The Big Law pb-2

by Chuck Logan

  Then he went over the schedule he’d put together on the phone yesterday. Meet with Garrison, the FBI man, this afternoon in St. Paul. Tomorrow he’d visit Keith at the Washington County Jail, then grab a late lunch with his ex-partner J.T. Merryweather at the St. Paul cops. J.T. had been cool to him on the phone. Even John Eisenhower had sounded a little distant. Garrison, however, sounded eager to talk to him.

  Only one Dr. Ruth Nelson was listed with St. Paul direct-ory assistance. She’d confirmed she had treated Caren and agreed to talk to him very reluctantly.

  He’d reserved a room at a Best Western in Stillwater, near the jail. All set.

  The morning was mild by local standards, above freezing.

  He was finishing his coffee out on the deck when Sally Jeffords wheeled up in her station wagon. She got out and waved, a rugged version of Tipper Gore. He went down the stairs to meet her and explained his concern about Kit being a little stuffed up, what time she’d gone down last night and what she’d had to eat. Sally took a thermos of her own coffee from the car-she preferred hazelnut, he drank Colombian-and with a People magazine for company, tramped up his steps. After Kit was up, Sally would bundle her off to her house.

  Broker put his bag, briefcase, and thermos in the Jeep, drove into town and pulled into the Blue Water for breakfast.

  Lyle Torgerson’s patrol car was parked alone in front. Broker knew it was Lyle because Lyle always backed into parking slots so he could leave quickly.

  A tempting mist of sausage, eggs and hash browns dangled over the grill. Lyle sat in the front booth, where he could look out on the waterfront, now shrouded in fog. He was reading the Duluth News Tribune.

  Broker slid in across from him. A waitress brought a cup of coffee. After eyeing the grease feast on Lyle’s plate, Broker ordered, “Oatmeal, whole wheat toast, big orange juice.”

  Lyle raised his eyebrows over the top of the paper and commented, “Off to the Cities. How’s it feel to be back in harness?”

  Before Broker could respond, the deputy reached across the table, peeled a square jack-o’-lantern sticker from the sleeve of Broker’s parka and deadpanned, “When I go visiting federal prisoners, I learned it’s best to leave my stickers home.”

  Lyle was square, muscular and his uniform looked as trim at the end of his shift as it did when he put it on last night.

  Twenty and out of the coast guard, most of it driving a cutter on the big lake.

  “You never wanted to work down in the Cities, did you?”

  asked Broker.

  “Not once. Too many rats in the cage.” Lyle yawned. He was a wilderness deputy. His idea of an adrenaline high was to take a snowmobile alone into a blizzard after a lost hunter.

  Or a Boston Whaler out into ten-foot waves to rescue some dumbass sailor. He didn’t mind wolves, bears, thirty below zero, or drunk hermits stockaded into cabins with deer rifles; but the image of a full moon perched on top a housing project on a sweaty July night filled him with unease.

  Broker ate his oats and said so long to Lyle, went across the road, gassed up at the Amoco and checked the air pressure in his tires. Then he pointed the Cherokee south to go see the fallen man who had stolen his first wife.

  Broker liked having the North Woods at his back door to disappear into. Living a half-hour drive from Ontario, he agreed with the Canadian perspective of American culture as the “Excited States.” Traveling south was a moral plunge.

  Into the cities of the plain. Broker was not church-going, but he held to an Old Testament notion that cities were incubat-ors of temptation, greed, and all the deadly sins.

  Jeff and Broker bantered this subject every deer season, and Jeff always pointed out, in his blunt sly manner, that the Ojibway and Cree had never been city dwellers, and they’d concocted the Windigo-the snowbound demon spirit who embraced all the lurid potential of long winters in the great outdoors: cannibalism, incest, and murderous rages of wigwam fever.

  Broker was undeterred. He argued that nature, unobstructed by jet planes, freeways, sirens, strip malls, and billboards, was necessary for the normal development of our brains.

  Human imagination, he insisted, evolved because our ancest-ors watched the subtleties of foliage playing in the breeze, or studied cloud formations and the patterns of wind and shadow on water. Soon there was Mozart.

  Yeah, real serene, Jeff agreed; Mozart would love it up here with the chain saws, snowmobiles, and now we got those Jet Skis.

