Ice Hunter

by Joseph Heywood

“Help me, Grady.”

  He was nervous but grabbed the brown dog’s front. Kira got its hindquarters and they carried the animal to her truck, where she gave the animal an injection and used a towel to wipe blood off her own arms.

  “Do you want me to follow you back to the office?” Service asked.

  “No, I’ll be fine.” She kissed him and got in her truck. “I’ll take Newf and see you at home.” She opened her passenger door and Newf jumped in and sat down.

  Service dug into his shirt pocket, asked for her hand, and put the pebbles from the Mosquito in her hand.

  “What’re these?” she asked with a smile.

  “It’s your reward for pulling that woman back,” he said.

  She looked at the stones, then at him. “I love sparkle-arkles, baby. You’ll get your reward tonight,” she added, lowering her voice. “If I can stay awake.” Then she winked and started her engine.

  Service lingered by the passenger door and stared at the dog. “How did you get out?” he asked.

  The animal woofed and wagged her tail, looking back as Kira drove away.

  There were black hairs on the edge of his truck window on the passenger side. The dog must’ve squeezed her way out. “Okay, dog.” he said to himself, “I owe you.”

  The county dispatcher relayed Service by radio to Gustus Turnage, a CO in Houghton. “Gus, Grady.”

  “Yo.”

  “I need information. There’s a man over your way in Pelkie. His name is Seton Knipe.” Service spelled the name. “Get me an address, phone number, and a read on him.”

  “How soon?”

  “Quick as you can. Do you know him?”

  “No, but Knipe’s an old name around these parts. Dough from mining and logging. Iron mines, I think, somewhere in the distant past. Maybe some real estate in recent years.”

  “Let me know what you find out, okay?”

  “Wilco. How goes the battle?”

  “Day by day.”

  “Yeah, well, eat your Twinkies,” Turnage said with an audible chuckle.

  The word was out on his court exploits, Service knew, and it made him feel good. When you took down a bad guy, it gave all the good guys heart.

  He called ahead to the Marquette County Jail, only to learn that Limpy was refusing visitors. There was no point in bugging the old bastard. Instead, he turned southwest and headed for Limpy’s camp. When he parked, he saw a lookout dart into the woods.

  Service didn’t get far down the trail before Limpy’s brother Eddie came toward him. Eddie had done half a dozen short stints in various U.P. county jails for fish and game and assault violations. He was a few years younger than Limpy but looked nearly as bad. He was toothless and balding, his face lumpy with acne scars, his back bent. Still, he had strength enough to lug along a baseball bat.

  “You’re not welcome here,” Eddie said.

  “I want to talk to Saila.”

  “Jerry’s dead. Just leave the girl be.”

  The word had obviously traveled fast. “Jerry was murdered, Eddie. We need information.”

  “We know how to take care of our own.”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t do so well with Jerry.”

  Eddie turned without a word and led him into camp.

  Acrid wood smoke hung in the air. Several people milled around casting angry eyes at them.

  The girl met him on the porch of a run-down shack. She was tall, five-ten at least, with spindly legs and arms and an enormously protruding belly. The other clan members gathered near the porch.

  Service said, “Folks, can we have a few minutes alone?”

  The crowd dispersed reluctantly.

  The girl had a pretty face but aged eyes, and he couldn’t blame her.

  “I’m sorry about Jerry,” he said.

  “I keep thinking he’ll come walkin’ up the trail any minute.”

  “He was murdered, Saila. Somebody shot him and set his body on fire and he is not coming back.”

  “That don’t change what I feel for him.”

  “He was in the Mosquito Wilderness Area when it happened. When did you last see him?”

  The girl thought before answering. “Two, three days ago, I guess.”

  “Was it two or three? This is important.”

  “He sorta comes and goes, ya know?”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Just that he had a job to do.”

  “Did he say when he’d be back?”

  “Probably yesterday.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “For some guy.”

