Whisper to the Blood (9 page)

In the center of the room stood Talia Macleod, who he recognized from the
lunchroom at school earlier that day. She was the focus of a group of Park rats
who stood in a circle facing her with a communal expression that made him feel
a little uncomfortable. Most of them were staring at her chest, currently
displayed in a soft turtleneck sweater the color of which matched her hair and
looked as inviting to the touch.

"In the past year alone the price of gold has gone up eighty-one
percent," she said, although it sounded more like a purr, "silver a
hundred and twenty-three percent, and zinc a hundred and thirty-two
percent." She smiled at her admirers, and a collective quiver ran over the
group. "I've heard all the naysaying and the doom and gloom, but when has
Alaska
ever gone the way
of the South forty-eight when it comes to the economy? Whenever there is a
recession Outside, we get a boom."

Howie Katelnikof, visiting with Auntie Edna and Auntie Balasha at their
corner table, scurried over to stand a step behind Macleod. "She's
right," he said, punctuating his words with a portentous nod.

Everyone wasn't buying into it, though. "And whenever Outside gets a
boom, we go bust," Mac Devlin said loudly from the bar.

Without looking around, Macleod said, "True, but with gold on the way
up to a thousand an ounce for the first time in history, even if we do get a
little bust it'll never fall back to what it was. Guys, I'm telling you, Global
Harvest is in it for the long haul. We won't be ripping out any railroad tracks
on our way out of the Park."

"We sure won't," Howie said.

"You will when the gold runs out," Mac Devlin said. His contempt
felt a little over the top, a little manufactured, and no one was listening to
him anyway.

Doyle Greenbaugh came to Macleod's elbow with a tray of drinks, and Johnny
saw her hand him a credit card that was as gold as the nuggets Global Harvest
was prepared to pull out of the ground in Iqaluk, along with a brilliant smile.
Howie smacked him genially on the back and made sure he snagged the first drink
on his return.

"It'll be twenty years minimum before the gold runs out," she
said, "and by then Global Harvest will have found something else worth
harvesting. It's a big fucking Park, in case you hadn't noticed."

They laughed at that, Howie loudest of all, titillated by her use of profanity.

"You!" Bernie said, pointing at Johnny. "Get out, and don't
come back for another five years!"

His voice was loud and meant to carry, so naturally all activity came to a
halt while everyone turned to look where he was pointing. It was a technique that
Bernie had perfected over the years in ridding the Roadhouse of wannabe
underage drinkers.

Johnny felt his face redden. "I'm not looking for a drink,
Bernie."

Any other time an underage entered the bar Bernie wouldn't let up until the
door hit him in the ass. But then Bernie had not been the same since a year
before, when Louis Deem had robbed his house of a greater part of Bernie's gold
nugget collection and in the act of escaping had killed Bernie's wife and
eldest son, Fitz. Fitz had been a friend of Johnny's, and he could not look at
Bernie now without pain and sympathy. Bernie, unable to face it head on, turned
his back abruptly and said in a hard voice, "Then get the hell on outta
here."

Johnny caught Doyle Greenbaugh's eye, and nodded at the door. Greenbaugh
nodded and said, "Take five, boss?"

Bernie nodded without looking around, and Greenbaugh snagged his coat and
followed Johnny out on the porch. "Man, that Koslowski is one cranky old
bastard."

Johnny stiffened. "He's a good guy, Doyle. He just lost his wife and
son last year, and he's not over it yet."

"I heard. Helluva thing." Greenbaugh blew on his hands and shoved
them into his pockets. His coat wasn't down and wasn't a parka, and he started
to shiver almost at once. "How you doing, Johnny?"

"I'm fine. I dropped by Auntie Vi's to see if you'd shown up, and she
said you were working here."

"Yeah, I remembered your stories about the place. I didn't believe the
half of it when you told me." Greenbaugh grinned. "Especially the
belly dancers."

Johnny laughed, appeased. "Now you know better."

"No kidding. Anyway, I told Bernie I was looking for work, so he put me
on temporary while his regular barmaid is off."

Johnny remembered his dad saying that the Salvation Army was the best place
to go for a bed and a meal when you were down to your last dime. It was the one
charity Jack had been willing to write a check to, but there was no Sally's in
the Park. A little shyly Johnny said, "Are you okay for cash?"

