The Big Law (1998)

by Chuck Logan

  They hunkered down side by side. James screamed, drowning out Bernie Shaw's TV voice. Rasputin's and the Snake's practical conversation as they tried to master the unfamiliar mechanism. Drum sanders were tricky, keeping the tension on the sheet of sandpaper while you tightened the drum.

  Finally, they had it crimped in place. Rasputin, his eyes merry with experiment, rolled the heavy sander toward James. Blubbering, James drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.

  Then Rasputin made the mistake of hitting the switch before he had a firm grip on the sturdy cross-T handle. The slack dust catcher on the exhaust inflated with the shock of an air bag. The machine roared and charged. It was an old model Clark, with an eight-inch drum and as thick as a squat fender off a stainless steel tank. They'd put the coarsest paper on. Looked to Broker like number sixteen—black rock grits.

  The runaway sander hit James's right ankle and ran over his foot cranking around five thousand revolutions per minute. His scream was lost in the snarl of the drum. A fine spray of blood, shredded skin and tissue spattered the wall. His foot shook violently.

  James catapulted beyond fear, swallowed his screams, racked by sick-dog shivers.

  Delighted at this serendipity, the two thugs got the sander under control and turned it off. Ignoring James's screams, they commenced a spirited discussion in their native language on the merits of the tool, pausing to point to various portions of James's twitching body.

  Konic intervened, dropped to one knee and spoke to James in low tones. James jerked his head, shouted, "Closet, in the ceiling, bedroom."

  The two gunmen pulled him to his feet and hobbled him down the hall. A squashed-bug smear of blood soiled his sanded floor.

  While they were gone Konic noticed the two cigars in Broker's Levi's jacket pocket. Pulled one out, read the label, tucked it back.

  "They're your son's. I took the liberty," said Broker.

  "Cuba," said Konic fondly. "Good women; unforgettable cigars."

  They brought James back, far gone in shock. They carried two cardboard boxes, and when one of them tipped slightly, Broker saw it was full of banded currency. He didn't know how James got it back. Didn't matter.

  Konic pointed to the boxes. "What's your idea? You can't carry it. We'll tie you up and dump you on the beach."

  "Alive," specified Broker.

  "Of course." Konic smiled. "How about the beach at Haiphong Harbor? I have some old friends in the Hanoi Politburo who would love to find you in that fix."

  "Let's save that for another time." Broker removed a slip of paper from his pocket. "Deposit it in this account; you know how, without attracting attention."

  Konic viewed the numbers written under the name of the Hong Kong bank. "No problem. They won't be fussy. 'Pecunium non olent,'" he said, smiling thinly.

  Broker nodded. Latin—basically: "Money doesn't stink." Swiss banks chiseled the motto over their doors.

  Konic put the note in his pocket, moved to the corner, stooped and squeezed James's bloodless cheeks between his fingers. "You only made one mistake, when you thought you could do it in the first place. You can't steal from us. We can't allow it. If you can do it, anyone can."

  Then he heaved James back into the corner and nodded to Rasputin, who grinned and switched on the sander. This time he had a good hold on the handle. A grinding roar chewed up the floorboards. Inched it forward. The churning sawdust caused James's thighs to pucker and quiver. Shut it off. A test.

  The gunmen took a stance, one to either side, bracing, holding the handle and the steering column. Their bodies moved in unison, counting down. One. Two…

  James slobbered, "All I ever wanted was to go to Las Vegas."

  They hit the switch for real.

  From being in a war, Broker knew the action eye is a high resolution camera of contradictions; the lens is a geyser of adrenaline, and pictures come in slow motion. His only thought was of Keith, desperately trying to pull Caren to safety. Looking into her eyes. Feeling his strength go by inches. How long had he held Caren above the crashing cataract before she slipped from his grasp, leaving him to soldier on.

  And Ida.

  The roar changed from a gritty snarl to a clogged whine. As it bit into James's groin, the gunmen grunted. Rasputin seized the steering column and lifted. The machine drove a red swath up James's middle, threw chips of sternum, bit into the hollow of his throat. When the drum caught his chin his neck flapped like broken film on a reel.

  They tried to dodge the mess, the machine tore from their grip and twisted out of control. It raved in the corner, chewing the wall, caught in a jerky danse macabre with James's legs.

  Someone yanked the cord out of the wall. Cursed. Then just silence. A nauseating rug-burned stench. And the steady patter of El Niño on the roof. Konic turned to Broker.

  "What can I say? They are contract men, they'll be on a plane for the old country before midnight. They delight in savagery." He shrugged. "One of the enthusiasms Russia is going through at the moment. A growth spurt, not unlike your wild west. But I can tell—you think we're crude, huh."

  Broker didn't respond. He had spent worse nights.

  But not in recent memory.

