Ice Hunter

by Joseph Heywood

  “Not yet.”

  The old man grunted. “The Web, satellites, cell phones, digital, the whole world’s going electronic. It’s not for me.” He tapped his temple. “In my day this was the only computer that mattered.”

  And still is, Service thought. Scaffidi might be aging, but his mind was sharp.

  “Do you like trout?” the old man inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, good.” The old man tugged at his arm. “Please, this won’t take a moment. I want to show you something.” Service tried to resist, but Scaffidi was persistent and said finally, “I won’t bite.”

  They walked down the lawn behind the house to a pond with two fountains. “It’s fourteen feet deep and well oxygenated. Doesn’t freeze in winter.” The old mobster spread out his hands. “I got brook trout like this! You get some time off, drive over, and I’ll show you. It’s no-kill, but I have an excellent camera and a friend who does fantastic mounts with fiberglass. We measure the fish, send him the pictures, and back comes a work of art.”

  “I might do that.”

  “Bring Officer Mecosta with you. I have the utmost respect for the work you and your colleagues do.”

  Scaffidi’s attempt to be smooth made Service skeptical.

  “In my pond I got a brookie will go nine pounds,” he said. “This is my life now. Fish, woods, deer, the animals, wildflowers. Winters I’m in Key West.” Service wondered if the old man was trying to posture and, if so, why?

  As they got back to his truck Service saw a Cadillac coming up the driveway. It stopped behind his vehicle, and a dark-haired woman got out. She had long legs and long hair the color of india ink. She wore a red silk sundress and had several strands of beads around her neck. Long earrings dangled from her ears.

  “Good, good,” Scaffidi said. “Judy Pellasi, meet Officer Service.”

  She extended her hand, and shook Service’s firmly. He saw a faint laugh in her eyes. Scaffidi’s niece hurried up the stairs, her high heels clicking on the porch boards, and disappeared inside.

  Scaffidi touched the conservation officer’s sleeve. “All set, Officer?”

  “Thanks for the espresso.”

  “Don’t forget about those brook trout,” Scaffidi said.

  “I’ll call first,” Service said. The old man was obviously lonely, and maybe Mecosta was right about his being in exile.

  Service used his cell phone to call Treebone at his office in the 1st Precinct, near Greektown in the center of Detroit.

  “Vice,” Treebone answered.

  “Grady.”

  “What’s up? You don’t make social calls.”

  “Ralph Scaffidi.”

  “Ralph the Shovel,” Treebone said with a laugh. “Lotta people down this way think he planted Jimmy Hoffa. What about him?”

  “He’s living near Munising. I need a profile.”

  “You in your truck?”

  “Rolling along at double nickel.”

  “This shouldn’t take long. I’ll call you back.”

  Twenty minutes later, as Service approached Trenary, his friend called back.

  “Here’s the scoop. I talked to OCTF.” The Organized Crime Task Force comprised personnel from the FBI, DEA, and Detroit Metropolitan Police. “Scaffidi was so much smoke in the Hoffa deal. He was a CPA, alleged dealings with the bent-noses, but he was never a made man. Strictly a service provider on the periphery. When Jimmy H went MIA, some people in New Jersey floated Scaffidi’s name. The Feebs turned him inside out, but it was no go. He was a sideshow, a red herring.”

  “The media played him up big.”

  “Pencils, man. They gotta scribble about something. Don’t get me wrong. Scaffidi’s no angel, but he’s not in the main line. Laundered some money, did this, did that. Sort of a mob utility man.”

  “Has he been down?”

  “No, man. He’s been bounced plenty, but that’s all. Teflon, see? He’s dirty, just more efficient than his pals. Word is that he’s smart as hell. OCTF said he got disgusted because of the Jersey mob’s little game and closed his biz. You sure it’s him up there?”

  “I talked to him not thirty minutes ago.”

  “The OCTF gang says he’s slick. It’s like dealing with Mister Rogers.”

