by Chuck Logan
Kit stared at the carving, at Broker, at Garrison, then back at Broker. “Bring it here,” he said. She darted under the kitchen table, sat down and hugged the carving to her chest.
“Smart move, kid,” said Garrison.
“So, what-?” Broker started to ask.
Garrison cut him short, raising a finger to his lips. He smiled, reached over, plucked up the pen off the magnetized notepad refrigerator door and scrawled on the pad. Broker read in the failing light: YOU GOT COOTIES!
Garrison roved his eyes over the living room and drew a little bug on the note for emphasis.
Broker took the pen from Garrison and wrote: “Talk in the workshop.” Garrison nodded, picked up his coat.
Five minutes later, Broker had instant coffee in a thermos and candles. Garrison had moved his truck into the garage.
By candlelight, Kit was banging the carved bug on a bench in the workshop.
Broker snapped trim pieces of maple, shoved them in the woodstove with handfuls of wood shavings. He took a matchbook from the bench, lit a crumpled piece of newsprint.
The stovepipe creaked as the tinder ignited. He turned to Garrison.
Garrison said, “I started out following you. After your session with Keith. I wound up following the guys who are following you.”
A slow wave of heat melted the chilled puff of Broker’s breath. “What guys?”
Garrison crossed his legs. He sat in a distressed rocking chair, sipped his coffee, rolled a blue tip match in his lips.
He’d brought a heavy plastic briefcase in from his truck and balanced it across his knees.
Whack. Whack. Kit laid about her with the carving.
“Three guys, one dolly,” said Garrison, “in a VW van, a gray Saturn and a blue Plymouth Horizon.” Garrison rubbed his chin. “You talk to Keith in jail. People start following you. Gotta be a reason. So I don’t sleep for a couple days, drive a lot and get a lot of parking tickets. You had lunch with Captain Merryweather. You tooled all over the freeway system. They’re on you. They put you to bed at your motel and stayed on you when you got up. You talked to a guy in St. Paul City Hall, they drifted past, stood around chatting, listening. You met that woman in a coffee shop across the street, they sat at the next table. They followed you up to the big place on Summit Avenue, back to your motel in Stillwater. Then to Sergeant Street in St. Paul, where the woman you met for coffee lives.
“The Saturn followed you when you left the Sergeant house, but the Horizon and the VW stayed. So I hung with them. In the morning, the woman left for work. The young guy and the chick in the VW van broke in the house. The Horizon stood watch. They came out, split from the Horizon, drove the VW to the Maplewood Mall, left it, got in a black Audi. I followed the Audi up here.” He pointed out the window, south along the shore to the cabin on the point.
“Did you take pictures of them going in her house,” asked Broker. That impatient stamping sensation was back in his chest.
“I always take pictures; got my Nikon in the truck,” said Garrison. “Just costs more now to get them developed.” He popped open the briefcase. It was custom-fitted to hold a cordless drill, screwdrivers, electrician’s pliers, coils of wire, screws, staples, other stuff Broker couldn’t identify. A stack of glossy, black-and-white, eight-by-ten photos slid out. And two VCR recording cassettes. The labels were dated and numbered-two days last week.
Broker picked up the top picture. David and Denise, the
“lawyers” from Chicago. They were using Ida Rain’s storm door for cover as they worked on the inner door. The next picture showed them coming out.
Seeing Broker eye the case on his knees, Garrison explained, “I paid a visit next door. Nobody home. Picked up this kit. Thing is, there’s no recording equipment. Just a TV, VCR, and lots of tapes. I don’t know how he’s doing it.”
Broker said, “The woman in the Sergeant house is Ida Rain, she’s an editor at the St. Paul paper and Tom James’s girlfriend…”
“Little shit James never mentioned a girlfriend,” said Garrison with a salutary nod.
“I get the feeling it was discreet. And you never checked,”
Broker said pointedly. “Ida Rain is in intensive care at Regions. Somebody beat her head in last night. Left her for dead. St. Paul Homicide called. She had my card on her refrigerator. I’ve been talking to her.”
