Running Dark (14 page)

“That seems like a reach,” he said. But the fewer licenses in effect when this happened, the less the state would have to pay out, and there was little doubt that Order Seventeen was aimed at reducing the number of licenses. Everybody in law enforcement had assumed this had been done to revitalize commercial fishing in Lake Michigan, protecting the commercial fishermen from themselves in the short term to improve their long-term interests—but what if they were all missing the real intent?

“Talk to your people and see what they have to say,” she said. “It certainly makes for an interesting what-if, eh?”

It did; and ten years fit the time frame Hegstrom was alleged to have given the Garden commercial fishermen. If she was right, Order Seventeen was the preparatory move to boost sportfishing in Lake Michigan and remove white commercial fishermen. If those fishermen had ten years left to make money, they were going to keep violating, and to hell with what Lansing said. After a moment he concluded that if they were going to violate, they'd try to do it in such a way so as to not jeopardize their licenses. This crude analysis also supported Len Stone's contention that the whole Garden situation was driven by money. Lasurm knew one helluva lot, but he couldn't just take her word for it. He needed to probe Lansing and find out what was going on. If he could just figure out how.

When the meat was done, he cut portions and put them on military mess plates and gave Lasurm salt and pepper. They ate quietly.

“There's something about meat grilled outdoors,” she said.

After their meal, they talked more about logistics while he was in the Garden, and he told her he was aiming for arrival on February 14, so long as the weather was bad. If not, he'd push it back twenty-four hours, or until a time that it got bad.

“You're coming in bad weather?” she said.

“Anything short of a Big Blue Norther,” he said.

“You really
are
an interesting man,” she said.

“Last time we met, you walked out when I showed you the mug shot,” he said.

“The girl in that photograph is twenty-two. She is my daughter, and she's a junkie.”

“She's the real reason you came to us,” he said.

“Too bloody late,” she said. “For her.”

“Who got Hegstrom to take her case?”

“I don't know,” she said, “but I can guess. We'll talk more when you come to the Garden.”

It was a less than satisfying answer, but he told himself it would have to suffice.

19

LANSING, FEBRUARY 10, 1976

“If the state owns it, Jumping Bill manages it.”

A
Detroit Free Press
columnist had once written that finding out what went on inside state government in the capital was akin to going to the moon: a helluva challenging journey to a destination without air, water, logic, or significant gravity. Michigan's elected legislators were notorious paradoxically for ferocious independence and blind party loyalty. But even some of the most popular elected officials were often ignorant of the engine that ultimately drove the governmental machine.

One night Service's old man had come home with a friend, both of them soused and stumbling around like the earth was on gimbals. “Son, this is the most powerful man in Lansing.”

Service remembered his first impression of Bill Fahey: five feet tall and equally wide, with a thick red nose and diaphanous gray angel hair that seemed to grow in clumps. The little man had grinned and mumbled, “Geez oh Pete, da game warden speaketh truth!”

“Jumping Bill” Fahey held the official title of state properties manager, a job he had held since 1947. “If the state owns it, Jumping Bill manages it,” his father explained. “He's the state's landlord.”

Service had thought about this some and never quite understood how someone in such a nondescript position could be so powerful; he wrote it off to his father's sense of hyperbole and too much alcohol in both men.

Jumping Bill came around regularly after that, and Service eventually discovered that they had become pals after his old man wrote the man a ticket for shooting a deer ten minutes after shooting hours had ended, and Fahey had paid his ticket without bellyaching. Out of this unusual meeting, a friendship was born. Fahey was originally from Gladstone, and still had a hunting camp north of Rapid River. One time Service had queried the old man about his other friends and discovered that his father had written tickets on every one of them, usually after they had become friends.

One morning Service got out of bed to find his father and Fahey drunk on the kitchen floor, a stringer of gutted and dessicated brook trout between them. Service had washed the trout, rolled them in cornmeal, and fried them. The smell brought the drunks back to life, and when they crawled into chairs, he served them trout for breakfast, setting a bottle of Jack Daniel's between them.

When his father died, the governor had attended the funeral and had heaped praise on the officer who had been drinking on duty and stepped in front of a truck. Service never doubted that Bill Fahey had somehow engineered the governor's appearance, and it was then that he began to suspect that Fahey's power was something more than mere drunk-talk.

