The Big Law (1998) Read online

  He told her, "Right now life looks like all fun and games with Grover and Elmo. But what they don't tell you on Sesame Street is it can get rough out there. People who don't eat their oats grow up weak." He held up a spoonful of oatmeal for her edification. "Kit, listen to Daddy: The weak die."

  Ring. Broker eyed the phone. Malignant plastic intruder in his house. He ignored it, sliced a banana in Kit's bowl.

  Ring. It was going to be a soap opera and he hated soap operas. Throw in stubborn people like Caren and Keith who had a knack for fighting dirty and soap opera translated to "domestic" on a police blotter. Messy, probably dangerous.

  Caren, always popular, managed never to have friends. And Keith was, unfortunately, the smartest pompous asshole Broker had ever met. Always popping up where you'd least expect him.

  Ring. He sprinkled cinnamon onto the oatmeal, stirred it with the baby spoon. Ring. The phone was an arm's length away on the kitchen counter. It was inevitable, so he picked it up and reminded himself. Be cool.

  "What?" he said in a resigned voice.

  "Broker? Yeah, this is kind of awkward, it's Keith…" Like real concerned.

  "Been a while," said Broker.

  Silence. Then:

  "It's Caren. She's in trouble. Need some help. She's in a real mess with this reporter from the St. Paul paper."

  "Yeah?…"

  "I think she might be headed your way."

  "Oh yeah?"

  Keith's voice lost its veneer of concern. "What it is—she called this number this morning."

  "What gives you that idea?"

  "I pulled the phone records."

  "Did you hit her?" Broker asked, striving to keep his voice level.

  "So she is headed there. Yeah. I slapped her. Mistake on hindsight, but there was provocation." Keith sounded like he was padding a police report.

  Broker grimaced. "Give her some room to cool down. You too."

  "I'm looking for my wife, not half-assed advice from you." Keith hung up. Caller ID registered an Amoco station. Probably already north of the Cities, on the road. Bastard always was sure of himself.

  "Shit."

  Kit, wearing oatmeal all down her chest, stared up at him with saucer eyes and a truncated brow. Soaking up prickly new nuances and adrenal grace notes. Anger.

  Broker mumbled, "You're probably going to get to see your first fistfight."

  "Chit," trumpeted Kit. She hugged a floppy, stuffed yellow dog that wore a sombrero, a serape and a beard of oatmeal. When you pressed the toy's tummy, it played a

  zoned-out version of "La Cucaracha." A present from his folks.

  Besides no swearing and no smoking, there was no hitting in Broker's house. So he needed help to referee Keith and Caren. He picked up the phone and called a friend, Jeffords, in Grand Marais. Good. Jeff was in his office.

  "Jeff, it's Broker. I have a touchy situation coming my way this afternoon. Ah, Keith Angland and Caren are having a mean fight and she's on her way here. No kidding. I'm serious…. She says he hit her…Yeah…I know. Haven't seen either of them for years. Must be bad if she's running. Yeah, guess he finally came apart. Nope. Keith just called and said she's got something going with a reporter. So it could be that again. Who knows? But they're both headed this way. If he goes crazy on me I have the baby here. No. Hey. Okay. I doubt they could be here earlier than noon. Okay. Appreciate it."

  Broker hung up the phone and lifted his daughter out of the highchair. "Looks like we're going to have a party. Uncle Jeff is coming over, too," he said.

  Tom Jeffords had copped with Broker in St. Paul, part of the freewheeling rookie "big five" that had included Keith, before he became a power-hungry asshole, and J.T. Merryweather and John Eisenhower. Jeff was the Cook County sheriff.

  17

  Caren staring straight ahead, tugging on her wedding band, driving eighty-five miles an hour.

  "What's Broker like?" Tom tried again.

  Thoughtful chevrons creased her forehead. "He never grew up. He's an…adventurer, I guess." The creases deepened. "He and Keith were partners for a while, way back, when Phil was a St. Paul cop. Then Keith used to be his boss. It's like—Keith loves giving orders. And Phil hates taking orders. And Keith was always trying out new approaches to improve Phil's attitude. And then there was me."

  She smiled gamely. "They don't really like each other much. Funny thing was, they made a hell of a team."

  Quite possibly she was impaired. Concussion perhaps. Out on the road, alone with him. With a priceless tape and at least a million dollars. Spiraled off on a tangent, reliving her first marriage.

  "Is he still a cop?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "He got rich. His folks have this cabin resort in Devil's Rock, he plays at managing it sometimes."

  Tom cleared his throat. "Is he quick-tempered? Calm?" Armed? Dangerous? Still in love with you?

  She removed her sunglasses, inclined her head and searched for words. "He used to watch that Robert Redford movie—Jeremiah Johnson—over and over. Every year, just before deer season. It used to drive me nuts."

  "Be serious."

  "I am. It drove me right up the wall, every November." She cranked her neck and stared at the rearview mirror. "I hope nobody is following us. Something bad always happens at the end of a car chase."

