man with a black sedan or a sign that said
STARK
on it. There was a phone number he could call from his cell phone if he didn't spot it right away. He stood at the curb for a minute or two with no luck. Not only did he fail to spot his sedan, he failed to see
any
black sedans or signs held overhead. There were plenty of dirty pickups and old SUVs, however. Finally he went for his phone and dialed. It rang. A man answered at the other end.

“Hello?”

“Hi. This is Stuart Stark. I've just touched down, and I'm supposed to have a car waiting.”

“Just a sec.”

While Stu was on the phone, a grizzled man leaned out of a beat-up Ford F-250 4x4 with a winch bolted to the front. “Hey, bud!” he called out.

Stu stepped back from the curb to get out of his way.

The man honked. “Hey, bud!”

Stu waved him off.

The man on the phone came back on. “You standing at passenger loading?”

“Sorry,” Stu said. “Some idiot in a Ford POS is yelling at me.”

“Funny,” the man said. “I think that idiot is me.”

Stuart turned. The grizzled man held up a cell phone and wiggled it.

Nice.
Stuart waved back and dragged his hamstrung cart toward the truck.

“Sorry,” Stuart said.

“That's two sorries in two sentences. Not a great start. And what's a POS?”

“I'd rather not say.”

“I'd rather you did.”

“Umm, it means ‘piece of shit.' Sorry.”

The man laughed. “That's okay. You can make up for it with your tip. I'll grab your bags.”

The man snatched up the duffel and flung it over the side of the truck into the bed with an ominous
crunch
. When he went for the backpack, Stuart leaped in front of him and grabbed it protectively.

“I can get this one.”

“Suit yourself. Hop in.”

Stu rode with the pack on his lap. It was heavy, and as soon as they hit the rougher roads, it began to crush his testicles at every pothole.

“I'm going to a private airstrip east of town,” Stu announced. “Yukon Air Tours.”

“I know it. Bush pilot. You going to fish or hunt?”

“Presumably,” Stu said.

“You get up here much?”

Stu thought it best not to seem too green or naive. He hadn't asked the price of the fare and wondered if it might change depending upon his answer. “No, but I'm a personal friend of Reginald Dugan, who employs a pilot at Yukon on an annual basis,” he said importantly.

The man eyed Stu. “Reggie. I've heard of him.”

“Really? It must be a small community.”

“Smaller than you think. And bigger.”

“Is that cab-driver philosophy?”

“Naw. It's census statistics. The state's forty-seventh in population and first in size. We're low-density here. Did you know we bought all this from the Russkies for two cents per acre?”

“Seward's Folly.”

“Aha! So you're an educated man. Or else you like trivia.”

“I was a history major.”

“Really? What kind of job does that get a guy?”

“None. I had to go to school all over again after I got my undergraduate degree.”

“For what?”

“Law.”

“Oh.…”

That was all the man said. Stu didn't expect more, not aloud anyway. The unsaid conclusion of the sentence was usually,
So you're probably a bit of an asshole, huh?
He didn't blame people who thought so. A lot of lawyers were.

“How far out of town is the airstrip?”

“Thirty miles, give or take.”

“Do you enjoy living up here?”

“Yeah. People say it's what America used to be. I like that, so I say it too.”

The remainder of the thirty miles was mostly quiet with scattered small talk. Stuart never asked the man's name, and the guy didn't offer. The river town melted away quickly, replaced by long miles of scattered driveways with homes in the distance. When they finally turned at a dirt road and completed the last ball-smashing half-mile of the journey, any fare that meant stopping seemed perfectly reasonable. When the trip came to a merciful end, Stu tipped 20 percent and hurried out to retrieve his duffel bag himself. The man leaned out of the window.

“Good luck to you.”

“Thanks. Do you have a card or anything so I can call you when my week in paradise is up?”

The man fished around in his pocket and came up with a bowling coupon, upon which he wrote a phone number. “That's my direct line,” he said, handing over the piece of paper. He patted his cell phone. “Anytime you need a POS, just give me a call.” With that, he winked and drove away, leaving Stu standing in the middle of a dirt driveway.

YUKON AIR TOURS
was carved into a rough-cut sign of solid wood. The sign hung overhead, dangling from chains on the gate he'd driven through when he'd arrived with his nameless driver. Not fancy, but quaint in its way. The business itself appeared to be located in a one-story ranch-style home.
Not so first class.
Stu slung a bag over each shoulder and staggered to the front door under their weight, where he rapped with a heavy knocker in the shape of a salmon against the metal receiving plate. The metallic boom echoed inside and rang sharply outside. The weather was what Stu's father used to call “crisp.” The bite of fall was tangible, but the temperature was not yet uncomfortably cold.