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.”