Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  He hoped.

  37

  Six-foot-six Jake Mecosta pulled on his rain slicker, uncapped a tin of Marvil Hot, and tucked a pinch between his cheek and gums. Mecosta was one of a few Native American officers in the DNR, a Baraga-L’Anse Chippewa. Mecosta and Service were the same age, longtime friends who shared a love for wild brook trout.

  “Hope I can find the way,” Jake said, eyeing the angle of a steep ridge overgrown with beech and maple.

  Service grunted. “We’ll just have to walk a little more. You take care of your feet and I’ll take care of navigation.”

  Jake Mecosta grinned and nodded. He had long been an effective officer, but he had a couple of weaknesses—he was both clumsy and had an amazingly poor sense of direction. Fellow officers teased him about it; he had laughed at himself, and said it just caused him to walk a little more than his colleagues, so he kept himself in better shape. Neither man was perfect: For Service it was dogs, for Jake, direction.

  Service did not know western Alger County well enough to make a one-man search. The boat had to have been dumped in this area for a reason. Last night he had studied maps and plat books and given up. Nothing fit, and his time was limited. He had called Jake Mecosta, who covered western Alger.

  “Let’s talk to Santinaw,” Jake had said after hearing the problem.

  “He’s still around?”

  “Eighty-five and still going. Walks down to Eben and back once a month, eight-mile round trip.”

  Santinaw was Huronicus St. Andrew, a Munising Ojibwa who had served in the Pacific in World War II, and come home in 1946 after some time in Japan. As a boy, Huronicus pronounced St. Andrew as Santinaw, and that had been his name ever since. He lived alone, never married, and occasionally worked as a hunting or fishing guide. Service’s old man had known him well, but Service hadn’t thought about Santinaw for at least fifteen years.

  His cabin was in the deep ridge area of the headwaters of the Rock River, east of the Laughing Whitefish, and they were getting ready to hike in to find him.

  “Santinaw’s been living here since he come back from the war,” Mecosta said. “If anybody knows the area, he’ll be the man.” But you did not call St. Andrew on a telephone. You had to go to him, and before you got to him, you had to know where he lived.

  Service studied the ridge. “This doesn’t look too bad.”

  Jake Mecosta grinned. “Isn’t too bad—for a bit—then she turns nasty. This rain and all that slate, we’ll be lucky not to break a leg.”

  “How far?” Service asked.

  “Mile, maybe two,” Jake said. “It twists around a lot.”

  “Your route, or Santinaw’s?”

  “Santinaw never walks the same way twice; claims it keeps his footprints out of the forest.”

  The rain was falling steadily and it was cool.

  “Let’s do this,” Grady Service said.

  If Santinaw would allow it, Jake would remain with him in order to use the 800 MHz radio to maintain contact with Service, who would hike out and head for Jackson for the meeting with Siquin Soong.

  The first quarter-mile was uphill, through a relatively clear maple and scrub oak forest, until they came to the lip of a ridge, where the terrain dropped straight down into an alder and cedar swamp bottom with braids of a small stream wandering through.

  “We can climb down here,” Mecosta said, moving to Service’s right. “Further along, we might need our ropes.” They both had harnesses and safety lines in their packs.

  A man in his eighties walked around here year-round, Service reminded himself.

  After an hour’s walk along the cluttered streambed, Mecosta stopped. “I think we gotta climb back out somewhere around here.”

  Service looked up at the rock ledges that seemed to stick to the cliff wall like a five-year-old’s Legos.

  “You got a favorite route?” Service asked, looking up into the rain.

  Jake sighed. “Seems like I always take a different one.”

  They used their green lights to climb, so they wouldn’t be throwing wide, bright beams all over the woods. It was dark.

  Sweat was pounding out of Service when they got to the top. “Now where?”

  “East, down a bit, south over a ridge, and there we are.”

  Which translated into two sweaty, tricky hours, and a small cabin built near a rock shelf looking down on what was the beginning of the Rock River.

