“Sixty percent of what we do here is paperwork.”
“I guess I have my answer.” Cork stood up. “Thanks for seeing me, Marsha.”
They shook hands without another word. Cork headed out, passed the contact desk, where Pendergast gave him a thumbs-up.
TWO
Day One
Cy Borkman’s enormous butt ate the stool he sat on. “Coffee, Janice,” he said to the young woman who was serving the counter at Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. He looked at Cork, who, until Cy arrived, had been sitting alone. “So, what did Marsha say?”
“That although she might be tempted, she wouldn’t actually burn my application.”
“Come on. What did she say?”
Cork sipped his coffee. “She encouraged me to pursue other career options.”
“She say why?”
“To make way for youth.”
Janice brought Borkman’s coffee and asked him, “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Two eggs over easy, patty sausage, hash browns, and wheat toast.”
“Tabasco?”
“Naturellement.”
Janice walked away, without writing on her pad.
“You ever think about security at the casino?” Borkman asked. “They’re always looking for guys.”
Cork shook his head. “Checking IDs, throwing out drunks, not for me.”
“What do you think you’d be doing as a deputy? Hell, a lot of it’s checking IDs and dealing with drunks.”
“Maybe so, but I’d prefer doing it with a deputy’s badge.”
Borkman clapped a beefy hand on his shoulder. “Pride cometh before a fall, Cork.” He took one of the little containers of half-and-half from the bowl on the counter, creamed his coffee, stirred in a packet of Splenda. “What about your PI business? You’ve got a good rep.”
“And not enough work to afford to pay a lawyer.”
“Why won’t Jo take your case?”
“She says it’s best to have a disinterested third party handle it.”
“Even if it breaks the bank?”
“She’s encouraged me to settle.”
“What would that mean?”
“Letting the bastards surround Sam’s Place with a lot of fucking condos.”
“You’d make a lot of money.”
“And ruin everything that Sam Winter Moon loved. And, hell, that I love, too. I’m going to win, Cy. I’m going to fight these bastards and I’m going to win.”
“What did Jo think about you applying for my job?”
“About what you’d expect.” Cork pushed his cup away. “Got things I have to do. When’s your last day?”
“Two weeks from tomorrow. They’re throwing me a shindig at the Four Seasons. You better be there.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Cork dropped plenty for the coffee and a good tip on the counter and headed outside.
In Aurora, Minnesota, things got quiet in November. The fall color disappeared. The stands of maple and oak and birch and poplar became bone bare. The tourists lost interest in the North Country. Deer-hunting season was nearly finished, and the orange vests, like the colorful foliage, were all but gone. There were still fishermen on Iron Lake, but they were the hardy and the few and came only on weekends. In town, the sidewalks became again the province of the locals, and Cork recognized most of the faces he saw there. November was usually a bleak month, days capped with an overcast and brooding sky, but the last week had been different, with the sun spreading a cheerful warmth over Tamarack County. Cork wished some of that cheer would lighten his own spirits.
He drove his Bronco from the Pinewood Broiler to the gravel access road that led to Sam’s Place. He stopped at the chain that had been strung across the road and that had been hung with a No Trespassing sign. He wanted to drive right through, break the chain into a dozen pieces. Instead, he simply drove around the barrier. He followed the road over the Burlington Northern tracks and pulled into the parking lot of Sam’s Place, where he got out and stood looking at what was, in a way, the vault of his heart.
Sam’s Place was an old Quonset hut built on the shore of Iron Lake. More than forty years before, it had been bought and refurbished by an Ojibwe named Sam Winter Moon. Sam had divided the structure in half. In the front he’d installed a freezer, a grill, a deep fryer, a shake machine, and a soft drink dispenser, and had begun serving burgers, fries, and drinks during the tourist season, May through October. It had become one of Aurora’s icons, a destination, a place for many that, until they patronized it, their vacation wasn’t complete. Sam, when he died, had passed the place to Cork, who’d been like a son to him. Years before, when Cork had lost his job as sheriff, he’d poured himself into keeping the spirit of the wonderful old burger joint alive. He’d brought his own children in to work the windows and flip the burgers and learn, in the way he’d learned, when he was their age, both the necessity and, ultimately, the pleasure of a job well done.
He heard the water lapping gently against the shoreline, and he walked down to the lake. There was an old dock where folks could tie up their boats, disembark, and order a meal. Ever since the chain had gone up across the access from town, that dock was the only legal way to come at Sam’s Place.
To the north stood a Cyclone fence that separated Cork’s property from the BearPaw Brewery. Cork’s land, two acres of mostly open field full of native wild grass and wildflowers, ran south along the shore of Iron Lake and stopped just short of a copse of poplars that surrounded the ruins of an ancient ironworks. Beyond the poplars, the open land continued until it hit Grant Park. Except for the lake, Cork’s property was bounded on all sides by land now owned by the Parmer Corporation, a development company headquartered in Odessa, Texas. Parmer intended to turn the entire lakefront, from the BearPaw Brewery, which they now owned, to Grant Park, into a large condominium resort community. All they needed to complete their ownership of a quarter mile of prime lakefront was to acquire Cork’s property. They’d offered him a lot of money, three-quarters of a million dollars. He’d turned them down. They’d offered him more, a full million this time. He’d declined the proposition. They’d made one more offer, one and a quarter million. He told them to take a hike.
Cork had an easement agreement with those who, before Parmer, had owned the property that stood between Sam’s Place and Aurora. This gave his customers access to the old Quonset hut along the road over the Burlington Northern tracks. But Parmer’s lawyers had wormed their way around the language of the agreement and, near the end of August, had chained off that access. Cork had gone to court, seeking a temporary injunction until the easement dispute could be resolved. The court had turned him down. He’d had so little business-only from boats on the lake-that he’d been forced to close Sam’s Place six weeks earlier than usual, cutting significantly into the cash that might otherwise have been available for legal fees.
From the beginning, Jo had overseen her husband’s interests. As the depth of Parmer’s pockets and the corporation’s resolve to string the proceedings out over years, if necessary, became more apparent, Jo had explained to Cork that it might be best to retain someone who was an expert in this kind of dispute and who could, perhaps, bring about a more expeditious resolution. She recommended a firm in Minneapolis. It was, she cautioned him, going to cost enormously.
Then Parmer had offered a compromise. Cork could keep Sam’s Place. They would build around it; in fact, they would incorporate the old landmark into their design. Cork simply had to sell them the remainder of his property at the last price they’d offered. He’d drafted his own response, told them to go fuck themselves, that he’d sell at no price, that only over his dead body would they ruin the shoreline of Iron Lake.
Jo had carefully pointed out that Parmer held all the cards, that if the lawsuit did, in fact, go on for years, and access to Sam’s Place continued to be effectively blocked, Cork would be forced out of business and they would have to find a way to shoulder a significant legal debt. She cautiously suggested that compromise might be possible.