by Chuck Logan
The ex-husband’s resort was just minutes up the road. Tom really wished Caren Angland would just disappear in a puff of smoke. Presto. Go back for the suitcase, cross the border into Canada. No more Ida Rain sending him to school board meetings. No more child support payments.
But the fantasy was full of holes.
Caren faced away, her forehead leaning against the window. He touched the money packet next to his chest-saw himself walking into a casino in Vegas with that wad in his pocket.
“Turn in up there,” she said suddenly. A bridge, a sign: BRULE RIVER. The trees opened. Another sign. NANIBOUJOU LODGE AND RESTAURANT. The structure had the obtuse shape of an ornate barn roof rising out of the ground.
Tom turned down the driveway. Wooden lawn chairs froze on a stark band of cobble beach; under a slag sky, six-foot Superior breakers auditioned for North Atlantic surf.
“I’ll stay here, you’ll go ahead to talk to Phil,” she directed.
“I will?” But the fact was, he liked the way it gave him some control, keeping her separate from the ex-husband.
Letting him lead the play. He drove on, turned and parked the car; they got out, and Caren laughed as they walked to the office.
“What? he asked.
“Personal joke. I’ll tell you sometime,” she said.
“Tell me now.”
“Okay. This lodge is where Keith and I started, I guess you could call it. Later, he brought me back up here, to propose to me.”
Tom stopped and cocked his head. “He drove all the way up here to propose?”
Caren shook her head. “There’s a waterfall up there in the park.” She pointed to the ridge across the road. “That’s where.” She yanked at her wedding ring. The knuckle was really swollen, agitated by her constant worrying at it. The ring would not come off.
“Try some soap,” he suggested.
They entered and she asked the man behind the counter if she could get something to eat. The clerk stared at her bruised face; the sunglasses and scarf, given the time of year, were a gruesome costume. He told them the kitchen was closed until supper time. But she could get a cup of coffee.
Caren said that would be fine.
The dining room dwarfed them-towering stone fireplace, soaring walls and ceiling. Flamboyant reds, oranges, yellows, greens swirled around Tom; the batik, cutwork and quilting of an immense pagan fun house.
Wild, like his thoughts.
“North Woods baroque,” quipped Caren, joining him. “It’s Cree, the designs.” Then in a more serious voice: “Let’s go outside. I want to use your cell phone to call Phil,” her voice accelerated. Breathy.
Like a teenaged girl, thought Tom.
Outside, they stood in the lee of the wind. She tapped the numbers and all of her tension drained out in a loud hopeful,
“Phil?”
Keith Angland slapped a US West printout on the table. Not a regular billed account. A copy a cop could get pulled in a hurry. He pointed an accusing finger at an underlined number. Acid voice, “C’mon Broker-she called you this morning. What’d she tell you?”
“That you hit her, Keith. So I told her to get clear.”
“Clear up here, huh?” Keith pushed the sheet of paper in Broker’s face. Broker swatted the accusing hand aside. The phone sheet fell to the floor.
Jeff stood close, striving for an impartial expression, with his heavy hands on his hips and his weight poised on the balls of his feet.
When the phone rang, Keith and Broker were speaking at once and pointing fingers. Broker stepped over to the wall phone under the bulletin board next to the kitchen cabinets, picked up the receiver and barked, “What?” Then he sagged.
“Aw, Jesus.”
“What you got going on behind my back, asshole!” Keith seethed, suspicious. He lurched up, banged the table and crossed the room in long strides. Broker sagged, exhaled. It was going to hell. Keith grabbed at the phone. Broker sidestepped, still holding the receiver to his ear.
Caren’s voice, in the handset, said, “I need you to look at something.”
“Not now,” said Broker tensely.
“Caren, goddammit, where are you?” yelled Keith.
Behind a closed door, the baby cried.
“Oh my God, he’s there. Did you tell him I was coming?”
Caren’s tiny voice whined inside the plastic.
“No. Wait,” Broker addressed them both. Caren on the phone and Keith, who was dancing in front of him. Jeff shadowed them, his large square hands held up, signaling for calm. In the bedroom, Kit began to cry in long rolling sobs.
