The Big Law (1998) Page 13

  Garrison smiled tightly. "Sheriff, have you ever talked, person to person, with Janet Reno." He poised his finger over the phone buttons.

  "Oh, c'mon," protested Jeff.

  "I shit you not, pardner," said Garrison offering the phone to Jeff.

  The silence in the clinic hallway sharpened the contrasting parties to the lopsided standoff. One side shivered from the cold with icicles literally dripping from their noses. The other exuded steely-eyed imperial high confidence. Warm and dry, they were organized in a wedge formation around James and the wheelchair. The agent who stood next to Special Agent Garrison wore body armor under her London Fog trench coat and rested an Uzi automatic on her hip.

  Jeff stared at the legal writ in his hand. He knew the judge who had signed it. Garrison, sensing an opening, closed up his phone and moved closer. "Look, I don't like it either, hotdogging it in your jurisdiction," he temporized.

  "The law—" Jeff insisted.

  "C'mon, Jeffords. There's the law and then there's The Big Law, know what I mean." He wrote a number on a card and handed it to Jeff.

  "I'm going to want to interview him," insisted Jeff.

  "Sure, that's my direct line," said Garrison. "Call me in St. Paul."

  They were done in. Out of fight. And the feds had the writ, signed by a judge. Exhausted, battered by the cold, sniffling and red faced, they stood by, numb, while the feds formed a human shield around James and rushed him out the front door. The doctor came into the ER, shivering. "The one in the chopper has frostbite on his fingers. He has

  to get to a full-care hospital. Either they take him or we call Lifelift out of Duluth."

  As the person formerly known as Tom James rolled past them he couldn't resist flipping Broker the bird and sneering, "Give my love to your fat little kid."

  "I told you," Broker seethed to Jeff between clenched teeth.

  "I heard it," said Jeff.

  When they hoisted Tom into the helicopter, he saw Angland and had a moment of fright, fearing Angland would accuse him, blab his version. Wrapped in blankets, Angland's eyelids just fluttered. Possibly sedated, he didn't seem to know where he was.

  Tom leaned back, savored the moment. He'd never been in a helicopter before. Guns. Radios crackling. Sizzling circuits. Star Wars lights winking on the control panel. All to guard him. This was like…Tom Clancy.

  25

  Tom had wind in his hair, playing chicken with the world, driving a coast-to-coast convertible orgasm.

  He had his own call sign: Tango. If he stepped outside the secure house, Lorn keyed his little black radio and said, "Tango is walking in the campus. Look sharp up on the ridge."

  Juice.

  How had he lived his life without it. Now he saw the world through the eyes of a tiger. Like in the poem. Stalking the burning night.

  His posture changed. The strength of his grip. The way he walked would change too, when his leg healed. He was becoming A Force to Be Dealt With.

  And he was gambling for high stakes, stringing a U.S. attorney along to make a deal, betting on the outcome of a videotape he had never seen. The clock was running. Keith Angland was in St. Paul Regions Hospital, under guard, recovering from hypothermia and frostbite. Tom had given up the locker key; an agent from Duluth had retrieved the video and was en route.

  He needed that tape to be as good as Caren said it was; so he could get his deal before Angland starting talking. If the tape was good, Tom could deny anything Angland said.

  C'mon tape.

  Tom had one real worry. Broker, the suspicious bastard.

  What if Angland talked to Broker? Could Broker and that North Woods sheriff find a way to screw up his deal?

  His flesh wound, just a deep scratch, was his proud badge of courage. It had been cleaned and freshly bandaged by a doctor earlier in the morning. The medic said he could walk on it if he used common sense. Garrison kept him under guard, at a safe house tucked into the river bottom at the base of a wooded bluff on the Wisconsin side of the Saint Croix River. They were about five miles south of the Hudson Bridge. Afton, Minnesota, was just across the thin ice. Tom searched for Caren Angland's house, a toy cube in the distance, against the gray mist of the Minnesota shore.

  Two agents stood guard on the cabin's first floor, trading off with two more who had cold duty in parkas, pile caps, and mittens with the trigger finger cut out so they could handle scoped rifles in the surrounding woods.

  The house was stocked to accommodate a family, so Tom found needle and thread in his room. The first night he carefully unraveled the lining to his parka and tucked the hundred-dollar bills around the hem. Slowly, carefully, he resewed the lining. The insulated padding disguised the paper and camouflaged the rustle.

  Now. Get rid of the envelope he'd used to hold some of the bills. He went into the bathroom. About to tear it up and flush it. Then he noticed the return address.

  MAJOR NINA PRYCE

  OPERATION CONSTANT GUARD

  APO AE O9787

  CJCMTF (CAMP MCGOVERN)

  That, he thought, might be useful. He tucked it in his pocket. Broker and his kid presumed to rob his glory. His desire to strike back at them was a flaw that would get him in trouble. It flared up once an hour.

  "Control that," he muttered aloud. First get your deal.

  Waiting.

