That backed old Norman off. “Okay, Tom. It’s like this.
The kind of people we handle don’t sit at desks and wear ties, you know what I mean?”
“I think I see,” said Tom.
“The jobs our clients wind up in tend to be blue collar.
You get your hands dirty.”
Tom nodded his head. “You can’t take your resume with you. It’s harder for architects than for street hustlers.”
“You need to think about that,” said Sarah. “And the idea that you won’t see anybody you know again.”
“Won’t see anybody I know again if I’m dead, either,”
Tom observed.
“Think about it. All alone someplace. Working some entry-level job, or plain labor to start. Could be boring. You really should think about it.”
Tom had thought about it.
The beauty of this part was that he had to simply and passionately tell the truth. A thought occurred that was almost touching in its sincerity; if he told the truth, could it be all wrong?
“I’m a forty-one-year-old white guy,” Tom stated. “You know what that’s like in the newsroom of the late nineties?
I have one foot in the tar pits.”
“That’s a little vague for purposes of evaluation,” said Norman without expression.
“They wouldn’t let me do the story,” Tom whispered.
“Say again,” said Norman.
Tom cleared his throat. “When I contacted my editors about the story, when I first got onto Caren Angland, they told me to bring it in and work the phones from the office.
They were going to give my story to younger staff.”
Sarah leaned back, elbow resting on the arm of her chair and gazed at Tom over her knuckles.
“Biggest story of my life. I got shot covering it. And they weren’t going to let me write it.”
“Oh-kay,” Norman said slowly.
“It’s just not there anymore, the newspaper world I grew up in. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know. I do know I keep getting asked to dance closer to the door.”
“What do you see yourself doing if you’re not a reporter?”
asked Sarah.
“I want to write,” said Tom flatly.
“We, ah, kind of agreed that’s out,” said Norman.
“Wait, let him finish.” Sarah came forward, took a second look.
“I mean really try to write. Fiction,” said Tom, eagerly, honestly. “It’s the thing I’ve dreamed about doing all my life.” He shrugged. “I just never had the guts to go out on a limb and give it a real try.”
For all her training and experience, a wisp of sympathy floated across Sarah’s seasoned brown eyes. Tom had expected more of a hearing from Norman. Like a barracuda cutting across a fresh blood trail, he turned all his energy toward Sarah.
“And there’s something else,” he admitted in a flat candid voice. “I can’t afford to take time off to try to write. But if I go into the Program I can skip on my debts-my child support, my credit cards.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “How do you feel about never seeing your kids?”
Tom came a little forward, edgy. “My wife ran off with a guy who sells swimming pools in Arizona and Texas.
Business is good. Who abandoned who?”
“Whatever,” said Sarah, seeing that it was a can of worms and Tom looked ready to stick every one of them on its own hook.
“So how do you see this dream life of yours developing in real time?” asked Norman.
Tom hunched forward, and a low-building intensity stitched his voice. He wasn’t acting. He was projecting himself into the dream:
“The FBI said I could get some help, like a stipend, a good used car, living expenses and office equipment. But that would be like living on the dole. I think I have a plan that would work.”
“Go on,” said Norman.
Tom nodded, exhaled, inhaled. Tried to keep his voice controlled, but it started to race: “It would involve investing some money. You set people up in business, help with loans and paperwork.” He raised his eyebrows.
Norman nodded. “It’s been done. Restaurants, car shops, garbage routes. What did you have in mind?”
Tom held up his hands. “I’m a fair handyman, carpenter.
I did all the electrical and plumbing repairs on the house when I was married. And I had a well-equipped woodworking shop going in my garage. So…” He took a breath. “What if we bought an old wreck of a house and I slowly rehabbed it. I mean, wherever I wind up?” He looked quickly from Norman’s face to Sarah’s face.
They watched without expression. Tom struggled a little for control because the irony of his words was bringing him close to laughter. He was basically stealing Caren Angland’s house hustle for his own. He waited a few more beats and continued.
“By the time I’d totally fixed up a place I’d have the trial-and-error experience to do another one. And I would have a reasonable fallback line of work for a freelance THE BIG LAW/185
writer. I could tell people I’m a recovering alcoholic. That way I don’t have to be meticulous about job history. And-if I attended some AA meetings, I could pick up part-time work as a painter-I did some stories on AA once. It’s full of painters. And, I could be working on writing a novel half the time.”
“You know, Tom,” said Norman, “at the back of any book, there’s the writer’s photograph.”
Sarah shook her head. “If it comes to that. Something can be arranged. So what’s your book going to be about? The Witness Protection Program?” Sarah asked.
Tom grimaced. “You think I’m not serious.”
“Just kidding. No, what would you write about?” she asked, sincerely this time.
“Ah, I thought, genre mystery. Create a private investigator who’d been a reporter, who maybe had some law enforcement training in the military. There are formulas for writing that kind of stuff.”
“Okay, Tom, I think we get the idea,” said Norman. He and Sarah stood up in unison. “We’re going to have a talk with our supervisor. Sit tight.”
Twenty minutes later the door opened, and Sarah came in with two cans of Diet Pepsi and a paper plate of holiday sugar cookies. She handed a Pepsi to Tom.
“Merry Christmas. You’re in. The fact is, you were never in doubt, with all the kilowatts Tony Sporta is generating in Chicago. A toast,” she proposed, “to your new career.”
32
Broker jockeyed in the chilly holiday bustle at a gate in the Duluth airport. “Frosty the Snowman” tinkled from the public address system in between arrival and departure announcements. He hoisted Kit in his arms to see Nina’s plane land.
Broker had done his army time in the first half of the 1970s, when airports were hostile to military green. More to the point, then he’d been the one traveling in uniform, not waiting at the gate with a baby and a diaper bag slung over his arm.
“There’s Mommy, there’s Mom.” He coached Kit when he saw Nina Pryce’s lanky athletic stride swing up the gangway.
Mommy wore army camo fatigues, boots and a soft cap. She carried a light travel bag on a strap over her shoulder.
His carrot-headed Athena-she of the glancing brow and steady gray eyes-now sparky with an iron grind of fatigue.
When she saw them, Nina smiled.
She owned one good black dress, like his dad owned one good black suit. She wore the dress to weddings and funerals.
She despised the army’s Class A skirt and avoided it whenever possible.
Broker had a feeling skirts weren’t in Kit’s future, either.
Her field uniform was clean and faded. Her leather shiny but not showy. A black oak-leaf patch was centered on her cap. The black stitched Combat Infantryman’s Badge she’d earned in Desert Storm was worn defiantly above the black jump wings over her left pocket. Late in coming. The first awarded to a female in the history of the army.
But the prize she coveted, the crossed rifles of the infantry branch for her collar, still evaded her. She wore military police insignia.
She carried herself with a wary reserve. Nimble and strong, she walked a tightrope in heavy armor. As an ambitious female officer, she had to coolly mask any outward show of femininity, which could be perceived as weakness.