Chasing a Blond Moon (23 page)

Nantz: “Crazy schedule, honey. There're two high schools down here, Everett and Eastern. I have to find out which one used to be Lansing High. Love you.”

Del Olmo: “The missing remain missing. Sorry I wasn't there this morning. Something came up.”

Gus: “Thirty-two bucks to see a stiff? Sorry I missed that.”

Deputy Linsenman: “Thanks, man. You
are
everywhere.”

Walter: “Enrica's okay. Thanks for the fly rod.”

Chief O'Driscoll: “Give me a bump, Detective. No rush.”

Service picked up and read the callbacks, shoved them into his in-basket, which was already full.

He called Pyykkonen, got a busy signal, and was switched over to her phone mail.

“It's Service. I'm in my office.”

When the phone rang, he expected Pyykkonen, but it was Nathaniel Zuiderveen.

“You hear about Dowdy Kitella?” She-Guy began.

“Hear what?”

“Somebody beat hell out of him last night outside the Amasa Hotel.”

“You sound pleased,” Service said.

“Don't try to mind-fuck a mind-fucker.”

Pyykkonen called after Zuiderveen. “We put the prints through AFIS and we got a hit. The prints are those of Tunhow Pung. They were in the immigration file.”

“But that's not Terry Pung in the morgue.”

“It becomes curiouser and curiouser,” she said. “I'd say Pung had his stand-in fully covered with paper and that he actually came through immigration in Terry's place.”

“When?”

“Most recent entry was July 2001.”

“Pung was a student at Tech '01–'02, right?”

“Somebody was,” she said.

“You get the ex-wife's name and address?”

He heard her shuffling papers. “Here,” she said. “Siquin Soong.” She spelled the first name, pronounced it again, “That's She-quin. She's remarried.”

He wrote down the name. “Address?”

“Nine One Two Two, Orchard Apple Circle, White Lake. It's in Oakland County. She owns a business in Southfield, White Moon Trading Company. I talked to her lawyer in Ann Arbor. She is quote, unavailable, end quote. It's the same firm as her late husband's.”

“Did you ask about the son?”

“Ms. Soong is in seclusion,” one of her lawyers says. “End of quote.”

“I bet,” Service said. “Talk to you later.”

He dialed his friend, Luticious Treebone.

“Hey,” Tree said. “What up?”

“The usual,” Service said.

“Yeah, scut. I talked to Nantz. She told me about Wisconsin. Said you are a busted up old man.”

“She'd never say that.”

“That don't mean it's not true.”

“I need information.”

“You mean you need it again. You lived in civilization you wouldn't need to call me all the time.”

“You'd be lonely.”

“I'd find a way to deal with it. What's the name.”

“Siquin Soong,” Service said.

“White Moon Trading.”

“You know her?”

“Big donor to the Democrats, beaucoup money into the Timms campaign.”

“Never knew you to follow politics.”

“This is Dee-troit, dawg. We breathe that shit. Got to keep you pale-skinned barbarians outside the gate.”

“There's no gate there,” Service said, “but that's an idea worth thinking about.”

“Racist,” Tree said.

“Soong's squeaky clean?”

“Ain't nobody squeaky clean, brother. Not even us.”

“You gonna give me the Paul Harvey?”

Tree chuckled. “The rest of the story. . . . Feds think White Moon is a front, that the lady is into a lot of shady shit, but nothing sticks.”

“Her husband's name is Soong?” Service said.

“Her old man's Buzz Gishron.” The name meant nothing to Service . “He was a deputy ambassador to the UN under Carter. He teaches constitutional law at Wayne State, where he has also been a major donor. If anybody's squeaky clean, it's Gishron—patron saint of individual rights and lost causes.”

“Married to her?”

“It got people shaking their heads when it happened. He's an old fart. She's late forties, major bootie and high maintenance. Got all the moves and the looks and money to make the moves work. Local society queen and the rights king—a marriage made for
People
magazine.”

“They covered it?”

“
Everybody
covered it. You don't get news up there? What do you want with Siquin Soong?”

“You got a cup of coffee close by?”

“Jolt Cola. Shoot.”

Service walked his friend through the case, starting with the finding of the body in the Saturn, through the discovery of the second body in the shower in the house in Houghton.

“People think cities got all the savages,” Treebone said. “The bodies still in a cooler up there?”

“Pending release by the prosecutor.”

“Don't sound like nobody wants those folks.”

Tree's statement struck a chord. A respected professor had been murdered and who had come forward to speak for him? “Can you get me some details on Soong, her business, all the stuff the feds think?”

“Can try, but Snoop-Doggin' a big-time Democrat could raise a few hackles and get my very black ass kicked, sayin'?”

“Whatever you can do.”

“Nothing in writing, okay? I don't want no paper trail.”

“I'll come to you.”

“Good, and bring Nantz. We'll have dinner with Kalina.”

“Your wife is culinarily deprived.”

“Man, I wouldn't subject nobody to Kalina's cooking. We step out. How's that boy of yours?”

