The Big Law (1998)

by Chuck Logan

  "Not right now. It's in my quarters."

  "Take good care of it. Bring it home."

  "What's up, Broker?"

  "I got a letter, too. Sounds like from the same person."

  "Is this some kind of revenge-taking by someone you rubbed the wrong way when you were a cop?"

  "I don't think so." Broker weighed his next words. "The person who wrote that letter didn't know me."

  Nina's voice brightened. "Well put. You're a die-hard analog cave fish, but not a cheater. I recall I had to hit you between the eyes with a two-by-four to get your attention. So what's it all mean?"

  "My analog cave fish deduction is—it's mixed up with Caren's death."

  "Hmmm."

  "Come home and we'll talk about it."

  "Okay. But can we have Christmas first?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Good. How many teeth does Kit have now?"

  "We refer to them as 'teef.' Two on top, three bottom, two in back each side, top and bottom."

  Nina gave him her flight information and said goodbye.

  Broker rubbed his hands together. Determined not to have Christmas ruined, he looked around the house and announced in a loud thespian voice, "Kit. Where's the tree?"

  She squinted at him. Tasted a strawberry finger. Darted her eyes.

  "We have to get the tree. Mommy's coming home."

  "Tee," she chirped.

  "That's right. C'mon, we're going to sneak into the woods and poach a tee."

  After giving her face and hands a quick cat wash, he stuffed her into boots and a snowsuit. "Lots of mysterious goingson around here lately, Kit. Sudden death. Sick letters. The first, last, best line of defense against the big black questions posed by sudden death is the make-work of ritual."

  He swung her under his arm and went out the door. "And getting the Christmas tree is way up there on the ritual list." Instead of strapping her in the car seat, he stood her on the passenger side floor. The top of her cap did not quite reach the dashboard. "Keep a sharp eye out for cops." Outlaws, they hit the road.

  Devil's Rock was hardly there if you drove fast. It had a post office and a volunteer fire department. But no place that sold Christmas trees. And anyway, buying a tree up here was like buying lake water to fish in.

  He drove south, parked off a hardpack gravel road that skirted Magney State Park, and slipped into the forest with Kit under one arm and a bow saw in his other hand. Deep in a thicket of tall spruce, Broker listened for a moment, then, reassured they were alone, felled an eight footer. He dragged it out, threw it on top of the Jeep and bungeed it down.

  When they got it home, and had the tree inside, he built up a fire in the Franklin stove and put a Christmas CD on moderately loud.

  Once the tree was fixed in the stand, boxes of decorations and lights were opened. Slowly the tree assumed the fantasy sparkle of Christmas. Broker rummaged among the bulbs and candy canes and removed a small, worn,

  handmade wooden loon. The paint was wearing thin. A frayed ribbon draped the neck.

  "Loon," he explained.

  "Lew," Kit pronounced in a burst of breath.

  He'd made the set of decorations for Caren, kept this one for himself. Patiently, he put it in Kit's hands and assisted her in hanging it from a branch.

  31

  Like a preview of things to come, the room had no windows.

  Tom wasn't sure what state he was in. It could be Wisconsin, Illinois, or even Michigan. He had seen license plates from all three states on cars in the lot at the last rest stop.

  His escorts didn't provide clues.

  They had driven the morning on freeways. He based this assumption on constant speed and very little stopping and starting. Finally they did slow down, stop, start and turn a lot. The van nosed down. Parked. The engine quit. He was invited out of the van into an underground garage. Red letters and numerals of the license plates. Wisconsin.

  Milwaukee, he thought. He sensed a large body of water nearby.

  The cars in the garage didn't look like a government car pool. It could be any building. He was taken up five floors in a service elevator and ushered down deserted carpeted corridors. Room numbers and ID plaques had been masked with tape.

  His wristwatch said 5 P.M.

  He bet Seymour Hersh never did anything like this.

  One of his escorts opened a door. When the door closed behind him tumblers clicked. Locked.

  The room contained a conference table and a blank blackboard. An empty cork bulletin board took up one of the

  narrow end walls. The other walls were bare. Blue shag carpet covered the floor, wall to wall. Three chairs were arranged on one side of the table. A single chair on the other. He figured the single chair was for the person being grilled.

  He put down his suitcase. It contained toilet articles, four changes of underwear and socks, two pair of slacks, three shirts and two sweaters, and an extra pair of shoes. The brown parka with the money sewn into the hem never left his hands.

  They'd told him he could take up to seven bags. Tom didn't even want the bag he carried. He'd only removed the bare essentials from his apartment when Agent Terry whisked him in on the midnight visit.

  Tom smiled and composed himself. Take deep breaths. Be appropriately nervous. Do not overreact. Avoid looking smug. Most people lived their innermost desires as talk or fantasy. He was through talking and dreaming. Being in this room proved that.

  He was a player now. And he felt like the man who drew the first circle. Simple and perfect. The only way to commit the seamless crime was with the unwitting assistance of the most powerful government on earth.

