Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Don’t overact, you two. I know I’m not Nantz.”

  He checked the room that Nantz used as her office. It was neat and orderly, reflective of a pilot’s mind. He saw something in the fax machine and lifted the sheet of paper. It was from Nantz. She had scribbled a note:

  “Can this be our Trapper Jet? NOT!”

  Service studied the photograph underneath her note. “No way,” he said out loud. People changed as they aged, but this was not a young Ollie Toogood he was looking at. He took the fax into the kitchen and got a bottle of Bell’s Amber Ale out of the fridge. The beer was brewed in Kalamazoo, but only beginning to get into the U.P.

  He popped the cap off the brown bottle and fed the animals, who ate like they were starved. Both of them were insatiable and would eat until they burst, but he and Nantz controlled how much they got. He watched Newf eat and pinched his own midsection. A year ago there was nothing to pinch. Now there was. McKower wasn’t the only one adding pounds.

  The Detroit Free Press and the News were out by the mailbox. He went to fetch them and settled onto a couch in the family room. Newf climbed up to take one end. Cat leaped onto the back and hissed to mark her own turf when Newf looked at her.

  “Are you two finished?” he asked them. Newf dropped her head and wagged her tail. Cat began a paw-bath.

  He opened the Free Press. The polls on the gubernatorial race showed that Timms had moved ahead by five points, her rise called “unprecedented.”

  There was a blurb about the senator’s bill to impose mandatory sentences for crimes that resulted in injuries to police officers. Sam Bozian was quoted: “This is a blatant play for publicity and an unnecessary statute.” The governor was right on the last count but it was discomfiting to agree with Clearcut on anything.

  The campaign schedule for both candidates was laid out for the next two weeks.

  A sidebar talked about a party fund-raiser to be held at The Stagecoach Lodge in the Irish Hills in Jackson County. Senator Timms was to be “honored,” whatever that meant. It was being organized by Siquin Soong. Service stared at the name and checked the date. Ten days. The people at the dinner would pay fifteen hundred a plate, the money going to the Democratic National Party. He called Nantz’s cell phone.

  “What?” she answered, sounding weary.

  “Thanks for the fax. You want to talk dirty?” he teased.

  She moaned. “Get real, Grady. My libido’s still on the airplane.”

  “This photo sure doesn’t look like Toogood,” he said.

  He could hear her wake up. “Lansing High School was called Lansing Central High School until 1943 when Lansing Sexton opened. The name in the record is a typo, I guess. They called it Old Central and the building is now part of Lansing Community College’s downtown campus. I had to go to the Lansing Board of Ed to get a 1947 yearbook and they also let me look at Toogood’s record. The records of most students from back then are now on microfiche, but Toogood’s war record and academics make him one of their all-star alums. He was brilliant in math—a real whiz, which is how he ended up at Purdue. His father was a judge and it was a prominent family. Ollie was the only child and the father planned on his going to law school. When he chose math and Purdue, the old man was frosted. When the boy joined the air force they stopped talking.”

  “You learned this from the records?”

  “No, Lori put me in touch with people at the Lansing State Journal and somebody there dug through their morgue and got some clips for me. There was a story about Toogood being on the dean’s list in his first semester at Purdue, and another about him leaving school for the air force. More stories when he was captured, others when he was repatriated, and nothing after that. One of the reporters who wrote some of the stories is a retired columnist. He told me about the rift between the father and son.”

  “The father burned the bridge and the boy never went back.”

  “I don’t know.” The columnist was shocked to learn that Toogood has been in the U.P. all these years and he wants to see if he can do a story. He said several reporters tried to see him at the VA in Washington and Baltimore, but were turned away.

  Service thought, where did he get his checks? “How much did you tell him?”

  “Not much, but his interest is definitely piqued.”

  This could be useful, Service thought. “You did a helluva job,” he said.

  “Up to Grady Service’s standards?”

  “Exceeds,” he said.

  “I was going to call you in the morning. How’s your face?”

  “Okay.” He made a mental note to call Vince and see if he could check the stitches. The cut above his upper lip kept seeping blood.

  “And the rest of your body?”

  “Sore, but getting better. The animals are tolerating me.”

  She laughed and he smiled. He loved her laugh, how she opened up and held nothing back when she was tickled. Her voice alone was a tranquilizer.

  “How’s Walter?”

  “Good. I stayed with him last night.”

  “Really?” her tone said how pleased she was. He didn’t offer details.

  “How come Simon didn’t meet us at the airport?” she asked.

  “He said something came up,” he said.

  “I’m awake now, big boy. Wanna talk dirty?”

  “Talking’s not enough,” he said.

  “Don’t I know it,” she said.

  “I don’t like being apart,” he said.

  “Neither of us likes it,” she said. “I dread the academy.”

  “How about if I come down and you can show me what you do.”

  She was silent. “Are you playing me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Probably not.”

  “The paper says the senator will speak at a fund-raiser for the party in the Irish Hills in ten days.”

  “I haven’t looked that far ahead,” Nantz said.

