The Big Law (1998)

by Chuck Logan

  Keith Angland walked onto the screen followed by a short older man. Keith sat on the couch against a background of dark paneling. His knobby elbows jutted from a polo shirt and rested on his knees. He smoked a cigar. So did the husky balding man in a cardigan who took the chair across from him. The older man had a scarf thrown shawl fashion around his throat and shoulders. Little white numbers ran in the corner of the screen establishing the time and date.

  A bottle and glasses sat on the coffee table between them. Angland poured two shots of clear liquor and they downed their drinks. The other man set down his glass, leaned forward and placed his hand on Angland's shoulder. "Fuck 'em. What did they do for you. They never appreciated you. It's hard, I know, Keith. But you're doing the smart thing," he said in a gravel voice.

  "Bingo, that's Kagin," said Lorn quietly.

  On the screen they made small talk. Then they both stood up. Caren's ghost appeared. Her fixed smile looked like a still photograph pasted in the animated footage. She had on the same fashionably baggy denim jacket she'd worn on the day she died.

  Terry shook his head sympathetically. "Goddamn man, goddamn," he said softly.

  "Shhhh," said Lorn.

  Voices bantered, tinny amateur audio.

  "I'm going to Hudson. Do you need anything special?" she asked.

  "Nah, we're good," said Keith.

  Caren departed, and they made more small talk, about remodeling basements. A third man entered the frame. He was heavyset, with ringlets of dark hair, and he wheezed when he said, "She's gone."

  "Bring it in," said Kagin.

  The third man continued to wheeze as he hauled a large suitcase onto the carpet in front of Angland. The same suitcase Tom buried in the woods.

  The older guy, Kagin, chided the Wheezer. "Shit, Tony, you're outa shape, ain't that fuckin' heavy."

  "Twenny-five bricks is always heavy," protested the Wheezer.

  "Bricks?" said Tom aloud.

  "Shhh," said Lorn again. But he came forward in his chair and reached for the telephone.

  On-screen, the wheezing man popped open the suitcase and proceeded to stack compact bundles on the coffee table. "Your five," he said to Kagin. "Rest is for you," he said to Keith. "Now who's the rat?"

  While Kagin stacked the money bundles into a gym bag, Angland reached down and flipped a magazine open on the coffee table. He tossed some papers to Kagin.

  A photograph. Stapled sheets of paper.

  Angland explained. "Transcript of the wiretap the task force put on your organization." He tapped the photograph. "I told you not to do any business with this guy on his phone line, or in his living room."

  Kagin picked it up. "Alex, Alex." He pursed his lips and shook his head sadly.

  Lorn was talking on the phone in high spirits. "Sharkey, Yeah. I'm watching it. Forget Angland. Grab your dick, boy. This is Chicago, big time. I got Kagin and guess who? Only Tony fucking Sporta giving a suitcase full of money to Angland for Gorski's ID. I shit you not. They are dividing it up before my eyes."

  Tom listened to Lorn with one ear and the tape with the other. On the tape, Kagin studied the picture. "Who are these other guys?"

  "FBI agents," said Angland.

  "And they pose for pictures like this, huh. Lookit them. All grins, like they shot a big deer or something?"

  "Right. Celebrating after taking down a big score. Except it's a lot of product, your product they confiscated in Chicago. Before I threw them some curves."

  "An' we 'preciate that, Keith, all you done. Shepherding through those three shipments," said Tony the Wheezer.

  And Kagin, still staring at the picture, shook his head. "Somebody should tell those guys it's not real smart to be taking pictures," he grumbled. Lorn and Terry exchanged incredulous expressions and burst into laughter.

  On the screen, Angland said, "They first squeezed him in Brighton Beach. He was stooling on you regular in Chicago and kept doing it when you brought him up here."

  Kagin said, "This is all good stuff here. But before the others will accept you, you gotta take a blood test." He tapped the picture with a stubby finger. "If you're coming in with us, you gotta whack this creep."

  Angland shrugged. "Understood. I'll handle it."

  "Bingo," crowed Lorn. "Tom, buddy, you just swept the Oscars."

  Tom grinned. Best Actor.

  On the screen they were now talking about money.

  "It's hunnerd percent pure. No fluorescent, unmarked; it's all washed through the Red, White, and Green Pizza chain in Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan," said Tony Sporta.

  "They just opened up here," blurted Tom.

  "Yeah," said Terry. "We think that's their distribution network for powdered coke. They did it that way in Jersey."

  "Shhhh," said Lorn.

  "You count it all yourself?" asked Angland.

  "Shit no," said Kagin. "We run it through a currency counter and weigh it. Ten bricks is what—Hey, Tony. What is ten bricks?"

  "Twenny-two pounds. Ten thousand one-hunnerd-dollar bills is twenny-two pounds; pile about thirteen inches on a side and four and a half inches deep. That's ten bricks," wheezed Sporta.

  "Yeah," said Kagin, with a profligate wave of his palm. "We only handle fifties and hundreds. The fives, tens and twenties we burn. Just not worth it at this level."