  But Keith was a pure city guy. He’d go to the woods but only to shoot a deer to stuff and hang in his paneled den.

  The den was his spiritual retreat, with a beer close and the big screen flashing with football gladiators. The sound of cheering crowds fueled his soul. Broker liked loud silences.

  Big skies and big nights: Orion. The borealis.

  To Broker, urban America amounted to lousy working conditions, an anomaly that nature would eventually rub out. Keith, like a spider, gravitated to the center of the humming web of rules that made a city run. He loved the intricacies of organization, of the law. Of man-made things.

  He loved control and the idea of enforcing. His flaw was his perfectionism. Broker saw the tidal wave of social bullshit coming, made his plans and walked. Keith, absorbed in meticulous detail, read it wrong, mocked it, and it had slapped him down.

  And he’d proven more fragile than anyone thought.

  He took your wife.

  Didn’t want her anyway.

  Didn’t want her wooed out from under him either.

  Now Caren was bringing them together.

  His senior year in high school, Broker had tested himself against the turns of Highway 61-sipping a beer and trying to puzzle out the lyrics to homeboy Bobby Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited.” Now the road was losing its two-lane charm.

  New construction widened it. Tunnels pierced the granite shoulders.

  The world he had grown up in was slipping away. Once you traveled at a pace determined by the terrain. Now you rushed to keep up.

  South of Duluth, the speed limit jumped to seventy and became a de facto seventy-five. Drivers hurtled past, hunched behind their steering wheels, holding cell phones to their ears.

  At Toby’s Restaurant, the traditional halfway pit stop between Duluth and the Cities, he pulled off to use the john and refill the thermos. Back on the road, now he moved in fleets of traffic. The pines thinned out and gave way to mixed hardwoods and snow-covered farmland. Billboards and chain-link fences lined the side of the road. New tract houses sprouted in the fields, subdividing farms, one by one.

  It amused him. Children were still raised on animal stories, still sang “Old MacDonald.” But rural grandparents were becoming extinct. Soon nursery rhymes would be set in nursing homes and malls.

  Up ahead, the horizon congested into a standing wave of haze. He exited the interstate at Forest Lake and jumped over to quieter highway 95 and meandered through winter woods and farm country along the Saint Croix River.

  He drove up out of a cut in the bluffs and saw the church steeples of Stillwater-half of them now converted to condos-and the railroad lift bridge. Three-story wood frame gingerbread homes posed, postcard perfect, on the hills. Even on a late winter morning the antique stores thronged with tourists. He and Nina owned a house here, at the north end of town; he’d leased it for the winter.

  He continued through the town, following State 95 along the river, toward the interstate. Keith was up there, on the bluff to his right. In the Washington County Jail. He drove south, approaching Bayport, passed Stillwater Prison. Knew some people in there, too.

  37

  Rumor was, Timothy McVeigh scouted the St. Paul Federal Building, among others, before he settled on Oklahoma City.

  The building was therefore spared so Broker could meet Agent Lorn Garrison at 1 P.M.

  The first time, they’d met under extreme circumstances, and Broker had not formed an opinion of the man, beyond his being another imperial control freak swooping down on h
is sky hook. As he watched Garrison come across the lobby he reminded himself to be positive; this guy could actually help him.

  Garrison’s suggestion they meet casually was encouraging.

  Feds excelled at playing two-way mirror. They stopped you cold on the phones, or, if they admitted you to their inner sanctum, they met you in teams of three so that the guy you really wanted to talk to had his supervisor breathing down his neck. Choosy. Locked down. Secret. In charge.

  But that was the old shoot-quick FBI of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Louie Freeh’s new FBI was more in touch. As evidenced by Garrison’s easy smile as he came across the lobby and extended his hand. They shook. Lorn’s grasp was steady, strong but not too assertive. His blue eyes were watchful.

  His garb, however, was old cold war formal; the darkest shade of gray Brooks Brothers made, white shirt, muted red tie. Black leather gleamed from his belt and his wing tips.

  He carried a heavy olive green trench coat folded over his arm and wore the felt slouch hat.

