by Chuck Logan
"Which is?"
"Believe me, not a reporter. Good luck," said John.
The night before Danny was to fly to San Jose, which was one mountain range away from his new home and life, he violated his no-red-meat rule and ordered a steak, french fries, and a bottle of red wine.
Later, he couldn't settle on an Ida Rain fantasy. Usually he pictured her in a mask, naked. Sometimes no mask, in the light. He went back and forth. Could not decide. Then. What if—
What if, when the time was right, he went back for the money and Ida. Brought her to California and, with his new wealth, turned a plastic surgeon loose on that chin.
God, she'd be unbelievable. Gorgeous.
The power of it nearly threw him off the bed.
He took the last of the wine and went out to his courtyard. His eyes moistened with emotion, imagining how it would be, slowly removing the bandages from her face.
How grateful she would be. How smooth her new chin would feel, sliding between his naked thighs, as her sweet auburn hair tickled his belly…
Thank you, Danny. Thank you.
And she'd cry, she'd be so happy and she'd raise her face to him and the hot salty tears would trickle down her perfect chin.
49
Late afternoon in the motel room off Highway 36. Last light leaked through the cheap venetian blinds and streaked the wall over the desk. Broker sat, eyed the telephone, sipped from a can of ginger ale, confronted the blank notebook page in front of him, fingered the message that had been waiting for him at the motel desk: Call back Ida Rain. Her work number. Put down the message. Stared at the phone again.
He picked up a ballpoint pen, twirled it, clicked the plunger.
Keith sat in a jail cell buried under an avalanche of lurid allegations, moral condemnation, and some solid evidence. The federal grand jury would indict. He would be charged. He refused to defend himself.
He wanted people to think he'd killed Caren and Alex Gorski, had tried to kill James. No remorse. Defiant. Strutting. Dabbling in jailhouse tattoos.
Wanted people to think he was crazy
Everyone except me.
Broker's hand dropped to the sheet of notebook paper. He drew a vertical line. Near the top, he added an intersecting horizontal line. Below the first line he added another horizontal, wider, parallel to the first. Farther down the vertical, he drew the short bottom bar. On a slant.
Bottom line.
The bottom line on the Russian cross represented suffering.
What do you want me to see that has to stay hidden from everybody else?
Broker stared at the symbol on the notebook page for a long time. He finished his can of ginger ale and opened another. He reached for a cigar, rolled it lightly in his lips. The phone rang. He reached for it.
"Broker? Dale Halme. I'm at your house." Halme was a Cook County deputy.
"Hi, Dale, you get in all right?"
"Sitting right here at your kitchen table with one crumbled phone log, shows call information for the eleventh and twelfth of December. Kind of smeared up, but legible."
"Strawberry jam. Can you make out any calls made between ten and eleven A.M. on the twelfth?"
"Right. Okay. Lessee, there's one. Made at ten-thirty-three A.M. Short, less than a minute. You want the number?"
"Yeah." Broker copied it.
"That all?"
"Yep. Thanks, Dale."
Broker hung up and immediately entered the number. A woman answered. "Barb Luct, East Neighborhoods."
"Hello, this is Cook County Deputy Phil Broker. I'm down in St. Paul cleaning up some details on the Caren Angland case. You're familiar…"
"Yes, of course; but you want the City Desk, not Neighborhoods," she said.
"No, I think I'm in the right place. Did Tom James pick up his calls on this extension?"
"He doesn't work here anymore," she said stiffly.
"But this was his phone?"
"Yes, this was his direct line."
"Thank you, you've been very helpful."
Broker chewed the cigar, was tempted to light it. The
FBI had dug into the phone log, determined a call went from Caren's house to the newspaper. And then they had rested on their shovels. No one took the basic step to verify whether Caren was home.
A ghoulish configuration arose out of Caren's death and Keith's silence. Broker had always had a gift for timing, for seeing into people. He moved in step with things, so when life accelerated, became tricky, or monstrous, he didn't trip. Whatever came his way, he accepted it at its own speed. With equanimity, the world produced malignant cancer and beautiful children, like Kit.
These qualities made him a natural for working nights in Vietnam. He'd been the best deep undercover cop in Minnesota. In his time.
If the job was merely charging the Gates of Hell with a bucket of water, send a young dumb guy. But if you needed to penetrate all nine rings, and get down past the sulfur, to the bottom, where Judas Iscariot was buried in the lake of ice—send Broker.
If you can't send Broker to hell, send Keith.
The second call came as anticlimax.
"Broker? Yeah, J.T.I checked the phone logs with Dispatch. Keith signed out to his home number between ten A.M. and noon on December twelfth. And the feds never ran a tap on his home line."
"Thanks, J.T., and ah…"
"Yeah, yeah; we never talked. So long, partner." Captain Merryweather hung up.
