Chuck Logan - Homefront

Broker sipped his coffee, puffed on the cigar, and watched the smoke dissipate in the wind. Kinda like Nina, always taking her iron will for granted.

Okay. So maybe it was time to back off. Reach out.

Broker actually grimaced at the idea of calling Griffin and asking for personal help. Help with Nina was one thing. But help for him personally…Jesus…

Up till now Griffin had provided a place to stay and the bare bones of a cover story. That done, he stayed at a respectful distance. How much did he know? Broker assumed Griffin gossiped with J. T. Merryweather and Harry Cantrell. They all used to come up here to hunt. He was one of the few “civilians” those two allowed into their confidence.

Face it. The problem with reaching out to Griffin-besides his tendency to overreact-was that he was a Vesuvius of advice waiting to erupt. He had almost thirty years saved up, twenty-five years of it stone cold sober. And Griffin tended to be blunt.

And even being longtime friends, they had some issues.

Broker finished his cigar and came back into the kitchen. He was still pondering making the call when Nina wandered in, doing her bathrobe shuffle but, Broker observed, with a little more swing than usual. She stopped, cocked her head to the side, and said, “Broker, you feeling all right? You don’t look so hot.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, backing up a step. Not used to her making and maintaining direct eye contact. Not used to seeing the hint of color in her cheeks. “Just cleaning the place up.”

She nodded, “Uh-huh. How’d it go with the principal this morning?”

“Ah, they’re moving her to a different home base, away from the kid she hit. No recess for a week. They’ll keep an eye out,” he said, thinking, first eye contact, now she’s tracking and making conversation. Christ, she is coming back. Not used to being scrutinized by her green eyes, he had to remind himself that Nina coming back was a good thing.

Then she poured a cup of coffee and took up her position at the stove, flipped on the overhead fan, and lit a cigarette. Broker was actually relieved when she pointed the TV remote like an escapist wand. The set popped on, dropping an electronic curtain over the room and hopefully cloaking his agitation.

For once he didn’t mind.

Usually the cable shows reminded him of undercover work that had taken him into endless barrooms where it was always 11:00 P.M. The time when the smart people had long departed and only the drunks remained, yelling their pet peeves at each other. Chris Matthews brayed on one stool, Bill O’Reilly on another. Sean Hannity off beating his meat in the john. CNN had less volume and droned in a thorazine monotone. PBS was different, a station that delivered its monotone with footnotes.

C-SPAN was okay, free of commercial breaks, it came at you in agonizing real time like a dogged AA group crusading to get the nation to go on the wagon of sober politics.

Broker retreated to the washer and dryer in the bathroom and reached in to haul towels from the washer, except the goddamn towels were tangled like wet pythons around the washer stalk, resisting him. Suddenly he yanked at them, jarring the machine. He stopped and stared at his hands. Close to shaking. The flash point idling hair-trigger…

Primed and ready, just a surge away.

Deep breath, center down. Slowly, he disentangled the twisted towels from the washer column. Looked up through the doorway, snuck a look at Nina, thinking how she’d always favored colors that complemented her hair and complexion; shades of green and amber. Harvest colors. Now she grabbed whatever came to hand first in the drawer or laundry basket. At this moment, under the green terry-cloth robe, she wore a gray T-shirt, a pair of red sweatpants. Purple sweat socks.

Kit was just beginning to be aware of her appearance and how to dress. She would avert her eyes from her mother’s outlandish costumes. Come to him with tops and bottoms, ask him if they matched…

Broker blinked, caught in mid-spiral; Nina was looking back at him. No, watching him.

Deliberately now, under the gaze of her increasingly alert eyes, he transferred the towels into the dryer, sorted another load into the washer, measured soap, set the control, started the water. When he went back to the kitchen, she continued to check him from the corner of her eye as she paced and chain-smoked and watched the Abrams tanks and the Bradleys rolling up the Euphrates River valley.

“So, what do you think?” she asked in a level voice, gesturing at the televised war just as some particularly sharp audio threw a rattle of shots into the kitchen. This distinctive whoosh, then an explosion.

“The AKs and RPGs sound the same,” Broker said, turning away. “I gotta go in town, pick up the flat, do some shopping before I get Kit,” he said over his shoulder, accelerating in an uninterrupted motion toward the door, stepping into his boots, grabbing his hat, gloves, carrying his coat, which he put on in the garage.

He didn’t have to check his wristwatch. He knew it was just after noon. Three hours till school let out.

As he wheeled down the driveway and onto 12, he decided he needed some drive time away from the house. He’d been living too close to her.

And her ghosts.

Janey, Holly, and Ace Shuster. The casualties from Northern Route. He repeated the names in his mind like a diagram of her condition. She blamed herself for Janey most, and then Ace. Holly had disappeared, vaporized from the face of the earth in the explosion at Prairie Island. Broker had been two hundred yards away…

He shook his head, focused on the road. Ghosts were mind games, just mental artifacts. Invisible.

Like radiation.

Broker had come to view Nina’s depression as an asylum where all the ghosts got out. Thing about ghosts. You had to keep them locked up.

Broker stabbed his right boot sole down, heavy on the gas. Maybe not the best time to call Griffin.

Gator was jangled on too much morning coffee, and now rubber-kneed from the bout at the sink, but when they entered the shop, he immediately started another pot. As the Mr. Coffee gurgled and dripped, he paced and watched Sheryl drift over to the cot in the alcove, tuck her knees under her, and start combing out her hair.

No afterglow booze. No drugs. He and Sheryl agreed. The first rule of the Great Monk Crooks was, they never used. Like Danny T. said in the joint: “You use, you lose the count.”

“So?” Sheryl asked, drawing the comb through her long hair, staring quizzically at the black kitten that emerged from a folded blanket under the desk and arched up against Gator’s shin.

“Jojo,” Gator said, picking up the cat, stroking it.

Sheryl’s eyes clicked around. “You mean…Danny T.’s Jimmy Jo?”

“Yep.” Gator gently put the kitten down, poured a cup of coffee, and handed it to Sheryl. She set down the comb, took the cup in both hands, blew on it to cool it.

“The bust in Bayport, what? Eight, nine years ago, she said. “I hear it still cuts Danny like a knife.”

Casually Gator opened his desk drawer and took out the sheets of paper. “No one ever figured out who snitched on Jimmy Jo. Gave him to the narcs.”

Sheryl nodded. “Eats at Danny. Gave him ulcers, losing his only kid like that.”

“Wasn’t a snitch. Was an undercover cop.” He tapped the paper.

Sheryl narrowed her eyes, taking the papers; she drew up her knees cross-legged, got comfortable. “This is a search warrant,” she said as she flipped up the blue memo stapled to the top page, raised her eyebrows.

“Read,” he said.

She put on her serious thinking face and carefully read the warrant. Then she scanned it again. He reached in the desk again and tossed her the Washington County letter, the Visa statement.