  "So, does he know about…the stuff on the tape," Tom thought out loud.

  "Not yet. I need you to act as go-between? To, you know, set up a meeting. Let him know it's serious and not just some dumb fight I'm having with Keith."

  Tom stared out the window at the toothpick wreckage of a cornfield. A woman has a fight with her husband. The husband hits her. She runs for help to her former husband. The two husbands dislike each other. The only thing they agree on—being cops—is that they hate reporters. Tom could wind up being a lightning rod for all the hot emotions zigzagging around. She could be dissembling—it could be a romantic triangle that involved at least one alleged murder, some crooks, more than a million bucks and an FBI investigation.

  What if Caren and Keith made up? It could happen. They'd have this tearful and probably sexually very hot reunion. Then Keith would get up, take a leisurely Clydesdale pee, and make Tom James disappear along with the guy whose return address was on the bomb hoax.

  They wouldn't let him write his story and this was for keeps. Jesus, Tom. You're too far out in front of this thing. You could get yourself killed. Something new in the shudder of fear beckoned him. Held him tight. The excitement.

  And then, a cool, veteran insight squinted down twenty years of seedy crime stories—I'm not the logical person to get killed, am I. Tom savored the dizzy drama, almost out-ofbody, looking down, watching his own thoughts. Plans were forming.

  Plans.

  He began this way, in a dry voice. "Pull over. We have to talk."

  She slowed and then turned off on a wide portion of shoulder. Tom said, "It's the money in the back. If there are bad guys and they follow us, we need to hide it."

  Her brow furrowed. She removed the glasses. "Not exactly secure back there, is it?"

  "No it isn't."

  "So," she said with aimless practicality. Her attitude was strong on mission and weak on details. Clearly she needed help.

  But then…

  There was Ben Franklin's enigmatic smile.

  He fixed his vision on a line of spruce across the road. A flock of crows detached from the trees and rose in a black scatter against the wool sky.

  "A murder of crows," said Caren.

  Her words yanked the hair on the back of his neck up on end. He jerked around and faced her.

  She shrugged. "My dad used to say that, back in North Dakota. There's probably a dead deer over in those trees."

  "We could put the tape in a luggage locker in Duluth, at the airport. And hide the money somewhere," he suggested.

  Caren considered, nodded. "Makes sense."

  "Where can we hide the suitcase? I don't want to be seen dragging it into a public
place."

  She mulled his question. In less than a minute, she had an answer. "Keith's dad has an old hunting shack up the Witch River trail, just past Lutsen. He moved to Florida after Keith's mother died, but he keeps up the taxes on it. There's a filled-in cistern back in the woods. We could put it there."

  "Good," said Tom, who didn't have a better idea. It

  would have to do. He opened his door. "Take a break. Let me drive the rest of the way," he said equably. They traded places, and as he put the car in gear, his eyes beheld the wheeling turmoil of the crows.

  Two tense, mostly silent, hours later they arrived in the port city of Duluth. Tom knew the area and drove to the airport. Caren didn't even blink when he told her to change seats and drive the car around the parking lot and pick him up at the terminal front entrance. He quickly found the security lockers, put the tape in one locker, dropped coins in a second locker and left it empty. He ducked in the gift shop to buy a Minnesota highway map.

  Outside, feeling more confident, taking control, he climbed back in the car and handed Caren the key to the empty locker. Then they studied the map. She pointed to a local road, just past Lutsen. The turn off for the cabin.

  They left Duluth and headed up Highway North 61. What if, he thought. What if I was alone in this car? Like the land, his thoughts changed, becoming rougher, wilder. Fields and oak trees were left behind. Granite-toothed hills and pine trees overlooked the road. What if she just disappeared? Superior paced them, an endless stampede of whitecaps.

  They stopped in Two Harbors at a Holiday, so Tom could buy some industrial-size black plastic garbage bags and a roll of duct tape. Caren bought a pack of Marlboros and returned to the car. Tom went to a public phone on the wall next to the fruit display. He stared at a pyramid of oranges, took out Garrison's card and called the FBI office in St. Paul.

  "Garrison's not in," said the agent who answered.

  "Tell him it's Tom James. I'm with Caren Angland and we're in danger. I'll call back in an hour. Make sure he's there." Tom saw it developing as a classic plot, not a news story; feed Garrison the broad details to start, save the best for last.

  Back on the road, in motion. Was he reporting it? Or was he living it? He stepped on the gas.

  Signs: CASTLE DANGER, GOOSEBERRY STATE PARK. BEAVER BAY and SILVER BAY, where immense chalk clouds balanced over hulking relics of the iron mining industry. The road was narrow, two lanes curling and dipping.

  Getting remote, wilder.

  Tofte, Lutsen, and then Caren showed him where to turn on the gravel road that twisted up a ridge. A small sign with the number 4. Away from the familiar highway, even with the windows up, and the heater on, Tom could hear the trees groan in the wind, an eerie sound that disturbed his citytrained ears. And he could feel the deep-woods chill. At Caren's direction he slowed and then stopped. A dark narrow lane carpeted with pine needles wandered into the trees. The access was barred by a logging chain strung between two pines.

