Now Caren was bringing them together.
His senior year in high school, Broker had tested himself against the turns of Highway 61-sipping a beer and trying to puzzle out the lyrics to homeboy Bobby Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited.” Now the road was losing its two- lane charm.
New construction widened it. Tunnels pierced the granite shoulders.
The world he had grown up in was slipping away. Once you traveled at a pace determined by the terrain. Now you rushed to keep up.
South of Duluth, the speed limit jumped to seventy and became a de facto seventy-five. Drivers hurtled past, hunched behind their steering wheels, holding cell phones to their ears.
At Toby’s Restaurant, the traditional halfway pit stop between Duluth and the Cities, he pulled off to use the john and refill the thermos. Back on the road, now he moved in fleets of traffic. The pines thinned out and gave way to mixed hardwoods and snow-covered farmland. Billboards and chain-link fences lined the side of the road. New tract houses sprouted in the fields, subdividing farms, one by one.
It amused him. Children were still raised on animal stories, still sang “Old MacDonald.” But rural grandparents were becoming extinct. Soon nursery rhymes would be set in nursing homes and malls.
Up ahead, the horizon congested into a standing wave of haze. He exited the interstate at Forest Lake and jumped over to quieter highway 95 and meandered through winter woods and farm country along the Saint Croix River.
He drove up out of a cut in the bluffs and saw the church steeples of Stillwater-half of them now converted to condos-and the railroad lift bridge. Three-story wood frame gingerbread homes posed, postcard perfect, on the hills. Even on a late winter morning the antique stores thronged with tourists. He and Nina owned a house here, at the north end of town; he’d leased it for the winter.
He continued through the town, following State 95 along the river, toward the interstate. Keith was up there, on the bluff to his right. In the Washington County Jail. He drove south, approaching Bayport, passed Stillwater Prison. Knew some people in there, too.
37
Rumor was, Timothy McVeigh scouted the St. Paul Federal Building, among others, before he settled on Oklahoma City.
The building was therefore spared so Broker could meet Agent Lorn Garrison at 1 P.M.
The first time, they’d met under extreme circumstances, and Broker had not formed an opinion of the man, beyond his being another imperial control freak swooping down on his sky hook. As he watched Garrison come across the lobby he reminded himself to be positive; this guy could actually help him.
Garrison’s suggestion they meet casually was encouraging.
Feds excelled at playing two-way mirror. They stopped you cold on the phones, or, if they admitted you to their inner sanctum, they met you in teams of three so that the guy you really wanted to talk to had his supervisor breathing down his neck. Choosy. Locked down. Secret. In charge.
But that was the old shoot-quick FBI of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Louie Freeh’s new FBI was more in touch. As evidenced by Garrison’s easy smile as he came across the lobby and extended his hand. They shook. Lorn’s grasp was steady, strong but not too assertive. His blue eyes were watchful.
His garb, however, was old cold war formal; the darkest shade of gray Brooks Brothers made, white shirt, muted red tie. Black leather gleamed from his belt and his wing tips.
He carried a heavy olive green trench coat folded over his arm and wore the felt slouch hat.
Broker looked like an ice fisherman meeting his lawyer; he wore cord jeans, scuffed Timberline low boots, a cardigan over a turtleneck, a blue mountain parka, a wool scarf, and a gray Polarfleece cap.
“Deputy Broker, Lorn Garrison; we met up north. You were a civilian then, and I was in a hurry. I’ve got more time today, and you have a badge.”
And, thought Broker, I’m on Keith Angland’s visitors list and you’re not.
With a few cordial words, the FBI man intimated he’d reviewed every report and personnel evaluation ever compiled on Broker during his prior sixteen years of police work, for St. Paul and the BCA.
Though on the surface Broker was relaxed, on a deeper level he became wary of getting a Clintonesque federal hand job-touch you up, feel your pain; now get lost.
“I know why you’re here,” said Garrison. “You want to see justice done for Caren. She died on her way to see you.”
He paused and squinted at Broker. “Consider this; had she not died, you would have been the person to turn that tape over to us, not some reporter.”
“I wondered why no one talked to me about that?”
“Hell, we’ve been busy, putting the Red, White and Green Pizza franchise out of business. And-I’m talking to you now.”
Playing me, thought Broker. Reel me into his hoary confidence and I’m going to be so grateful I’ll go milk Keith for him. Broker cleared his throat. “I want to question Tom James.”
“You know that isn’t going to happen.”
“Do I?”
“Look. You got a personal stake in this. And I understand. But you don’t really get it. What we’re dealing with here,” said Garrison.
“I got a feeling you’re going to fill me in.”
“And take you for a ride and buy you lunch,” said Garrison.
The agent led him out the door to a tan Dodge Dynasty parked in the no parking zone in front of the building.
“Where we going?” asked Broker, getting in.
Garrison grinned sideways. “Across state lines.”
The FBI man turned left on Kellogg Boulevard and took it to the I-94 interchange. They drove east. He said, “First thing. I can’t help you on James. He’s gone. They washed him. That boy’s on the other side.”
“What about Caren Angland’s death?” Broker asked.
“We’re carrying her on the books as missing.”
“Just bear with me awhile, Broker,” Garrison appealed.
“We’re talking way bigger than dead snitches and cocaine deals in Minnesota.”
Garrison was not smooth, but he was definitely foxy. Or maybe he was sincere. His tone did not patronize. He was reaching out, lawman to lawman; indulging in none of the bureau’s old arrogance. Broker was being brought into the fold.
“Let’s start with specialties,” said Garrison. “You used to work undercover, St. Paul cops and the state bureau. You were long on balls and short on paperwork, popped the bad guys on dope and weapons, you worked with DEA and ATF.
Black market sales, cash and carry.”
“Stuff that was too sweaty and dirty for you guys at the bureau to mix in.”
Garrison pulled a blue tip match from his trench coat pocket and stuck it between his lips-a reformed smoker’s trick. “Let’s get something straight. I’m old FBI. But I ain’t old dumb FBI. You know the old dumb FBI- they’re the guys who’d piss in their pants because nobody authorized them to unzip.”
Garrison treated him to a lidded crocodile smile. “And I came into the bureau red hot from the marine corps, not some fuckin’ law school.”
The agent turned his attention back to traffic, goosed the Dynasty and, going eighty, passed a string of cars on the right. “I swear people in this state all learned to drive in shopping mall parking lots,” he observed in a dour voice.
“So,” said Broker.
“So, we agree. Policy left over from the Hoover days was to stay far away from grunge details. Especially the
