After the Rain pb-5 Page 6

  “I ain’t that ambitious. I mean, like where you planning to spend the night?”

  “Motel, I guess.”

  “Only one good motel in town and Jane’s in that. Course, so is your kid.”

  “Let me tell you something. My kid could use a break. And Jane’s good with her.” Real direct.

  “Speaking of Jane. I remember what she said back at my place about you needing to get loaded to be with a guy. Did that bother your husband? You drinking?” Just as direct.

  Nina couldn’t stop the flush creeping up her neck. She lowered her eyes. “Not like I had to get falling down…”

  Ace held up his glass of scotch and peered into it. “I don’t need the details. And sure, I’d like to fool around but I’d kind of like you to be sober. How’s that?”

  Nina’s grin was wary and amused. “If that’s the wager then it looks like nobody’s getting laid.”

  Ace shrugged, drained his glass, and signaled for another round. “You can stay at my place tonight. Got an apartment over the bar. No games, no bullshit, no hidden agenda. I already made up my mind to sleep on the couch. But tomorrow,” he winked, “we’re going to sober up, you and me.”

  The drinks arrived and Nina raised her glass in a toast.

  “To tomorrow.”

  Nina fished her cell phone from her purse. “I’m going to call Jane, tell her I won’t be back tonight, and explain things to my daughter.” She looked around. “And I gotta use the john.”

  Ace nodded, pointed toward the rear of the place. “Door in the hall on the right.”

  Nina got up, walked down the bar, and went into the women’s john. She took a seat in the stall, latched the door and flipped open her cell phone, thumbed down through the phonebook, selected Jane’s number, and pushed “send.”

  “This is Jane.”

  “Nina.”

  “How’s it going, Mata Hari? You catch that four-pound walleye yet?”

  “Very funny. So far so good. I’m invited to his pad for the night. He says he’ll sleep on the couch. And I sort of believe him. He’s this odd mix of Eagle Scout and the Sundance Kid. I can’t tell if he’s going for it or going along with it.”

  “We gotta try, right? Hollywood wants to know how you assess your security.”

  “My first impression, he’s got some dangerous baggage but it takes a while to get down to it. The other guy in the bar was more edgy. But this Ace, he’s…”

  “He’s a tricky guy, Nina; and he’s got some social skills and maybe even some depth of character. But so did Darth Vader.”

  “I hear you. So far he hasn’t discussed his business.”

  Hollywood came on the phone. “We can’t cover you all the time, Nina. Not in a small town. We talked about this. If you go forward you’re on your own.”

  “Understood.”

  “We need some idea of his pattern, his contacts, any sign he’s anticipating something big.”

  “I got it, Holly.”

  “Okay. And we set the ball rolling. Jane has the local cop hunting down your husband.”

  Great, Nina thought, but said nothing.

  “I said…”

  “I heard you.”

  “Okay. Here’s Kit.”

  Nina shut her eyes. The bathroom smelled of cheap disinfectant on monotonous yellow linoleum. The walls and floor closed in; claustrophobic. She was quick to fight it off. It’s not a question of one kid; thousands of kids out there could be potential victims… Still, she had used her daughter, like a private soldier, to gain position.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “You did great, honey. Thanks.”

  “Are you done working yet?”

  “No, I got to keep going a little while longer. But, hey, Dad’s on his way to pick you up and take you home. What are you and Auntie Jane going to do tomorrow?”

  “She said there’s an outside pool, in a park.”

  “Remember, you need lots of lotion even if it’s cloudy.”

  “I know.” Then Kit’s voice quavered. “Are you going to come home, too?”

  “C’mon, honey, we talked about this.” Nina tapped her teeth together.

