The Big Law pb-2

by Chuck Logan

  “So?”

  “Two cameras. On either side. Somebody, besides the FBI, was taking pictures of us.”

  Caren stared straight ahead. “What’d you think? This was about Keith stealing a piggy bank? People are dead.” She stepped on the gas, and Tom braced his hand on the dashboard. Be nice if there was a mute button on the world, he thought, so he could tap down his rising vertigo.

  15

  Deadline pressure was one thing. Dead people was another.

  And raw fear was something else. Until this morning it had lurked on the streets between the safe buildings of his life.

  “Is someone following you right now?” he asked, looking around.

  “Not anymore. I did the old serpentine car switch in the Hertz parking garage. Keith showed me how-the prick. He learned it at the FBI Academy.”

  “Did he do that to your face?” Tom asked.

  “Yes he did.”

  Tom’s thing was talking and writing. He drew the line at physical violence. He thought of Lorn Garrison. Big hands and shoulders-as big as Angland’s. Lorn had a gun. Hell.

  Lorn was federal. He had the marines. He turned and looked back at the skyline of St. Paul dropping below the horizon.

  “We’re going in the wrong direction. We should go to the FBI,” he stated.

  “There’s somebody I have to see first,” Caren said doggedly.

  “Who?”

  “My ex-husband.”

  “Why?” Tom’s voice strangled. Ex-husband? The situation took a sickening pulp fiction plunge.

  “Because he can protect us and I need his advice.”

  “About what?” Tom yelled.

  “What do you think? About what I should do,” she yelled back.

  “No you don’t.” Tom dug out his wallet. He held up Garrison’s card. “I can call the guy who was at my place this morning. Right now, on my cell phone. He’s ten minutes away, day or night, he told me.”

  “But then I wouldn’t get to see Phil.”

  Tom stared at her, confused.

  “Look,” she explained. “Once the feds see what I’ve got they’re going to stick me in protective custody. Before that happens I want to talk to Phil, I want to make sure what I have. And he’ll know the best way to negotiate.”

  “Negotiate?” There was something wrong here. Some im-balance.

  “Yes,” said Caren brightly. “Because I might be looking at Witness Protection.”

  “That’s forever.” Tom’s head snapped to the left, alert.

  “So is turning over a federal informant to the bad guys.

  Where do you think that goddamn tongue came from.” She pounded the steering wheel with both fists so hard her sunglasses fell off. “And…he hit me.”

  “Jesus.” He reached to steady the wheel. Her swollen cheek pulsed. Her eyes were…fury. “I think I’d better drive,” he said.

  Caren ignored him, set her jaw and stuck her glasses back on. “You don’t rat out brother cops for money, that’s basic…”

  her voice trailed off.

  Tom mumbled, “I don’t get it, you know this how?”

  “It’s on tape. I filmed it,” said Caren.

  “Filmed what?” Tom’s voice broke. A tape. The media’s Holy Grail. Tom actually put his hand on his chest over his banging heart. My God. A tape. I’m going to be on Larry King Live.

  “What Keith did. Why the feds are after him.” She jammed her hand into her purse and withdrew a compact plastic cassette. “Right here. If it’s all right with Phil, you can give it to the FBI.”

  On tape. Independent confirmation. No hearsay. To hell with spousal immunity. “What’s on tape?”

  “Keith ratting out an FBI informant, taking money from some guys who run rackets in Chicago. They’re opening up a dope business here and Keith gave him the keys to the state. Check it out,” said Caren grimly. She slung her head back, indicating the cargo area to the rear. “That suitcase is full of money they gave him, packets of hundreds. It was in our basement.”

  “Stop the car!” shouted Tom, transfixed.

  She pulled over onto the shoulder, worried he might be sick. He was out before the wheels stopped rolling, walked to the rear, and oblivious to the traffic rushing by, tried to open the hatchback. Locked. Impatiently he waited for Caren to come around and unlock the rear hatch. He lifted it and climbed in with the suitcase and seized the handles in both hands. Heavy. His heart fluttered. It could be fifty pounds.

  His fingers flew over the clasps and clicked them open.

