Bad Optics

by Joseph Heywood

  “Blond hair.”

  “Natural, you mean?”

  “I don’t know man, just blond. How I know what hair goop she use?”

  Oh shit, dumber than a post, the twin of the Prince. “Okay, this allegedly Swedish Andy, how did she find you two? Did you put an ad in the phone book or on Craig’s List?”

  Cat eyes, light bouncing, no penetration. “We hang out down to Beaudoin’s, Soo, yah?”

  “She met you there, came in and just walked up to you guys?”

  “Pretty much,” Angevin said with a nod.

  “Bullshit, Paint. How would she know you were for hire and for what?”

  “Word gets around about me and Prince, what we can do.”

  “So you have a reputation as beasty gay boys?” Treebone asked with a smirk.

  “No man, we friends, Prince and me—not that way. Why this dude keep saying that shit?” Angevin asked Service.

  Tree kept after the man. “Not that way? What way are you two sweet fairy friends? You afraid I keep saying it I gonna turn you that way, or maybe you’ve already like got thoughts like that?”

  Service saw that Angevin was beginning to hyperventilate. He tapped Treebone’s boot with his own to let him know to lighten up and lay off this line, but his friend was pumped. “What did this Andy offer?” Service asked, trying to take back the interview and steer it elsewhere.

  “Couple bills each, gas money, some beer and, you know, stuff.”

  “Stuff, what the hell is stuff?” Treebone demanded.

  Paint stiffened, “Yah, just stuff, you know?”

  Service asked, “The job for the Swedish lady was to be done where, and how soon?”

  “Soon as.”

  “And you guys agreed to it?”

  Angevin shrugged and looked perplexed. “Sha hi-sa!”

  This exclamation meant nothing to Service. “Had you met her before?”

  “No, was first time.”

  “This how you and the Prince do business, some stranger comes up to you cold and offers you money to assault a guy and you say okay, just like that? What if she was plainclothes setting you guys up?”

  “Blow jobs,” Angevin said. “Cops don’t do that stuff.”

  Quick response there. Maybe he’s not entirely thick. “Did she say why she was targeting Allerdyce?”

  The boy shook his head. “Just say kick some old man’s ass and tell him tell his friend need retire or everybody will have to pay.”

  “I’m that friend. Do I look ready to retire?”

  Angevin stared at the floor. Service added, “And the others include my woman and kid. How’d you feel if somebody threatened your woman and your kid?”

  “Just words,” Angevin said. “We wun’t hurt no kid.”

  “But old people, they’re fair game?” Tree said.

  Service said, “That what you beat up Mr. Allerdyce with, just words?”

  Treebone asked, “Swedish woman give you a name for your target?”

  “No man, if I’da heard that name, I’d have said no deal, no way.”

  “You’ve heard of Mr. Allerdyce?”

  Angevin said, “Everybody knows who he is, man.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She give us an address.”

  “Where?”

  “Place over McFarland, spooky place look like redneck hillbilly Radio Shack shit, wires, poles, antenna shit, all that. Dr. No shit, sayin’? Creeped us out, dude.”

  “Did your employer tell you when the target would be there?”

  Angevin shook his head, “Said just wait and watch, he’ll come. She say, ‘get him when he come out. He’ll be weak when he come outside.’”

  Service looked up at Allerdyce. “This happened in McFarland? You never told us where it happened.”

  Allerdyce said, “Youse never ask where, and what diff’rence dat make now, hey?”

  None now, but who would know that Allerdyce and Fellow Marthesdottir were seeing each other? Was there a leak, and if so, who and where?

  “Your Swedish woman paid cash?”

  Angevin said, “Cash, used bills.”

  Why those distinctions would make a difference to the punk, Service didn’t understand. “And she never said where she was from, or who wanted the job done?”

  Paint said, “She never say, but while she doing Prince, and I wait’n my turn, I see Escanaba newspaper in back seat.”

