Chuck Logan - The Big Law

He put the knife away, came forward off the chair, stooped and stabbed a hooked iron poker at the burning slabs. Sparks boiled up against the sooty fieldstone. The firelight played in the dents and wrinkles of his face, the kind ones and the sinister ones.

Broker brought two cans of Grain Belt from the fridge, they put on their coats, went out through the studio, down the stairs to the beach and hunkered in the lee of a large boulder. Six-foot waves dotted them with spray. A groan twisted on the wind, then a long splintering crash echoed as another ice-loaded tree toppled in the woods.

Garrison turned his collar up, sipped the can, shook his head. “What kind of people sit out in the winter and drink cold cans of beer?”

“Been doing it all my life.” Broker put an unlit cigar stub in his mouth. Chewed.

Garrison asked, “How’d you figure out Keith went on the mother of all undercover operations?”

“Everyone assumed Caren called James. But she was at her doctor’s office when the call was made. I checked with Dispatch at the St. Paul cops. Keith was signed out to his home number. He set it all in motion.”

“See. Like everything. We never checked. Off chasing the big case.”

“What about you?” asked Broker.

Garrison said, “Hell. Go figure. They put a guy who’s three months from retirement on a complicated case like this.

They told me it was another dirty cop hunt, and they picked me because of my work in New Orleans and Atlanta. Look at me, Broker.”

Broker looked.

“Fifteen years ago, I went undercover in Meridian, Mississippi; had me a little store, barbershop in front, used furniture in back. I fit right in with those good old boys in the Klan.

I know my way around that scene. But Russians? What do I know about the Russian mob?

“They brought me up north and gave me Alex Gorski to run into St. Paul as a snitch. Right off, he suggests my bad guy is Keith Angland. I didn’t know this Gorski, his habits, his weaknesses. I did know he couldn’t get anything hard on Angland, just rumors, hearsay-then boom-he disappears, and this tongue is sliding around on the floor. I know a few people at Quantico. I found out that tongue didn’t go through normal channels. The lab work-up went straight to the director’s office. Same place the money you found went, and the hate mail. We didn’t investigate Caren’s motives”-he held his bottle up in a salute to Broker-“or James’s motives, even after you raised some interesting questions about the missing cash. The case against Keith was designed at the very top to slowly fall apart. Maybe get him a little jail time.”

“Then Caren comes in from left field and…”

“And gives him the break he really needs.” Garrison swatted his hand at the air in disgust. “Don’t matter how she did it-don’t mean to sound cold-Hell, guess I do-this is a cold business. Don’t matter how he did it either, drinking, calling the chief names, abusing his wife-point is, he did it masterfully, and everybody believed him. Konic believed it enough to recruit him.”

Broker nodded. “He was trying to get her clear. She didn’t run for her therapist or a divorce lawyer, like she was supposed to.”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is, before Caren died, Keith was building a legend as a corrupt cop who might kill a snitch-’cause, hell, we can’t prove he killed Gorski, and the Russians can’t prove he didn’t. It’s still suspicious, could be a setup. But everybody knows he killed Caren, right. Because James, the eyewitness, said so. Suddenly he’s got lots of credibility, and it’s more believable he killed Gorski, too.”

“Where’s Gorski?” asked Broker.

Garrison shrugged. “Probably going through WITSEC

orientation in D.C., with James.”

“It all comes down to what happened at the waterfall,”

said Broker.

Garrison hunkered forward, gestured with his bottle.

“Could be Keith overreacted. They fought. Somehow James took one in the leg. She fell in, Keith tried to save her. James freaked. But he knew about the money, so he sees a way to escape from his messy little life. He exaggerates, makes it into a war story. Hell, he probably believes Keith pushed her in.”

Broker recalled Keith, his icy rage, strutting in the cell.

“Keith…improvised. He’s taking credit for her death to give himself better cover. Almost like he piled her corpse on a barricade, to hide behind. Which only leaves him with one problem.”

“Yeah,” said Garrison. “James knows what really happened.

James can burn him. Keith reached out to you, didn’t he?”

Broker nodded. “He staged the fight in that holding cell, told me James had the money, to find him.”

“He’s using you. You know that.”

Broker thought of gold wedding rings jingling on Keith’s purple, swollen fingers. On the same hand with the claw marks, the tattoo. Help . That felt more personal than finding money. Something between them. About Caren. He glanced up at the glow of the night-light burning softly in Kit’s window. His safe place. It wasn’t protecting himself that worried him; it was protecting the space where he stopped and Kit started.

Garrison was saying, “I like to read old Civil War journals, stuff written by the actual soldiers. In one account-I think it’s a Union soldier writing about the fighting in the cornfield at Antietam-the word translated is used to describe surviving the point-blank fire. Well, Keith has taken up residence in hell, those wounds on his arm are his permanent passport.

He’s been translated . He’s different now. This isn’t law enforcement, where you catch the bad guy and provide him a lawyer.”

Garrison picked up a smooth cobble and threw it at a breaking wave. “Keith’s at war, and in a war there are acceptable casualties. Caren was one. Ida Rain might be another.

And you could be the next. If you do find James and lead these bastards to him, you won’t be coming back. And that pretty little girl sleeping in there is going to be out one daddy.

That’s why you need some insurance. You roger my last, soldier?”

They finished their beers without talking. Broker listened to the anthem of the surf tossing against the ancient stones.

There were no ethics in nature, no impossible missions, no heroes.

Just survival lessons.

It was an old-fashioned patriotic tragedy, playing to an empty auditorium in the land where Jerry Springer rated number one. The players rose above themselves, tried to do the right thing, and walked straight into the propellers of history. Caren, doomed, ironically, by her husband’s love, died blind to his real motives. Broker’s attempt to fill in at shortstop could still cost Ida Rain her life.

All because Keith had climbed on his Russian cross and decided to go out there and try to save the goddamn world.

They took four-hour shifts, watching the cabin down the beach. The next morning, still no electricity. No black Audi.

Routine kicked in. While Garrison slept on the living room couch, Broker put breakfast out for his daughter. Kit called yogurt “aga.” Possibly related to her word for spaghetti, which was “spaga.” Broker noted the new word in the journal he kept for Nina.

He heard a vehicle up on the road, glimpsed the mail truck through the trees. Early. Catching up after the storm. He carried Kit out to pick up the mail. Maybe there would be a letter from Nina.

When he opened the lid to the rural route box he found no letter from his wife. Just junk mail, a phone bill and a manila envelope.

After reading the neat angular printed name on the return address, his stomach churned, sweat popped on his temples: Ida Rain.