  “Fine,” Kit said sharply. “I know-don’t quit, don’t cry unless you’re bleeding.” Kit had obviously mastered Jane’s cell phone because suddenly the call was over. The connection went dead: she had hung up on her mother. Nina couldn’t afford the luxury of remorse when she was working, but she couldn’t stop a memory. Eight years old, about Kit’s age. An elementary school in Ann Arbor. A one-page story assignment: What I did this weekend. “My mom and I went to the VA Medical Center to help the wounded soldiers…” The teacher, in beads and a peasant skirt, had said, “That’s okay, Nina, it doesn’t mean you’re for the war…”

  Focused now, she finished up in the bathroom and washed her hands. She regarded herself in the mirror. The alcohol she’d consumed dragged on her, like the middle of a Ranger run wearing full equipment. Deliberately, to test her timing and reflexes she applied fresh lipstick, taking pains to perfectly match the line of her lips.

  She blotted her lips on a paper towel and surveyed her makeup. So far so good, you floozy.

  Well, this is what she wanted. To be a D-girl and hang it way out there, going after something big. On her own.

  Which brought her to the subject of what was going to happen tonight. Nothing in her training had exactly prepared her for this assignment.

  Would Ace change his story when they were alone and expect to sleep with her tonight? Would he get rough? She took a fast inventory of the men she’d gone to bed with in her life. More than half of them had been a waste of time.

  This was the first time she’d had to evaluate a potential sexual encounter professionally. Like a hooker or a particularly calculating trophy wife.

  She squared her shoulders, grabbed the doorknob, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. Hu-ah.

  She walked back to the table, sat down, and said, totally spontaneously: “I’m a lousy mother.”

  “You’ll live. C’mon,” Ace said, standing up.

  “Where to?” Nina said.

  “Take a ride. Eat supper. Get you a toothbrush.”

  “Big of you.”

  “Got nothing else going,” Ace said.

  Chapter Seven

  An hour later they were in another bar and Ace was still playing Dr. Phil. “I mean,” he said, “we only got a few more years of this.”

  Nina screwed up her face. “What do you mean, this?”

  “I mean, what are you-thirty-five, thirty-six? ’Bout the same as me. We ain’t like wine, you know. We don’t get better as we age. Like, right now-today-bang,” he snapped his fingers, “you can walk into any bar, anywhere, and make something happen because you got some looks and a body. But in five years…”

  Nina slouched in the booth and held up her glass in a grudging salute. “Forty,” she said glumly. She didn’t have to fake this conversation. Uh-uh. This was a subject she thought about all the time.

  “And you know what the stats are on divorced women over forty getting remarried. Ain’t pretty, sweetheart. Us boys definitely got more shelf life.”

  “You’re depressing the shit out of me. No wonder the population of North Dakota is rock bottom, if this is the way you court your women.”

  Ace shrugged. “Just saying, you should probably give the marriage a little more work, that’s all. Bird in the hand.”

  Nina leaned forward. “A bird in the hand bites. My husband is a total asshole.”

  They stared into their empty glasses. Nina had switched to vodka sevens. She’d had a lot of success drinking vodka with a crazy bunch of Russian paratroopers in Kosovo. A new round of drinks arrived. The way Ace spread his hands before he spoke, Nina could see him behind a pulpit.

  “Okay. It’s like this,” he said. “You’re strung out. Strung out means you talk a little too fast. And there’s off-the-wall thoughts come out of nowhere and bash through the conversation at random times. Like just
now.”

  “You know this for a fact?” Nina said.

  “Sure. I’m strung out, too. But mine is more long haul, more like holding off deep space. Mine’s sadder. Yours is madder.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Drink. Booze tames down the brightness and buffs the edges off so it don’t make the air bleed.”

  “Jesus. You been thinking about this stuff way too long, Ace.”

  “I’ll say.”

  And that’s the way the afternoon went into sunset: the ironies of marriage counseling, Ace’s slow-hand seduction and booze. One bar, two bar, red bar, blue bar. Not quite a blur. Maintaining. Hey. They were both obviously competent folks.

  They drove east out of town and he got her talking. About growing up an Army brat, schools on bases all over the South. How she’d gone into the Army, served in the Gulf War in a signal company, and moved to Minnesota after discharge. How she was tending bar in this joint called the Caboose by the U of M when she met her husband.