Garrison rocked, exhaled, reflected, “Knowing Tom James sure is hard on women, ain’t it.” After a pause. “You think she has a line on him?”
“She’s the kind of woman who gets under a guy’s skin. It’s possible. She’s my best bet.”
Garrison nodded in agreement. “Good call. It’s the most likely security lapse, James gets lonely. Phones. Writes a letter.” He stabbed a finger at the picture in Broker’s hand. “I don’t think they did it. That blond kid isn’t in the bone-breaking end of the family. He’s an electronics freak. I figured he wired you and Rain.”
“Family?”
Garrison palmed another photo, one Broker had seen before, in the cemetery in Wisconsin. Keith shaking 388 / CHUCK LOGAN
hands. The distinguished guy with close-cropped hair in an expensive suit. Garrison pointed to the lean gentleman. “Nice Chicago family. There’s miles of insulation between Victor Konic and the Paulie Kagins of the world. Got this monster brownstone on North Lake Shore Drive. Banking. Imports.
The blond kid is his son, David; degree in computer science, Stanford. The apple of his eye.”
“This Russian Mafioso sent his kid to bug me?”
“A bunch of weight lifters with blue tattoos on their hands would kind of stick out up here. But they’re exactly the guys who could have worked on the Rain woman.” Garrison shook his head. “If she knew anything, they know it now…”
“Maybe,” said Broker. “She’s tough. Another thing, if these guys are such pros why’d they make it look like a shivering junkie with a claw hammer did it? Why’s she still above ground?”
Garrison glanced out the window, toward the cabin down the shore. “If they come back, we’ll find out.”
Broker ignored the dark undertone in Garrison’s voice.
“So the bureau finally is taking me seriously about James and the money.”
“Well, it’s tricky, isn’t it. Someone in the bureau actively discouraged my attempt to investigate your questions about James. I got used. On both ends. James hustled me. And the bureau kept me in the dark. I don’t like being used. So I walked. Now I’m taking you seriously. And I’m here to tell you you’re going about this all wrong.”
Broker studied the FBI man. “Who are you, the Good Fairy?”
“No. And neither are you. You’re the guy who went to Vietnam, dug up a pile of lost gold and smuggled it out of the country. You find things. That’s why Keith put you on his list.”
Broker engaged the weary knowledge in Garrison’s eyes.
“What do you want?”
“Same as Keith, same as the people he’s got following you.” Garrison grinned. “Stop playing cop. Be yourself.”
Kit barged into Broker’s knee, looked up, thrust out the carving. He picked her up, tousled her curls, smelled her innocent breath. He had been a happy exile in babyland.
Hiding out, up here in his smuggler’s cove. Now, here was Garrison, making sense. Kit would have to go into a compartment for a while.
“How do I know you’re alone?” asked Broker.
“You don’t. But we both know who is. Way out there, deep, alone.” Garrison squinted. “Don’t we?”
Broker went with his gut. “Yeah,” he said.
Garrison nodded. “To get Keith off the hook you need a motive these Russian bastards can understand. Like making a few bucks off his misfortune.”
“Are you that smart? Didn’t you tell me cops need big hearts and weak brains.” Broker grinned.
Garrison shrugged. “Well, you know-you work the edges long enough, you come to a place where your edges intersect with someone else’s edges…
and you feel your way along the new edge and suddenly you’ve poked your foot into this little Manhattan Project.”
Broker met the ex-FBI man’s serious gaze, held it.
Garrison rocked back in the chair, swept stray wood shavings off his lap. His voice was quiet, resigned. “You may owe him. But clearing that debt don’t mean you can trust him. Not the way he is now. The only person you can trust is me.”
68
On the way into the house, they paused and studied the cabin on the point. Twilight pooled under racing Appaloosa clouds. Rollers thrashed the granite shore. No lights. No wood smoke. No black Audi. A phone company truck pulled down the drive. Too weary to even wave, the lineman patched the down wire and left.
