Death Roe

by Joseph Heywood

  “Don’t run,” he said, but she hung up before he could say anything more.

  Goddammit! He called Denninger. “Have you got Alma DeKoening’s address?”

  “Didn’t she show up?”

  “I met her, but I need her address.”

  Denninger found it and read it to him and he wrote it in his notebook. He called Station 20 in Lansing on Channel 25 and asked the dispatcher to call the Traverse City State Police Post and ask them to send a unit to DeKoening’s address. If she was home, they should hold her until he could get there.

  Halfway back to Traverse City he got a radio call from the Troop who handled the call. “Subject’s not there, DNR Twenty Five Fourteen.”

  “Copy,” Service said. Fuck!

  The Troop asked, “You want me to ask the county to sit on this place?”

  “That would be good,” Service said. “If she shows, ask the county to apprehend and hold her in their lockup.”

  “What charges?”

  “We have twenty-four hours to sort it out,” Service said. Goddammit to hell. So close, now this. Their slam-dunk case was looking more like a desperation shot-at-the-buzzer. Life had been so much easier in his old job.

  He called Rogers and told him the bad news. Rogers had not yet called Fish and Wildlife.

  He also called Couch and informed her.

  “You still want warrants?” she asked.

  “No point. The stuff will be gone.”

  “You sound pissed,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Pissed is good,” she said. “I like my investigators to be pissed. It sharpens their wits.”

  35

  Saturday, November 13, 2004

  SARANAC, IONIA COUNTY

  During the long drive back to the resort Grady Service tried to sort out what he had. They had seen an illegal transaction and the line operating; maybe the court would not allow the sample seizure, but Alma DeKoening had just confirmed once again that Piscova was still operating. The season would be over anytime now. Maybe Fish and Wildlife would get lucky and intercept product on the other end. But it also sounded like DeKoening had split, which meant she could not serve as a witness unless they found a way to track her down.

  This case had started with such promise, but every day it seemed to turn more to shit. The whole thing was like flipping on a flashlight in a room full of rats and watching them scatter.

  He got back around 1 a.m. and went to bed. Denninger was stretched out naked on top of her comforter. “Get under the damn covers!” he barked at her.

  “What’s your problem?” she mumbled.

  They spent the next morning going through paperwork and records and adding to their list of people to see. Chief O’Driscoll called after lunch. “Have you seen the papers yet today?”

  “We don’t get a paper here,” Service said, making a mental note to add that to their list.

  “Headline reads, ‘DNR Too Cozy with Contractors? Director Resigns for College Job.’ ”

  “What’s that from?”

  “Lansing State Journal, early edition. Front page.”

  “Reporter?”

  “The byline says Gabriel Salant.”

  “Anything of substance?”

  “Nope—rehash of rumors. Several department people denied it, and two or three hung up on him. You know anything about this?”

  “Like I said, we don’t get a paper here.” He wasn’t lying, just answering selectively.

  “I’m getting a lot of calls accusing you of putting the reporter up to this.”

  “People can believe what they want. But it will be interesting to see if anybody takes any unusual actions.”

  “I had a similar thought. Cecil Hopkins called me from his place in Muskegon. He saw the article, wants to know what the brouhaha’s all about. I sketched it in for him, but he wants to meet you face-to-face. Said he can be there in the morning early, on his way to Lansing. Cecil will hit the ground running.”

  Could eighty-year-olds actually run? he wondered . . . and then, Great—another thing to juggle.

  “We’ll be waiting for him.”

  “Give it all to him, Grady. He’s a big boy and he can handle it.”

  “Yessir, Chief.”

  Roy Rogers called an instant after he’d hung up. “Fish and Wildlife said yes. Apparently they’re ready to knock down the door on their own case, and they’ll look for our stuff, too.”

  Finally, a break, though he knew there could be complications. Still, it was promising, and would cancel out any negative decision by the judge on the original seizure.

  36

  Saturday, November 13, 2004

  SARANAC, IONIA COUNTY

  The alarm was set for 6 a.m. but there was pounding on the door an hour before that. Service scrambled out of bed and Denninger sat up.

  “Get dressed—it’s Hopkins,” he hissed.

  She laughed. “You ever have this happen to you when you were a high school kid?”

  “Shut up and get dressed.”

  He had not seen Cecil Hopkins in more than ten years, and remarkably, the man looked like he had not aged a day since then. “Sorry,” Service apologized at the door, “but we aren’t quite ready.”

  “I always did my best work in the morning, and when I retired, I didn’t see a reason to change my ways.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Hot and black would be good.”

  Denninger came downstairs in jeans and a sweatshirt and Service introduced them. If the interim director questioned their cohabitation setup, he didn’t say anything.

  “Teeny hated your guts,” Hopkins said.

  “That was a bad thing?” Service said.

  Hopkins chuckled. “Hated me too. Enough foreplay, Detective. Tell me, what the heck is going on with Piscova.”

  Service took him through the case step by step.