  They smelled smoke before they got to the cabin, and as they approached, a small bear came hurtling past them. Even in the green beam its fur was deep black and shiny. Both men laughed.

  “Santinaw, me and Service came to talk with you,” Mecosta yelled from the front of the cabin.

  The old man stepped outside, holding a pipe. His loose, shoulder-length hair was bright purple and lime green, and he was smiling.

  “Young Service,” he said with a big smile. “Lucky you got here at all, following Jake. Come in, come in.”

  The interior was tight and dry and warm, a small fire going in a wood stove. There were cured furs on the walls, tools, rifles, a honed crosscut saw, a shelf filled with old crocks and bottles, and a rack with fishing rods. The wooden floor was shiny from use, no dust.

  Jake and Service put their packs on a small table, opened them, dug out the contents. Coffee, tea bags, brown sugar, snuff, pipe tobacco, matches, aluminum foil, duct tape, smoked whitefish, some cigars. “For you,” Mecosta said.

  Santinaw ignored the goods, asked them to sit. “Just about to make some tea,” he said. “I took honey off a bear.”

  “We saw a bear on the way here.”

  Santinaw smiled. “That’s him. The tyke’s been hanging around ever since I took his honey, hoping I’ll share. I might, but don’t be tellin’ him. Good to keep bears and women guessing.”

  St. Andrew put on a teakettle and sat down with his visitors.

  Mecosta touched his own hair, said to the old man, “That the new look in Rock River country?”

  “Got a woman over to Eben. Her idea. Said it makes me look like a rock star, whatever that is.”

  Mecosta smiled. “How old, twenties?”

  Santinaw pursed his lips. “She’s a mature woman—thirty at least.”

  Mecosta looked at Service and rolled his eyes.

  “We need help,” Service said, and told the man the whole story of the murders, the blue boat, the bear, everything.

  Santinaw listened without interrupting.

  “You think they brought this animal up into the Laughing Whitefish country?” he asked when Service had finished.

  “I’m guessing,” Service said. “They sank the boat off the point for a reason. If they were going to transfer it to a truck, they could’ve done that elsewhere.” In Hancock, for example.

  “You say this is a sacred bear?” Santinaw asked.

  “Not sacred—rare. And if it’s real, maybe the only one of its kind that anybody’s seen.”

  “That makes it sacred,” the old man said.

  “You’ve been all over the area,” Jake Mecosta said.

  Service said, “We’re looking for a camp, not sure of the size, but we figure it’s isolated, not that easy to get to. Probably not on the lake.”

  “Be easier if you knew the owner,” Santinaw said.

  “We think the people we’re looking for are Asian: Korean or Chinese. They’ve brought the animal here for a reason, maybe to sell it.”

  “I’m not a holy man. I don’t see futures,” Santinaw said. “Except in bed with that woman in Eben. I always know what she’s going to do.”

  “Like dye your hair?”

  “I didn’t see that one coming,” Santinaw said with a wink. “You know maw-wi-win a-tik-a-meg.”

  “Weeping whitefish,” Service said.

  Santinaw nodded. “Your fath
er taught you well, young Service. We fought together, you know; Guadalcanal, Okinawa, all those places, a long time ago. Too much blood, too much blood.”

  Service thought they were about to lose him, but the old man recovered, heard the teakettle whistling, filled cups, added tea bags, let them steep. “Ja-ga-nash, the English, could not read a brown face. They came here and found many whitefish in the river, took the fish, did not offer to share, saw some of our people crying and thought they were laughing.”

  He paused. “They cried not for the fish. Match-i manito lived up the river, above the lake in the canyon ma-da-gam-ish-ka ni-di.”

  “Where the water moves quickly?” Service said. “I’m a little rusty. Match-i man-i-to?”

  “I can’t speak it at all,” Jake said.

  “Yes, fast water, above the lake. Matchi manito is the one ja-ga-nash called the devil. To us that is matchi or wa-ni-sid—unclean.”

