The Big Law (1998)

by Chuck Logan

  "We brought all this stuff in to use in a pinch if we have to hide somebody." He folded his arms and perused Danny. "You sure you want to do this? It's going to be hot sweaty work."

  Danny grinned. "Hey, I eat this shit up."

  Travis squinted and cocked his head. "You sure you used to be a reporter?"

  "What's that?"

  Grinning, they went out the screened door, down the deck. The back lawn was knee deep in weeds and ended in an extensive oak woods.

  "What's that way?" Danny pointed past the oaks.

  "Just fields. It's pretty isolated here. That's what appealed to the asshole who used to own it. Remote. Good place to set up a meth lab. Except he was an idiot who flunked basic chemistry and he burned down his kitchen when we busted the place. We seized the house as assets. Same way we came into the truck out there. We were getting ready to auction them off when your case file came across my desk. And I got to thinking. We sell it to you on paper and you fix it up and sell it back to us—you'd have a legitimate paper trail to fall back on. Plus, you get a quiet place to work. Like in the proposal you put together during your intake interview."

  Danny smiled. "It's perfect." He pointed to the white house next door past the corral. "Who lives there?"

  "Couple of women."

  "Oh yeah," said Danny, making a long wolfish face.

  "Forget it, they're lesbians. This is Santa Cruz. Five percent of the county population is registered lickers."

  "That can't be right?" Out of reflex, Danny questioned the statistics.

  "Didn't say it was right, but those are accurate numbers. C'mon, we have some serious shopping to do."

  Travis was on a tight time line, so they made whirlwind rounds. Danny opened a bank account in Watsonville. A $6,000 money order from Acme Remodeling signed over to Daniel Storey launched the account. The money was combination living stipend and business expenses to get started on the house. Then Travis sold him the truck and the tools in it for a ridiculous $1,000. They transferred the title and registration in the bank and had the deal

  notarized. Danny was the legitimate owner of a 1989 Chevy truck. He had a bank account, driver's license, house, and a phone number.

  And the money in his coat.

  Danny drove his new truck, feeling his way down the unfamiliar roads back to Santa Cruz to drop Travis at the hotel. Travis left him with a county map unfolded on the front seat and the route back to Valentino Lane marked in yellow Magic Marker. "Okay. I'll call every day and be back in a week. Give you time to settle in. Then we'll go shopping for a computer. Slightest problem you call Travis." He waved, turned, and walked away.

  Danny put the truck in gear and drove from the hotel, turned up Ocean Street and traveled under mingled palm crowns and tall evergreens. El Niño was taking a lunch break. The sun peeked out and rolled a blue cobalt sheet of sky in back of the scattering clouds.

  People crowded the streets. Aging hippies on skate-boards with sparse ponytails, tourists, cyber millionaires, and Mexican lettuce pickers. And students showing lots of brown California skin. Shorts. Sandals. The clean air had been rinsed in the rain and mist, now the sun cured it. Dizzy on his freedom, he missed the turnoff from Highway 1 and had to backtrack. He stopped at a corner liquor store and bought a six-pack of Coors.

  Follow the yellow Magic-Markered twenny-brick road.

  He found his way back to the locked gate at the end of Valentino Lane, got out of the truck, held the keys to the truck and the house over his head and shook them in his fist. Like he'd been handed the keys to all the locks in all the prisons in the world.

  53

  Find James.

  How the hell do I find James. I'm going home to change diapers. Goddammit. Broker drove north, away from St. Paul, staring ahead into a Minnesota sky that could inspire Sibelius. He cocked an eye to his rearview mirror to see if any butternut-gray Ford Rangers with tinted windows were behind him. All clear.

  On his right, a flock of ravens descended on a snowcovered field like a shower of black arrows. Reflex thought. Something dead over in those trees.

  He continued his argument with Keith.

  So you decided to play Holden Caulfield. Catcher in the Russians. Intercepting suitcases? You assigned a role to Caren. The battered wife. She would tattle on you to a reporter and end your career. You didn't confide in her. Can't confide in anyone, can you? But she stuck her nose in.

  Then James had bounced weird.

  So why find James?

  The money is an excuse. James knows what really happened at the Devil's Kettle. He can blow your cover. So use me.

  So maybe I find a thread to follow. Maybe I find James. Then what, Keith? Your new Russian "buddies" kill him. More credit accrues to your mole account.

  Do I owe you that much?

  Broker shook his head. He was running out of separate compartments in which to store things.

  "You don't look so hot," said Jeff.

  They sat in Jeff's office. Kit hugged the Beanie Babies moose she'd acquired from Sally Jeffords. Broker debated whether he should turn in his badge and ID. He nodded his head in agreement. "Didn't sleep much last night. Motel bed."

  "Well, it's up to the FBI now," said Jeff. "Maybe they can tie James to those letters." His desk was piled with paper. Petty crime and nuisance complaints go on. Jeff had other things on his mind. He didn't mention the badge, so Broker kept it.

