Force of Blood

by Joseph Heywood

“I think DEQ gives the approval, based on the SAO’s recommendation. After all, someone is asking to alter the environment, aren’t they?”

  12

  Slippery Creek Camp

  TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2007

  When Grady Service saw Limpy Allerdyce’s battered Ford pickup parked next to his cabin, he winced. Allerdyce was one of the U.P.’s most notorious poachers, a felon, the leader of a feral tribe with a remote camp in the swamps of extreme southwest Marquette County, his father’s alleged onetime snitch and now his informant as well. All of this was bad enough in its own right, but what hurt most was that Limpy had somehow eliminated the people who had killed Nantz and his son, Walter, which by unbending Yooper ethical standards now left him indebted to the creep.

  He found Allerdyce in a stare-down with Newf on the porch. “Yore dog t’ward me ain’t so frien’ly, sonny,” Limpy said.

  “Good for her,” Service said. “You want coffee or arsenic?”

  “I don’t like da flavors youse got in dere.” Which meant the old poacher had been inside his cabin. Keeping him out was like trying to cut off air.

  “Why’re you here, Limpy? I’m busy.”

  “Yeah, youse ain’t here much dese days. Youse still porkin’ dat cute little state trooper?”

  Service glared at Limpy, who greeted the glare with a bobblehead grin. The old man was here with a purpose. He never showed up without a reason. “Spit it out, Allerdyce.”

  “Word out youse’re lookin’ for errorheads.”

  “The ubiquitous ‘word,’ huh?”

  Allerdyce ignored Service’s sarcasm. “I had me dis call from pal over Raco, eh.”

  “That so?”

  “Said red niggers campin’ up Vermilion way got somepin’ in da ground dey don’t want white men ta have.”

  Jesus, the U.P. swamp drums are unbelievable. “What sort of thing in the ground?”

  Allerdyce shrugged. “I ain’t no monocle like dat ole Nekkidbuttgeezer.”

  The poacher’s often sloppy language, twisted logic, and malapropisms made him seem a fool, but he wasn’t. What the man lacked in formal education, he overcame with prodigious natural smarts, raw intelligence, and highly refined woodcraft, the sort of combination that made him a formidable cedar swamp lawbreaker. “What have you heard?” Service asked.

  “Hectorio, El Spicko Grande, word is he put out word for copper error-heads. You know Hectorio, eh?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Lives Spicklansing, owns tamaletacoteria, nort’side.”

  “You mean Lansing?”

  “I just said.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Youse need get out, circle-eight, check ’round more.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. You ever find any ‘errorheads’?”

  “Pfft. All over bloody place up here, I guess. Not wort’ shit.”

  “This you know from experience?”

  “Just say I mebbe heard it oot in woods.”

  “This Hectorio, he wants copper?”

  Limpy sighed. “I never learned ta think Spick.”

  “You heard this from your friend in Raco?” Raco was near Bay Mills, which was just east of Iroquois Point. Once a Bomarc missile base, it was now an EPA Superfund Site.

  “Dat’s close nuff, but all he tole me was red niggers up da lake, makin’ shit pies.”

  “And your source for Hectorio?”

  Allerdyce stared at the roof. “Somewheres, don’t member ’sackly.”

  “Seriously, you know about such places?”

  “You don’t? Dey’re everywhere, ’specially by big lakes, rivers, eh.”

  “And you never picked up artifacts?”

  “What I want armyfax? Stuff’s ugly, wort’less junk. You pick rotted bloobs?”

  Service shook his head.

  “Den youse unnerstand, sonny,” Allerdyce said, hopping down from the porch snarling and growling at Newf with such realism it pulled Service up short.

  But Service didn’t understand anything except that Limpy was trying to give him information, and obviously the old man knew about Katsu and the fracas with the archaeologist from Hibernian.

  Limpy stood beside his truck. “Dat big red nigger dey call Katsu? He done hard time.”

  “For what?”

