She keeps staring at me, like she’s waiting for me to do or say something. “Could someone push through a bogus claim?”
“Would that surprise you?”
“Not in the least.” Where and when financial gain was at stake, nothing surprised him anymore. People could show real genius and no scruples in the free-for-all for money that was the heart of capitalism. “But they would have to convince a court in order to get their claim validated, right?”
She said, “It would appear from here that the provenance of the evidence would be the critical factor.”
“Odds?” he asked.
“Given the skinny water that constitutes extant legal precedent, I’d guess fifty-fifty, depending on the strength of the claim, the skill of the lawyers, and who the judge is.”
Like rolling dice, win or lose in one roll. “Depending on the minerals at issue, it could be well worth a gamble.” But limestone? No way.
“If there are minerals in the claim. What if it’s something else that they really want access to, but can get to it only via mineral rights to a particular landmass? They’re not going to argue in court about particular minerals, only the legitimacy of their claim to any and all minerals in the parcel in question. Is it possible that Bozian has proof of ownership, proof we know nothing about?”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know anything, and it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m just getting started on this deal.”
“Bear in mind,” she cautioned, “that Sam’s not one to play a game where he’s not already calculated the probable outcome. Any time he thinks he might lose, he pulls out.”
“Is there such a guarantee?”
“A deed for mineral rights signed by the state would do it.”
“Current owner?”
“Assume so, but if there isn’t a clear current owner and the claimant can sway the judge . . .” She didn’t finish the thought. “You’re on the case officially?” she asked.
“I’m on something,” he said, and left it at that.
He had watched Gyttylla throughout the meeting and finally realized what it was that was holding his attention. He said to M, “Gyttylla, eh? All black. Her visual twin, Ms. Bonaventure, is the lady in white, but they are the same person.”
M sucked in a sharp breath. “How did you figure this out?”
“I’m guessing all the clothes are the same size, and the shoes, but more importantly, both women wear the same heel and both are worn to indicate pronation. I could measure, but I’m pretty sure the wear is identical or nearly so.”
M said quietly, “Pronation?”
“She walks on her heels, weight back.”
“And you know this how?”
“We’re trained to track man and beast.”
M smiled. “You’re everything they say you are.”
He smiled back. “The question for me is, are you?”
On the long trek back to the surface, Service whispered to their severe escort in black, “I like you better as Punner.”
She touched his arm lightly. “Me too, and you have my number.” She added, “Now we can find out how much of your game is talk.”
Not the kind of challenge he liked to have thrown at him. Temptation was a difficult opponent, and Punner was a definite head-turner with an agenda he couldn’t figure out, and didn’t want to.
When they started to work their way off the campus, Allerdyce chirped, “Youse want go Woof Cave, youse on own dat one. Not go down ground no more. Dis was nuff.”
“It was heated and lighted and comfortable,” Service said.
“Youse’s opinion.”
The old man seemed resolute. “You’re a claustrophobe, you?”
“And I don’t like Sanny Claws neither, dumb clown comin’ down bloody chimleys. What wrong dat fat man do shit like dat?”
Chapter 16
St. Ignace
Mackinac County
Dirty clouds were stacked like limestone layers over the cobalt-gray waters of the straits, a color so vile it forced Service to shiver. Beside him Allerdyce, toothless and open-mouthed, buzzed like a cheap saw, his sleep mask not unlike a lot of the dead bodies Service had come across over the course of his career.
The men had talked only perfunctorily since East Lansing, and Service had spent most of the time mulling the situation as he pressed the truck northward.
Ironically, all the lanes on the bridge were clear, and the entire way across the 5-mile-long bridge there was none of the usual construction blocking, slowing, or diverting traffic. Unlike his life.
Allerdyce startled awake within a hundred yards of the toll booths on the north side. “Wah, what dat stink is, Sonny?”
“Wake up, you’re dreaming.”
“Don’t dream,” Allerdyce insisted. “Leave dat stuff to shrinkheads, god-pilots, them.” Allerdyce pointed. “Somepin goin’ on up dere, hey.”
Service saw a Michigan state policeman ahead, outside his patrol vehicle, standing beside a toll booth line and motioning for him to pull up to that lane, which he did. Not just any trooper, it was Lt. John “Jump Start” Skelton, the post commander in St. Ignace. He’d earned the name when he saved three heart attack victims in one week.
“John,” Service said.
“Sorry, Grady,” the L.T. said, looking across at Allerdyce and shaking his head. “We need for you to pull over to the post for a minute.” Skelton added, “It’s not my idea.”
“What up?” Service asked.
“Just pull over to the post for a few, okay?”
“Sure.” Now what?
Skelton said mysteriously, “Let me get there ahead of you so I can witness the whole scene,” and rushed to his car and headed for the post that looked out over the straits.
Grady Service gave eight dollar bills to the toll-taker. “It’s only four for you,” she said.
“Four for me and four for the vehicle behind me. Tell him welcome to the U.P.”
“Cool,” the bridge attendant said and lifted the bar for him.
