Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  “Fine.” It had ached when he had awakened, but he had willed the soreness away and it felt fine now. He took the captain through the circumstances of the investigation, the coincidence of the figs, and the connection to the Pung family.

  “Where’s the son now?”

  “Supposedly enrolled at Michigan, but maybe he’s playing the same game he played here.”

  “Keep me informed,” the captain said.

  Pyykkonen showed up just after he finished eating.

  “Want breakfast?” Shark asked, showing a connection to the world for the first time since last night. It wasn’t like Wettelainen to react to women he’d not met before, but he certainly was reacting this morning and Service found it amusing.

  She smiled as Shark pulled back a chair for her, took an order for eggs over easy and bacon, and started assembling the breakfast.

  “Walter promised the girl that the cops will follow through on this,” Service said.

  “His name is Walt,” Shark said from the stove.

  Limey Pyykkonen said, “I called the prosecutor and Judge Pavelich. They’re talking to people in Wisconsin about extradition. I’m going to drive down there and be in on the arrest. The sheriff talked to the university about Pung’s son and his surrogate. They don’t buy it at all.”

  Service wasn’t surprised. “You want company in Wisconsin?”

  She seemed to hesitate. “Sure.”

  “Call me on my cell phone. I’ll meet you in Crystal Falls and we’ll go from there.”

  On his way to Watersmeet he called Jimmy Crosbee, the student who looked after Newf and Cat when he and Nantz had to be away. Jimmy had first worked for them last year, was now a senior at Escanaba High School, and one of the top football players in the Upper Peninsula. The boy didn’t hesitate and said he’d take care of the animals after practice, and if Service’s absence ran into Friday, his cousin would fill in for him. The team had a Friday night game in Traverse City.

  He located Sheena Grinda on the Automatic Vehicle Locator computer, called her on 800 MHz, and arranged to meet her at a coffee shop in Watersmeet.

  Grinda arrived after him, dressed in shorts, a halter, and tiny white sandals. It was apparent that her uniform hid a lot and he wondered if this was by design.

  “You didn’t tell me it was a pass day,” he said. Like most workers, officers got off two days a week, and called them pass days. Weekend was a term that didn’t exist for them, and holiday was rarely more than a word in the dictionary.

  “It’s not. I’m working later tonight. I’ve got a dork running a trot line in one of the back bays of Beatons Lake.”

  This was the Grinda he knew, always working, always pushing. “Any luck on that cable?”

  “There are nine places west of Marquette selling it. I’ve made phone contact with all of them. Now I have to go visit and show them the sample. They tell me there’s a way to identify the brand and from that we might get a back-trail. I’m headed down to Menominee as soon as we’re finished.”

  “Nice outfit,” Service said.

  “Bait is bait,” she said, giving him the hint of a smile. “I had lunch with Simon yesterday,” she said.

  Simon del Olmo was in adjacent Iron County.

  “Still no sign of that trapper you’ve been looking for, but he says he has a lead on another of his hidey holes. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “He had a cabin on Mitigwaki Creek. It burned. But Simon found another place. He wasn’t there. The guy gets around pretty well, considering he’s blind and on one leg.”

  He watched Grinda drive away after a quick coffee and went into Watersmeet’s nondescript post office. The postmistress was a tall, gaunt woman. She looked to be around his age, had long straight hair and freckles. He explained who he was and what he was doing.

  “I’m not out to violate federal law,” he said, “but I need to know if Oliver Toogood has a mailbox here, and if so, does he get any mail?” He knew that Trapper Jet didn’t have a mailbox at his camp. He had looked and never seen one.

  “He doesn’t have a mailbox here.”

  “I guess the other question is moot,” he said. He’d try Iron River next. It was on his way to Crystal Falls.

  “He had one here,” the woman added, “but I insisted he give it up so I could assign it to somebody else. We only have so many and there’s a lot of demand.”

  “Reassign it? Because it didn’t get used?”