  “Do you know who?”

  She shook her head and clasped her hands together. He understood the body language. She was shutting down.

  “Do your folks know about Jerry?”

  She barely moved her head. “They don’t want me and our baby.”

  “You should call them,” he said. “Your baby ought to have grandparents. Did Jerry work with this man before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We don’t put our noses in other people’s business.”

  This was a Limpyism. “Do you know what kind of work it was?”

  “No, but I seen his chain saw was gone.”

  “What make was it?”

  “I don’t know that stuff. It was yellow. Had a long blade, ya know? Jerry took real good care of his guns and tools.”

  But not people, Service thought. “Anything missing besides the chain saw?”

  “No, just that. He’s real particular about that saw. He’ll use other people’s tools, but not their chain saws. Wouldn’t loan his, neither.”

  “This other guy, did he pick Jerry up?”

  “No, I think they were gonna meet at the Happy Jet.”

  “In Gwinn?” It was the only bar he knew with this name, but he needed to make certain and help her to keep talking.

  “Yah, Jerry likes the Happy Jet. I haven’t been in there yet, but I hear it’s way cool.”

  If you liked bikers and meth freaks. “Did Jerry have his own car?”

  “He had Limpy’s truck and he took real good care o’ that, too.”

  Service couldn’t think of other questions. “Thanks for talking to me, Saila. Call your parents. Things get said when people are mad or upset, but time tends to calm things down. They’ll be worried about you when news of Jerry gets out.”

  She nodded, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t call.

  Eddie Allerdyce walked out of camp with Service. “You think they’re gonna let Limpy out?” Had Limpy told his brother he was offering to trade information? It wasn’t likely. The family would not like it if their leader were known to be cooperating.

  “I don’t know,” the CO said. “He violated parole. You know who Jerry was going to work with?”

  “I did, you can bet we’d already be hunting that bastard.”

  Which meant he knew that Jerry had gone with somebody. “Let the law handle this, Eddie. You people have enough problems.”

  “You’re a decent guy,” Eddie said. “Limpy told us that. He don’t got no hard feelings, eh? He didn’t mean to shoot you that time, ya know? It just sorta happened.”

  “What’s Jerry drive?” Service asked.

  “He’s got my brother’s truck.”

  “Did you see Jerry leave with his chain saw?”

  “Nope. I didn’t see him leave at all.”

  “Maybe he was going to do some work with Ralph.”

  “Limpy tell you that?”

  “I’m just asking.” Eddie didn’t need to know he’d gotten the information from Honeypat.

  “Ralph lives near Christmas?”

  “Down to Ridge, but he don’t welcome visitor
s.”

  It wouldn’t hurt to leave Eddie with a little hope. “Tell your people if they clean up their acts, Limpy may have a chance. You keep on doing what you’ve always done and they won’t send him back to you.”

  Eddie said nothing.

  Ridge was a tiny farming community southeast of the village of Christmas. Like most COs in the U.P., Service knew of most the villages and little clusters of houses that served as population centers, but he had never been to Ridge and radioed CO Jake Mecosta for help. A member of the Baraga-L’Anse Ojibwa, Mecosta worked out of Munising and was one of the few Native American COs in the state. Most of the tribes and bands had their own police and CO forces, and few of the Indians moved into the state ranks. Service wasn’t sure why. Mecosta agreed to meet him at the public boat launch on Christmas Beach in Bay Furnace. Christmas was a fine example of Yooper schemes to make money. A Swede from Munising had bought land back before World War II and had built a factory to produce year-round Yule gifts. The business had burned, but the town had kept the name. You could still buy Christmas trinkets in gas stations and restaurants. And you could gamble at the tiny Indian casino called Kewadin, which meant north wind.

  Jake Mecosta was leaning against the front fender of his truck, chewing a toothpick. Nearing fifty, Jake was six-six, with short salt-and-pepper hair and skin the color of cherrywood.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Mecosta said with a grin when Service pulled up beside him. You hunting Twinkies?”