  This fit. Scaffidi was not the least bit threatening. “He ran a laundry for the mob?”

  “The Feebs think so. They worked with the IRS but never got enough for an indictment. The grand jury looked at him beaucoup times and passed on him. He has the big bucks, but it all looks legit.”

  “Big bucks from accounting?”

  “He speculates, invests, buys, sells—like that.”

  “Speculates on what?”

  “Pork bellies, bull testicle futures, soybeans, gold, who knows?”

  “But he’s retired now.”

  “That’s the word.”

  “Up here people say he’s got mob minders. That he’s not here by choice.”

  “I didn’t get that impression from OCTF. They know he’s there, by the way.”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “I’m a giver.”

  “See if you can ferret out more details on his business interests. Has he ever been implicated in a whack?”

  “I’ll dig, but the way it’s told here, he’s superficially clean. I’ll do what I can. Why the interest?”

  “Limpy’s son Jerry turned up dead.”

  “You think Scaffidi is involved?”

  “Just checking things out.” Scaffidi had ordered Jerry away to protect his niece, but knowing Jerry, he might not have kept away.

  “Okay, man. Stay off the trails.”

  “Always.”

  Service stopped for coffee at the Trenary Home Bakery, known far and wide in the U.P. as the THB, which was both a bakery and a restaurant, the latter in an old Red Owl grocery store building. The floor was made of red and black tiles. It was like being transported into the fifties. He ordered Trenary toast, the Finnish form of cinamon toast called korpu. The bread had a shelf life of months and could be eaten only if dunked.

  He thought hard about Scaffidi. Jerry Allerdyce had worked for him, but not recently—according to Scaffidi. Jerry had boffed Scaffidi’s niece. Was this enough to cost Jerry his life? Scaffidi was on the periphery of organized crime; no doubt he had the contacts to have such things done. Jerry cut wood for him. Wood had been cut in the Tract around the fire where Jerry’s body had been discovered. Service decided that Ralph Scaffidi deserved further attention. Until he had something solid to grab on to, he needed to keep all options open. After a final bite of toast he decided to pay a visit to Wink Rector, the resident FBI man in the U.P.

  It was late afternoon when Service drove up Wink Rector’s street near the town of Harvey, where the Chocolay River dumped into Lake Superior. The house was in a plat of new homes, two stories with two-car garages and well-watered lawns. Rector was tinkering with his sprinkler system.

  “King Twinkie,” Rector greeted him.

  “I just visited Ralph Scaffidi.”

  Rector looked surprised. “Why?”

  “Jerry Allerdyce was murdered. I had information suggesting he was doing some work for Scaffidi.”

  “Was he?

  “Odd jobs, but Scaffidi canned him back in May.”

  The FBI agent clucked and shook his head.

  “I got the feeling that the people there with him weren’t there by his choice,” Service said.

  “They’re not.”

  “Rumor is that the mob exiled him up here.”

  “Bullshit. He helped us with another investigation and made some people unhappy.” Rector pushed up the end of his nose. “That kind of people. The Bureau didn’t give his name to the news. The New Jersey mob did
that to push the investigation back into Detroit and deflect it from them. It didn’t work, but it screwed up Scaffidi’s life big time. He’s alone and he wanted protection. We set him up with a private security firm from Detroit. They send him a couple of guys, they last three or four months and leave and then they send him replacements, but he pays the bills. It’s not like witness protection. Did he show you his pond?”

  “I saw it.”

  “He’s a nut about hunting, fishing, conservation, all that stuff. The pond is state of the art and when he says there are big brookies, believe him. Hard as hell to catch.”

  “His niece is staying with him.”

  “You mean Miss Leggy?” Rector shook his hand for emphasis. “She doesn’t hurt the eyes, does she?” he said in a conspiratorial tone and glanced over his shoulder. “The wife hears me, I’ll be dead meat.”

  “What’s she doing living up here with Uncle Ralph?”

