Absolute Zero (2002) Read online

  back of his knuckles. Pretty girl. Broker shook his head and felt it all

  drop on him. What had happened to Hank Sommer was worse than

  death. The problem with having a highly developed code of duty

  was the flip side—the shame when you screwed up.

  Had Amy screwed up? Had he?

  He had to shake these doldrums. Write it off to lingering shock

  and the unaccustomed booze. He took two steps back and lowered

  himself into a chair because the bed was too far away right now.

  No, that wasn't it. The bed had become fearful.

  He could shut his eyes. But would he ever open them again?

  He watched Amy's chest rise and fall peacefully, which caused

  him to yawn. To fight off the lethargy he sat bolt upright and

  reached for the small writing table next to the chair and clamped his

  hands on to the edge.

  He held on so tight his fingertips blanched white, because he

  had to stay awake, because the sleep he now imagined was bottom

  less, laced with black bubbles, like his look down into the glacier

  water. Because he'd never take sleep for granted again.

  But his eyelids pressed down and the bubble of his willpower

  burst, and sleep opened its arms and waited with the patience of

  gravity. He finally slumped forward through the ether of an alco

  holic dream and pitched toward the floor in a slow-motion fall, but

  the floor had turned to transparent glass beneath his feet and he

  crashed through, down into the private catacombs where he walled

  off his dead. And he saw Hank Sommer's long, quiet body in its

  own private room and Hank's sightless eyes startled open and

  looked up.

  And a whole heap of bodies stood up in a forgotten place called

  Quang Tri City. They were schoolboys from Hanoi and farm boys

  from the provinces and they formed a circle and he saw that their

  hair and fingernails had grown long since 1972.

  Nimble as spiders, they swept in to get him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nina Pryce.

  If ever a name destroyed sleep. He lurched up, ducked, and discovered he was in bed wearing nothing but his shorts. How'd he . . .

  Amy Skoda appeared next to his bed smiling, with her eyes mostly clear and her hair in place. She held a coffee cup out to him and he saw the room-service tray with a coffee carafe on the bureau next to the TV.

  "Actually I know more about you than I let on last night. I know you married Nina Pryce," she said.

  Broker studied the T-shirt she wore, which he'd last seen folded in his duffel. The black one with NEW ORLEANS spelled out in white alligator bones. Below the hem, lamplight glossed the blond fuzz on her thighs.

  She cleared her throat and handed him the coffee. "After Desert Storm, Nina had a small following. Not quite Mia Hamm, but loyal. I almost went into the army because of her."

  Broker grimaced slightly at the subject of his wife. AmazonDot-Kill: she had achieved a certain female-soldier notoriety in the Gulf. He took the cup and sipped. The coffee helped his hangover, which was less overt pain than a massive energy drain. "So why didn't you?" he asked.

  "Hey, I'm out there but I'm not that cutting-edge. Nina wants to

  fight next to the men."

  The words were rote and spun from his mouth. "She didn't just

  fight next to the men in the desert. She led a company of them against three times their number of Republican Guards and she won. It sort of alienated the patriarchy." He cleared his throat. "That, and the fact that she wouldn't suck titty with the Witch Hook Feminists. She caught it from both ends and they ran her out of the army."

  "But she got back in. She's in Bosnia."

  Macedonia, actually. Probably Kosovo. He didn't know exactly. The unit she was in now, Delta, didn't officially exist. "Clinton stuck his nose in," Broker said, employing the name like an allpurpose subject, verb, and object. He waved the subject away. "I, ah, don't remember getting in bed."

  Amy shrugged. "I got up to pee and found you passed out on the floor. So I tucked you in."

  "You picked me up?"

  "You're big but you're not that big." Broker found her style distressingly familiar.

  "I took your pants off, too. Don't worry," she said, "I'm not pregnant and your virginity is intact."

  He let that one slide, too, and just stared at her. "You don't look hungover."

  "Oh, I'm hungover; I just don't whine about it."

  He couldn't win, so he knuckled his frizzed hair, gathered the sheet toga-fashion around his waist, grabbed his jeans, and went into the bathroom. When he emerged, shaved, showered, and dressed, she had changed back into her rumpled hospital duds.

  "Thanks for collecting me last night," she said frankly. "I would have tried to walk to my car and wound up in a snowbank." He nodded and opted for brevity. "Bad night."

  "Do you want to know the kicker?" She flung open the curtains and Broker winced at the roar of sunlight and the cloudless blue sky. Lake Shagawa twinkled placid as a millpond. Then she said quietly,

  "I called in. They're flying him down to the Cities in half an hour. Thought you might want to say good-bye."

  The plows had left the parking lot iglooed with piles of snow. As they threaded toward Iker's truck, Broker, feeling achy and fogged over, reached for a cigar.

  Amy laughed.

  "What?"

  "The eyebrows. And the cigar. You look like a cross between

  Sean Connery and Groucho Marx."

  Broker grumbled, threw the cigar away, got in, started the

  truck, and drove into town through a convention of yellow county

  snowplows. All around, Ely's residents wore Minnesota weather

  cowboy grins and were chipping away at the drifts with shovels and

  snowblowers.