  Broker looked like an ice fisherman meeting his lawyer; he wore cord jeans, scuffed Timberline low boots, a cardigan over a turtleneck, a blue mountain parka, a wool scarf, and a gray Polarfleece cap.

  “Deputy Broker, Lorn Garrison; we met up north. You were a civilian then, and I was in a hurry. I’ve got more time today, and you have a badge.”

  And, thought Broker, I’m on Keith Angland’s visitors list and you’re not.

  With a few cordial words, the FBI man intimated he’d reviewed every report and personnel evaluation ever compiled on Broker during his prior sixteen years of police work, for St. Paul and the BCA.

  Though on the surface Broker was relaxed, on a deeper level he became wary of getting a Clintonesque federal hand job-touch you up, feel your pain; now get lost.

  “I know why you’re here,” said Garrison. “You want to see justice done for Caren. She died on her way to see you.”

  He paused and squinted at Broker. “Consider this; had she not died, you would have been the person to turn that tape over to us, not some reporter.”

  “I wondered why no one talked to me about that?”

  “Hell, we’ve been busy, putting the Red, White and Green Pizza franchise out of business. And-I’m talking to you now.”

  Playing me, thought Broker. Reel me into his hoary confidence and I’m going to be so grateful I’ll go milk Keith for him. Broker cleared his throat. “I want to question Tom James.”

  “You know that isn’t going to happen.”

  “Do I?”

  “Look. You got a personal stake in this. And I understand. But you don’t really get it. What we’re dealing with here,” said Garrison.

  “I got a feeling you’re going to fill me in.”

  “And take you for a ride and buy you lunch,” said Garrison.

  The agent led him out the door to a tan Dodge Dynasty parked in the no parking zone in front of the building.

  “Where we going?” asked Broker, getting in.

  Garrison grinned sideways. “Across state lines.”

  The FBI man turned left on Kellogg Boulevard and took it to the I-94 interchange. They drove east. He said, “First thing. I can’t help you on James. He’s gone. They washed him. That boy’s on the other side.”

  “What about Caren Angland’s death?” Broker asked.

  “We’re carrying her on the books as missing.”

  “Just bear with me awhile, Broker,” Garrison appealed.

  “We’re talking way bigger than dead snitches and cocaine deals in Minnesota.”

  Garrison was not smooth, but he was definitely foxy. Or maybe he was sincere. His tone did not patronize. He was reaching out, lawman to lawman; indulging in none of the bureau’s old arrogance. Broker was being brought into the fold.

  “Let’s start with specialties,” said Garrison. “You used to work undercover, St. Paul cops and the state bureau. You were long on balls and short on paperwork, popped the bad guys on dope and weapons, you worked with DEA and ATF.

  Black market sales, cash and carry.”

  “Stuff that was too sweaty and dirty for you guys at the bureau to mix in.”

  Garrison pulled a blue tip match from his trench coat pocket and stuck it between his lips-a reformed smoker’s trick. “Let’s get something straight. I’m old FBI. But I ain’t old dumb FBI. You know the old dumb FBI-they’re the guys who’d piss in their pants because nobody authorized them to unzip.”

  Garrison treated him to a lidded crocodile smile. “And I came into the bureau red hot from the marine corps, not some fuckin’ law school.”

  The agent turned his attention back to traffic, goosed the Dynasty and, going eighty, passed a string of cars on the right. “I swear people in this state all learned to drive in shopping mall parking lots,” he observed in a dour voice.

  “So,” said Broker.

  “So, we agree. Policy left over from the Hoover days was to stay far away from grunge details. Especially the tempting stuff. Like all that cash floating around drugs. Times changed.

  Down in New Orleans we busted that ring of cops selling dope. Helped revitalize the whole department. Fact of life.

  Now the bureau is down in the cotton, chapter and verse with the homies.”

  “Right, I saw an example of the new cooperation up in Grand Marais,” said Broker.

  “Special case. Called for extreme measures,” said Garrison.

  “What’s special? A cop maybe kills an informant, takes payoff money from a dope dealer…it’s New Orleans all over again.”

  Garrison replied slowly, rolling each word off his tongue.

  “I never worked bank squads, I never worked Italians and I never worked dope till New Orleans. Counterintelligence was my thing.”

  “You lost me,” said Broker.

