The Big Law pb-2

by Chuck Logan

  Just survival lessons.

  It was an old-fashioned patriotic tragedy, playing to an empty auditorium in the land where Jerry Springer rated number one. The players rose above themselves, tried to do the right thing, and walked straight into the propellers of history. Caren, doomed, ironically, by her husband’s love, died blind to his real motives. Broker’s attempt to fill in at shortstop could still cost Ida Rain her life.

  All because Keith had climbed on his Russian cross and decided to go out there and try to save the goddamn world.

  69

  They took four-hour shifts, watching the cabin down the beach. The next morning, still no electricity. No black Audi.

  Routine kicked in. While Garrison slept on the living room couch, Broker put breakfast out for his daughter. Kit called yogurt “aga.” Possibly related to her word for spaghetti, which was “spaga.” Broker noted the new word in the journal he kept for Nina.

  He heard a vehicle up on the road, glimpsed the mail truck through the trees. Early. Catching up after the storm. He carried Kit out to pick up the mail. Maybe there would be a letter from Nina.

  When he opened the lid to the rural route box he found no letter from his wife. Just junk mail, a phone bill and a manila envelope.

  After reading the neat angular printed name on the return address, his stomach churned, sweat popped on his temples: Ida Rain.

  He tore open the seal and pulled out several paper-clipped photocopied sheets. A note attached on a memo under the logo of the St. Paul paper. FYI was printed across the top.

  Then Ida’s vigorous slanting penmanship:

  Broker,

  I should have given this to you before, but I was a little embarrassed by what it reveals. But, what the hell.

  The notion of Tom’s writing being a link to recent events intrigued me, so I dug out an old manuscript he played with last year.

  When you read the first few paragraphs it’s clear he was projecting a personality along the arc of his fantasies, not to mention fine-tuning his narcissism.

  The rude part is that he insisted I call him his protagonist’s name in bed. And I confess, I did on occasion.

  And when I did, it enhanced his performance. Which was never more than B minus, top end.

  I called the local FBI media representative and asked if people entering Witness Protection can choose their new names. It’s common practice that they do, as long as the name is “secure.” I thought you might find this interesting.

  Regards, Ida

  Broker checked the postmark. Mailed on the day she was attacked. He flipped up the memo and studied the typed pages below.

  UNTTTLED

  by Tom James

  There were first-time suckers and forty-year Vegas Strip alumni at the table, the bejeweled wife of a man who owned the casino sat elbow to elbow with a $500-a-night call girl. What they all had in common was fascination for the tall man with the cold blond hair and steady blue eyes as he blew in his fist to warm the dice. More money was riding on this toss than he had earned last year.

  Oblivious to the envious eyes trained on him, and to the chips heaped before him, utterly without hesitation, Danny Storey threw the bones.

  There was more, but Broker went back and reread the first paragraph. He did not read literally, he listened to the language. The cry of it.

  Disliking the clarity of his imagination, he pictured Ida Rain locked in a carnal embrace with Tom James.

  He squinted at the typed paragraph again.

  Danny Storey.

  Hugging Kit, he said, “I take everything back I ever said about newspaper people.”

  Running on the ice, taking the steps two at a time, kicking open the door.

  “Garrison!”

  “Hiya, Madge.”

  “What’s up.” She looked up as Broker came into Dispatch.

  Since the National Guard arrived, the pace had slackened.

  Madge was alone in the office. Kit had been handed off once more to Sally Jeffords, who said she was going to claim the kid as a dependent.

  “Need a favor.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Let’s run this name-Daniel Storey.” He handed her his notebook, with the name scrawled across a whole page. “And all spelling variations they come up with-for a new driver’s license…”

  “In Minnesota I’ll need a middle initial and date of birth.”

  “Skip Minnesota, run it on every other state in the country.”

  “Alaska and Hawaii?”

  “Yep.”

  “And here I thought your brief return to law enforcement was winding down,” said Madge, squinting. She turned to her keyboard and ordered, “Get me a date of birth.” Her terminal routed to a state computer in St. Paul that could talk to all the systems in all the states.