  A block from the hospital Amy touched his arm. "Better let me

  out here. It probably won't look right, us walking in together." As

  she got out of the truck they heard the whack of a helicopter on

  approach at the hospital helipad.

  The chopper had triple tail fins, which made it a BK 117 Amer

  ican Eurocopter; it was dark blue with white diagonal stripes and

  the letters SMDC on the fuselage. It carried a pilot, a registered nurse,

  and a paramedic.

  It was the kind of expensive ride only real sick people take.

  Broker drove through the shadow of the Eurocopter and into

  the lot where the plows had created white cubbyholes with twelve

  foot walls. He parked in one of them as the chopper landed on the

  other side of the white maze, and he got out of the truck and walked

  toward a knot of people standing on the hospital steps. Milt, wear

  ing a borrowed sweat suit under his parka, his arm in a sling, with a

  barely civil smile on his face, stood like a man on a mission. He was

  listening to an officious-looking woman in a pants suit. She was

  talking but she was clearly on defense, arms crossed over the brief

  case clasped to her chest.

  Nearer the door, in the shadows, Allen slumped against the

  brick wall in his blue parka and baggy loaner jeans and a sweatshirt.

  His hair drooped to complement his sunken eyes and the twenty

  four-hour beard that darkened his face.

  The stunned woman standing next to Allen looked like all the

  mothers Broker'd ever seen who had lost their children at the state

  fair.

  Jolene Sommer, the trophy wife, was not the Barbie Doll Broker

  had expected. She was neither blond nor tanned. Her dark hair,

  olive skin, and restless green eyes flew Mediterranean flags agai
nst

  her white-trash name. In her bittersweet glance, he glimpsed some

  thing rare that had been shattered when she was a kid and cheaply

  put back together.

  She was in her early thirties, stood about five eight, and weighed maybe 120 pounds. The dark hair twisted in natural curls around her shoulders, and her cheekbones were wide under the broken emerald eyes, and her lips were full and her nose straight. She wore no obvious makeup to complement the quiet shades of gray and charcoal of her turtleneck sweater, slacks, tailored wool coat, and the soft leather of her boots. She had removed her gloves. A simple gold band marked her left hand.

  Broker instantly disliked the young guy wearing shades who stood next to her; he disliked the way they looked so good together; he disliked their palpable aura of familiarity.

  Further, he disliked beauty in a man; the torch-singer glow of a Jim Morrison or a young Warren Beatty who hid cocaine secrets behind aviator sunglasses. He disliked the casually tousled thick blond hair, every strand of which seemed individually groomed and placed. He disliked the insouciant hip-slouched promise of youth, the easy sex in either pocket. And he disliked the man's flat-bellied athleticism, so innocent of aches and pains.

  Mostly, he disliked his own disapproval.

  This had to be the old boyfriend. Broker was painfully reminded of all the lean young army ranger officers who rubbed elbows and

  flirted with his wife half a world away. Ex-wife? Whatever. If Jolene was Bonnie, this had to be Clyde. Okay. He was a sixfooter and python-smooth and strong. Looking more carefully, Broker found his flaw; this was a guy who couldn't maintain his cool. It was the way he'd dressed for this occasion that gave him away. His black suit, black shirt, black tie, and the glasses looked like an early Halloween costume or the garb of a limo driver who'd booked a really good ride. And in contrast to the other people gathered here, he put out such a fulsome cloud of barely suppressed well-being, he almost sparked.

  Allen crooked his arm and summoned Broker with a nervous wag of his finger, shouting to be heard over the helicopter.

  "Broker, come over here, Hank's wife wants to meet you. Jolene, this is Phil Broker, the guide. He paddled us out to get help." Allen's voice was controlled and grave and his eyes stayed focused at knee level.

  "Heads up, Jolene; this is the canoe guy," echoed the young man in black as he took her elbow and steered her. Allen immediately acquired her other elbow and both of them attempted to squire her forward. It looked like a tug-of-war over the spoils, and Hank's brain wasn't even cold yet.

  Broker felt the heat go to his hands. He had no right to be indignant. But he was.

  He became more irate as they continued to hang on her arms as Jolene Sommer reached for his hand. She moved like a person really eager to meet new people, and her sweaty clasp was more a grab for something solid than a handshake. "I truly appreciate what you did," she said, searching Broker's face.

  Broker wanted to convey something but, rather than grope for words, he remained silent and Jolene continued to hold on to his hand. Looking too deeply, almost impolitely, into her eyes, Broker blinked and stepped back. She still had Allen holding one elbow, the smooth young guy clamped on the other.

  His impulse was to pull her away, take her aside.

  But he was the stranger here so he nodded, released the handshake, and stepped farther back. The guy in black then effortlessly moved in, squeezed Broker's elbow, and took a long billfold from his inside jacket pocket. With one-handed flash he manipulated three $100 bills and tucked them into Broker's hand. "For your trouble, fella; thanks again."

  He's dealt blackjack, thought Broker, who wanted to see his eyes.

