Service Dress Blues Read Free

relief. He picked the thing up, as if to assure himself of its reality, and then laid it back in the drawer’s curved tray with some paperclips and rubber bands. With a rare and silent prayer of thanksgiving, he gently closed the drawer.
    Lena’s voice, shrill and imperative with a tinge of angry panic, shattered his momentarily mellow mood.
    â€œOle Lindstrom, get in here.”
    Sighing heavily, he left the club room and lumbered down the hallway into the living room. He winced a bit as he noticed the stain his own blood and tissue had left in the carpet.
    â€œFor planning purposes, woman, is this just a hissy-fit or am I in for the full-blown psycho-bitch from hell routine?”
    â€œShut up.” Her voice was now strangely subdued. She stood slouched at the end table where the phone sat. Her head was bowed in what someone other than Ole might have mistaken for submission.
    â€œWhat is it, then?”
    â€œHarry’s in trouble. Pretty big trouble, maybe.”
    â€œAt the Academy?”
    â€œWhere else, you think? Ole, we got to get a lawyer damn quick I guess.”
    Ole blinked at this new information. His head throbbed, and his body screamed simultaneously for caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, but data were somehow getting through. One was pertinent.
    â€œWhat day is it?”
    â€œTuesday.”
    â€œI’m seeing a lawyer tomorrow afternoon. From Milwaukee. Gary is supposed to pick the feller up in Appleburg and run him out here so he doesn’t kill himself on the way. I’ll talk to him.”
    â€œBetter call Gary and remind him. Otherwise he’ll be resting on his Laurels tomorrow instead of running that errand.” She straightened from the subdued stoop and looked straight at him, a spark in her eye and a half-smile playing at her lips. “That’s what I said, Ole Lindstrom. ‘Laurels,’ with a capital L.”

Chapter 3
    December 10, 2008
    Rep Pennyworth met Gary Carlsen in front of the memorial to Senator McCarthy at the Sylvanus County Courthouse. Yeah,
that
Senator McCarthy. Not Gene; Tailgunner Joe, eponym of an era and an ism.
    â€œOle always has people wait for me in front of the shrine,” Carlsen said, flashing an
aw-shucks
, heartbreaker smile. “It’s his way of saying,
‘This
is what it’s like to be a Democrat in Sylvanus County.’”
    â€œI’m duly admonished.”
    â€œThe truck is out front.”
    Carlsen swept a mop of very light brown hair from in front of eyes with a blue cast that was soft but not pale, a hint of gray adding nuance to a robust tidewater hue. At just under six feet he was almost three inches taller than Rep, and only a hint of paunch sneaking over his belt marred a sleekly muscled, gym-rat build. Rep thought he had to be pushing thirty, only six or seven years younger than Rep himself, but he affected the anxious-to-please earnestness of a college senior angling for a strong grad-school recommendation from a senior professor.
    Exiting the courthouse, they walked through brisk cold and brilliant, sting-your-eyes winter sunshine to a metallic green Ford hybrid SUV sporting an “Impeach Bush/Cheney” bumper sticker and a parking ticket. Before climbing behind the wheel, Carlsen shed a bright yellow North Face ski jacket with the stub-end of a lift ticket still tied to the zipper and stowed it in the back seat. This exposed a long-sleeved white dress shirt that he wore open-collared, and an oversized biker’s wallet stuck in a rear pocket of his blue jeans and linked by a chain to a belt-loop. Rep clambered into the front passenger seat.
    â€œThe chauffeur service wasn’t my idea, by the way,” Rep said. “Mr. Lindstrom insisted on having you meet me in Appleburg because he said if I tried to drive my Taurus into Loki I’d end up stranded there with a broken axle.”
    â€œWhat do you know about Ole?” Carlsen asked as he started the mammoth