“Keep him away from me,” shouted the tiny voice. “He’ll kill me.” A male voice came on the line. He was shouting, too.
To quell the riot breaking out in his house Broker slammed the phone down on the hook and turned to face Keith.
Four miles away, Caren blurted: “He’s there, Keith is.” She pressed the telephone to her chest.
Tom took a deep breath, grabbed the phone and yelled,
“This is Tom James. I won’t let her near that guy, is that clear?” The line went dead.
She hugged herself, rocked in place.
“That’s it,” said Tom. “It’s FBI time.”
“Just don’t tell them where we are until I get to talk to Phil.
Okay?”
“Uh-uh. I’ll handle this from now on.” In the cold wind, his fingers left dots of sweat on the square number pads when he touched them.
“FBI,” said a mechanical male voice.
“Lorn Garrison.”
“Agent Garrison is in a meeting-”
“Listen, it’s Tom James. It’s about Keith Angland. It’s urgent, goddammit!”
Garrison was on the line immediately, “Tom, it’s Lorn.
Did you put some reporters on us this morning?” First-name basis.
Tom overrode Garrison’s question, “You want Angland?”
“What’ve you got?” asked Garrison. The patented, low-key all-purpose FBI question.
“A home video of him and some people. His wife made it. Like Rodney King.” Tom’s sentences were breathless. Run-on.
Garrison came back fast, chiseled. “What people?”
Tom covered the handset and asked Caren. “What people?”
Caren grabbed the phone and blurted, “Keith gave Paulie Kagin and Tony Sporta a picture of Alex Gorski posing with some FBI guys and a pile of confiscated cocaine.
Kagin gave Keith over a million bucks. It’s on videotape and the sound is good.” She handed back the phone, turned to the cedar shake wall of the lodge and hid her face in her hands.
Tom took a deep breath while Garrison’s voice hockey stopped, changed direction and lost its sandpaper grit. And its distance. Tom knew that agents were trained to negotiate with tense people on telephones. “Tom. Are you all right?”
Good buddies all of a sudden. Real concerned.
“I’m with her. Angland roughed both of us up this morning.”
“You have to be careful. If it’s Paulie Kagin, he’s real bad news. Where are-”
“We took off. We’re up on the North Shore.”
Garrison yelled, not into the receiver: “Get onto the flight lines. Find me a chopper, ASAP. National Guard, Army Reserve.” He turned back to the phone and said to Tom,
“Where’s this tape?”
“We put it in a secure place. Look, I gotta figure a few things out. I’ll call back when I feel safe.”
“Wait. We got these calls from the paper. Tom…are you working on a story?”
“Lorn. That wasn’t me. Angland marched into the newsroom this morning and pushed me around in front of the whole staff. I’m working on staying alive. Can you get up to Grand Marais? We’re just north of there, at the Naniboujou Lodge. Angland’s up here and the sonofabitch is after us.
We may be moving around, so I’ll have to call you from my cell phone. Stay in contact with this number, will you?” his voice pleaded. Then he thumbed the power button and ex-tinguishe
d the conversation.
Twin jets of fear and excitement propelled Tom past the lodge, out across the broad back lawn. Superior snapped at the beach a hundred yards away. Sleety spray pecked his face. Slowly his breathing returned to normal. Caren moved to his side.
“You can see a hundred miles. It’s so big,” he said softly.
“Actually about fifteen miles, then the horizon falls away.
You know, the curvature of the earth.”
She spoke matter-of-factly. Smart. Probably valedictorian and homecoming queen. Tom felt a powerful resentment.
The only reason he was remotely close to these events was because he’d once written about something she’d done.
“The water’s real cold,” he said in a distracted voice.
“Stays about thirty-four degrees all year. Bodies don’t float.
Water temperature is too low for decomposition. They stay down.”
Violent waves smashed the shore. Not as violent as the scenario he was trying to concoct in his mind. All the icons dropped in place, almost in perfect sequence. He faced her.
Saw the wind strip away her flimsy scarf.
Lady Luck with a black eye.
