The Big Law pb-2

by Chuck Logan

  It was the money. James and the money. But now it was something else. From the climate-controlled purgatory of the jail, Broker drove south into a picturesque Minnesota snowstorm.

  You owe me.

  Of course, Keith had always been nuts. Driven, single-minded. Like the Wright Brothers were nuts.

  There was the time Keith-in his gadget phase-had this insane notion he could get all the Homicide squad guys to wear these beepers that would send a signal to a tower and the tower would relay to his office at the station, where he could plot the position of all his men, at every moment, on a wall map.

  Just like that character in Catch-22, somebody had joked, wiring the platoon together so they’d march better. And Keith had shot back, “I know that book, it mocks authority.”

  Owe me.

  Broker pummeled the steering wheel. Keith would never bring that up. Had never mentioned it. Unless…

  His hand searched for a cigar in his jacket, found the cellophane bag, pulled one out and stuck it in his mouth. Okay.

  Break it down. Keith wouldn’t give a straight answer about Caren. But he would link James to the money.

  The “owe me” part-Broker grimaced.

  God, we were young that night on St. Alban:

  That night Broker had been reminded that heroes are like the rest of life, a come-as-you-are party. They can be unbear-able assholes-

  And still save your life.

  How it had happened at St. Alban was like this: Jimmy Carter was the president and Keith was a sergeant; Broker, J.T., John Eisenhower, and Jeff were patrol grunts. They got the call. Eight in the evening on an inky soft June night. Man with a gun, threatening his family. Little house on St. Alban, on the East Side. When Keith arrived, they had the house secured. The SWAT team had been called. Guy had the family in the kitchen. Wife. Three kids, all under ten years old.

  Broker-young, dumb and full of come-crouched at the back door with a shotgun. Could hear the guy raving in there.

  This one didn’t want to talk. This one was working up to it.

  And that’s what he told Jeff and Keith. What he yelled to J.T.

  and John in the front. Can’t wait for SWAT to tie the laces on their spit-shined jump boots. No time.

  “He’s gonna do it. We gotta go in.”

  So he went, figuring angles, slamming off doorjambs. Air-borne. Ranger. Veteran of house-to-house close combat in a forgotten place called Quang Tri City. Dived on the tacky linoleum, shotgun sweeping on target as he hit the floor. Jeff scrambling to cover him. Saw the guy right there, skinny, runt-of-the-litter redneck piece of shit. Should have been drowned at birth. Saw his mad rabbity eyes, bad teeth, thin lips screaming, saw the wife screaming, kids screaming. Then a shot and the wife wasn’t screaming and Broker sighted the shotgun at the guy who was barricaded behind the cowering fetal shape of the woman. She was down, bleeding profusely from a messy head wound. The guy hid in back of his kids, all three of them pulled tight to him, human shield fashion, with one arm, while he extended his other arm, and the pistol at the end of it, straight at Broker, who was lying in the prone position, on the kitchen floor, ten feet away.

  Broker could still remember those kids. Towheaded, terrified cornflower blue eyes in sugar-diet faces. Two little girls and a boy. Them screaming. The mother bleeding. The guy yelling.

  No way he could take the shot. Not with the kids in the way.

  Then, so fast Broker never even shut his eyes, the guy pulled the trigger. Except someone moved over him, put their body between Broker and the round. The bullet blew the back of Keith’s right shoulder all over the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

  Keith just kept walking. Slow. Hands up, talking calm, taking the bullet. No gun. Threw the guy off just enough. His next shot went wild and Keith smothered him, grabbed the gun. The kids were all right. The mother made it. Keith, the college quarterback, never threw a football again.

  And Keith, the asshole, wrote Broker up for recklessness.

  Think fast.

  Everyone tended to forget how fast Keith could think on his feet, how slippery his mind worked, how he could adapt and innovate…

  Broker had to stop at a convenience store and check a phone book. He didn’t know where Keith lived. When he had the address he checked it in the Hudson’s Street Atlas he carried in the glove compartment. He located the road and continued up Highway 95, through Afton.

