Broker went with his gut. “Yeah,” he said.
Garrison nodded. “To get Keith off the hook you need a motive these Russian bastards can understand. Like making a few bucks off his misfortune.”
“Are you that smart? Didn’t you tell me cops need big hearts and weak brains.” Broker grinned.
Garrison shrugged. “Well, you know-you work the edges long enough, you come to a place where your edges intersect with someone else’s edges…and you feel your way along the new edge and suddenly you’ve poked your foot into this little Manhattan Project.”
Broker met the ex-FBI man’s serious gaze, held it.
Garrison rocked back in the chair, swept stray wood shavings off his lap. His voice was quiet, resigned. “You may owe him. But clearing that debt don’t mean you can trust him. Not the way he is now. The only person you can trust is me.”
68
On the way into the house, they paused and studied the cabin on the point. Twilight pooled under racing Appaloosa clouds. Rollers thrashed the granite shore. No lights. No wood smoke. No black Audi. A phone company truck pulled down the drive. Too weary to even wave, the lineman patched the down wire and left.
Kit, trussed in layers of Polarfleece, resembled a ball of yarn with a tiny visor between a wrapped scarf, her cap and the hood of her coat. Alert little eyes peered out at the sudden, violent cold. Her lips emitted tiny burp- scented jets.
Broker’s own breath made a starched spinnaker in the rising wind.
Hatless, ears turning red, Garrison shook his head.
“Somebody should have told Keith the trouble with fucking heroes is they get people killed.”
“Watch your language,” said Broker. Habit. But he nodded, agreeing with Garrison’s assessment. He raised his chin toward the cabin. “If they come back I’ll roust them. I’m going to nail the guys who messed up Ida,” said Broker, hugging Kit.
“Do that,” quipped Garrison. He pointed to the moose in the Cook County insignia on Broker’s parka. “You got the badge and you’re wearing the outfit. Just walk in there, read THE BIG LAW/391
them their rights and give them the protection of the legal system?”
“Not what you had in mind.”
“We’re playing with Konic, we need some life insurance.
I was thinking more along the lines of taking hostages.”
“Well talk about it. What about this bug? Think we can find it?”
“They can afford the best-and the best is wafer thin, half the size of a playing card, receiver and transmitter. Let the guy who put it in find it.”
“If he shows up.”
They went inside, Broker peeled Kit out of her layers and opened a can of kids’ pasta rings and veggie franks, heated it on the stove. Half of it went on her bib, the other half made it into her mouth. Stranded at the sheriff’s office, she’d missed her nap. She was beat. He left Garrison in the kitchen opening a can of Hormel chili.
By candlelight, he dressed her for bed, then filled a tippy cup with milk. Kit stood at the window, staring, perplexed, at the frozen grill of stalactites. The bird feeder where she watched the chickadees was deserted, cased in ice.
“Dees?” she passionately wondered aloud.
He picked her up. “No dees, and Daddy needs a hug. It’s tough poop out there, kid.” As he rocked Kit, he pictured Ida Rain, turbaned in white, laced with tubes, IVs, hooked to machines. Her suffering was a direct result of talking with him.
He squirmed in the rocker, trying to get comfortable. It was the first time he’d put Kit to sleep wearing a.45 strapped on his hip.
When she was asleep, he came back to the kitchen, tried the phone, heard a dial tone and called Regions Hospital in St. Paul. After a few minutes working through another goddamned automated phone system, he reached a human, a nurse on ICU. He identified himself. The nurse told him that Ida Rain was stable but still comatose. Her pupils were equal. She showed faint responses to sounds and light.
The prognosis was optimistic but guarded.
Broker hung up. Garrison had retreated to the chair by the fireplace, where he meditated under the flickering dragon’s head. He turned his knife blade, testing it against his thumb. A damp split of oak hissed in the flames.
He put the knife away, came forward off the chair, stooped and stabbed a hooked iron poker at the burning slabs. Sparks boiled up against the sooty fieldstone. The firelight played in the dents and wrinkles of his face, the kind ones and the sinister ones.
Broker brought two cans of Grain Belt from the fridge, they put on their coats, went out through the studio, down the stairs to the beach and hunkered in the lee of a large boulder. Six-foot waves dotted them with spray. A groan twisted on the wind, then a long splintering crash echoed as another ice-loaded tree toppled in the woods.
Garrison turned his collar up, sipped the can, shook his head. “What kind of people sit out in the winter and drink cold cans of beer?”
“Been doing it all my life.” Broker put an unlit cigar stub in his mouth. Chewed.
Garrison asked, “How’d you figure out Keith went on the mother of all undercover operations?”
“Everyone assumed Caren called James. But she was at her doctor’s office when the call was made. I checked with Dispatch at the St. Paul cops. Keith was signed out to his home number. He set it all in motion.”
“See. Like everything. We never checked. Off chasing the big case.”
“What about you?” asked Broker.
Garrison said, “Hell. Go figure. They put a guy who’s three months from retirement on a complicated case like this.
They told me it was another dirty cop hunt, and they picked me because of my work in New Orleans and Atlanta. Look at me, Broker.”
Broker looked.
“Fifteen years ago, I went undercover in Meridian, Mississippi; had me a little store, barbershop in front, used furniture in back. I fit right in with those good old boys in the Klan.
I know my way around that scene. But Russians? What do
“They brought me up north and gave me Alex Gorski to run into St. Paul as a snitch. Right off, he suggests my bad guy is Keith Angland. I didn’t know this Gorski, his habits, his weaknesses. I did know he couldn’t get anything hard on Angland, just rumors, hearsay-then boom-he disappears, and this tongue is sliding around on the floor. I know a few people at Quantico. I found out that tongue didn’t go through normal channels. The lab work-up went straight to the director’s office. Same place the money you found went, and the hate mail. We didn’t investigate Caren’s motives”-he held his bottle up in a salute to Broker-“or James’s motives, even after you raised some interesting questions about the missing cash. The case against Keith was designed at the very top to slowly fall apart. Maybe get him a little jail time.”
“Then Caren comes in from left field and…”
“And gives him the break he really needs.” Garrison swatted his hand at the air in disgust. “Don’t matter how she did it-don’t mean to sound cold-Hell, guess I do-this is a cold business. Don’t matter how he did it either, drinking, calling the chief names, abusing his wife-point is, he did it masterfully, and everybody believed him. Konic believed it enough to recruit him.”
Broker nodded. “He was trying to get her clear. She didn’t run for her therapist or a divorce lawyer, like she was supposed to.”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is, before Caren died, Keith was building a legend as a corrupt cop who might kill a snitch-’cause, hell, we can’t prove he killed Gorski, and the Russians can’t prove he didn’t. It’s still suspicious, could be a setup. But
