No Man's Dog (9 page)

“And you,” Luck said, “you're
Ironmill.
Am I right?”

“Hunh? Oh, yeah. Mulheisen. I guess that's what it means.”

“Two Germans meet in a dark woods,” Luck said. “One German says, ‘Wie gehts.' What does the other say?”

Mulheisen struggled to recall his nato-Deutsche, from thirty years back. “Uh, I guess he says, ‘Wohin das biergarten?'”

Luck laughed. “I don't have any beer, and I'm not about to drive into Queen to get some, but let me speak to these boys and we can go on back to the house. You can tell me about your exploded mother. Oh, I'm sorry . . . I shouldn't have said that.”

“Not at all,” Mulheisen said. He stepped away so that Luck could dismount from the cab. The man turned out to be about Mulheisen's height, six feet or so. He was a trim fellow, from what Mulheisen could see, wearing a loose, heavy duck barn coat, twill trousers, and heavy-soled shoes, the brim of his canvas hat rakishly tilted. He had an athletic grace, an easy movement. The coat pocket was bulging, Mulheisen noted, and caused the coat to swing heavily. Luck was armed.

“I don't like to ask this, Mul,” Luck said, when they stood between the two vehicles, “but are you packing?”

Mulheisen shook his head. “Packing? A gun? Nah, I had to turn it in when I left the force.” He held his arms out.

Luck smiled apologetically and waved his hand. “I'll take your word. All right. I'll just be a minute.” Luck made his way around Mulheisen's car to the other truck. He talked quietly to the men. They turned on their headlights and began to back out the way they had come, but shortly they merely backed into the brush, with a loud crackle of breaking branches, then turned and drove on out.

Luck returned and said, “Just a couple of neighbors. I was on my way to get my mail. If you can wait here a minute, I'll be back in a second.”

He hopped up into the cab and with a roar drove into the brush, breaking limbs and crushing sumac as he steered around Mulheisen's car.

Mulheisen stood in the gathering darkness. The truck had disappeared. He could hear an owl hooting from the woods. He wondered if he should light up a cigar but decided not to. He went to stand by the car. Presently, Luck's vehicle came roaring back and pulled around the Checker, back onto the two-track, and stopped. He rolled down his window and called to Mulheisen to follow him.

Once through the gate, which Luck stopped to lock closed behind them, Mulheisen followed the truck another quarter of a mile or so, the woods getting deeper, until suddenly they broke out into a broad clearing. The house was ahead. It was a low, single-story house with a shallow-pitched roof and large stone chimney. It had a broad porch along the front, over which the roof extended.

Luck parked his truck next to another vehicle, an older-model Buick sedan. He motioned Mulheisen to park to one side of the truck.

“Kind of lonely, back in these woods,” Mulheisen ventured as he got out. “Smells good though, those pines.” There were a couple of large white pines soaring up on either side of the house, easily eighty feet tall. There was a long stack of firewood to one side, with more stacked on the porch. Beyond the house a ways were two buildings, one of them an equipment shed, the other a small barn.

“I had more of those pines once,” Luck said. “One of the last stands of virgin white pine in these parts. I don't know how it got missed by the timber company. I had to cut them down.”

“Why is that?”

“Field of fire, Mul. Before I cut them you could have walked right up to the house without me knowing you were there. If you were careful.”

Mulheisen nodded as if he understood. He drew in a deep, hearty breath. “I wonder if there's a word for that pine smell?” he said. “Resiny? Maybe, ‘resinance'?”

‘"Resinance'? I like that,” Luck said. “Poetic, although one would inevitably have to explain that it wasn't ‘resonance,' like the sound.”

Mulheisen glanced at the AK-47 that Luck had taken from the rack on the rear window of the pickup. He was carrying the gun casually in one hand, a large bundle of mail under his other arm. When they went into the house he set the gun to one side, leaning against the wall. He hung his hat on a peg set in a rail alongside the door and set the mail on the kitchen counter.

It was a pleasant, ordinary-looking house. The kitchen to one side, with standard cupboards, a work counter with stools around it. A large archway led to the living room, furnished with couches and chairs. An enameled green woodstove sat on a brick hearth, vented into what had been an attractive fireplace made of faced fieldstone. It was putting out quite a bit of heat. Luck opened the door of the stove and poked at the logs within, then made some sort of adjustment to the draft device in the chimney pipe. He turned around to face Mulheisen.

