Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  “You’re not helping my self-image.”

  “Fathers don’t have self-images.”

  “This one does.”

  “You really don’t remember what happened?”

  Service exhaled. “There was a little wrestling.” Which was hearsay. What he remembered was a flash of white, spiking adrenaline, silence.

  “Wull, Peel-grim,” Walter said, with a bad impersonation of John Wayne. “We all know yore tough. You don’t gotta be humble too.”

  “I’m not humble.”

  “You said it, not me,” Walter said.

  “Finish your sentence,” Service said.

  The boy looked puzzled. “Dude,” Service said.

  “Dude,” Walter said. “Did the doctor happen to mention permanent loss of brain function?”

  “Not a problem,” Service said.

  Walter looked at him. “Does that mean yes, it’s not a problem, or yes, he talked to you?”

  Service smirked and wanted to laugh, but his face was too sore and swollen. “See how it feels to talk to you?”

  Walter rolled his eyes.

  Nantz came into the room. “How it feels to talk to who?”

  “Stay out of this,” Service and his son said in unison.

  “There’s a driver waiting to take us to the airport,” Nantz said.

  “In Madison?” Service asked.

  “Madison is where we are,” she said.

  “I need to make a side trip on the way to the airport.”

  “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.

  “Not unless you can beam me over to Jefferson, Scotty.”

  Walter Commando and Maridly Nantz exchanged glances. “Are you all right, Grady?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t think you’re all right.”

  “Can we go to Jefferson now?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk to Masonetsky.”

  “That idea sucks,” Wayno Ficorelli said, walking into the room. “He’s in the hospital there.”

  “You broke my finger,” Service said.

  Nantz tapped Walter on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “You broke a finger on my right hand,” Service said.

  “There wasn’t time to assess handedness,” Ficorelli said.

  “You need a remedial class to improve observational skills.”

  “I observe that you guys are leaving. Am I going along?”

  “So you can cripple my other hand?”

  “Let’s all move,” Nantz said sternly.

  “Tell the kid it was just some wrestling,” Service said.

  Ficorelli looked at Walter. “It was just some wrestling.”

  “Was there a winner?” the boy asked.

  They were in the corridor. “The law,” Service said.

  “Is that the same as justice?” his son asked.

  “Rarely.”

  “This is not uplifting for a young college student.”

  “It gets worse as you get older.”

  Nantz said, “Okay, boys.”

  They stopped at the discharge desk so that Service could sign out and continued out into bright sunlight.

  Ficorelli said, “Like, am I invited, or am I wasting steps here?”

  “Next time we work a case maybe I’ll have the finger re-broken before we start,” Service said.

  Nantz opened the side door of a black super cargo van.

  Service looked at Ficorelli. “Mount up, finger-snapper.”

  When they were all seated and belted, Nantz said, “You can all shut up now.”

  Walter said, “It’s them, not me.”

  “We’re bonding,” Service said.

  “The Mars thing,” Ficorelli chipped in.

  “No bonding in this van,” she said.

  “Does that mean sex is out of the question?” Ficorelli asked.

  Service cuffed him on the back of the head with his left hand.

  Rafe Masonetsky was lodged in the Jefferson Hospital. Pyykkonen was already there, waiting for him to be handed over so she could haul him back to Houghton.

  As soon as Ficorelli saw Pyykkonen, he abandoned Service.

  Rafe sat on a bed, his face swollen and bandaged. His first words: “I want my lawyer.”

  “Terry Pung’s father is dead,” Service said. “We’re gonna find Terry and I have a hunch he’s going to implicate you.”

  “Dude, I know nothing about that,” Masonetsky said shakily.

  “Where’s Terry?”

  “Ann Arbor, I heard, but I don’t know, man. He called me in August and asked if I could help him with something, but I had to work.”

  “Where did he call from?”

  “I don’t know, man. Ask his mama.”

  “His mama?”

  “He’s a mama’s boy. He don’t do shit unless he checks with her.”

  “You’ve met her?”

  “More than met, dude.” Rafe shuddered when he spoke.

  Service decided that Rafe was afraid of the woman. “You have a problem with her?”

  “She’s like, hot, man.”

  Service switched directions. “Cats and rabbits at the archery range.”

  “What?”

  “I figure you know who supplies Gage. Gage gave you up to us to get Ficorelli off his back. Who supplies him?”

  “Fuck, I should tell you?”

  “Let’s count the reasons: resisting arrest, assault and battery against an officer of the law, attempting to flee, criminal sexual conduct, drugs—you want me to go on?”

  Masonetsky moaned softly. “What do I get?”

  “Payback on Gage, and we tell the prosecutor you cooperated fully.”

  “Jubal Charter,” Rafe said.

  “Does Ficorelli know him?”

  Masonetsky nodded. “Everybody knows him. He’s the county’s animal control guy. You busted me up good,” Rafe said.

  “We’ll call it even on that score,” Service said, his face aching.

  Ficorelli was outside, sticking close to Pyykkonen. Service looked at him and shook his head. “Jubal Charter supplies rabbits and cats to Gage.”