  Hopkins said, “Back in my day I questioned Piscova’s contracts, but they had already been in place a long time by then, and it would have taken a major, very messy—and very public—fight to get them out. When you sit in the director’s chair you have to pick your battles.”

  “What about principles?”

  “The first principle for a director is to keep the department alive and functioning, even if some of the parts could work better than they do. That reality bother you, Detective?”

  “It does.”

  “Good. A detective needs passion, but let the director sort out the politics, internal and external.”

  “This isn’t about politics,” Service said a bit more forcefully than he meant to.

  Hopkins tilted his head and grinned. “We shall let the evidence fall where it falls, my boy. But trust me—state government is always about politics.”

  At the door the octogenarian clutched Service’s arm and whispered, “I see folding cots. Might be a good idea to put one of them to use. I heard you come down the stairs. Let me just say that I’m from a different generation and I don’t know beans about baby boomers, generations X, Y, or Me, or any of the sociology and psychobabble that goes with them. What I do know is that it’s not a good idea to get your meat the same place you get your bread. It may be perfectly innocent, but sleeping in the same room isn’t the image we want for our department. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, Director,” Service said, feeling like a fool.

  “What did he say at the door?” Denninger asked.

  Service began unfolding a cot.

  “Shit, I knew it! My career’s burned!”

  “Can the drama queen act,” Service said with a growl.

  “Is he going to back us?”

  “He’ll back the evidence,” Service said. “We’re not the point.” />
  “Meaning?”

  “We’re expendable.”

  She sighed. “Does this mean I have to wear jammies?”

  “Wear as much or as little as you want. I’ll be down here tending the stove.”

  “The upstairs stove could use some attention,” she said, then, holding up her hands in supplication, said, “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be cute and it’s just not appropriate. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “Even though it’s true,” she muttered.

  As he nursed his coffee and the shower ran in the background, it dawned on him that brash D2 was in fact very insecure, both personally and professionally, feeling vulnerable, and trying to toy with the edge by testing herself. Sexual innuendo was meant to bolster her confidence. Jesus, he told himself, you think like a father.

  What to think of Hopkins? No way to tell. He’d once been a good director, but the department these days had some rats on the loose. It had become politicized and had split from the Department of Environmental Quality, which under Bozian had become a rubber stamp for businesses looking for easy approvals and minimal red tape.

  Andriaitis called. “Hey, asshole, good news: Roxy’s okay. They got her white count under control for now, but her doctor told me the long-term outlook is iffy at best. I’m going to drive down to Grand Rapids to fly out of there. You want to palaver?”

  “When?”

  “My flight’s tomorrow at noon. How about breakfast at seven? I’ve got a room at the Pantland Hotel.”

  “I think it’s called the Amway Grand Plaza now.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Andriaitis said. “See you at seven.”

  “I’ll be there. You hear Teeny resigned?”

  “I heard.”

  “Hopkins has the interim job.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “You know Hopkins?”

  “Never met the man. Lobby at seven.”

  37

  Sunday, November 14, 2004

  GRAND RAPIDS, KENT COUNTY

  Service was ten minutes from the hotel when Roy Rogers called. “The thing is, Fish and Wildlife says the Piscova shipment is now at Crimea’s Shipping and Receiving, but they want to let it sit.”

  “How long?”

  “They’re vague, but promise if Crimea moves to distribute, they’ll make the seizure. They say they want to hold off—reasons unspecified—until sometime in the New Year, maybe, probably, approximately, more or less, like that.”

  “Verbal promises,” Service said, “are almost impossible to enforce.”

  “Without ink on paper, bubkes,” Rogers said.

  “If they can predict distribution schedules, they must have somebody deep inside.”

  “That’s the read from this government-leased chair, too. I’ll call when the FDA has results. Maybe the hearing out there will go our way. Did I tell you Leukonovich has a list of subpoenas to serve? She’s coming out to meet with you.”

  “She doesn’t know where we are.”

  “In the IRS, people call her Special Z, like she has superpowers or something.”

  Rogers sounded odd. “Have you been drinking?”

  “I’m only punch-drunk and I don’t mean on punch. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours.”

  “Go sleep.”

  Service found Andriaitis standing with a look of unvarnished disgust in the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel lobby. There was a huge sort of bronze sunburst on the wall behind the reception desk, and a giant chandelier twinkling above a round leather couch. The lobby walls were done in dark wood, a fanciful architect’s notion of an English gentleman’s club.

  Andriaitis wore a faded, stained Carhartt coat, ragged corduroys, and knee-high leather boots, with his trousers tucked into them. “You’re on time. You believe this fucking place? Amway makes a fucking megafortune selling pyramid schemes and now the founders are enshrined in this town like a couple of homegrown Dutch saints. Questionable money cleans itself over time. Quint Fagan knows that. You get enough, you can fend off legal challenges and the stink eventually starts to go away. If you don’t take down his ass, one day he’ll be building a Royal Fagan Arms.”

