He fiddled with the radio, lost the signal from the Cities and finally turned it off and just cruised, kicking up a trail of dust. He skirted the St. Croix State Forest and came up on his destination, a small general store and tavern that Tabor owned on a crossroads. He rolled by the store, checking the cars parked outside. Tabor’s new Ford Bronco, several pickups. He turned around at a logging road and on the way back he tested the pager to make sure it was working. Then he parked in front of the tavern.

Jules Tabor sat at the wheel of the Bronco. He motioned to Broker to pull his rig around to the back of the building. Tabor parked in front of a large pole barn. He got out, worked a combination lock, pushed open the doors, and waved Broker in.

Tabor pulled the door closed behind Broker’s truck. Broker got out and they shook hands. Broker always noticed this archaic ritual. Most of the people he dealt with were way past guaranteeing a deal with a handshake.

Tabor had a face like rare prime rib as befits a K-Mart country squire and member of the Chamber of Commerce. Broker figured that, like a lot of serious right-wingers, Tabor had solid half-truths pumping in his big fatty heart. His political allies, unfortunately, had leaked out of a Bosnian Serb circle jerk. Broker took it in stride. He’d dealt with passive-aggressive hippies and rabid pseudo-anarchists, lethal pint-sized Hmong mafia, and frothing Black nationalists. Geekers, all of them, with their IQs wired directly into their assholes, as far as Broker was concerned. So now here was potbellied Jules Tabor with a graying mass of hair and skidmarks of clandestine reverse John Brown zeal streaked in his blue eyes. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and a tie with a trout on it and his chest pocket bulged with pens clipped into a plastic holder stamped with the logo of his car dealership.