  So, slam-bam-dismissed. Okay. But old radar started to track. While he studied what was wrong with this picture he remained low-key. He slipped the bills into his pocket, like they expected a humble canoe guide to do, and folded his hands below his waist like an usher, and waited.

  Milt concluded his nontalk with the lady in the pants suit, who retreated inside the hospital. He spotted Broker and walked over with the forward momentum of a slightly damaged armored vehicle. They shook left hands. Milt extracted a business card and said, "I'll be in touch. I can reach you at the lodge, right?"

  Broker nodded, took the card. "Who's the lady you were talking to?" he asked.

  "Oh, her? She's small-fry. The risk management flak for this

  place. Fortunately, they're part of the Duluth system and Duluth has deep pockets."

  "Lawsuit," Broker said.

  Milt narrowed his eyes. "Word is two nurses heard the anesthetist admit she took the breathing tube out too soon."

  Broker nodded politely—like it was all over his head— and then pointed toward Sommer's wife and her sleek companion. "How'd they show up so quick?"

  "Charter out of St. Paul."

  "Who's the guy?"

  Milt narrowed his eyes a fraction tighter, as if this were more information than a loyal canoe guide needed to know. After a beat he said, with a ripple of distaste, "Earl Garf, he's the remnant from her checkered past we discussed."

  "Uh-huh. What's he do now?"

  Milt shrugged. "What all the smart young ones do, computers." He adjusted his sling, turned: "Well, ah, Christ, here comes Hank."

  An ambulance pulled out of the garage toward the waiting helicopter.

  "Got to go, thanks for everything," Milt said; quick handshake, fleeting eye contact. He was leaving Ely and the tragic vacation, locking back into the gravitational pull of his high-speed, highstakes world. They all were. He stepped back to join Jolene and Allen as the gurney bearing the blanketed mummy bumped toward the helicopter door.

  Eyes shut, Sommer's face jutted under a clear plastic oxygen mask like carved Ivory Soap.

  Broker's lower lip went a little stiff as he recalled the tramp of ritual. Bagpipes at cop funerals. Taps sounding over rows of empty paratroop boots. He had wanted to thank Hank Sommer for saving his life.

  But he was just the hired help so he kept his place amid the tragic procession. Sommer's Ford Expedition was still at the lodge. The keys were hanging on a peg by the fireplace. All three clients had clothes and gear strewn from Ely to Fraser Lake. Clearly the departing friends and family were too preoccupied to collect belongings. He had Milt's card.

  The cortege escorted Sommer to the helicopter medics who

  loaded the gurney into the chopper. Mrs. Sommer, Allen, and Milt embraced awkwardly. Garf smiled directly into the sun.

  Then Garf escorted all three of them to a waiting cab and they drove away. Broker squinted into the bright sky, and the wind sock on the hospital roof hung limp, and the only danger nature posed today was the flash of mild snow blindness.

  The helicopter lifted off and in its place, on the far side of the helipad, Amy Skoda stood at attention, her hands balled loosely at her sides. She watched the helicopter, and Broker watched her until the engine faded and the plane itself receded into a dot in the southeastern sky. Then Amy turned away and came across the parking lot.

  Broker coughed three times. Then he sneezed. The sneeze blew the sharply stacked sun-and-shade design of the brilliant day into runny watercolors. Dizzy, he put his hand out and felt Amy's firm grip steady him.

  "Must be hungover," he mumbled.

  She rested a cool hand on his forehead. "I don't think so. You went swimming in ice water in a blizzard. You fried your resistance paddling out. You've caught a cold."

  Chapter Fourteen

  It 's all shadows now. Sinking. Velvet suffocation. Darkness fills in like ink. Shadows twist. Are they sparks or are they bubbles? Do they rise or do they burst? Don't know. Ego sorts through the debris and finds the drawers of memory. Ego rearranges and sifts. Robust memory responds. There was icy water, then pain. Now bright lights. Halos of concerned faces hover. Ego assumes personality. Personality discovers some of its baggage.

  Hurt. Dying. Dead.

  But stuff still moves inside his head. Drowned in th
e dark, he grows gills and discovers he can breathe the black. Somewhere above, on the surface, murky storms of human weather barge around; garbled people in white coats who move, poke, talk, shine lights.

  Better to avoid It. Them. Up there's where the pain lives. Better to roll over and dive and meander along the bands of shadow where the lacy patterns of light sway like kelp.

  Enchantment is not out of the question.

  Everything else sinks but life is a stubborn bubble that persists in rising to the glow that is brighter and brighter and like—hey—

  See . . .

  • • •

  A kind of seeing. Dream-seeing. A shadow man and shadow

  woman in fuzzy outline, filled with black. They stand, facing each

  other, and the man slouches forward heavily. He holds one palm up

  and with the finger of his other hand, he strikes the palm, sadly

  counting items off a list.

  The woman bows her head and pulls a hand through her hair.

  Her other hand presses into her chest over her heart.

  Still not clear, like peering through screens, veils, mist. Just

  shapes. Tense, worried shapes. And some precocious part of his

  mind is piping up that this is how Homer described shades in hell.

  A bell rings and they walk away. Now there's nothing to look at