Homefront. Part 23

J. T. stepped out on his front porch and studied the hazy dawn that cloaked his fields, the paddocks, and the fences in mist. He'd made it up to homicide captain in St. Paul before he took the early retirement and put his savings into 160 acres in Lake Elmo and tried raising ostriches.

The specialty meat was slow to catch on in a fast-food culture, so now he was trimmed down to breeding stock and covering his bets with beef. Never regretted farming. Not one bit. He started his town car, a Crown Vic he got at a police auction-interceptor package, good Eagle tires-and headed out his driveway into the fog.

His weather-wary eyes scanned the muddy fields to either side of the road; first the early rain, then the frost, now clogged with wet snow. Like his own land. How soggy would the spring be, how soon could he get in with a tractor?

He drove south and west on back roads until he hit State 95, which he took until it T-boned into 61. He turned south, and soon he was driving across the bridge over Mississippi at Hastings. He continued through town and turned left on Highway 361, following the red-and-blue toucan on the sign for the Treasure Island Casino that pointed the way with lifted wing.

J. T. thinking. Broker had been one of the least likely cops he'd ever partnered with. Harry Cantrell was the other. Now he was on his way to find Cantrell. Sat.u.r.day morning was Cantrell's Treasure Island day.

He made the last turn and headed down the road toward the casino. Off to the right he saw the twin gray domes of the Excel Prairie Island nuclear reactors hover in the steam clouds over the scratchy bare trees. The sight of those reactors reminded him that he and most of the people in the state owed Broker a debt of thanks.

Last July there had been an explosion at the plant.

A construction accident, they said.

Nine people had died. Dozens were injured. The official story descended from Washington and walled off the incident like a solid steel trap; no way in or out. So far the press was unable to dent the official story that a fuel tanker had ruptured, flooding a ditch with gasoline, that a spark ignited a truck full of oxygen and acetylene. The explosion had rocked the plant and cracked the spent-fuel pool. But no significant radiation had been released, the governor had insisted. The state quietly provided doses of pota.s.sium iodide for thousands of citizens in a ten-mile radius as a precaution against possible low levels of radiation poisoning. Now a lot of people who'd taken the iodide were looking at their kids closely every morning at the breakfast table.

Broker had been in the blast area when the explosion occurred, with a Delta colonel. They had diverted an explosive device away, from the cooling pool. It had been a near thing. Broker survived. The colonel did not. Nina had been thirty miles away fighting for her life against George Khari, who'd infiltrated the explosives into the plant.

Khari had links to Al Qaeda. Nina killed him, tearing her right shoulder to shreds in the fight.

J. T. took his pipe from the pocket of his Carhartt jacket and nibbled at the stem. You think you know a guy, how much he can take-all his life Broker had loved the shadows. Saw Gary Cooper in High Noon High Noon when he was a kid, took his cues, and never looked back. Married a woman who was his fierce mirror image. when he was a kid, took his cues, and never looked back. Married a woman who was his fierce mirror image.

J. T. shook his head.

After Prairie Island, Broker and Nina shrugged it off. Just another op. But people who knew them, people like J. T., observed that they were different.

They should have seen G.o.d in the inferno of that day.

Just too d.a.m.n dumb and proud and stubborn-both of them-to admit the damage they'd taken below the waterline. It hit Nina first.

J. T.'s eyes drifted to the northern sky, socked in with brooding gray clouds. They were up north now, hiding out in a backwoods retreat. Healing up, playing house, pretending they were all right...

Griffin was looking out for them. J. T. shook his head again. Jesus, Griffin, the reformed angel of death, playing nanny, hovering over them. Except something had happened, and now Griffin needed a favor.

So, to do this right he'd take another old partner along on this day's work.

J. T. shook his head one last time.

Cantrell. Cleaned up now, after Broker hauled him kicking and screaming into treatment. He'd retired from Washington County after he sobered up. A pure, unreconstructed redneck son of a b.i.t.c.h. Cantrell didn't answer his phone. Made himself hard to find. You had to track him down and get him face-to-face.