  “’Cause I’m such a convincing good ole boy I worked the Klan, and the militias, but I got in a little time with the KG-fucking-B. You heard of it?”

  Broker scoured Garrison’s features for a hint that the agent was joking, toying with him; Garrison’s face was stone solemn. It was silent in the car as Garrison took the exit for 694 and drove north.

  Garrison let Broker ruminate. Miles of frozen landscape scrolled past. After several more minutes, Garrison THE BIG LAW/219

  began to sing, almost to himself, in a mournful country baritone.

  “If I had the wings of an angel

  Over these prison walls I would fly

  And I’d fly to the arms of my loved one

  And there I’d forever abide.”

  Garrison grinned. “Corny, huh?” He smiled. “Yeah, well, Garrisons come out of Kentucky. We fought on the Union side in the Civil War. And we fought on the union side in Harlan County. My daddy retired deputy chief in Louisville.

  I got a brother just retired from Secret Service.”

  His pale eyes snapped at Broker. “Always been more than a paycheck and a pension, if you know what I mean.”

  “I get the picture,” said Broker.

  “Don’t think so, but it’s time to expand your mind, temporary Deputy Broker. Consider this: Who was the guy Keith Angland sold the information to?”

  “A Chicago hood named Paulie Kagin.”

  “Uh-huh. Kagin’s Organizatsiya-Russian Mafia.”

  “I read about it, but I wouldn’t know,” Broker admitted.

  “That’s right. Nobody does. Including us at the bureau.”

  Garrison slapped the turn indicator and took the exit ramp onto Highway 5. He retreated into silence again, and Broker watched the cornfields, wood lines and silos of Lake Elmo zip past. Garrison exited onto Highway 36 and drove east past the motel where Broker would spend the night. As the road swept north in a turn toward the Stillwater business district, Garrison jerked his head toward the red brick outline of the Washington County Jail sitting next to the government center,

  “He’s gone pretty nuts in there. Gave himself a tattoo.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.
Brother Keith has also migrated over. Scratched him a Russian pachuco cross, in blue ink, on his left hand.”

  Garrison tapped the top of his hand. “Don’t know what he’s using, but in Russian prisons they mix urine, ballpoint ink, and ashes from burnt shoe soles. Like jail credentials; for instance, a spiderweb signifies professional drug trafficker.

  Now a star, that’s an assassin. Not sure about crosses.”

  Garrison sliced him with a thin look. “We offered Angland the usual deals to plead down. Real hard ass. He wouldn’t even open his mouth. The second time we met with him, he just laid his left arm on the table, the tattoo on one side, those stitches on the other.” Garrison screwed his lips up.

  “Like he was taunting us with his wife’s murder.

  “I had a good look at those stitches. He must have taken his time shoving her in. That girl fought. Hard. When we took him to the hospital after we picked him up in Grand Marais, I had the doctor pare the shreds of her flesh out from under his fingernails.” Garrison grimaced. “The tattoo is pretty unusual behavior. He’s gone spectacularly nuts. He has a real high IQ, you know. My experience is, cops and priests shouldn’t be too smart. Gets them in trouble. What they need is big dumb hearts, to soak up lots of suffering.”

  He swung his slow eyes on Broker. “What did you think, you’d go in there tomorrow and get him to confess?”

  Broker was now curious. He leaned back as Garrison shot through the gauntlet of Christmas decorations that draped the light poles of Stillwater. As they turned right and blew across the old railroad bridge into Wisconsin, he wondered aloud, “Keith and the Russian mob?”

  Garrison stroked his chin, reached in his pocket and withdrew two horehound hard candies. He handed one to Broker. Garrison sucked on his and began to talk in a slow, deliberate cadence.

  “Well, you know, we Americans like to be entertained. We tend to get distracted. While we were having our play war in the Gulf and watching the O.J. Simpson trial some dramatic changes were going on-out there.” He cast a big hand at the snow-covered Wisconsin horizon and the larger world beyond.

  Garrison chuckled. “We’re about to start living some real bad B movies. Remember the old James Bond novels-SPECTRE, the international criminal conspiracy from hell. All those suspicious foreign fuckers with accents. Well, they’re here. Goldfinger. Dr. No.”