  “I think I’ve said all I can say.”

  “Thanks,” he said. If Trapper Jet never got any mail, how was he getting a disability check from the government? Maybe he wasn’t? If not, why? His mind began to flood with questions all leading off in uncontrolled and unproductive directions.

  “You might check Mailboxes Forever. It’s a private business. They opened in June. They’ve got some boxes, but mostly they mail packages and do packing.”

  “Great,” Service said. Mailboxes Forever was in a small gray polebarn near the intersection of US 2 and M-47. Service walked inside and found a man at the counter. He had a dozen yellow perch on a sheet of newspaper comics and was cleaning them. The man didn’t look up.

  “They biting?” Service asked. There was no size limit on yellow perch, but most people who chased them preferred the fat jumbos, ten inches and longer.

  “Were this morning,” the man said. “Hope they will be again tonight.”

  Service took out his badge and waved it under the man’s nose to get his attention. “You got a customer named Oliver Toogood with a box?”

  The man looked up. “Ought to arrest that sonuvabitch,” he said, with a hard voice. “Came in here last year stinking to high heaven, demanded I give him a mailbox. Can you imagine that shit? Give him one! Said the feds didn’t have room for him no more.”

  “Did you rent him one?”

  The man’s lips curled up in anger. “I told him to get da hell out. I’m in business here and I don’t need some stinking cripple in here ranking out my customers.”

  The man’s hands were covered with blood and the smell of fish was wafting through the place. “Yeah, it pays to keep a clean business.”

  “Right,” the man said, returning his attention to his fish.

  A quick stop at the main post office in downtown Iron River got him the same answer. Ollie Toogood did not have a mailbox. If not Watersmeet or Iron River, where? He was forced to conclude there was neither box nor checks, which raised the question of what the man lived on. Was the rumor true, that he was baiting bears for hunters willing to pay big fees? Or was he truly self-sufficient?

  Just outside Crystal Falls he pulled into the District 4 office in time to see a small black bear lope through the parking lot, headed north toward the cover of a cedar swamp. It looked over its shoulder at him and accelerated as he pulled into a parking slot.

  Margie, the district’s dispatcher, waved as he passed by. He stopped into the office to see the district’s lieutenant, but he was out. Service asked Margie if he could use a phone and she told him that since Yogi “Wolf Daddy” Zambonet had retired in the spring, his office was temporarily open. Zambonet was the state’s wolf expert and had been involved in a case with Service the previous fall. Wolf Daddy opted for the early retirement engineered by Governor Sam Bozian to reduce the state’s work force. As with other Bozian initiatives, he had gone for sheer numbers with no thought about institutional memory or expertise needed to provide continuity to state programs. His plan called for the replacement of only one in four who took the early out, but the legislature, led by Lorelei Timms, had risen up and vetoed this. All the early-outers would be replaced, but it would take eighteen months to get the force back up to some semblance of strength. It was one of the few wins against Bozian in his long tenure.

  “He come around much?”

  “No, he’s been fishing and getting ready for b
ird season.”

  Yogi’s office was empty, devoid of all the wolf posters, equipment, and gizmos he used in managing the U.P’s wolf packs. The place looked sad to Service.

  He called the captain again and told him he was going to Wisconsin with Pyykkonen.

  “Explain,” the captain said with his customary directness.

  “Pung was involved in a Korean archery group. There’s a club in Wisconsin, which happens to be where the Masonetsky kid lives. I asked McCants to talk to the archery club, but the director went hard-ass on her. We found a photo of Pung in traditional archery gear. It had to come from someplace, and the Masonetsky kid and the Pung kid are connected, or so I’m thinking.”

  “Have the Wisconsin authorities been contacted?”

  “By the prosecutor and Judge Pavelich in Houghton.”

  “What about Wisconsin Fish and Game?” the captain said.

  “Not yet,” Service said. He added, “You’ve got contacts in Washington?”

  “Fewer each year,” the captain said. He didn’t seem dismayed by the fact.

