posing with some FBI guys and a pile of confiscated cocaine.
Kagin gave Keith over a million bucks. It’s on videotape and the sound is good.” She handed back the phone, turned to the cedar shake wall of the lodge and hid her face in her hands.
Tom took a deep breath while Garrison’s voice hockey stopped, changed direction and lost its sandpaper grit. And its distance. Tom knew that agents were trained to negotiate with tense people on telephones. “Tom. Are you all right?”
Good buddies all of a sudden. Real concerned.
“I’m with her. Angland roughed both of us up this morning.”
“You have to be careful. If it’s Paulie Kagin, he’s real bad news. Where are-”
“We took off. We’re up on the North Shore.”
Garrison yelled, not into the receiver: “Get onto the flight lines. Find me a chopper, ASAP. National Guard, Army Reserve.” He turned back to the phone and said to Tom,
“Where’s this tape?”
“We put it in a secure place. Look, I gotta figure a few things out. I’ll call back when I feel safe.”
“Wait. We got these calls from the paper. Tom…are you working on a story?”
“Lorn. That wasn’t me. Angland marched into the newsroom this morning and pushed me around in front of the whole staff. I’m working on staying alive. Can you get up to Grand Marais? We’re just north of there, at the Naniboujou Lodge. Angland’s up here and the sonofabitch is after us.
We may be moving around, so I’ll have to call you from my cell phone. Stay in contact with this number, will you?” his voice pleaded. Then he thumbed the power button and ex-tinguished the conversation.
Twin jets of fear and excitement propelled Tom past the lodge, out across the broad back lawn. Superior snapped at the beach a hundred yards away. Sleety spray pecked his face. Slowly his breathing returned to normal. Caren moved to his side.
“You can see a hundred miles. It’s so big,” he said softly.
“Actually about fifteen miles, then the horizon falls away.
You know, the curvature of the earth.”
She spoke matter-of-factly. Smart. Probably valedictorian
The only reason he was remotely close to these events was because he’d once written about something she’d done.
“The water’s real cold,” he said in a distracted voice.
“Stays about thirty-four degrees all year. Bodies don’t float.
Water temperature is too low for decomposition. They stay down.”
Violent waves smashed the shore. Not as violent as the scenario he was trying to concoct in his mind. All the icons dropped in place, almost in perfect sequence. He faced her.
Saw the wind strip away her flimsy scarf.
The angry husband had a motive to shut her up. He had struck her earlier in the day. The motel clerk, if shown a photograph, would testify to the damage on her face.
She’d told her ex-husband of the attack, that she was leaving Angland and felt the need of his protection.
She had assured a member of the press she had an incriminating tape of her husband’s collusion in the disappearance and alleged death of a federal informant. Now the FBI knew of the tape and were in motion. That left one thing.
He spun and asked point blank, “Does Keith know you have the money?”
She shook her head no. “It took me a week to find where he hid it after I first saw the tape.” She studied his face and asked, “Are you all right?”
“I was just thinking how it isn’t a story for me anymore.
It’s a tragedy happening to some people.”
“That’s an odd sentiment for a reporter.”
“I don’t feel like a reporter right now, Caren.” He studied her beautiful, bruised face, saw how it was chilled by the wind, almost like a carved ivory brooch.
Or a death mask. How would it look under a million tons of Lake Superior ice water? Effortlessly, he sketched the rough headline: “Dirty Cop Kills Wife Who Helped Indict Him.”
But he didn’t know how to make that happen. He tried to imagine himself holding her under water, out there, in that violent surf. Hell. She was stronger than he was. And that would still leave him walking around, the last person to have knowledge of her whereabouts. The loose end. Loose ends get yanked on, they could braid into a noose. An exercise in fantasy.
Still-almost perfect.
He turned and faced south; every atom in his being was drawn to the hidden cash. Magnetic greed. But it was probably dirty. Easily traced. Still, there were ways to pass cash.
He’d written about it.
But not without accomplices. Not in large amounts.
The fantasy was coy, danced close, then moved off like a third person and pranced on the frozen grass. It handled her all over and she didn’t know it.
He still had the story. With a resigned heave, he turned to her. “Do you really need to talk to Phil? The FBI will be here in a couple of hours.”
Caren nodded her head vigorously. “I want him to know that I’m doing the right thing for once. And, I don’t know-maybe I need a lawyer. Ask him what he thinks about the Witness Protection Program.”
Tom could still experience a piercing moment of compassion for her. “People like you don’t go into Witness Protection. It’s for crooks.”
“Then what happens to people like me?” she asked in a flat doomed voice.
They looked at each other, out of words. Tom had the impression they’d arrived at a place off the map of their lives.
They turned back toward the warmth of the lodge. Inside, Tom said, “Okay, I’ll go talk to him. Where is he?”
“Keith’s there,” she cautioned.
“I’ll just have to deal with it.”
She scanned his face dubiously. “Broker’s Beach is about four miles up the road on the right. There’s a sign. You can’t miss it.”
He left her sitting at a table, alone, with the ornate hall surrounding her like a gaudy broken heart.
20
Tom drove to Devil’s Rock, which was nowhere. Just a sign.
He pulled over to the side of the road fifty yards from the faded sign for BROKER’S BEACH RESORT-CLOSED. He took the packet of bills from his pocket. It won’t be missed, he told himself. He slipped off the rubber bands that secured the ends. Broke the paper strap.
The hundreds fanned in his hand. He counted, thinking there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed by money. That buried suitcase contained enough to manufacture a whole new life.
The count was one hundred. He’d never felt so strong, lifting $10,000 with one hand.
Except Caren knew where it was hidden. She would gush it all to this Broker guy. Maybe she had a count and would figure out the packet was missing.
A hundred hundreds and that was just one. The goddamn bag weighed almost fifty pounds. And now he’d have to put it back.
Looking up and down the empty stretch of road, he was stricken. What a wild desolate place this was. It wasn’t fair.