  "Burn. No shit?" said Angland.

  "Yeah, I got this fifty-five-gallon drum at the summer place I got on Lake Michigan. You know. Roast wieners. Have a few beers. I'll show it to you when you come down to Chicago to pick up your next load."

  Angland poured another round of drinks. Kagin opened a slim portfolio and slid sheets of paper across the coffee table. "This is where the niggers are shipping that crack bullshit to in St. Paul out of L.A. and Detroit. You go bust their animal asses. Make you look good at work, eh?"

  "This is fine, thanks," said Angland, carefully folding the sheets of paper.

  "Good," said Kagin. He coughed and waved his cigar. "Let's go up for some air, huh—my eyes are burning up down here."

  The three men walked off screen. Tom stared at the couch, the table, the paneled wall and the suitcase full of money. "Twenny bricks" remained in the suitcase. According to Sporta, that was forty-four pounds of hundred-dollar bills. Two million dollars.

  Tom squirmed in his chair and crossed his legs. He was actually getting a hard on. Terry stopped the tape and thumbed rewind. Lorn was saying, "…and bring some equipment so we can copy this thing." He turned, one hand over the receiver and spoke to Tom. "Sharkey says you done good. I got a feeling you're flying first class."

  Tom endeavored to look like a dutiful citizen. Lorn was back talking to a U.S. attorney in charge of a midwestern task force.

  "Tony doesn't have Kagin's balls. He's too old to do more time. He's got a bad ticker. He definitely could flip. Come over here and have a look at this thing. Get a search warrant for Angland's house to see if that money is still there. Right. See ya."

  An hour and a half later, Tom watched a dozen justice department attorneys huddle around the VCR after viewing the tape. A crew was making duplicates. The Minnesota U.S. attorney was there grinning his slightly bucktoothed grin. But Joe Sharkey, the prosecutor out of Chicago, was the one cloud walking.

  Sharkey was the man to make the deal. Short, intense, with pinstripes on everything he wore, including his socks, he strutted, with his thumbs hooked in his pinstriped suspenders. The other suits in the room congratulated him in awed voices, "Joe, this is a career-defining case."

  Sharkey set his narrow jaw in his knife-edged face.

  And he'd say, "If Sporta flips on Kagin, we'll be into the Italians and the Russians. Jesus…they'll have to build a whole new Marion, we'll get so many bad guys."

  The lawyer gave off an unholy glow, like, boy, am I gonna look good at the press conference when I spring this one. Already dreaming of a corner office at Justice.

  Tom continued to stand quietly, meekly, reverently. Until finally, the attorney let Lo
rn Garrison lead him across the room to meet the man who delivered the tape into his hands.

  "Homage is due," said Sharkey, throwing a wiry arm over Tom's shoulders and hoisting his can of Coke.

  "Here, here," saluted the room full of feds.

  The attorney smiled broadly. "You want to disappear, Mr. James—shazam. I personally sprinkle you with pixie dust."

  "But I still have to pass with the Marshals," Tom wondered aloud.

  "Hey, you're not some bottom-feeding thug," said Sharkey. "The tape is pure platinum. You're going to be flying up there right behind the pilot, trust me. You're gone."

  Tom smiled modestly.

  Twenny bricks.

  That night Agent Terry escorted Tom back into St. Paul, so he could remove clothes and toilet articles from his apartment. When Terry used the bathroom, Tom slipped into the corridor and dropped his letters down the mail chute. Then Tom packed a single bag and never looked back. Shazam.

  27

  All his life he had come up here and watched the Devil's Kettle lash the Brule in an endless crack-the-whip against the granite walls, then disappear into the depths of the earth. It had always been a mystery. As a little boy, he believed a monster lived down there, thrashing in the raging current. When I grow up, he'd told himself, I'm gonna catch that monster.

  A clump of iris turned black on the snowy rock in the center of the Brule River. The rock overlooked the pothole and was assumed to be the place where Keith Angland threw his wife to her death.

  Or, more accurately, to the first stage of her death, mused Broker as he rehashed the conclusions he and Jeff had aired earlier today. He stood on the observation platform over the Kettle, rolling an unlit cigar in his mouth.

  Apparently she didn't go in all the way, so Keith had to risk his own life, climb down, and shove her the rest of the way, inch by inch, while she clawed his arm to bloody ribbons.

  Of course, given the terrain and the weather, this method of coup de grace virtually insured he would need assistance to climb back out. That, or take his chances getting down the icy cascade, then off the partially frozen and extremely treacherous river.

  No one seemed to remember that Keith had a weapon. Even though he'd shot James. If he was so bent on killing Caren, who was clinging to the rocks about thirty feet below, why not lean over and squeeze off one or two rounds and let gravity take it from there. Keith had a basement full of marksmanship trophies.

  And why would Keith shoot a reporter and then let him get away? Keith ran marathons. James was the original couch potato.

  The theory Jeff and Broker suggested was more plausible: a confused struggle in the snow on slippery footing. But two of the parties to that scenario had survived, and neither of them would talk about it.