“Settled into school, I think.”

“You see much of him?” his friend asked.

“Stayed with him last night.” He didn't amplify with details.

“I knew you had that father shit in you. You hear anything from Eugenie in Grand Rapids?”

“She the P.I.? Not yet. Yell when you have something on Soong,” Service said.

“Semper Fi,” Tree said.

Service got a cup of coffee and stepped outside to light a cigarette. Fern LeBlanc saw him and flashed a look of scorn. She neither smoked nor drank and saw both habits as signs of moral weakness.

How could he dig up information on Harry Pung?

Lieutenant Lisette McKower pulled up in her truck, hopped down and stretched.

“Bumpy roads,” she said, twisting her head to stretch her neck. She looked at his bandages. “If that's cosmetic surgery, you need to find another surgeon.”

“If that's a joke, you need to find another writer.”

“How's the arm?”

He lifted it. “Sore.”

“How's the captain?”

“Fine,” he said.

She hesitated. “He seems tired to me, Grady. Distracted.”

“We all get tired.”

“Not you and the captain.”

Service felt tired, his arm was sore, and his face stung. Ten years ago he didn't need sleep or much time to recover, but this had changed. McKower was five-five, one hundred and twenty pounds, but it looked to him like she had added a few pounds and her dark hair was showing a few strands of gray. When he had been her training officer he thought they had sent him a cheerleader. She was twenty-four then, had spent three years as a USFS smokejumper, and was as tough as they came, mentally and physically. Later she had been promoted to sergeant, and last year to lieutenant. For one month, long ago, they had been intimate; when they realized their mistake, there had been some anger and a lot of embarrassment, but they had gotten past their indiscretion and had remained close as colleagues and friends. She was married now and had two daughters.

“How goes the el-tee life?” he asked.

She curled some of her hair in her fingers. “See the gray?”

“What gray?”

She smiled. “Seriously, I'm worried about the captain and you look like shit.”

“Leave it alone, Lis.”

She cocked an eye. “Whatever you say.” She reached over and squeezed his wrist. “Be careful, okay?”

“Is that like safe sex?”

She walked through the door and Service turned his mind back to Harry Pung, but found no quick answers. He went back to his cubicle and started looking at the callback slips.

Detective Jimmy Villereal in Benton Harbor had busted some people illegally harvesting ginseng near Van Buren State Park and wanted to know if he had similar cases in the Schoolcraft County coastal zone along the northern Lake Michigan barrier dunes. Ginseng? How the hell was he supposed to know?

North Trails Riders wanted an instructor for a snowmobile program. Somebody else could have that.

A female reporter from St. Ignace wanted a technical definition of hunter orange. Let her look it up for herself.

A man with a cabin on the Ford River wanted to lodge a complaint about a man in an ultralight aircraft, shooting airborne ducks and geese. Which county, Marquette, Delta, or Dickinson? He hated callbacks, wished Fern would take more information.

A magistrate in Marquette wanted to clarify some information on a ticket Service had written.

He threw the callbacks on the desk. All of it could wait.

McKower came into his cubicle and sat down in the chair next to his messy desk.

He talked her through the Pung case, including his need to ferret out more about the dead professor. She thought for a second, said, “Stretch Boyd.”

“The departmental PR guy?”

“Budgets are tight, but I have it on good authority that he has access to LexisNexis.”

“Which is?”

“About the best electronic library in the world. It's expensive, but you can quickly pull up litigation or news. Call Boyd and ask him to help.”

“In exchange for what?”

“He's a trout-fishing addict. Give him a few spots and he'll bury your work in his budget. But don't give him any eastern Yoop spots.”

“Because you've already done that,” he said.

She smiled. “I'm keeping those for me.”

He called Boyd as soon as McKower left the office and explained what he needed—any articles on Siquin Soong, White Moon Trading, or bear poaching.

“You understand there's a quid pro quo?” Boyd said.

“Yeah.” Service gave him three spots, all of them good, none of them well known.

“Man, cool,” Boyd said. “Talk to you tomorrow?”

Service didn't feel like cooking. He stopped at the Duck Inn, a tavern at a crossroad south of Marquette. It was a worn-out place favored by COs, loggers, cops of all flavors, a few lawyers, and a couple of judges.

He was not surprised to find Linsenman sitting at the bar, nursing a nonalcoholic beer. “The real stuff might help more,” Service said.

“I gave it up for Lent,” Linsenman said.

“You gonna eat?”

Linsenman nodded.

Service said, “I'm buying.”

“This isn't a celebration.”

“Any meal you can eat is a celebration.”

Linsenman smiled.

“What the hell is your first name?”

Linsenman pursed his lips. “Weasel.”

“Your parents named you
Weasel
?”

The deputy shrugged. “My mom said it was a difficult pregnancy. Call me Linsenman.”

17

Newf jumped up, put her paws on his chest and stretched. Cat floated up onto a table in the foyer and extended her head so he could scratch her.

“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.”