  “Something like that,” Grady Service said.

  “I heard Allerdyce got out and you already put him back in.”

  “For now. I’m trying to get some information about his son Jerry.”

  “Jerry? That one’s dumber than a Sioux tryin’ to ride a bicycle,” Mecosta drawled. The Ojibwa had fought for nearly a century and a half against the Sioux, driving them from Upper Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota onto the Great Plains. Hard feelings persisted on both sides.

  “You know Jerry?”

  “I busted him once for stealing black walnut trees.”

  That sounded like Jerry. “I’ve heard he used to work for a man over this way, a friend of Limpy’s. Named Ralph. He supposedly lives near Ridge.”

  Jake Mecosta spit out his toothpick and grimaced at the mention of the name. “Ralph Scaffidi,” he said.

  “The Ralph Scaffidi?” Scaffidi was a Detroit mobster who suddenly became major news when FBI investigators leaked information to the media that he had knowledge of the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance in 1975. “What’s Scaffidi doing up here?”

  “The official word is that he’s retired,” Mecosta said, “but I talked to Wink Rector and he didn’t say so in so many words, but he left me with the impression that Scaffidi was exiled up here by the mob. He’s got a couple of punks living with him, but if Rector is right, they’re guards, not servants.”

  Wink Rector was the FBI’s resident agent for the Upper Peninsula. He had an office in Marquette and a house on the Chocolay River.

  “Have you met Scaffidi?”

  “No, but a couple of times the wife and I have seen him and his shadows in Foggy’s.” Foggy’s Reindeer Room was a bar in Munising. “Are you actually gonna go see him?”

  “I guess I have to.”

  “Better you than me,” Mecosta said with a sly grin.

  Directions in hand, Service left his colleague at the boat launch and drove south toward Ridge. Scaffidi’s house was half a mile down a tree-lined, hard-top driveway that looped in front of the structure. The new house was huge, made of cedar logs and sited on a small hill overlooking a swamp. The house looked bright orange in the sun. A mown and manicured lawn stretched all around the house. Service expected keep out signs but found none.

  Service had barely parked when an old man with silver hair ambled out the front door. He wore a golf shirt with an emblem that said key biscayne yacht club.

  “Mister Scaffidi?” Service said as he got out.

  “I am he,” the man said. He face was tanned, his hands wrinkled with age. He had pale brown eyes that were alert but betrayed no emotion. Service saw somebody else lurking behind the screened front door.

  “Grady Service, DNR.”

  Scaffidi nodded. “A fish dick,” he said with a teasing grin, “but not local. Mecosta’s our local guy. What brings you out to the sticks?”

  Jake had said he’d never met the man, who anticipated Service’s thoughts. “I’ve never met Officer Mecosta, but I make it a point to keep track of such things. How about a cup of espresso? A warm drink cools the body on a hot day. I’ve got a new machine sent from Milano.”

  Service agreed and followed Scaffidi onto the porch, where they sat at a small round table. An unopened Sunday New York Times lay in the middle of the table.

  The old man sat down and said over his shoulder at the door, “Carlo, two espressos, please, and cut the lemon peel fresh, capisce?”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Scaffidi said, turning back to Service. “I’ve tendered invitations to your colleague Officer Mecosta, but he hasn’t bothered to respond. I have a lot of concern about this brouhaha over feeding deer. A fella’s gotta bait deer, well, that’s like hunting sheep in the barn, am I right? This bovine TB thing is a mess, but until the state puts down its foot and says no more feeding, it’s just going to keep spreading. The government’s got to look out for all the people, am I right? Not just the connected few.”

