Midnight come again (19 page)

He walked away with a friendly wave.

She swallowed hard and fished a quarter from her pocket. Bobby picked up on the first ring. "Yeah?"

At the sound of his impatient voice barking out that single syllable, unaccustomed tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them back.

"Who the hell is this?" Bobby said.

She tried to say hello, failed.

But he knew. "Kate?" His voice sharpened. "Kate, is that you?"

Kate heard Dinah's voice in the background. "Is it Kate? Bobby, is it Kate?"

"Shut up, woman, I'm trying to listen here! Kate, is that you? Goddamn you, answer me!" "It's me," she whispered finally.

"It's about goddamn time!" he shouted so loudly that she winced and held the receiver away from her ear. "Where the hell are you? Are you all right? Say something, goddamn it!"

"I will if you'll shut up," she said, gaining voice.

"Where the hell have you been? We've all been scared shitless! You couldn't pick up the phone before this, you couldn't have set some minds at rest? Dinah's been worried sick! I swear I'll kill you when you get back, Shugak!"

"Now there's a great incentive for me to get on the next plane," she said wryly, and surprised herself.

"Yeah, whatever, just get your ass back so I can start. It's gonna be long, Shugak, and it's gonna be painful, and I plan on just purely enjoying the hell out of myself! Now when the hell are you coming home?"

"Not yet, Bobby," she said. "When, goddamn it? Give me a time, a day!

Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? It's your ass all over again if it's next year! When?" "Sometime," she said, unable to say anything else. "I just called to let you know I'm all right. I am, Bobby. Honest. Tell Auntie Vi, okay?"

"Kate!"

"And George, and Old Sam, and Bernie. Tell them all I'm okay. I've got a job, a place to stay. Tell Auntie Vi I'm eating. I'm okay," she repeated, clinging to the belief that it was so.

"Kate, don't--"

"I've got to go."

"Don't hang up, goddamn you, Shugak, don't--"

She replaced the receiver and leaned her head against it for a moment, eyes closed. The anxiety and the concern in his voice nearly undid her.

She was finding it hard to breathe, and almost regretted making the call. She heard again the distress underlying Bobby's bellow, and could not. Jim had been right, she should have called before now.

The thought of Jim lying in a hospital bed down the street steadied her, gave her back her sense of purpose and helped her regain her composure.

She went back inside the bank, found a seat and read a six-month-old issue of Money magazine while the line grew shorter. Money told her to cut up all her credit cards. Money told her to start moving her stock portfolio from foreign to domestic holdings, warned against overinvesting in Internet stocks, and suggested some companies she might consider. Money told her to start a SEP, a self-employment retirement plan, something every self-employed person should have. Kate wondered if the two thousand and change left over from last year's fishing season was still in the Darigold one-pound butter can on the kitchen table of her cabin. Her Baird Air paychecks were accumulating in a stained manila envelope in a daypack under her bunk out at the airport. She probably should have brought them in and opened an account in Alice's bank. She was sure Money magazine would have said so.

Promptly at five the manager locked the door to forestall any new customers, and by ten minutes after five he was escorting the last customers outside. He spotted Kate just as he was locking the door again. "Oh, I didn't see you there." His eye ran over her appreciatively. "Mike Sullivan. I'm the manager."

"I know, I heard. I'm a friend of Alice's," Kate said, avoiding giving her own name.

"I'll be right there, I've just got to balance my till," Alice called.

"Not a problem," Sullivan said. He smiled at Kate. "Alice is our head teller. Very capable and reliable employee."

Kate nodded without replying, and after a moment Sullivan, disappointed at his inability to start up a conversation, went away.

She wasn't surprised to hear that Alice was a reliable employee. When they had attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks together, Alice had never been late for class, always had her homework done on time, always had her term papers finished by the due date, was always prepped and ready for every test. She should have been cordially hated by every classmate she had, but she wasn't. She was too nice for that.

She was a zaftig little brunette, even shorter than Kate, with a merry smile that nearly made her dark button eyes disappear in the round folds of her face, and a headlong manner of speech that made listeners want to breathe for her. She'd been trailed by a line of men that reached across campus from her first day there. She was merciless in dissecting their faults, and Kate remembered more than one night when the women of fourth-floor Lathrop dorm had gathered together to trash their latest boyfriends. Alice always had something to contribute, but it was always delivered with such rueful amusement and self-deprecation that even the men themselves, had they been present, could not have taken exception.

Or not very much. Alice never hurt anyone's feelings if she could help it, not on purpose, not even in absentia.

There was a knock on the door and Kate looked around to see a man standing outside, nose pressed up against the glass and a hand shading his eyes.

"Chris!" Sullivan said, sounding pleased, and went to the door to let him in. "I heard you were coming to give the Fourth of July speech.

Great to see you!"

"How are you, Mike?" Chris said, clasping Sullivan's hand and grinning.

It was was a wide grin, practiced, polished and produced for effect. It looked familiar to Kate, but she couldn't place it or him. He wore a dark suit over a white shirt, and a bolo tie with a big ivory walrus nestled between the points of his collar.

Mike murmured something, and the other man laughed and slapped him on the back. "Nothing to worry about, everything's under control. We'll be meeting with them in the next day or so. As soon as I get the confirmation from Dillon."

"Good to know." The bank manager looked over his shoulder. "Alice, would you close up for me?"

She flashed her bright smile. "Sure, Mike, not a problem."

The two men went out. Kate waited as the rest of the tellers rectified their tills and departed and Alice went around checking the locks.

