Running Dark (12 page)

16

GARDEN PATROL (AIR RECON), JANUARY 31, 1976

“ . . . look for shadows on da snow.”

Joe Flap tended to the controls of his single-engine Beaver with a disinterest that had Grady Service in a cold sweat. They had taken off from Escanaba at 11
a.m.
, headed northeast, and looped south to run down the west coast of the Garden Peninsula. For the first time in weeks they had seen a cloudless, snowless sunrise, and though a bluebird sky surrounded them, the flight was anything but smooth. It was vaguely reminiscent of the
chop-chop-chop
of running a snowmobile across the ice of Big Bay de Noc.

Joe Flap said, “Toivo-da-Yooper's down Detroit for da Red Wings game, eh. It bein' Detroit, dere's flatlanders in da row behind 'im, and dis guy's yackety-yack and says real loud, ‘Only two tings come down Canada: hockey players and hookers.'”

Flap looked to see if Service was listening before continuing. “Toivo, he turns around real slow, eyeballs da jerk, and says, ‘Da wifey's from Canada.' Da flatlander's eyes get real big an' he says, ‘Yeah, what position does she play?'”

Service let the pilot laugh himself out and said, “Three things come from Canada.”

Flap scrunched up his face. “Eh?”

“They send us snow, too.”

The pilot clucked and shook his head. “Was a joke.”

Service stared out at the Garden Peninsula as they cruised at 120 miles per hour. There was no wind at ground level, and not much at two thousand feet—when Flap cared enough to keep the altimeter needle steady. Service saw fields and farm sections and pastures, snow-covered roads, woodlots and rolling hills, the whole thing looking idyllic and benign, the picture of serenity from above; he pictured hardy people in their houses, fires crackling in their fireplaces and wood burners. Blue-gray plumes of wood smoke wafted from chimneys and corkscrewed straight up until the surrounding air skinned the heat out of the rising air.

“What're we lookin' for?” Flap asked.

“Nothing in particular. Just give me the Joe Flap special look at the Garden.”

Flap considered this. “Well, I ain't pranged here,” the pilot said, adding, “yet.”

They crossed US 2 west of Garden Corners and headed south along the peninsula's jagged western shoreline. Service had a map in his lap and traced their route: the wide half-moon arc of Jack's Bluff and the insinuation of Valentine Point and Kates Bay, which barely jutted in from Big Bay de Noc; Ansels Point; the two-mile-long Garden Bay; Puffy Bay next; then the massif of Garden Bluff, and off to the west in the bay, Round and St.Vital islands. Ahead were South River Bay, Snake Island, and Middle Bluff, which marked the location of Snail Shell Harbor in the lap of Fayette State Park; Sand Bay lay south of the park; the jagged cliffs of Burn't Bluff next, and Sac Bay tucked politely beneath the towering bluff's southern bulge. Then, on down to Fairport with Rocky, Little Summer, and Summer islands off to the south, and farther out, the purple-gray silhouettes of Poverty, Gravelly, Gull, and St. Martin islands.

Service used his binoculars to scan for nets or lift shacks on the ice, but saw nothing.

Joe Flap braced the stick between his knees and flew with both hands on his own binoculars. “Sometimes you don't see da lift shacks if dey got da good camo, so youse look for shadows on da snow. An' look for foot trails packed down where dey move from hole to hole.”

He added, “Dere at eleven o'clock, see the shadow?” They were near Ansels Point. Service looked and finally located the structure, which, like the one they had encountered on the patrol, was painted to blend in.

“Can you land anywhere down there?” Service asked.

“Almost,” Flap said, nosing the aircraft down.

From two thousand feet the ice had looked smooth and smoky gray-blue. As they descended Service could begin to see the jagged rises, severe moguls, and precipitous pressure ridges that characterized the chaotic surface; by the time they were lined up for a landing, he was sure the ice below would shred the bottom of the plane, but Joe Flap eased the bird down onto the aircraft's skis with an assertive
thump.
He let the plane skid and hop for a moment before slamming the throttle forward, jerking the nose of the aircraft into a steep banking climb with the engines screaming their objection. Service thought he was going to lose his stomach.

The ride on the ice had been bumpy, the sound like an ironing board skimming across a rock garden, but the ride was not nearly as harsh as on a snowmobile or in Stone's truck, there being more give in the aircraft's skis and struts. “We'll run up da eastern shore and cut back across da center,” Joe Flap said, banking the plane south and twisting the nose back to the northeast as they began to gain altitude.

The one thing Service had seen on the way down was that the various bluffs along the west coast were close to sheer and at least two hundred feet high. Even with snow, he could see that the multihued limestone outcrops were pocked with holes and small caves, offering good places for shooters to hide themselves to ambush lawmen below.

By contrast the east coast of the Garden Peninsula sprawled before them was more wooded and flatter than the west coast, and punctuated by numerous cedar and tamarack swamps that looked like black tumors from above.

On their next run Service asked Flap to descend to five hundred feet and fly along the road that led from Garden down to Fairport as he studied the terrain where the rock-throwing had taken place. He saw two-tracks and snowmobile trails within a third of a mile of the cedar swales where the attackers had hidden. He made notes on his maps as they flew. There was little talk, and most of the time Joe Flap was watching the ground with his binoculars and not paying attention to anything that might be at their altitude.