So here was J. T. driving to a f.u.c.king casino, which he considered a monument to stupidity, on a dreary late March morning.

He parked in the mostly vacant lot and went into the pink pleasure palace. As a favor to his wife he was trying to give up smoking his pipe, and now the cloud of cigarette smoke fluttered against his nose like the smudged wings of tiny tempting devils.

Seniors mostly. Old guys with wars on their hats. One of them shuffled by, with a silhouette of a World War II destroyer on his baseball cap; dragging his oxygen tank, transparent tubes running to his nose.

J. T. checked the blackjack tables. Cantrell was primarily a blackjack addict. No Cantrell. Then he walked into the high stakes slots alcove. Cantrell knew you couldn't beat the slots. But he believed you could surprise the slots. Sneak up on them at random moments.

Cantrell believed you could get lucky.

J. T. spotted him slouched in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a leather jacket on a high-backed chair like a flesh-and-blood extension grafted onto the machine. Tapping the spin b.u.t.ton, recirculating the energy between himself and the slot.

Cantrell didn't age. In his late fifties, Minnesota by way of New Orleans PD, his face was still Elvis smooth and ruddy, his sleek dark hair still combed in a fifties duck-a.s.s hairdo. To J. T., who considered himself a mature black man, the rebel twinkle in Cantrell's eyes had always raised the worst abiding ghosts of Dixie.

"You lost, J. T.?" Cantrell asked casually without moving his eyes off the rolling sevens on the machine screen. Always had great peripheral vision.

"You don't answer your phone," J. T. said. "We got a mandatory formation."

Cantrell nudged the spin b.u.t.ton again. Scattered sevens. Not lining up. "We do?"

"Griffin called me last night. He needs a favor."

Cantrell turned in his chair and squinted through the smoke coming off the Pall Mall straight in his lips. "And?"

"I got a feeling it involves our buddy, the unsung hero."

"Broker, really?" Cantrell removed the cigarette from his lips. "I thought he was bulletproof. So whattaya got?"

"A name. Some chick. We got to check her out."

Cantrell shook off his casual slouch, straightened up his back. "Let's go."

A few minutes later they were breathing the cold fresh air in front of J. T.'s truck. Cantrell looked in the direction of the two gray nuclear reactors poking above the trees. "f.u.c.kin' Broker," he said. "You know, I ran into Debbie Hall last week."

J. T. grunted. Debbie was now a lieutenant in St. Paul homicide. Years back, when she'd been a profane fireball, she and Broker'd had this explosive street romance.

"She confessed she'd made a pa.s.s at him, couple years ago when he and Nina were separated. She put it out there, and know what he said? He said, 'If I wanna play games, I'll go to a f.u.c.kin' casino.'" Cantrell shook his head.

J. T. handed Cantrell a sheet of fax paper. A one-paragraph criminal history on Sheryl Mott from the St. Paul gang task force. "Griffin had a license number. I ran a DL, talked to Tommy in the gang task force," J. T. said.

"Known affiliation with OMG. Suspected of transporting narcotics into Stillwater Prison...no charge..." Cantrell looked up. "Not much here. You talk to Dave at Corrections about the prison stuff?"

J. T. gave him a slow smile and shook his head. "I thought maybe...Rodney."

Cantrell shrugged. "h.e.l.l, you don't need me to talk to a piece-of-s.h.i.t snitch like Rodney."

"Wrong. I always...sort of scared Rodney. He's p.o.o.p-hispants terrified of you."

"Yeah." A rakish grin spread across Cantrell's face. "Good ol' Rodney," he said with slow glee.

Cantrell followed J. T. back through Hastings, then up 95 to Stillwater, where he left his Outback sedan in the Cub parking lot. He got in J. T.'s car, and they drove a few blocks and pulled into the parking lot at the River Valley Athletic Club.