Broker placed the phone back on the cradle and rubbed his eyes. Then he studied the Russian cross he'd drawn on the notebook page. Remembered Keith, holding up his left hand—and now he thought: as if the wounds, the tattoo, the rings, were a shrine he kept to Caren. Broker said it out loud, "Caren didn't call James. You did. You crazy sonofabitch, you're…working."
And it got all fucked up.
50
Broker only had one move. He called Ida Rain.
"Is this business or pleasure?" she asked in a wry tone. Broker caught her still at work.
"If you've something for me, I have something for you," he said, being deliberately coy. As he spoke, he wrote in the notebook, under the Russian cross—Question: Help me? Answer: Find James. Tongue story!
She answered with wry ambiguity, "Gee, and we've only just met."
"You'll love it, what I've got," he predicted.
"I will, huh? Give me a hint?"
"An embalmer's syringe full of hot ink, straight in your heart."
Instantly practical: "Where shall we meet?"
"Someplace private, your house."
She gave him directions. She left work in half an hour.
He worked his way back toward St. Paul, took the Cretin exit off of U.S. 94, continued south down Cleveland Avenue and turned on Sergeant. Ida lived across from a junior high. Kids made bright blurs in the dusk, walking home in those absurd baggy pants. No snowball fights. No chasing and yelling.
Computer kids. Weak arms—different from the kids who climbed trees. Then he saw a suicidal skateboarder zoom on the ice.
Maybe not so different.
He checked the address she'd given him, found it, parked in front, got out, walked up the steps and knocked.
Ida swung open the door, looking fresh in a long, reserved burgundy dress after eight hours in the office. She ran her hand through her hair. "I just got home. Come in."
He entered. She took his coat and hung it in the hall closet. "Ah, watch your step," she cautioned.
Crossing the living room he had to detour around a large—as in six by five feet—jigsaw puzzle laid out on the carpet. About a quarter of the tiny pieces were assembled, framed by loose corners. A constellation of colored cardboard filled the surrounding room.
"What is it?" Broker asked.
"The Tower of Babel. It's a Ravensburger."
"How many pieces?"
Ida shrugged. "Nine thousand."
Except for the puzzle, Ida's house was neater than he could imagine living. The old rambler was dense with ribbed c
urlicued woodwork that insurance companies won't insure anymore because the replacement value was off the charts. She collected knickknacks. Teak elephants, Asian brass, preColumbian stone figures—probably souvenirs of world-trotting vacations. An old walnut-paneled Philco stand-alone radio sat in the corner of her dining nook.
A female bachelor's house. Orderly, free of dust, and just shy of severe.
"Is coffee right? Or tea?" she asked.
"Tea sounds good."
Her body swept like a sensual wand through her immaculate kitchen. Like the knickknacks on her shelves, her clothing was perfectly arranged, every crease and fold deliberate.
"Should I call you Mr. or Deputy?" she asked.
"Broker's fine."
"Sit down, Broker." She pointed to one of the two chairs at the small table.
Broker sat and watched the teakettle. And her. Being married to a prodigy of Title Nine, he now noticed women who grew up forbidden to sweat. Ida was tremendously physical but in no way athletic. She'd wear blue jeans, but never get them dirty.
When the kettle boiled, she poured water into a teapot and placed the pot, two cups, two teaspoons, napkins, two tiny ceramic wafers to hold the used tea bags, a creamer and a sugar bowl on the kitchen table.
Then she brought her purse from the counter next to the stove, sat down and steepled her fingers. "I'm willing to share information with you. This puts me in a ticklish ethical situation. I'm a very private person."
She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her purse. The copy of the sick, one-page letter he'd left with her.
"I resisted doing this because, frankly, I don't like where it goes." She placed her hand, palm down, fingers spread on the letter. "Tom could have written this. This part." She tapped a stanza toward the end. "About the rats. There's one particular grisly image. The gnawed bones. The marrow."
"Go on."
Ida nodded. "Two years ago, I worked the copy desk when Tom was general assignment. He covered an ugly story about an abandoned toddler locked in a basement in a condemned house. She'd died of malnutrition and animals got to her. He was working on a tight deadline and I edited his raw copy.
"He wrote a straightforward story until he described the condition of the baby's remains. Suddenly his language went into this over-the-top fascination with a single image. I remember it almost verbatim—along the lines of,
'in the harsh glow of a naked light bulb, the tiny wrist bones had been snapped and the marrow methodically scooped out.'"
Ida made a face, sipped her tea. "He can't help himself. It's like his signature. He writes a straight news story and then gets caught on one detail that he inflates with runaway similes and metaphors. The first thing I'd do with his stories was go straight for the overwritten item." She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. "Just my opinion. Not exactly proof."
Broker disagreed. "That's how they caught Kaczynski; his brother recognized the phrasing in the Unabomber Manifesto and called the feds."