Greenbaugh shrugged. "I'm okay for now, but thanks for asking."

"Did you hear about the mine?"

Greenbaugh jerked his head at the bar. "Hard to miss, with the babe
going full steam. She's been here for a couple hours now, talking it up to
everyone who walks in."

"Did she talk to you?"

"She did." Greenbaugh grinned. "She says she thinks she might
be able to find something for me. There are some real opportunities in this
mine. Get in on the ground floor and a person can just coin the money, you
know?" He winked at Johnny. "I'm hoping it ain't only a job, if you
catch my drift." He nudged Johnny with a jocular elbow. "We're
staying in the same boardinghouse, after all."

Johnny felt uncomfortable at sexual badinage with someone so much older than
he was-the guy had to be in his thirties-so he pretended not to understand.
"That's great, Doyle, I'm really glad to hear it. She told everybody up to
the school that they were going to start taking applications immediately and
that they'd start putting people to work on the first."

"Barely two weeks from now, I know. Howie Katelnikof was talking to me
about it."

"What's Howie know about it?"

"He was the first guy she hired, caretaker out on the claim. He says
he'll try to get me on next. He's a good guy."

"You're kidding."

Greenbaugh looked surprised. "No. Why would I be?"

Because, Johnny thought, every Park rat worthy of the name knew that Howie
Katelnikof was the best excuse for preventive homicide the Park had ever seen.
Because whenever a cabin was burgled, a snow machine stolen, a truck stripped
for parts, Howie Katelnikof was the guy voted most likely to. Because Howie
Katelnikof was always going to be the go-to guy in the Park to fence stolen
property, buy a lid of dope or a hit of coke, and Jim Chopin was certain he was
cooking up batches of crystal meth and selling it retail out of the homestead
he and Willard Shugak had been squatting on since the death of Louis Deem.

But mostly because Howie Katelnikof had tried to kill him last year, and
Kate, and he had almost killed Mutt. Johnny thought of himself as a pretty
easygoing guy, but once he got pissed off he stayed pissed off, and he was
pissed off at Howie for life. He opened his mouth to issue a warning of some
kind, but he'd hesitated too long. Greenbaugh had something else on his mind. "Listen,
kid, do me a favor?"

"Sure," Johnny said. "Not like I don't owe you about a
hundred."

"I'm going by the name of Gallagher here. Dick Gallagher. Richard, if
you want to get technical on me." He grinned again, but he was watching
Johnny with a sharp eye.

"Oh," Johnny said inadequately. He rallied. "Um, I guess it's
none of my business why."

Greenbaugh-Gallagher-shrugged. "I don't mind saying. There's stuff left
over from my life I'd as soon be shut of." He grinned again. "Women,
mostly. I want to start fresh, new life, new name, new job. Remember how you
told me that day in Ahtna that a lot of people do that at the border
crossing?"

Johnny had said that. "Yeah."

"Well, that's me, to the life. I'm starting over here, clean slate. So
Dick Gallagher from now on, okay?"

Johnny thought back to earlier that day and making fry bread with Auntie Vi.
Had Greenbaugh's-Gallagher's-name been mentioned? "Is that the name you're
registered under at Auntie Vi's?"

"Yep. Started the way I mean to go on. So what do you say? Forget that
loser Greenbaugh?"

It seemed ungrateful and unreasonable to refuse. What did it matter, anyway?
A new name to go with a new life. Wouldn't be the first time that had happened
in
Alaska
. He
remembered the stories Kate had told him of her time in Prudhoe Bay, when the
news cameras would come into the mess hall and half a dozen guys would get up
and walk out, leaving their dinner on the table, before the deserted wife or
the parole officer they'd left Outside caught them on film at eleven. "Okay,"
he said, "sure. Why not?" He was proud that
Greenbaugh-Gallagher-trusted him enough to ask the favor. How many times does a
sixteen-year-old kid get asked to help somebody hide out from his past? It was
right out of Zane Grey. It made Johnny feel like a card-carrying member of the
Last Frontier.