  Broker rotated his neck and shoulders. Working out the tension. You gave up this line of work, remember, he told himself.

  And then—the FBI touches down like a tornado, sweeps up Keith and James, and disappears. They don't even interrogate Jeff or me. If I was working this case I'd damn sure want to know why Caren would drive three hundred miles to see an ex-husband she hadn't spoken to in five, six years…

  Broker was finding his way out of the wind tunnel of shock and remorse. Hearing old music; the compulsion to solve something. Two days in a row he had left Kit with Jeff's wife, Sally, and had climbed the trail up to the Kettle.

  A lot of people were making the trek. A few were gawkers. But mostly they were women paying their respects. After Duluth television sent a remote team to film on this spot, women came to lay flowers. The story rolled down a familiar nightmare alley—abused wife dies at the hand of her violent husband.

  The reporter had done her homework and pieced together a story from interviews with cops and medics who had been involved in the rescue at the Kettle. She depicted Caren running for her life from her current husband to the protection of her previous husband. The TV bullshit incensed Broker deeply.

  Especially the nuance of unrequited romance that connected him to the story like black crepe crime-scene tape.

  The first night was the worst. Caren visited his sleepless thoughts as he lay awake listening to the rise and fall of Kit's breathing in the crib next to him. He imagined Caren, perfectly preserved, in a time capsule of ice water, deep within the granite folds of the earth, or five miles out, gently turning in the crystalline bowels of Superior.

  Her blue lips stuck on the request: Phil, I need your help.

  But then, he could reduce it to a much simpler, visceral knot in his stomach: Kit turning blue, choking, and that smug weasel, James, knowing why.

  The feds pulled a curtain of official silence over the death at Devil's Kettle. After a few calls to the federal prosecutor in Minneapolis, Hustad, the new Cook County attorney, saw it was futile to build a case against Keith Angland. Tom James was unavailable, held incommunicado in federal custody.

  The word drifting up the cop jungle-telegraph to Jeff was: Witness Protection for James. Caren's death was lost—but not forgotten, the feds insisted—in the shadow of something big.

  The story rolled from Duluth downstate and washed against an official stonewall at the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office and lost momentum. After a few days, the pilgrims stopped coming to the Kettle. Caren's story, like all news stories, ended.

  America shopped toward Christmas. Life went on at the decibel level of a radio commercial written for third grade comprehension.

  Sound bite metaphysics.

  Caren was dead.

  Shit happens.

  Blip.

  Unconcerned, the Kettle sucked the Brule River

  underground as it had done since the glaciers piled up the ridge, too powerful and unapproachable to give up its secret.

  Broker walked back down the trail, rolling his shoulders, working out the kinks. He snipped a soggy inch off his cigar and stuck it back in his mouth.

  Jeff called that night: Quick, turn on the tube. Duluth. Channel 13. With Kit under his arm, Broker tapped the remote. The opaque gray screen turned into the Minneapolis U.S. attorney. He stood at a podium in front of a phalanx of Cheshire-smiling feds. He said that Caren Angland had not died in vain. She had provided taped evidence—through the intercession of Tom James—to a federal investigation. Based on that evidence, her husband, Keith, was being questioned by a federal grand jury for conspiring to murder a federal informant.

  The conference veered out of control when the U.S. attorney confirmed that, yes, a human tongue had been delivered in a fake bomb to the FBI office in the St. Paul Federal Building a week ago. He termed this "a taunt from the Russian mob." He added that the presumed-dead informant's name and return address were on the package. And that the man's car and some of his clothing had been found in the Saint Croix River, near Scandia, Minnesota.

  Testing at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, confirmed that the tongue belonged to a male.

  Then the U.S. attorney introduced a federal strike force prosecutor, a dapper, short man named Joe Sharkey, from Chicago. Sharkey explained that Keith was just one target of his investigation, and a minor one. A Chicago mobster captured talking to Keith on Caren's tape had copped a plea and turned federal witness.

  "How big is this?" asked a reporter.

  "Big as Sammy Gravanno. We're looking at an interlocking case involving the Italian and Russian Mafias."

  The report added a local follow-up, querying a spokesman for the St. Paul Police Department about Keith Angland. "That's a federal matter, no comment," said a dour department media representative.

  As soon as the report ended, Jeff called back. "Holy cow. Keith trafficking in human tongues? Two flavors of Mafia? She ever mentioned a tape?" he asked.

  "This is the first I heard," said Broker.

  "She must have wanted you to see it. Why?" asked Jeff.

  "Don't know. But James does. He knew about the tape. He had to be talking to the FBI. How else could they come out of nowhere so quick."

  "And I was right ther
e, big as a barn, wearing a badge. If I'd of known what kind of danger Caren was in…," mulled Jeff.

  "Probable cause, at least," said Broker.

  "You bet. I'd have cuffed Keith before he cuffed me. And I would have put some people around Caren—fast."

  "But you couldn't, because we didn't know where she was."

  "James could have told us. But he didn't," said Jeff.