  “Ain’t healt’y walk around yard axing why somebody inside, eh. Dat ginch squeeze you got, word is she good gal, fair, not no Dickless Tracy.”

  “We were hoping for your endorsement,” Service said sarcastically.

  “Youse just take a shot at me?”

  Service held out his hands and Allerdyce got into his truck and disappeared.

  Oddly enough, he found himself pleased by Limpy’s visit. The fact that the old poacher knew about Katsu suggested the deal on the coast was, first, a big deal, and second, that big money was in play, or Limpy, reformed or not, would be unlikely to have the slightest interest. Allerdyce knew just about everything that went on in the U.P., and although he’d spent seven years in prison for shooting Service in the leg during a scuffle, the detective couldn’t think of anyone who would make a better governor of the U.P., if there was such a thing.

  • • •

  Back at his office in The Roof he checked his private telephone directory on the computer and called Marge Ciucci.

  “Aunt Marge,” she answered after one ring.

  “Grady Service, Aunt Marge.”

  “Ah!” she exclaimed. “You done it, boy. Grazie grazie, prego prego, bravo bravo, Grady.”

  “Am I interrupting anything important?”

  “You interrupt? Not possible. Never. Anything you want, you get.”

  “Dr. Ladania Wingel.”

  Long pause. “What you want that for?”

  “You know her?”

  Marge Ciucci let loose a long hiss. “That one. Femmina!”

  “What’s the deal, Aunt Marge?”

  “She sweet-talk her way onto school board, get ’erself appointed to an open term. Then all hell she breaks loose, si? Only she knows how schools should be run, and if anyone disagree for any reason, she screams racist!”

  Wingel’s consistent, at least, always leaning on race. If Tree was here now, he’d kick her in the ass. Luticious Treebone was a black man, his best friend, a fellow Vietnam veteran, and a retired Detroit cop. They had served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam together. “You know the woman personally?”

  “She lives in a condo south of town, only mixes with muckmucks.”

  “Any other Whitewater faculty members in Jefferson?”

  “Professore Crispin Franti—he teaches soil science at the college, works the state extension service here in town.”

  “Good guy?”

  She made a smacking sound with her lips. “Numero uno: the best.”

  “Got a phone number?”

  “Minuto,” she said, left the phone, and came back with the number.

  “Thanks, Marge.”

  “You gonna be in Jefferson, you stay with me, you hear? Marge take care of you like her own bambino.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said hanging up.

  He walked outside to have a cigarette.

  Persia Hunger was already outside. She was his age, a longtime employee in the Department of Environmental Quality. “You know anything about DEQ permits for archaeological digs?” he asked.

  “I’m water. You need to talk to dirt—Verlin Ponozzo—but he’s in Lansing all week.” After a moment of silence she said, “You think DEQ and DNR will ever be merged again?’

  “I ain’t no monocle like old Nekkidbuttgeezer,” he said, quoting Allerdyce.

  “What?”

  “Sorry, that was a poor play on words. I really don’t know the answer, Persia.”

  He knew she asked because he was a friend of the governor. Everyone assumed he and Governor Timms talked a lot. Everyone assumed wrong.

  He called Friday at her office. “I think I’m headed to Wisconsin,” he told her. “What’s your day bee
n like?”

  “Like a week of water torture—phone calls, witness reports, transcripts, files, all the glory of law enforcement in one day.”

  “The kid okay?”

  “More resilient than us. How’d things go for you?”

  “ ’Puters and phones, ’puters and phones. Oh, and Allerdyce showed up at camp.”

  “My, aren’t you blessed.”

  “Believe it or not, I think he was trying to tip me on the artifact case.”

  “That creature is scary,” she said.

  “Yeah, but every cop knows him.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “He asked if I’m still porking you.”

  “Are you?”

  “Not often enough.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “He thinks you’re cute.”

  “Well I am, right?”

  “And hot.”

  “Hold that thought until I have energy again. When to Wisconsin?”

  “Tonight maybe, back later this week.”