  “Hah,” Ficorelli said. “They hire Wisconsin wardens up there in Michigan?”

  “It happens. Tell your mom thanks for her hospitality.”

  On the drive back to Madison, Nantz said, “You’d recommend he be hired?”

  “He’s unorthodox, but he gets the job done.”

  Service was surprised to see Nantz’s Cessna on the tarmac. “I thought the senator sent her plane?”

  “Sent her pilot. Actually she didn’t have a choice. I was coming whether she approved or not. I wanted to bring Walter and I couldn’t justify burning her fuel.”

  Service sat in the right seat while Nantz did her preflight check and started engines. Walter sat in the jump seat just behind and between them. “You never called me back,” Service said.

  “Her pace is a killer,” Nantz said. “We were on the go constantly and we had some mechanical problems in Saginaw. Grady, the polls show her moving ahead. I think she’ll win.”

  “You never called me back,” he repeated.

  “She came as soon as she heard,” Walter said. “Cut her some slack.”

  “Put a sock in it,” Service said over his shoulder. “This is between us.”

  “What he said,” Nantz said, asking for taxi instructions.

  As they turned over Lake Michigan and began to climb, Nantz looked over at him. “That girl who was burned? She didn’t make it. Candi says they’re gonna petition to try the other kid as an adult.”

  “Fourteen,” Service said, shaking his head. It sometimes seemed that God’s only interest in mankind was body count
. “Are we dropping the kid in Houghton?” he asked with a nod toward Walter.

  “Duh, I’m coming home for a couple of days,” Walter said. “Remember?”

  Nantz looked at Service. “The captain says you will take a couple of pass days. He also says he has the information you wanted, but not to think about any work until you’ve been off a couple of days.”

  “What about you?” Service asked.

  “Lori said we can take as long as we need. Have you heard what Sam is going to do when he leaves office?”

  Die, Service thought. “No.”

  “Lori says that there’s some inside talk that he may move to Washington and take a cabinet job.”

  “His reward from the Republicans for destroying the state?”

  She shook her head and called, “Level at angels fourteen.”

  Service looked at her. “Why do they call it angels? If you put the plane a thousand feet into the ground, do they call smashed at devils one or something?”

  “Is he always like this?” Walter asked.

  “Sometimes he’s worse,” Nantz said, adjusting the throttles.

  13

  Service’s home office was still a work in progress and consisted mostly of an old oak door across two sawhorses, a rickety desk chair, a battered metal file cabinet, and two huge wall maps. Nantz was constantly threatening to bring in a builder to construct a proper office, but he preferred the basement as it was and asked her to leave it alone. So far she had. One map was of the Mosquito Wilderness, the other of the Upper Peninsula. Since putting up the U.P. map the previous summer, it had hung untouched. By contrast, he was constantly making new notations on the Mosquito chart. For Service the Mosquito remained alive in all ways, though his notations had tapered off since Candi McCants had taken responsibility for the area.

  He got out a box of red pushpins, lit a cigarette, and stood in front of the U.P. map, which was mounted on a floor-to-ceiling cork wall. He started inserting pins, one for each event that could be connected—at least in his mind. The pins stretched from McMillan in the east, to Iron and Gogebic Counties in the west, a distance of almost one hundred and eighty miles. He inserted pins for Griff Stinson, Betty Very and She-Guy Zuiderveen, Sheena Grinda, Trapper Jet, Dowdy Kitella, and finally, a red pin at the location of Pung’s body on the Portage Canal. He wrote off the events in Trenary with Bryce Verse and the girls as separate and unrelated.

  He balanced an unlit cigarette in his mouth, put his feet up, and studied the pattern. Griff lost a bear—confirmed. Bearclaw probably lost a bear. Sheena found a bear caught in steel cable. There was ursine hair in Pung’s Saturn and more hair resembling it in the Brown camp at Lac La Belle in the Keeweenaw. Trapper Jet’s presence on Betty Very’s turf remained unexplained, and his grousing about Kitella probably was no more than a gripe. There was no pattern to be seen. The only pattern he had to work with was ursine hair in the car in Hancock and hair and a steel cage at Pung’s rented camp at Lac La Belle. Had a bear been kept at the camp and moved to a boat in Hancock? This was the only way to read it at this point, and the main thing he wanted to focus on.

  “Hon?” Nantz said from the stairs.

  He looked over at her. “Captain Grant is here,” she said. “You okay?”

  No, he was frustrated.

  The captain came down the stairs stiffly, his uniform freshly pressed. Service gave him the only chair and stood by the wall. The captain sat stiffly with a manila folder in his lap, looking more uncomfortable than normal as he surveyed the Mosquito wall map.

  “Hard to let go?” the captain said.

  “Any word from the federal lab?” Service asked, changing the subject.

  “Not as yet. You will take more than a couple of days off,” his boss added in a tone that told Service it was not a request.

  “I’m fine,” Service said. He didn’t want people fussing over him. He had been hurt many times and he had always eventually healed.