  76

  Communication with Victor Konic ended. They wound more tape around his eyes, but sloppy, so he could see. And bound his ankles. Then they threw him in what felt like a van. They drove. After an hour, they stopped. Hands grabbed under his armpits. Took his feet. And heaved.

  The rain had stopped. But it was wet sand where he fell. A beach, because he could hear the deep, regular emptying and filling of surf. Smell the salt. The damp soil seeped into his bones. He ached. Old wounds, old injuries; the doors to all his compartments came unlocked. His living and his dead promenaded in the dark.

  The tape cut his wrists and ankles as he slowly, methodically, warred against his bonds. Sometime during the night, animals, dogs he hoped, sniffed near in tall grass. His movements scared them away.

  All night he listened to the pounding of surf. There was a fullness to it, a long roll. More resonant than the crash of freshwater on granite.

  It did not rain.

  Drenched with sweat and dew, it took him until dawn to work through the tape on his ankles. Finally, he freed his legs and stood up. A breath of light nudged the darkness. Like black fog, it drifted out to sea, toward the west.

  Sand dunes, tall wind-bent grass. Ancient rounds of

  rusted barbed wire. And a vast horizon. Superior made the same picture for the eye. But Broker smelled the sweep of Asia out there.

  Kit would still be sleeping in Minnesota. He hoped Nina was well. And that Ida Rain was still with us. He wondered if his daughter, if all the sons and daughters, would ever know about Uncle Keith.

  Going deep.

  Broker started to walk off the beach, out of the Shadow of Death. Into the thin sunlight. Stumbling, hooded with the tape, hands still tightly bound behind his back, he tried to get his bearings. Grids of soggy green fields stretched inland. There was a road. And an old house. Once elegant, now its shutters were rotted, the tiles falling from the roof, walls bleached of color by the salt air.

  As he approached the dwelling, El Niño marshaled the clouds. His shadow gradually faded on the gummy road, then vanished. A Mexican woman with four kids stood in the yard, behind a rickety fence rigged from wire and driftwood.

  She looked hopefully at the sky, debating whether to hang her basket of laundry on the clothesline. The tall Anglo walking toward her gate looked desperate, but it didn't seem to bother her.

  Broker stopped at the edge of the fence.

  "I need to use a telephone," he called from his mask of tape.

  She gathered the children to her, glanced around awkwardly. Alone out here. No car in the drive.

  "Telephone," he repeated.

  She shook her head.

  "Nine-one-one," he said.

  "Qué?"

  A lost pilgrim from the Boreal Forest, he struggled at Spanish. "N
uevo-uno-uno?"

  "Qué?"

  The sky grumbled. She looked up with a resigned expression, and it began to rain.

  77

  Twisting gladioli formed a lavender-blue arch over Ida Rain's hospital bed. Dreamy from medication, she leaned back against her pillows with a noseguard of bruises plastered in the center of her face. Like Broker had imagined, bandages made a white turban around her head. Tests would determine if she'd suffered long-term memory loss. The doctors didn't think so.

  Ida licked her dry lips, talking was still difficult. Broker held a sippy cup to her mouth. She drank from the straw.

  "How'd it go out there? I mean, afterward?" she asked.

  "You waking up and IDing James as your attacker helped a whole lot," said Broker, not real keen about reliving being grilled by the Santa Cruz cops, the Marshals Service, and the FBI.

  "Did you see the stories?" She pointed to copies of the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers on the bed.

  "I read them on the ride in from the airport."

  "Not often a guy like Wanger gets to use a line like: 'Real life is stranger than fiction.'" Ida attempted to smile.

  Broker took her hand, and they were quiet for a few beats. Then she looked around the ward, at the curtains, machines, patients, and staff in green gowns.

  "Reminds me of ER," she said.

  Broker shook his head.

  "I expect to see Doug Ross or Dr. Benton show up any minute." She stopped. "You don't know what I'm talking about?"

  "No."

  She tugged for him to come closer. When he did, she whispered in his ear. "I have this little secret."

  "You should rest," said Broker.

  "No," said Ida. "It's important I get this straight before I talk to any more cops."

  "Okay."

  "Tom—Danny—him; he told me he killed Caren Angland. He was curious why Keith Angland didn't contest his story."

  Broker nodded. "That's a secret, all right."

  "But it has nothing to do with why he attacked me?"

  "Not directly."

  "Indirectly?" She attempted to narrow her cloudy eyes. Couldn't.

  Broker figured: no memory loss, still sharp. The ninethousand-piece puzzle would be completed.

  "Something's going on, huh?" she asked.

  Broker nodded again.

  "But you won't tell me?"

  "Can't. Don't know myself, for sure."

  "Give me just a hint?" Same old Ida.

  Broker rubbed his chin. "How's your World War Two history?"

  "Try me. You might be surprised." Beaten to a pulp in a hospital bed, Ida sounded like Mae West.

