Frozen Assets

by Lee Schultz

  She raised a hand to stop me. "Not that kind of help. I want you to help me find my son."

  27

  Memory Lane out on US 141 by the Paint River has a great Friday fish fry. Even though decades ago people stopped going to hell for eating meat on Fridays, this heavily Catholic and Lutheran area still has Friday fish fry at all the restaurants and bars. Memory Lane is run by a retired police chief from somewhere in another state, Illinois, maybe. He bought the resort, added a number of hand-built log cabins on the riverbank, spiffed up the RV park, and seems to make a decent, if not lavish, living at it. The food is great, and the Friday buffet features fish in half a dozen dishes, from plain "poor man’s lobster" to the fancier whitefish filets and deep fried walleye strips. Teddy had called the other members of our Friday Foursome, and we were sitting at a table in a corner of the restaurant area, as far away from the bar and smokers as we could get. Teddy sat across from me, lost in thought. Alice Reiner and Dallas Warmanen sat on either side of me. I hadn’t brought my sister. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  We’re pretty much four of a kind. Short, sixtyish, plumpish (okay, so I’ve become more than plumpish, so sue me) and outspoken, the four of us have a lot of fun together. If anything at all happens in the county, from an illicit affair to a drug deal, one of us knows it. Alice has short brown (out of a bottle) hair and a deep, raspy voice that only comes from decades as a smoker. Out of respect for the rest of us, she grudgingly sits in the non-smoking areas when we go out together. A few years ago, right after I came here, I helped her divorce her gambling-addicted husband of thirty years. Dallas, also short, sixtyish and a smidgen thinner than the rest of us, hails from Texas. She came here fifteen years ago after her husband dumped her for another woman. She brought along her two mentally challenged granddaughters, Marina and Michaela, whom she has raised from infancy.

  I really have to hand it to her, she’s done such a great job with the kids, now in their mid-twenties. Both have jobs - menial, but jobs nonetheless. One bags groceries and the other washes dishes at the Eatery. She helps them manage their money, and, although the girls live together in an apartment, she is always checking up on them to ensure that they continue to function semi-independently. I love going to the grocery store, because Marina bags groceries there and always insists on carrying my groceries out to my car, then giving me a hearty hug before she goes back into the store. I don’t know what those girls will do when Dallas gets her ticket punched.

  Teddy brought us the latest Yooper jokes: You might be a Yooper if your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to your blue spruce, or if driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow. Or if you saw the slogan "Drink Canada Dry!" and you’ve been trying to do just that since.

  Yoopers like poking fun at themselves.

  While we ate our dinner, I related the events of the past few days, minus the bit with Rosie. "You’re shitting me, right?" asked Alice.

  "If only..." I sighed. "I keep hoping someone will jump out and yell ‘April fool!’ but so far it ain’t happening."

  "So let’s see," said Dallas, "first you find a dead drug dealer, then a dead dope dealer, then somebody throws a firebomb through your window. And you have no idea of who or why. And the police don’t have a clue, either. That sum it up?"

  I nodded.

  "And", interjected Teddy, "you have a gorgeous FBI agent who thinks you’re a suspect!" She grinned with delight. I just glared at her.

  "So we need to come up with a plan to (a) keep you safe, and (b) find out who’s behind all this."

  "Okay, Miss Marple, it’s your story." I rolled my eyes.

  The next hour was spent with our heads together, scribbling notes on napkins, trite as it sounds.

  My initial reaction to an offer of help is to say no, no I’m fine, I can handle it. Then I stop, breathe, and remind myself that despite the old saw that it is better to give than to receive, if nobody accepts, how can anyone have the pleasure of giving? I’ve learned that accepting an offered gift brings huge pleasure to the giver - well, most of the time, anyway – so I try to receive as well as give.

  The plan was that I would stay with Dallas until the window on my cabin was repaired, and then the four of us would spend the nights there, with at least one of us on guard at all times. Alice planned to arm herself with her digital camera with its high-powered zoom lens. Dallas, strangely, is a gun nut, and would bring along several handguns, over my protests. The UP is Second Amendment territory, and you can quote the exact words of the second amendment, which does NOT give everyone the right to carry assault rifles, only to "bear arms" in connection with a "well-regulated militia", until you pass out from lack of oxygen and you won’t change a single mind. I’ve learned to just shut up and nod and smile.