"Why here?" Cantrell asked.

"His sc.u.mbag body is a temple, remember," J. T. said. "He works out here every Sat.u.r.day morning, according to Lymon at Washington County. Check this: Lymon says Rodney is trying to go straight, they got him working full-time in a health food store-"

"You can sell a lot of dope in cute little bottles in health food stores," Cantrell said.

"Whatever. Okay. We wait. He's still driving that red Trans-Am."

As they waited, Cantrell watched the midmorning female traffic alight from their SUVs and saunter into the club.

"Where do they get these chicks, man? Lookit that blonde-she's got Spandex skin; she's got makeup looks airbrushed on-"

J. T. nibbled the end of his pipe and said, "I hear they got this Stepford Wife production line pops them out at this new McMansion development a little ways west of town."

Cantrell marveled, "Sounds about right; whatever happened to old-fashioned nasty p.u.s.s.y? I mean, they're so clean clean."

J. T. did not respond. Cantrell grumbled, took out a Pall Mall, studied it, then placed it behind his ear. "He was always lucky, Broker was."

No response.

"Debbie said she talked to a guy who talked to a guy at ATF," Cantrell said.

"Uh-huh."

"'Bout the Prairie Island thing."

This time J. T. looked up. "Yeah?"

"Said they found lots of this residue, like clay silicates or something. Wasn't the usual s.h.i.t they find when you blow off a lot of plastique..."

"And?"

"Just a stupid wild-a.s.s guess, but the guy thought maybe those terrorists got short weight on their explosives. Somebody sold them a bunch of play dough mixed in with the Semtex. Guy said that's why the shock wave didn't stove in that cooling pool."

"Bingo." J. T. pointed his pipe at a red Trans Am that wheeled into the lot and parked six stalls away. The s.h.a.ggy driver bounded out of the car in a silky blue wind suit and hefted his gym bag, looking like a young buffalo wearing lifter's gloves.

"Rodney all right," Cantrell said, sitting up. "What's his last name again?"

"Rodney Jarue," J. T. said. "Let's give him a few minutes to settle in."

They entered the club lobby and were immediately challenged by the lean, tanned redhead wearing horn-rims behind the reception counter. "Excuse me, but are you members?"

She kept her smile in place, but furrowed her brow ever so slightly. A big black guy traveling with a stringy well-preserved Elvis clone didn't fit her normal Sat.u.r.day-morning walk-in client pattern.

"I'll make this easy," J. T. said amiably, opening his coat so she could see the gold detective shield on his belt. He left out the part about taking the badge off a decorations wall mount in his den.

"You guys are cops cops," she said, biting the inside of her cheek, lowering her voice, casting her eyes around like she was relieved they were alone in the lobby.

"Hey"-Cantrell scowled indignantly-"it's just a job. Take it easy."

Still wary but a bit more agreeable, she asked, "Is something wrong, Officer?"

"Nah," Cantrell said, coming closer, leaning over the counter, staring at her blouse, which was very tight and had this string tie dealy that accentuated her bodice. "Say, I used to play racquetball here..."

"Things have changed. The new manager tore out two of the courts, put in a nursery," the woman said. Then her eyes clicked on J. T.

"Look. We just want to talk to one of your members, kinda quiet like." He dropped his voice a register, oozing sympathy. "You know, don't want to bother him at work...in front of people..."

Her eyes darted back and forth between them.

Cantrell said, "Just be a few minutes." They were already heading for the stairs in the right corner of the lobby. "Weights still upstairs?" Cantrell called to her as they started up the stairs.

"What's she doing?" J. T. asked.

"Not sure. Possibly debating whether to reach for the phone."

They jogged up the stairs, peered through the gla.s.s door to the right, where an aerobics cla.s.s was in progress on a highly polished gym floor. To their left a long room with two rows of cardio machines stretched the length of the building, facing three wall-mounted TVs. Halfway down the machine room the club opened into another area with lots of stainless steel showing, half fixed weight stations, the other half free weights. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined one wall. They headed into the weight room.