  “Do you go everywhere with her?”

  “Depends on how long the event is. Most of the time it’s a whistlestop schedule, which means I usually wait at the airport and refuel so we can get on to the next place. She never wears down. What are you up to, Service?”

  “I need to get into that dinner.”

  She grunted. “I’d like it better if you said you need to get into me.”

  “That’s a given,” he said.

  “Why this sudden interest?”

  He debated how much to tell her and decided to lay it all out. “Siquin Soong is Harry Pung’s ex-wife.”

  “So?”

  “She’s organizing the foo-foo fund-raiser. I need to talk to her, but her lawyers are getting in the way. I figure I might get a chance for an informal chat during the dinner.”

  “Chat? That word doesn’t fit your vocab. And Grady, she’s a power broker and the senator’s backer. I’m not sure Lori will buy this.”

  “The senator doesn’t need to know.”

  “Are you asking me to lie to her? She’s my friend.”

  “You don’t have to lie. Just tell her we just want some time together. She can understand that, and it’s the truth, right?”

  “I don’t like the position you’re putting me in.”

  “I can think of some good positions,” he said.

  “Don’t deflect,” she said.

  He took a deep breath and walked her through the case, the problems with Terry Pung, the body in Houghton, the AFIS hit, all of it.

  “Are you suggesting that one of the most important people in the state’s Democratic Party is doing something illegal?”

  “No.” The feds were, but he had no idea what that entailed yet. “I think she’s just trying to shield her son. If she has nothing to hide, she has nothing to lose, right?”

  “So you want to ambush
her.”

  “What would you do if you were me?” he asked.

  “Baby, I don’t know. This just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Get used to it,” he said. “Cops follow the law and sometimes you end up in some funny places. If you could get the next day off, we can have dinner with Tree and Kalina.”

  “I’d like that,” she said enthusiastically. “But I need to sleep on all this.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “You,” she said, laughing again. “I love you, Service.”

  “Even though I’m a busted-up old man?”

  “Who said that?”

  “Joke,” he said. That asshole, Treebone.

  She said, “I’ll call you in the morning, honey.”

  Simon del Olmo called as Service was getting into bed.

  “Sorry I had to leave the truck,” Simon said. “Something came up.”

  “Thanks for dropping it.”

  “Did you hear about Dowdy Kitella?”

  “She-Guy called me about it.”

  “He’s in custody in the Iron River hospital.”

  “For getting his ass kicked?”

  “No. Elza and I found steel cable in his truck. It matches the stuff she found. We also found a chemical the arson people said was the accelerant at Trapper Jet’s place. We’re headed out to his place with a search writ.”

  Simon and Grinda working together? That was interesting. “Have you asked him about Trapper Jet yet?”

  “Not yet. The docs won’t let us in. His head got bent pretty bad. We’ll make the formal arrest tomorrow. You want to be here?”

  “No, just let me know how it goes down.”

  “Si, jeffe.”

  “Good work, Simon.”

  “Better to be lucky than good. An Iron County cop noticed the cable near where they found Kitella and called us.”

  Us? Service lay his head on the pillow and couldn’t sleep. There was too much luck and too damn many coincidences in this case.

  The phone buzzed at 4 a.m. It was Nantz.

  “Good morning, love. I’m going to talk to the senator for you this morning.”

  “No concerns?”

  “Some, but if Soong has nothing to hide, there should be no concerns about talking to you.”

  “Thanks, Mar.”

  “I’ll call you later today, darlin’.”

  “You’re the best,” he said.

  She laughed. “Damn right.”

  18

  The first thing Service did when he got to his office was to check e-mail. There was a note from Stretch Boyd of the department’s PR group saying that DNR Director Eino Tenni had prohibited the use of outside electronic libraries and that he was sorry he couldn’t help with the LexisNexis search.

  “Great,” Service muttered. He had traded for nothing.

  The captain strolled by and looked in at him. “Are you familiar with Captain Richard Sorgavenko?”

  “Should I be?” Service countered.

  “Air Force Academy of 1963. Graduated at the top of his pilot training class and ended up in F-105s at Khorat in Thailand in 1966. He flew one hundred missions and volunteered for another tour. When he began to approach the end of his second hundred, he volunteered again and was turned down. So he began to destroy paperwork after every sortie and the planners lost track of where he was on his tour. He continued like this until he was shot down and killed on his two hundred and eighteenth sortie. What was his mistake?”

  Service stared at his captain. “Pushed his luck, tried to do too much?”

  The captain stared at his detective. “He got shot down,” the captain said, walking away.

  Service faced a quandary about what to do next. He finally decided he needed to get something started on Irvin “Magic” Wan. He had had the option of calling in a detective from the downstate Wildlife Resources Protection Unit; instead, he had called Treebone, who was supposed to have had a P.I. contact him. So far, not a damn word.

  Service hung up and leaned back in his chair. He hated begging and depending on others.

  The captain wandered into the office, sat down across from him, looked like he was going to say something, stood up and walked out without speaking.

  He snatched up the phone as soon as it rang. “DNR, Service.”