  “That should work good. I should be brimming with energy by then.”

  “I would hope so.”

  • • •

  Professor Crispin Franti was at home, seemed friendly, and agreed to meet him for lunch at the Havelock Café in Jefferson the next day at noon.

  A call to Marge Ciucci got him a bed for as long as he needed it. “You mind if I bring my dog?”

  “He’s welcome too.”

  “She.”

  “Even better.”

  The last task of the day was to follow up on Allerdyce’s statement that Katsu had done time, and a quick check showed it to be true. He immediately called Jingo Sedge.

  “Sedge? Service.”

  “S’up?”

  “Tell me more about Katsu’s criminal record.”

  “Grand theft. He was in a bar, drunk, bought a car from a drunk cowboy for two hundred and fifty bucks, cash. Katsu drove it away. The cowboy staggered home, sobered up, and his old lady wanted to know where the fuck her wheels were. Hubby calls the cops, claims the ride was stolen. The cops pick up Katsu that same day. He had a previous conviction for aggravated assault. He was barely twenty then. The prosecutor in the car case got the previous conviction into the record, and Katsu’s public defender stood mute with his thumb up his ass. The jury found him guilty in twenty-five minutes flat and the public defender told him, ‘Better luck next time around, chief,’ and bogeyed into the sunset. This was in Montana, state of Big Sky and tiny minds.”

  “This doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

  “Quite the opposite. Given his background, it takes some balls to knowingly protest what he considers to be a moral and social travesty.”

  Service said. “Okay, if that’s your gut, go with it. But consider the flipper: Maybe the bigger magnet for his interest is the amount of money at stake.”

  Silence on the other end. Good, she’s listening.

  “You got something specific?” she asked, after a long pause.

  “Allerdyce dropped by my place to specifically tell me about the goingson, and that Katsu’s an ex-con.”

  “Based on what that scum told you, you assume Katsu’s out for money?”

  “That scum knows more about what goes on up here than you and me combined. He would not have dropped by unless there was substance for us.”

  “So you trust one con’s word against another’s?”

  “Yep, that’s a tidy description of our work. I’m on my way to Wisconsin.”

  “To see Wingel?”

  “Probably. Later, Sedge.” He heard her suck in breath just before he hung up.

  13

  Jefferson, Wisconsin

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2007

  Crispin Franti was sixtyish and white-haired, but had a pencil-thin, coal-black mustache, which looked like it had been painted on.

  The Havelock Café was plain and small, and filled with people who dressed like farmers just in from fields or tractors, or whatever it was that they did.

  “You know the word ‘havelock’?” Franti asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s that cloth sunshade doodad hanging down the back of a hat, which means this place is here as the refuge from the sun, which is the farmer’s friend and his foe. But you want to talk about Ladania Wingel.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Aunt Marge called me after I agreed to meet you. Everybody around here knows Wingel: On campus she’s a banshee howling in a bugle factory, and nobody pays her any mind because she can’t get her voice heard above the academic din. But here in town on the school board it’s different, and she’s cut herself a real swath in the town’s collective feelings. I just read that the IRS says an estimated 75,000 people make their livings as ETAs—Elvis Tribute Artists. Can you believe that? Ladania is a blowhard. She loves to go bitchcakes in public and watch people cringe. Me, I think she’s entertaining, but then I know to not take any of her shit personally.”

  “If people don’t agree with her?”

  “She inducts your ass into the Universal Club of Racists. You met her yet?”

  “No.”

  “Wingel has dinner every Wednesday night at the Bounty House. She’s the ultimate control freak. She’ll be with the school board president, who is a dandy piece of work in her own right, but well-intentioned. Walk in on them and she’ll have no choice but to play nice. Her public rants are mostly directed at teachers, students, parents, administrators and so forth, but she publicly and verbally kisses the school board president’s ass.”

  “You don’t care for her.”

  Franti grinned. “The only reason we don’t shoot some people is because it’s against the law. I’m hungry. Let’s order.”

