by Chuck Logan
“Someplace private, your house.”
She gave him directions. She left work in half an hour.
He worked his way back toward St. Paul, took the Cretin exit off of U.S. 94, continued south down Cleveland Avenue and turned on Sergeant. Ida lived across from a junior high.
Kids made bright blurs in the dusk, walking home in those absurd baggy pants. No snowball fights. No chasing and yelling.
Computer kids. Weak arms-different from the kids who climbed trees. Then he saw a suicidal skateboarder zoom on the ice.
Maybe not so different.
He checked the address she’d given him, found it, parked in front, got out, walked up the steps and knocked.
Ida swung open the door, looking fresh in a long, reserved burgundy dress after eight hours in the office. She ran her hand through her hair. “I just got home. Come in.”
He entered. She took his coat and hung it in the hall closet.
“Ah, watch your step,” she cautioned.
Crossing the living room he had to detour around a large-as in six by five feet-jigsaw puzzle laid out on the carpet. About a quarter of the tiny pieces were assembled, framed by loose corners. A constellation of colored cardboard filled the surrounding room.
“What is it?” Broker asked.
“The Tower of Babel. It’s a Ravensburger.”
“How many pieces?”
Ida shrugged. “Nine thousand.”
Except for the puzzle, Ida’s house was neater than he could imagine living. The old rambler was dense with ribbed cur-licued woodwork that insurance companies won’t insure anymore because the replacement value was off the charts.
She collected knickknacks. Teak elephants, Asian brass, pre-Columbian stone figures-probably souvenirs of world-trot-ting vacations. An old walnut-paneled Philco stand-alone radio sat in the corner of her dining nook.
A female bachelor’s house. Orderly, free of dust, and just shy of severe.
“Is coffee right? Or tea?” she asked.
“Tea sounds good.”
Her body swept like a sensual wand through her immaculate kitchen. Like the knickknacks on her shelves, her clothing was perfectly arranged, every crease and fold deliberate.
“Should I call you Mr. or Deputy?” she asked.
“Broker’s fine.”
“Sit down, Broker.” She pointed to one of the two chairs at the small table.
Broker sat and watched the teakettle. And her. Being married to a prodigy of Title Nine, he now noticed women who grew up forbidden to sweat. Ida was tremendously physical but in no way athletic. She’d wear blue jeans, but never get them dirty.
When the kettle boiled, she poured water into a teapot and placed the pot, two cups, two teaspoons, napkins, two tiny ceramic wafers to hold the used tea bags, a creamer and a sugar bowl on the kitchen table.
Then she brought her purse from the counter next to the stove, sat down and steepled her fingers. “I’m willing to share information with you. This puts me in a ticklish ethical situation. I’m a very private person.”
She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her purse. The copy of the sick, one-page letter he’d left with her.
“I resisted doing this because, frankly, I don’t like where it goes.” She placed her hand, palm down, fingers spread on the letter. “Tom could have written this. This part.” She tapped a stanza toward the end. “About the rats. There’s one particular grisly image. The gnawed bones. The marrow.”
“Go on.”
Ida nodded. “Two years ago, I worked the copy desk when Tom was general assignment. He covered an ugly story about an abandoned toddler locked in a basement in a condemned house. She’d died of malnutrition and animals got to her.
He was working on a tight deadline and I edited his raw copy.
“He wrote a straightforward story until he described the condition of the baby’s remains. Suddenly his language went into this over-the-top fascination with a single image. I remember it almost verbatim-along the lines of, ‘in the harsh glow of a naked light bulb, the tiny wrist bones had been snapped and the marrow methodically scooped out.’”
Ida made a face, sipped her tea. “He can’t help himself.
It’s like his signature. He writes a straight news story and then gets caught on one detail that he inflates with runaway similes and metaphors. The first thing I’d do with his stories was go straight for the overwritten item.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “Just my opinion. Not exactly proof.”
Broker disagreed. “That’s how they caught Kaczynski; his brother recognized the phrasing in the Unabomber Manifesto and called the feds.”