  “Grady,” the captain said, looking directly into his eyes. The use of his given name jolted him. “At our age we can’t be involving ourselves in physical confrontations. Over time we have to learn to use our brains instead of our muscles.”

  What was this about? Service wondered. A reprimand?

  “By every measure of performance, you should be a captain now, or at least a lieutenant, but until last year you were still a working warden.”

  Was he looking for an explanation? “I always liked my job, Captain.” Which was the truth. It was hard enough to look after himself and the Mosquito without having to worry about a bunch of officers.

  “That has been self-evident,” Grant said. “It is equally clear to me that you have taken creative steps to ensure that you would never be considered for promotion.”

  What the hell did the captain want?

  “You have over the course of your career gone out of your way to annoy Lansing and to isolate yourself from the center.”

  “Not intentionally,” Service said, beginning to feel defensive. “They didn’t like me. I didn’t like them. It was balanced.”

  “Rationalize it any way you like,” the captain said, “but your past behaviors ensured that the overall mission of the department was compromised.”

  “Sir?”

  “For an organization to function at maximum efficiency and to discharge its mission, it needs to have the right people in the right jobs. You haven’t been in the right job for a long time and despite your denials, I believe that this was a matter of choice. Your selfishness, Grady, affected all of us.”

  The rebuke stung. He admired and respected the captain, and was confused by the captain’s disappointment in him. “Sir, why are you telling me this?”

  “I am going to retire, Grady. I have recovered most of what was lost from the stroke, but frankly I don’t have the endurance I once had, and I can’t concentrate the way I once could. It’s time for me to step aside and make room for someone who can fully perform.”

  Grady Service didn’t know what to say.

  “If I were a betting man,” the captain went on, “I would wager on Senator Timms capturing the gubernatorial helm. After she takes office, I will step down.”

  “What if she doesn’t win?”

  The captain smiled. “She will, Detective. But here is my concern: She is extremely smitten by you and I fear that she will move to appoint you to a position that you do not deserve. You have been a polarizing personality throughout your career.”

  “Sir, I haven’t done anything to encourage her attention.”

  “I understand that, but I am telling you that while I think you could perform any job in the department, you have not earned it and I expect that when the time comes, you will reject her patronage.”

  “Captain, I don’t want another job. You have my word on that.”

  Grant nodded crisply. “Good.” He held out the folder. “This is the information on Mr. Toogood.”

  “Anything interesting in it?”

  “I haven’t looked. I have no idea why you wanted it, or where your mind is these days. You asked for the record and I have now delivered it. I do not want you back on duty until you can assure me that you are feeling closer to normal.”

  Service was tempted to object, but said simply, “Yessir.”

  He walked upstairs with the captain, who made small talk with Nantz and Walter, and then escorted him to his vehicle. “Our conversation today is a matter of honor,” the captain said. “Just the two of us, man to man. I trust you and depend on you and I know you will never let me down.”

  Service found himself staring at the driveway long after the captain was gone.

  Nantz prepared a lunch of ravioli with rosemary walnut sauce and brought two bowls down to Service in his basement office. He opened a bottle of 1999 Cima Merlot Montervo and splashed some in two glasses. The wine was new to the
m, the color rich and red.

  “I didn’t have Kasseri,” Nantz said apologetically. “I used Asiago and I didn’t have time to pick up fresh pane.”

  “This is great,” Service said with his mouth full. It hurt to try to eat.

  She sipped the wine. “Nice.”

  Walter came downstairs sniffing. “I’m hungry.”

  “Pasta in the kitchen,” Nantz said.

  “Do I get wine?” he asked. “Sheba always let me have a glass of wine.”

  “No,” Service said.

  “I figured you’d say that,” Walter mumbled, going back upstairs.

  “He’s always pushing,” Service said.

  “You didn’t when you were that age?”

  “If I had, I’d have looked like I do now.”

  “I pushed my parents all the time, especially my dad,” Nantz confessed.

  “Look how you turned out,” Service said.

  She smiled. “Not too shabby, hey?”

  He nodded and pushed his bowl aside. Half the ravioli was still there.

  “You’re hurting,” she said. “It always shows in your appetite.”

  “The swelling makes it hard to chew.”

  She put her hand on his leg. “It will go away.”

  She shook her head with worry and took a swig of wine. “What did the captain want?”

  “He brought me some stuff I asked for.”

  “He was here quite a while.”

  He had made a promise to the captain and, given what his boss had confided and Nantz’s closeness to Senator Timms, he couldn’t tell her. “It was just work stuff, and he thinks I should take a few more days off.”

  “Will you?”

  “I can’t sit round on my keester all day, babe.”

  “You’re holding back on what you and the captain talked about.”

  “He said it was just between us.”

  “So if Lori says something is just between her and me, I shouldn’t tell you?”

  “A promise is a promise,” he said, wondering what the senator had told her.

  “I thought we were always going to tell each other everything.”

  “Mar.”

  “I know, I know, but I’m dying to tell you something and I can’t.”

  “Maybe there’ll be times when we have to accept a delay in telling each other things,” he said.