Killing a Cold One

by Joseph Heywood

  “For one or two?”

  “Two.”

  Friday seemed more relieved than elated. “You’re a champ, Limey.”

  “Hell I am, but I know how to take care of my friends. You need anything more over this way, give me a bump. Yalmer just came back and says you should ‘keep Lard-ass out of trouble.’ ”

  “I’ll try,” Friday said. “But it’s a big job.” She broke contact and looked at Service. “Lard-ass?”

  “Shark humor.”

  “Lamb,” Friday said wistfully.

  “Registered in her own name, and for two. Smell like a setup to you?”

  “We must not assume,” Friday said.

  “I won’t if you won’t,” he said. “Now what?

  “Quigley, face-to-face. We need to back him out of our business until we need him.”

  Service understood why she didn’t bother to call ahead. It was New Year’s Day. There would be a party to watch college bowl games. Quigley had entertaining power brokers as his primary religion, and prosperity theology as his own personal gospel.

  55

  Thursday, January 1, 2009

  MARQUETTE

  They pulled up a circular driveway to a large house in the swanky Huron Woods development some locals snarkily called Hot Shot Acres. There were a dozen luxury vehicles parked along the drive, but Friday found a close space and squeezed in. The house had been built by a local architect but tricked out by an interior decorator from downstate, no local businesses used except for some subcontractors, out-of-the-gate choices that got Quigley off to a lousy start with the locals.

  A well-to-do local who didn’t spend locally was immediately a questionable entity in the U.P. Quigley soon realized his mistakes and corrected them, making sure to take care of locals first, in the courtroom and outside it.

  The prosecutor opened his door with a Manhattan in hand. Holiday music in the background, people talking. Quigley looked at them and said, “It’s football day—what the hell do you two want?”

  “We need to talk,” Friday said, stepping past the man.

  “Can’t this wait? I’ll be in the office Monday.”

  “No, Malcolm. Here, now.”

  The prosecutor yelled “Business” into the din of Christmas music, showed them into a small room off the foyer. It was filled with shovels and boots, chooks and choppers on hooks, a large plastic snow scoop. “You better have a good reason for this,” Quigley said menacingly as he closed the door.

  Friday gave him one of two photographs and Service saw him suck in his breath. “There you go, Mr. Prosecutor. What goes around, comes around. Portage View Retreat House, three years ago this month. You and Marge were separated and you were banging Lamb. I don’t care if that caused the separation or didn’t. That doesn’t matter . . . yet. Could’ve been because, but that’s speculative.”

  Friday handed the second Polaroid to the prosecutor, the one with his dicky bird waving in the air, and handed him photocopies from Lamb’s bankbooks. “Lamb sure did like photos, Malcolm, but I guess I’m not telling you anything new. And why not? It was all in good fun, right? Eat, drink, screw, and be happy. Then one day good old Lamb says, ‘Lookee here, darling,” and there was the incriminating picture. Instantly you could see in your own mind just how good a hold she had on your shorthairs. How am I doing?”

  The prosecutor glowered, took a swig of his drink, and exhaled. “The bitch was a lot smarter than I figured, a damn slick operator. She didn’t ask for five hundred forever, just that much a month for four years, enough to build her a nest egg, and not enough to bankrupt me or send me off the deep end.” Quigley stared at Friday and said wearily, “You can’t believe I killed her.”

  “Well, it’s a helluva lot better motive than Daugherty might have.”

  “Yeah, and maybe the deputy wasn’t so magnanimous when she sank her claws into his dumb ass.”

  “Actually, Malcolm, it looks to us like Lamb saw Daugherty strictly as short-term sport, and a freebie to boot.”

  The prosecutor glared at her. “In other words, the deputy walks.”

  “The way it looks to me, maybe you had somebody toss her place . . . looking for these, no doubt. I’m going to ignore that because you don’t strike me as the type to kill, at least not with your own hands, and in that, you and Daugherty are a lot alike. All I ask is that you stay out of our way from here on in. If evidence develops that shows I’m wrong about the deputy, we’ll run with it. Same if it points to you.”