  “Her soon-to-be-ex-husband caught her with an anchorman from a Detroit TV station and filed papers. It got messy, and she’s wild as hell. It’s not my job to judge people.”

  “Scaffidi said Limpy helped him with a car problem once.”

  “That’s the story. A flat tire on M-28. Talk about fate, Limpy and Scaffidi. They became pals. Go figure. Scaffidi has an M.B.A. from Detroit-Mercy and a master’s in civil engineering from Purdue. Opposites attract.”

  “That’s all there is to it?”

  “Limpy’s pure dirt, but as far as I know they were just pals.”

  Rector’s wife, Barb, came out of the house. She was wearing an apron over shorts.

  “The steaks are ready, hon. Hi, Grady. You want to join us for dinner?”

  “Sorry, Barb. Duty calls.”

  She smiled, said, “Cops,” and went back inside.

  Service thanked Rector for his help and headed for Gwinn, which was south and thirty minutes away. He was tired from all of the day’s driving, but he wanted to check out a couple more things.

  Service called the county dispatcher and had him run Allerdyce’s name. He got back a plate number and description of an ’85 Ford pickup.

  Next he called Bob Bagilvo, Gwinn’s police chief. “This is Grady. I’m heading into town. Meet me at the Happy Jet?”

  “Got an ETA?” the chief asked.

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Bagilvo was waiting in the dirt parking lot of the bar, which was a nondescript two-story building with wood paneling up about eight feet. A yellow sign on the side said welcome hunters. It was always there, even though the gun season for deer was only two weeks long. The sheriff was a short man with a thick neck, shaved head, and a Fu Manchu mustache.

  “What’re we looking for?” Bagilvo asked.

  “Limpy Allerdyce’s pickup. We think Jerry Allerdyce was using it and he’s dead.”

  “I heard,” Bagilvo said. “Why’re you doing the legwork on this?”

  “Related matter,” Service said, giving the small-town police chief the plate number and vehicle description. The truck was not in the bar’s parking lot, or in the immediate area.

  “Can you and your people check town and put out a BOL?” Cop talk for be on the lookout.

  Bagilvo said he would and Service headed for home. His day had lasted nearly sixteen hours already. There was no overtime for all this, and the union steward was always monitoring COs’ biweekly time reports. As usual, he’d falsify his, claiming only the hours the union contract called for rather than the actual time he had worked, which was always more. The horseblanket days were better; back then COs worked whatever hours it took to get the job done and if you were underpaid, you didn’t care, because the work had a purpose. You took time off when natural breaks came, not when somebody arbitrarily wrote it into a schedule. Philosophically, Service accepted the function of unions, but he did not like being organized.

  He found Kira waiting on his cabin porch for him. Newf stood beside her, wagging her tail.

  “How’s the eagle dog?” he asked Kira after their kiss.

  “I’m keeping him for a couple of days, but he should make it. Newf was brave, wasn’t she?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  The dog wagged her tail when she heard her name.

  “The brown dog panicked,” Kira said.

  “So did I,” Service said, making her laugh.

  It was Service’s turn to cook, but Kira had already made a small pork roast with wild rice. “I was beginning to think I was going to dine alone,” she said. “Want to talk about your day?”

  “The usual,” he said.

  After he did the dishes and showered they went to bed, cuddling close, but his mind was on Jerry Allerdyce.

  13

  Bagilvo called early the next morning. Allerdyce’s pickup had been found west of Gwinn in the village of Princeton, a long-ago mining town now inhabited by old folks and Air Force retirees from the nearby base that had closed a few years back. It now housed various state prisons and the Marquette International Airport. Bagilvo had been the town’s chief of police for a long time; when one of his people located the truck, he anticipated what Service would want and immediately alerted the county and state police lab from Negaunee. Kira offered to take Newf, but Service put the dog in the truck and took her with him. When he arrived in Princeton, Limpy’s pickup and the area were crawling with people.

  “Got anything?”

  “Not yet,” Bagilvo said.