  Caren got out and felt around the roots of one of the chained trees. She held up a rusted Sucrets tin. Opened it and took out a key. Tom forced the rusty Yale lock open and dropped the chain. Drove in. Put the chain back up.

  Tom checked the deserted road. Just the low howl of the wind, the heaving pine crowns. Alone.

  A hundred yards up the bumpy track they came to a sagging cedar plank cabin on a boggy pond. Caren's expression fit right in; it was the most desolate place Tom had ever seen.

  The cistern was another hundred yards from the cabin, in thick undergrowth and jack pine. It took Caren half an hour to find it. Stonework from another century jutted from the moss and pine needles. Rusted sheets of buckled metal bolted to gray wormwood heaped over the sides. A mattress spring. Orange, flaking refuse; decaying tin cans.

  Back at the car, Caren stood hugging herself in the cold while Tom dragged the suitcase from the cargo hatch. Acting as if he were checking the locks, he slipped his

  hand in, pulled out a packet of bills and stuffed them into the zippered, inner security pocket of his jacket.

  All right, Tom. You just crossed the line.

  Feels…alive.

  Then he doubled and redoubled garbage bags over the luggage as protection against water damage. When he finished, he secured the bundle with loops of duct tape.

  Carrying the suitcase on his shoulder, he was soon sweating and dizzy from exertion. She tapped him on the arm and spelled him with the bag. Amazing. She wasn't even breathing heavily.

  Aerobics at the spa. Gym rat.

  At the cistern, he carefully rearranged the rusty mess to make room for the bulky package. Then he eased the bundle into the cranny he'd prepared and placed layer after layer of corroded debris over it. The frozen ground was stiff as steel. They left no footprints. He took this as a sign.

  As he used pine needles to scrub the rust off his hands he wondered if he could find the place in the dark. He'd counted his steps back to the cabin. One hundred and six. When he emerged from the trees he took a visual fix on a wind-damaged birch tree to the right of the cabin. If he stood in front of the birch, the direction to follow through the trees was two o'clock.

  He realized he was staring at Caren's back as she huddled in her baggy denim jacket, smoking a cigarette. He tapped her on the shoulder and put his hand out for one of her cigarettes. He tore off the filter and lit it with her plastic Bic.

  First time in ten years he'd had one. He inhaled. Breathing poison felt right. Hot little sparklers of nicotine sizzled in his fingertips. But then—no. Smoking was back-sliding, one of Tom James's weak habits. He was moving away from Tom James. Moving fast. He stamped the cigarette out on the cold ground.

  They were all alone out here. He looked at his hands, which were nicked, raw and bleeding slightly from working at the cistern. The slight labor had raised several blisters.

  Weak. But getting stronger.

  Back in the car, Tom wrote down the exact mileage on a business card as they turned onto the gravel road. He made another mileage notation when they reached the highway. For a minute he studied the intersection, sketched a collapsed billboard for a landmark. Then he dropped the car in gear and drove north toward Grand Marais, and beyond it, Devil's Rock.

  18

  Kit was down for her nap. The dishwasher and the clothes drier hummed their safe lullabies. Stacks of clothes were folded with precision in two plastic baskets next to the kitchen table. Morning chores were done. That wasn't true. With Kit, the work never ended.

  When he and Nina had gone off to take on the world, she had quit the army, had been a grad student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. When they got back, she was pregnant and he thought…

  He paused. Aired out the resentment. Moved on.

  Banks of thermal windows lined the lakeside wall. A desk. Low shelves full of books. Gathering dust, except the ones about child rearing…

  The window casements still smelled of new maple and cedar. The whole house smelled new. Like Kit smelled new.

  Like his life did.

  An olive drab, rectangular metal box sat on his desk, the shape and cover latch identifying it, to a veteran's eyes, as a fifty-caliber ammo can. But this one was outfitted with a cedar liner. Broker ordered it out of a catalog, full of cigars, from a warehouse in North Carolina. He popped the lid, removed a corona and snipped it in half with a guillotine cutter he carried in his pocket. He put

  half back in the box and stuck the other half in his mouth.

  He patted his stomach where it strained slightly against his waist band. Off cigarettes for six months. Eight pounds over his best weight. He had been through hundreds of cigars and a lot of frozen yogurt. He had yet to light one of the cigars.

  He mulled over them, rolled them in his lips, then clipped off the end when they started to get soggy and chewed them and cut them down to a nub. An interim step. Insurance against reaching for a cancer stick in times of stress.

  Like now.

  It would be all right. Jeff would
be here. Steady Jeff.

  Seventeen years ago—God, that long—they'd all been up here, cases of beer, steaks. Steelhead fillets from the nearby Brule River on the grill. Sleeping bags lined up on the plank floor of the then one-room cabin. Jeff, Keith, John Eisenhower, J.T. Merryweather. Wives and girl-friends. Caren laughing.