The angry husband had a motive to shut her up. He had struck her earlier in the day. The motel clerk, if shown a photograph, would testify to the damage on her face.
She’d told her ex-husband of the attack, that she was leaving Angland and felt the need of his protection.
She had assured a member of the press she had an incriminating tape of her husband’s collusion in the disappearance and alleged death of a federal informant. Now the FBI knew of the tape and were in motion. That left one thing.
He spun and asked point blank, “Does Keith know you have the money?”
She shook her head no. “It took me a week to find where he hid it after I first saw the tape.” She studied his face and asked, “Are you all right?”
“I was just thinking how it isn’t a story for me anymore.
It’s a tragedy happening to some people.”
“That’s an odd sentiment for a reporter.”
“I don’t feel like a reporter right now, Caren.” He studied her beautiful, bruised face, saw how it was chilled by the wind, almost like a carved ivory brooch.
Or a death mask. How would it look under a million tons of Lake Superior ice water? Effortlessly, he sketched the rough headline: “Dirty Cop Kills Wife Who Helped Indict Him.”
But he didn’t know how to make that happen. He tried to imagine himself holding her under water, out there, in that violent surf. Hell. She was stronger than he was. And that would still leave him walking around, the last person to have knowledge of her whereabouts. The loose end. Loose ends get yanked on, they could braid into a noose. An exercise in fantasy.
Still-almost perfect.
He turned and faced south; every atom in his being was drawn to the hidden cash. Magnetic greed. But it was probably dirty. Easily traced. Still, there were ways to pass cash.
He’d written about it.
But not without accomplices. Not in large amounts.
The fantasy was coy, danced close, then moved off like a third person and pranced on the frozen grass. It handled her all over and she didn’t know it.
He still had the story. With a resigned heave, he turned to her. “Do you really need to talk to Phil? The FBI will be here in a couple of hours.”
Caren nodded her head vigorously. “I want him to know that I’m doing the right thing for once. And, I don’t know-maybe I need a lawyer. Ask him what he thinks about the Witness Protection Program.”
Tom could still experience a piercing moment of compassion for her. “People like you don’t go into Witness Protection. It’s for crooks.”
“Then what happens to people like me?” she asked in a flat doomed voice.
They looked at each other, out of words. Tom had the impression they’d arrived at a place off the map of their lives.
They turned back toward the warmth of the lodge. Inside, Tom said, “Okay, I’ll go talk to him. Where is he?”
“Keith’s there,” she cautioned.
“I’ll just have to deal with it.”
She scanned his face dubiously. “Broker’s Beach is about four miles up the road on the right. There’s a sign. You can’t miss it.”
He left her sitting at a table, alone, with the ornate hall surrounding her like a gaudy broken heart.
20
Tom drove to Devil’s Rock, which was nowhere. Just a sign.
He pulled over to the side of the road fifty yards from the faded sign for BROKER’S BEACH RESORT-CLOSED. He took the packet of bills from his pocket. It won’t be missed, he told himself. He slipped off the rubber bands that secured the ends. Broke the paper strap.
The hundreds fanned in his hand. He counted, thinking there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed by money. That buried suitcase contained enough to manufacture a whole new life.
The count was one hundred. He’d never felt so strong, lifting $10,000 with one hand.
Except Caren knew where it was hidden. She would gush it all to this Broker guy. Maybe she had a count and would figure out the packet was missing.
A hundred hundreds and that was just one. The goddamn bag weighed almost fifty pounds. And now he’d have to put it back.
Looking up and down the empty stretch of road, he was stricken. What a wild desolate place this was. It wasn’t fair.
Being this close. He stuffed the loose bills in his jacket pocket. Angry now, Tom stabbed the gas and turned down the entrance road to the resort. The only satisfaction left was seeing the look on Keith Angland’s face when he told him his wife had ripped off his money. And the FBI was coming for his ass- and all because of me-Tom James.
The gray Subaru pulled into the drive and parked alongside the county Bronco, Broker’s Jeep, and Keith’s Ford. Broker watched a pasty guy in a baggy brown parka get out-longish hair, mustache, glasses, the same guy in the picture lying on his kitchen table.