“Take your coat?” he asked. He hung Mul's jacket and his own coat side by side on pegs by the kitchen door, where other coats hung. He looked very rustic in his wool plaid shirt and red suspenders.

“Hungry, Mul? I made a stew before I set out to get the mail. Venison. Shot it myself, a young buck.”

When Mulheisen accepted, Luck promptly said, “Great! How about a little whiskey to celebrate the end of the day, while I get the dinner together? Better than beer, eh?” He rubbed his hands
together briskly and poured them each a hefty shot of George Dickel Sour Mash from a bottle that stood on the counter.

Mulheisen happily sipped the whiskey and stood about while his host tossed down his drink. The place looked like a hunting lodge, Mulheisen thought. Very masculine, but very orderly. No sign of a woman's touch, no flowers, no polka dot curtains, just adjustable blinds. No doilies or place mats.

Luck set out the plain sturdy plates on the bare kitchen table. He hoisted a heavy iron pot off the range to set on a trivet on the table. Then he dished out very large portions of the steaming stew, full of chunks of meat and potatoes, a carrot or a rutabaga here and there, along with what looked like some parsnip and the odd mushroom. He got bread out of the bread box and sawed off large chunks on a bread board. “Baked it myself,” Luck said. “Good bread, if I say so.”

Mulheisen sat and was on the verge of digging in when Luck stopped him. “Just a minute, Mul, if you don't mind.” He clasped his hands and bowed his head, eyes closed, to say grace. “Dear Lord, bless this simple meal which you have provided. We humbly thank thee for all your gifts and pray that you will guide us in everything we do. In Jesus' name, amen.” He looked up and said, “All right! Let's eat. Oops! Forgot the wine.”

He jumped up and darted into a nearby room, returning with a bottle, which was already open, and poured some out for both of them in plain, everyday wineglasses.

The stew was hot and good. The wine was Californian, quite appropriate, a dark and spicy red. “I like that Oregon pinot noir,” Luck said, “but I'd already opened this Napa cab. Hope you don't mind.”

Mulheisen didn't mind. It tasted fine. He ate hungrily. They didn't speak much and were soon finished. “I usually have some pie, but I'm all out,” Luck said apologetically. “A neighbor lady makes
great cherry pie. When you're up in cherry country, that's the specialty. But I've got some ice cream. No?”

Luck pushed back from the table. “I'll clear those dishes up, just leave them for now. How about a little more of that Dickel with our coffee?”

Mulheisen was agreeable. Luck poured them each a generous amount in the glasses they'd used before. “Go on in and relax,” Luck said, waving a hand toward the living room, “while I get the coffee going. Smoke if you got ‘em,” he said grandly.

“You don't mind cigars?” Mulheisen inquired.

“Not at all,” Luck said. “I'll join you in a minute.”

Mulheisen lingered in the kitchen, politely, while Luck ground the coffee and put it to drip in the automatic maker. The two of them stood and sipped the whiskey and Mulheisen offered him a La Donna Detroit. Luck accepted it graciously. “I was going to offer you a Cuban,” he said. “Maybe later, eh? I've never seen this brand.”

“An outfit in Detroit makes them,” Mulheisen said. “I know the people. Supposedly they're made with Cuban tobacco, but I suspect it's Dominican. Rolled by Cuban émigrés. They're not bad.” He clipped them and they lit up.

“Not bad,” Luck agreed. “All right.” They both puffed. “Ain't this the life?” Luck said. “All my own provender, except for the wine and the coffee . . . and your cigars, of course. Now what's this about your mother? What does it have to do with me, Mul? Hey, let's go in the living room and get comfortable.”

He turned on a couple of standing reading lamps and settled into a chair near the stove. Mulheisen sat across from him on a couch. Mulheisen glanced out the window and realized that the yard was bathed in light.

“Comes on automatically,” Luck remarked. “Now, you were saying, about your mother.”

Mulheisen didn't really know how to proceed. “Well, she was going to a meeting of the county commissioners. I don't know what it was about, exactly, a public hearing, I think, about some kind of development project. She's a bird-watcher, you see . . .”

“Ah. One of those radical environmentalists,” Luck said jokingly.