Ida exhaled. “Tom is feeling sinister all of a sudden.”
Yesterday, Broker might have agreed with her. Today, James’s desperate motives were overshadowed, and he was reduced to a flawed little man who had blundered onto a huge chessboard. But Broker couldn’t say that to Ida. Or Jeff. Or even Nina. He only glimpsed the barest outline himself.
“My turn,” he said.
“Wait.” Ida rotated her teacup in her long fingers. In a cool, wagering voice, she asked, “You don’t like journalists, do you?”
Broker shrugged. “You know how it goes. The dog that bit me.”
“Be more specific,” she said.
Broker explained, “You don’t tell the truth. Two of you can read a police report and come up with two different versions of the crime, neither of which are completely faithful to the original.”
He picked up the tea cup and studied it in his hand. “The newsie comes and asks the cop what’s going on. The dumb cop says it’s an empty blue and white teacup with little flowers on it. The newsie goes back to the office and turns real life into a story with his name on it. Has to jazz it up. Find somebody to balance the facts from another perspective. Say they remember the cup when it was full once.
If it’s a big story, they’ll grab at anything.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Real life doesn’t fit into tidy stories, Ida.”
“Real life doesn’t even fit into most lives, Broker,” she replied, boldly holding his gaze.
Slowly, her slim hand reached across and gently disen-tangled the teacup from his fingers. She placed it flat, picked up the teapot and poured it half full. Her eyes swept his face.
The cup was no longer his literal example. Now it was that powerful cliche: half full or half empty.
Broker asked, “How did you wind up with James?”
She touched her hair with her right hand and looked away.
When she faced him again, her eyes registered the faintest glisten. “Maybe I can’t compete with the Nina Pryces of the world for guys like you.” She composed herself. “All I try to do is improve things,” she said simply.
Broker waited a few beats, for the air to clear. Then he got up. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give what I’m about to tell you to Wanger. We go back a way.”
“Sure.” She bounced back from vulnerable fast as a speed bag. Stood up.
“Probably the place for him to start is the Hennepin County coroner’s office. Apparently they have a direct line to the horse’s mouth at the FBI lab in Virginia.” He smiled.
“Tease.” She lifted slightly, forward. Up on her toes.
“The famous tongue, that was mailed to the federal building? That they announced in a news conference as being a male tongue. And hinted it came out of a missing FBI informant…”
“Well?” She kind of twitched. A full-body, news-junkie twitch.
“They screwed up on the forensics. It’s a woman’s tongue.
Probably from a medical school.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a great tip. We’ll try to get it right.”
Broker nodded, they walked to the closet, carefully skirting the puzzle. She gave him his coat. As he pulled it on, his eyes swept the living room, and sitting on a cabinet shelf, he saw a framed photograph. Tom James’s sincere face, glasses,
longish hair, and mustache. A regular “Minnesota Nice” poster boy.
“You have an extra copy of that picture?” he asked.
Ida shrugged, crossed the room, plucked the picture off the shelf and tossed it to him. “He’s all yours.”
51
Danny, wearing his new contact lenses, his hair combed back, made money plans at thirty-five thousand feet.
The problem with cash was it attracted attention. Even relatively small amounts consistently deposited in a bank would arouse suspicion. Most successful laundering schemes involved other people. Setting up a cash-and-carry business, falsifying books.
Danny wasn’t interested in trusting other people. Or lugging “twenny bricks” to the Cayman Islands.
He would fix up houses. He would write. And slowly.
SLOWLY. Very slowly, he would take weekend trips to casinos. He’d just play the slots at first. The long-odds megajackpot slots. He’d invest thousands of quarters and dollars. Until he hit a jackpot.
It might take years. But once he did, he’d have a legitimate income. He’d pay taxes. He could invest. He’d become known as a professional gambler who was expected to deal with large amounts of cash.
How long did it take to drive from Santa Cruz to Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas?
Danny smiled and hugged his worn brown parka.