A chair tipped, slammed against the plank floor. “Hey!
What’s going on?” Keith was on his feet.
Everybody was moving. Broker pointed to the picture, out the window, said to Jeff, “That’s him, he’s traveling with Caren.” Kit had quieted. Now she began to cry again in the bedroom. Keith yanked open the door. Jeff stayed with him step for step.
Broker was torn. One step forward and two steps back.
He confirmed that Caren was not in the car. The old Broker would have Keith on the ground by now. Jeff yelled over his shoulder, “Stay clear.” The new Broker went for the baby.
Outside, Tom James slammed the car door, looked around and pulled up his collar. Resort cabins, bleached by cold, with shuttered windows, hunkered in a rocky cove. A county sheriff’s Bronco, the big unmarked Ford, and a green Jeep were parked in front of a large cedar-plank home, out on a rock promontory.
Lake Superior lashed the shore. Spume flew ten feet. The air turned to shadow. Even Tom, an inside city dweller, could feel the storm charge jitter in the swirling clouds.
The door to the house opened and Angland pushed through it. A tall husky uniformed cop strode after him.
Seeing the tough hick lawman provided instant comfort as Angland bore down on him. Shouted:
“Where is she, scumbag?”
“Guess what, Angland, it’s FBI time,” Tom shouted back in a shaky voice, trying to stand his ground. The wind whipped the words away.
“Hey, fuck you,” seethed Angland, and Tom saw that he was working himself into a jerky Samurai rage, like an actor in a Japanese movie. The uniformed cop threw out a restraining arm. Angland put both his palms out, warding off the cop. “Stay out of my personal life, Jeffords,” he warned.
Personal.
The word tattooed into Tom’s brain. They still thought it was personal. Keith was fooling them. Oh boy. Caren hadn’t told them about the real reason…
A lean, dark-haired man with striking black e
yebrows strode out on the porch, holding a toddler bundled in a blanket. Another tough hick. The uniformed cop swung his eyes to the man on the porch and called, “Stay there, Broker.”
In that instant, when the cop’s eyes were averted and he took a step back toward the porch, Tom and Keith were alone.
Tom sneered at Angland, wanting to wound him. The words shot out, “Hey, tough guy. Guess what-she’s got your dirty mob money.”
For a second, Angland did nothing except tabulate behind his cold eyes. Then his face curdled. “I’ll kill you sonofabitch!”
Before the cop spun back around, Tom’s wild glance locked with the hard-eyed gaze of the man on the porch. He had seen the exchange with Angland and was now scrutiniz-ing Tom. But then the cop lunged and threw his arms around Angland’s shoulders. Broker sprinted, baby in arms.
“Hold her,” he yelled, holding the baby out as he pushed Tom toward a door in the side of the garage, opened it and thrust him and the kid through. “Stay put.”
Inside, a woodstove, wood shavings curled on the floor.
The walls held racks full of woodworking tools. The kind of shop Tom once dreamed of having. The kid squirmed and 106 / CHUCK LOGAN
started to cry. Tom ignored her. Voices surged outside. He went to the door, to watch the fight develop in the yard.
All big guys, in their forties. Tom sensed their slight caution, past the straight-ahead fury of their youth. Broker waded in and hooked one of Keith’s legs with his ankle and swept him off balance. But Keith, light-footed, recovered, shook them both off and went for Broker. And Tom saw that it was definitely Japanese movie time, the way they puffed up with macho-strut and put on their bad Kabuki scowls. Wow.
These two guys really hate each other.
Fighting over Caren, maybe.
He tensed forward, eager to see two men their age fight.
Especially these two. But then he became aware of the weight of the toddler in his arms-she had stopped yowling.
And plunged her plump hand into his pocket and now was fascinated by the fistful of hundred-dollar bills mashed in her small but strong fist.
“Hey, you little shit,” protested Tom.
As he shifted the baby’s weight to reach with his other hand, the kid thrust the hand up and out, throwing open her fingers. Bills erupted and fluttered all around. The kid squealed, distinctly, “Pretty-pretty.”