  Caren hugged herself. A semitrailer rocketed past. Blasted her two inches sideways.

  Tom opened the bag and- Aw God, Sweet Jesus, look at that-row after row of currency. A solid wall of hundreds, two feet square, in crisp packets. Pounds and pounds of hundred-dollar bills.

  He was just a gentle tug of a man. He’d spent his life quietly pulling on loose threads and hoping one of them would lead to a big fish. Until this moment. What a mighty urge came over him-to reach out and grab. Thank you, God. Here was Moby Dick. He leaned over, pressing his hands down on the dollars, feeling the dense little ridges comb his fingers. He slammed the case shut and they got back in the car. The classic questions pranced before his eyes.

  Who-what-where-when-why-how.

  Only then did he realize that he had taken one of the bills.

  He turned it in his fingers. Ben Franklin’s subtle smile gazed enigmatically up at him. Questioning.

  “So, who’s your ex-husband?” he asked, more calmly.

  “He’s”-she paused-“married to Nina Pryce.”

  Tom sat up. He never forgot a name he’d read in a headline. “She’s the one…the army, some stink from Desert Storm?”

  “That’s right, the one with the Joan of Arc complex. The first woman ever to pee standing up.” Etched acid diction.

  “So, ah, what’s he do?”

  “He has this chair at his kitchen table. When you’re in trouble you go sit there and explain it to Phil.”

  “I see,” said Tom dubiously.

  “No you don’t.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “Right now he’s up on the North Shore. Past Grand Marais.”

  Tom tried to gauge her. An ex-husband suddenly waiting in the wings had an uncertain edgy feel. On the other hand, Grand Marais was the end of the world, and that gave him time to think about the best way to orchestrate…

  The story, he reminded himself. All that money and he’d actually touched it. Right back there.

  “Are you…involved with your ex-husband?” he asked.

  She actually blushed. Horrible to see under the swollen bruises. “Phil. God no. I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Does he know we’re coming?”

  Caren nodded. “I called him and told him I was in trouble.”

  Her lower lip began to tremble. “I told him Keith hit me.”

  Every time she mentioned being hit she trembled with anger. She shouldn’t be driving. He should get her off the 76 / CHUCK LOGAN

  road. The safe thing would be to call Lorn Garrison right now. Jesus Christ-he had a tape.

  “Once we get up north you’ll give me the tape?”

  “Right. I want you to crucify the sonofabitch.”

  Really should wait. But he couldn’t resist it. He flipped open his cell phone and punched Ida’s number. He recalled this vintage newsroom poster, a guy in a 1940s hat-like Lorn Garrison’s hat-with a press card stuck in the band, talking on an old-fashioned pedestal phone-Hiya doll, gimme rewrite.

  “Ida Rain.”

  “Ida, it’s Tom,” he tried to sound brisk, but he could hear his voice puff up importantly. He twirled the hundred-dollar bill in his fingers as he spoke.

  “Jesus, you all right?” She didn’t hide the concern in her voice. Then she yelled, “It’s Tom, it’s Tom.”

  Tom imagined the whole newsroom alerted at the mention of his name. Converging on the phone. Everybody talking about him.

  New
voice. “Hey, Tom, how’re you doing, man?” said Bruce Weitling, the city editor. More words in the greeting than he’d spoken to Tom in the last year.

  “I’m on to something really big here, Bruce…”

  “We’re starting to appreciate that. The guy who gave you a hard time this morning. He’s Angland, right? Mixed up in some kind of FBI investigation? We called the feds already and they were very cool, like, what ever gave you that idea?”

  “No. No. No calls. I want to work out some ground rules.

  First, it’s exclusive and copyrighted…”

  “Tom, c’mon back to the office and we’ll talk. We need you to work the phones and brief Wanger and Kurson.”

  “Hey, screw that. This is my story.” Tom was incensed.

  Cheryl Kurson was just a kid. A girl.

  “Sure it is and your name will be on it. We just want to field a full court press, if it’s big.”

  “No,” said Tom calmly. Mine. Dammit. Mine.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” Bruce’s voice was ruffled, in-dignant.

  Tom punched off the phone. Caren was watching him, so he shrugged confidently. “They can wait. Let’s go.”