Ida exhaled. "Tom is feeling sinister all of a sudden."
Yesterday, Broker might have agreed with her. Today, James's desperate motives were overshadowed, and he was reduced to a flawed little man who had blundered onto a huge chessboard. But Broker couldn't say that to Ida. Or Jeff. Or even Nina. He only glimpsed the barest outline himself.
"My turn," he said.
"Wait." Ida rotated her teacup in her long fingers. In a cool, wagering voice, she asked, "You don't like journalists, do you?"
Broker shrugged. "You know how it goes. The dog that bit me."
"Be more specific," she said.
Broker explained, "You don't tell the truth. Two of you can read a police report and come up with two different versions of the crime, neither of which are completely faithful to the original."
He picked up the tea cup and studied it in his hand. "The newsie comes and asks the cop what's going on. The dumb cop says it's an empty blue and white teacup with little flowers on it. The newsie goes back to the office and turns real life into a story with his name on it. Has to jazz it up. Find somebody to balance the facts from another perspective. Say they remember the cup when it was full once. If it's a big story, they'll grab at anything." He looked straight into her eyes. "Real life doesn't fit into tidy stories, Ida."
"Real life doesn't even fit into most lives, Broker," she replied, boldly holding his gaze.
Slowly, her slim hand reached across and gently disentangled the teacup from his fingers. She placed it flat, picked up the teapot and poured it half full. Her eyes swept his face. The cup was no longer his literal example. Now it was that powerful cliché: half full or half empty.
Broker asked, "How did you wind up with James?"
She touched her hair with her right hand and looked away. When she faced him again, her eyes registered the faintest glisten. "Maybe I can't compete with the Nina Pryces of the world for guys like you." She composed herself. "All I try to do is improve things," she said simply.
Broker waited a few beats, for the air to clear. Then he got up. "I'd appreciate it if you'd give what I'm about to tell you to Wanger. We go back a way."
"Sure." She bounced back from vulnerable fast as a speed bag. Stood up.
"Probably the place for him to start is the Hennepin County coroner's office. Apparently they have a direct line to the horse's mouth at the FBI lab in Virginia." He smiled.
"Tease." She lifted slightly, forward. Up on her toes.
"The famous tongue, that was mailed to the federal building? That they announced in a news conference as being a male tongue. And hinted it came out of a missing FBI informant…"
"Well?" She kind of twitched. A full-body, news-junkie twitch.
"They screwed up on the forensics. It's a woman's tongue. Probably from a medical school."
"No."
"Yes."
"That's a great tip. We'll try to get it right."
Broker nodded, they walked to the closet, carefully skirting the puzzle. She gave him his coat. As he pulled it on, his eyes swept the living room, and sitting on a cabinet shelf, he saw a framed photograph. Tom James's sincere face, glasses, longish hair, and mustache. A regular "Minnesota Nice" poster boy.
"You have an extra copy of that picture?" he asked.
Ida shrugged, crossed the room, plucked the picture off the shelf and tossed it to him. "He's all yours."
51
Danny, wearing his new contact lenses, his hair combed back, made money plans at thirty-five thousand feet.
The problem with cash was it attracted attention. Even relatively small amounts consistently deposited in a bank would arouse suspicion. Most successful laundering schemes involved other people. Setting up a cash-and-carry business, falsifying books.
Danny wasn't interested in trusting other people. Or lugging "twenny bricks" to the Cayman Islands.
He would fix up houses. He would write. And slowly. SLOWLY. Very slowly, he would take weekend trips to casinos. He'd just play the slots at first. The long-odds megajackpot slots. He'd invest thousands of quarters and dollars. Until he hit a jackpot.
It might take years. But once he did, he'd have a legitimate income. He'd pay taxes. He could invest. He'd become known as a professional gambler who was expected to deal with large amounts of cash.
How long did it take to drive from Santa Cruz to Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas?
Danny smiled and hugged his worn brown parka.
Twenny bricks. Flying with the sun. He pictured the barren cistern in the woods, above Highway 61, under a featherbed of fresh undisturbed snow.
He shut his eyes and imagined walking through the doors of the Sands. The sounds, the smells, the coin-song of the trays.
From the window seat, he watched the great plains pucker into the steep, shadowed wrinkles of the Rocky Mountains. Two more deputy marshals, who had taken vows of silence, escorted him to San Jose. The jet wallowed down through about a mile of clouds and landed with a splash in rain puddles under an overcast ear
ly afternoon sky. Sunny California had the El Niño flu.
In the small terminal, the escorts turned him over to a tanned man with a confident smile. Early thirties, he was part bodybuilder, part cowboy, in a lightweight sports coat, black T-shirt, faded jeans, cowboy boots and sunglasses. One of the escorts said, "He's all yours, Travis." And they ambled away.