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 tempting stuff. Like all that cash floating around drugs. Times changed.
Down in New Orleans we busted that ring of cops selling dope. Helped revitalize the whole department. Fact of life.
Now the bureau is down in the cotton, chapter and verse with the homies.”
“Right, I saw an example of the new cooperation up in Grand Marais,” said Broker.
“Special case. Called for extreme measures,” said Garrison.
“What’s special? A cop maybe kills an informant, takes payoff money from a dope dealer…it’s New Orleans all over again.”
Garrison replied slowly, rolling each word off his tongue.
“I never worked bank squads, I never worked Italians and I never worked dope till New Orleans. Counterintelligence was my thing.”
“You lost me,” said Broker.
“’Cause I’m such a convincing good ole boy I worked the Klan, and the militias, but I got in a little time with the KG-fucking-B. You heard of it?”
Broker scoured Garrison’s features for a hint that the agent was joking, toying with him; Garrison’s face was stone solemn. It was silent in the car as Garrison took the exit for 694 and drove north.
Garrison let Broker ruminate. Miles of frozen landscape scrolled past. After several more minutes, Garrison THE BIG LAW/219
began to sing, almost to himself, in a mournful country baritone.
“If I had the wings of an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly
And I’d fly to the arms of my loved one
And there I’d forever abide.”
Garrison grinned. “Corny, huh?” He smiled. “Yeah, well, Garrisons come out of Kentucky. We fought on the Union side in the Civil War. And we fought on the union side in Harlan County. My daddy retired deputy chief in Louisville.
I got a brother just retired from Secret Service.”
His pale eyes snapped at Broker. “Always been more than a paycheck and a pension, if you know what I mean.”
“I get the picture,” said Broker.
“Don’t think so, but it’s time to expand your mind, temporary Deputy Broker. Consider this: Who was the guy Keith Angland sold the information to?”
“A Chicago hood named Paulie Kagin.”
“Uh-huh. Kagin’s Organizatsiya-Russian Mafia.”
“I read about it, but I wouldn’t know,” Broker admitted.
“That’s right. Nobody does. Including us at the bureau.”
Garrison slapped the turn indicator and took the exit ramp onto Highway 5. He retreated into silence again, and Broker watched the cornfields, wood lines and silos of Lake Elmo zip past. Garrison exited onto Highway 36 and drove east past the motel where Broker would spend the night. As the road swept north in a turn toward the Stillwater business district, Garrison jerked his head toward the red brick outline of the Washington County Jail sitting next to the government center,
“He’s gone pretty nuts in there. Gave himself a tattoo.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Brother Keith has also migrated over. Scratched him a Russian pachuco cross, in blue ink, on his left hand.”
Garrison tapped the top of his hand. “Don’t know what he’s using, but in Russian prisons they mix urine, ballpoint ink, and ashes from burnt shoe soles. Like jail credentials; for instance, a spiderweb signifies professional drug trafficker.
Now a star, that’s an assassin. Not sure about crosses.”
Garrison sliced him with a thin look. “We offered Angland the usual deals to plead down. Real hard ass. He wouldn’t even open his mouth. The second time we met with him, he just laid his left arm on the table, the tattoo on one side, those stitches on the other.” Garrison screwed his lips up.
“Like he was taunting us with his wife’s murder.
“I had a good look at those stitches. He must have taken his time shoving her in. That girl fought. Hard. When we took him to the hospital after we picked him up in Grand Marais, I had the doctor pare the shreds of her flesh out from under his fingernails.” Garrison grimaced. “The tattoo is pretty unusual behavior. He’s gone spectacularly nuts. He has a real high IQ, you know. My experience is, cops and priests shouldn’t be too smart. Gets them in trouble. What they need is big dumb hearts, to soak up lots of suffering.”
He swung his slow eyes on Broker. “What did you think, you’d go in there tomorrow and get him to confess?”
Broker was now curious. He leaned back as Garrison shot through the gauntlet of Christmas decorations that draped the light poles of Stillwater. As they turned right and blew across the old railroad bridge into Wisconsin, he wondered aloud, “Keith and the Russian mob?”
Garrison stroked his chin, reached in his pocket and withdrew two horehound hard candies. He handed one to Broker. Garrison sucked on his and began to talk in a slow, deliberate cadence.
“Well, you know, we Americans like to be entertained. We tend to get distracted. While we were having our play war in the Gulf and watching the O.J. Simpson trial some dramatic changes were going on-out there.” He cast a big hand at the snow-covered Wisconsin horizon and the larger world beyond.
Garrison chuckled. “We’re about to start living some real bad B movies. Remember the old James Bond novels-SPECTRE, the international criminal conspiracy from hell. All those suspicious foreign fuckers with accents. Well, they’re here. Goldfinger. Dr. No.”
Broker frowned.
“You think I’m shitting you? When the whole shebang started to collapse over there in the late 1980s, all these forward-looking apparatchiks in the KGB heisted billions of dollars’ worth of Communist party funds and pirated them out of Russia. Socked them away in Swiss banks. At the same time they emptied the Soviet prisons to raise an army of thugs. It’s the perfect nightmare-veteran intelligence agents running nets of hardened criminals.
“These guys have literally hijacked the Russian economy.
Now they’re branching out. So they’re here, where the easy money is. ’Cause we consume so much dope. And we’re so fat and stupid.”
They turned right on a county road, slowed for a small town named Claypool and followed the twisting two-lane past empty pastures, farmhouses, woodlots, and the stubble of snowy cornfields.
Garrison continued, “But it isn’t the dope, fraud, counter-feiting, or gasoline scams I worry about, uh-uh…”
They topped a rise. Through a gnarled screen of barren oaks, higher than the nearest silo, Broker saw a golden onion dome crowned by the distinctive silhouette of a Russian Orthodox cross.