Greenbaugh-Gallagher!-thumped his shoulder and grinned at him again.
"I'm sure glad I picked you up on the road, Johnny. You're my lucky
charm!" He laughed heartily, gave Johnny's shoulder another thump.
"Oh," he said, pausing with one hand on the door, "and maybe you
could tell that little girlfriend of yours, too. Make sure she knows my new
right name, and tell her why?"

"Sure," Johnny said. "Van's cool. She'll be happy to."

"Great," Gallagher said, and disappeared back inside.

Without knowing how, Johnny had the distinct feeling that there was a joke
he was missing, but it was getting darker and colder and later by the minute,
so he shrugged it off, climbed back on his snow machine, and headed for home.

SIX

K
ate?"

She heard Jim's voice from downstairs. She didn't move.

His footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Kate?"

"Go away," she said, her voice muffled by the comforter she'd
pulled over her head.

"Kate? Where are you?" The overhead light clicked on. "Oh.
Hey, Mutt." The bed moved as Mutt lifted her head and whined, a single,
plaintive note.

"Kate, what's wrong?" Jim said in a different tone. "Are you
sick?"

"No. Go away."

The side of the bed sank beneath his weight and she felt the comforter
pulling away. "Don't," she said, grabbing for it, but by then it was
too late. She blinked up at Jim and Mutt, two pairs of eyes, one blue, one
yellow, staring down at her with equal concern.

"What's going on?" Jim said. "You're never in bed during the
day."

"None of your business. Leave me alone." She pulled the cover back
over her head.

The weight of him on the bed didn't move. Neither did Mutt's.

"Oh. Has this got something to do with the board meeting this morning?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I take it it didn't go well."

"I don't want to talk about it!"

"Okay." The bed heaved and she heard footsteps go downstairs. The
bed heaved again as Mutt jumped down and followed, the ticky-tack of her claws
sounding on the floor.

"Traitor," Kate said, her voice muffled by the comforter. Given
Jim's come-hither presence downstairs, and given Kate's present mood, it was
doubtful that Mutt would have returned even if she had heard Kate call her
name.

Kate was, in fact, sulking. Nobody loved her. Everyone thought she was
stupid. In fact, she was stupid, didn't even know what a quorum was. She'd
looked it up in
Webster's
when she came home and it was the minimum
number of members of the group meeting required to take a vote. She'd had the
vague idea that it had had something to do with books, and how they were put
together, but no. Thank christ she hadn't said that during the meeting.

The aroma of frying bacon crept beneath the covers, a sinuous and seductive
smell.

Although she'd said plenty else that Harvey Meganack would be happy to
repeat over the bar at Bernie's for months to come. If not years. She still
couldn't believe they got paid for sitting on the board. And what the hell was
a point of order, anyway?

Johnny's truck drove up and a few minutes later she heard the sound of his
feet on the stairs. The door slammed. He said something to Jim. Jim replied,
and both of them laughed. Probably laughing at her.

She'd looked for the U-Haul box when she got home. It wasn't in the back of
Johnny's truck. It wasn't in the garage. It wasn't even in the woodshed. She
wondered if maybe she'd tossed it onto the slash pile from the beetle kill the
three of them had cleared at intervals this summer. The slash pile was a mile
from the house and she didn't have the energy to navigate the three-foot layer
of snow between, especially not in the cold and the dark.

There was more banging around in the kitchen, and other interesting smells
began to waft upstairs.

Kate's stomach growled. It was getting very hot and humid beneath the
comforter. She swore a ripe oath, extricated herself from the tangle of
bedclothes, and stamped down the stairs.

"Hey, Kate," Johnny said with a grin.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said. Maybe she snarled.

Startled, he actually backed up a step. "I . . . I . . ."

Jim, pouring a bottle of red wine into a pot, said, "It means
hello." He gave her a look from beneath lowered brows. "At least it
does in most of the cultures I run in."

"What's with the wine?" she said.

"Relax, the alcohol will boil off."

She knew that, he'd cooked with wine before and on occasion she'd been known
to pour a dollop or two into a soup or a stew, but it left her with nothing to
argue about. She stamped over to the couch and flung herself down and glared
out the window.

Johnny withdrew stealthily backward, sidled into his room, and closed the
door very gently behind him. He'd meant to introduce the subject of
Greenbaugh-Gallagher!-into the conversation at the first opportunity, let Kate
and Jim know the Park had acquired a good guy, but it could wait.