  They stopped, gassed the Tahoe at a Super Pumper. Ace made good on his promise and bought her a toothbrush. They went to dinner in Cavalier, the next town east, and she talked about having a kid, thinking it would improve the marriage.

  They drove back to Langdon in the dark.

  Then Ace suddenly switched off the headlights and the night outside Nina’s open window jumped up so black and shot with stars it took her breath. “God-damn.”

  Stars like she’d seen on night patrols in remote stretches of Bosnia. But more of them here. More sky.

  “Welcome to the prairie, gateway to the Great Plains,” Ace said.

  But then the grandeur plummeted as she looked north. Anything could come across the border and filter down through the empty grid of back roads, run this deserted highway. The interstate just an hour away. Then she looked at Ace Shuster, who was good with women, but who might do anything for money. Him and his pal Gordy.

  He switched the lights back on and drove into town, slowed in front of the Motor Inn, and turned to her.

  “You want to see your daughter? Say anything?”

  Nina shook her head.

  “You sure?”

  “Look. I thought about this a lot. I need a clean break or it’ll be a tar baby, I’ll get stuck in it all over again. Jane. My old man probably coming to pick up Kit. I mean, I took her and didn’t tell him face-to-face. Just left a note, for Christ’s sake. I just need some…time.”

  “Okay, okay,” Ace slowly accelerated past the motel and continued west on 5 toward the Missile Park.

  They found Gordy rolling a dolly, wheeling four cases of booze at a time off the loading dock onto a truck bed. He scowled at Nina and went back to work, hairy and furious. Nina turned to Ace and said, “Maybe you’re right. He doesn’t like me.”

  They went inside and Nina pointed to the cases of booze stacked along the wall by the basement stairway.

  “You got a lot of booze for a bar that’s out of business,” she said.

  Ace scratched his head. “Long story. Tell you all about it in the morning.”

  Nina gathered herself and followed him up the stairs into the apartment. And-hello-it was much cleaner than she expected. Dishes washed and put away, the drainboard in the kitchen clean. And lots and lots of books. A beat-up, old-fashioned desk and a swivel chair. Another well-worn armchair with an ottoman and a lamp.

  No televison.

  One whole wall was a blowup photomural of grazing buffalo.

  “Moved in here when I split with my wife,” he said as he stripped the bed and put on fresh sheets. She watched him make the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles, folding and tucking in tight hospital corners.

  “You sure you weren’t in the Army, the way you make a bed?” she said.

  “Prison,” he said.

  He took the old sheets out to the couch. Then he handed her a T-shirt and showed her the bathroom. She took the toothbrush from its cellophane wrapper, used his Sensodyne and brushed her teeth, undressed, and put on the shirt. The shirt was an extra-large maroon cotton number that came down to mid-thigh. The sleeves and neck had been cut out way down the side so the shadowed dents and curves along her ribs peeked out.

  She folded her clothing and came back into the living room.

  Ace smiled and looked her over. “Picked the shirt to go with your hair and eyes.” They stood a foot apart, watching each other.

  “Another one of your little touches, huh?” Nina said as she hugged herself. Her word touches turned slowly in the close space between them like a silky scarf, slowly descending. “Now what?” she said, too abruptly, awkward, clearly on edge.

  “Good night,” he said simply.

  Nina, wary, went into the dark bedroom almost on tiptoe, walking a plumb line to the bed, not wanting to disturb or touch anything, fearing sexual trip wires strung in the dark.

  Alert. She braced for him coming through the door.

  Chapter Eight

  The first moment of truth came in Detroit two days ago, just after they broke Rashid. They’d had a real quick sit-down with the Colonel, who’d provided the intell that located Rashid. One of the “Squirrels,” a pure intelligence network so spooky nobody knew its origin, the Colonel was their unofficial link to the databases back at the Pentagon. He could not say yea or nay to their preemptive mission. He could only evaluate. He had a chalky air-conditioned pallor acquired in some unnamed Pentagon sub-basement. He’d told them, just the three of them who were the sharp end-Hollywood, Nina, and Jane:

  “We believe the intelligence is too provocative to pass up. They may have something, possibly a suitcase; one of those KGB tactical nukes. They could be bringing it into the States through North Dakota. Virtually anybody can claim refugee status and enter Canada. We know there’s Al Qaeda activity in Winnipeg, just to the north of Langdon. So it could already be here, and maybe there’s a fresh trail.”