After nearly three hours of crisscrossing the peninsula, Flap turned the aircraft west toward Escanaba.

“Do you make night runs down here?” Service asked as they flew along.

“When dey ask,” Joe Flap said.

“No, I mean do you make
your own
night runs down here?”

“Sometimes I come up and just look around at night. You can see stuff good if dere's a good moon, or if dey use any light at all. If we had enough people on da ground at night, we might make some good pinches, but dey don't seem ta want ta do dat, and I can't blame 'em. Hard enough to deal wit' rats in daylight, eh.”

17

GRAYLING, FEBRUARY 1, 1976

“All this over fish?”

He had decided that using Brigid Mehegen to help him get a parachute would not be smart: too close to home, and her grandfather was nosy, eccentric, and unpredictable. Better to get help from someone he knew he could rely on.

Grady Service and Luticious Treebone were about the same height, but Tree was considerably heavier, the difference being a lot more muscle. When the towering black man swaggered through the swinging doors of Spike's Keg o' Nails, all sound stopped—as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of a vacuum jar. The big man smiled, waved a hand regally, and announced, “As you were, people—I ain't Jimmy Hoffa.”

The patrons laughed and went back to their conversations.

Treebone took a seat across a small table from his friend. “How come when you need something, I always gotta drive up to some whiteboy redneck roadhouse?”

“Lots of Detroit people have places up here,” Service said.

“Not of the brother hue,” Tree said. “You see why I couldn't be no woods cop. I ain't got the prejudice, but I gotta see my own people, you know?”

“And Kalina hates small-town living.”

Treebone rolled his eyes and nodded solemnly. “There is that.”

“You bring it?” Service asked.

“In the trunk. I ever leave you hang?”

Luticious Treebone took reliability as a religion. Service had graduated from Northern Michigan where he had been a fair student and a competent hockey player. Tree had played football and baseball at Wayne State and graduated cum laude. They both had volunteered for duty in the Marine Corps, and met at Parris Island boot camp; they both took the same specialized training, and spent a tour in the same long-range recon unit in Vietnam, both of them coming back with numerous decorations and little desire to talk about what they had seen or done. Both had attended the Michigan State Police Academy in Lansing and spent two years as Troop road patrollers before transferring to the DNR. After just one year as a CO in Oscoda County, Treebone took a job with the Detroit Metropolitan Police. They had been friends for more than twenty years, and were closer than most brothers.

“How's Kalina?” Service asked. Kalina was his friend's wife. It had been because of her he'd taken the job in Detroit.

“Wonderin' how the single life's sittin' with you.”

“I haven't bought a leisure suit yet.”

Treebone howled. “They got that disco shit up there?”

“Hell, we just learned about some guy named Elvis. You gonna ask what I'm up to?”

Treebone shook his head. “I know you're going outside the envelope and I really don't wanna know more than that, man. You believe they give you your daddy's old territory?”

“I'm not spending a whole lot of time there,” Service said, and explained to his friend the situation in the Garden Peninsula. He did not talk about his surveillance assignment.

“All this over
fish?
”

“Fish is money.”

“I hear you, but more money in fish than dope? The brothers hear that, there won't be no fish left in the Detroit River or Lake St. Clair!”

“We got dope too,” Service said. “Supposed to be a new thing. You want to see what you can find out about it? Street name is Garden Green.”

“I heard of that shit, man, but even if they got supply, a buncha Yoopers not gonna be supplyin' Motown, dig?”

“If it turns out to be nothing, so be it.”

“Kalina is dying to know if you're dating anybody special.”

“Nothing steady.”

Treebone laughed. “I told her you'd be married to your job.”

“It's not like that.”

“Bullshit. You gonna invite me up there this summer to chase some of those pretty little brook trout you don't tell nobody about?”

“You bet.” Trout fishing was a passion that both men shared. When they first met, Treebone had been a confirmed worm-dunker, but had since converted to fly fishing and—when he had time, which wasn't often—was learning to tie his own flies.

“From what you say, it sounds like you boys in green don't have your act together up in the Garden.”

“We're trying.”

“They sendin' you in to do a snoop, am I right?”

Service said nothing.

“I know you'll think it through before you commit,” his friend said quietly. “Just remember—this ain't 'Nam, and you are no longer in the business of capping bad guys. It's our job to catch 'em, gather evidence, and let the courts take it from there. End of speech. Now can we eat?”

They were eating cheeseburgers when a young woman in a ski sweater came over to the table and nervously tapped Treebone on the shoulder. “I'm sorry to interrupt your lunch, but do you play for the Lions?”

“No, ma'am; I just got out of the joint.”

The woman scrambled away with a red face.

Service looked at his friend and shook his head. “You just have to stir the pot.”

“Just reinforcing the stereotype. A big black man's either an ex-con or a jock.”

“And everybody north of Detroit is a redneck.”

“No man, north from Detroit to the bridge they're rednecks; above the bridge, you motherfuckers are a whole different species—one they don't even have a word for.”

Service looked at his friend and saw he was not smiling. “I hope this is not gonna be an armed snoop,” Treebone said.

When Service didn't respond, Treebone grimaced.

“Be cool,” his friend said as they embraced. “You need somebody to get your back, you call.”