Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (21 page)

I hated the sympathy in his face.
Poor Joe, grasping at straws.
I felt a red film in my head replace the glow from the fluorescent light. My legs were trembling. The urge to hit something surged into my shoulders. A cold sensation spread up from my belly, and became a hard beat in my head, as if the Arctic was inside, not just out.

“Yeah,” I hissed. “And there’s no rabies. And it can’t be contagious. And there are no fucking microphones because that’s just crazy and—”

I stopped. “Shit, Eddie. You’re the best friend I have.”

He was white. “Just tell me what you want to do.”

“Let’s go over to Longhorn, have a drink,” I said.

“They told me at the airport, security is looking for you. Someone named Hess.”

Outside, we crunched over toward the oil company hut.

“I’m going to be part of it,” he said. “Whatever it is.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

His face floated inches from mine. “Don’t
worry
? We’re Uno and Dos. We’re the team. If you don’t tell me, I’ll be there anyway and probably screw it up. You’ll tell me eventually. So tell me now.”

Eddie’s face close. Eddie’s force and rage and love an unqualified lifetime offer.
You won’t stop? Then why would I ever stop, whether or not I think you’re right?

I told him what Homza had okayed for us. He didn’t like it. But he did not protest.

“Do you have a better idea, Eddie?”

“I don’t have any idea,” he said.

We knocked and did not wait for an answer and just walked into the hut, as we’d been doing all summer. They were all there. My neighbors. My friends. Karen’s new buddies, turning to me, consoling me, pouring drinks for me. The fly lights on the shiny web, moves his wings, thinks he’s free, unaware that the trap already has him.

Which one of you did it? Listened to us? Killed her? Went after the Harmons? Introduced the disease?

Come on in, any old time, Dave Lillienthal always said.

Said the spider to the fly.

“More Tito, Dave! Man’s best friend.”

I gazed up drunkenly at the Longhorn North Oil exec, who stood over me as I sprawled in his massive corner chair. I held out my glass. He shook his head. He said, “You’ll make yourself sick, Joe, if you don’t slow down, man. Have some coffee.”

“Dave, why keep all this goddamned liquor here if you won’t give people any? All you do is offer drinks, and when I ask for one, you say no.”

Dave Lillienthal grew hazy through the bottom of the olive-green plastic tumbler. He walked off and Deborah replaced him, looking down at me; wan, small, and horrified. Stiff as a petrified stick. She kept her voice down, as if she did not want others nearby to hear.

“I’m so sorry about Karen. She was a terrific person.”

Was it you, Deborah? Was it your brother? Who was it?

“You don’t look so good yourself,” I slurred.

“Oh, Joe! I bonded with her right away. What she was, she was
kind,
Joe. A rare quality to find in someone so accomplished. This all must be awful for you. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. Anything Dave and I can do, just say it. Um, do you mind if I ask a question?”

“Deb, whenever someone asks if you mind a question, it means you won’t like it. Just ask.”

“Theoretically, I’m curious, I mean, if someone slept with a person who has rabies, and got vaccinated after, how much time has to pass before that person knows the vaccine works? You know, that they’re safe?”

“Who did you sleep with, Deborah?”

She spoke in a low, embarrassed voice, hard to hear over people crowded into the hut, party central usually, wake central tonight. The chair was new, overstuffed, Haitian cotton. The window looked out on my hut, where lights glowed, as the soldiers had come back.

“Joe, I told you, theoretical question.”

“Are you afraid you gave it to someone? Or afraid someone gave it to you?”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget it. I know you loved her a lot. She was so happy with you.”

I shrugged. I drank. I slumped down further and said, “Now I’ll ask you one. Karen and I wondered, how much would Longhorn lose if your pipeline doesn’t go through next year, if drilling gets blocked?”

“Don’t even think that.”

“How much? And what would happen to you and Dave?”

“We’d have to close the Anchorage office.” She moved off. Dave was back to refill my glass. He seemed, despite his protests, to keep me supplied. I gagged, rose, and lurched to the bathroom, making sure to lock the door. There I groaned loudly, patted vodka onto my face, like aftershave, washed out my mouth with it, and spilled some on a sleeve. The rest went down the sink. I urinated into the toilet but made sure to drip a bit, stain the crotch of my pants.

I refilled the tumbler with cold water, made sure to keep the ice and the fresh lime. I swayed slightly on the way back to the chair, my grieving man’s throne.
Don’t overdo it.

“Joe, you okay?”

Calvin DeRochers, the diamond hunter, stood there now. He’d discarded his usual jeans and U Arkansas sweatshirt for something more formal, for the impromptu wake. White button-up shirt, collar crisply jutting from his homemade knit sweater. Creased beige cords and newer Columbia boots. For here, he was dressed up.

I mimicked him. “Am I
okay
? I’m great. I’m the greatest I’ve ever been. You guys,” I said, morosely, switching mood, sweeping my free hand to encompass all: the three McDougals, Eddie, Merlin and his wife, and Deputy Oz, Bruce, a few members of the Barrow Iñupiat Dancers, “are the greatest pals a guy could want. I love you all. Karen loved you, too.”

