The Big Law

Really should wait. But he couldn’t resist it. He flipped open his cell phone and punched Ida’s number. He recalled this vintage newsroom poster, a guy in a 1940s hat-like Lorn Garrison’s hat-with a press card stuck in the band, talking on an old-fashioned pedestal phone-Hiya doll, gimme rewrite.

“Ida Rain.”

“Ida, it’s Tom,” he tried to sound brisk, but he could hear his voice puff up importantly. He twirled the hundred-dollar bill in his fingers as he spoke.

“Jesus, you all right?” She didn’t hide the concern in her voice. Then she yelled, “It’s Tom, it’s Tom.”

Tom imagined the whole newsroom alerted at the mention of his name. Converging on the phone. Everybody talking about him.

New voice. “Hey, Tom, how’re you doing, man?” said Bruce Weitling, the city editor. More words in the greeting than he’d spoken to Tom in the last year.

“I’m on to something really big here, Bruce…”

“We’re starting to appreciate that. The guy who gave you a hard time this morning. He’s Angland, right? Mixed up in some kind of FBI investigation? We called the feds already and they were very cool, like, what ever gave you that idea?”

“No. No. No calls. I want to work out some ground rules.

First, it’s exclusive and copyrighted…”

“Tom, c’mon back to the office and we’ll talk. We need you to work the phones and brief Wanger and Kurson.”

“Hey, screw that. This is my story.” Tom was incensed.

Cheryl Kurson was just a kid. A girl.

“Sure it is and your name will be on it. We just want to field a full court press, if it’s big.”

“No,” said Tom calmly. Mine. Dammit. Mine.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Bruce’s voice was ruffled, in-dignant.

Tom punched off the phone. Caren was watching him, so he shrugged confidently. “They can wait. Let’s go.”

Caren nodded. “It’s a six-hour drive to get north of Grand Marais.”

“Good,” said Tom. He could use the time to think. Distracted, he started to slip the bill into his pocket, but she was still watching. Quickly, he tucked it out of sight, in the glove compartment.

16

Broker eyed the clock, pictured Caren on the road and envied Kit her world of friendly talking puppets and animals. She was watching them now, stamping from bare foot to foot as credits rolled on the television screen. Sesame Street ended with a furry monster tribute to the number nine. Kit poised, defying gravity, pitched slightly forward.

The theme music for Barney and His Friends came on.

“Oh-oh,” she announced with a judgmental furrowing of her eyebrows and forehead. She weighed twenty-one pounds, and a third of that was baby fat. He wasn’t kidding Nina, their kid was a diminutive Churchill, sculpted in pink dough, crowned with copper locks.

What if Nina’s lean, mean tomboy gene skipped a generation?

“That’s right, a big oh-oh,” Broker said as he handed over her reward, an Arrowroot cookie strictly forbidden by Major Mom before afternoon.

Their secret.

Since Kit, there were rules in the house. No smoking and no profanity. So he spelled out the curse: “Ef-You- See-Kay Barney and the yuppie puke he rode in on.” He knit his own thick eyebrows and improvised on his favorite line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “We don’t need no stinking purple glob of fat.”

He disliked Barney with a savvy passion he reserved for all the forces he intended to arm his daughter against. He’d seen fat, jolly, beady-eyed slugs like Barney operate around kids before. And he thought that the corpulent reptile was a fitting mascot for America at the end of the twentieth century.

Like half the country, the lizard was an overweight blimp; and he mouthed the kissy-ass victim-speak that was smothering the culture like a tree cancer.

Broker pointed the clicker and punched Washington Journal up on C-SPAN. Brian Lamb appeared, sturdy as the smiling Quaker on the oatmeal package on the kitchen counter. Broker put Kit’s high chair next to the kitchen table and ladled oatmeal into two bowls. Daddybear bowl and Babybear bowl. He blew on hers to cool it, then placed it on a Winnie-the-Pooh place mat on the high chair tray.

Hoisted her into the chair.

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 80 / CHUCK LOGAN

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