  “There’s a man lives in Iron County. His named is Ollie Toogood. My father introduced me to him when I was a kid. He’s a decorated Korean war vet, on full disability, a former POW. When he got out of the VA hospital system, he came up here and has been here ever since.”

  “It sounds like you already know everything there is to know about him.”

  “I thought I did, but could you use your contacts to pull his service record for us. And, if possible, the address where they’re sending his checks?”

  “Priority?”

  He didn’t really know, but Trapper Jet’s disappearance was beginning to bug him. “Not overnight, but soon should do it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, that’ll do it.” He thanked the captain, hung up, and tried to call Nantz, but got her voice mail. “Hey, it’s me. I’m headed to Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. I’ll have my TX along. I miss you, Mar. By the way, Walter did good. I’ll tell you all about it later.” TX was cop jargon for telephone.

  He parked at Simon del Olmo’s house near Crystal Falls. Simon’s truck was gone. His personal truck, an old Ford, was in the garage. It was nearly 3 p.m. and he called Pyykkonen and asked if she needed directions.

  “You gave them to me once,” she replied. “Not all women are directionally challenged. I should be there in ten minutes.”

  Jefferson, Wisconsin, was an attractive little farm town and county seat about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. It was close to three hundred miles south of Crystal Falls. Pyykkonen didn’t have much to say as she concentrated on her driving. They grabbed burgers at a fast food joint south of Green Bay and kept going.

  En route he called Roger Guild, a Wisconsin game warden who had responsibility for the county that butted up against Iron County. Wisconsin wardens were limited to fish and game work and did not have full police powers. He had known Guild for several years.

  “Rog, Grady Service. I’m headed down to Jefferson. Who’s the warden down that way?”

  “Wayno Ficorelli, why?”

  “I need to plumb his mind.”

  “You won’t need a long string,” Guild said. He gave him the warden’s cell phone number.

  “Somebody else I should talk to?”

  “No, Wayno’s okay, just a little unorthodox.”

  “Thanks, Rog.”

  “It’s cool.” Service stared at the phone. Why was everyone talking like a sixteen-year old?

  “What?” Pyykkonen asked, seeing the look on his face.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  He immediately called his son. “Hey, I thought you ought to know—if you get down to the house, there’s a high school kid named Crosbee taking care of the animals. He’ll be coming in every night.” It was strange to think that his son was in college and younger than Crosbee.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got homework and hockey.”

  “Just thought you ought to know so you wouldn’t think we had a break-in.” The words sounded feeble in his mind. “Okay,” he concluded. “I gotta go.”

  “You seem distracted,” Pyykkonen said.

  “Aren’t we all?” he countered.

  She looked down the highway and nodded.

  He reached Warden Ficorelli on his first try.

  “Your dime, start talking,” Ficorelli answered.

  “This is Grady Service. I’m a DNR detective up in the U.P. Roger Guild gave me your number.”

  “You know Roger?”

  “For a few years.”

  “Okay, he’s one of the good guys.”

  “The good guys?”

  “He doesn’t have his tongue surgically fitted to the bureaucratic butt-cracks in Madison. You a Packer-backer?”

  “No.”

  “Good, I hate those fuckers. What kind of team can you build wearing yellow for chrissakes?”

  “Lombardi did okay.”

  “He was a fucking Nazi. Since then, nothin’ but pansies and players in yellow.”

  Ficorelli wasn’t one to let his opinions lay dormant.

  “I’m headed down to Jefferson. You know a guy named Masonetsky?”

  “Rafe or his old man?”

  “Either. Both,” Service said.

  “Coupla loudmouths,” Ficorelli said. “I been bustin’ Rafe since he was twelve. Everybody thought he was gonna go into the NFL, but he went off to some dink college up your way and hurt his leg and that’s the end of that tune.”

  Ficorelli didn’t know what had happened. “I don’t think that’s how it went down.”

  “No?”

