The Big Law

As the caravan from the Kettle drove up the Gunflint Trail, they saw the Blackhawk, dark and sleek, props drooping in the moderating snow like a steel dragonfly.

Two FBI men stood guard at the helicopter. The side hatch was open, and Keith, on the stretcher, was visible inside.

Like a Praetorian, one of the feds held on Uzi at port arms across his chest. The other held a small radio. The freezing mob from the Kettle got out of their cars and started toward the helicopter. When the fed with the Uzi stepped forward, Jeff, incensed, withered him. “Point that thing down range, sonny, or you’re under arrest.”

Helicopters. State-of-the-art weapons and communications gear in plain view. Broker and Jeff exchanged squints. The feds loved this. Called it going “high profile.”

“Who’s in charge?” demanded Jeff.

“Garrison. He’s inside,” said the Uzi holder.

They went inside. Nurses and orderlies stood in the corridor by the reception desk, stymied and blinded by a blaze of FBI badges. When Doc Rivard started out to check Keith in the chopper, one of the feds accompanied him.

“Wait a minute, hold on you,” yelled Jeff at the agent.

“FBI. Outa the fucking way,” the agent stated coolly, holding his badge up.

Jeff ripped off his fur cap and flung it on the floor. “My county, goldarnit. Nobody move.”

“Yeah,” said the very worked-looking state patrol trooper who’d partnered with Lyle Torgerson up to the Kettle.

“Yeah,” chattered Lyle Torgerson, throwing off his blankets.

Five more feds came down the hall in a pack, surrounding Tom James, who sat in a wheelchair. They were configured in a politically correct tartan that looked like big-city America slouching toward the millennium. One black, one Chicano, one Asian woman and two white men. Broker had always disliked government types and considered them beyond pigment and gender. Their pinstripes were branded clear through their skin and onto their internal organs.

James sat mum, clutching his brown parka in his arms.

He’d been hastily outfitted from the clinic lost and found. A blanket was thrown over his shoulders, old felt boot liners on his feet. A blaze orange wool hunting cap on his head.

Bare shins-one of them tightly bandaged-showed below his hospital gown. Broker was stunned to see a sturdy armored vest Velcroed around his torso. The feds formed a human barrier around him.

“What the heck?” Jeff pointed at James and thrust out his chin.

The Head Fed was a rangy six-foot-two silverback in a dark gray wool suit, a metallic silk gray tie, and two- hundred-dollar shoes. Well preserved, midfifties. His creased tanned face was out of place in winter. He affected a brown felt 1940s hat, the brim turned down over one eye.

Looking more like someone who drew his pay from Allan Pinkerton than from Louis Freeh, he said, “Hi, boys.” Out came the magic badge. “Lorn Garrison, Special Agent, tem-porarily working out of St. Paul. Who are you?” Easy smile over an easy southern accent. The motley crew of freezing Cook County lawmen appeared to amuse him.

Jeff, hands on hips, blocked their path: “What are you doing?”

“James is a federal witness. And I’m taking Angland in for probable cause. Exigent circumstances,” said Garrison evenly.

He withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his suit coat pocket and slapped it into Jeff’s hand. “And if that doesn’t cool your jets, here’s a writ of habeas for them both, signed by a federal judge in Duluth an hour ago.”

“Bull,” protested Jeff, “Angland is my prisoner and James is my witness.”

“Don’t look like you booked Angland yet to me,” observed Garrison. “Read that piece of paper and be warned.”

Broker lunged forward and grabbed at James’s throat.

“Where’d my kid find a hundred-dollar bill to choke on, you fucker?” James shied away, terrified. The biggest fed jumped forward.

But the powerful hands that spun Broker out of the way were Jeff’s. “You’re a civilian, Broker; stay clear,” he admonished.

Garrison pointed at Broker. “Who’s this?”

“He’s with me.” Jeff was mad.

“You better get him, and yourself, under control,” advised Garrison. He narrowed his eyes. “This is federal business.”

“Get off it,” stated Jeff. “We’ve just had a woman maybe murdered and you’re taking my witness and my suspect.”

Garrison whipped out a cell phone and consulted a small note pad. “It’s Jeffords, Sheriff right? End of the World County. Nowhere, Minnesota.”

Jeff waved his arm. His cops surged forward and took a blocking stance across the hall.

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