Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

Harry was right. Broker had never acquired the investigator’s instinct to absorb telling detail from a crime scene. But even he could see the direction of bullets through the shattered wood grille, the bits scattered into the room. The killer had fired through the screen. The killer had been talking to the priest.

This was no burglary gone bad. This was personal. Or psychotic.

His eyes settled on the bloody carpet and the abstract taped image of the dead priest. So did you deserve it? Broker pushed sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and felt a throb of pain originate in the bump behind his ear and radiate through his head like a thought that Harry had put there.

The hell with this. Better to talk to the living.

He walked out, pulled the door shut behind him, went through a side gate in the sagging wrought-iron fence, and crossed a vacant lot snarled with weeds and wildflowers. Ray Tardee’s house was a single-story wood-frame 1890s shotgun; living room, kitchen, bedroom.

Tardee sat in a slant of shadow on his front porch sipping a can of Pig’s Eye.

He was in his midfifties, big shouldered, with not much belly. He wore a leg brace on his right foot, and even on this very hot day he wore motorcycle boots, grimy jeans, and a stained T-shirt from which the sleeves had been sliced out. His thick fingers and palms were intricately whorled in black lines, cured and callused in grease and gasoline.

Closer in, Tardee had shaggy brown hair, wispy mustache, and chin whiskers. The fading eagle, anchor, and globe of a Marine Corps tattoo graced his left forearm, and he wore a thunderbird beadwork wristband below the tattoo that suggested some Native American action in his confused bloodlines. Unmoving, he watched Broker come up his overgrown sidewalk.

“You Ray Tardee?” Broker called out.

“Sorry. I’m the fucking sphinx. I ain’t suppose to talk to nobody about nothin’,” Tardee said.

“Broker, Washington County Investigations. We just called you.”

Tardee put down his beer can and folded his arms across his chest. “The sheriff said I ain’t suppose to talk to nobody about nothin’, and that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Tardee repeated.

“Right. Sheriff Eisenhower told me; but he’s out of town, so right now you’re talking to me.”

“All right. Let’s see some picture ID.”

So Broker took out the brand-new ID that Harry had neglected to take off him. Tardee scanned it and grumbled, “Yeah, okay; I saw you at the church with that Selby Avenue Sioux.”

Tardee studied Broker to see if he picked up on the racial slur. Broker got it. Back in the old days, before gentrification, when Broker had walked a beat in St. Paul, Selby Avenue was the main drag of the black ghetto.

“You got enough skin to get on a tribal roll?” Broker asked.

Tardee squinted.

“Ojibwa?” Broker asked.

“Net Lake.”

Broker nodded. Net Lake was a poor rez, not blessed with gaming revenue. “Tough shit for you, no casino,” Broker said as he came up on the porch and sat casually on the rail. “So did you know the priest?”

Tardee shrugged. “Mexican guy. He wasn’t from around here. I saw him in the yard once, putting down sod. I told him it was the wrong time of year to lay sod, that September would be better for the roots to take.”

“You talk about anything else?”

“Yeah, he said it was hot. I agreed.”

“And that’s it?”

“Pretty much. I already been over this.” Tardee slipped his hand into his back jeans pocket and pulled out a business card. “With. . Lie-mond Greene. Investigator.” Tardee grinned, showing decayed teeth. “Kinda makes you believe in progress, don’t it?”

“Say again?” Broker asked.

“Lymon Greene is progress, see. I asked him where he grew up. In fucking Golden Valley west of Minneapolis. He’s a new one on me. I’ve known some splivs, in the cities and in the crotch. But Lymon, he’s my first square black guy.”

“Square, huh? Not hip like you and me?”

“There it is.”

Broker endured a moment of sun-induced dementia. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be here. “Like for instance, Lymon would never rough somebody up, you know, just because they’re a lowlife piece of shit. He probably never even says the word shit, huh?”

They regarded each other like natural enemies, and their eyes agreed it was too hot to pursue it. Tardee shifted his feet. “You know, the sheriff and I had this talk about this little situation I got coming up.”

Broker raised his face and took another long drink of too much sun. Working the deals was high on the list of reasons he had quit police work; herding the rats through the sewers with sticks and carrots, keeping them out of sight.

Broker blinked and shook his head again. “Yeah, that was real smart, Ray; selling a bag of grass to an undercover cop.”

Ray scratched his belly and grumbled, “Shit, man, it was self-defense; that fuckin’ undercover narc was on his knees begging. Dude was undoing my belt.”

“Sheriff says you got priors. You’re over the line. That’s a commit to prison.”

“Fuckin’ guidelines,” Ray said.

“Yeah, but maybe we can get them to go for a departure from the guidelines.”

“The sheriff didn’t say maybe. He said be quiet about the woman in the Saints jacket going in the church, and he’d get me a deal.”

“What I want to know is, could it have been a guy dressed like a woman?” Broker said.

“She looked like Robin Williams,” Tardee said.

“What?”

“Yeah, remember that movie Mrs. Doubtfire , where he dressed up in that padded costume and the wigs and shit? That’s exactly what she looked like. A fucking shim.”

“Shim?”

“A she and a him. An in-between.”

“How tall?”

“Too tall. About five eleven, but walking funny, like a kid in high heels. Like she was in built-up shoes. And, ah, she had a big ass.”

“How so?”

“Too big. I’m good on asses, but I’m better on pussy. See, I got hit in the war, and they put this steel plate in my head.” Ray thumped his skull. “Ever since, I got no sense of smell whatever; I can eat anything .” Ray grinned broadly and let his tongue loll inside his smile.

“I’m impressed. So was there anything about her big ass that was distinctive?”

Ray grinned. “Yeah, it was too big for the rest of her. And she didn’t move like someone who had a big ass. She moved like someone who had a pillow stuffed in the seat of her drawers.”

“So it could have been a guy dressed up like a girl?”

“Could of been, but probably not, unless you really want it to be,” Tardee said carefully.

Broker let it go; he was getting personal again, trying to make it be Harry. He thanked Tardee and left the broken porch. As he walked toward the car, he heard Tardee whistling behind him. He was a good whistler. The Fat Tuesday lilt of “When the Saints Go Marching In” was unmistakable.

Easing from North End gravel onto city pavement, Broker remembered the book of matches he’d taken from Harry. He fished the square of cardboard from his chest pocket and rotated it in his fingers like prayer beads.

He was starting to formulate a plan.

He flipped open his cell phone, thumbed out Mouse’s card, and punched in his number. Mouse answered on the third ring.

“So what are you doing?” Broker asked.

“Driving back from federal court in St. Paul. They recessed on me. How’d it go with Harry?”

“Not so hot; Ole’s was a setup,” Broker said. “He talked me into dropping by his place on the way so he could pack a bag. And he. . slipped out on me.”