  He told them it was a real long shot. They’d be going into a very fragile intelligence matrix. He concurred with Nina’s plan, given the target, to lead with D-girls. He advised them to plan their approach carefully. He bid farewell saying, “This meeting never happened.” Then he packed his briefcase and departed.

  Fragile intelligence matrix.

  That meant a small town where everybody knows everybody and strangers stick way out.

  The information on Ace Shuster was already spitting out of the fax machine.

  Wonderful. He killed a guy in a bar fight. Although, even in the official record, the incident looked like self-defense. But Shuster was convicted and did a year on a manslaughter rap at the state farm.

  Then-Jesus-the FBI had pictures of him in the spectators gallery at Waco. This raised the specter of anti-Semitic American militias finding common cause with Al Qaeda.

  No subsequent arrests. No known militia affiliations.

  Shuster’s father had been investigated repeatedly as a major player in the liquor traffic along the border, but the charges never stuck. He wasn’t breaking any North Dakota laws.

  The Colonel had put together a fast synopsis after a consult with Shuster’s former probation officer. Shuster had served his time, went back into the community, and caused no real trouble. He’d had his conviction reduced. Probation described him as an underemployed heavy-machinery operator, and real smart. But the brains went wasted, because he tended to brood and drink. The drinking was probably self-medication for moderate depression. He’d dabbled in sports, smuggling, and women. Possibly peripherally involved with the biker gangs who ran the smuggling on the Canadian side of the border. No solid evidence linked him to the looming meth traffic. Remember, he was smart. He could be mixed up in almost anything out in all that empty country. Potentially a very dangerous guy, but not so’s you notice it right off.

  A ladies’ man.

  Nina had looked out the window toward Ann Arbor, where Kit was staying with her mother’s sister, and came up with the idea.

  “It could work if it’s bold enough,”
Holly said.

  Bold enough…The gloves were off. They were in the serious black on this one.

  “You still sure you want in?” Holly said.

  The serious black. Lie, cheat, steal.

  “We’re not carrying copies of the Geneva Convention in our kit,” Holly said.

  Jane, the sharp tack, cracked wise. “There’s killing in combat and then there’s murder. You ain’t talkin’ about combat.”

  “Correct. I ain’t necessarily talkin’ about combat. And there’s other things you might have to do.”

  “Things?” Jane had said.

  “What, I gotta draw you a picture?” Holly said pointedly to the two women.

  So Nina told Jane, “He means like whatever it takes. Like you might have to suck some smuggler’s dick. Not your favorite thing, Jane.”

  Jane came back fast. “Just as long as it ain’t Holly’s.”

  D-girls. Nothing but hardcore. Behind the bravado they were all picturing Paula Zahn on CNN going zombie-cottonmouthed, trying to get her words out while in the background a nuclear plume mushroomed over downtown Chicago, or Kansas City, or…

  Fuck it.

  Nothing else mattered. Mission first.

  But the way the plan worked, Jane drew a pass. Jane was in the motel in town probably reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Kit. Nina got the duty and now here she was in a smuggler’s bed, listening to him putter around in his living room just beyond the closed but unlocked door. Jesus, his place was clean. Did that mean he was clean? What if he was a bareback kind of cowboy who didn’t want to use condoms?

  What was the statistical probability of contracting AIDS from unsafe sex in remotest North Dakota, anyway? Better or worse odds than being the first dummy rolling out of a Black Hawk on a hot mountain LZ in Afghanistan?

  Numbers. Odds. Probabilities…

  Nina slid between the clean sheets.

  Downstairs she heard the dolly scurry across the floor. A one-man ant colony, Gordy went back and forth, loading the crates of whiskey. The rhythm of the work, the rolling dolly wheels, the thud of the cases being hefted in place drummed like a harsh lullaby.