  “An evil spirit.”

  “For Christians, the evil one, but our people knew him since time began. He would come to that place above the river to do things that would make our people cry.”

  “But there’s no place for a camp up that way,” Mecosta said.

  “Now,” Santinaw said. “Now.”

  He got up, added honey to their tea, dumped two huge spoons of sugar into each, and gave the cups to his guests.

  “It is true,” Santinaw said. “Nin ba-ba-mosse, ond-jish-ka-osse, bi-jiba-osse, qwai-a-kosse, be-dosse, ki-ji-ka, nan-do-dish-kig.”

  Service had to concentrate hard to understand. St. Andrew had said something like, “I walk about, into the wind, slowly and fast, in circles and straight ahead, feeling my way.”

  “You walk a lot,” Mecosta said.

  Santinaw laughed. “Enough Ind’in talk. My memory is better with tobacco.”

  Service opened the outside pocket of his pack, took out two cartons of Marlboro Light 100s in boxes.

  Santinaw opened the first pack delicately, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, put a piece of dry spaghetti in the woodstove, used the pasta to light his cigarette.

  “You want me to talk nish-naw-be?” St. Andrew asked Service.

  “You’ve taxed my vocabulary already.”

  “The Iroquois, the na-do-we, used to go up above the lake and eat their enemies. Long ago some of my people met the Iroquois down near the lake and killed them. We never saw na-do-we again. This isn’t in many white history books. My people avoided the above-the-lake because they wanted to let the manitos there have their peace. They had seen too much. But there was a time when the whites had a camp up there, a big cave.” He made a shape with his hands.

  “A grotto?” Service said.

  “Yes, grotto. It goes deep into the side of the canyon and it is dry. Some white trappers lived there for many years and then a sickness came and they were gone.”

  “I think we’re looking for something a little more recent than a grotto,” Service said.

  “I will leave in the morning, walk around, see what is to be seen.”

  “I’d like to stay and go with you,” Jake Mecosta said.

  “A man is free to choose,” St. Andrew said.

  Following his own route, Service was back in his truck in just over one hour.

  How the old man had lived so long in such punishing territory was impossible to comprehend.

  Service was almost home when the cell phone buzzed. It was Teddy Gates.

  “I’ve been calling all day, but I didn’t want to leave this message. Toogood withdrew all his funds from that bank up there.”

  Ontonagon. “When?”

  “The day after I talked to you.”

  “Did he go there himself?”

  “No, he was up there earlier this fall and asked for a cashier’s check to be picked up by a friend. He even gave them a photograph of the guy.”

  Service sighed. Had Trapper Jet been to Ontonagon before Betty Very stumbled on to him? Was this why Toogood had been up there? If so, what was he doing wandering around the Firesteel River?

  “Toogood’s dead,” he told his old commander. “The body was found yesterday.”

  The general cursed. “The check was for just under a half a million smackers.”

  Service hung his head, did not think, listened to the rain thumping the cab, mocking him: “You dumb fuck, you dumb fuck.”

  He called Betty Very and asked her to make a run to the bank in Ontonagon.

  38

  Jackson was eight hours south of Gladstone, thirty degrees warmer, and as different as a Traverse City cherry and a durian. Service sat in his truck outside the general aviation building and talked to Treebone on the cell phone. Eight shiny corporate jets were parked on the apron, and a sign on the fence said, god is busy. attention pilots: eyes up for deer on taxiways.

  “You understand what I want?” Service said.

  “Got the what, not the why,” Luticious Treebone said.

  “Need to know, man.”

  “How it is, dawg.”

  “Your best man, right?”

  “Sterling’s our own Motown strike dog. Can follow a fart off a motorcycle seat with a five-day head start.”

  “He’s so good, how I’m getting him?”

  “The man is in the drawer, you know, Idi Amin shit. He shows you his stuff, maybe you can bring him over.”

  Idi Amin was Treebonese for IA or Internal Affairs. “Must be some most serious shit.”

