“What are you getting at?”
“Well, just what is it that your wife does in the Army?”
“Last I heard she was in Italy.” Broker hoped that was general enough. Goddamn you, Nina, I’m going to wring your neck.
Wales squinted at Broker. “She’s a long way from Italy now.”
“Guess so. We’ve been out of touch.”
Wales leaned back and steepled his fingers. He stared briefly at a county road map that hung on the wall. “How do I say this?”
“Try straight ahead.”
“Straight ahead it is. Nina showed up with this Jane lady and they put considerable effort into looking, ah, like they were involved together.”
“Say again?” Broker came forward slightly in his chair.
“Traveling as, ah, a quarreling couple,” Wales said.
Broker stared at him.
“Actually, we don’t have a whole lot of experience with this sort of thing out here…” Wales talking slower now, deadpan, drawing it out and studying Broker’s feverish face for a reaction.
“C’mon, Wales. You don’t strike me as a guy who talks sideways,” Broker said.
“Alternative lifestyles. I believe that’s what you call it in Minnesota, ain’t it?”
“Wales?”
“Out here I guess we’re less kindly disposed toward…alternative lifestyles, but naturally we’re working on it,” Wales said.
“What exactly is it you want to tell me?”
“This Jane lady Nina’s traveling with works real hard at looking sexy in a strident way that excludes men. She comes across queer.”
“Ah,” Broker said as a jagged fever spike flared up through the roof of his mouth and jabbed into his brain.
Wales continued his careful scrutiny. “Gotta give them an A for effort. You worked UC, you know how hard it is to put an agent into a small community. I didn’t buy it at first look, but there’s some who did. Like maybe their intended target. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s just bored and this gambit amuses him.”
“You might as well tell me the whole story,” Broker said in his best neutral voice.
“Sure, I can do that. Yesterday around noon this soap opera rolls into town. We get a call, two women having a domestic in the parking lot of a virtually closed local bar. They got a little kid with them. So our deputy goes and cools them out. Various accusations pass back and forth. My cop separates them. Gets them to agree on a plan to diffuse the conflict. The plan is to locate you to come get your kid. Jane gives my guy a contact person to find you. Jane takes your kid and checks into the motel. Then Nina…”
Wales paused, massaged his right wrist where he wore the copper band. “Arthritis. Copper’s s’posed to help. Anyway, when Nina doesn’t show up at the motel, Jane calls my deputy as per the arrangement. He calls the contact person who turns out to be the sheriff in Cook County, Minnesota. Now, we get to wondering-why is a county sheriff involved?
“Then Sheriff Jeffords calls me and asks me, as a favor, to make extra sure nothing happens to your kid on account of you and him are buddies. Meanwhile, your Nina runs off with the bar owner. Seems they saw they had something in common from the git. To wit: a drinking problem.”
“Aw god.” Broker sagged forward, elbow on knee, face in his hand. “Go on,” he said. The fever had now divided into a lot of little spikes that started to seethe behind his eyes like flames, or maybe snakes. He struggled to keep a straight face.
Very casual, very sly, Wales hit Broker with his crack shot. “By the way. Nina and Jane rolled into town in this broken-down Volvo.”
“Volvo,” Broker said in a strangled voice.
Wales grinned. “That’s how my guy read it. He said that underneath their bullshit, these two chicks had the look of folks who might arrive by Humvee, or in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, or by fuckin’ parachute…”
Broker held up his hands. “I give up. You’re right. The people she hangs with would turn Volvos away from her funeral.”
“And those people would be…”
“Nina never brought her work home.” Broker clicked his teeth together. “The fact is, she ain’t brought herself home, either, the last couple years.”
“You ever heard of the Purple Platoon?” Wales asked.
Broker shook his head. “Where’d that come from?”
“Your friend Downs, he’s got a photographic memory, I guess. From an article he read. What about the term D-girls?”
Broker stared at him. “Got me.”
“C’mon, Broker,” Wales said softly. “Try D for Delta.”
Broker slumped his shoulders. “Wales, man, I don’t know. I just come here to get my kid clear of whatever’s going on.”
Wales leaned across his desk and said, “Maybe.”
They stared at each other.
Slowly, employing a reasonable tone of voice, Wales said, “Look. The guy she took off with is named Ace Shuster. He did a bit for manslaughter ten years ago. Everybody, including me, believes it was self-defense and the jury stuck it to him. A case of personal and local politics. He drinks too much and considers himself a ladies’ man. And his dad had a moment of notoriety a couple years back as the biggest whiskey smuggler in North Dakota. But the way they do it, they haven’t been breaking any state laws. The dad split for Florida and left Ace behind to sell the family bar. And probably, from time to time, Ace ships a little booze north, like a thousand other saloons between here and Washington State. But his heart ain’t really in it, because the truth is, Ace ain’t such a bad guy. We also believe, but cannot as yet prove, that the little asshole who runs Ace’s bar, Gordy Riker, is moving methamphetamine precursor, and anything else that pays the freight, down from Canada…”
Wales’ voice was picking up momentum. “I talked to people in Bismarck who never bullshit me. There is no state operation aimed at Ace Shuster currently in the works.”
Broker stared at Wales’ face. It was a rugged, compassionate face, like the perfect uncle or the perfect sergeant. Wales narrowed his eyes. “Let me tell you how it is. I got three full-time deputies for this whole county. There’s one state highway patrol copper…”
Broker interrupted. “I saw a bunch of brand-new Border Patrol Tahoes parked at the motel on the way in.”
“Right. After 9/11 they started sending guys from Texas through here on thirty-day rotations. We got three official border crossings in the county. They close between ten at night and six in the morning. The BP sits at the customs stations each night just in case Al Qaeda comes trotting down the road in platoon strength chanting the Koran.”
“I wish I could help you, Wales,” Broker said.
“Lemme put it to you this way, Broker. You remember Gordon Kahl?”
Broker nodded. “Tax resister, Posse Comitatus type. There was a shoot-out here in North Dakota, early eighties. They got him later someplace down south.”
“Arkansas. But the scene here is what I’m getting at. Feds came strutting into Medina and brushed the local cops aside. Dumb shits. Set up an ambush on the road. Two federal marshals were killed and Kahl got away. Lot of people think that wouldn’t have happened if they let the local sheriff handle it.”
Wales smiled tightly and paused to let his words sink in before he resumed talking. “I got two hundred miles of wide-open border, and, like I said, three official crossings under the watchful eye of the U.S. Border Patrol.” He stood up, planted his wide knuckles on his desk, and enunciated very clearly: “And I got twenty-three prairie roads cutting through the fields that people been using for a hundred years. Some of them are graded and can handle a semitrailer.”
He paused and took a breath. Then he said, “So I only got one question: WHAT THE FUCK IS ARMY SPECIAL OPS DOING IN MY COUNTY!”
Chapter Twelve
Broker left the sheriff’s office pissed, but also experiencing fits of wonder and disbelief at what Nina and her crew were up to. He got back in the Explorer, continued down Highway 5, and found the city park sign and an arrow pointing north. Two blocks later he passed the elementary school.