  “Good morning. I’m Eugenie Cukanaw. I talked to Tree and I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I was wrapping up a case.”

  Her voice was solid, neither high nor low. “Thanks for calling,” he said.

  “You must be a good friend to get Treebone to pull in a chit. I’m doing this gratis.”

  “We go back.” Service wondered if gratis was why she was so long in getting back to him.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “There’s an Asian guy who lives in Grand Rapids. He owns some clubs, said to be in the drug and skin biz. I know one club is in Kalamazoo and that’s all I know.”

  “Magic Wan,” she said. “We know Irvin pretty well. What is it you need?”

  The question caused him to pause. What exactly did he want? “We are led to believe he works for a man called Mao Chan Dung and that Wan owns some sort of hunting camp in the U.P. What can you find out about his relationship to and dealings with Dung, and where’s the hunting camp?”

  “A hunting camp? Interesting. I don’t know a man named Dung, but that doesn’t mean anything. As for the camp, maybe I can get that information for you. Do you mind my asking why the DNR is interested in such a lowlife?”

  “It’s our specialty.”

  “I imagine it is,” she said, her tone one of amusement.

  “I have a potential international poaching case.”

  “Now that sounds interesting.”

  “An informant puts Wan in the business, but he’s a new name and personality for us.”

  “Shouldn’t U.S. Fish and Wildlife be involved in this?”

  She knew the bureaucracy well. “At some point. Right now we’re just taking a preliminary look at players, trying to figure out what it is we have.”

  “Fair enough—why get the feds involved until you have to.”

  “You’ve been there.”

  “Too many times to count. What sort of timeline am I on?”

  “Soon as.” He gave her his office, home, and cellular numbers. Once again, he owed his friend Tree.

  Later, on his way to lunch, Fern LeBlanc said, “You have a visitor.”

  He looked around and saw no one. “Outside,” LeBlanc said with a nod of her head.

  There was nobody in the parking lot, but as Service got behind the wheel of his truck, the passenger door opened and Limpy Allerdyce struggled to get into the seat.

  “Haven’t seen much of youse, sonny,” Limpy said wearily.

  Allerdyce had shot Service during a scuffle and spent seven years in the State Prison of Southern Michigan for attempted murder. Allerdyce was one of the most notorious poachers in the state’s history and the leader of a tribe of poachers, mostly his relations, who lived in the remote southwest reaches of Marquette County—the largest county west of the Mississippi and by itself larger than the state of Rhode Island. The summer after Allerdyce got out of jail, Service had found the murderer of the poacher’s son and he and Allerdyce had reached a sort of agreement, which Allerdyce claimed to have had with Service’s late father: no poaching in the Mosquito Wilderness, and he would provide tips from time to time. Limpy had made the deal to avoid going back to jail for parole violation, and last year he had helped Service break a major wolf-killing case. But it turned out that Allerdyce also had gotten money from the poachers, who were his competition. He had played both sides like a chess master.

  “You’re my visitor?” It had been months since he had seen the old man. He looked gaunt and sallow, hi
s neck thin as a bird’s, his skin yellow.

  Allerdyce put a shaking hand on his belly. “Gives me the wop-agita gettin’ so close to a cop house. Been too long, hey?”

  Wop-agita? “Not long enough,” Service said. “I’m on my way to a meeting.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, sonny. You’re goin’ for grub. Limpy buys.”

  “I can’t accept a gift from a felon,” Service said. There was no policy that stated this, but he didn’t want to spend time with the old man. “I’ll pay,” he said when Allerdyce made no move to get out of the Yukon.

  They drove into the drive-through at McDonald’s. Limpy ordered four large orders of chicken nuggets. Service drove them over to “the island,” what locals called Presque Isle Park, a tiny and scenic peninsula jutting into Lake Superior. Sitting in the truck with Limpy’s body odor would have been too much to bear. They got out of the truck and sat on boulders by the water’s edge. The rocks were pinkish-red, showing their iron content. It was sunny and cool, clouds racing across under a brisk northwest wind, their shadows skating like sea creatures just under the surface of the frigid gray-blue water. The air had lost its summer softness and Service could feel fall coming.

  Limpy put one nugget in his mouth and put the rest of the boxes in a brown shopping bag he was carrying. Service had a cheeseburger and coffee, and after the burger lit a cigarette and held out the pack to Limpy, who refused.

  “Got a question for youse.”

  Service didn’t look at the old man. Limpy never asked a question without a purpose, did nothing without intent. He was a predator in human form, a demon and shape-shifter, a crow pocketing a bauble at a five-and-dime, a wolf taking easy and helpless prey. He was cold-blooded and calculating, most of his children sired from his other children or their spouses, a dirtbag who took and did as he wanted, with no remorse. In Allerdyce’s mind all that mattered was what he wanted, and if you disagreed, you were in deep trouble.

  “What?” Service asked. The old man was acting strange. He couldn’t put a finger on what it was, but something was different—the weight loss, some uncharacteristic fidgeting and nervousness.