  “No, man. He breathed some on the wrong brother, lipped his script.”

  “English, asshole.”

  “He’s a hunter, Grady, got his ass in somebody else’s patch, changed his story couple of times when he was talked at. His time here could be short. You like what you see, you might want to put a gray shirt on him.”

  “He’s a brother?”

  “Yo, he’s a flyboy brat, grew up near the Soo.”

  “So you’re asking me to audition a man when I need your best.”

  “He is the best. He does the job and then we talk.’”

  “Your Grand Rapids P.I. hasn’t delivered,” Service said. “Is your man carrying a cell?”

  “That’s not like Eugenie,” Tree said. “I’d better check on her. My man carries two cells.” Treebone gave him the numbers.

  Service explained what he wanted, said, “We tight?”

  “Semper Fi, bro.”

  Service needed help and his friend was talking up his man, but Tree wasn’t past a little scamming to get what he wanted for his people.

  The plane came in from the northeast, nose into a light wind, touched down without a smoke puff on the five-thousand-foot runway, and taxied in. Lorelei Timms got off the twin-engine aircraft looking tired, a wrinkled trench coat slung over her shoulder. She was followed by a burly silver-haired man with a beaming smile. Timms walked toward Service and nodded. The silver-haired man followed with two bulging suitcases and a battered leather garment bag. The senator said, “Grady Service, this is my husband, Whit.”

  Whit Timms set the bags down and shook Service’s hand. “Mostly I’m her pack animal,” he said.

  The couple walked toward a waiting tan minivan and driver. A State Police SUV was behind the van. Two young women and a young man got off the plane carrying cardboard boxes and headed toward a second van.

  Nantz stepped into the hatch opening, looked down at Service and smiled. “Permission to come aboard,” she said. “I’ll show you around my office.” She wore black trousers, a white short-sleeved shirt with epaulets, a thin black tie, a black wheel cap with wings.

  There was not enough headroom for him and he had to stoop.

  “There’s no security here,” he said.

  Nantz stopped and pointed out a window at the threesome loading boxes in a second van. “The guy is Troop Sergeant Toby Robinette and there are
three more in the detail in civvies. It’s covered, Service.”

  “Sergeant? He looks fourteen,” Service said.

  “Everybody looks fourteen to you,” she said with a laugh. “He works older than he looks.”

  She squeezed past him, pumped the hatch closed with a hydraulic arm, and latched the door.

  They went back through the bird to a bench seat on the starboard side.

  “What happened to my tour?” he said.

  “It’s about to begin,” she said, tossing her tie over her left shoulder, unsnapping her trousers, letting them fall and stepping out of them. She pushed him onto the bench, put her hands on his shoulders, squatted over him.

  Someone began banging on the hatch.

  “Somebody wants in,” Service told her.

  “Only one person’s getting in right now,” Nantz whispered.

  The outside noise continued.

  The sound on the door blended with her movement and faded. When she came she collapsed on him, her arms tightly around his neck. “God,” she said, her hips and thighs spasming with diminishing aftershocks.

  There was no one near the plane when she opened the hatch.

  He carried her bags to his Yukon. She sat beside him with her hand on his hip. “That just blunted my edge,” she said. “Why am I so horny?”

  “Why is air invisible?” he said.

  She shrugged. “You’re supposed to say something earthy and carnal,” she said.

  “My brain’s not working.”

  She smiled. “Well, at least one part of you is. I need a nap this afternoon.”

  They drove twelve miles south to the Indian Road B&B on Devil’s Lake. It had a gray brick facade, with neatly mown lawns and fingers of peony beds down to the lake.

  Nantz hung up her evening gown, got out her shoes for the dinner, took off her clothes, and collapsed on the bed.

  Service took a tux out of a plastic bag and hung it up. He had not worn a tux since his wedding. He tried to imagine himself in it and groaned, remembering he had forgotten to get black shoes.

  He went down to the Yukon and dug out his Danner boots. At least they had once been black.