Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

She jabbed her index finger at him. “If-and it’s a big if-Tardee helps you make a case, we might consider a departure from guidelines. So let’s see the case.”

“When the time’s right.” Broker stood up and extended his hand. “Thanks.”

Gloria did not accept his handshake. Her face was gray beneath her tan. Her eyes were as flat as her voice. “Are we through?”

“Yes,” Broker said, heading for the door.

“Broker.”

He turned in the doorway.

“For your information: Mouse and Benish should mind their own business,” Gloria said.

Broker gave a noncommittal nod, then walked from the office, went down the hall, and stopped at the receptionist’s desk. “Tell me something,” he said.

The receptionist sized him up, looked down the hall in the direction he’d come from, then back at Broker. Apparently, she was not a neutral when it came to Gloria, because she enunciated in a hard, level voice, “Maybe, baby, but I kinda fuckin’ doubt it.”

Broker was unperturbed. “The kid in the picture on Gloria Russell’s bookshelf looks familiar. Who is he?”

“You’re new, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m new.”

“That’s Tommy Horrigan; he was the victim in the Dolman case.”

“You mean, alleged victim? Dolman was acquitted.” Broker chose the words to get a reaction.

She responded with cold, controlled hostility. “Yeah, right.”

Broker turned and walked from the office with what felt like a sheaf of daggers planted in his back. It looked as if the Dolman case had never stopped festering in the county, and now the dead priest with the St. Nicholas medallion in his mouth had ripped off the scab.

He took the stairs down, worked through the corridors, went out the door and hit the heat- Jesus-the fuckin’ heat actually throbbed, like the theme from Jaws. .

He hardly noticed a young woman who was smoking a cigarette next to a square brick column. He was absentminded, thanking his friend John Eisenhower for dropping him into the middle of this nutcase mess.

A sudden movement to his left rear had him crouching, hands coming up. Yikes. She darted in front of him; her breath smelled of tobacco.

“Jumpy, are we? You know, if you’re smart, you’ll talk to me,” she said.

Like most of the people who annoyed him these days, she was young; a little over thirty. Five-six or — seven. She wore loose white cotton pants, Chaco sandals, and an armless rayon blouse. The headband tied in her brown hair conveyed a certain fashion statement; it was July, so maybe she was showing solidarity with the Parisian mob that stormed the Bastille. She had brown eyes, freckles, and a spiral notebook in her hand. She would be attractive if you liked skinny reporters.

“Hi, I’m Sally Erbeck, with the Pioneer Press . You’re Broker, special assignment on the dead priest, right? “

“Excuse me, you’re in the way.” Broker put his head down and walked toward his car.

“Hey, you. . you’ve got a dead priest. I’m going with a lead that says he died Tuesday night in his confessional and foul play is suspected. You want to comment?”

“Better show me some ID,” Broker said, still walking. He was halfway to the car.

“Hey you, wait-I’m the Washington County reporter for the Pioneer Press .” She whipped a laminated card from her purse.

“Never heard of you.” Broker kept walking swiftly. He nodded at her identification. “And you can get one of those faked up anywhere. I saw it on the Learning Channel. If you’re really a reporter, get a letter of introduction from your editor.” Broker opened the car door and climbed in.

“If I was a guy, you wouldn’t pull this shit! I’m gonna remember this,” Sally yelled.

Broker popped the ignition and raced the engine. He cupped his left hand to his ear and leaned slightly out of the driver’s-side window. “What?”

Then he rolled up the windows, cranked up the air-conditioning, stepped on the gas, and fishtailed toward the exit, leaving Sally Erbeck in a patch of burned rubber.

As Broker drove west on Interstate 94, a bright migraine blue sky burned through the haze while, up ahead, the skyline of St. Paul levitated in a heat island bonfire. Crouched over the wheel in his air-conditioned bubble, he exited the freeway and drove into the downtown loop.

Holy Redeemer was just off Kellogg Boulevard, overlooking the river bluff, in the shadow of the Landmark Center. In keeping with Minnesota’s basic law of nature-there are two seasons: winter and road construction-Kellogg was torn up for blocks in either direction. A maze of chain-link barriers and yellow tape blocked the adjacent streets. Broker had to park in a ramp and circle back through the west end of the downtown loop.

So he found himself on foot in the new St. Paul walking across snug, newly laid cobblestone streets. He passed by Hmong women in traditional embroidered tunics and Somali women wearing the hijab who had laid out vegetables and fresh flowers in outdoor stalls. He walked past caffeine addicts bent over their laptops outside cafes.

He tried to count the rings pierced into the ears of a youth on a scooter with orange buzzed hair. And he stared at slices of tanned bare midriffs decorated with navel rings as they swung by. Tattoos were on parade; they circled arms, they climbed bare calves like clinging vines.

As he walked across Rice Park, he discovered that the tarnished bronze statue of St. Paul icon F. Scott Fitzgerald had been surrounded by a lynch mob of bulbous, vacantly grinning cartoon sculptures: Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Snoopy. Charles Shultz was being celebrated as St. Paul’s new favorite son. Charlie Brown was in; Nick Carraway was out.

But some things never change.

Up ahead, past the silly cartoon characters, Holy Redeemer’s gray stone shoulders hunkered down between the face-lifted building and the commercial finery like a Roman linebacker-strictly playing defense these days.

Broker walked past the church and up the steps to the rectory, rang the bell, and introduced himself to the secretary who answered the door. The interior of the rectory was low lit, gray, and musty. Crossing the threshold, Broker felt like he was entering an American catacomb. When the door closed behind him, he was standing in 1956, and God was in his heaven, and the cars were still made out of steel.

“Father Malloy will be with you in a moment,” said the secretary, a middle-aged woman whose dress and demeanor matched the quiet decor.

Broker sat on a hardwood chair flanked by large amber glass ashtrays set in metal pedestals. The carpets, walls, furniture yielded an underscent of cigar smoke.

“Hello, Broker,” said Jack Malloy, coming into the vestibule, right hand outstretched. Broker rose, and they shook hands. In his youth, Malloy had evaded his calling to the ministry by hiding in the St. Paul Police Department. He and Broker had met in the patrol division.

Malloy’s golf shirt stretched taut over his flat stomach. His grip was strong, his blue eyes direct. “You want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

Malloy walked back into the rectory kitchen and returned with two mismatched coffee cups. He handed one to Broker.

“Do you really think the Saint has reappeared?” Malloy asked as he led Broker up a flight of carpeted stairs, down a hall, and into a study.

“We don’t know. So we’re taking it real quiet until John gets back in town. He had to go to Seattle. Death in the family,” Broker said.

“I’m sorry to hear it; give him my regards.” Malloy pointed to a pair of stuffed leather chairs. They sat and sipped their coffee for a moment.

Malloy’s eyes became a little tight, the muscles working in his cheeks. “So the hysteria has arrived in Minnesota and killed a priest,” he said.