Chuck Logan - After the Rain

So, you can come to Europe.

Or, you can come home.

So you can stick me in the kitchen with a kid and an apron.

Broker shook his head. Ten minutes after he’d met her he told her straight out she had a chip on her shoulder. And she fired right back:

That’s no chip. Those are captain’s bars, mister.

The fact was, she was a disaster in the kitchen.

He looked one last time at the Weather Channel, how the green mass of precipitation was finally moving out of the upper Midwest. The local report said scattered showers. He eyed his rain parka and decided to leave it. Then he clicked off the TV and left the room.

He grabbed a Styrofoam cup of motel coffee in the lobby and went outside, lounged against the hood of Milt Dane’s Explorer, and lit a another cigar. He assumed she’d come walking into town from that bar. Or maybe Shuster would give her a lift.

Ace.

Carefully he mulled the all-too-ready image of Nina waking up in bed with…

He dragged on the cigar a little too hard and got some smoke down his throat and coughed.

Shit. So here he was dead in the water, waiting for her to come down the highway. The Missile Park was about a mile west down Highway 5.

Broker remembered back to the beginning. He should have picked up on the clues when he visited her apartment in Ann Arbor-when he met her she was on academic leave from the Army, finishing up her master’s in business administration at the University of Michigan.

Her place looked like somewhere Dracula slept between night shifts. Spare and functional. TV dinners and beefed-up vitamin shakes in the refrigerator.

No houseplants. No cat. No paintings on the wall. The only personal item sat on her desk. A trophy from the national military competition pistol shoot at Camp Perry. Second place in the fifty-yard offhand with a.45.

Make a note. Never marry a woman who can outshoot you with a handgun.

When Nina barged into his life he had been dating a woman named Linda who worked at a nursery north of Stillwater, Minnesota. Linda had long black hair she pinned up with a turquoise clasp and always managed to look like she’d just stepped out of a grove sacred to Demeter. Always had her hands plunged in potting soil and wood chips. Good old Linda. Always listening to Minnesota Public Radio. Ripe as a D. H. Lawrence love scene.

C’mon, Broker, tell the truth. Linda would have bored you stiff after a while.

Never bored with Nina. Never once.

Broker spotted her. A stride of color coming at a brisk step down the gravel shoulder. He got up. Check it out. See. It was impossible to be bored and mad at the same time.

Okay.

The watery light licked her bare arms and legs. She wore this meager sleeveless summery dress that came down to mid-thigh and gave her the look of an R-rated Monet in motion. Red-painted toenails in Chaco sandals. And, naturally, she’d never worn a dress like that for him. Strictly jeans and shorts and working duds. Or a goddamn Army uniform. Seven years of married life and they’d been together less than three.

As he waited and sipped his coffee, his eyes swung up and down the highway, out of habit. He spotted Yeager leaning against the side of the county office building across the street. Ostensibly taking a smoke break. A moment later Yeager was joined by another cop in different uniform, a darker shade of brown on top, gray striped trousers below. The state patrol guy. Cute. Both of them playing cop face, affecting sunglasses on a sunless day so they could watch without showing their eyes. A boy, seven or eight came out of the building and talked to Yeager. They all went inside together.

A few minutes later she walked up and they stared at each other.

Broker drifted his eyes across the street to the county building. “We’re in a goddamn fishbowl here. They’re real suspicious about you over there.”

Nina scrunched her lips. “Yeah, so is the guy I’m with.”

“With,” Broker said.

They locked eyes. Let it sputter between them.

“Yeah,” Nina said. “Gordy bet Ace I’m a cop.”

“Great,” Broker said. He turned and they fell in step, walking east toward the restaurant.

“He’s a strange guy, Ace Shuster,” Nina said. “Not what you’d expect.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Broker said.

“Bullshit. You’ve thought about it in great detail. Just like I thought about it when you told me about your fling with Jolene Somer.”

Snap and hiss in the close space between them. Like a live high-tension wire that got loose.

“Yeah, what about your Ranger captain in Bosnia-Jeremy,” Broker shot back.

“I necked with Jeremy once. You fucked that tramp Jolene.”

“So this is what? Payback?”

Nina smiled briefly. “Ace hasn’t even tried to touch me.” She paused for effect and bored a look into his eyes. “Yet.”

They went into the restaurant. Nonsmoking booths on the left, counter front, tables and more booths to the right. They sat in an open booth to the right.

A waitress in tight toreador pants and a deeply tanned face brought them water and a coffeepot. Broker ordered a late breakfast: ham, eggs, no toast, no potatoes, oatmeal on the side. Nina ordered an omelette. She raised an eyebrow.

“Oatmeal and eggs? I thought you were strictly oatmeal. That’s all Kit will eat for breakfast since you brainwashed her.”

Broker shrugged. “Maybe that Atkins guy has a point. I’m checking it out.”

Nina grinned. “You had a birthday last week. The old waistline creeping up on you?”

“I’m doing fine.”

“I don’t think so.” In a completely disarming move she leaned across the table and laid the inside of her cool wrist along his forehead. “You’re running a fever and I’ll bet that hand is infected.”

The day heaved when she did that. Broker almost wanted to stayed glued to her arm, but it moved away. She’s fucking that guy, I know she is and she’ll never admit it. Never should have told her about Jolene. Never.

Their orders arrived and Nina was all business. Broker struggled to give her his full attention, but between his smoldering anger, the mild fever, and the painkillers, the edges on things got blunted. Nina looked faintly screened, distant.

“Get in touch with Jane and Holly,” she said. She took a pen and a business card from her purse and wrote on the back. “Here are their cells”

She slid the card across the table. Broker turned it over and saw the pine-tree logo of his resort: Broker’s Beach.

Nina started to say, “They’re staying-”

Broker cut her off. “I know. One of the local cops told me. They’re at an Air Force radar site east of town. Along with some rough trade in a Black Hawk.”

“Aw shit.”

Broker pressed on. “Remember the famous Shuster-McVeigh photo op? Well, it’s total bullshit. Pure coincidence. Shuster was at Waco looking for his nutzy sister, who was reported to be in the compound. She wasn’t. He found her in Seattle.”

“You know this how?”

“One of the locals told me this morning.”

Nina stiffened slightly when the highway patrolman entered the cafe and started toward their table. He was snappy-looking in his uniform, duty belt, and Smoky Bear hat.

He passed their table smartly and inclined his head in a deferential nod, just as polite as can be. “Broker. Major Pryce.” He continued on and sat down at the counter, his back to them.

Nina sagged and stared at Broker.

“I tried to tell you. You’re wrong for this kind of work. All you guys are. Once Jeff back home heard our kid was stranded in North Dakota he called the local sheriff. Asked him to keep an eye out for her. That raised a flag. It is definitely not SOP for abandoned children to have sheriffs in other states immediately start calling and asking personal favors. It suggests I’m connected. So, Wales, the local sheriff, did some checking around with the Minnesota AG’s office and got an earful about me and then about you. The Vietnam trip in ’95. The rumors about the gold. And you being a big Army celebrity after the Gulf.”