"Let's take a minute," she Said, plumping down in the chair across from Kate. "It's great to see you. How long has it been? What are you doing in town?" One great thing about Alice--she never read the newspapers, and the local news on Bering's only television station was erratic at best. The story had been eclipsed by one of the spasms over presidential misbehavior growing ever more common to the national media, and had never been broadcast nationally, which meant Alice could not have seen it on CNN, either. She would therefore probably know nothing about the events of the previous fall. Current affairs were not Alice's forte.

Kate could feel herself relaxing, and they spent ten minutes playing catch-up and do-you-remember before she got around to answering Alice's last question. "I'm working out at the airport for Baird Air. Ground service."

Alice frowned. "I'm surprised I didn't hear before. You've been here for a while?"

"Since March."

Alice was hurt. "Why didn't you come see me before?"

Kate had known that question was coming since she had decided to contact Alice and she had no better answer for it now.

Into the silence, Alice said, "Didn't you know I was here?" Kate thought of lying and discarded the idea. "Yeah, the one time I had to come into town for supplies, I saw you working in the bank."

"Why didn't you say in? My folks would love to meet you. I told my mom all about Kate Shugak from Niniltna who almost flunked out first semester and then graduated with honors. She was impressed."

"Actually," Kate said, "I'm working under another name."

Alice puzzled. "You aren't here as Kate Shugak?"

"No."

Alice's eyes widened. "Oh wow, Kate! I heard a rumor you'd gone into business for yourself! Are you still being like a, what, a private eye?

A detective?" She gave a little wriggle of pure pleasure. All was forgiven. "Are you, what do they call it? Undercover?" She sat forward on the edge of her seat, eyes wide and fixed on Kate's face, determined not to miss a word.

Kate cursed inwardly. "Well, I guess you could say--"

"Because I think that is soooo cool! Just like Sharon Mccone!" Alice looked at her worshipfully. "What's going on? Who is the bad guy? Is it Jacob Baird? Although he's been around forever, it'd be kind of hard to imagine him being a bad guy, even if he ought to be arrested for the rates he charges. Even if he did bring Auntie Sylvia's dog down to the vet that time for free. Are you working with the police? The state? Oh wow, Washington? Do you--"

Kate held up a hand to stem the flow. "Slow it down, Alice." Alice lapsed into a hopeful silence. "I was wondering if you could help me with something."

Alice lit up. "You mean like with your investigation? You bet! Anything!

What?"

"I need some information from the bank."

"My bank?"

"Yes."

Alice blinked. "Sure!" she said, a smile spreading across her face.

"Don't," Kate said. "Think about it first. I don't have a warrant, this is strictly a personal favor. It's private information. If you get caught, you could get fired. You could even be prosecuted."

Alice tossed her hair, a short, shiny bob parted on one side that cupped her chin in two curved black wings. "Hah. They couldn't run this place without me. What do you need?"

Kate hesitated, nerving herself.

For nearly a year Kate Shugak had been adrift in an unfamiliar world, with obscure landmarks and unknown beacons, her safe harbor a horizon away. The scar on her arm itched and she rubbed it. Mutt watched her through the glass door from her seat on the porch outside.

Bobby Clark threw a party every year for those Park rats who were Vietnam vets; she remembered hearing them talk about being "back in the world."

"When I was back in the world," they'd say, as if the Nam was not and had never been part of the world, of the real world, of their real world which was defined by snow, not jungle rain, eating moose, not dog, and love with a woman you didn't have to pay to pretend to care.

Back in the world.

She wasn't sure she was ready to be back in the world, but Jim Chopin was laid out in a hospital bed, unable to do for himself, and the least she could do was make a stab at finding out why someone had put him there.

"The least she could do."

Sounded better than ' in the world."

She took another breath and then did it, took that step over the line to move from passive observer to active participant.

She met Alice's eyes and said firmly, "I need to see the account records of every fish processor who's got one with your bank, for the past three or four months. Since the fishing season began, anyway." She paused.

"Especially the foreign ones," she added, and couldn't decide if the distant tumult resounding in her ears was the crowd roaring approval or herself, running scared. make her fearless like you do not let her forget us --Brother Wolverine Alice invited Kate home to dinner and Kate could not refuse without giving offense, not that that had ever stopped her before, but the phone call to Bobby had softened something inside her.

Weakened her defenses, maybe, but nevertheless she followed Alice to the post office, where Alice checked three different post office boxes--

"Gramp's, Mom's and mine"--and then to one of the grocery stores, where she bought a head of leaf lettuce for $1.99, a bunch of radishes for a dollar, and three bunches of green onions for $2.40, almost exactly twice what they would cost in Anchorage, about the same as they would cost in Niniltna. "What do you drink?"

"I don't drink," Kate said.

"Not booze, you can't buy any here anyway," Alice said. "Pop? Kool-Aid?

Lemonade?"

"Lemonade sounds good," Kate admitted, suddenly feeling dusty.

Alice paused with one hand on the cooler door. "Didn't you used to drink Diet 7UP?"

"Yeah, got too sweet for me."

"How about Mutt?"

"She doesn't drink Diet 7UP anymore, either." Alice grinned, and Kate added, "She drinks water and there's already plenty of that around."

Alice giggled. It was an attractive giggle, joyous and dimpled. It hadn't changed much in thirteen-plus years, and suddenly Kate was very glad that Alice still lived in Bering. "Did you come home right after graduation?" she said outside the store as Mutt fell in between them.

Alice shook her head. "No, I moved to Anchorage, just like you. I used to read about you in the papers sometimes." She gave Kate a sideways glance. "It must have been a hard job."

The scar on Kate's throat itched. "Yeah."

"But I was always glad you were doing it. Somebody has to look out for the kids who have fallen through the cracks." "Yes," Kate said.