  “Working on it,” he said as he picked up a phone and called the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic. Thinking the feds would alter James’s DOB, but maybe not that much. Experience taught him that people falsifying ID changed the year of their birth but frequently hung on to the real day and month.

  The phone rang. Calling this number made him think of ear infections. A receptionist answered, he asked her to get Doc Rivard. She said he was in emergency with a patient.

  Broker left a message for Rivard to call him at the sheriff’s office.

  “How’s it going?” he asked Madge.

  “Zip for Alabama.”

  Broker nodded, looked down a list of emergency numbers on the wall and called Regions Hospital in St. Paul. It took five minutes to get a straight answer out of a nurse on ICU.

  Ida’s signs were improving, but she wasn’t “out of the woods”

  yet.

  Another phone rang, Madge took it, spoke, shoved it at Broker. He hung up on St. Paul, took the receiver.

  “Broker, Frank Rivard.”

  “Yeah, Frank, need a favor.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Our big scene before Christmas, Tom James. You treated him for a gunshot wound. The Kettle thing. Caren, right.

  Ah, I need his date of birth.”

  Patiently, Broker sat still for a lecture on the confidentiality of medical records. “Frank, it’s urgent.”

  “You owe me, I’ll get back to you,” said the doctor. He hung up.

  Broker tapped his pen on his spiral notebook. Looked around. “Where’s Jeff?”

  “Conducting a sweep with the border patrol. There’s a party of winter campers missing out by Saganaga. He and Lyle took gear for three days,” said Madge.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. But he thought, Good. He didn’t want Jeff and Garrison locking horns. He pictured Jeff and Lyle snowshoeing up the Gunflint, staring across Lake Saganaga into the Canadian mist.

  Madge handled a few storm calls. Used the radio to reach a deputy patrolling the ritzy West End around Lutsen. Then Doc Rivard called back.

  Broker wrote down: November 22, 1956. “What do you have for a physical description?” He wrote: five feet ten, 180

  lbs., hair, brn, eyes blue. He thanked Rivard, hung up.

  Turned to Madge. “How’s it going?”

  She whistled. “I thought we’d need middle initials and DOB, but I’m getting hits without it.” Her fingers pounded the keys. “Alaska, Robert Store, that’s o-r-e, March 15, 1941.”

  “Nah,” said Broker, “too old.” He pushed the DOB note to her.

  “Arizona, no record. Arkansas, no data. California, hello: Three hits: Arthur Story-not your spelling, but the second one is right on the money. Daniel Storey.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “Eleven. Twenty-two. Fifty-eight.”

  “Is there a physical description?” Broker had a pleasant deja vu sensation from high school hockey, set up at the net and Jeff passing the puck right to him.

  “Brown hair, blue eyes, a hundred and seventy-five pounds, five ten.”

  “Address?”

  “One seven three Valentino Lane, Watsonville, California.”

  She gave the l
icense number. “Just issued last week.” She looked up. “Happy?”

  “Very. Thank you, Madge.” Broker wrote the address on a notepad and stuck it in his pocket. Briefly, he slumped in his chair. Shut his eyes. C’mon Ida.

  Could be you found Tom James, girl.

  He got up, walked to the bookcases, selected a road atlas, thumbed to the map of California, and checked the index.

  Watsonville was below San Francisco, inland from Monterey Bay, near Santa Cruz…

  Madge waved, pointed to a glowing light on the phone.

  “Hit line one,” she said.

  Broker tapped the extension. “What?”

  “We got company,” said Garrison.

  “I’m on the way,” said Broker, having full-blown predatory thoughts and intending to act on them. He hung up, turned to Madge. “Where’s the key to the evidence closet?” He pointed to his head. “I got a jacket but no duty hat.”

  Madge opened a drawer, threw him a key marked with red tape. Broker went down the hall, ducked in Jeff’s office, found a used paper coffee cup and plastic spoon in the trash, took them, went back down the hall. He opened the closet, picked among the hangers and shelves, found a winter cap with ear flaps. Then, quickly, he stooped to the footlocker where Jeff kept evidence seized and tagged. He thumbed through plastic bags, found the one he wanted-a piddling amount of cocaine. Eased one end open around the staple, inserted the spoon, scooped a pinch and put it in the cup; folded the cup and stuck it in his pocket.