  Airtight. Mentally, he felt along the seams of his accomplishment, assuring himself that they were snug. He savored the picture of Angland in his cell—soon to be condemned—powerless. Up against that tape, not even his own lawyer would believe his protest of innocence in Caren's death. He was guilty of too many other things.

  The door opened. Two marshals entered the room, a man of medium height and a short compact woman. They both wore slacks. The man wore a tie. The woman wore a tailored shirt. Laminated clip-on ID cards hung from their belts along with blocky-handled automatic pistols riding high in nylon holsters.

  They introduced themselves. Norman and Sarah were in their early forties and had veteran cop faces, eyes set like tired rhinestones in nests of fine wrinkles. As he had with Lorn and Terry, Tom looked for signs that these two could sense a criminal. Scent an evildoer.

  "Sit, Mr. James," said Norman, pointing to the single chair. Tom sat. Adopting a patronizing tone, Norman admonished, "Do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into?"

  Tom had been prepared for this by Lorn Garrison, and by his own research. He had also read everything he could find on the Internet about body language and interrogation techniques. Direct, short answers. Maintain eye contact, but don't overdo it.

  "Who's the psychologist? Isn't that the first step on an intake evaluation?" he asked.

  "Ordinarily, yes. Psych and vocational interviews. But usually we're dealing with scummy criminals. Are you a scumbag criminal, Tom?"

  Tom laughed. Incredulous of the charge, frightened by the power they represented, a little uncomfortable because of the healing gunshot wound in his leg.

  Norman backed off. "Relax, you don't even have any outstanding parking tickets."

  Tom's sigh of relief was genuine. "I drive the speed limit. I don't walk against red lights. Even on empty streets. I read instruction manuals to the end."

  Norman and Sarah smiled a little.

  "And I know what I'm getting into. I read everything I could find on the Net about you guys. The suicide rate among protected witnesses is fifty times the national average, if that's what you mean," said Tom.

  Norman and Sarah exchanged glances. "Okay," admitted Sarah. "You're our first newspaper reporter. How do we know you're not crazy enough to go through all of this just to write a story?"

  "If I was going to write a st
ory, I would have already."

  "Maybe," said Norman.

  "Two people knew about that tape. One of them is dead. The other got shot." Tom smiled weakly.

  "And it's worth giving up your identity?" asked Sarah.

  "You betcha."

  "Convince me," said Norman aggressively.

  "How long have you been a marshal?" Tom asked.

  Norman steepled his fingers. "Eleven years. Eight years as a detective in Akron before that."

  "Uh-huh. And how many times have you been shot?" Tom raised his leg and yanked up the cuff of his trousers to show his bandage.

  That backed old Norman off. "Okay, Tom. It's like this. The kind of people we handle don't sit at desks and wear ties, you know what I mean?"

  "I think I see," said Tom.

  "The jobs our clients wind up in tend to be blue collar. You get your hands dirty."

  Tom nodded his head. "You can't take your résumé with you. It's harder for architects than for street hustlers."

  "You need to think about that," said Sarah. "And the idea that you won't see anybody you know again."

  "Won't see anybody I know again if I'm dead, either," Tom observed.

  "Think about it. All alone someplace. Working some entrylevel job, or plain labor to start. Could be boring. You really should think about it."

  Tom had thought about it.

  The beauty of this part was that he had to simply and passionately tell the truth. A thought occurred that was almost touching in its sincerity; if he told the truth, could it be all wrong?

  "I'm a forty-one-year-old white guy," Tom stated. "You know what that's like in the newsroom of the late nineties? I have one foot in the tar pits."

  "That's a little vague for purposes of evaluation," said Norman without expression.

  "They wouldn't let me do the story," Tom whispered.

  "Say again," said Norman.

  Tom cleared his throat. "When I contacted my editors about the story, when I first got onto Caren Angland, they told me to bring it in and work the phones from the office. They were going to give my story to younger staff."

  Sarah leaned back, elbow resting on the arm of her chair and gazed at Tom over her knuckles.

  "Biggest story of my life. I got shot covering it. And they weren't going to let me write it."

  "Oh-kay," Norman said slowly.

  "It's just not there anymore, the newspaper world I grew up in. Maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. I do know I keep getting asked to dance closer to the door."

  "What do you see yourself doing if you're not a reporter?" asked Sarah.

  "I want to write," said Tom flatly.

  "We, ah, kind of agreed that's out," said Norman.

  "Wait, let him finish." Sarah came forward, took a second look.

  "I mean really try to write. Fiction," said Tom, eagerly, honestly. "It's the thing I've dreamed about doing all my life." He shrugged. "I just never had the guts to go out on a limb and give it a real try."

  For all her training and experience, a wisp of sympathy floated across Sarah's seasoned brown eyes. Tom had expected more of a hearing from Norman. Like a barracuda cutting across a fresh blood trail, he turned all his energy toward Sarah.