Twenny bricks. Flying with the sun. He pictured the barren cistern in the woods, above Highway 61, under a featherbed of fresh undisturbed snow.
He shut his eyes and imagined walking through the doors of the Sands. The sounds, the smells, the coin-song of the trays.
From the window seat, he watched the great plains pucker into the steep, shadowed wrinkles of the Rocky Mountains.
Two more deputy marshals, who had taken vows of silence, escorted him to San Jose. The jet wallowed down through about a mile of clouds and landed with a splash in rain puddles under an overcast early afternoon sky. Sunny California had the El Nino flu.
In the small terminal, the escorts turned him over to a tanned man with a confident smile. Early thirties, he was part bodybuilder, part cowboy, in a lightweight sports coat, black T-shirt, faded jeans, cowboy boots and sunglasses.
One of the escorts said, “He’s all yours, Travis.” And they ambled away.
Travis smiled, displaying perfect California teeth. A tiny stud twinkled in his left ear, and his styled hair had been ir-radiated to the color of ash by the sun.
“Inspector Joe Travis, pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out a brown muscular hand. Danny saw a strap when the collar of Travis’s coat shifted. Wearing a gun in a shoulder holster.
“Danny Storey,” said Danny, shaking confidently.
“Prove it,” challenged Travis, tightening his grip.
Danny froze, explored Travis’s merry prankster smile and resolved to show no fear. “Hey, what is this?” he demanded.
“Ground zero orientation. Survival lesson number one coming up-where is the center of gravity in your new world?”
Danny studied this young, assured, armed weight lifter.
Caught the drift. “You are the center of gravity.”
“Good,” said Travis. “You feel the slightest vibration, the tiniest temblor, you get on the horn to Travis. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Hell, pardner.” Travis slapped him on the back. “This is going to go off slicker than whale shit.”
They were walking out of the terminal toward the parking lot. Danny asked, “You’re from the West, right?”
“Snowflake, Arizona.”
Danny took a Power Bar from his pocket and tore off the wrapper. Made a joke. “Are there any marshals from, say, the Midwest or East?”
Travis’s hand shot out and intercepted the energy bar wrapper. “Gotta watch that out here. You can’t litter or smoke anywhere anymore. Not even beer joints. You drop a butt or a wrapper anywhere outside and it’s a two-hundred-dollar fine.”
“Jesus,” said Danny, as he devoured the Power Bar.
“Fine his ass out here, too, they catch him littering in public. You’re in California, man,” quipped Travis. After several steps, he asked, “Now, what were you saying?”
Danny shook his head. He had just discovered how won-derful the blase air tasted. Under luminous clouds he strolled through an open-air greenhouse. “When’s the last time it snowed here?”
“Oh, that’s good, I like that.”
Travis led him to a mud-spattered Chevy pickup. Under the thick coat of dirt it might have once been maroon. New tires, though. The box was piled full of sawhorses, scaffolding and several large plywood, pad-locked boxes.
They got in, Travis turned it over and the engine purred.
“Like the ad says. Like a rock.” He wheeled from the lot into traffic and onto a freeway. A small portable cooler sat on the seat between them. Travis popped it open and took out a can of diet Coke. “Help yourself,” he said.
Danny selected a Sprite and leaned back while Travis dodged through lanes of congested traffic. They passed an orange Kharmann Ghia, a mustard Volvo, an eggshell blue Saab; makes and colors more exotic and expensive than Danny was used to seeing on Minnesota highways.
“Trying to beat the rush to the hill,” Travis explained. “All this around here is Silicon Valley. Right over there.” He swung his pop can at a jungle of vegetation and buildings.
“That’s Cupertino, where Steve Jobs did his thing. You into computers?”
“Sure,” said Danny.
“Only way to go. Everywhere you look it’s Startup City, people out in their garages working on the next software coup so they can be bought out by MicroSquash.
“Problem is, a lot of the gearheads work here but live with the potheads, over the hill in Santa Cruz. And there’s only one road over the mountains. Highway seventeen. Accurately nicknamed the Highway of Death.”
