Jeff grunted. “Why? The county board will only send over buckets of puke yellow paint. All they seem to have.”
“So what happened?” asked Broker.
“John Eisenhower says hello.”
“How is John E?”
“Keeping the beds in his new jail full. Keith’s in one of them.”
Washington County Sheriff John Eisenhower had this new, overbuilt, twenty-first-century jail in Stillwater that boarded a lot of high per-diem federal prisoners.
Jeff said, “John E feels lousy about Caren. Like everybody.
He also said he talked to the marshals who brought Keith over. And this marshal said he talked to an FBI guy who talked to a lawyer in the U.S. attorney’s office who saw the tape.”
“Ah,” said Broker.
“Yeah, well; it’s two million bucks. The guys on the tape gave Keith two mil. Hundred-dollar bills in a suitcase. Keith apparently has been running interference for huge cocaine shipments. He also gave them a picture of an FBI snitch who’d penetrated the Russian mob. And Keith’s on the tape saying he’ll get rid of the snitch. That Gorski guy. The one the feds say had his tongue mailed to the Federal Building.
Good sound, clear pictures. Caren hid a video camera in her laundry room pointing out to Keith’s den in the basement.”
“Anybody hear what happened to the money?” asked Broker.
“Nope.”
“Anybody have any idea why Caren was coming to see me with the tape?”
“No again.”
A cry in the hall interrupted them. Madge walked in and handed an aromatic Kit to Broker, who still had the diaper bag over his shoulder. “Sorry,” said Madge. “Don’t do diapers at work.” She left the office.
Broker laid Kit down on Jeff’s desk, removed her boots, snow pants, unsnapped her Onesie, positioned a fresh Huggies under her and pulled the tabs on the sodden one she was wearing.
“Fierce green poop,” admired Jeff.
“Peas. She ate a lot of them last night.”
“Or Kermit the Frog met an awful fate in there,” said Jeff.
Gingerly, Broker tucked the overflowing diaper into a plastic bag, put it in the diaper bag and rigged Kit’s clothes.
Then sat her on his lap. She grabbed the first thing within reach, a Vietnam Era forty-millimeter grenade launcher round, used as a paperweight.
“So, what about Tom James?” asked Broker.
Jeff cocked his head to the side. “You remember that agent who ran the show up here, Garrison?”
Broker nodded. “Old-style G-man.”
“I called him up, and he’s at least up front about it. He says, ‘Oh yeah, that guy. We don’t have him. Don’t even need him for chain of evidence. This Sporta flipped. And Sporta live on the stand is better than some tape. We turned James over to the U.S. Marshals Service.’
“So I call the U.S. Marshals in Minneapolis, and these guys have no sense of humor at all. They just say, ‘We’re not authorized to discuss our caseload.’ They gave me the number of their PR office in DC.” Jeff exhaled. “Sounds like James went through the looking glass.”
“Funny, don’t you think? Most reporters would kill to write a story like that. He goes into Witness Protection.”
“Most reporters don’t stop a bullet. Maybe getting shot made a believer out of him,” said Jeff.
Broker scratched his chin. “But how the hell did a zero like James get on to Caren in the first place?”
“Don’t know.”
Kit dropped the grenade round. As it clattered to the floor, both men flinched. Broker picked it up, handed it to Jeff, who put it out of sight, in a drawer.
Broker sat up in his chair. “That gray Subaru Caren drove up here. What happened to it?”
Jeff shrugged. “Towed it in. Have it parked out back. Hertz is supposed to send somebody to pick it up. No one showed yet. Probably the holidays. Never got the keys.” Jeff opened his top drawer, dug around, held up a door slip.
The station wagon was just outside the back door. Jeff inserted the slip and unlatched the driver’s side, reached over and popped the passenger door. Broker placed Kit in the back and began looking into cracks, under seats, feeling in the cushion crevices in the seats. Shards of Caren’s pill bottle were scattered on the floor carpet. He picked up a triangle of plastic with the prescription label attached. Read the doctor’s name: Dr. Ruth Nelson. Slipped the label in his pocket.
Jeff opened the glove compartment. “No way,” he said.
The unwrinkled hundred-dollar bill lay on top of a neat plastic folder containing rental information. Jeff removed it and showed it to Broker.
“This James guy seems to leak hundred-dollar bills,” said Broker.
29
Tom traveled in a black velvet casket. That’s what the inside of the U.S. Marshals Chevy van resembled; it was totally masked with black material to shut out light and sound. Part casket, part birth canal. Tom James was going to burial.
Danny Storey was being born.
Lorn Garrison and Agent Terry had said good-bye and wished him luck. The farewell was hasty, the agents were rushed; off to join the raid being mounted against Red, White and Green Pizza Parlors throughout the Twin Cities.
Tom was touched when Agent Terry gave him his bag of workout equipment. The canvas satchel contained hand weights, leg weights, a jump rope and two hand squeezers.
Tom sat in the plush van and pumped a hand spring in each fist until his forearms ached.
Two U.S. marshals were driving him to his intake interview. They were polite young men with short haircuts, of a lean body type; ex-military, Tom thought. They didn’t wear suits like the FBI but dressed like normal people, except for the big Glock pistols under their jackets.
The van’s front seat was sealed off from the locked rear compartment physically but not visually. The marshals sitting in front could watch Tom through a pane of two-way mirror.
Tom had a low camp bed, magazines, a CD player, earphones and a rack of CDs. A plastic cooler was stocked with ice and cans of pop. At intervals a hatch would slide open next to the mirror and one of the marshals asked how he was doing. Did he need to use the john?
They obviously knew the stretch of road because they always asked him when they were close to a rest stop.
At supper time, they consulted Tom about what kind of menu he preferred, but he had to eat it, take-out, locked inside the van. Later, when they stopped at a motel, the van pulled up right next to the door; the marshals stood on either side, and Tom stepped from the vehicle to the door.
They stayed in the same room. Tom asked and was told this was normal procedure until he was out of the “Danger Zone,” a radius of unspecified miles around the Twin Cities.
Just as well. Had he been left alone he would have used the phone. To call Ida Rain. Just to hear her voice and fantasize a little. Then hang up.
He could wait.
In the morning, Tom showered and then inspected his slack body in the mirror over the sink counter. He couldn’t do anything about the flab immediately. But, on impulse, he shaved off his soft-looking mustache. He left his glasses off.
First thing he’d ask for: contacts.