  "And there's something else," he admitted in a flat candid voice. "I can't afford to take time off to try to write. But if I go into the Program I can skip on my debts—my child support, my credit cards."

  Sarah narrowed her eyes. "How do you feel about never seeing your kids?"

  Tom came a little forward, edgy. "My wife ran off with a guy who sells swimming pools in Arizona and Texas. Business is good. Who abandoned who?"

  "Whatever," said Sarah, seeing that it was a can of worms and Tom looked ready to stick every one of them on its own hook.

  "So how do you see this dream life of yours developing in real time?" asked Norman.

  Tom hunched forward, and a low-building intensity stitched his voice. He wasn't acting. He was projecting himself into the dream:

  "The FBI said I could get some help, like a stipend, a good used car, living expenses and office equipment. But that would be like living on the dole. I think I have a plan that would work."

  "Go on," said Norman.

  Tom nodded, exhaled, inhaled. Tried to keep his voice controlled, but it started to race: "It would involve investing some money. You set people up in business, help with loans and paperwork." He raised his eyebrows.

  Norman nodded. "It's been done. Restaurants, car shops, garbage routes. What did you have in mind?"

  Tom held up his hands. "I'm a fair handyman, carpenter. I did all the electrical and plumbing repairs on the house when I was married. And I had a well-equipped woodworking shop going in my garage. So…" He took a breath. "What if we bought an old wreck of a house and I slowly rehabbed it. I mean, wherever I wind up?" He looked quickly from Norman's face to Sarah's face.

  They watched without expression. Tom struggled a little for control because the irony of his words was bringing him close to laughter. He was basically stealing Caren Angland's house hustle for his own. He waited a few more beats and continued.

  "By the time I'd totally fixed up a place I'd have the trialand-error experience to do another one. And I would have a reasonable fallback line of work for a freelance writer. I could tell people I'm a recovering alcoholic. That way I don't have to be meticulous about job history. And—if I attended some AA meetings, I could pick up part-time work as a painter—I did some stories on AA once. It's full of painters. And, I could be working on writing a novel half the time."

  "You know, Tom," said Norman, "at the back of any book, there's the writer's photograph."

  Sarah shook her head. "If it comes to that. Something can be arranged. So what's your book going to be about? The Witness Protection Program?" Sarah asked.

  Tom grimaced. "You think I'm not serious."

  "Just kidding. No, what would you write about?" she asked, sincerely this time.

  "Ah, I thought, genre mystery. Create a private investigator who'd been a reporter, who maybe had some law enforcement training in the military. There are formulas for writing that kind of stuff."

  "Okay, Tom, I think we get the idea," said Norman. He and Sarah stood up in unison. "We're going to have a talk with our supervisor. Sit tight."

  Twenty minutes later the door opened, and Sarah came in with two cans of Diet Pepsi and a paper plate of holiday sugar cookies. She handed a Pepsi to Tom.

  "Merry Christmas. You're in. The fact is, you were never in doubt, with all the kilowatts Tony Sporta is generating in Chicago. A toast," she proposed, "to your new career."

  32

  Broker jockeyed in the chilly holiday bustle at a gate in the Duluth airport. "Frosty the Snowman" tinkled from the public address system in between arrival and departure announcements. He hoisted Kit in his arms to see Nina's plane land.

  Broker had done his army time in the first half of the 1970s, when airports were hostile to military green. More to the point, then he'd been the one traveling in uniform, not waiting at the gate with a baby and a diaper bag slung over his arm.

  "There's Mommy, there's Mom." He coached Kit when he saw Nina Pryce's lanky athletic stride swing up the gangway. Mommy wore army camo fatigues, boots and a soft cap. She carried a light travel bag on a strap over her shoulder.

  His carrot-headed Athena—she of the glancing brow and steady gray eyes—now sparky with an iron grind of fatigue. When she saw them, Nina smiled.

  She owned one good black dress, like his dad owned one good black suit. She wore the dress to weddings and funerals. She despised the army's Class A skirt and avoided it whenever possible.

  Broker had a feeling skirts weren't in Kit's future, either.

  Her field uniform was clean and faded. Her leather shiny but not showy. A black oak-leaf patch was centered on her cap. The black stitched Combat Infantryman's Badge she'd earned in Desert Storm was worn defiantly above the black jump wings over her left pocket. Late in coming. The fi
rst awarded to a female in the history of the army.

  But the prize she coveted, the crossed rifles of the infantry branch for her collar, still evaded her. She wore military police insignia.

  She carried herself with a wary reserve. Nimble and strong, she walked a tightrope in heavy armor. As an ambitious female officer, she had to coolly mask any outward show of femininity, which could be perceived as weakness.

  But she had to avoid being too cold, because she could be seen as robotic or mannish. She had to look to the care of her troops, but without any outward shows of affection that could be interpreted as "Mommish."