  I still hadn’t told them about Rosie.

  Just as we were finishing up our postprandial beers, Cal walked in. "Cripes, Molly, I’ve been looking for you everywhere!" He came over and kissed me on the cheek, and when the other three clamored "Hey, me too!" he dutifully pecked each one on the cheek, too. Teddy dragged another chair over to our table, and the bartender brought over the beer Cal had ordered after spotting our little group.

  All the ladies like Cal a lot. He is probably one of the more attractive single men in the area, as far too many are unkempt potbellied chainsmokers who reek of chainsaw oil. Or they’re at the other end of the spectrum, designer clothing, body spray, and total arrogance. So whenever he shows up at our get-togethers, he is always welcome. We tease him about his "harem." He just smiles a lot.

  We quickly brought him up to speed about events and our plans. He started to tell us we were out of our minds, then changed his. He knows us all too well.

  "Okay, how about I contribute? Let’s see. I can get a high-powered spotlight we could use to light up a prowler." We liked that idea a lot. "And I can take my turn at watch. And wait!" He almost jumped up and down in his chair with enthusiasm. "I have a friend who has night vision goggles - what a great advantage that would be if somebody tried something at night!"

  We plotted and schemed for the better part of an hour, then went our ways, Dallas, Cal, Alice and Teddy to their respective homes, and me to my place to pick up the critters. No way was I leaving them out there at the mercy of whatever asshole might come along with a firebomb or who knows what other nasty idea. I still had to figure out what to do with Rosie.

  Then we headed back to Dallas’ home in the Wagner Location.

  It took me most of three years to figure out all the various "locations" in the area. Everywhere there once was a mine, is now a location bearing the name of that mine. Tobin Location. Monongahela Location. Odgers Location. You often don’t find the names on the map, but anyone who has been here long knows just where you mean when you say the name. Wagner location is southeast of town, across the Paint River Bridge, surrounded by river, cemetery and golf course. It’s made up of streets lined with neat ranch homes, with the majority of residents being of retirement age. Iron County has a huge percentage of people over 65, either those who have lived here all their lives, or those who used to visit here for hunting or fishing, and who chose this area for retirement. Some of them are snowbirds, wintering in Florida or Arizona or southern Utah, but most of them stay year-round. Many of them live alone. Many of them heat with wood all winter, and most of those make their own wood and shovel their own snow. Those who do, are very healthy. After all, they get lots of exercise, first cutting the wood and stacking it, then hauling it in to stoke the fire, then hauling the resulting ashes outside again, not to mention shoveling literally tons of snow each winter.

  City people pay lots of money to gyms to get that kind of exercise.

  Once Dallas and I had settled in, I telephoned Dispatch at the sheriff’s office to let them know that I would not be out at my place tonight, but would be there the next night. Just in case anybody went looking for me. We played a couple of games of S
crabble, and then suddenly I was totally exhausted. Everything that had happened descended on me at once, and it was all I could do to brush my teeth before collapsing into bed. Jeezo Petes immediately took his rightful place wrapped around my head.. I was almost asleep when I felt the bed jiggle as Holy Wah carefully climbed up onto the bed next to me. I drifted away, feeling peaceful and grateful to my friends, both furry and human .

  28

  The critters and I went back out to my place after breakfast. There was no sign that anyone had been there, but then I don’t kid myself thinking I’m some sort of sleuth. There could have been ten people out there and I wouldn’t have known it. The cleanup people and the window guy had been and gone, but the lingering odor of burned wool and gasoline was a reminder that it really had happened, it wasn’t just a bad dream. And the slightly darker spot on the floor where the charred wood had been sanded and refinished. Eventually I’d have to do the entire floor to make the spot blend in, but that was the least of my worries.

  Phone service had been restored, too, and it rang almost the instant I stepped inside.

  "Ms Meagher?" The damned fool still said it "meeger" even after I had corrected him. "This is Kenny Wilson from State Wide Realty in Ironwood? Do you have a minute?"