  Lorn allowed him to check his voice mail at his apartment. Every TV station in town, plus CNN, had logged in, plus the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune, the other two big papers in the state. Some messages he saved to listen to over and over. Others he erased. The one from Layne Wanger he saved: "Hey, Tom, sure would like to talk to you," etc. Sprinkled between the business calls were hushed inquiries from Ida Rain:

  "Tom, if you hear this please know that I understand how difficult it is for you to communicate right now. How is your leg? We're all so proud of you. Just let me know you're all right. Love you. Ida."

  God. He curled his lip. Listen to her. Bubbling with…pride. She was probably yakking to everybody in the newsroom how she'd been intimate with Tom James. Hi Ida. Bye Ida.

  Erase. Erase.

  When he wasn't monitoring the calls he read about himself in the papers. The story was still sketchy. Mainly it came from the Cook County sheriff, Tom Jeffords, because no one else involved would talk to the press. In Jeffords's account, Tom assumed the role of mystery witness and victim in the events at the Devil's Kettle that resulted in the alleged murder of Caren Angland and the arrest of her husband by the FBI. Tom had been whisked into hiding by the feds because he was involved in their chain of evidence against Keith Angland.

  But the feds had taken Angland into custody for racketeering, not the murder of his wife. It was a trade-off. The feds could use the RICO statutes to ask for stiffer sentencing than the state could, even under its first-degree-murder statute. Proving first-degree murder against Angland would be difficult.

  And the feds weren't going to share their witness.

  Jeffords put it this way: "All parties assume Keith Angland killed his wife, but without a body, a witness, a weapon, or any material evidence other than a nine-one-one tape that doesn't mention Angland by name—it falls in a legal crack—technically, no crime was committed. We have to carry Caren Angland as missing, presumed dead."

  No crime was committed.

  More magic.

  The safe house was outfitted with a computer, printer, and copier-fax. Happily, the computer was on-line, so Tom could browse the Web. Mainly, he scouted out information on the Witness Protection Program. Or WITSEC, as Lorn referred to it.

  He didn't really need to bone up on WITSEC. He'd read a book about the U.S. Marshals Service in the last year, and he had a fundamental knowledge of the program.

  If the tape was good, he'd have no problem getting in.

  He'd be all right. Just had to be patient and don't do anything dumb. That's how most people got caught. They did something dumb.

  Tom's dumb hang-up was a recurring f
antasy. He imagined Broker's chubby baby, now big as a cow, sitting in the woods, at the cistern where he'd hidden the money. One by one, she ate the bills.

  That's really dumb, Tom, he told himself. But every hour the crazy image rolled by, like a goddamn crosstown bus.

  He found himself wondering if the kid was precocious and could communicate with her father. Tap her foot like a trained pony. Tell him what had happened in the workshop.

  Broker had put his hands on Tom's throat, wanted to hold him on suspicion.

  There it was again. Baby Huey, eating his money; crapping green like a goose.

  Broker wouldn't be so tough if he weren't worried about his kid all the time. Cops were weird about their kids. He'd done a story on a cop once who got in trouble for running background checks on the boy who was dating his daughter.

  He was somebody now. He didn't have to take shit from hicks. Maybe write a little something. Send a note to the fancy pants wife in the army, too. Give her something to think about.

  Don't mess with Tom.

  Tom opened a new file and began to play with words. Not the straightforward AP style that characterized his reporting. No, this was a mood piece. This was twitchy.

  Send a little love note to Broker. And the wife.

  Just a page to keep him up nights.

  Only mail them if he got into the program.

  His fingers flew over the keys, inspired. He went over it a few times, hit the spell check, polished here and there. He scrolled to a clean screen and typed Phil Broker, General Delivery, Devil's Rock, Minnesota. Then he typed the wife's military mailing address. Quickly, he printed out the sheets.

  The desk contained basic office supplies, which he took to his room, along with the printed material. Using a Kleenex to mask his fingers, he folded the sheets with the writing on it and slid them in envelopes. Then he used a scissors to cut out the addresses. The desk drawer had a Glue Stic, which he used to affix the addresses to the envelopes. There was also a roll of first-class stamps. Recently purchased. Madonna and child. The stick'em kind. No need to lick. Carefully, again employing Kleenex, he stuck one stamp on Broker's envelope, eight on the other.

  Now he just had to wait until he could sneak them in the mail. He slipped the envelopes into a copy of Newsweek and tucked them under his mattress.

  Lorn Garrison sat across the kitchen table, rolling a blue tip safety match in his lips. Ex-smoker. He watched Tom read the stories about Caren's death and Angland's arrest for the tenth time. Then he leaned over, gathered all the sections and piled them in the wood box. A Franklin woodstove, fire blazing, sat on a pedestal in the center of the room. Lorn bunched one of the sections and tossed it into the flames.

  "A little advice," he said. "Our recommendation carries a lot of weight with the U.S. attorney when he makes his decision to put somebody in the program. But the final say is up to the Marshals Service. And they are real sticklers for detail.

  "If the marshals see you drooling over your press clippings, they'll figure you've got an ego connection to your past. They won't take a chance on you. Catch my drift."

  "Good point." Tom nodded. But he resented the agent messing with him. He asked, "How long since you quit, Lorn?" The agent narrowed his eyes and Tom smiled. "Your fingers are still stained yellow from nicotine. Camels? Unfiltered Luckies? Pall Malls?"