  “Checkmate?” he said.

  “Just check,” Friday said.“For now.”

  “Deal,” the prosecutor said.

  “I put great faith in your pragmatism, Mr. Prosecutor.”

  “Life is a series of choices,” he said. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. For the record, she was strictly lowlife, but I never wished her any harm. I let myself get trapped—my fault all the way.”

  Right, Service thought. “And then your old lady told you that she went out and diddled Daugherty for some payback, and that meant you were double-fucked.”

  “I’ve never much cared for you or the DNR,” Quigley said, avoiding Service’s glare as he and Friday left the house.

  Service wondered how many more local men there were in the prosecutor’s circumstances. “You going to check her safety deposit box?” he asked Friday.

  “You bet. Next week. I’ll even ask Malcolm to sign the writ.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be on your shit list,” Service said.

  “Astute observation,” she said.

  •••

  There was an envelope stuck between Friday’s storm and inside doors, a note inside the envelope: Dear Sheriff: Martine Lecair was a fine teacher and lady. None of us can understand why she left us. Her employment and personal records are in the envelope. The birthplace of her twins is listed as Nelson River, Manitoba. God bless you. No signature.

  “I’m guessing the secretary at the school office,” Friday said after she read the note. “Happy New Year,” she added. “Funny, even without Lupo we would have been pointed to Nelson River. The first three vicks were born there. Makes you wonder exactly what connection Lupo has to all this, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m headed to Nett Lake,” Service announced.

  “When did you decide that?”

  “When I read that note. All this is Indian-related, and I haven’t been able to get the hit-and-run out of my mind. Anything on the paint sample yet?”

  “No.”

  “Yell at me soon as you hear something,” said Service.

  “We are owned by these damn jobs,” she said. “You going alone?”

  “Probably,” he said. Noonan and Tree had both gone south and would not be back until the end of next week.

  56

  Saturday, January 3

  NETT LAKE, MINNESOTA

  Driving through snow was neither fun nor easy if you had to be on paved highways. Back in the woods, it could present some dicey moments, but you had more time to think and anticipate. Service planned to drive from Marquette to Duluth, and from there, eighty miles north through the toothy Mesabi range, downhill to the marshy boreal swamps of Nett Lake. He’d delivered Cat and Newf to Friday’s to stay until he returned. When Tuesday worked, her sis took the animals and Shigun. Her sister was nothing short of a saint. Newf loved the kids. Cat just wanted to be included, and close to easy food. He tried to call Allerdyce but got no response and took off at zero six hundred, thinking it would be an easy six-hour drive, weather permitting—the eternal if of living in the north.

  He stopped to eat in Ashland at a generic food emporium, where everyone wore a plastic badge proclaiming hi, my name is, like this was the surname of a large contingent of individuals with fragile likenesses; like the military—second name last, no middle name needed. hi, my name is melody was dis
tinctly a product of the “hon” culture, but the food came quickly, and what more could you ask when you were on the road, hon?

  He had passed several Minnesota state troopers driving brand-new Mercury Sables, and this made him think back to his days as a Troop, driving a Plymouth Fury with an engine powerful enough to put the thing in orbit if only it had possessed wings.

  Rumor had it that Ford would soon dump the Sable into the automotive model dustbin. There was something downright wimpy about cop cars named for fur-bearing animals mainly used to decorate women. Cops belonged in Furies, scaring the shit out of themselves in chases. Hell, Sables lived only to be skinned. What kind of model was that for law enforcement?

  North of Duluth was hilly, not technically mountainish, and he stopped in Eveleth at an eat-cheap tavern across from the the Hockey Hall of Fame. His waitress made a point of informing him that she’d had frequent carnal knowledge of a number of Minnesota North Star players before the team’s “dickhead owners” had moved their cheap team down to Dallas, and she had sworn off sports for sex since then. The joint was called The Dead Canary, and nobody smoked. He wondered if canaries had died from smoking in order to influence the law. No smoking in bars. What the hell is happening to this country? Sometimes he felt like an alien in his own land.