When Service graduated from the Michigan State Police Academy, Fahey showed up for the ceremony, red-faced and mumbling, stinking of gin, food stains on his twenty-year-old tie. He'd not seen or talked to Fahey since his father's funeral, and was surprised to see him. He was even more surprised to see Colonel Edgar Browning Proctor, the top Troop in the state, fawn all over the little Yooper, who rarely uttered a complete—much less coherent—sentence.

Fahey pumped his hand, grinning and slurring, “Geez oh Pete.”

After the ceremony, Proctor (who was called EBP behind his back—for “extra big prick”) had pulled Service aside.

“You're a friend of Fahey's?”

“My dad was.”

“Your father?”

“Frank Service.”

Proctor had gaped at him. “You're Ironfist Service's son? I didn't know,” the state police commander said. “I was post commander in Iron Mountain, and I knew your dad. If you're half the cop your father was, I'm glad we've got you in the Troops.”

Fahey told him after the graduation party to look him up if he ever needed anything.

Until now there had been no reason.

Fahey answered his own phone. “Properties, Fahey.”

“Mister Fahey, it's Grady Service.”

“Geez oh Pete,” Fahey said. “How does it feel to ramrod the Mosquito?”

“Good,” Service said. Had his father's friend been keeping track of him?

“Geez, you sound good,” Fahey said. “What can I do youse for?”

“I'd like to talk to you about something,” Service said.

“Not on the phone,” Fahey said. “Face-to-face. You comin' down to Lansing soon?”

“Nossir.”

“Geez oh Pete, I'd better fix dat, eh? You'll get a call, okay?”

Two hours later Attalienti telephoned. “You're going to Lansing tomorrow,” the acting captain said.

“I am?”

“Metrovich just called me. The director has requested you as our liaison with SPO on a special project.”

“SPO?”

“State Properties Office.”

The current director of the DNR was John “Jungle Jack” Curry, who had come to Lansing in 1967 from Alaska where he had been the number-two man with Alaska Fish & Game. The Michigan salmon program was attributed to the director, and officers told Service that even Curry was caught by surprise at the program's success. The salmon had been planted with no firm idea of whether they would survive or not. The program's main goal was to reduce alewife overpopulation. It was also common knowledge that Curry had not shown a lot of concern about the Garden situation.

“Why me?”

“SPO has decided to conduct some kind of real estate and asset audit, and the director wants someone to run interference. Metrovich got the impression that State Property asked for you by name, and, if so, Jungle Jack's not one to buck the flow, so you're going. The request is highly irregular and Cosmo and Curry both have their antennae quivering with suspicion. I'm sure Curry doesn't want some dirt-boot CO dealing with another agency, but he's too savvy to cross swords with the property kingpin. You're to meet a man named Fahey at Lou Coomes restaurant in north Lansing at noon tomorrow. Fahey's the director of State Properties. I were you, I'd head down there tonight. The weather from the bridge down to Grayling can get ugly. After your meeting you are to report to Curry and Metrovich.”

Service started to laugh and stopped when he realized that Fahey's little exercise in muscle might just have earned him a couple of enemies in his own department. “Goddamn Lansing,” he said out loud.

The restaurant was not far off US 127 and had a towering neon sign that looked like the gaudy trail of a comet. The restaurant was filled with men in dark suits.

The maître d' eyed Service's uniform and said, “This way, Officer.”

She led him to a private dining room where Fahey was already seated, a napkin—already stained—tucked in over his tie. He had a drink in front of him and a large bowl of olives stuck with green and white toothpicks.

“Geez oh Pete!” Fahey greeted him. “You made it.”

“You made it happen,” Service said.

“Easy enough when you've been around as long as me. In your dad's honor we're gonna have an old-fashioned U.P. lunch—cudighi on Finnish rye, smothered in onions and hot Italian mustard. The cudighi comes from an old Finn up to Lake Linden. People back home are always sendin' me stuff. I get a box of Trenary Toast once a month, but one of my staff members broke a tooth so that gets tossed soon as it arrives.”

Fahey handed him an envelope. “This is a memo from me to your director. It apologizes for any inconvenience and explains that the audit is postponed until a later date. 'Course, I don't suggest when, because it's good to keep others on edge. State bureaucrats hate unscheduled audits, so he'll be relieved when he gets this—at least for a while. How about a drink?”

“Just coffee,” Service said. “I'm on duty.”

“Geez oh Pete, not a chip off the old block—but hey, it's the smart thing to do. You remember that trout breakfast you made for the old man and me?”

Service remembered. He said, “Do you know Acting Chief Metrovich?”

