Nina grimaced at him. She was having trouble starting her words.

"Well?" he asked.

She clicked her teeth together. "Something about this scene doesn't feel right."

"You b.i.t.c.h b.i.t.c.h!" Broker's voice rose to a shout, loud enough for Shuster to hear on the porch.

"What can I say? We're new at this sort of thing. I knew if Kit was here you'd come for her..."

"Nina." Broker's voice ended in a sputter.

"Can you get Kit back to stay with your folks? Charter a flight? There's a landing strip."

That was almost an echo of his mom's suggestion about Doc Harris flying in. "You been talking to my mom?" he said hotly.

In a fast change-up, she dramatically placed her fingers on her chest, raised her eyebrows. "Me?" Then she went back to her angry Mars in the House of Estrogen, or whatever the f.u.c.k Mom said her problem was, and gritted her teeth. "And maybe you could stick around?" Clearly it pained her to ask. "I gotta pa.s.s you something. It's in my left hand. A name and number off his caller ID. I can't chance using a phone. Have Holly check it out. Heard him on the phone. Sounds like a pickup."

"Christ, first I'm used. Now I'm working?" Broker's right hand shot out and seized her bare arm above the elbow. Hard.

"Ow."

It felt good to touch her, to feel her move. "Pa.s.s it to me when I grab your hand."

"Hey!" Shuster lurched up alert on the porch and called out. "Talk is okay. Grabbing is not okay."

"...Turned into a regular little wh.o.r.e. Don't care who you give it to..." Broker's voice rose as he pulled her in close and they tussled, twisting her wrist with his good hand, feeling her insert the folded paper into his injured palm. Turning, he winced with pain as he slipped it in his pocket. He released her wrist and raised his hand, palm open, as if to slap her.

Nina's expression was suitably indignant and furious from a distance but, close in, there was a smirk, possibly even erotic, in her eyes. "G.o.d, I love it when you talk dirty," she said under her breath.

"You're enjoying this, whoring for George W.," he said between clenched teeth.

She whispered right back. "Oh really? What about that sleazy little c.u.n.t Jolene Sommer you f.u.c.ked last year?"

"We were separated," he yelled, suddenly on the defensive, feeling the force drain from his raised hand. Should have never never told her about Jolene.

"a.s.shole!" she shouted back.

On the porch, Ace turned to Gordy. "I think I just won a hundred bucks, 'cause you can't fake that. Uh-uh. Those people are definitely married married."

Nina stepped inside the arc of Broker's swing and slapped his face. Stung, Broker recoiled, recovered, and grabbed a fistful of her short hair and wrenched her head to the side. Then he held her at arm's length as she swung at him, a haymaker windmilling in midair...

Shuster came off the porch fast, athletic; he stepped between them and announced, "You're outta line, fella."

Broker reached around him to get at Nina. Shuster shouldered him, holding his hands up, all defense, not aggressive, trying to be reasonable. "I said, you're outta line."

Broker turned his attention to Shuster. He blinked, his face worked. His breath came in a rush. All his anger flashed like chain lightning, and he had to ground it somewhere or he'd just burn up right there. Before he realized it, he had squared off. Shuster's hands came up. But they were still open and signifying calm.

"Man..."

Broker changed up the speed, his hands a blur. He feinted right with his shoulder and fired a left jab, very crisp and fast, that piled into Shuster's right cheek- BIGMISTAKE!!!!!!!.

The force went out of the punch and his whole nervous system cringed and scream-balled up like a spider in a flame. His knees buckled, his good hand shot to protect his fiery left hand. Shuster blinked, surprised, raised his hand to his face.

Now Gordy trotted forward and muttered to Shuster. "Step back, Ace. You can't be mixin' in this. You got that DUI, remember? They'll throw you back in jail."

Gordy came straight ahead and Broker resigned himself to taking a punch for Delta Force, Donald Rumsfeld, and Homeland Security. G.o.dd.a.m.n s.h.i.t! G.o.dd.a.m.n s.h.i.t!

Gordy let fly, a powerful but sloppy overhand right. Like he was driving an engineer stake into hardpan. Jarred, seeing a starburst, Broker took it high on the left cheek and temple.

Broker staggered back, shook his head. Gingerly he tested his cheekbone. Unbroken. He'd have a black eye. A sore neck. Shuster restrained Gordy's c.o.c.ked right fist. "That's enough, Gordy. Let him go," he said.

Gordy Riker bounced, doing a huff-and-puff number with his shoulders. Broker did a modified Charlie Chaplin pratfall, tripping as he stepped back. He fell on his b.u.t.t on the damp trap rock. Gordy hovered-porcupiney, short-fused, mean. Then, when Broker didn't attempt to get up, Gordy swaggered back to the bar.

Shuster walked Nina protectively back toward the porch, then stopped and came back to where Broker sat unceremoniously on his rear end.

"You don't gotta listen to me but I'm going to give you a little advice. I just been through a divorce myself, and one thing I learned is people need a little s.p.a.ce."