“Joe, maybe you shouldn’t go back to your hut tonight . . . where you . . . well, you know, memories. Why not sleep in my hut? I’ve got an extra bed in my room. Soldiers in the rest, but it’s comfortable. Eddie can come, too. Both of you. Better to be with friends instead of strangers.”

“Yeah, thanks, Calvin. Friends!”

“And maybe a little cutting down on the booze.”

“Hey! What booze? This isn’t booze.” I grinned. “It’s water.” I broke up laughing.

“I’m serious. Vodka won’t help.
Talking
helps. You want to talk about anything, I’m here. Calvin,” he said, speaking of himself in the third person, as usual, “is here for you.”

“Thank him if you see him. Hey, Calvin! I’m the one who’s sorry for
you
. Another summer over. No diamonds.”

I watched his face. I saw no guile or regret, no guilt or anger or even disappointment. I saw patience. But that meant nothing if he was a pro. He shrugged. “Calvin will be back next year. The diamonds are here. Waiting. They’re
here
!”

•   •   •

JENS ERIK HOLTE, CHOPPER PILOT, WANDERED OVER NEXT. IT WAS LIKE
they all waited and took turns with me. When there was an open spot, somebody filled it.

“Karen promised to take me dogsledding, Joe.”

“Yeah! Sledding! Those dogs are big!”

“How do you get them to turn?”

“Make the right noises, man, and they do it! But they wouldn’t listen to me. Hey, Jens, you flew the Harmons from site to site, right?”

“They hired me after their first pilot got his leg busted in that car accident. They were good customers. They always paid in advance. Not everyone does that, you know.”

“You ever think the accidents weren’t
accidents
?”

His eyes widened. “You mean, someone tried to stop them?”

I scratched my head. I squeezed my temples, as if I had a headache. I let him wait. I said, “That diary. Thing is, I’m reading back in Kelley’s diary, the print files.
There’s something in it
that I read, I can’t figure out what it is, but
there’s something she said that’s the answer. I know it!
And, wait! You’re Norwegian, right? Ever hear of a city called Tromso?
”

“It’s our Arctic capital,” he said with some pride.

“Ever been there?”

“Me? I’m from Oslo. I served in the Air Force in Bodo, but never went to Tromso, no.”

“Now you’re a citizen here, right?”

“Yes.”

“You had to take the test? Who’s the first president? What’s the capital of Minnesota? How many states in the U.S.?”

Jens Erik was down on one knee, the way we’d been told Iñupiats speak with children, the elderly, or, in my case, a grieving drunk. He held a sweating can of Foster’s. His silver hair was brushed back, and his eyes were the blue of ice shining up in a glacier, or rather, if color could look sad, it would look like Jens’s eyes.

“Jens, what’s the capital of Minnesota, anyway?”

“Who the hell remembers?”

“That proves you’re American,” I said. “You can’t answer basic questions about our country.”

Jens Erik laughed and took a drink. I said, “You must have a brand-new social security number. I bet those numbers are so high now, you immigrants must need a card the size of a movie poster to get all the digits on it, that or the digits are so small you can’t see them anymore. Got your card, Jens? Lemme see it. I wanna see your card!”

He smiled. “Who are you, an immigration agent?”

I fumbled for my wallet. “My card, see? Nine digits.”

“I don’t carry mine around,” said the pilot. “The guy at the agency told us, don’t keep it in your wallet. You might get mugged. Keep your card in a safe place.”

I said, “Where’s your safe place, Jens?”

He laughed. “You a thief?” he said.

•   •   •

ALAN MCDOUGAL OFFERED ME THE SPARE BEDROOM IN HIS HUT BUT I SAID
I’d already accepted Calvin’s invitation. Deirdre McDougal came over and said nothing but held my hand. I felt badly for pretending with her that I was drunk. Eddie tried to take my glass away, but I loudly told him to buzz off. I finished the water, lumbered to the liquor table, poured in more Tito, and did the bathroom spill-it-out routine again.

I heard people talking outside the bathroom.

—He asked my social security number!

—He was asking about the pipeline!

—He said there’s clues in Kelley’s diary.

Eddie went person to person, making excuses for my drunk condition, glancing back at me and shaking his head occasionally,
Poor Joe
, telling them that I’d been babbling “crazy theories.” I held the blackness at bay but at all times Karen stood offstage. People moved around me like marionettes, or two-dimensional images. I felt crushing grief ready to flood in. I saw a black void stretching into the future.

You brought her here. You could have stayed out of things. You were even ordered to stay out.

“Joe? I saw Karen at the high school. She was coughing. I thought she might be getting sick. I’m so sorry.”

Bruce Friday had brought over a kitchen chair and reversed it and straddled it so his arms lay on top. He was drinking a Coke. He emitted a slightly moldy odor, a guy who lives alone, for years, who uses mothballs instead of a washing machine. His arms looked thin beneath his shirt, skinny impressions, but close up the muscles in his wrists and hands were powerful. Scarred. Corded. I saw white patches on his cheek, discolorations where frostbite had healed over the years.