  Hotel guests were staring. “Breakfast,” Service said, trying to break the rant.

  “Not here. Let’s take a walk.”

  It was spitting snow outside, under a light, steady northwest wind. They walked east and north and west again until they reached Fish Ladder Park off Monroe—a half-mile from the hotel. Below them several fishermen in parkas and foul-weather gear were working the frothy yellow-white foam below a low dam that stretched a couple hundred yards across the river.

  “Early steelhead,” Andriaitis said. “Half the people throwing spawn get their eggs from Piscova. If there are fish eggs anywhere, Piscova won’t be far away: Salmon, paddlefish, you name it, Fagan’s in the middle of it. The big money’s always in the eggs.”

  “Paddlefish?”

  “Not much of a population left in the Great Lakes, but plenty out in the Dakotas and eastern Montana.”

  “Paddlefish caviar?”

  “A blue-collar offering.”

  “A Piscova product?”

  “Not sure he sells the eggs, but I know he has contracts to collect them for a couple of states out that way.”

  “Funny business?”

  Andriaitis shrugged. “Other than a known cheat sucking on the public teat? Who knows?”

  The comment gave Service an idea, which he tucked away for later.

  They ended up in a café in a touristy section of Monroe Street. The place was called Twenty Four Seven. They ordered a jug of coffee and the same breakfast, fried eggs and hash.

  “Roxy’s over the crisis?”

  “This one. There’ll be more. The cancer’s like an unstoppable slow leak.”

  Service turned on his recorder. “Did you work for Piscova when they were making caviar?”

  “Last couple of years, but my little outfit was centered on egg collection at state weirs. I didn’t hear about what Fagan was doing with caviar until later.”

  “From Roxy?”

  “I told her to quit that piece of shit, but once she gets something set in her mind, there’s no dislodging it. She always dreamed of building a shack on a mountaintop, but what the hell good is stuff if you ain’t alive to enjoy it?”

  Service had no answer. “Did Teeny get anything from Fagan?”

  “Don’t know the answer to that. Your job to figure it out.”

  “Fisheries people?”

  “Fella named Bob Carruth and a biologist named Hoyt Grip. They both liked to party and they both drove brand-new, top-of-the-line trucks every year—on state salaries. You do the math.”

  “What about Clay Flinders?”

  “He’s of the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it school of management. As long as his department’s meeting its goals and staying within budget, he won’t interfere. He thinks its enlightened management, but all he cares about is the bottom line, which means next year’s budget getting approved.”

  “Jeff Choate?”

  “Captain Sleaze. Should have been a recycled condom salesman. Word is he lives way above his income and he travels a lot, mostly to Florida. I guess he likes the sun, and broads and dogs—especially broads.”

  “They run the caviar line at night,” Service said.

  “That should be about done for this year,” Andriaitis said.

  It occurred to Service that the man still had sources inside the company. “Alma DeKoening?”

  “Young, dumb like a fox. I heard she quit,” Andriaitis said with a grin.

  Definitely a source inside. “Vandeal?”

  “Loyal to Fagan and he’s made a bundle. Bent like a coat ha
nger on the job, but he’s Mr. Straight Arrow outside work.”

  “Fagan?”

  “Wants to be like the jamokes who built Amway. He’s as twisted as a grapevine but damn smart, and he hires gunfighter lawyers to cover his six. Somewhere along the way he learned that lawyers are like the H-bomb between us and the Russkies—mutually assured destruction, deterrence and all that. He keeps a bunch on retainer and he’ll sue over anything and everything.”

  “Local lawyers?”

  “Some, but the heavy guns are out of Chicago, Detroit, and New York.”

  “Shamrock Productions?”

  “His latest venture, a video production company. Heard they made a trip to the Ukraine to film a show.”

  “When?”

  “Last August.”

  “DeKoening go with them?”

  “Not sure. There’s a bimbo named Genie Starr who runs it for him. He hired her away from a Fox affiliate somewhere.”

  “They have offices?”

  “Ann Arbor or Plymouth, somewhere over that way.”

  Same place as Fagan’s convenience store chain. “What about Piscova’s Canadian operations?”

  Andriaitis grinned. “Not the company’s. Quint’s personal investments. You’ve been doing some homework. All I heard is that a lot more money crosses that way than comes back this way, and where it goes in Canada, or why, nobody knows.”

  A waitress brought their breakfasts. “You headed back to Anchorage?”

  “For a couple of weeks, and then it’s off to Florida to see the wifey and sit on my ass with all the other snowbirds”

  “Have you been to Fagan’s place in Florida?”

  “Which one?”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “Got the one near Pensacola Beach for the rank and file, and a swanky place smack in the middle of Key West strictly for the big hitters.”

  Eino Teeny was in Key West for a month, according to the chief.

  “I doubt you’ll ever make a case with your inside probe,” Andriaitis said. “Was me, I’d stick with the egg case. That one you can win. You attack inside, they’ll circle the wagons, even your friends.”