  Scaffidi was referring to a continuing controversy between farmers, the DNR, State Agricultural Commission, Farm Bureau, other groups, and some wealthy people in the northern Lower Peninsula who had hunt clubs where they fed deer year-round to keep them on their properties. Bovine tuberculosis was carried in the air from cattle to deer. Some scientists believed that putting out huge piles of corn and other feed caused animals to congregate, which helped bovine tuberculosis to spread. The DNR’s director insisted there was no hard evidence of this, but the division’s own wildlife chief had called for a statewide baiting and feeding ban.

  “I’m sorry,” the old man said. “You don’t make the regulations. You just enforce them. Forgive me for running off about this, but I care very much about our natural resources.”

  A muscle-bound young man in running shorts and a Honolulu blue detroit lions football jersey brought two tiny cups of espresso and eyed Service suspiciously.

  “Carlo’s one of my assistants,” Scaffidi said. “He’s a good boy, loves the woods. It’s hard to find young people to come up here and work.” Jake Mecosta said Scaffidi’s helpers were keepers. Carlo certainly looked the part.

  Service watched Scaffidi rub the lip of his cup with lemon peel and followed his lead.

  The espresso was bitter.

  “I had to do it again,” Scaffidi said, “I wouldn’t touch this crap, but I’m an old man and the doctors want to take away all my pleasurable habits. A man’s gotta hang on to what he can, am I right? I get one cup a day. So what can I do for you, Officer Service?”

  “I need to know if a man named Jerry Allerdyce sometimes works for you.”

  “He has, but not recently. Is there a problem?”

  “Jerry is dead.”

  The old man didn’t bat an eye. “That happens to all of us.”

  “He was shot.”

  “Has that been in the news?”

  “No sir, not yet.”

  Scaffidi stared at him. “I’m retired.”

  The statement caught Service by surprise and left him momentarily flustered. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  The old man raised his hands. “I know you didn’t. Jerry was a wild kid. He did some jobs for me, took down pulp, cut firewood, hauled stuff here and there. He’d work hard for a few days then get some beer and disappear. I tried to understand, tried to teach him good habits, that work is work and play is pl
ay, but he wasn’t the kind to listen. My niece is staying with me. She’s getting a divorce and it’s messy. She and Jerry, well, I don’t have to paint you a picture. I found them back in the woods one day. Like rabbits, they were: I had to cut him loose.” Scaffidi pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “When was this?”

  “Late last month. My niece was here maybe two weeks before I caught them. I thought, okay, she’s been married a long time to a crumb, she’s sowing some wild oats, and what’s the harm, but I don’t like to mix family and help. I’m old school.”

  “That’s the last time you saw Jerry?”

  “Four weeks back, maybe five. I made it clear he’s not welcome here socially or otherwise. I wish I could be more help. I hate this kind of thing coming up here. In Detroit . . .” He threw up his hands. “That’s a different planet, but up here is peaceful, like the Garden of Eden,” he added with a beneficent smile.

  “How did you meet Jerry?”

  “His father told me about him.”

  “How do you know Limpy?”

  “Many years ago my car broke down and he stopped to help me. We did favors for each other from time to time. I was still living in Detroit then, but he went off to prison and I haven’t seen him since. You’re the officer he shot, aren’t you? I thought I recognized your name from the papers back then.”

  Scaffidi was very well informed and though he was superficially friendly and polite, there was more to him, something Service couldn’t quite nail.

  “Limpy was released early, but he’s back in jail.”

  Scaffidi nodded. “Some people, it takes a long time to unlearn things.”

  A reference to himself? Service wondered.

  “I’m sorry about Jerry. He was likable, but unreliable.”

  Service pushed back from the table.

  “More espresso?” Scaffidi asked.

  “I have to move on, but thanks for talking to me.”

  The old man walked down to the truck with him. “You gotta go?”

  Service nodded. “Thanks again.”

  The old man looked into his truck. “I see they haven’t saddled you with one of the Big Brother computers yet.” The coming DNR satellite system was not public knowledge yet. Scaffidi was very well informed.