  Ford River and the Drazel’s office were just south of Escanaba. The only building he could think of had to be the retired Troop’s former business. Having a newspaper was by itself meaningless, but it was a piece of information that might come to have the feel of weight to it.

  Treebone put the camera on the cot where the detainee sat and told him to look. Prince looked, shook his head, and passed the camera back. Service handed the boy surveillance photos from Marthesdottir’s cameras. More head shakes.

  Service looked at Treebone and thought that’s four who didn’t order the job, which means there are others. Service did not want to break off the interview yet. “What time were you at Beaudoin’s?”

  “Early, like eight?” Paint said.

  “That your usual time to circulate?”

  “Circalake?”

  “You know, get out and get around, hang out, visit and such?” Thick as a brick.

  “Oh yeah, pretty much.”

  “What kind of weather that night?”

  “Cold, clear.”

  “Roads dry?”

  He nodded, “Yah. And her truck clean.”

  “Her truck?”

  “Where we make deal.”

  “What color?”

  “Gray, silver, like that.”

  “Anything on the doors?”

  “Enh-enh, but I don’t read good.”

  “Anything, color of what was there?”

  “Was red writin’, red and blue ball above it, man.”

  Silver truck, red writing. Shit. This had to be the Drazels. Dry night, easy drive south to the Escanaba area, three to four hours max, probably no motel stop and too damn many potential routes for fuel stops to try to run gas sales.

  Service took his friends outside. “It’s them, but no way to pinpoint anything. What I’m wondering is how they would know Limpy’s been seeing Marthesdottir. He looked at the old man. You tell anyone?”

  “No, just youse guys.”

  They went back into the cell, and Service said, “No charges this time, but put one more blip on the radar and we will activate all this plus whatever new shit you’re tracking in.”

  Angevin stood up and stuck his hand out toward Allerdyce. He looked down at the outstretched hand. Allerdyce snapped a kick between the man’s legs, putting him face down on the floor. “I got ten-year-old grand-girlie-kittles hit harder than youse two assholes. Next time youse come after me, I come back after youses wit’ knife, not no boot.”

  Service opened the cell door, looked back at Angevin and said, “Meg-wich,” thank you in Ojibwa, and followed the old man out. “We’ve got to figure out how the Swedish woman knew about you and Fellow,” Service told his partner.

  Chapter 35

  North of Nowhere Camp

  Chippewa County

  The camp name was misleading. To reach the place you had to drive almost forty miles south of it, so you could sneak back to the north through a maze of eroded two-tracks. He’d bought the place after Maridly Nantz’s murder and gave it to his friend Tree as a retirement gift—a hideaway, a place to provide his wife, Kalina, with more space and an abundance of solitude. Later he and his friend had quietly sprinkled Nantz’s ashes into the unnamed little trout stream on the east side of the property, a spring-fed ribbon of water that stayed frigid year-round, and in summer brought schools of fat brook trout up from warm
er waters. He’d bought the camp from the retired writer, Bowie Rhodes, whom Tree and he had first met in Vietnam and had been friends with ever since.

  Service still owned Nantz’s huge house on the Bluff above Gladstone, along with his Slippery Creek Camp. He and Tree had decided to head directly to Ford River from the Soo, and he had momentarily considered holing up at Nantz’s house, but Tree wanted to check on his camp where they decided to spend the night. They would push on to Ford River in the morning, hit there early, and have all day to work the situation, whatever that amounted to.

  Given the sort of clout attached to Kalleskevich and Bozian, it was difficult to understand how anything in their name could be affixed to such rank amateurs as the Prince and Paint. The fact that someone hired the pair of cretins suggested that their alleged employer was herself a rank amateur and lacking in judgment. The combination of amateur with amateur could be disastrous by all measures and for all people involved.