  Gentle snow. Kids in colorful mufflers and mittens toting sleds. He turned off Highway 95, onto the back roads.

  The house would look great once it was fixed up, but right now, with so much trim missing and patchy from sanding, it had warts.

  The key was where Keith said it was, embedded in a wedge of snow under the decorative rim of the garage light. He went up the steps and let himself in. The heat was turned down, cold enough for his breath to cloud.

  Two steps into the front hall he looked into the barren living room and…

  The footlocker lay on its side on the dull, dusty maple floor.

  It had resided in Caren’s closet when they were married.

  Every Christmas…

  Strewn around the trunk, he saw the set of decorations, minus the loon, he had turned out on a jigsaw the first winter of their marriage. The room was empty, no furniture, so he slid his back down a wall and sat on the floor.

  The wooden baubles caught a random moment in Caren’s life. The house was like a blueprint of her hopes. Roomy enough for a big family. Miles of yard to run in. Near the water. Swimming and sailboats and canoes. But also a shambles.

  He heaved himself up and went into the kitchen. On the counter, filmed with dust, he saw a perfectly preserved lump of chocolate halved by the neat incision of teeth marks.

  The kitchen drawers were tidy but contained no tools. He backtracked to the breezeway and found drawers where the tools were kept. He took a WunderBar and went down the basement stairs. A musty veil of dust hung over the den. A discarded pair of rubber gloves lay on a pile of siding torn out of the wall. The feds hadn’t cleaned up after themselves.

  They’d brought the dog in. The dog trained to sniff out money saturated with particles of cocaine. The dog had found the stash.

  Like Keith said, under the antelope. A hidden niche was built around an old chimney base.

  Empty. So it wasn’t where Keith hid it, and the feds didn’t have it. If they did, they’d be posing with it on TV. And Keith had been exact about one thing-find me a thief.

  In a bathroom, off the den, he found a box of Band-Aids and put a square patch over the bruised cheek. Then he sat down on the couch. The stuffed twelve-point white tail and the antelope peered down with glass eyes from the wall over the hole in the paneling. Two armchairs, the couch, a coffee table. A desk that served as a storage platform for Keith’s trophies. Pistol. Skeet. Golf.

  Connect the dots. Caren found the money, took it, along with the tape. Had it on the trip north. Did something with it. Hid it. James knew. Then it all happened and-not like James stole it. Nobody asked him about it.

  But proving it? His eyes roved over the musty basement.

  Jeff had said this was where Caren set up the camera. Keith must have been brain-dead to bring the bad guys and a suitcase full of money right into his house.

  Why would he do that? Caren would have to know…

  Caren knew. He knew Caren knew.

  Conventional wisdom: The control freak went out of control.

  Broker pictured it, working a nervous rhythm with his palm on his thigh. Keith the perfectionist, spurned. So Keith the racist. The drunkard. The dirty cop. Wife beater. Murder-er.

  People were pleased to see him go down. Almost like a group of siblings getting back at their tormenting, stronger, smarter older brother. Love and hate tangled tight. “And he did this and he did that and he…”

  The only hot-button sin Keith had neglected on his suicidal plunge was drowning puppies.

  When he was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad, he did it
perfectly.

  The wall clock said twenty to twelve. He was going to be late for lunch with J.T. Merryweather. As he let himself out, he debated whether to go in the living room and collect the strewn tree decorations and pack them. Her father had died, but her mother could still be living in Williston and might want them.

  But he could not act on the impulse. This was still Keith’s house, and he was very aware of trespass. Broker turned away from the living room, walked out, closed the door behind him, put the house key back where he’d found it.

  He got in his truck, fastened his seat belt, turned the key and drove west, toward St. Paul.

  43

  U.S. 94 formed a moat in front of the cement bastille that was St. Paul Police Headquarters. Broker grabbed an exit and parked in the visitors’ lot.

  A beefy cop behind a bullet-proof bubble in the lobby squinted at Broker’s badge and ID, called up to J.T., and pointed to the elevator. Broker knew the way to Homicide.