  Caren nodded. “It’s a six-hour drive to get north of Grand Marais.”

  “Good,” said Tom. He could use the time to think. Distracted, he started to slip the bill into his pocket, but she was still watching. Quickly, he tucked it out of sight, in the glove compartment.

  16

  Broker eyed the clock, pictured Caren on the road and envied Kit her world of friendly talking puppets and animals. She was watching them now, stamping from bare foot to foot as credits rolled on the television screen. Sesame Street ended with a furry monster tribute to the number nine. Kit poised, defying gravity, pitched slightly forward.

  The theme music for Barney and His Friends came on.

  “Oh-oh,” she announced with a judgmental furrowing of her eyebrows and forehead. She weighed twenty-one pounds, and a third of that was baby fat. He wasn’t kidding Nina, their kid was a diminutive Churchill, sculpted in pink dough, crowned with copper locks.

  What if Nina’s lean, mean tomboy gene skipped a generation?

  “That’s right, a big oh-oh,” Broker said as he handed over her reward, an Arrowroot cookie strictly forbidden by Major Mom before afternoon.

  Their secret.

  Since Kit, there were rules in the house. No smoking and no profanity. So he spelled out the curse: “Ef-You-See-Kay Barney and the yuppie puke he rode in on.” He knit his own thick eyebrows and improvised on his favorite line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “We don’t need no stinking purple glob of fat.”

  He disliked Barney with a savvy passion he reserved for all the forces he intended to arm his daughter against. He’d seen fat, jolly, beady-eyed slugs like Barney operate around kids before. And he thought that the corpulent reptile was a fitting mascot for America at the end of the twentieth century.

  Like half the country, the lizard was an overweight blimp; and he mouthed the kissy-ass victim-speak that was smothering the culture like a tree cancer.

  Broker pointed the clicker and punched Washington Journal up on C-SPAN. Brian Lamb appeared, sturdy as the smiling Quaker on the oatmeal package on the kitchen counter. Broker put Kit’s high chair next to the kitchen table and ladled oatmeal into two bowls. Daddybear bowl and Babybear bowl. He blew on hers to cool it, then placed it on a Winnie-the-Pooh place mat on the high chair tray.

  Hoisted her into the chair.

  He told her, “Right now life looks like all fun and games with Grover and Elmo. But what they don’t tell you on Sesame Street is it can get rough out there. People who don’t eat their oats grow up weak.” He held up a spoonful of oatmeal for her edification. “Kit, listen to Daddy: The weak die.”

  Ring. Broker eyed the phone. Malignant plastic intruder in his house. He ignored it, sliced a banana in Kit’s bowl.

  Ring. It was going to be a soap opera and he hated soap operas. Throw in stubborn people like Caren and Keith who had a knack for fighting dirty and soap opera translated to

  “domestic” on a police blotter. Messy, probably dangerous.

  Caren, always popular, managed never to have friends.

  And Keith was, unfortunately, the smartest pompous asshole Broker had ever met. Always popping up where you’d least expect him.

  Ring. He sprinkled cinnamon onto the oatmeal, stirred it with the baby spoon. Ring. The phone was an arm’s length 80 / CHUCK LOGAN

  away on the kitchen counter. It was inevitable, so he picked it up and reminded himself. Be cool.

  “What?” he said in a resigned voice.

  “Broker? Yeah, this is kind of awkward, it’s Keith…” Like real concerned.

  “Been a while,” said Broker.

  Silence. Then:

  “It’s Caren. She’s in trouble. Need some help. She’s in a real mess with this reporter from the St. Paul paper.”

  “Yeah?…”

  “I think she might be headed your way.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Keith’s voice lost its veneer of concern. “What it is-she called this number this morning.”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  “I pulled the phone records.”

  “Did you hit her?” Broker asked, striving to keep his voice level.

  “So she is headed there. Yeah. I slapped her. Mistake on hindsight, but there was provocation.” Keith sounded like he was padding a police report.

  Broker grimaced. “Give her some room to cool down. You too.”

  “I’m looking for my wife, not half-assed advice from you.”