The Longhorn hut was decorated more expensively than the government one in which I resided. The furniture was plusher, the paint fresh. The kitchenware was top of the line—restaurant quality, not Army surplus, like ours. The photos on walls, unlike personal momentos in other huts, were corporate: a shot of their gigantic floating Arctic drill rig, the
Bowhead,
exploring off Greenland; a shot of Dave and Deborah shaking hands with Alaska’s former Democratic senator, on this base; a shot of one of their seismic ships off Arctic Russia, escorted by a Russian icebreaker—Longhorn had drilled there; a shot of Merlin, Deborah, and the secretary of Homeland Security, on the bridge of a U.S. icebreaker, poring over a nautical chart.

“You talk to Karen?” I asked Bruce.

Head shake. “I told that Army captain, Hess, that I saw her at the high school. Seems I confirmed what someone else already told him. By the way, Hess is looking for you.”

“It’s not like I’m hiding, you know.”

“Karen was with a child at the school. A little kid. I saw the kid take her hand, lead her out to the parking lot.”

“Boy kid or girl?”

“Sorry. I saw them from the back.”

“Parka color? Pink would be a clue.”

“Dark green, I think. Or maybe it was blue.”

“Did you see where they went in the parking lot?”

“I wish I did. I stayed in the building.”

“Hey, Bruce, I wanted to ask about your polar bears . . .”

He looked surprised that I’d switched the subject to this, but he gave his usual answer. “They’re not
my
bears. They’re Earth’s, Joe. The living bounty of all.”

“I wondered all summer. You want to block off their territory, block development where they live, right?”

“They’re dying out, Joe. They need protection. They need a federal designation, an off-limits habitat. Where they hunt. Where they breed. Where they raise cubs.”

“And if their habitat was protected, how much exactly—how many miles of coast—would that include?”

“All the way across, Joe!”

“Wouldn’t that stop any new pipeline construction, sea to shore?”

“I hope so,” Bruce Friday said, rising to leave.

“By the way, Bruce, you ever find any bears out on the tundra this year, dead from rabies when you autopsy them?”

Bruce Friday stopped, turned, stared at me.

“Rabies? No. Foxes get it mostly. In bears it’s possible, but almost unknown.”

•   •   •

“JOIN ME FOR A DRINK, MERLIN. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU NEED IT.”

“I don’t drink, Joe. You know that.”

“Scared of a little vodka, Chief? Come on. One sip.”

“I haven’t had a drink since I was nineteen. I hate the taste.”

“Merlin, we may have missed something at that cabin.”

He grew very still. “What?”

“Well, five of us get out of the chopper, see? Eddie and I go into the cabin right away, see? And your deputies
split up and go out by themselves
and then come back and tell us they found nothing. But we never checked what they said.” I smiled. I hoped it was a shrewd, suspicious smile.

Merlin stood up. Color blotched his powerful face.

“You’re saying a cop was involved? Covered things up?”

“You told me that Clay Qaqulik didn’t share his theories with you. You said he worked alone. Why would one of your own people do that? Maybe he didn’t trust
you,
Merlin
.
You personally
.
”

Merlin’s eyes narrowed, then he sighed. “You’re upset, Joe. I understand.”

I shrugged. I took a long drink. I drank all my water. I said, more aggressively, “Eddie and I were in the cabin. We couldn’t see outside. Luther took the ATV out on the tundra. What did he do there? You went through Clay’s pockets. I’m
upset
? You think I give a damn about your sensibilities? It never stops! Poor us! Always victims! Don’t give me that poor-us shit.”

Merlin’s face loomed very close, so I could see the pores, the gap between two lower teeth, black hairs in his nose, the half-healed scar of a shaving cut on his chin.

“You are drunk.”
I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. “
Clay and I grew up together,” he said gently.

“Yeah, yeah, family, all of us brothers. Merlin, who’s the guy you arrest half the time in killings? The husband. The brother. Why not a cousin? With a bank account in Oahu? Pipeline money. You have one of those accounts, Merlin? Dave here pays you on the side? Is that it?”

“Stay away from the office,” he said. “I don’t think it is such a good idea for us to work together anymore.”

Merlin picked up his hat and left.

•   •   •

MIKAEL GRANDY HAD HIS ARM IN A SLING, AND HIS SHIRT BILLOWED OUT
due to bulky bandages beneath the fabric, wrapping his rib cage. He approached gingerly. I was surprised he would come near me, surprised to see more grief and guilt than pain on his stupidly handsome face.

“I fell in love with her. I never met anyone like her before. She was strong, and she was loyal. She loved you. She told me that. She told me because I, uh . . . I confessed how I felt. All she could talk about half the time was you. How you’d buy a little house. How you’d live back east. How she wanted kids one day, but not yet. I’m not going to press charges against you.”