  J.T. Merryweather was a really black man with fine Carib features and pouchy lavender circles under his eyes. He had given up the cigarettes and had put twenty pounds on his hips that he disguised with expensive tailoring. Coming into the Homicide bay, Broker noticed that J.T. was spending twice what he used to on suits and shoe leather. J.T. was a captain now. He had his own alcove and desk.

  J.T. spotted Broker and reached for a ringing phone. “Be right with you. I’m up to my ass, putting this new gang task force together.”

  Officious. Not making solid eye contact.

  A chubby detective waddled by. Broker quipped, “Hey, Reardon, still keeping Sara Lee in the black, huh.”

  Expressionless, Reardon said, “Nothin’ personal, Broker, but fuck you.” He shouldered by.

  The treatment. Janey had called it right. Keith was a plague carrier. Broker had touched him. The dismissive distance set a boundary, implied in J.T.’s gesture and the THE BIG LAW/251

  brush-off from Reardon. And the other Homicide cops in the room-most of whom knew him-barely acknowledged his presence. None of the old horseplay or lurid jokes.

  No bitching. Always a bad sign.

  Not one of us anymore.

  Broker found himself on the receiving end of the tribal cop stare-suspicion and disapproval. Guilty until proven innocent. Either way-unworthy.

  J.T. finished his phone call, got up, grabbed his overcoat and walked Broker past the cold-eyed Homicide cops, out of the bay, into the hall, toward an elevator.

  “Keith do that to your face?” J.T. said offhand.

  “How-?”

  “Deputy out in Washington told us. Word’s out Keith was yelling something about you owing him.” J.T. smiled, and it wasn’t a smile at all.

  Broker, blindsided, stopped and stared at his old partner.

  J.T. shrugged. “You don’t have a whole lot of friends here right now. But that shouldn’t bother you, you always liked to operate alone.” They entered the elevator and rode down in silence.

  At ground level, on their way out of the building, they passed the chief. Prester Dobbs was skinny and balding. An import from San Francisco. His loose neck flesh and big popped-out eyes reminded Broker of an ostrich.

  Head in the sand, the street coppers agreed privately. Keith had said it out loud. Among other things.

  Dobbs’s blue button eyes struck Broker’s and glanced away. They knew each other, not well, but enough to chat in the hall. The chief turned away without a greeting.

  J.T. said from the side of his mouth, “Chief don’t even want anybody saying Keith’s name in the building anymore.”

  J.T. grabbed an unmarked car from the lot, and they shot through the downtown loop, turned left and parked in front of a hydrant next to Galtier Plaza. Broker followed J.T.

  into an overdecorated Italian restaurant.

  Too loud, too many people. Tables too small. Triple canopy hanging baskets of ferns. Going in, it was clear they knew J.T. They were seated immediately.

  Away from his colleagues, J.T.’s manner relaxed. His world-weary gaze became more curious than suspicious. But still at a distance. There was no small talk. No catching up.

  No congratulations on J.T.’s promotion or showing pictures of Kit. Ten years ago they’d got off on foxhole camaraderie, taking chances for each other. Wrestling assholes full of PCP

  down to the cuffs on the pavement.

  J.T. scowled at him, like he read his thoughts. “Look,” he said, “you picked a loser to come back on. Being out to Washington County having prayer meetings with Keith. Not saying it’s fair, but there’s this shit-rubs-off thing. Some of the guys think you need a bath.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m listening.”

  Broker took a cigar from his pocket. The ferns about wilted as he clipped the end. J.T.’s eyes enlarged with disapproval.

  “You can’t do that in here.”

  “Not going to smoke it. Going to chew it.”

  “Man, that’s disgusting.”

  Broker rolled his stogie in his mouth to the dismay of a waitress who informed him that, even unlighted, the cigar upset other customers, who had complained. Broker put it out of sight and they ordered. Lasagna for Broker. J.T. had the fettuccine.

  J.T. took a piece of fresh baked bread from a wicker basket and dipped it into a small bowl of olive oil and nibbled. He chewed, swallowed and let his smoky gaze settle on Broker.

  “So, what do you want.”

  “I need some computer time, a credit work-up on Tom James, the reporter who was with Caren.”

