The Bad Sister. Kevin O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ knew Gil had slowed down mostly for Rene’s sake. His brother and Rene were like cordial adversaries. They managed to tolerate each other. As Rene put it: “I like Gil, but he’s an asshole a lot of the time. And I don’t like the way he treats you—especially in front of me.”

      She’d made that painfully clear when Nate had introduced her to Gil—over dinner at McMenamins two years ago. After ninety minutes of listening to their brotherly banter, Rene had cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Gil,” she’d said calmly over her crème brûlée. “But I don’t appreciate you calling Nate ‘pussy,’ ‘douchebag,’ ‘doofus,’ or ‘wuss.’ I know you’re trying to be funny, but I don’t find it amusing at all.”

      “Well, okay...” Gil had said, looking stumped. He’d turned to Nate. “So—how about those Trail Blazers, bro?”

      At first, Nate had been embarrassed. He’d wanted his brother to like Rene, and here she was slamming Gil’s standard shtick—and a tradition of verbal abuse that had thrived for at least a quarter of a century. It was really none of her business. Yet, Gil respected her. Nate noticed he tapered off on the name-calling after that—at least, in front of Rene. Gil still liked to goad her on occasion, but never pushed it too far. He was pretty much behaving himself for this trip—so far.

      “What was I talking about before you interrupted and jumped on my ass about my driving?” Gil asked, his eyes on the road.

      “You were telling me that I should switch jobs, and I wasn’t listening,” Nate answered.

      “Just let me say this,” Gil went on. “Frank—at the agency, you know my friend Frank—he wrenched his back. So he went to Kaiser and they had him see this physical therapist there. The woman spent forty-five minutes showing him some stretching exercises. Then she printed up some exercise instructions for him and sent him on his way. They charged Frank three hundred and ninety bucks. I’ll bet that’s a hell of a lot more than you get per hour at the veterans hospital. According to Frank, this girl was like—phoning it in. She didn’t exactly break into a sweat.”

      Nate squirmed in the passenger seat. “I’m sure Kaiser gets most of that three hundred and ninety bucks,” he said. “And maybe the therapist seemed apathetic because she doesn’t like her job. I happen to love where I work. I love the guys. I like helping these veterans put themselves back together again.”

      Nate hoped Rene would keep her mouth shut. Earlier this week, he’d complained to her that one of his new patients had spit on him. In truth, the job wasn’t always the lovefest he made it out to be. Occasionally he got patients who were genuine jerks. That was true in any job. But most of the guys who came to him were still traumatized and in pain. And his job was to inflict even more pain on them and teach them to tolerate it. Whether it was on an exercise mat, on a pair of parallel bars, or in the shallow end of a pool, he had to push these broken men to their limit. Many of them were amputees. Nate had to help them adjust to using prosthetics, and he might as well have been torturing them. But by the time they’d completed their therapy, most of his patients were grateful. Nate became like a war buddy with some of these guys. He’d wiped away their tears, lifted and carried them, and cheered them on. Once they were whole or pretty much independent, Nate always got a lump in his throat saying goodbye to them. They made him feel essential and seemed to look up to him. It was a feeling he never got from his older brother.

      “All I’m saying is that you work like a dog, and they pay you shit,” Gil said. He checked the rearview mirror again. “It took seven years to earn your degree, and for what, Nate? How much do you rake in a year? Fifty? Fifty-five grand?”

      Nate turned toward his window. “Around there,” he mumbled.

      He was pretty sure his brother didn’t make much more as a private detective.

      Nate used to look up to Gil, who had been kind of wild when they were growing up. He attracted people with his charm, his good looks, and his athletic prowess. He was a tough act to follow. Much of Nate’s identity was wrapped up in being Gil Bergquist’s kid brother—and that had made him proud until late high school. Then he’d started to resent it.

      Time had shifted things around a bit. Nate was in great physical shape from working out with his patients every day. He was tall, with blue eyes, wavy black hair, and a goatee. As for Gil, though still handsome, he’d gotten paunchy. He’d had two failed marriages and rarely saw his only child, a nine-year-old daughter who lived with the first ex-wife in Ashland. His private investigation business was unsteady. He was probably in debt up to his elbows and certainly couldn’t afford the Audi. If someone was actually following them on the highway, it was probably a repo man.

      Gil was always pushing the envelope, living beyond his means.

      Two nights ago, when he’d called Nate about this trip, Gil had mentioned that he was about to “score a shitload of money.”

      “And how exactly is that going to happen, Sherlock?” Nate had asked.

      “I’m not at liberty to say, but it involves some information I’ve dug up for a client—valuable information, it turns out.”

      “This doesn’t sound very aboveboard,” Nate had said warily. “In fact, it sounds way under the board. What’s going on?”

      “The less you know about it, the better. But if everything goes according to plan, I’ll be sitting pretty next week.”

      “Jesus, Gil, I can’t believe this. What are you doing, pulling a bank heist or something?”

      “That’s it, I’m Thomas Crown.” He’d chuckled. “Relax. It’s nothing that serious. Forget I even said anything.”

      To Nate, it sounded like extortion—what with that talk about the valuable information Gil had dug up for a client. Gil had gotten into trouble before with other shady get-rich schemes. He’d been lucky not to have his detective’s license revoked or been arrested or worse.

      And yet, here was Gil, Mr. Shady Deal, doling out career advice to him.

      “If I were you, I’d tell the VA hospital to take this job and shove it,” Gil said as he took a curve in the highway. “Then I’d find some cushy work at one of these health care providers. Or you could start your own business—like I did, work out of your house for a while, no overhead. Anything but that miserable hospital job . . .”

      “I’ll take that under advisement,” Nate replied.

      He didn’t say anything else to his brother. He turned and asked Cheryl about her job behind the Enterprise Rent-A-Car counter at PDX. That kept her talking for the next thirty minutes. They turned off the highway onto a rural road, and then to a gravel trail that snaked through the woods.

      Nate listened to the pebbles ricocheting against the underside of the car. He noticed the turnoff to their closest neighbor’s cabin, which meant they had a half mile to go. It was getting dark, but Nate still spotted certain landmarks along the way—including an old metal Smokey Bear sign he’d nailed to a tree twenty years ago, and Gil’s initials carved in another tree closer to the cabin. Then there was their mother’s birdhouse on a pole that never stood straight: the Leaning Tower of Pisa Birdhouse, the family used to call it. The birdhouse was pretty dilapidated now.

      The vacation home—a three-bedroom log cabin with big windows and a porch in front—looked slightly neglected as well—at least, from the outside.

      Parking by the porch, Gil popped the trunk. They СКАЧАТЬ