  This woman, this Andy, Service thought, had sent the two punks after Allerdyce in an attempt to get the old man to pressure him to get out of the way. It was interesting that Paint, stupid as he seemed to be, was not totally unaware, because he had nearly fainted when he heard the name of the old man he and his partner had beaten up. Everyone in the U.P., northern Wisconsin, and northern lower Michigan with an IQ above room temperature seemed to know who or what Allerdyce signified, and most people tiptoed around him the way they would tiptoe around a bear with a nasty disposition, or a minefield. Did Andy know this and intentionally withhold the old violator’s name, knowing she’d have a difficult time finding anyone who would go after someone with such a reputation? She could have saved herself the trouble by hiring a professional from one of the cities, but they wouldn’t come cheap and two hundred dollars seemed like peanuts. So was this Andy person perhaps trying to operate on the cheap? And if so, why? What the hell is this all really about? Especially since his gut was telling him Bozian and Kalleskevich were after diamonds, not artifacts, and if so, why the hell was the woman playing cheap when such big bucks seemed to be at stake? His gut, he knew, wasn’t infallible, but it was rarely off, and his first impression rarely changed later.

  It was a quarter mile from the North of Nowhere gate to the cabin, which was a two-story thirty-by-thirty-foot log box with only a single small window above—a porthole facing northeast. Even on the brightest summer day the interior of the cabin was as dark as a hangman’s heart. He loved the location but had never felt comfortable in the cabin. Tree loved the place and that was all that mattered. His friend had paid for power to the camp. He dug a well and installed a hot water heater. Tree spent much of his time up here fishing and hunting, out of his wife’s hair. As gregarious as Tree was, Service found his friend’s love of solitude less surprising than satisfying. It reminded him of the old saying about how the more one knows people, the more they like their dog. Most of Tree’s career had been spent in and around Detroit, and he was peopled out.

  Allerdyce dropped his small duffel bag inside the camp door, stood there, and looked it over the way a burglar might examine a potential target.

  “Got all the basic food groups here,” Treebone announced.

  “Watermelon and Kool-Aid?” Allerdyce asked, tongue in cheek.

  “Cram it, you racist insect,” Tree said, and laughed. “I refer, of course, to Ball Park dogs, baked beans, beer, and ammo. Not your store-bought canned beans, but my own recipe for shoot-fire-out-your-ass specially spiced by that classy firm, Brothers ’n’ Others.”

  “My taste birds don’t fly,” Allerdyce said. “And I ain’t youse’s brother nor whatever.”

  “We’ll excuse your deficiencies,” Tree said, “just this once. If you’re gonna whine, there’s peanut butter in the cabinets and jam and jellies in the fridge, and a loaf of limpa rye, in the freezer, but it has to be unthawed.”

  Service smiled. Tree was up here so much he was beginning to talk like a Yooper. Unthawed indeed.

  “Real food,” Allerdyce said. “PBJ on limpa. Okay, dat work.”

  Tree pulled Service aside to confirm his observation. “Is he acting ouchy-owly or is it my imagination?”

  “I feel it too,” Service said, “whatever it is.” With Allerdyce, it could be anything, but Tree was perceptive and Service sensed some sort of extreme unease in the old man. As long as he had known the violator, he rarely expressed real feelings.

  They turned in early. Service had a last smoke outside before climbing up on the deck above to a cot. As he smoked he studied the bear claw marks on the corner logs of the house and saw that his friend had added bear-proof metal shudders to the windows. Allerdyce stood outside with him, staring up at the tops of the cedars around the cabin. It was a cloudy night, with almost no light getting throught the treetops. “Violet’s delight,” he told the old man, who grunted and made no other response.

  “Was a time,” Allerdyce whispered in a scratchy voice.

  “I’m packing it in,” Service said. “We’ve got to roll early.”

  Allerdyce said nothing.

  Just before 0400, Service awoke with a start to tomb-like silence and none of the usual camp sounds—no heavy breathing, no snoring, farting, coughing, choking, or rasping, none of the symphony of nasty sounds sleeping old men tended to make. He rolled over and could make out Tree’s breathing but couldn’t see him. The two of them had spent so much time together in darkness in their various lives that they no longer needed to see each other to know the other was close.

  “Problem?” Tree asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Service reached over to Allerdyce’s cot and found no Allerdyce. “Did you hear Limpy climb up to bed?”