  Broker said, "In 1942, Eisenhower briefed the press corps about the landings in North Africa—before the troops hit the beach. He assumed they wouldn't say anything because everybody was on the same side."

  Ida leaned back and smiled painfully. "Journalists aren't supposed to take sides…"

  "Right, for objectivity's sake, they should have solicited a reaction from Hitler," said Broker.

  "You, ah, have an example that isn't from the Stone Age?" Ida asked.

  "Maybe we're working on that now," said Broker.

  Slowly, she picked her words, "You'll tell me someday, when it's more just a story than a secret."

  "Deal," said Broker.

  "Okay, my selective memory loss has wiped out that part of Tom's conversation. Now we have our stories straight."

  "My turn. St. Paul Homicide is after me on this. How did Tom know we were working on those stories?"

  "Easy. He hacked into the company office network and read an e-mail about it."

  Broker shook his head. "I knew there was a reason I put off getting a computer."

  A nurse approached and told Broker that was enough. Ida had to rest.

  She touched her puffy upper lip. "You may kiss me goodbye, here, on this bruise."

  Chastely, Broker did.

  Lorn Garrison, waiting in the hall, asked, "How is she?" He didn't mean her medical condition.

  "She's cool," said Broker.

  They parted in the parking lot after making tentative plans to hunt together next fall. Soon, bounty money would start trickling into a Kentucky bank account.

  "So what did you tell them?" asked Nina over the long-distance connection from Tuzla. She referred specifically to Tommy Reardon at St. Paul Homicide; but she meant them all.

  "Same thing I told the Santa Cruz sheriff's department, the Marshals Service, the FBI, and the reporters. They wouldn't listen to me when I tried to make an argu

  ment about James being involved with the missing money. So I went on my own to find him. Except somebody was listening. Probably bugged the house. When I got the lead on James from Ida, they were right on top of me. Those guys wrapped me up the minute I knocked on the door."

  "So they were watching you?"

  "Must have been. The BCA had a crew up to check the house. They never found a bug, though."

  "Did you mention the couple down the beach?"

  "You know, they slipped my mind."

  "Sometimes I don't like talking to you when I can't see your eyes." Broker didn't respond. She didn't push it. They both reserved separate compartments to store bodies in. So she asked, "Does James change the case against the husband?"

  Broker smiled. "Jeff just heard through the grapevine—that Italian Mafioso, Tony Sporta, the feds' key witness—well, after seeing how well they guarded James in Witness Protection, he's changed his story. He's refusing to testify. So the case is getting more circumstantial all the time, and Keith has a sharp lawyer."

  "Can of worms," said Nina.

  "Yeah, well; I'm through sticking my nose in other people's business," said Broker.

  "Can I get that in writing?" They laughed, and then Nina asked, "How's Kit doing?"

  Broker watched Kit perform her peculiar stomp dance under the dragon. "You know. Normal kid things. It's a beautiful clear night. We're going out and learn some stars."

  They stood on Broker's favorite rock while the big water beat a rolling cadence at their feet. Six breath-stopping degrees filed each star to a point. The night sky was sharp enough to bite.

  "Ars," puffed Kit, echoing Broker's coaching. Muffled

  in Polarfleece bunting, only her eyes showed, specked with diamonds.

  He held her up, face to the south, where the mighty hourglass of Orion blazed. The constellation was a night anchor running back through time, to the first humans who raised their eyes above survival in the dirt.

  "See. The three stars in a row. That's the belt. And the big one down to the right, that's Rigel."

  To honor the advent of his daughter's new century—and for her mom and Caren and Ida—Broker pronounced, "That's Orion, Kit; she's a hunter."

  About the Author

  CHUCK LOGAN is the author of After the Rain and four other novels featuring former Minnesota undercover copy Phil Broker. He lives in Stillwater, Minnesota with his wife and daughter.

  Don't miss the next book by your favorite author. Sign up now for Author Tracker by visiting www.AuthorTracker.com.

  Praise for Chuck Logan and

  The Big Law

  "This one's a keeper…intriguing…original…Logan throws the pace into overdrive from page one and keeps it there…Readers will be hanging on to the edge

  of their seats until the final page."

  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  "Satisfying."

  Kirkus Reviews

  "I couldn't put this book down. Chuck Logan is a remarkably good writer…[He] not only gives us a miserable villian etched in acid, he gives us writing

  with flashes of brilliance."

  Charles Jaco, USA Today

  "One of the best new thriller writers is back with a twisty offering involving bad cops, ex-wives, sleazy

  newspaper reporters and the witness-protection

  program…If he were a boxer, he'd be a heavyweight,

  and definitely a contender."

 
; Chicago Tribune

  "An exciting tale well-told…Gives readers a fascinating look deep inside the government's well-publicized but less well understood witness-protection program."