  “He failed a drug test. Steroids.”

  “Dumb fuck,” Ficorelli said, sounding delighted. “Big dumb fuck.”

  “Do you know a guy named Randall Gage?”

  “I thought you wanted to know about the Masonetskys.”

  “Gage too.”

  “Gage is a prick. He runs some archery shit up toward Oconomowoc. Bastard trucks in rabbits and cats and his members have night shoots.”

  “That’s legal?”

  “Fuck no, but the members are a tight-lipped buncha assholes and so far I haven’t been able to make a case.”

  “You got a tip?”

  “Madison got an anonymous letter.”

  “I have business with Gage and I also want to talk to Rafe Masonetsky.”

  “What business?”

  “Gage’s membership list.”

  “What about the big dumb fuck?”

  Ficorelli didn’t sound particularly stable, but he decided to confide some of the reasons.

  “There’s a warrant for his arrest. Drugs.”

  “Steroids?”

  “No, something else.”

  “You want my help?”

  “That’s why I called. We’ll be in town in about ten or so. Got the name of a good motel?”

  “Hell with that motel shit,” Ficorelli said. “You can bunk with Mom and me.”

  Service fought a snicker. “You live with your mother?” The man sounded like he was in his early thirties.

  “You got a problem with that?” Ficorelli asked.

  “No, no. But there’s two of us.”

  “We got room.” Ficorelli gave him directions and promised to meet them at ten.

  “We have a place to bunk tonight,” Service told Pyykkonen. “That will give us all day tomorrow to do business. We can talk to the cops tonight, get everything coordinated, make sure the warrants are in, check on subpoena status.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said.

  Ficorelli and his mother lived in a farmhouse a mile north of town. It was surrounded by fields filled with dried field corn that rattled in the breeze.

  The warden was no taller than five-six
and small-boned, but jutted out his jaw like a feisty dog ready to do battle over anything. His mother was frail and gentle with blue hair, and blue veins showing through her pale cheeks.

  Ficorelli met them with glasses of red wine. “Made this myself,” he said, beaming with pride. He was still in uniform. His mother had loaded a table with snack food and made pasta while they munched.

  “How can you eat like that and stay so skinny?” Pyykkonen asked their host as he hoisted spoonfuls of food and swallowed without chewing. He ate like some sort of constrictor, Service thought.

  “I fuck a lot,” Ficorelli said, breaking into a laugh.

  Pyykkonen glared at Service, who raised his eyebrows in answer.

  Service stepped onto the porch to try Nantz again and heard Ficorelli yip.

  When he stepped back into the house, the warden’s cheek was red and he was eating silently, his attention focused on biscotti.

  Pyykkonen stared at Service. Her look was not one of amusement.

  11

  Mama Ficorelli was up early the next morning and when Service came down to the kitchen she was already piling food on the table. The aroma of baking bread filled the house like an airborne intoxicant.

  “Did you sleep all right?” Mama asked.

  “Yes, fine.” But he hadn’t. He had left another voice mail with Nantz and still hadn’t heard from her.

  Sometime during the night he also thought he heard voices in the next room—Wayno and Pyykkonen—but he decided that was ridiculous and went back to sleep.

  Limey came down to breakfast before Ficorelli and sat on the side of the table, next to an open chair. Her hair was frazzled, and she looked like she hadn’t slept much. An insipid smile was pasted on her face.

  “Good morning,” she said with more enthusiasm than Service was accustomed to.

  Mama Ficorelli was serving blueberry pancakes when her son came bouncing into the room and plopped in a chair beside Pyykkonen. The antagonism of last night seemed to have dissipated.

  Service ate in silence, thinking about the day ahead, wondering if Rafe Masonetsky and Randall Gage were going to help give the two investigations new directions and impetus. When he tuned in, Pyykkonen and Wayno were talking about porcupines and ladybugs. Service tuned them out and tried to get Limey’s attention, but she was locked on to Wayno and it took a while.