Broker glared at him, all the while muttering deep inside how, granted, his left hand was under the weather and how maybe he should get up and introduce this hayseed to his right hand. Instead, he reflected that the ability to defer satisfaction was a sign of maturity; so he played his a.s.signed role and remained on his b.u.t.t.

Shuster joined Nina and Gordy and they went back up the steps into the saloon. Broker dropped his eyes and stared at a tiny procession of black ants picking their way through the pebbles.

Maybe you could stick around.

Yes, dear.

Broker grimaced and felt a puffy bruise swelling up below his left eye. He looked up and down the deserted highway. Just the green fields, the low gray clouds. Across the road he saw a rusting Bobcat sitting in weeds in what had once been a parking lot. A fading John Deere logo painted up on the front of a large washed-out yellow pole barn. Weather-beaten letters spelled SHUSTER AND SONS EQUIPMENT SHUSTER AND SONS EQUIPMENT. Thought he saw the shadow of someone standing in the doorway, watching. When he looked again, the guy was gone.

"You're asking a lot," he said under his breath as he slowly got to his feet.

Chapter Fifteen.

Dale Shuster stood in the doorway of Shuster and Sons Equipment and watched the commotion across the road in front of the Missile Park, thinking it had been a long time since anybody'd got in a fight in that parking lot. And it didn't turn out to be much of a fight, anyway, so eventually he turned away. The woman had showed up on Sat.u.r.day. By the next afternoon, she had guys fighting over her. He shook his head. With his brother Ace it was always women. And not just the kind of women who went with booze. Women liked him. in the doorway of Shuster and Sons Equipment and watched the commotion across the road in front of the Missile Park, thinking it had been a long time since anybody'd got in a fight in that parking lot. And it didn't turn out to be much of a fight, anyway, so eventually he turned away. The woman had showed up on Sat.u.r.day. By the next afternoon, she had guys fighting over her. He shook his head. With his brother Ace it was always women. And not just the kind of women who went with booze. Women liked him.

'Cause he's good-looking, lean, and has that smile.

The opposite of me.

Dale got a pretty good look at her, and she seemed to be a short-haired redhead, kind of trashy and skinny.

Whatever.

He paced the interior of the pole barn and heard his boot soles echo faintly on the crumbling concrete slab. Empty like a cavern in here. Dale had this habit that, if he didn't concentrate, he saw things the way they looked when he was a child. Like this place. He remembered it full of big iron-bright-yellow backhoes, crawler dozers, loaders, and graders. Back in the missile time, when Dad was in the money; always chewing a cigar, talking on the phone in the front office, his brother Ace jockeying the big machines around the lot.

Before they got the house in town.

When they still had the farm.

Dale blinked. He was staring up at a dull speckle of light. Holes sprayed in the corrugated sheet metal where Ace, age sixteen, had become exasperated with the pigeons and grabbed the shotgun and pumped off a few sh.e.l.ls of birdshot. That was Ace, impulsive. Dale would have been six...

Unlike his brother, Dale was methodical. That's why their dad left him in charge of shutting down the equipment accounts and selling off the last of the inventory.

A task that was near completion. All he had left on the premises was the one Deere front-loader out back. And the backhoe attachment, which he'd already sold.

He returned to his desk at the front of the building. Shuster and Sons never had much of an office, just the desk, a small refrigerator, a computer, phone, fax, and a TV set mounted on the wall. Off to the right of the desk, walled off behind a part.i.tion, were a toilet and sink.

Dale sat down on the ancient swivel chair and stared at the clock. Some things he couldn't tidy up by being methodical. Like the weather. He picked up the remote and thumbed on the TV. He'd been tuned in to the Weather Channel exclusively for the last week.

Rain was bad for the equipment business.

He waited through a commercial and then watched Heather Tesch stand in front of a map of the United States. Behind her, a straggling green amoeba of precipitation crept across North Dakota, Minnesota, and into Wisconsin. Low pressure squatted on the Midwest, fed by a warm front coming from the Gulf.

The Gulf air drove the jet stream into a coil up and into the North, disrupting the normal pattern. Where the hot Gulf air and cool stuff from Canada collided it was raining like h.e.l.l. In the wake of the storms, the fields were green sponges.

At least the thunderstorms had moved on through Minnesota and Wisconsin and were petering out along Lake Michigan. It caused delays. Even the biggest crawlers were stymied by mud.

But he'd used up all his waiting sitting behind this desk, sifting through these files. When he started working for his dad he'd had an electric typewriter and a rotary phone. Dad never really trusted him on the big iron; that was Ace's job, running the machines. Dad put Dale in the office. When he started he'd filled legal pads with his crisp penmanship-Palmer Method-drilled into him at Langdon Elementary in the second grade by flat-chested Miss Heidi Klunder, with skin like oatmeal and skinny blond hair.

Not like Ginny Weller.

That was ten years ago and he could still hear Ginny's voice like it was right now, like in an echo chamber; still feel the tease of her lips, her moist warm breath against his ear. "C'mon Dale baby, we're all alone, just you and me. Just be a minute and I'll give you a feel..." "C'mon Dale baby, we're all alone, just you and me. Just be a minute and I'll give you a feel..."