  The switch from hills to swamp was sudden, and the PBS station out of Duluth was calling for eighteen to twenty-four inches of fresh Alberta snow over the next twenty-four hours. The area south of Nett Lake was already under a thick white blanket, with impressive snowbanks piled up and few people or vehicles out and about. The U.P. seemed almost overpopulated by comparison.

  He had the road pretty much to himself, his tires cutting fresh tracks, snow fluttering around without serious intent. It was the granular stuff, coming in hard little pellets. Back home locals could wax poetic about the properties and significance of different kinds of snow. For him it was just a bunch of slippery white crap that made life more difficult. You either endured or you didn’t.

  Service reached Nett Lake, and pulled into an establishment advertising live bait—ammo—beer—deer—corn-fry bread, a one-stop shopping experience in a snowy swamp. He topped off his tank and went inside, found himself in aisles filled with some great winter gear at pretty good prices, and helped himself. He had all kinds of gear in the truck, but in the North Country, you couldn’t have enough. Several pairs of socks and some twelve-inch Sorels with a tag claiming they were insulated down to minus-100 degrees. The male clerk had a baby face and a flashy gold earring.

  “Chains?” Service asked.

  “Back to the hardware,” the kid said with a head jerk.

  He added another shovel to his new chains and a folding track for traction in case he got stuck, and a box of chemical hand warmers. Unexpected bounty. He loved outdoor gear, as did most COs.

  “Expecting trouble?” the clerk asked as he tapped prices into an adding machine with paper that draped down to the floor like a Gene Simmons tongue.

  “How far to Nett Lake?” Service asked.

  “In miles or light years?” the clerk asked.

  Bush humor. “How about drive time?”

  “Depends on your speed, don’t it. You’ve got about nine miles to go.”

  Some sort of virus was loose upon the land, putting the smart-mouth on teens everywhere: MTV, shit like that. Millenium Generation, my ass: more like the Moronic Generation.

  Service said, “How far to the nearest asshole, not counting you?”

  The kid said, “Look in a mirror.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. The kid was annoying but quick. He’d probably end up as the CEO of some damn dot-com.

  Out in the Tahoe he fiddled with the radio and finally found WELY, which was mostly static and billed itself as End of the Road Radio.

  If population was sparse between the iron range and swamp taiga, it was nonexistent in the swamp itself. All road signs had been torn down or turned around to confuse strangers, the unspoken message: Get Thee Lost.

  Nett Lake turned out to be a loose collection of buildings, trailers, shacks, snowmobiles, boats on rusty trailers with flat tires, and so forth, just like the U.P. Roads hadn’t been plowed, but there were iced tire ruts marking the way, and in one area some kids had shoveled space in the street to play basketball. A backboard had been erected on the roadside, and kidlings in snowsuits and plaid wool jackets and bulky chooks swarmed each other and the ball, trying to dribble, pass and throw each other down, like in the old days when some tribes played lacrosse with human heads instead of balls, and called by some The Little Brother of War.

  One small building was set by a cluster of trailers with a big sign announcing that a new tribal center would arise magically on the location. Smoke tendrils trailed from chimneys and merged with falling snow. Snowmobiles were abandoned as much as parked, pickup trucks, too. A black dog sat in a doorway and issued a laconic snarl as he walked by.

  The woman at the tribal post office had a moon face and brown doe eyes. “Not open,” she told him. “Sorry.”

  “Not here for mail,” he said. “I need information. Where’s your police station?”

  “Chief’s gone fishing today,” she said. “You could talk to Au-da-ig-we-os. This means Crow’s Flesh in our language,” she explained. “You know about Ojibwe people?”

  “Some,” he said.

  “Most wabish ask to talk only to the chief.”

  “I’ll talk to anyone who can tell me about Wendell John Bellator, also called Na-bo-win-i-ke.”