  He reached down and wiped Kit's runny nose.

  "Cold going around," said Jeff.

  Broker went home and called Garrison's office to see if the FBI had made any progress on the hate letters. An agent informed him that Garrison wasn't working there anymore and gave no forwarding information. No one in the office knew anything about the letters. Good-bye.

  His eyes drifted south, to the cabin on the point. The glow of a TV screen illuminated the windows. Come all the way up here and watch TV.

  The next morning he watched the snow melt.

  Saber-toothed winter was supposed to keep the riffraff out. But January slogged into the North Shore like a muddy green tramp, reeking of April. In town, piles of snow dwindled to humps of black cinders.

  The second day he was home, Kit woke up coughing, nose plugged. He spent a sleepless night holding her in his arms, fearful she couldn't breathe lying down. In the morning he called the clinic, made an appointment and took her in. Ear infection. Amoxicillin, three times a day.

  After another sleepless night, he looked out on a damp morning and saw more ground than snow. The next day it was mud.

  Kit's illness gave his mind a rest from thinking about Keith. A powerful urge to go buy a pack of cigarettes befriended him in the middle of the night. He put on his bathrobe, sat in the kitchen and fought back with frozen yogurt.

  Refilling his bowl, he opened the thick volume, DSM-IV, he'd purchased at a Barnes and Noble on the way out of St. Paul. He turned to the section on obsessive-compulsive personalities.

  Four days of antibiotics reduced Kit's infection, and Broker bundled her up to go grocery shopping. Returning home, as he flicked his right turn signal coming up on his driveway, he noticed the truck.

  Hidden in the trees, a hundred yards down the road. Right on the edge of his property. New Ford Ranger 250. Tinted windows. Confederate brown-gray. He grimaced, glanced at Kit, who was doing her windshield wiper exercises halfspeed in the car seat.

  He slowed and passed the vehicle. Damn. No plates. Dealer's sticker in the window. He hurried into his turn, gunned the Jeep and nearly rammed the porch because he was reaching over in back, unbuckling her seat straps onehanded.

  He swept her over the seat, and she squealed, thinking it was great fun. Up the steps. Plunged in his house key, turned the lock, was inside and reaching into the closet.

  One hand in behind the coats, the other high, reaching for the box of shells. Kit stomped at his knee, a tiny Samurai figure armored in Patagonia fleece. Broker loaded the twelvegauge with double ought buck.

  Now what.r />
  With no place to put her, he did the unthinkable, checked his house with her in one arm and the shotgun poised in the other, like an ancient dueling pistol. Satisfied the house was secure, he strapped her in the high chair,

  put the chair in the laundry room, and closed the door.

  Just for a minute, honey. Promise. She was screaming before he was out the back door.

  Broker checked the garage, the workshop, and then ran into the trees. Winded. Even without the cigarettes, he hadn't really worked out for months. Then he slowed. The truck was gone.

  Boot prints led from the tire marks, down the slight slope into the trees. They stopped above the cabin the Chicago couple rented.

  Okay. Get home. Breathing heavily, he dashed up the porch, heard her wails as he unlocked the door. Setting the shotgun aside, he freed Kit from the chair, pulled off her coat and tried to console her.

  "I promise, I'll never do that again."

  After he put Kit down for her nap, he tried to write a letter to Nina. "Kit's coming out of her ear infection. Breakfast: oatmeal, vitamin, bananas, milk. Reverses spoon and holds scoop for handle and shovels it in that way. Progress? Still sleeping three hours for nap. And averaging eleven hours at night. 8:30 to 7:30 A.M. Has settled on Bedtime Bunny as her sleep toy. Cucaracha Dog gets tossed out of her crib every night."

  Broker kept the letter to providing information about Kit. Nothing about Keith. Nothing about snooping Ford Rangers. Nothing about his curiosity about his new neighbors to the south. Nina had enough to worry about.

  In the evening, after supper, Kit stomped back and forth waving a shotgun barrel swab that looked like a cattail. "Puf" the Dragon loomed over her like a member of the monster chorus line in Where the Wild Things Are.

  Then she dragged her two favorite blankets, Bedtime Bunny, Cucaracha Dog, Kitty, and her tippy cup over to the fireplace. She set them down on the hearthstones, returned to the kitchen, seized the short step stool, pulled it all the way across the living room and positioned it in

  front of the fireplace. After recollecting her stuffed animals and blankets, she precariously mounted the stool and peered up at the Puf. Worry wrinkled her brow.

  "Oh oh, Daa Dee, Oh oh," said Kit over and over.

  Broker waved at her and went back to cleaning his .45 automatic at the kitchen table.

  Ida Rain called after Kit was asleep. "The Wanger story runs tomorrow morning. I can fax you a copy…"

  "Don't have a fax."

  "Well, then I can e-mail it as an attachment."

  "Don't have one of those either."

  "You don't have a computer?"

  "Everybody says that."

  54

  From mud-swept Cook County, Broker watched and read as Wanger broke the tongue story.