  I sighed. "Mr Wilson, what part of ‘I’m not interested in selling’ don’t you understand?"

  "I have something I’d like to run by you that would certainly be to your benefit to at least consider." He sounded even prissier than he had the first time we’d talked.

  "Okay, but I still won’t sell my property to your client or anyone else."

  "I’ll see you at two."

  I resisted the urge to slam the phone down, which would have been silly, because it certainly wouldn’t bother HIM and would probably break my phone.

  Just as I was contemplating the pleasure it would give me to murder whoever was doing these things to me, Teddy showed up. Teddy is something of a computer geek, and she knows how to get information I didn’t even know existed. I’d asked her if she could help me try and figure out who owned the property so maybe I could figure out what to do next. I had also enlisted her help in finding Rosie’s son. You’d think I had just given her a winning Powerball ticket.

  "Can you research the guys who own the rest of the property surrounding mine?" I showed her the plat book which showed the property’s owner as "Up North Enterprises."

  She took over my desk and her fingers flew over the keyboard. Various web pages popped up so rapidly I couldn’t tell what half of them were. After about 15 minutes she threw up her hands. "I’ve traced the ownership of the property back through a dozen different forwarders, but I’ve hit a brick wall. It’ll take a better hacker than I am to find out who’re the ultimate owner."

  In Michigan, if you do business under an assumed name and you’re not a corporation, you’re supposed to file a form with the County Clerk which discloses the principals of the business. Supposed to being the operative term. I had already checked, and there was no such filing for Up North Enterprises. I had also already run a check with the Michigan Department of Commerce, and there was no corporation or limited liability company or professional corporation with that name. For me, that spelled Dead End.

  I went into the kitchen, put a couple of scoops of premium high-test coffee beans in the grinder. For some reason, I love the sound the grinder makes as it chews up beans to the fine powder I like to make my coffee with. Teddy runs on caffeine, and can be a real bitch when her levels drop. I didn’t want to take any chances. She likes her coffee strong like I do, so she smiled her thanks when I put a large hand-thrown mug of steaming brew on the desk for her. I have a whole set of the mugs, made by Yours Truly.

  When I was lawyering, I always wanted to do things with my hands. So now that I have the time and resources, I do some carpentry – I built the desk Teddy was sitting at – I never go anywhere without a knitting project with me, and a couple of times a year I spend a week or so working with clay. I have a fifteen by twenty cabin behind my home, and that’s where I have my pottery stuff - kiln, wheel, bags of raw clay, cutting wires, molds, rolling pins, glazes, and all the little tools I use when making things. There’s something almost primal about squeezing a lump of clay into various shapes, of watching it spin on the wheel and take shape as a bowl, or plate, or cup, or vase, or whatever. I still have the first misshapen bowl I made in clay class.

  This is also where I keep my spinning wheel, yarn dyes, bags of roving for spinning - wool, alpaca, silk, cotton, even some yak and camel hair. Spinning is almost hypnotic, and a wonderful stress reliever.

  Ordinarily my life has a low stress level, but right then I was itching to get to my spinning wheel. Getting firebombed and receiving death threats had raised my stress to levels I hadn’t experienced since The Knifing.

  29

  "Hah!" I jumped when Teddy smacked both palms on the desk. "Got something here!" She pointed to the screen. I bent over her shoulder and squinted. "George Olds, who’s he?"

  George Olds. Age forty-eight, a shirt-tail relative of the Olds for whom the Oldsmobile is named. Lives in Farmington Hills, a tony area near Detroit. You won’t find homeless people on Farmington Hills streets, nor will you find rusted out cars with dragging mufflers. More like Cadillac Escalades and BMW X5's. Ever notice how many rich folks drive expensive SUVs which never leave paved roads? I blame it on those early ads which showed an SUV driving up the side of a stock exchange building.

  Just like the original Olds, who, along with other auto magnates, timber tycoons, shipping moguls, and copper and iron barons, bought up lots of Upper Peninsula woods and created their own private hunting preserves, George owned, in his own name, several thousand acres, including several hundred in Iron County. Olds is famous for hostile takeovers of healthy businesses, where he rapes the company’s assets including pension trusts, lays everybody off, then sells the leftovers to the corporate buzzards who follow his trail of corporate corpses. He is also known for having donated a hundred acres to a summer camp for children.