Kit, trussed in layers of Polarfleece, resembled a ball of yarn with a tiny visor between a wrapped scarf, her cap and the hood of her coat. Alert little eyes peered out at the sudden, violent cold. Her lips emitted tiny burp-scented jets.
Broker’s own breath made a starched spinnaker in the rising wind.
Hatless, ears turning red, Garrison shook his head.
“Somebody should have told Keith the trouble with fucking heroes is they get people killed.”
“Watch your language,” said Broker. Habit. But he nodded, agreeing with Garrison’s assessment. He raised his chin toward the cabin. “If they come back I’ll roust them. I’m going to nail the guys who messed up Ida,” said Broker, hugging Kit.
“Do that,” quipped Garrison. He pointed to the moose in the Cook County insignia on Broker’s parka. “You got the badge and you’re wearing the outfit. Just walk in there, read THE BIG LAW/391
them their rights and give them the protection of the legal system?”
“Not what you had in mind.”
“We’re playing with Konic, we need some life insurance.
I was thinking more along the lines of taking hostages.”
“Well talk about it. What about this bug? Think we can find it?”
“They can afford the best-and the best is wafer thin, half the size of a playing card, receiver and transmitter. Let the guy who put it in find it.”
“If he shows up.”
They went inside, Broker peeled Kit out of her layers and opened a can of kids’ pasta rings and veggie franks, heated it on the stove. Half of it went on her bib, the other half made it into her mouth. Stranded at the sheriff’s office, she’d missed her nap. She was beat. He left Garrison in the kitchen opening a can of Hormel chili.
By candlelight, he dressed her for bed, then filled a tippy cup with milk. Kit stood at the window, staring, perplexed, at the frozen grill of stalactites. The bird feeder where she watched the chickadees was deserted, cased in ice.
“Dees?” she passionately wondered aloud.
He picked her up. “No dees, and Daddy needs a hug. It’s tough poop out there, kid.” As he rocked Kit, he pictured Ida Rain, turbaned in white, laced with tubes, IVs, hooked to machines. Her suffering was a direct result of talking with him.
He squirmed in the rocker, trying to get comfortable. It was the first time he’d put Kit to sleep wearing a.45 strapped on his hip.
When she was asleep, he came back to the kitchen, tried the phone, heard a dial tone and called Regions Hospital in St. Paul. After a few minutes working through another goddamned automated phone system, he reached a human, a nurse on ICU. He identified himself. The nurse told him that Ida Rain was stable but still comatose. Her pupils were equal. She showed faint responses to sounds and light.
The prognosis was optimistic but guarded.
Broker hung up. Garrison had retreated to the chair by the fireplace, where he meditated under the flickering dragon’s head. He turned his knife blade, testing it against his thumb. A damp split of oak hissed in the flames.
He put the knife away, came forward off the chair, stooped and stabbed a hooked iron poker at the burning slabs. Sparks boiled up against the sooty fieldstone. The firelight played in the dents and wrinkles of his face, the kind ones and the sinister ones.
Broker brought two cans of Grain Belt from the fridge, they put on their coats, went out through the studio, down the stairs to the beach and hunkered in the lee of a large boulder. Six-foot waves dotted them with spray. A groan twisted on the wind, then a long splintering crash echoed as another ice-loaded tree toppled in the woods.
Garrison turned his collar up, sipped the can, shook his head. “What kind of people sit out in the winter and drink cold cans of beer?”
“Been doing it all my life.” Broker put an unlit cigar stub in his mouth. Chewed.
Garrison asked, “How’d you figure out Keith went on the mother of all undercover operations?”
“Everyone assumed Caren called James. But she was at her doctor’s office when the call was made. I checked with Dispatch at the St. Paul cops. Keith was signed out to his home number. He set it all in motion.”
“See. Like everything. We never checked. Off chasing the big case.”
“What about you?” asked Broker.
Garrison said, “Hell. Go figure. They put a guy who’s three months from retirement on a complicated case like this.
They told me it was another dirty cop hunt, and they picked me because of my work in New Orleans and Atlanta. Look at me, Broker.”
Broker looked.