He dropped his eyes to the computer screen, clicked through the invoices. He tried to avoid looking at the clock on the wall. But in the right-hand corner of the blue bar at the bottom of the screen the digital time stared at him.

Once he had endured time like everybody else. Now he felt it gushing like a Niagara of digital code through his chest. He tried to get his mind around numbers; tried to imagine a million people going about their lives, all of them taking time for granted. None of them knowing for sure how many days, minutes, hours, seconds...

He laughed. Christ, there weren't a million people in all of North Dakota.

Then, vividly, he pictured the tape hidden in the kitchen pantry, in a box of Fruit Loops. He moved the tape every day to a different hidey-hole.

Thinking about the tape stopped his breath. He almost gasped. The tumescent squirm of antic.i.p.ation was like the petals of a flower opening deep inside. Gave him shivers.

For years, down in his bas.e.m.e.nt apartment, alone, he'd fanta-sized the image of Ginny Weller down on her knees, begging him not to punish her for what she'd- The bell on the front door jingled and Gordy Riker strolled in looking very pleased with himself. The image of Ginny vanished. Gordy had an elbow raised and was conspicuously sucking on the knuckles of his right hand.

"Hey, Needle-d.i.c.k, we gotta talk." Gordy bouncy, full of himself, jerked his thick neck back across the road.

"Don't call me that," Dale said calmly.

Gordy mugged surprise at Dale's controlled response. It only slowed him for a few beats. "Okay, sure, I'm sorry. Don't mean to offend. But the thing is, you gotta talk to Ace."

"I heard about the woman, and I just saw you hit that guy."

"You see me put him on his a.s.s with one punch? He's bigger'n me, too."

"Who is he?" Dale said.

"b.i.t.c.h's husband, she she says." Gordy furrowed his brow. says." Gordy furrowed his brow.

"What do you mean, 'she says'?" Dale said.

"Kinda coincidental, don't you think? She shows up in a bar hardly n.o.body goes to, on a highway hardly n.o.body who ain't local uses," Gordy said.

"So?"

"And she's traveling with the only lesbian ever seen north of Grand Forks."

Dale perked up, went to the window, and stared across the highway at the bar. "A lesbian? Here? No s.h.i.t." Now that would be something. Now that would be something.

"What I'm saying is, it's too coincidental. n.o.body comes to Langdon except..."

"Yeah, yeah, for weddings, funerals, or unless their job sends them here," Dale said. He smiled at Gordy's consternation. "So you think she's working, huh?" If Gordy was worried, it could only be about one thing. "Some kind of snitch? Cop maybe?"

Gordy shrugged. "Maybe the Canadian excise people are b.i.t.c.hing about the whiskey again."

Dale's smile broadened, enjoying Gordy's discomfort. "Ace don't ship that much. It's the meth has everybody riled. More likely she's after you you."

Gordy was not amused. "Ha ha. But that ain't the point. Ace's thinking with his p.e.c.k.e.r. I mean, c'mon, at the very least she's a lush. And he's drinking."

"Think of that: the two of them shacked up in the back room. They'll drink up the inventory."

"I'm serious here. They catch him driving and drinking one more time, he'll be eating takeout pizza in county. Walking the halls for exercise, on one cigarette a day."

Dale shrugged fatalistically. "It's because of Darlene and the kids leaving. The divorce." He made a sympathetic a.s.say with his flat blue eyes. But behind his expression he hid a swell of satisfaction. Ace was finally falling back to earth in flaming, whiskey-soaked pieces, spiraling so low he was almost taking orders from this piece of s.h.i.t, Gordy, who'd had a D average, who had to go to summer school to graduate. Who had to get special permission from the princ.i.p.al to go on the Senior Trip.

"So what do you say? Have a talk with him."

Dale nodded without enthusiasm. "He don't listen to me, you know."

"At least try."

"Okay. I'll talk to him."

Gordy nodded, looked around. "So, ah, where's our favorite funny f.u.c.king Indian?"

Dale settled back into his desk chair and took his time reaching into the refrigerator, taking out a c.o.ke, popping the top. Gordy called Joe Reed the "funny f.u.c.king Indian" because Joe had this very un-Indian habit, according to Gordy, anyway, of always being strictly on time.

So that's why he's here. He wants Joe back. Dale jerked his head north. "Went over the border yesterday. Don't know why. He don't exactly leave detailed trip tickets. Guy like Joe, I don't really want to know." Dale jerked his head north. "Went over the border yesterday. Don't know why. He don't exactly leave detailed trip tickets. Guy like Joe, I don't really want to know."

"I hear you. Well, when he gets his sneaky blanket a.s.s back here, tell him to drop by and talk to me," Gordy said.

"You ain't got the b.a.l.l.s to say that to his face," Dale said.

They stared each other down. Gordy broke first, laughed, and said, "You're absolutely right. But like I said, ask him ask him polite to drop by." polite to drop by."