  When he returned the key to Madge, she observed him in his new headgear and pronounced, “You look like Elmer Fudd.”

  70

  “The girl is with him,” said Garrison. He was looking through Broker’s spotting scope, which he’d set up on a ledge in the casement windows by the bathroom. Aiming through tangled birches. “Looks like they got stuck on the road, coming in.

  They’re carrying stuff into the cabin. The chick don’t seem too happy.”

  Broker banged cupboard doors, opened drawers, found a box of Ziplocs. Dumped the grocery bag in his hand. Five amber plastic four-ounce bottles rattled on the table. He grinned. “Just cleaned the local Health Food Coop out of inositol.”

  “What is that stuff?”

  “Inositol. B vitamin supplement. Back in the Stone Age, when I was on the job, they used it to cut coke.” Another lupine grin. “Right, you never worked narcotics.”

  “I worked narcotics,” defended Garrison.

  “Yeah-Jax beer and moonshine.” He spun bottle tops, shook white powder into the Ziploc. Weighed it in his hand.

  “About twenty ounces,” he said to Garrison. “If this was coke, what’s it worth these days?”

  “On the street?”

  “No, man, in jail time.”

  Garrison rubbed his forehead. “Ah, I think seventeen ounces can get you five years mandatory.”

  “I plant this on him and threaten to take him in. But we really want to talk to his dad.” Broker winked. “Maybe Ida Rain found James.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Now I don’t intend to leave a mark on this punk; but I definitely am going to fuck him up. You with me?”

  Broker felt his voice speed up, his whole body lighten. Eager for contact.

  Garrison’s face, more suited to the lumpy sorrow of his country songs, split into a sly smile. He pulled on his jacket.

  “We’ll kidnap his ass.”

  “Not exactly, we’ll let the girl go, give her a message for Konic.”

  “The girl could be for banging or she could be heat. Or both. I’m not armed.”

  Broker stuffed the Ziploc in his parka pocket, went to the closet by the door, pulled out his Remington twelve-gauge, and tossed it to Garrison. He reached to the upper shelf for the shells. Threw them over. Garrison pushed in shells, racked the slide. Broker checked his.45. Put on the Cook County sheriff’s department winter cap.

  Feeling good. Like a racehorse who’d slipped a plough harness. They got right to it. No stealth, straight ahead. Cut through the woods-CRASH CRASH-stomping holes in the armored snow. The sound of incoming doom.

  The waxed Audi was skewed in a dipping turn on the slick road a hundred yards from the cabin. The right tire was buried to the wheel well in snow that looked like crushed glass.

  “I don’t know where you fuckin’ learned to drive.” Unpleasant female voice, heavy with accusation. The trees parted.

  Broker and Garrison could see them, started down.

  “Cool it, my cell phone’s in the cabin, we’ll call a tow truck,” said David Konic. He wore dark slacks, a full-length black leather coat and sunglasses. He was lifting a bag of groceries from the trunk of the car.

  “Great, first the lights go out, now this,” said Denise, exas-perated. They could see her now, blond hair, white head-band, trim in a navy blue nylon wind suit and ankle boots.

  Hands on hips, in back of David. She spotted them the moment they saw her. “Ah, David…”

  “Oh, hi,” said David, removing his glasses and putting the winning boyish smile on his face.

  “Hi yourself,” said Broker. Coming down a slight rise, Garrison moved off, balancing the Remington casually on his shoulder.

  Denise, not David, reacted instinctively to the shotgun.

  “So what the fuck is this, hunting?” she asked, eyeing Broker’s official parka askance as she moved a step back, hands loose at her side, and Broker thought Garrison might have called it. She was the dangerous one. He veered toward her. Reflex and experience took over.

  “So, you’re a cop, huh?” said David, amiable, still smiling.