"There he is, on the bench press," J. T. said.

"Perfect," Cantrell said.

Maybe a dozen people were scattered among the shiny equipment, four guys, the rest women.

"I love it," Cantrell said, "the way they flex and sneak looks at themselves."

Rodney had removed his jacket and lay on his back on the bench wearing a loose armless T-shirt with an "A.S.I.A. Security" logo on the chest. He was adjusting his grip on a bar that rested in the lift rack over his head. Two forty-five-pound plates were on each end of the bar, held in place by steel squeeze clips. He was just finishing up a few deep clarifying breaths, getting ready to lift the bar off the rack, when he looked up.

"Oh, bulls.h.i.t," Rodney said as his eyes scanned J. T. and then came to settle on Cantrell.

"Rodney? What's this?" Cantrell said, bending down and pinching Rodney's right biceps, where a band of subtle scarring and healing skin circled his arm. "Didn't you used to have this barbed-wire tattoo?" He glanced over at J. T. "You know what? I think our boy is cleaning up his act."

"I don't have to say s.h.i.t to you," Rodney said. "You ain't on the job anymore. I know my rights." He focused his eyes upward, then powered the bar off the rack and slowly lifted it. Locked his elbows. Exhaled.

Cantrell shrugged, then reached over, deftly pressed the handles of the squeeze clamp, slid it off the bar. J. T. immediately did the same with the one on his side.

"Hey, don't f.u.c.k around," Rodney said.

Cantrell then reached over, grabbed a thirty-five-pound plate off a peg on a nearby machine, held it up. J. T. nodded, found a similar weight on his side. They quickly slapped the weights on either end of the bar behind the twin forty-fives.

Rodney grunted, his arms trembling slightly as he started to lower the bar back toward the rack. J. T. moved behind the bench and put his fingers lightly on the bar, nudged it away from the rack.

"Jesus," Rodney muttered. Arms wobbling slightly, his elbows caving in, he shoved the bar back up to full extension.

"Sheryl Mott. Used to hang around with OMG, tell us about her," Cantrell said.

Rodney grimaced. Dots of sweat squirted up across his broad forehead. Strips of muscle jumped under the flushed skin of his shoulders. "f.u.c.k you," he hissed between clenched teeth.

"Again," Cantrell said. He quickly plucked two more thirty-fives from nearby pegs, raised his leg, straddled Rodney's torso, and slapped the weights on the bar, one side, then the other. J. T. maintained the subtle stand-off pressure on the bar. Cantrell looked down at Rodney, who was now making this deep grinding tectonic noise in his chest. "Sheryl Mott," he repeated.

"Guys," Rodney gasped. "You ain't been around. I am am trying to go straight. Talk to Lymon at Wash Co. for Christ's sake..." His bulging brown eyes blinked away the gush of sweat, darted at the nervous gallery starting to a.s.semble around them. Then he whispered, "C'mon, cut me some slack. I'm trying to get a job here, personal trainer..." His arms were shaking now, deep tremors running down into his pecs. trying to go straight. Talk to Lymon at Wash Co. for Christ's sake..." His bulging brown eyes blinked away the gush of sweat, darted at the nervous gallery starting to a.s.semble around them. Then he whispered, "C'mon, cut me some slack. I'm trying to get a job here, personal trainer..." His arms were shaking now, deep tremors running down into his pecs.

"C'mon, Rodney," Cantrell said impatiently. He was mashing the handles of the squeeze clip in one hand, reached up with other, selected the Pall Mall from behind his ear, and put it in is lips.

"You can't smoke in here," an indignant female voice said. Cantrell turned his head, saw a perfectly coiffed woman, maybe forty-five, cute little halter, Spandex shorts, bare midriff clean and smooth like it'd been run off a lathe. She glared at him through a sheet of meticulously applied makeup.