  “I ain’t heard nothing,” Tree said. “I died when my head started down toward the pillow.”

  Service felt his way to the ladder and climbed down and told Treebone, “This place needs a nightlight.”

  “I sleep better in dark, and since I’m the only one here most of the time, it will remain that way.”

  Service found Allerdyce squatting just outside the door, with his back to the log wall. “You okay?” Service asked. No response. Service nudged him slightly with a sock-foot.

  “What?” Allerdyce sputtered.

  “Everything okay out here?”

  “Was till youse woken me up.”

  “Sorry. You coming up to your cot?”

  “Just fine ’ere.”

  “Okay,” Service said just as the inside camp light came on and Treebone came out in his skivvies and sweatsocks and stretched. “What’s with you two? I can’t sleep with two old men down here whispering like old women. We’re not even close to the ass of dawn yet.”

  Service said, “We’re good here,” as he pushed Tree back inside and stepped inside with him.

  “You want to tell me what’s up?” Tree asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. He’s acting more squirrelly than normal. I found him squatting with his back against the wall. Asleep.”

  “Damn, he’ll be lucky if he can unfold his legs in the morning.”

  “I think something’s bugging him.”

  “How can you tell?” Tree countered. “He doesn’t say shit, except for his cutesies.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Grady, the man’s a wood tick. He doesn’t think like normal humans. I’m going back to bed. Call me if the patient takes a turn for the worse.”

  Service went back to bed too, and lay on his cot watching the doorway below. Eventually Allerdyce came in, but got only to an inner wall where he went into the same squat as outdoors. Service fell asleep wondering what was wrong and awoke to the sound of bacon snapping in a black iron skillet, the smell of coffee brewing, toast popping from an old and very athletic toaster. He checked his watch 0500, still black outside with the main light on below him. Tree might believe he needed the dark to sleep, but the main light had not awa
kened him.

  When Service rolled out to pull on his trousers, Tree grumbled in his deep voice, “What the hell is going on?”

  “Allerdyce is making breakfast,” Service said.

  Treebone yelled down from the loft, “Don’t cook my eggs hard, old man. I get hard eggs, I want shoot the cook.”

  “I hear dat,” Allerdyce said from below. “Eats is on. Move it, we burnin’ daylight, boys.”

  “Sun won’t be up for at least another hour,” Tree yelled back.

  “I can see da dawns out dere,” Allerdyce came back. “Get butts moving.”

  Grady Service wiped sleep from the corner of his eyes and yawned. This had the feel of a long day.

  Allerdyce put a cup of coffee in his hand. Service asked, “What the hell is going on? You slept all night on the floor?”

  The old man said, “I slep worse places, wah.”

  Had whatever was eating at the old man passed? Need to keep an eye on him.

  Chapter 36

  Ford River

  Delta County

  Grady Service’s mood was dark as loon shit. Tree was angry and seething. Only Allerdyce seemed unaffected, and his thoughts were impossible to know. The Drazel Sisters facility was cleaned out, and they were gone, vamoosed, off to terra incognita. Damn.

  The windows had been spray-painted black inside. A nice touch, Service noted, if you were looking to delay any pursuit. Expecting to find something and then finding nothing tended to dump his personal gyroscopes into a dizzy tumble. It was one thing to theorize these people might boogie and yet another to actually find them gone. Psychology affected cops as much as civilians.

  Who had tipped them off? Paint? The Prince? How had they known to send the twin goons after Limpy at Marthesdottir’s place, in the middle of nowhere, when his schedule and presence were badly erratic at best? This left a bad taste.

  Service said, “Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em,” as he leaned against a chest-high yellow metal post in the parking lot in front of the old Drazel Sisters building. Definitely the old Troop’s place of business. “Somebody around here has to know something,” Service declared as much to himself as to his companions. He stared at the building. Did the Drazels work and live here, or if they only worked here, where did they live? Fellow said they rotated employees from downstate. And where the hell was Andy the Swedish woman in this mob?