  “Crow’s Flesh, he can help you. I will take you.”

  “I’m Grady,” he said.

  “Lynx,” the girl said. “It’s, like, a kind of wild cat?”

  She led him down a row of trailers and opened a door in a mudroom without knocking. She had an accommodating, sweet way about her, and a soft voice. There was a deer carcass hanging from a tree by the mudroom, and moose antlers were attached to a basketball backboard, antlers wrapped in twinkling purple LEDs.

  An obese raccoon charged to greet him and hissed in a standoff. Lynx said, “Hush, you little bully,” and the coon scrambled away. There were photographs all over the walls, some small, some large, some framed, some just tacked in place.

  “Would you like something to eat?” the girl asked.

  “Where’s Crow’s Flesh?”

  “He’ll be out soon. He’s taking his nap. I think when you become an elder, your nap becomes very important. We have plenty to eat.”

  The coon came back and jumped up, sinking its claws into his pants and staring up at him.

  “Biter?”

  “Sometimes. She’s not a pet. But she stays here a lot, and the old man won’t scold her because he says he was also a biter when he had teeth—you know, glass houses and such.”

  Nice. Grady Service sat at a small table and kept an eye on the animal.

  “What do you do for a living?” Lynx asked.

  “I run around in circles,” he said.

  She giggled. “They pay you for that?” she mumbled, and left him alone.

  •••

  Bowls of food were everywhere. Crow’s Flesh wore a burgundy sweatshirt emblazoned with redskins in a fancy gold script. The man had tiny hands and broken, yellowed fingernails.

  Lynx scooped something from a frying pan onto their plates. Brown meat and gravy. The old man broke a biscuit, dipped it into the gravy, and filled his mouth.

  “You two should talk, Grandfather,” the girl said. “He’s looking for Na-bo-win-i-ke.”

  The man nodded and pointed at Service’s plate. “Moose. Eat first.”

  Moose was followed by greens with thick crisp bacon slices, heavily seasoned fish, carrots glazed in honey and brown sugar, baked sweet potatotes, dewberry cobbler. The old man ate steadily, rarely pausing, and never returning to a dish once he had taken a small
helping from it. The girl brought raspberries in thick cream and apologized. “They’re frozen,” Lynx said. “Unthawed, eh.”

  Service laughed. They even speak some of the same peculiar language as Yoopers here. The old man grinned, showing perfect white teeth. Service guessed they were as false as his own, but the old man said, “You ever had the gas?”

  Had the girl delivered him to a feeb? Indians loved practical jokes and leg-pulling, and you just never knew. He immediately felt bad about the thought. The pair had just shared all kinds of food with him. It was rare to have such hospitality from people you knew, much less strangers.

  Crow’s Flesh made a cup with his hand, made a drinking gesture, and Lynx brought a small brown crock and two glasses and set them in front of the men. “Whiskey from my grandson out east in the Virginias,” the man said.

  It was smooth. “Nice,” Service said.

  “Been expecting you’d come along,” Crow’s Flesh said.

  “I didn’t even know there was a here until a couple days ago.”

  The man smiled “Ancekewenaw. You got the troubles over that way.”

  The troubles, and not a question. He hated articles with certain nouns. Indian telegraph. “That so?”

  The old man sipped his whiskey, smacked his lips with satisfaction, and pointed a crooked finger across the table. “You’re tryin’ to figure it out.”

  “You read minds?”

  “Not so good no more, I don’t.” Crow’s Flesh turned to Lynx. “He thinks I read minds.” The two of them burst into laughter.

  Service wondered what the joke was.

  “Was only me and a deputy here for sixty winters. Now they got casino money and five deputies, a chief, and a second chief. I’m too old now, they tell me: Hunt, sleep, eat moose, venison, fish, drink, eat rice, talk, had my time. Up to young ones now. What kind of badge you carryin’?”

  Service showed him and the man stared. “I like a simple badge. Plain and simple, no need for fancy. That’s a fine one, for sure.”