“Fifteen years ago, I went undercover in Meridian, Mississippi; had me a little store, barbershop in front, used furniture in back. I fit right in with those good old boys in the Klan.
I know my way around that scene. But Russians? What do I know about the Russian mob?
“They brought me up north and gave me Alex Gorski to run into St. Paul as a snitch. Right off, he suggests my bad guy is Keith Angland. I didn’t know this Gorski, his habits, his weaknesses. I did know he couldn’t get anything hard on Angland, just rumors, hearsay-then boom-he disappears, and this tongue is sliding around on the floor. I know a few people at Quantico. I found out that tongue didn’t go through normal channels. The lab work-up went straight to the director’s office. Same place the money you found went, and the hate mail. We didn’t investigate Caren’s motives”-he held his bottle up in a salute to Broker-“or James’s motives, even after you raised some interesting questions about the missing cash. The case against Keith was designed at the very top to slowly fall apart. Maybe get him a little jail time.”
“Then Caren comes in from left field and…”
“And gives him the break he really needs.” Garrison swatted his hand at the air in disgust. “Don’t matter how she did it-don’t mean to sound cold-Hell, guess I do-this is a cold business. Don’t matter how he did it either, drinking, calling the chief names, abusing his wife-point is, he did it masterfully, and everybody believed him. Konic believed it enough to recruit him.”
Broker nodded. “He was trying to get her clear. She didn’t run for her therapist or a divorce lawyer, like she was supposed to.”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is, before Caren died, Keith was building a legend as a corrupt cop who might kill a snitch-’cause, hell, we can’t prove he killed Gorski, and the Russians can’t prove he didn’t. It’s still suspicious, could be a setup. But everybody knows he killed Caren, right. Because James, the eyewitness, said so. Suddenly he’s got lots of credibility, and it’s more believable he killed Gorski, too.”
“Where’s Gorski?” asked Broker.
Garrison shrugged. “Probably going through WITSEC
orientation in D.C., with James.”
“It all comes down to what happened at the waterfall,”
said Broker.
Garrison hunkered forward, gestured with his bottle.
“Could be Keith overreacted. They fought. Somehow James took one in the leg. She fell in, Keith tried to save her. James freaked. But he knew about the money, so he sees a way to escape from his messy little life. He exaggerates, makes it into a war story. Hell, he probably believes Keith pushed her in.”
Broker recalled Keith, his icy rage, struttin
g in the cell.
“Keith…improvised. He’s taking credit for her death to give himself better cover. Almost like he piled her corpse on a barricade, to hide behind. Which only leaves him with one problem.”
“Yeah,” said Garrison. “James knows what really happened.
James can burn him. Keith reached out to you, didn’t he?”
Broker nodded. “He staged the fight in that holding cell, told me James had the money, to find him.”
“He’s using you. You know that.”
Broker thought of gold wedding rings jingling on Keith’s purple, swollen fingers. On the same hand with the claw marks, the tattoo. Help. That felt more personal than finding money. Something between them. About Caren. He glanced up at the glow of the night-light burning softly in Kit’s window. His safe place. It wasn’t protecting himself that worried him; it was protecting the space where he stopped and Kit started.
Garrison was saying, “I like to read old Civil War journals, stuff written by the actual soldiers. In one account-I think it’s a Union soldier writing about the fighting in the cornfield at Antietam-the word translated is used to describe surviving the point-blank fire. Well, Keith has taken up residence in hell, those wounds on his arm are his permanent passport.
He’s been translated. He’s different now. This isn’t law enforcement, where you catch the bad guy and provide him a lawyer.”
Garrison picked up a smooth cobble and threw it at a breaking wave. “Keith’s at war, and in a war there are acceptable casualties. Caren was one. Ida Rain might be another.
And you could be the next. If you do find James and lead these bastards to him, you won’t be coming back. And that pretty little girl sleeping in there is going to be out one daddy.
That’s why you need some insurance. You roger my last, soldier?”
They finished their beers without talking. Broker listened to the anthem of the surf tossing against the ancient stones.
There were no ethics in nature, no impossible missions, no heroes.