Service followed Skelton to the post and spotted him waiting at the front door, which he held open. Service also saw a black helicopter in the parking lot. “Got a pen,” he asked Allerdyce. “Write down the tail number on the chopper.”
The old man did as requested, but said with a sniffing sound, “Stink gettin’ worse.”
Service sensed something more than smelled it. Two Troops stood inside the front door; one of them pointed down the hallway and said, “Conference room.”
Lt. Skelton hurried ahead and held the door open for Service. He stepped inside, saw an immense creature alone at the fake maplewood conference table. Gray layers of lumpy flesh, bushy eyebrows the size of small butterflies, dead eyes. “Sam?”
“It’s Governor,” Bozian said.
“You termed out, so unless you pushed our current governor aside, it’s plain old Sam to me.”
“You never mellow,” Bozian said.
“And you look more like Jabba the Hut every time I see you.”
“Who?” the former governor asked.
“A fat-ass alien. Don’t you take your kids to the movies?”
Bozian did not rise to the bait. “What were you doing below the bridge?”
“I need a passport to travel around the state?”
“You’re on suspension.” Interesting that Bozian knows, and Eddie Waco was right.
“What the hell does that have to do with me crossing the bridge? Am I missing something here?”
“You’re always missing something.”
Bozian had informants. “What is it you want, Sam. I hate wasting time with jerks.”
The governor asked, “How’s your blood pressure?”
Service laughed, “A boatload better’n yours, if appearances count for
anything. They bring you into the post on a dolly?”
Bozian’s eyebrows fluttered nervously. “Why is it you have to do everything the hard way?”
“First, it’s more fun, but more importantly, it’s because assholes like you make it necessary.”
Bozian shook his head slowly. “You have enough troubles without exacerbating your situation by impersonating a police officer. You have been suspended and are not empowered to legally discharge the duties of a state conservation officer. My legal advisors are of the opinion that such egregious behavior would meet the definition of a felony.”
“Where do your boys get their information, from a Cracker Jack box?”
“You deny you’re suspended?”
Service shrugged, “Is there a point to this, Sam? I’ve got things to do.”
“We’ll be seeking a warrant,” the former governor said.
“We?”
“The state.”
“You’re not the state, Sam. Haven’t been for years. You live out east. I doubt you’re not even a Michigan resident anymore.”
“I retain interests here,” the governor said.
“Such as property?”
“Yes, such as.”
Here goes a gamble and a guess. “I sure hope you aren’t claiming your farm property here as your primary residence for tax purposes. I’d have to get the law after you. Concerned citizen, you know.”
“Make your jokes,” Bozian said. “A warrant will be forthcoming.”
Grady Service walked over to the governor, pulled out his wallet, flipped it open, and showed the man a laminated card. “My commission as a federal special deputy marshal.”
Bozian fished in his pocket for his eyeglasses, and Service said, “It’s real, Sam. Federal Special Deputy Marshal. And I’m not the only one. Many COs in the state are federally sworn.”
“But you’re not a conservation officer. You’re suspended.”
“Give it a rest, Sam. I’m not suspended as a marshal. I still have that commission. That hasn’t been suspended.” It was all a bluff. Maybe the card remained in force, probably not, but Bozian obviously had no idea, so for the moment this was a sweet little trick. Even when they took his state badge and sidearms, Chief Waco had told him to keep the federal card. Which didn’t amount to much. As a CO he could assist federal officers and do things for them, but he couldn’t initiate anything unless directed to do so. What the commission did was give him the freedom to work across state lines.
“I don’t think that’s legal,” Bozian said, but with no force of conviction.
“Get a new box of Cracker Jacks, Sam. The answer might be in it, and if this is all you’ve got, I’m out of here.”
“This isn’t o-o-ver,” Bozian stammered.
“Count on that, Sambo. Arrows can fly two directions. Next time you come to a word fight, bring more than pidgin shit.”
Allerdyce was still in the truck and asked. “Youse find dat stink?”
“A former governor we all love so much.”
Allerdyce chuckled. “Sam ’ere? T’ought know dat stink. Like sulphur brimstone dat, the Devil for sure.”
Part II: Metes and Bounds
Chapter 17
Slippery Creek Camp
Back at camp, his home away from home, or as it stood currently, his home in lieu of home. Tuesday and Shigun were in Marquette, and he was here. The old poacher was off on his own somewhere, talking to god knows who or doing god knows what. All that mattered was he knew that if the old man stumbled across something he’d bring it back quickly. Limpy had been gone two days since their return.
After the surprise meeting with the former governor, Service kept thinking all the way from St. Ignace how Hollywood got things wrong. The life of a cop was 99 percent boredom, sometimes more, but nobody wanted to see or read about that. Entertainment showed cop lives skipping from crime wave to wave, creating a picture that bore very little resemblance to reality. It might seem real to readers and moviegoers, but not to cops who were familiar with the 1 percent action and 99 percent tedium.
