“So, basically, her problem was Keith.”
“Her problem was an irrational decision to stay in a destructive situation.”
“She was loyal,” Broker said.
“Don’t play word games,” said Dr. Nelson.
“I’m not,” he said with a flash of rising anger. “She
“That’s morbid.”
Broker looked around the posh office. “She came here because if she went to the HMO, people she knew would see her. You gave her privacy, and drugs, for a price. If I’m morbid, what’s that make you?”
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
Broker pressed on, “Did you try to warn her?”
“Of course,” Dr. Nelson stated in an icy tone. “She said the one thing she knew about Keith was that he’d never lose control. But she was wrong. He did lose control. First he hit her and then he killed her.”
Broker shook his head, said slowly, “Keith Angland never did anything spontaneous in his life. He always has a reason.”
“Amazing. You’re protecting him. He killed a woman that was once your wife, and you’re making excuses for him.
What a bunch of sexist crap. Next you’ll tell me she asked for it.”
Broker smiled. “May I use your phone?”
“You may not. Now, if you’re through, I have a patient coming in a few minutes.”
Broker wheeled through the storm, looking for the nearest phone booth. Mental note. End his rustic Luddite phase. Buy a cell phone.
The first booth he found was glyphed with gang symbols.
When he got to it, he found the receiver cord cut. Turning, he noticed the grayish brown Ford Ranger pickup, black tinted windows, parked across the street, trailing a plume of exhaust. Did he see it in front of Dr. Nelson’s home?
Broker had to drive a block over, to Grand Avenue, to find a phone outside a 7-Eleven. As he dropped in a quarter, he saw the butternut-colored truck drive by and turn the next corner.
Madge in Grand Marais accepted charges. “Jeff’s got my house key in his office. Have whoever is patrolling north of town stop by my place. There’s a crumpled copy of a phone bill pinned to my bulletin board in the kitchen over the phone. Can’t miss it. Has strawberry jam on it. Have them call me at my motel. I’ll be there for the rest of the day.”
Madge had the motel number. He thanked her and hung up. Then he called J.T. Merryweather. Two minutes later, he stepped from the booth and made the truck, idling half a block down the street, reflecting the confetti swirl of the stormy sky in its opaque windshield.
47
He was in the program, they said; but for a week his jubilee was put on hold. The Marshals Service was skeleton-staffed for Christmas and New Year’s. He had once written a story on Tibetan Buddhists that required some research into the
His window overlooked the empty parking lot of a defunct beer factory, the dingy, red brick housing of the departed workforce and the dreary Lake Michigan sky.
His guards changed daily, sometimes twice a day. He started demanding that they show their ID. The phone connected to room service but not to the outside.
“It’s the holidays,” a marshal explained. To compensate, they plied him with all the food and drink he desired. And VCR videos.
On Christmas day, he ordered a porterhouse steak, a fifth of Chivas Regal, and chose three movies. The films were calculated to indulge his current predicament- stories about Witness Protection, or about people who changed their identity.
The second movie was appropriate.
Lascivious on Scotch, he saved the best for last. One of his all-time favorite movies:
Drawn in by the killer’s dark charm, Firth finally overcame his wimp personality by murdering the psycho and absorbing his scary persona.
Tipsy, he hit rewind and played the last scene over. Colin Firth, transformed, walked out of the art film cinema he owned, which was showing a James Dean retrospect-ive-James Dean see, a subtle cue there in the background, brooding from the movie posters. Now Firth had exchanged his conservative suit for a leather jacket. Smoked a cigarette.
New hair. Rugged, ballsy, a killer who got away with it. And, yeah-cultivating the look of James Dean.
You know, Tom thought. If you took away the glasses…
He stood, weaving slightly in front of the mirror over the dresser. Took off his glasses, experimented with combing his hair straight back, no part. Danny Storey could look like James Dean. Get contacts, some muscles. Put a dab of gel in his hair.
He poured another drink, rewound the movie, and watched it again.
The holidays ended and Tom checked out of the Bardo Motel. Another blacked-out van was waiting. This one opened in front of the Northwest baggage handlers at the curb of the Milwaukee airport. Two new marshals, in the young, taut, military mold, met him. They introduced themselves as Dennis and Larry. Their job was to escort him to “orientation.”
Dennis and Larry were correct but uncommunicative traveling companions. They said about five words apiece all the way to Richmond, Virginia.
Another hearse was waiting in short-term parking. Tom guessed that his destination was Washington, D.C. In keeping with WITSEC’s clandestine nature, the marshals never flew point to point, they always traveled at a remove.
Tom spent three hours in comfortable isolation. They stopped once at a Holiday station on an interstate exit, to use the bathroom. The marshals parked the van literally three feet from the bathroom door. Tom was out and back in, not seeing more than a slice of bare trees. Cloudy sky. The air was cold, wet, damp. But still some trace of green lingered to the exhausted grass. No snow.
The ride ended in another parking garage. Tom went up another elevator and was admitted to another quiet floor of an office building with unmarked doors and thick carpets.
His escorts unlocked a door and told him to go in and wait. Tom carried his bag into an efficiency apartment