“Something like that,” Mulheisen said. “Anyway, she left something in the bus and went back to get it and a bomb went off. It killed the driver, but it just stunned her. Stunned her pretty badly. A few bruises, a few cuts. That healed up.” He went on, describing the situation briefly.

Luck sipped at his whiskey. “You ready for some coffee, Mul?” When Mulheisen nodded he got up and went into the kitchen, returning with a couple of mugs full of coffee. “Black all right?” he asked. “More Dickel?” He poured their whiskey glasses full.

When he was seated again, he said, “I'm glad your mother's okay. It must have been quite an ordeal for her. Tell me, does she remember much of the, uh, event?”

Mulheisen said that so far she didn't. She remembered going to the meeting, but as for the rest, how she got out to the bus, and so on, he'd reconstructed it from talking to the investigators.

Luck nodded sympathetically. “Maybe she'll remember more, later on,” he said. “But where do I come in? Oh, don't bother. I know all about it, Mul. I don't mean to act dumb. You'll have to forgive me. The feds came to see me. They tried to lay it on me. It was all bullshit, of course. Nothing came of it. I haven't heard a word about it since. But how did you hear about me? I'd have thought they'd given up on that angle.”

Mulheisen sipped the coffee. “Your name came up,” he said. “Along with several others, of course. I just thought . . . well, I don't know what I thought. None of the other suspects were available to me, but you were in Michigan . . .”

“So you thought you'd drive up here and see what I was like, what was going on? Something like that?” Luck sat back, at ease, and puffed his cigar. He looked at it. “Not bad.” Then he leaned forward and looked at Mulheisen carefully. “But tell me, Mul, you say you quit the force to look after your mother. So am I to understand that this is strictly a personal thing, unofficial?”

Mulheisen lifted his eyebrows, a gesture of apology. “I was a cop, Mr. Luck—”

“Call me Imp, Mul. Everyone always has.”

“Anyway, I quit, true. But naturally, I know some of the people who are investigating.”

Luck sat back then. “Thanks for being open about it, Mul. But let me confess . . . I recognized your name. I've seen your name in the papers. I was being a little paranoid, forgive me. I just wondered how far you'd take the undercover routine.”

“I'm not undercover, Imp. I'm just—as you say—up here to see what you were like, see if I couldn't get a sense of what this is all about, as far as it involves you.”

“Well, it doesn't involve me, at all,” Luck said, firmly. “I hope you believe that. It's true. I don't know anything about what happened down there. But the way it is, something like that happens anywhere I'm near and the cops come calling.” He shrugged. “I don't like it—who would? But there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.”

“'Anywhere near,'” Mulheisen said. “How near were you?”

“I was in Michigan. That's near enough for the federales. As a matter of fact, I was probably, oh, about a hundred and fifty miles away. Fishing. Caught some good walleyes. Well, I guess you've seen my file. My dossier. You'd know all that.”

“No, I haven't. I'm not on the force. My old associates might talk a bit, but they're not sharing their files with me. All I know is your name. I can't say I'd ever heard anything substantive about you, before or since.”

There was a brief silence. Luck seemed to digest this information, such as it was. Then he said, “So where are we? That it? Satisfied?”

Mulheisen just looked at him and drew on the cigar. “What's your take on this, Luck?”

“You mean, who did it? I don't know. Arabs, maybe. Though why they'd bomb a bunch of environmentalists, I don't know. Maybe they were after somebody else, some other agenda.”

“Arabs doesn't make any sense to me, either,” Mulheisen said. “But what about bombing? What do you feel about that?”

“Unofficially? I'm agin it,” Luck said. “Oh, to be frank, I'm not philosophically opposed to violent actions, not categorically. When something of importance is at stake. I don't know what could have been at stake here. Like I say, it may not have been aimed at your mother and her group at all.”

“What about those fellows at the World Trade Center, or at Oklahoma City?” Mulheisen inquired.

“Two different things,” Luck said. “The 9–11 thing, that was an Arab thing. My understanding of this al-Qaeda group is that they're radical Muslims, terrorists with a complicated religious and political ax to grind. They don't like the U.S. We're too powerful, too secular. They want us out of their world and their governments aren't doing anything about it. Oklahoma City, now, that's a little different. I knew some of the boys who were involved in that. If you'd read my dossier, which you say you haven't, you'd know that I got questioned pretty thoroughly on that one, too. Pretty thoroughly.” He looked grim.