  "Ooookay," I said over Teddy’s shoulder, "what am I missing? What ties this guy to Up North?"

  Teddy scrolled down the screen and pointed. "See this? He’s a principal in an outfit called NorthStar Outfitting out of New York state, which is the sole owner of something called Northwoods Net, which interestingly enough, is registered in the Bahamas. Northwoods Net owns Freedom North, Ltd., a Canadian corporation, which is a shareholder in Northern Lights Tours out of Wisconsin, which is the majority shareholder in – badda bing, Up North Enterprises! I had to backtrack through all these shell corporations to get to him, and do the same to find the five others who own NorthStar. I’m running info searches on them right now."

  Turns out Georgie Boy and the other five are birds of a feather. All known as ruthless businessmen who don’t care how many bodies pile up as they amass their fortunes. Dotcoms, which failed after they were taken over by these Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Manufacturing plants. Meat packing plants. Printing companies. Banks. They bought an island off the coast of Washington State and made it their private retreat, accessible only by boat or plane. They own huge homes in several states and countries, their own top of the line jets, yachts capable of sailing across oceans, and god knows how many hangers-on and toadies ready to do their bidding instantly. Several of them are under suspicion of illegally selling arms to non-USA-friendly despots, as well as the disappearance of at least one rival. Among them, they probably own half the wealth in the United States.

  Thomas Parsons Davis III, a Californian with suspected ties to the New York mob families. Made a killing post-911 doing cleanup of Ground Zero. Rumors were that the bidding was "fixed" to ensure that he would get the contracts, and then inflated the costs way beyond his original estimates.

  K. Donald Romanoff, a Michigan boy, owns a construction company which was implicated in the collapse of a building in Milwaukee which killed 138 people. Allegedly the com
pany had increased its profit margin by skimping on everything from concrete quality and reinforcing to spacing of the metal beams holding up the floor above. Also suspected dealings with the mob.

  Samuel Adams Tinsdale, a Boston blueblood whose grandfather made his fortune bootlegging, majority shareholder of second-largest construction firm in the world. Reaps obscene profits from the various wars being fought around the world - and, some say, fomented by Tinsdale and his cronies. Suspected of being behind the professional hits of several environmental activists who opposed his company’s projects. Huge contributor to Republican Party and very close friend to the President and Vice President.

  Then there’s Marianne Kaye and her husband, Allen Putnam Knox. Together they own one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, known for collecting expired drugs from doctors and hospitals and reselling them to third-world countries. Majority shareholders in a company which dressed women in nurse uniforms to sell baby formula to third world mothers, whose babies then died when their mothers’ milk dried up and there was no money to purchase more formula. Suspected of using street people for drug trials when the FDA required further animal testing. They also own a majority share in a tobacco company which, now that cigarette smoking seems to be on the wane, market their product in those same third-world countries. All perfectly legal, of course, if morally reprehensible.

  As one would expect, there is never enough evidence against these people for any prosecutor to indict. In a few small cases, well-compensated underlings took the rap for a situation, and after parole, ended up on an island in the Caribbean or a chateau in France.

  I let out a huge whoosh of breath. My mind was whirling with all the possibilities and questions. All of which led to: What do these people have to do with what has been happening to me? What do I have that they want?

  Well, duh, my property. But why?

  30

  Before she left, Teddy helped me do an online search for information on finding adoptees. My first search indicated over half a million hits. I guess hunting up birth parents or adopted children is big business. I immediately went to "Bastard Nation" for no other reason than I liked the name. I tried searching for "Daniel Sullivan," "Rosie Sullivan," and "Roger Sullivan." No dice. Not a single hit. I spent another three hours noodling around on the net. I found a reference to Rosie in a ten-year-old newspaper article, when she and several others had been arrested for drug transactions. I found a reference to Roger in an appellate brief he had filed. Daniel Sullivan apparently did not exist. I tried the social services websites in the states Rosie had mentioned. Nothing.