  "Pall Malls," said Lorn. "And it's fourteen months." The agent cleared his throat. "This time."

  Tom hobbled to the windows and wondered if he could get Lorn Garrison to smoke a cigarette as part of his deal.

  Whole pack. One after another.

  Tom found it interesting, setting up housekeeping with FBI agents. They had been distant figures when he was a reporter. Their personal manners were always obscure behind a tightly controlled official screen. Now he saw them in a relaxed state. Because the safe house was remote, it was easier to do their own cooking than order out. Surprisingly, the laconic Garrison turned out to be the chef.

  This afternoon he planned to make spaghetti. He had slipped a red apron over his pinstripe shirt. And, as a concession to static duty in the safe house, he had removed his tie. The apron bulged over the big pistol on his hip.

  Seeing him standing there, wincing a little as he methodically sliced onions, reminded Tom of a scene in The Godfather. Cooking for an army of hoods who had gone to the mattresses.

  "What kind of gun is that?" asked Tom.

  "Pistol," corrected Lorn patiently.

  "Okay then, pistol."

  "Forty caliber."

  "Why not a nine millimeter? I thought everybody used nine millimeters?"

  Lorn looked warily from side to side, a conditioned reflex. "Nine millimeter is for pussies," the agent said phlegmatically.

  Tom grinned. Lorn was the kind of material that would make a great color piece on the changing of the guard at the FBI. Probably shook J. Edgar's dainty little hand when he received his badge. Wonder if he's ever thought about that dainty little hand buttoning on a dress. But that was too over the top for Garrison. That would probably get Tom knocked on his ass. So he pursued the gun talk: "Why for pussies?"

  Lorn smoothly moved the sliced onions aside with the edge of a long butcher knife and assessed a green pepper. "'Cause it's a woman's gun. Light, to fit in their nice little hands. Not too loud. Not too much recoil. Makes tidy little holes. You know; like we don't really want to hurt anybody." A serpent of mannered distaste coiled in his border state accent.

  "Can you carry any kind of gu—pistol you want?"

  "Forty cal. is the current policy."

  "But if you could pack anything you wanted, what would it be?"

  Lorn set the knife down and wiped his hands on a dishtowel. Then he carefully unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were heavy, thick with black hair, liver spots, and freckles. A fading blue tattoo in the shape of a globe, anchor and eagle showed just below his rolled cuff.

  "Forty-five." Lorn was emphatic.

  "Isn't that kind of dated?" observed Tom.

  "Yeah," Lorn grinned. "Make a hole in you the size of this." He held up a gnarled right fist.

  "You've actually seen that?"

  Lorn Garrison's piercing eyes passed right through Tom for a second and then he turned back to his knife and cutting board. Tom thought, So you've seen people shot. Big deal. I've been shot. And I've seen Caren Angland try to fly.

  Tom stood up. "I'm going out for a walk. The doctor said it was okay if I take it easy."

  "Take Terry. Just stay down near the shore," said Lorn.

  Before he left, he couldn't resist dialing up his messages one more time. The first saved message was from Ida. "If you need to talk, Tom, I'm always here…"

  He tapped number three twice, which speeded up the message, then he erased it.

  Agent Terry was a scrubbed, light-skinned black guy with freckles. Real in-shape. Like Tom was going to be when he became Danny Storey. They were about fifty yards down the beach, making slow progress through driftwood. Tom marveled how fluid his imagination had become. He fantasized Ida Rain's flawless body, naked and headless, skipping in the cold. Conversationally, he asked, "Hey, Terry, you ever screw an ugly woman?"

  Terry quipped, poker-faced, "When I was a little kid I remember seeing a few ugly Negro women. As I got older I might have seen one or two plain black women. But now, I know for a fact, there is no such thing as an ugly woman of color—so you must be referring to white women."

  Tom grinned. "But if you wound up with an ugly one—you think making her wear a mask would improve things?" For the rest of the walk, Tom gave Ida back her head—because she gave such great blowjobs—but he made her wear a mask.

  After their walk, Tom asked Terry how he stayed in such good shape. So, downstairs, Terry changed to a sweat suit and showed Tom the calisthenics routine he used on the road. It involved stretching, push-ups, crunches, a jump rope and weights. Terry was coaching Tom through the exercises, a little impressed because Tom was taking
notes, when cold gravel scattered outside. The agent from Duluth wheeled up to the house with the tape.

  26

  Lorn, Tom, and Agent Terry gathered before the TV/VCR in the living room. Front row seats. The others sat in back. Terry inserted the tape in a Play Pack cassette and pushed it in.

  "Okay," said Lorn. "Let's see what you've got."

  Terry thumbed the remote. The blinds were pulled. A pack of Red Hot Blues corn chips was open on the coffee table. Diet Cokes had been set out.

  The mosaic of static on the screen transformed into a basement still life featuring a couch, a coffee table and an easy chair. One minute passed. Two. Garrison cleared his throat. Tom began to see himself employed by Prison Industries at Stillwater Prison. As Garrison started to turn to Tom—