When Fahey transitioned from small talk to business, his fool's mask evaporated. “Acting's all he'll ever be. Cosmo's all shine, no metal. Wouldn't say it's raining until somebody above him says it's so. When Cosmo's six months are up, he'll retire and a man named Grant will get the captain's job. He's new to the DNR, but he's a man with depth. He came to Lansing from the federal government in Washington, D.C. The U.P. needs a captain with the kind of pluck you fellas have.”

“The men never talk about Metrovich,” Service said.

“People don't talk about air, either. It's just there. Cosmo isn't heavy enough to leave footprints if he walked across a swimming pool filled with Jell-O. Attalienti may make a good captain down the road, but not in the U.P. They're taking a good look at him now. He might do well in one of the southern law zones. Deano's a good man.” Fahey didn't say who “they” was.

Fahey had surprisingly incisive insight into the law enforcement division, and Service decided to test it. “Len Stone?”

“Yooper-tough and right out of the old school. He'll get the permanent lieutenant's job and, if he wanted to, he could move downstate for a captain's job—but they'll never get Len out of the U.P. Besides, he can retire in eight or nine years.”

A waiter brought their lunches and they tried to eat while three different men “popped in” to pay homage to Fahey. They all had jokes for him, and Fahey had a quick comeback for each of them. The well-spoken and thoughtful man of minutes before immediately backslid to ridge-running bumbler when people came into the room. Their last visitor was a long-legged woman with black hair and green eyes who talked to Fahey but stared the whole while at Service. Fahey introduced her as “Shay-the-Lay,” and she laughed and corrected him. “It's Shay da Leigh.”

“Never was good wit' names,” Fahey said with a chuckle.

“Except when you want to be,” she said, excusing herself for interrupting.

“Good girl,” Fahey said when she was gone. “And a crack lawyer in the Legislative Services Branch. You're a senator or a rep and you want to draft a bill, you call in LS and they help you to write it and put it in the appropriate capitolese. Shay's the best they've got, great brain and an even greater wild streak. She was raised over to Bessemer. You can trust her.”

They finished eating in privacy and Fahey had two more vodka tonics. “So, what was it you wanted to talk about?” his father's pal finally asked.

“The Garden.”

Fahey nodded solemnly. “Those boys sure didn't take to Order Seventeen. Still taking potshots at you fellas, I hear.”

“Somebody's going to get killed,” Service said.

Fahey pondered this as he took a drink. “Smart boys down there. They see the handwriting on the wall.”

“Such as the end of commercial fishing in Lake Michigan?”

Fahey raised an eyebrow and cracked a grin. “Just like your old man. I don't know how, but that sonuvagun always knew what was going on,” he said. “The fur trappers came first, then the mining companies and the loggers, and now the oil companies are coming in. The fact is that commercial fishermen aren't important enough to have the power to get what they want. See, in Lansing, clout and power count. Companies have pretty much always gotten what they wanted as long as the state got a good cut. Money speaks, eh?”

“There's more money in sportfishing than commercial fishing,” Service said.

“Geez oh Pete, this salmon thing's bigger than anybody dreamed, even Curry. The commercial net boys keep at it, they'll kill the salmon. You know what brought down our fish stocks more than any other factor?”

“Lampreys.”

“Nylon,” Fahey said. “With nylon fishermen no longer had to make their own nets out of linen or know how to repair them, which they did all the time. Nylon's lighter, cheaper, stronger, and requires a lot less upkeep. Capital and costs down, profits up. Nylon changed Great Lakes commercial fishing.”

Service decided to push a little. “I heard the Indians might get to keep their nets.”

Fahey straightened his shoulders and took another drink. “Well, all that's in the federal court system and there's no way to predict those buggers, but if I were a betting man, I'd bet the Indians will come out of this winners.”

“And white commercial fishermen will get bought out?”

“You've got good sources,” Fahey said, raising his glass in salute. “The few who've been able to hang on to their licenses would get bought out.”

“Do you know Odd Hegstrom?” Service asked.

“Since the old days. Smart fella—and cagey as they come.”

“He created U.P. Legal Services.”

“Not with a lot of support from the state bar or Lansing. People think Odd's addicted to fighting windmills, but that's malarkey. He just doesn't like to see people pushed around, and when he goes into a fight, he likes to win. Usually he does.”

“Political ambition?”

“What does a man need political office for if he's already got power? Odd's not all pro bono. He's got one helluva law practice, and though he's got the tribes pro bono now, I'd expect that down the road they'll become real billable hours and a cash cow. Why the interest in all this?”