Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

Mouse held up a key. “Why don’t you cruise by the gym downstairs and tell Lymon it’s time to meet.”

Broker took the key and went down two flights of stairs, took a few turns, and opened the door to the gym. The room had blue cinder block walls, a blue carpet, and was too small for the thicket of stainless steel exercise stations. In among the crowded steel it was silent but not empty.

Lymon stood on one side of the room with a sheen of sweat on his smooth face. He was methodically lifting dumbbells in alternating biceps curls. Not showy, he wore gray wind pants and an oversized white T-shirt. Thick grids of veins swelled in either forearm as he slowly hoisted and lowered the forty-pound weights.

Across the room Gloria Russell sat at the pec fly machine, spreading her arms, aligning her back, and dragging her arms together, working her delts. She wore black spandex shorts and a black tank top. Broker could not see a hint of fold in the tanned belly above her waistband. Gloria’s eyes bored into the middle distance, concentrating on the reps.

Tremendous fatigue streamed off both of them. Broker could almost see it, like smoke. Lymon couldn’t miss Broker coming into the small area, but his eyes didn’t register Broker’s entry. In the zone, his focus remained fixed elsewhere; his lips continued counting reps.

Lymon’s lips mimed eight as he lowered the weight in his right hand. Then he repeated the silent eight as he lifted the barbell in his left hand, and his eyes moved across Broker and fixed on a point in space about a foot off Broker’s shoulder. No one spoke.

So Broker watched them progress gracefully through their compact jungle of iron and steel. After she finished with the pec fly, Gloria moved to the inclined bench press. She started with dime plates on the bar. Did a steady set of ten reps.

Lymon had finished the alternating curls and continued his biceps work on a barbell. But now he was no longer staring into space. He monitored Gloria, who had added a pair of nickel plates to the bar for her second set. On her seventh rep her arms began to tremble but she maintained her form and was able to pump out the eighth rep. The barbell clunked into the weight stand; she sat up and stared, catching her breath.

Broker intruded into the interval between sets and said, “Lymon, we have a meeting with Mouse.”

“Ten minutes,” Lymon said.

Now Gloria added another pair of nickels to the bar and locked her knees over the raised supports and lay back, resuming her head-down prone position on the inclined bench. She composed herself, carefully placed her hands, and lifted the weight. Smooth, concentrated; two, three, four. .

At four she began to fall apart. She struggled.

Lymon was there instantly, hovering, adding a light tug with his fingertips. His spotting made the difference, and she completed the lift. In that second, as she braced her arms and prepared to lower the weight, their eyes locked.

Then, for the first time, they acknowledged Broker’s presence. As a pair, they looked back at him. Broker thought they appeared romantic, arranged there together among the benches and the barbells, which was to say they looked young, beautiful, and haunted. They also looked guilty of something.

And doomed.

Broker, Mouse, and Lymon sat down to talk. Broker thought it ironic that Mouse chose the soft interrogation room to have their chat, the room where victims were questioned gently. They sat in cheap but comfortable easy chairs. A short child’s blackboard and a box of toys sat in the corner. Broker could clearly picture Harry interviewing Tommy Horrigan in this room a little over a year ago.

Broker related his off-the-record talk with Malloy, underscoring Malloy’s obvious worry that someone was declaring open season on priests. Then he kept his mouth closed and listened.

Mouse said, “Okay, here’s the deal. John’s not back till Friday night. We have to stall the media going into the weekend. Then, on Monday John will hold a press conference. If we don’t come up with anything by then, he goes public with the medallion. So. . if the press gathers, we avoid the front door. I’m telling everybody to enter and leave the building through the basement garage. The call takers in Dispatch are screening all the media calls.”

Mouse turned to Lymon. “Get on the horn with Albuquerque PD and check out the family that accused Moros. See if they’ve done any traveling lately, like to Minnesota.”

Lymon shook his head. “This is big,” he said. “We should call in the state guys right now. If we have a new player out there who’s going after priests. .” He stared like a man watching a tidal wave coming ashore. “These back-channel games, meeting Malloy on the sly, chasing after Harry, they amount to gambling with people’s lives.”

Mouse said, “Go call Albuquerque.”

Lymon narrowed his eyes but managed to keep his mouth shut. Without another word he stood up and left the room.

Mouse turned to Broker. “He’s right, you know.”

Broker nodded. “I agree about the gambling part. John’s gambling this is local, and that Harry has been sitting on a solid lead. I’m gambling that Harry will tell me what it is before he sneaks up and skull-fucks me in my sleep.” Then Broker reached over and thumped Mouse on his dense chest. “And Harry is gambling, because he called me thirty minutes ago, and I heard the goddamn slots banging in the background. So get on those casinos. He’s driving in from one right now.”

“How do you know?” Mouse said.

“Because he wants me someplace where he can see me for a meet. Not in person. On the phone.”

“Hell, where? We’ll stake it out.”

Broker shook his head. “No way. This is Harry, remember. Anything looks out of place, he’ll spot it. The last thing we want is a confrontation. Did you call your pal in Hinckley?”

“Called him and sent the faxes. It’s being put in place. C’mon.” Mouse motioned for Broker to follow him back to his cube, where he had a state map spread on his desk.

“Okay, I sent stuff to every joint in the state; that’s sixteen in all. But we’re concentrating on these.” Mouse tapped place-names highlighted in yellow magic marker on the map that formed a rough circle around Minneapolis and St. Paul. “The Grand Casinos in Hinckley and Onamia, Mystic Lake in Prior Lake, Treasure Island in Red Wing, Turtle Lake in Wisconsin, and Jackpot Junction in Morton-but that’s getting way out there.”

Broker bit his lip. “It could work. We want to find him when he’s half in the bag, distracted in a public place. We want him in a goddamn trance staring at a blackjack dealer. That’s the way to approach him.”

Mouse hitched up his belt, cleared his throat, and said, “Wonderful. This has become competitive between you two.”

“Always was,” Broker said.

Broker had forty minutes to kill before his date with the statue. He figured Harry needed a support system so he might turn to Annie Mortenson again. He drove out of the basement ramp, eased through the back streets, worked around to the west of town, came down Myrtle Hill, turned left on North Fourth, and parked in front of the Stillwater Library. From here it would be a quick hop up Third Street to the old courthouse.

The Carnegie library was one of Stillwater’s jewels, with A.D. 1902 chiseled over the door. Broker picked his way through kids’ bikes that were strewn on the broad lawn like a snapshot from a happy childhood. He went inside, asked for Anne Mortenson at the curved front desk, and was directed downstairs to the reference desk.

Broker came down the marble stairs two at a time and saw her standing behind the desk in jeans and a maroon paisley blouse. She was younger than he expected, midthirties. His initial impression was: medium, in height, in looks, in intensity. Her brown hair was clipped in straight bangs across her forehead and fell on either side of her oval face in a lank pageboy. Her bookish brown eyes did not entirely conceal a dynamo of spinster energy that suggested her trim appearance would not change for the next forty years.