Angland held out his left arm like a bar and firmly moved the women aside.
God. Everybody was watching them. Him. So Tom stepped protectively in front of Ida and Molly and blurted, “Leave them alone.”
Standoff. Time for dozens of reporters and editors to engrave Angland’s demeanor on their memory and for the slow ones to be informed by the fast ones as to his identity. Angland jerked a thumb toward the lobby. “Outside,” he ordered.
“Okay,” said Tom, warning Ida and Molly with his eyes that it was all right. It wasn’t of course. It was like a movie.
On screen, they walked from the silent, stunned newsroom.
Angland rolled his shoulders when he walked, top heavy, like a siege engine. At six foot one and two hundred pounds, he was made for contact: a hitter, a shooter, a man catcher.
Tom was a soft five foot ten. Like a male movie star, he was shorter than he saw himself on the screen of his mind.
They went through the lobby, through the fire door, into the stairwell. Angland turned, grabbed. A seam in the armpit of Tom’s shirt ripped as Angland mashed cloth in his fists.
Tom wanted to protest. There were rules. The main rule was that the reporter was not supposed to get involved. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt. That happened to other people.
Angland bounced Tom off the tile wall, hard. He removed his sunglasses and tucked them in his pocket. He had long, blond eyelashes. Booze robbed him of his bird-of-prey edge, gave a puffy bovine quality to his brawny face. Tom could imagine him snorting, sleeping in hay.
Pale yellow eyes. Insane fires trapped inside ice. Pores and whiskers like a cratered forest. His lips curled back in a contemptuous grin that showed predatory canines.
“Stay…away…from…my…wife,” he repeated.
“NO!” Ida’s voice caromed off the stairwell tiles. She stood in the doorway. Her wide eyes fixed, determined. Angland shrugged, drooped a shoulder in a deceptively fast, short movement and punched Tom in the stomach. Then Angland sauntered down the stairs as Tom sagged, gasping against the wall. Ida rushed to him. “Tom?”
“I’m all right,” he wheezed.
“Is that?”
“Angland. The cop. He’s out of his gourd. Don’t worry,”
said Tom.
“Are you kidding? I’m calling security.”
“No. Let me handle it.”
Ida touched his cheek. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Do me a favor.”
“Okay.”
“Go in. Get my briefcase and jacket from my desk. I don’t want to go back in there right now.”
She spun on her heel and left the stairwell. She returned in less than a minute with the briefcase and the coat and the picture Angland had dropped. “What’s going on? Is this woman his wife?” she asked,
“Not now.”
“Why are you supposed to stay away from her?”
He snatched the picture and started down the stairs, one arm clamped to his aching stomach. She matched him, step for step.
“Where was this taken? When? Who took it?”
Tom couldn’t tell. Was she jealous? Was it the newsie smelling blood? Two flights down, three, and the questions kept coming.
“Is this personal or is it a story?”
Tom paused. For the first time in his life the words bounced funny and he wondered-why were they separate issues? He put a hand on her shoulder, “Look, Ida, I don’t know what I’ve got, as soon as I do, I’ll call. Stay near the phone. If I have what I think I have, I’ll need your help.” He continued down the stairs.
Without missing a beat or a stair, she said, “What do you think you have?”
“Ida, please.”
She switched gears, tried for levity, “You said that last night. Hey, Danny boy, tell me.”
He ran ahead, through a door, into the lobby, past the guard desk and out the front entrance onto Cedar Street.
“C’mon, you can trust me,” Ida persisted, pacing him. Then,
“You have to trust me, I look out for you.”
He spun. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Easy,” she tried to calm him. “It Just helps to have an extra set of eyes go over-”
“You think I can’t handle it myself?” Getting angry.
Patiently, she said, “Tom, I think you’re going through a rough time in your life and you just…”
The gray Subaru station wagon pulled out of traffic and almost hopped the curb. Caren dropped the passenger side electric window. At first he didn’t recognize her; a scarf was tied over her hair and she was wearing sun-glasses. The attempt at disguise dramatized his excitement. Ida tugged at his coat sleeve. “Is that…”
Caren pushed open the passenger door. Tom jumped in.
“Are you all right?” she asked. One second Ida was framed in the open window, the next, the tires squealed and Ida disappeared.
The upholstery smelled showroom fresh. The floor carpet-ing was immaculate. She had folded the backseat down to make space to accommodate a big suitcase. She’d rented a car. Disguised her appearance. Packed a bag.
“Keith came by the office with a picture,” he said tersely.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Tried to play tough with me…” He rubbed his sore stomach, then stopped in midsentence, caught in a slowmo-tion plunging sensation. Caren’s right cheek was beat up beneath a layer of cosmetic base. She got rubber leaving the curb, ran a red light turning left on Fourth Street and then, another one turning left onto Minnesota. Tom grimaced, opened his briefcase, removed Garrison’s picture and looked at the two photos side by side.
He held them up. “Two pictures?” she said.
Tom held one up. “They were following you yesterday.
An FBI agent gave me this one, this morning.” That made her dip one corner of her glasses with a finger.
“FBI agent?” she repeated. “You called the FBI?”
Tom shook his head. “They visited me. They’ve been watching Keith and you.” He held the pictures up side by side. “You notice anything?”
She shook her head, now concentrating on weaving through traffic. She went for a full count on run red lights and accelerated down the ramp onto Interstate 35E.
Tom explained. “I’m in the foreground in this one. You’re in the front in the other.”
“So?”
“Two cameras. On either side. Somebody, besides the FBI, was taking pictures of us.”
Caren stared straight ahead. “What’d you think? This was about Keith stealing a piggy bank? People are dead.” She stepped on the gas, and Tom braced his hand on the dashboard. Be nice if there was a mute button on the world, he thought, so he could tap down his rising vertigo.
15
Deadline pressure was one thing. Dead people was another.
And raw fear was something else. Until this morning it had lurked on the streets between the safe buildings of his life.
“Is someone following you right now?” he asked, looking around.
“Not anymore. I did the old serpentine car switch in the Hertz parking garage. Keith showed me how-the prick. He learned it at the FBI Academy.”
“Did he do that to your face?” Tom asked.
“Yes he did.”
Tom’s thing was talking and writing. He drew the line at physical violence. He thought of Lorn Garrison. Big hands and shoulders-as big as Angland’s. Lorn had a gun. Hell.
Lorn was federal. He had the marines. He turned and looked back at the skyline of St. Paul dropping below the horizon.
“We’re going in the wrong direction. We should go to the FBI,” he stated.
“There’s somebody I have to see first,” Caren said doggedly.
“Who?”
“My ex-husband.”
“Why?” Tom’s voice strangled. Ex-husband? The situation took a sickening pulp fiction plunge.
“Because he can protect us and I need his advice.”
“About what?” Tom yelled.