  “Think you could get us a little assistance. We’re stuck.”

  “Shut up, David, get down,” ordered Denise. Cut-mouth tense. Right hand starting to swing back. Making her move.

  “Think fast,” yelled Garrison, bringing the Remington around.

  Broker rushed her, building momentum on one running step and planting the toe of his left boot in a short vicious kick into her right shin. She grunted in pain, went off balance as the black automatic pistol came up from the waistband in the center of her back. Broker stepped in, grabbed the pistol and twisted it from her hand as he body-checked her.

  She made a hollow thunk against the side of the car. Limbs spraddled, she rag-dolled to the frozen ground.

  “Nobody fuckin’ move,” yelled Garrison, covering David with the shotgun.

  David froze, hugging his bag of groceries. He didn’t look afraid, merely inconvenienced.

  Broker stuffed Denise’s Walther P5 in his pocket. Then he advanced on David, grabbed him by the shoulder, roughly spun him around and threw him against the car. The grocery bag fell and burst. Oranges tumbled, Van Gogh bright, on the mean ice. Broker removed the Ziploc from his pocket and let it fall among the orange parade.

  He growled at David. “You broke into my house, you little shit. What were you doing in my…” Then Broker stopped in feigned surprise. “Hello? You dropped something.”

  David glanced down. Shook his head. “Is that lame. That’s pure bush. God.”

  Garrison hauled Denise by her jacket collar over next to David and let her fall. She moaned, rolled over and struggled to sit up.

  “Denise, look at this, Andy of Mayberry is trying to set me up,” said David.

  “Motherfuckers,” hissed Denise, enunciating every syllable.

  Broker placed his boot heel on her shoulder and propelled her back against the car. “Watch your fucking language,” he admonished and almost laughed, getting his worlds mixed up.

  Garrison picked up the Ziploc of powder. “Ah, David, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to jail. You heard of federal sentencing guidelines?”

  “C’mon, David,” said Broker, “we got work to do.” He pulled him to the front of the car. “Hands on the hood.”

  David leaned forward and spread his legs, assuming he was going to be frisked. “No, no,” said Broker. “You’re going to push.” He turned to D
enise, whom Garrison was helping to her feet. “Denise, honey, you through trying to kill people?

  You think you can drive?”

  Regarding him with viperish brown eyes, she stated, “I got the right to defend myself, and him, like I get paid to 406 / CHUCK LOGAN

  do. And I have a license to carry. And you’re not a straight cop, that’s what I think.”

  “Of course he isn’t a straight cop,” said David, still smiling.

  “I don’t know about the other one.”

  “I’m a member of AARP,” said Garrison.

  “Here’s the deal,” Broker said to David. “It happens I am a temporary deputy in this county, so I can run you in on the dope, which I’ll say I found in the course of investigating the house invasion you pulled on me. You with me so far.”

  “But you don’t really want to do that, do you?” said David, still smiling.

  “What’s going on, David?” asked Denise.

  “He wants to talk to Victor,” said David. “We’re cool. I told you about this guy. It’s business.”

  “Smart kid,” said Broker. “C’mon, let’s push this car out of the ditch. Lorn, there should be a shovel around the cabin.” Broker removed the floor mats from the Audi while Garrison went to the cabin, poked around outside, went in, and emerged with a snow shovel.

  After digging out, Broker stuffed the floor mats under the bogged tire. Denise got in, started the Audi. Broker, David, and Garrison pushed. The tire bit into the mats, spit them away but picked up the traction to climb back on the road.

  “Now what?” asked Denise.

  “Take off. Tell your employer to call me. I’m in the book.

  And no rough stuff, or David here will be decorating the bottom of Lake Superior.”

  She looked at David. Totally self-assured, he nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. Then to Broker, “You have some of my property.”

  “Sorry, I’ll hang on to the Walther.”

  Lurching, brake lights jarring, she backed up the driveway, turned on the access road, and accelerated toward Highway 61. Broker turned to David, who was still smiling, up from North Lake Shore Drive to slum among the jack pine savages. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, huh?”