The real life? Boredom: hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes years. In the interims—the crests—you checked, watched, listened, observed, baited, trailed, and patroled, made your rounds, kept your boots in the dirt and snow, and worked your beat. Every cop anywhere had a beat, even if it never extended more than fifty yards from the patrol vehicle. As a cop, you got to know your beat the way you knew your own body. You paid attention to all changes, however small and seemingly insignificant, seasonal and natural, man-made or unexplained. Anything and everything had potential significance, or would if you could fit what you were seeing into something larger.
Allerdyce had continued with his vehicular sleeping sickness as they made the trip westward from the bridge, which gave Service time to think. The limit for a cop was his brain. Cops were human and all humans had deficiencies. The key was to figure out your own and navigate around them, or find ways to compensate. Sometimes it was a matter of increasing your computing power, in other words, to create and activate a network of people who could act like remote computers. Fellow Marthesdottir, M, the Dotz kid, Honeypat, Oheneff, Friday, his friend Luticious Treebone, these were elements in his network this time around. Every case tended to birth new network contacts or strengthen old ones. The cop who tried to work without extending himself through others was doomed to fail. Policing is a collective effort, not a solo deal. The key was to have eyes and ears that could see and hear and know things you couldn’t know on your own. People in your network were like delicate plants, and some needed more water and fertilizer than others. Some needed nothing. They blossomed and bloomed on their own. It was damn near impossible to predict how things would turn out. What you knew, without a doubt, was that a cop who didn’t rely on his contacts was soon going to be shit out of luck. You could think of them as plants in your professional garden. Without attention there would be no harvest.
Service interrupted his thoughts to survey the camp. For years it had been only a shell, a rough carapace, in which he slept on a bed made of two army footlockers pushed together end to end. He had nearly finished the interior at one point, but this was as far as he got, and now it looked much like it had before he’d tried to take it to the next level. It was basic shelter, which suited him, filled with fishing and hunting gear.
To Tuesday Friday, it had the “air of a fading gentleman’s club—without gentlemen.”
Allerdyce, ironically, understood all of this instinctively. He got the logic and had used it in the days when they opposed each other and he was running wild across the U.P. The old man scared a lot of folks and for good reason. But he had been a pro in his day, arguably the best ever, and for that alone he was entitled to respect. In recent days it had become clear that they were a lot alike, and only certain walls of laws and ethics divided them. The governor was out to punish both of us, the dumb bastard, but it was no matter. What they’d done might be outside the box, but it had paid off for the state, and that, bottom line, was the job, wasn’t it?
The drive across the U.P. had been downright pleasant. Spring was settling on Lansing and now it was beginning to hint itself up here—not that early spring would be a picnic as mud replaced snow and made travel equally difficult in vehicles and on foot. The weather might be pleasant for the moment, but in forty-eight hours it could rain, dump snow into streams, and start creating snow runoff. Four nights ago while they were still below the bridge, the southern U.P. had gotten ten inches of wet snow, which was already receding.
He hadn’t seen Tuesday for a while and, although they talked frequently, phone calls were poor equivalents for proximity. He knew and felt they had been too long without touch, both of them getting the grumples. During their last conversation, Tuesday barked at him, “You asshole, you’re treating me like one of your snitches.”
“I don’t us
e snitches. They are civic-minded informants.”
“You’re such a jerk.”
The meeting with Bozian was a mild surprise, and he wanted to know the scuttlebutt in state police circles about his minor collision with the former governor. Tuesday had a temper, which made him smile, but he knew he had taken a step too far and amends would have to be made. She was right, of course, but she played him the same way when she needed information. It’s a quid pro quo. In his mind, anyway.
At first, when the old man shuffled into the cabin, Service was lost in his own thoughts and paid no attention, but when the old poacher started pouring coffee Service looked up and saw he had two burgeoning black eyes, a scabbing cut lip, and some ragged thread stitches wagging from a jagged head wound that reached down to his right eyebrow. “What hit you, a cuckolded husband?”
“Weren’t no bloody cuckoo, Sonny. Was young buck from over da Soo and dumb-cluck Polack from down below somewhere, hey. Dey got me when I don’t got da guard up, beat shit outten me, say, ‘Tell youse’s pal him and his girlie-squeeze, dere brat, youse, udder kittles, nobody gone end good if youse’s friend don’t retire, take long awaycation, keep ’is nose outten udder pipple’s business.’”
Allerdyce kept spouting, “Dey drop da log over road trick, come out on me quick fast, fore could figger t’ings out, den they haul out blades. Got in some good licks but dey big suckers, got hold me, put fist boogers all over my ’ead. And den, one dem let loose a bit and I scoot off.”
Translation: Two big young men had attacked him by dropping a tree across the road, and when he got out to move the obstacle, they had jumped him to deliver a message. Not to Allerdyce, but through him to me. Assholes. Service felt his temper flare, but forced himself to remain calm.
“How is it you know these guys are from the Soo and downstate?”
“Da buck, he been aroun’ hey. Udder one I never seen before.”
“You know their names?”
Bad Optics Page 12