  A source in the Hennepin County coroner's office…

  A source close to the BCA Crime Lab confirms…

  A well-known Twin Cities forensic pathologist, who prefers to remain anonymous, told this reporter…

  Then Wanger challenged the FBI to disprove the allegations.

  The feds held a press conference. Faces washed out in the camera lights, backs against the wall, they stood for questions like candidates for a Pancho Villa firing squad. No Lorn Garrison in the lineup.

  They stonewalled. The second day, they waffled. The third day, Wanger flew to Virginia, to Quantico, and filed a story that forecast an official FBI correction about the "evidence." The next day the media rep in the Minneapolis office read a brief press release: DNA testing proved conclusively that the tongue in the bomb hoax delivered to the federal building came from a woman.

  "Does this change the government's case against Keith Angland?"

  "No comment."

  Keith Angland's high-buck criminal defense attorney held his own news conference in front of the Washington County Jail. He said he was encouraged by recent favorable turns in the discovery process. Cryptically, he predicted a jury might divine more than one interpretation for the events depicted on the famous FBI tape.

  Broker watched Keith's lawyer plant the first seeds for reasonable doubt.

  But it didn't solve Broker's—or Keith's—problem about James. He was down to one idea; he had one story left to leak to Ida Rain. But it was much thinner than the tongue exposé.

  The FBI would not report back on the hate letters, and soon they'd trace the tongue leak to him. Then there was the Ford Ranger lurking around. And the Chicago kids in the cabin down the shore.

  He was cool. No big thing, walking around with a toddler in your arms and a loaded. 45 stuck in the back pocket of your Levi's. People up here did it all the time.

  That night, he rocked next to the woodstove and read passages from the DSM-IV to his innocent drowsing daughter.

  "Check this out: 'Displays excessive devotion to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendship.

  "'Emphasis on perfect performance. These individuals turn play into structured work.

  "'Reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others. Stubbornly insist that everything be done their way.'

  "Narrowly applied, that could be Uncle Keith," Broker admitted.

  Or any overworked, underpaid, strung-out copper.

  Nowhere in the thick manual did they list the symptoms of, or a diagnosis for, hate, greed or lust. Or the laziness that led to criminal shortcuts. The book could excuse as much evil as it could trap. He yawned, shook his head and mused out loud: "Smile for the camera, say 'victim.'"

  At two in the morning, Broker got up to pee. Walking past Kit's crib he encountered a minefield of toys he'd neglected to pick up. Tiptoeing carefully, almost through—but then, ah shit.

  Dada dah da!

  Dada dah da!

  Cucaracha Dog. Stepped right on it. Immediately Kit bolted up and wailed. It took an hour to get her back down. They both overslept, so Broker was still in bed when the phone rang. He fumbled. Picked it up. "What?"

  "Hello, Broker, it's Ida Rain. How about that Wanger, eh?" In good humor, she perfectly mimicked the Far North argot.

  "They sure made a pretty pasty-faced bunch of suits on TV," agreed Broker. "Ah, Ida, can I call you back, I have to change my kid."

  "Girl, right? What's her name?"

  "Kit."

  "That's it? Kit?"

  "Nina named her Karson with a K. I thought Karson Pryce Broker sounded like a department store. So—Kit."

  "Gotcha. You have my number?"

  "On caller-ID." He rang off, attended to Kit's diaper, got her a tippy cup and then called Ida back. Her voice, still relentlessly upbeat, picked up right where she left off.

  "We blew everybody's socks off. We're going national with the story. We want more."

  "Well," said Broker, "there is one thing." He played his last card. And it was mostly bluff. "Angland put me on his visitors list at the Washington County Jail. He had a complaint. They'll do that sometimes. They can be wrong straight down the line, but they cling to one thing, a perceived quirk in procedure or a fact they think the cops or the press got wrong."

  "The fact being?"

  "That day, before Caren died, Keith and James had a

  shouting match up here. Keith told me James goaded him, said: 'She took your money.'"

  He could almost hear her connecting the dots long-distance. "Tom disappears. The money disappears…" Ida's voice trailed off.

  "You're the one who said he wanted to be someone else. Well, he is. And maybe he's better off than we know?"

  "Hmmm. And everybody was looking the other way."

  "You want to write that story?" asked Broker.

  "It's not a story. It's hearsay. But Wanger might do some digging, considering you give such good tongue."

  Broker's wince was almost audible.

  "Sorry," said Ida. But she wasn't. She was having fun. "I'll run it by my boss and see what he says."

  Broker hung up the phone, went to his desk, took the photo of James out of his briefcase, then removed
the picture from the frame. Then he picked up Kit. "C'mon. Let's get dressed and go to Duluth. Daddy's got an idea."

  55

  Monday morning. Ida Rain called in the middle of Sesame Street.

  "Broker, I'm sorry. But there's no story. Keith Angland won't talk to Wanger. His lawyer painted you as a nut up in the woods with a personal ax to grind. The editors backed off for now."