A dozen framed newspaper photos hung on the wall in the alcove off the bar. A small flag. Ace made a mental note to take the pictures and the flag off the wall and box them. He’d promised them to the North Dakota Room at the county library.
He nodded to Gordy, who was behind the bar drinking a can of Coke for breakfast. Sweating standing still, Gordy was strapped into a black Velcroed back brace. Square and muscular, always unshaven. Even as a little kid, Gordy had lots of hair; a cross between the Energizer Bunny and a werewolf.
“Late night, huh?” Gordy asked. Friendly enough except for his restless, calculating eyes. He was, still, for all his ambitious plans, the hired help. And you could never tell when this hung-over shadow of Ace Shuster would experience a lethal two-minute relapse back to when he was the baddest thing in three counties.
Ace nodded and climbed on a bar stool. Gordy put two Alka Seltzers in a glass, poured in some water, and pushed it across the bar. Ace drank his breakfast. Gordy poured a cup of black coffee, slid it over along with a copy of the Grand Forks Herald.
“So what’s going on?” Ace asked.
“Nothing much. Just the last few pickups tonight, tomorrow.”
Ace nodded. They were cleaning out the last of the booze. Pickups after ten. There were only three full-time deputies and one highway patrol in the county. They seldom staffed from ten at night to six A.M. There was more Border Patrol around since 9/11, but they seldom patrolled the prairie roads the Canucks used when they came down to shop for the whiskey.
“Don’t suppose anybody called?” Ace said.
“Nah.”
Figured. Liquidation. Ace thought it a fitting word to describe the demise of a drinking joint. Everything must go. The license, the building, the chairs, the cash register. Ace himself. Ace’s function was to preside over the dismantling of the Missile Park Bar. Just like Dale was selling off the last of Dad’s heavy equipment at the shed across the road. Dad moved to Florida, picked up a golf club, and never looked back. Ma, expert at denial and rationalization, went to church and played bridge.
Ace sipped his coffee, lit his first Camel of the day, and opened the paper.
“I already looked, nothing new on Ginny,” Gordy said. Ginny Weller, a town girl who’d moved to Grand Forks, had gone missing last month.
Ace nodded, scanned the section anyway, and turned to the commodities markets in business. “Three-dollar spring wheat,” he said and shook his head.
“Umm,” Gordy mumbled. He was a town kid whose father ran a string of failing gas stations. He’d never sat on a tractor in his life.
Ace passed on sports, repelled when he saw a lot of Minnesota purple in the feature football art. He came to the daily crossword and settled in on 1 across. “Four-letter word for southern veggie,” he said.
“Corn,” Gordy said.
“C’mon numbnuts. It says southern.”
“Ah, grits?”
“Four letters,” Ace said. He checked 1 down. Dark yellow. After a moment he penciled in “ocher,” which gave him an O for 1 across. Okay. He got it. He was starting to pencil in “okra,” when he heard tires crunch to a stop on the weed-choked trap rock out front.
Ace and Gordy exchanged surprised looks when they heard something they hadn’t heard at the Missile Park in a long, long time: female voices. And these female voices were on the shrill side, pitched high, banging back and forth at each other.
Ace winced and looked at Gordy, who shrugged, came around the bar, went to the front, and looked out the window.
“Two chicks and a little girl,” Gordy said.
“What are they driving?”
“Looks like a red Volvo. Hard to tell the way it’s all dusted up. With Minnesota plates. Got an old green Wellstone sticker on the bumper. And, ah, this rainbow-type decal.”
Ace’s expression jiggled between a wince and a grin, “A Volvo, huh? Boy. They’re lost for sure.”
“I hear you. Jeez, busy day-old Chevy truck just pulled in, too. Arizona plates.”
“So what are they yelling about? The women.”
“Ah.” Gordy craned his neck closer to the window. “Sounds like one of them wants to use the john and the other one ain’t buying it, says it’s just an excuse to have a drink. Now the other one and the little girl are trying to talk her out of it.”
“What’s she look like?” Ace asked.
“Which one?”
“The one who wants a drink.”
“Ah, she’s a redhead, not bad; kinda tough-looking.”
Ace came forward off his stool. “How do you mean, tough?”
Gordy grinned. “Tough like the grim-fucking-reaper. She’s got this skull-and-crossbones tattooed on her shoulder.”
Ace nodded. Gordy would like that. Like it better if she had a Harley logo tattooed on her ass.
Just then the door opened. And Ace expected to see a tough redhead walk through. Instead, it was a leather-tanned older guy wearing this flowery, flowing orange and red Hawaiian shirt, with a full head of hair going white. Ace sat up and took notice. You don’t see that many older guys with forearms like that, who walked so light on their feet. Who came into a room checking everything with those pale quiet eyes. Ace had seen eyes like that on serious lifers during the month he spent on orientation in the Bismarck state pen before they sent him out to do the easy time on the farm.
“I’d get near a phone if I was you, call nine-one-one,” the guy said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “Got a cat fight goin’ out there.” He walked to the bar, sat down, and stared at the wall full of pictures.
Gordy came up. The guy said, “You serving any lunch?”
“Sorry, the kitchen’s closed. We’ve sort of gone out of business,” Gordy said.
Very clearly Ace heard one of the women yell, “Yeah, well, I didn’t drive all the way out here to watch you crawl into a bottle in Nowhere, North Dakota, goddammit.”
Gordy and the guy drifted to the window and stared into the parking lot.
“Which one’s that?” Ace asked.
“The other one,” Gordy said.
The guy nodded, “The dark-haired, dikey-looking one.”
Ace and Gordy perked up and raised their eyebrows thoughtfully. The dikey one. Uh-huh.
The guy shrugged. “Minnesota plates. That’s a dead giveaway. Twin Cities is a regular dike pit. I feel bad for the kid.”
Ace and Gordy nodded again, thoughtfully.
“Aw, screw lunch, gimme a beer,” the guy said.
“All we got left is Old Milwaukee,” Gordy said.
“That’ll do.” When he had a beer he gestured at the walls of an alcove to the right of the bar. The framed pictures, newspaper articles. A military unit flag. “Yeah. This is the place.”
“How’s that?” Gordy said.
“I was here once, back in the seventies. Came to visit my brother when he was in the Air Force, in the 321st Missile Wing. Was stationed down in one of those control pods, tending to ten of those big mothers, the Minutemen. We sat in this bar and had a beer.”
Ace smiled. And Gordy said, “Sure, during the Missile Time.”
The guy nodded. “Usually I take Route 2 across, but, hell, thought I’d swing up through here, not in a big hurry. So when did they pull the missiles out?”
Ace stared at his coffee cup. In the shadow of those missiles he’d had something like a happy childhood. Whole damn town had…
“You fucking bitch! You are not going to pull this shit after all we been through…” The angry voice screeching through the front door. The floor snapped back on its hinges, rattled off the wall.
Then, “Mommm…”