Chuck Logan - After the Rain

Broker decided to start that cigar. Yeager popped his Zippo, giving him a light.

“So,” Yeager said.

“So,” Broker said.

“Point is, the border patrol’s number-one priority up here ain’t to stop our meth problem. Not now. Like, say, take our friendly smuggler who usually drives a load of ephedrine pills, or kitchen cabinets, or flush toilets.”

“Toilets?”

“Yeah, we had a run on full-capacity flush toilets a while back. You know, we got all these environmentally correct toilets now that use less water-you gotta flush two, three times. They were bringing truckloads of the big five-gallon jobs down, some of them right through where we’re standing. Any rate, point is, one night our driver hauls a different cargo. Maybe he don’t even know what’s in his trailer.”

Yeager squinted down the rutted track back toward his cruiser. “Like, say, a full load of Stinger missiles. Or those Russian SA-18s. That’d play some hell with the air traffic pattern.”

“So you guys been brainstorming scenarios, huh?” Broker said.

“You bet. Your wife’s caper has a terrorism angle all over it. And we wouldn’t have had a clue if she wouldn’t have used your kid as a prop. I don’t know if that was brilliant or just plain cold-but once your sheriff buddy called and asked us to get tight on the kid, we got onto you, and then we started getting pieces of the whole picture.”

“Look, Yeager. Nina and her crew are cowboying, way out ahead of something. I got a feeling the big-footed feds will roll into your shop any day with the official word.”

“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Broker. What good is some fancy helicopter full of commandos gonna do? Hell, they don’t know what it’s like out here on these prairie roads at night. Me and the boys grew up here. We can keep track of Ace and Gordy. It ain’t like they’re going to do anything with Nina along. Or didn’t she think it through that far?”

Broker thought about it. Yeager was right. But so was Holly. Once the words nuclear device were put into the mix there was no telling how even steady-looking dudes like Yeager would bounce.

“Yeager, I just came up here to get my kid.” Broker didn’t sound convinced and Yeager sure wasn’t.

Sensing that Broker was weakening, Yeager remained patient. “Okay, come on. Back in the car. We got one more stop.”

They got in the cruiser and backed out of the trail and drove the roads on the American side. For Broker the empty monotony of these fields now took on a sinister sweep. There was just no way to stop a simple suitcase coming across.

After a mostly silent ten-minute ride, Yeager wheeled his cruiser into a weed-thick driveway and drove up to yet another deserted farmhouse. A windmill tower stood beside the house with just the gears up top, no blades. A collapsing barn leaned off to the side, and a rundown Quonset hut out back. This house had a narrow front and a high-pitched roof, its two upstairs windows empty of glass and the front door, torn away, looked like gaping eyes and a mouth.

Yeager leaned back in his seat and lit another Marlboro.

“This is where Ace Shuster lived when he was a kid.” He pointed south. “Our house was about two miles that way, and it’s in worse shape than this place.”

“What are we doing?” Broker asked.

“Figured I’d bring you up to speed on Ace, since he’s become the object of all this intense interest.”

Broker had to grin at Yeager’s style-laid back but relentless.

“What? You got something better to do?” Yeager grinned back.

“So you’re going to take your time, give me the county tour. Spend half the day out in the tullies and maybe my cell phone will ring and I’ll have to go somewhere and you’ll just have to take me there.”

“Hey, Broker, you got a suspicious mind. You should be a cop.”

“I already met Ace.”

“What’d you think?”

Broker thought about it. “At first he seemed like this aging hell raiser, and then…”

“Yeah?”

“His eyes. His eyes were…sad.”

Yeager nodded. “The whole family is just a little bit”-Yeager gently waffled his hand-“off center. His sister, Dorsey, was the one who showed it most. And then, I guess, the kid brother, Dale. The dad, Gene, he was crazy but disciplined. Always cooking these wild schemes to get rich, but always worked like hell. Now, Gene’s dad, Asa-he had the outlaw gene. A regular bomb thrower, back in the days of the Nonpartisan League…”

The term bomb thrower got Broker’s attention. He’d been sitting back, hands crossed in his lap. He came forward, opened his arms, draped one back on the rear seat. Put the other hand on the dash. More attentive now, he said, “Sounds like some family.”

“Yeah. I think their mom, Sarah, she just checked out and went on automatic pilot. Like one of those women you read about back in the old days: too much work, too much prairie. The wind gets to some people. The winters…” Yeager chewed at the inside of his cheek, looked off across the fields. “Ace, he was the oldest kid. Thing I respect about Ace is the way he fights to keep that outlaw gene at bay. Gets up every morning and has to choose twenty-four hours of not breaking the law. That’s a tough one. Another thing, he pretty much looks after everybody.”

“You saying Ace has real psychological hang-ups?”

Yeager shrugged. “Hard to tell with German farm stock. Everybody keeps it in. Then they get behind with the bank, have a couple bad years, and we get a call from an anxious wife with supper cold on the table. Sometimes find the guy’s body out in the corner of a field with his shotgun next to him. Ace? He ain’t exactly your Prozac kind of guy, so he maintains with alcohol.”

The question was on his face so Broker went ahead and said it: “Not the bomb-throwing type?”

“Ace? Is that what they think?”

Broker decided to take the chance that Yeager was waiting for. “Okay, here we go…”

Now Yeager was sitting forward. “Yeah?”

“They got a picture of Ace standing near McVeigh at Waco.”

Yeager rolled his eyes. “They’re basing this whole circus on a fucking picture ?”

“I didn’t say that. But they have a picture.”

“Hey, man, these people gotta do their homework,” Yeager said, getting more animated. “Remember I mentioned his sister, Dorsey? Well, she was wild as hell in high school and then did one of those come-to-Jesus flip turns. She started chasing religious cults. Word got back she was hanging out in this wacko compound in Texas. Turned out to be Koresh’s operation. So Ace went down there, just about the time the ATF did their famous ninja walk in their pretty little black suits.”

Broker braced himself. “So?”

“Once Ace got down there, he found out that Dorsey had been there but split a month before. Ace eventually found her in Seattle, working in a Starbucks coffee bar. Married some guy and is still there, as far as I know. A happy ending.” Yeager squinted at Broker. “If I was you , I’d put a little more faith in what people say over coffee at Gracie’s diner and less in the people who breeze around in black helicopters.”

“Okay, maybe he doesn’t want to blow up federal buildings-could he be the kind of guy who would run anything across the border for money?”

Yeager kind of sidled closer, on the scent. “Anything? Like something real dangerous?”

“C’mon, Yeager…”

Yeager wagged his finger in Broker’s face. “No. Ace wouldn’t do that. But that little creep Gordy Riker would. In a fucking heartbeat.”

“Why you so sure Ace wouldn’t?”

“ ’Cause I’ve known him all my life. Look, we played Legion ball together. Jesus, could he hit. He was eighteen and people were saying he was another Maris. He had a shot at the majors, hurt his knee in a tryout camp, and never went back. Just bad luck. That’s the story of Ace’s life. Nothing ever worked out right for him.” Yeager shook his head.