  • • •

  Aunt Marge tried to feed him another lunch after the lunch with Franti. She and Newf were already bonding. “Crispin, he’s a good guy, eh?”

  “You were right.”

  “What you want for supper tonight?”

  “I’ve got a meeting.”

  She frowned and shook a finger at him. “Work, work, work, the same as Wayno, and look where that got him, capisce?”

  • • •

  The Bounty House was in downtown Jefferson, across the street from an old firehouse, which now housed a national agricultural PR firm.

  Finding Ladania Wingel wasn’t difficult. She was the only black person in the restaurant. The woman with her was attractive, spiffed and polished, a high-upkeep type in a tight, bright-red top and red fuck-me heels.

  He approached the table. “Excuse me … Dr. Wingel?”

  “We’re in a meeting here,” she said tersely, through a forced smile.

  He flopped open his shield. “Detective Service, Michigan Department of Natural Resources.”

  “You have no jurisdiction in Wisconsin.”

  “Actually I do. I’m also deputized as a federal marshal. You want to see those credentials too?”

  “Would you care for a drink?” the other woman asked. “Razzie martoonis here are yummer-yums.”

  Wingel sighed. “This is about the dig.”

  “It’s about the remains you harvested and mysteriously reburied.”

  “I reported all this. Winter unearthed the remains, not me.”

  “So you wrote in your report.”

  “Oh good, it’s nice that you can read. If you’ve comprehended what you read, then our business is concluded. Good-bye.”

  Service pulled out one of the two extra chairs at the table and sat down. “I’ll say when we’re finished, Dr. Wingel.” He turned to the professor’s companion. “I’m Grady Service—I won’t be long.”

  “Marldeane Youvonne Brannigan. Stay as long as you like. You don’t have to hurry on my account. Can we girls buy you a martooni?”

  “I’m on duty, but thanks for offering,” Service said.

  “Shame,” Brannigan said. She ordered a raspberry martini and drained the drink in hand. There were already two emp
ty glasses on the table. As soon as the waiter brought her a new drink, Brannigan got up and left the table.

  Service looked over at Wingel. “Before you find some bullshit reason to accuse me of racism, I want to do something.” He pushed the speed-dial number for Treebone and put the phone on speaker. “You all set?”

  “Good to go, man.”

  “Dr. Wingel, Lieutenant Luticious Treebone of the Detroit Police Department is on the line. He is a black man. If I say anything to you that is in the slightest bit racist, he will jump in. Shall we proceed?”

  “I’m good,” Tree said.

  “This is highly irregular,” Wingel said.

  “I know,” Service said, “but Tree and me are highly irregular guys: We spent a long time together in the marines in Vietnam, we were state cops and game wardens together, and I’m godfather to his kids, so there’s no bullshit between us.”

  “We gonna jaw-jaw or do this thing?” Treebone complained impatiently.

  The woman’s eyes were wide, a deer in the headlights.

  Service took out a piece of paper he’d prepared earlier at Aunt Marge’s. The map he’d sketched included the area with the sand bowl and the place Sedge had described as an amoeba. He put the map on the table in front of Wingel and handed her a pen. “Where exactly did Old Man Winter cough up said corpse?”

  Wingel said, “You don’t intimidate me—either of you.”

  “Wrong answer. Where exactly was the corpse?”

  She studied the drawing and finally, tentatively, made a small, shaky X, the ink barely legible on the paper. The mark was on the southwest extremity of the amoeba.

  He tapped the area. “Any idea what that is?”

  “It’s not written anywhere, but the late chairman of the Madeline Island Reservation once told me that according to oral tradition, there once was a small, protected harbor there. Obviously time and weather have closed it in and filled it up.”

  “Madeline Island?”

  “Wisconsin,” she said haughtily.

  “Did this alleged chairman make a dying declaration?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” she said.

  “When you conducted your first dig, were you aware of the harbor?”

  “There was only one dig.”

  “I take it the answer is negative?”