  Keith hung up. Caller ID registered an Amoco station.

  Probably already north of the Cities, on the road. Bastard always was sure of himself.

  “Shit.”

  Kit, wearing oatmeal all down her chest, stared up at him with saucer eyes and a truncated brow. Soaking up prickly new nuances and adrenal grace notes. Anger.

  Broker mumbled, “You’re probably going to get to see your first fistfight.”

  “Chit,” trumpeted Kit. She hugged a floppy, stuffed yellow dog that wore a sombrero, a serape and a beard of oatmeal.

  When you pressed the toy’s tummy, it played a zoned-out version of “La Cucaracha.” A present from his folks.

  Besides no swearing and no smoking, there was no hitting in Broker’s house. So he needed help to referee Keith and Caren. He picked up the phone and called a friend, Jeffords, in Grand Marais. Good. Jeff was in his office.

  “Jeff, it’s Broker. I have a touchy situation coming my way this afternoon. Ah, Keith Angland and Caren are having a mean fight and she’s on her way here. No kidding. I’m serious…. She says he hit her…Yeah…I know. Haven’t seen either of them for years. Must be bad if she’s running. Yeah, guess he finally came apart. Nope. Keith just called and said she’s got something going with a reporter. So it could be that again. Who knows? But they’re both headed this way.

  If he goes crazy on me I have the baby here. No. Hey. Okay.

  I doubt they could be here earlier than noon. Okay. Appreciate it.”

  Broker hung up the phone and lifted his daughter out of the highchair. “Looks like we’re going to have a party. Uncle Jeff is coming over, too,” he said.

  Tom Jeffords had copped with Broker in St. Paul, part of the freewheeling rookie “big five” that had included Keith, before he became a power-hungry asshole, and J.T. Merryweather and John Eisenhower. Jeff was the Cook County sheriff.

  17

  Caren staring straight ahead, tugging on her wedding band, driving eighty-five miles an hour.

  “What’s Broker like?” Tom tried again.

  Thoughtful chevrons creased her forehead. “He never grew up. He’s an…adventurer, I guess.” The creases deepened.

  “He and Keith were partners for a while, way back, when Phil was a St. Paul cop. Then Keith used to be his boss. It’s like-Keith loves giving orders. And Phil hates takin
g orders.

  And Keith was always trying out new approaches to improve Phil’s attitude. And then there was me.”

  She smiled gamely. “They don’t really like each other much. Funny thing was, they made a hell of a team.”

  Quite possibly she was impaired. Concussion perhaps.

  Out on the road, alone with him. With a priceless tape and at least a million dollars. Spiraled off on a tangent, reliving her first marriage.

  “Is he still a cop?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “He got rich. His folks have this cabin resort in Devil’s Rock, he plays at managing it sometimes.”

  Tom cleared his throat. “Is he quick-tempered? Calm?”

  Armed? Dangerous? Still in love with you?

  She removed her sunglasses, inclined her head and searched for words. “He used to watch that Robert Redford THE BIG LAW/83

  movie- Jeremiah Johnson-over and over. Every year, just before deer season. It used to drive me nuts.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. It drove me right up the wall, every November.”

  She cranked her neck and stared at the rearview mirror. “I hope nobody is following us. Something bad always happens at the end of a car chase.”

  “So, does he know about…the stuff on the tape,” Tom thought out loud.

  “Not yet. I need you to act as go-between? To, you know, set up a meeting. Let him know it’s serious and not just some dumb fight I’m having with Keith.”

  Tom stared out the window at the toothpick wreckage of a cornfield. A woman has a fight with her husband. The husband hits her. She runs for help to her former husband.

  The two husbands dislike each other. The only thing they agree on-being cops-is that they hate reporters. Tom could wind up being a lightning rod for all the hot emotions zig-zagging around. She could be dissembling-it could be a romantic triangle that involved at least one alleged murder, some crooks, more than a million bucks and an FBI investigation.

  What if Caren and Keith made up? It could happen.

  They’d have this tearful and probably sexually very hot re-union. Then Keith would get up, take a leisurely Clydesdale pee, and make Tom James disappear along with the guy whose return address was on the bomb hoax.