  “Was there a chain saw in the truck?”

  “Nope.”

  Which could mean that Jerry had moved it to into another vehicle. If he’d ever had the saw. If he had met anyone. Still so many ifs.

  “Anybody talk to people who live around here to see if they saw anything?”

  “My people are knocking on doors right now.”

  “Make sure we get prints,” Service told a nearby lab technician.

  “Take it easy,” the man said. “Let cops do cop stuff, okay?”

  Service apologized. He had the politically bad habit of assuming command of whatever he was involved in. This had irked many people over the years.

  “Let’s eat,” Bagilvo said. They drove separately to the Sweete Shoppe in Gwinn.

  “You look tired, pal.”

  “Summer’s starting,” Service said. “People come north, think they’re free, let it all hang out.”

  “Hell, summer hasn’t even started. You got to learn to pace yourself or that job will kill you. They couldn’t pay me enough to do what you do,” Bagilvo said.

  It was not an unfamiliar sentiment, yet Service and most other COs wouldn’t trade their jobs for anything. Usually.

  Service got to the county jail just after lunch. Limpy was brought to an interrogation room. He had a toothpick in his mouth, but few teeth.

  “Jerry had a job with someone and took his chain saw along. We found your truck near Princeton, but no saw. We figure Jerry got picked up. He sure as hell wasn’t out at that fire all by himself.”

  Limpy said nothing as he gummed the toothpick, making it dance.

  “You were right about the Tract. Parcels were leased to people when the Tract was first established. Some of the leases are still in effect. They’re for ninety-nine years. I have names.”

  Limpy looked mildly interested. “Yah?”

  Time to float a name, see if Limpy reacted. “Two parcels, forty acres each, are leased to Seton Knipe of Pelkie.”

  “That so?”

  “Why’d you tell me about this, Limpy?”

  Limpy grinned. “When you work out a deal, let me know.” He stood up. “You think I could get out of the hoosegow to go to Jerry’s funeral?”

  “We’ll see what we can do.” It might be a while before there could
be a funeral, Service knew.

  “Maybe me and Honeypat could get it on too.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” Service said. “If you’re playing with us, you’re never gonna get out.”

  “Yah, yah,” Limpy said as he walked away wheezing. “I’m shakin’ in my mukluks.”

  Service stopped at Strawberry Lake and parked at the public boat launch. As fishermen came and went, he checked their licenses and made sure they had personal flotation devices or life jackets. They all did. Newf greeted the anglers like old friends, her tail wagging. While he was there, a helmetless boy in a red T-shirt raced an ATV down to the launch, saw Service’s truck, swerved sharply, almost tipping over, and raced back up the road, spitting gravel. Service followed a dust cloud and pulled into a double-wide trailer built back among young white pines in neat rows.

  A man came out. He was tall and shirtless, with the muscles of an iron-pumper. He had an earring, forearm tattoos of wiggling hula girls. His blond hair was cut short in front and grown scraggly in back. His Jeep Cherokee had a logo from Hamtramck and a detroit lions decal. “Did you see a boy just drive in on an ATV?” Service saw a long, flatbed trailer, the kind used to haul ATVs, beside the trees.

  “Nope.”

  “Is the boy your son, sir?”

  “Fuck off,” the man said with the shadow of a grin. No doubt the kid was already inside, or out back, watching. Men sometimes did stupid things to win their sons’ affections.

  “I just don’t want your kid to get hurt. He’s too young to ride without supervision, and he wasn’t wearing a helmet.”

  “Must be somebody else,” the man said.

  Service knew from experience not to argue. Some behavior patterns were predictable. The CO got back into his truck and when he reached the main road, he turned away from the boat launch, drove half a mile, pulled his truck into a side road where it would be out of view, got out, locked it, and went back to the road.

  It didn’t take long for the helmetless kid in the red shirt to come zooming by at forty miles an hour or more. Service crossed the road and cut through woods and fields to the double-wide trailer, where he hid to await the boy’s return.