Chuck Logan - Homefront

“You know,” she said in a dreamy voice, “you and Broker are kinda the same size from a distance. Anybody ever have trouble telling you apart in the dark?”

Griffin ignored her. He recalled a TAC sergeant in Ranger school who used to call them “Heckel and Jeckle,” but damned if he was going to tell her.

“So you gonna tell me what you’re doing?” she asked with one of his Luckies hanging from the corner of her mouth.

“Nope.” It amazed Griffin, how she could stretch out naked on the rug and smoke just one cigarette. He fluffed the toy, inspected the restored proportions, and decided Kit would never know her bunny had been disemboweled by a ski pole. He set the bunny aside.

“Code of the West? Post-Vietnam Lost Boys Sacred Oath?” Susan arched an eyebrow. “Just what is your pact with Phil Broker?” She leaned forward and trailed her fingers over the thick blight of withered scar tissue that wrapped the muscle above his left knee. “Does it have something to do with this?”

He removed her hand, reached over, plucked the smoke from her lips, and took a drag. Gave it back. “What’s the point?” he asked.

Susan studied the burning cigarette between her fingers, looked up. “Maybe I can help.”

Griffin grumbled but did not break eye contact. Encouraged, Susan continued. “I’ve been watching Kit Broker at school. She plays alone. She’s way too self-contained for an eight-year-old. She’s learned how to distance. Knows how to deflect any questions about her family, her past. It’s like she’s being…coached. That’s masking behavior…stuff you might see in kids with abuse at home, or criminal activity.”

Griffin uncrossed his legs, recrossed them, reached for his own cigarette, lit it. Stared at her.

“What’s Kit got at home?” Susan asked. “What’s the big deal? You tell people he works on your crew, but he really doesn’t. He hardly ever shows up. You’re providing sanctuary. Why?”

Griffin stared at the fire and thought about it. After Nina had her head-on collision with depression, Broker had called in some chits. He’d just been up for deer hunting and knew the house on the lake was unoccupied for the winter. It was the perfect remote retreat for Nina to tough it out…

He engaged the concern in Susan’s eyes. True. They had not considered Kit as a factor. Figured she’d go along as obedient baggage. Now Susan was raising flags. He turned from the fire and faced her.

“You’re asking a lot,” he said.

Susan shrugged her bare shoulders. “What I see is the kid. Especially after she punched out Teddy Klumpe. She’s way too tough for eight. That could come from carrying too much weight. Like she’s wearing armor. Somebody should say something to the parents. Is trying to stop a kid from getting damaged asking a lot?”

“Broker and his buddies do have a code,” Griffin said. “The main part of it has to do with loyalty.”

“Okay,” Susan said. “That’s for them, cops. Ex-cops. Whatever. Not you. Or is this because you were Army buddies back in the day?”

“Jesus, you don’t give up,” Griffin said.

Susan grinned and poked his flat stomach with her finger. “Nope.” She scooted closer, rested her elbows on his knees. “C’mon. Who are they?”

“I thought you were concerned with Kit.”

“Sure, and I’m thinking, my Amy’s the same age. We could get them together for a play date, for starters. That way I could meet her mom, get it going back and forth,” Susan said.

“They didn’t come up here for play dates and coffee with the moms. Pretty much the opposite,” Griffin said. His voice sharpened and Susan saw the fast warning shadow pocket his face.

Sensing she’d hit a boundary, she sat back, folded her arms across her modest breasts, and gave back a little challenging edge of her own. “You’re overdramatizing, as usual.”

“Listen, Susan; they’re not going to be here long enough for Kit to get damaged,” Griffin said.

“You sure about that? He’s your friend. You should help him.”

True. Which got Griffin thinking…

Susan waited patiently. She’d been North Woods raised on the big lake and was a seasoned angler. She knew when she felt a nibble, knew the proper time to play out a little more line.

Except Griffin was now thinking about the other thing; how no way Jimmy could come into the place on skis. So somebody else could be in this. Somebody who played real rough. Finally he said, “Look, it’s complicated…”

Susan took a last drag on her one cigarette, twisted, and flipped it into the fireplace. When she turned back, she took her time, letting the firelight play over the very serviceable curves of the only intelligent eligible woman in Glacier Falls who would take a chance on a silvertip loner like Harry Griffin.

Griffin started over, speaking carefully. “It’s like this with Broker and his wife. You know how when there’s a crisis-say a building catches fire-everybody runs. Except there’s two people who go back into the fire to take care of the casualties…”

Susan sat up straight. She had never felt his eyes range in on her quite this way, like hard iron sights. She nodded her head slightly.

“Well,” Griffin continued, “it’s good we have people like that around when all hell breaks loose. But maybe it’s not such a good idea if they get married to each other and have a kid.”

Deliberately, Griffin stood up and stared at her, to let it sink in. She knew him as an intense guy; and now she’d hit a new wall in him. Macho guy loyalty. Whatever. She sobered a bit, seeing the warning frown in his eyes. Shucks, so much for afterglow. And he was standing in a certain way, this quiet power stancing, cautioning her away from the subject. Then he turned and walked from the main room toward the bathroom. A moment later, Susan heard the shower start to run.

Susan hugged herself in front of the fire. She looked down and saw a faint tickle of goose bumps rise on her forearms. It was the first time he’d revealed a part of himself that actually worried her.

The alarm went off, and Sheryl Mott got up in her efficiency apartment on Lincoln Avenue in St. Paul. Five-fuckin’-thirty in the morning. Still dark out-and this is after doing a six-hundred-mile round trip yesterday, missing work…she gingerly touched the rash on her cheeks from Gator’s Brillo-pad four-o’clock shadow.

Mission Impossible theme music was playing in her head. Your assignment, if you choose to accept it …

Her assignment today was Dickie Werk, Werky for short.

Richard M. Werk maintained an office in the Ramsey Building, a liver-colored brownstone near Mears Park in downtown St. Paul. He employed a secretary, two legal clerks, and an “investigator.” Simon Hanky, the investigator, was a vetted OMG soldier whose main job was to keep an eye on Werky and clean up messes. Sheryl had some history with Hanky, and he was one scary fella.

Werky rented space to three young, eager, world-saver attorneys who rallied to the defense of disadvantaged inner-city youth who had difficulty finding gainful employment in a tough economy…and were forced to support themselves by robbing and selling dope. And stabbing and shooting people.

Sheryl rolled her eyes, shook her head, planted her feet on the chilly hardwood floor, and pushed up off the bed.

Werky was the kind of overly self-dramatizing guy who never outgrew snarfing his first line of cocaine in law school, blowing his brains out listening to Warren Zevon’s Lawyers Guns and Money at max volume. He ate too much, sweated too much, talked too much and had this absolute, and potentially fatal, fascination with rubbing up against hard-core criminals.