Travis wasn’t exaggerating. The tortured road snaked through cuts in the hills. A steel guardrail fortified the center line. There was no shoulder. And no room to escape between the rail and the stark rock, both of which were scarred with auto paint. Tiny galaxies of shattered glass sprinkled the edge of the pavement.
“See what I mean,” admonished Travis. “I was you, I’d stay put on the other side of this damn mountain.”
Crossing the peak, Travis identified where the San Andreas fault came through. Then they started to descend into the Pajaro Valley. Danny had a contact high-hot metal, gasoline, cooked rubber, rain-plump vegetation, all marinated in the delicious air.
Travis interrupted his travelogue. “Hey, you’re a college graduate, right?”
Figuring he was being tested, Danny responded, “Nah, I went a few years at Wayne State in Detroit.”
“No. I mean really. You graduated.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“University of Minnesota. Journalism.”
Travis grinned. “I’ve handled twenty-three people, counting dependents, in WITSEC. You’re my first college graduate. Also the first one who had a workable plan for their future. I’m fucking amazed.”
They were winding through rolling foothills, and soon the land broadened out. The air thickened, spongy with mist.
There were orchards, fields, and more swarthy people in jeans and straw Stetsons. Mexicans. Mexicans with muddy boots. The Pajaro was soggy this season. Travis stopped for a red light and then put on his left turn signal.
“This is Scotts Valley. I know a guy here. We’re going to get you a haircut.”
Not suggesting. De facto. Danny shrugged. They pulled off in front of a rundown strip mall of storefronts. One had a crude barber pole painted on the plate glass. Inside there were two chairs, both empty. A short Mexican guy in a white smock was sweeping the floor. A quick smile creased his brown face when he saw Travis.
“Buenos dias, hair ball,” said Travis. “Those papers come through yet?”
“Hey, Travis. Good, man. Finally got it.”
They shook hands
ritually, locking thumbs, cupping fingers, then clasping both hands.
“Great. Ah, this is a friend of mine. Danny Storey. Meet Hector Sanchez.”
Danny took the guy’s hand. After a more conventional handshake, he discreetly wiped a patina of Vitalis off on his pant leg.
Travis said, “Danny needs a haircut. He looks like he just crawled out of a blizzard. Fix him up so he looks at home eating fish and chips on the Municipal Wharf.”
“Could you cut it like James Dean?” asked Danny.
Hector squinted. Vacant. But he winked and said. “Yeah, sure, sit down.” Travis laughed and said, “I’ll do my best to stage direct.” Hector unfurled an apron like a matador and whipped it around Danny’s neck as he sat in a chair.
Travis gave pointers as tufts of Danny’s hair collected on his shoulders and tumbled down into his lap. Hector massaged some fix in Danny’s new hair and worked him over with a hair drier.
Travis paced, arms folded, squinting. “Yeah, I think so.
James Dean for the 1990s.”
The chair spun and Danny studied his new head in the mirror. His hair was full on top and short on the sides. Kind of lightning-struck.
“Get you some sun, maybe a little body piercing, you’ll look like a native,” approved Travis.
“I’ll skip the earrings,” said Danny.
“No problem, I just do it to blend in with the gazelles up in Frisco.” Travis handed Hector a roll of bills, they did their elaborate routine with the hands again. Then Travis and Danny left the shop. The soft late afternoon light was a cool haze around Danny’s ears. They got back in the truck.
“So what do you think?” asked Travis.
“He’s one of your success stories,” said Danny.
Travis gave him an appraising look. “You got it. I’m trying to help, but he’s sucking wind, one day at a time. Maybe I can swing him a better location in town, that’d help. But basically he’s fucked. He’s an almost illiterate Mexican dude who sold dope all his life. And now he’s the one thing he was raised to hate: a rat, a squealer. Guy never heard of James Dean.” Travis sighed. “What are you gonna do. Most of my clients are up north in the Bay Area. I don’t get down here a whole lot.”