  “Not my area. Put it through channels,” said J.T. crisply.

  “You’re a lot of help,” said Broker.

  “Don’t give me that, go talk to the feds. They’re all over this thing. Check out bad-ass Agent Garrison. We call him the Lorn Ranger,” said J.T.

  Annoyed, Broker drummed his fingers on the table. “Okay, let’s get right to it. Why did Keith turn?”

  “Ask the feds, they made the case.”

  “I want to hear your opinion.”

  J.T. occupied himself with fastidiously straightening his silverware. Keith Angland was not J.T.’s favorite topic in the best of times.

  “You want to know what I think, huh?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  J.T. squinted. “How do you want the race card? Face up or face down?”

  Broker shrugged. “Up, wild, I don’t care.”

  “Okay. The last thing Chief Sweeney did when he left office was send Keith to the FBI Academy…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He was different when he came back from Quantico. The consensus was, the management courses went to his head.”

  Broker nodded. Keith’s attendance at the prestigious FBI academy spanned the former chief’s term of office. The new mayor appointed a new police chief.

  J.T. continued. “So Keith comes back and thinks he’s going to set the world on fire. He locks horns with Dobbs right from the start. At first, they like, tried coexistence. Keith still ran Narcotics.”

  “Pretty successfully, I heard,” said Broker.

  “Yeah, that’s why Dobbs wanted him there, he had all this good shit he could get from his new fed buddies after being the honor student out there.”

  “Sounds good so far. Where’s the problem?”

  “The promotion board comes up. Dobbs skips Keith and promotes Janey to captain.”

  Broker said, “Back when I was in patrol, I knew Janey.

  She’s sharp.”

  “No one disputes that. But Keith had the higher score. So he started a serious rumor that Janey banged the chief to get her promotion.”

  “The usual department bullshit,” said Broker. His stomach churned, and he had that tiresome sensation of rowing through clotted human forms in an iron boat-office politics.

  “Okay, I can see where this is going. The next promotion test, you make captain and he doesn’t. So what’d he say then? You screw Dobbs, too?”

  J.T. fired back with p
recision, “Keith Angland made public remarks that were reported in the media. Racist remarks. He tried to racially polarize the department.”

  “You’re giving me a speech,” said Broker slowly.

  J.T. carefully shuffled his razor blade features. “You asked.”

  He looked away. “I hate this goddamn thing,” he whispered.

  “If he could do it, anybody could do it. That’s what’s got everybody on edge. And all that fuckin’ money…”

  Broker came forward in his chair, on the verge of detailing Keith’s strange behavior in the transport room. The whole James scenario. But no-what happened in that holding cell, beyond the range of the microphones, was meant to be private. His alone. So he said, “When this started, Caren called, left a message on my machine. Said Keith was in a lot of trouble. Know what my immediate reaction was?”

  “Sure, you thought ‘good, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’”

  Broker exhaled. “Was he really that bad?”

  J.T. inspected a forkful of pasta. “Nah, he was that good, but he was a prick. What the hell did Caren see in him?”

  “He was going to be mayor…”

  “Governor,” quipped J.T. In a softer voice, “Is it true, about the claw marks on his arm? The skin under his fingernails?”

  “Yeah,” said Broker.

  “Hate this thing,” said J.T. He reached across the table and placed his palm, flat down, on Broker’s nervously tapping fingers. “Quit that. Here, eat your food. It’s getting cold.”

  44

  The snow sifted down, fine as salt, and turned to vapor when it touched the shiny black interstate. After saying good-bye to J.T., Broker drove north, then west, on the freeway loop that belted the Cities. Exile in a cabin with his baby had strengthened a weak spot in his personality. He had been forced to learn patience.

  Patience suggested: Go deeper.

  So he drove and thought. He’d written Caren off as a frustrated country club Republican. Wrong.

  He’d thought that Keith, buried under a landslide of federal charges, would come clean about Caren, describe a messy confrontation on the icy rocks. But Keith had taunted him, and the eavesdropping feds, about the missing bodies of his alleged victims. Taking credit.