8. Delaney
DELANEY
They pull us into secondary at Wild Horse on the way south and I know before the officer says a word that it was always going to happen, because Nash Overbeck is standing in the doorway of the office with a coffee, and he lifts it about an inch when he sees me.
They take us into a room with a table.
It is a good room for what it is for. Grey block, a camera in the corner with the light off, four chairs, a window with the blinds turned to the wall. A poster about agricultural declarations. Job is out in a kennel run and I can hear her losing her mind about it through the wall.
"Sit, sit," Overbeck says. "This isn't anything. Nobody's in trouble. Do you want water? Wanda has water."
Nobody wants water.
He sits down across from us and puts his hands together on the table and smiles at me like a man at a church supper.
"Congratulations again," he says. "Malta courthouse. I checked, you know. I hope that's all right. It's the job."
Rook says nothing. He has gone into a state I have never seen in a human being, a kind of stillness that has weight to it, and I understand that everything he has is aimed at this man and being held one quarter inch off the trigger.
"Here's where we are," Overbeck says. "January nine.
There's a load coming south out of the Bakken and it needs a carrier with a legal authority and a bad reputation, and it needs to come through a lane that doesn't get looked at, and I've got the lane, and you have got the number.
" He turns his hands over. "One load a month.
That's all. Twelve a year. In exchange, Delaney Marlene Cobb never hears the word conspiracy again as long as she lives.
That investigator does not come back. There's no grand jury out of Great Falls. Nothing."
"You have no paper," Rook says.
"Rook." Overbeck looks almost hurt. "You went and got my box out of Redcliff at four o'clock this morning and I know you did, and I want you to understand something, because it matters to what happens next.
" He leans in a little. "I made copies in 2019.
And in 2021. And every March since. That's what a lockbox is for, son.
It's a thing you leave out where a man can find it so he'll feel like he's done something. "
The room does a slow turn around me.
I burned it. I stood in the gravel and I burned it and I felt something come off my back that I have been carrying since I was thirty years old and it was theater. He let us have the theater.
"So that's the offer," Overbeck says. "Take it and everybody keeps everything."
"No," Rook says.
And Overbeck reaches into the folder in front of him and puts a photograph on the table, face up, turned toward Rook.
It is a surveillance shot, long lens, grainy.
A man standing beside a black SUV on a gravel pad with a rig in the background.
He is heavyset and he has a bad leg, and he has his weight all on the other one, and even in a photograph you can tell he is the kind of man who does not sit down in front of people.
"His name's Mattox," Overbeck says. "Knox Mattox.
He's the one who wants the lane. He's been asking about your charter since the day your new president rode into Ferris.
" He taps the photograph twice. "I'm giving you the courtesy of the name, which is more than I have to do.
The load is going to move on January nine.
It is going to move on somebody's authority.
And Rook, if it isn't yours, then it's going to move on someone else's, and it is going to come south through this port anyway, and a year from now when it comes apart, there is going to be a woman in a feed store in Ferris explaining to a US Attorney why her name is on it. "
Rook opens his mouth.
"Yes," I say.
Everything in the room stops.
"Yes," I say again. "January nine. One load. We'll take it."
Overbeck sits back. He looks like a man handed a dessert.
"Well," he says. "There's a businesswoman."
We are eight miles south of the port before Rook comes apart.
It happens all at once and it is the loudest I have ever heard him and it is still not loud, which is the horrible part.
"You do not speak for this club."
"I know."
"You have been in one room with one table and you have no idea what you just agreed to.
Nine people in a trailer outside Lordsburg, Delaney.
That is what a load out of the Bakken with a name on it is.
That is what it was. You sat in that room and you looked at that man and you said yes to it in your own mouth. "
"I know exactly what I said yes to." My hands are shaking and I put them on my knees. "Rafe. Pull over."
"No."
"Pull the truck over."
He pulls the truck over. The wheels go off onto the gravel and stop and the wind hits the side of the trailer and rocks us.
"I did arithmetic," I say. "That's all I did.
I do it fast and I've been doing it since I was ten, and here it is.
In that room, if you say no, we do not leave that building today.
He had the door shut and a camera turned off and a man's name in his pocket and he was not going to let us drive south with a no.
Yes was the only thing in the world that got this truck across that line, and I said it, and now we're on this side, and the line is behind us, and it is January nine, and today is the fourteenth of November.
" I turn on the seat. "That's fifty-six days.
You just bought fifty-six days on ground of your own choosing and I bought them for you with one word. "
He has both hands on the wheel and his head down.
"You do not get to spend yourself," he says. "For this. For me."
"There it is." I hear how flat it comes out. "That's the actual thing. Say the rest of it."
"There is no rest of it."
"Rafe, look at me." I wait until he does.
"I have been club paper for four years. A friend of the club, no, and somebody's girlfriend, no.
Paper. Nine hundred and forty-one loads.
Warden said the cut doesn't make me yours, and he was right, and the reason he was right is that I was already in it before anybody handed me a costume.
So here's where I am." I put a finger on the dash between us.
"You don't get to spend me without asking.
And they did not get to spend me without asking.
Those are the same rule and I'm holding both of you to it, and you don't get to be the one man in Montana who's allowed to break it because he's fond of me. "
The engine idles. Job pushes her head up under my arm.
"That is your president's wall motto," I say. "WE DO NOT ASK. You told me at that table it means we don't ask permission. Fine. But somebody in that room has to ask somebody, and I asked myself, and I'm telling you the answer."
He is quiet for a long time.
"Fifty-six days," he says.
"Fifty-six days."
"On ground of my choosing."
"On ground of your choosing."
He lifts his head and there is something on his face I have never seen there, and it takes me a mile and a half to identify it, and when I do I have to look out the window.
It is the face of a man who has just realized what he has got.
"Delaney," he says.
"Yeah."
"When we get to Ferris, do not hand that cut back."