Chasing a Blond Moon Page 5

  Walter rolled his eyes, took a piece of toast, and grabbed for the butter.

  Nantz shot a surreptitious scowl at Grady.

  Service had met the aspiring governor last fall during a particularly nasty sequence of events in which two men and a bear died on a highway near Seney. Lorelei Timms had been taken by his actions at the accident scene and had been singing his praises publicly every since, a situation that made him grind his teeth every time another CO teased him about it. She had also become a constant phone pal, calling to ask him about the ­minutiae of fish and game management and trying to get him to act as her inside informer in the DNR. So far he had refused to help her, but this hadn’t stopped her from calling, or dropping by every time she was in the U.P. on her way to her place at the exclusive Huron Mountain Club north of Marquette. He didn’t dislike the senator. In fact, he liked her, but he didn’t have time to hold her hand and get himself sucked into a political vortex. He had experienced two run-ins with Sam Bozian, both of which had nearly cost him his job and career. In fact, just before his unexpected and unwanted promotion to detective last summer, he had been suspended without pay for two months—on direct orders from Governor Bozian. As far as he was concerned, he never wanted to be close to anyone whose job rested on the gullibility of a bunch of uninformed fools.

  “Lorne called and said he thought it might be a good idea,” Nantz said.

  Lorne O’Driscoll was the DNR’s chief of law enforcement, the state’s top woods cop. Last fall Nantz had begun training as a conservation officer and was at the top of her class when she was pulled out and thrown into a post-September 11 task force in Lansing that never materialized. While living at a motel she had been viciously attacked by a man, and the chief and his wife had taken her into their home to help her convalesce. She was scheduled to restart the DNR academy again in November, and since healing from her injuries had been a part-time contract pilot for the department in the Upper Peninsula.

  “You mean the chief called,” Service said. O’Driscoll had backed him up in some important ways over the past two years and had proven to be the best chief in Service’s twenty years, but like most COs he didn’t care for Lansing and felt the further away he stayed, the better it was for everyone. Nantz loved to call the chief by his first name, knowing that Service found it grating.

  “Lorne said to say hi. He thinks it won’t hurt to have one of us with the senator.”

  “That’s political espionage.”

  Nantz laughed. “Don’t be paranoid. It’s not healthy.”

  Service sampled his coffee. “Paranoia I can handle. It’s help from Lansing that creeps me out.”

  Nantz shook her head. “The great Grady Service, afraid?”

  Gus and Shark laughed as he turned red and changed the subject, relating what he had seen during the night and what promises he had made in Gus’s behalf.

  “Macofome show up?” Gus asked. “He’s always around Pyykkonen.”

  Shark grinned and held up a forearm. “Boom-boom,” he said. “It’s all over town.”

  “She seems to know her job,” Service said, noticing that Walter was listening carefully, taking it all in.

  “No question, but you know how things can be up here, eh. The local cop house don’t see a lot of serious shit, so gossip falls like January snow.”

  Just before Service, Walter, and Nantz got ready to leave, Gus got a phone call. He nodded at the phone and handed it to Service.

  “Bearclaw.” Betty “Bearclaw” Very was the CO stationed in Ontonagon.

  “Hey,” Sevice said.

  “Think you could make a run down this way?”

  “I really need to make a stop at Tech and get back to Marquette tonight.”

  “I think you’ll want to see this,” Very said. “Last night I was out by the West Branch of the Firesteel River and I found an old guy wandering around. He’s blind, got only one leg, and insists he knows you. He calls himself Trapper Jet.”

  “He smell like fermented skunk?”

  “That would be him.”

  “I know him,” Service said. “How the hell did the old coot get way up there? His place is a hundred and twenty miles away.”

  “Not much of a talker,” Very said. “Announced he wants to see you, end of conversation. I’ve got him at my place.”

  “What the hell was he doing?”

  “He acted lost. I was out checking bear movement, fruit crops, old baiting sites, and such, and there he was. He seemed pissed that I showed up. I brought him to my place, but he clammed up on me.”

  “Nantz and I are rolling. It’ll take us about ninety minutes, give or take.” Trapper Jet might be blind, but it was not possible he was lost. The old bastard was in his late seventies, and had lived alone in a shack in northern Iron County since the mid-1950s. He looked and smelled like he was at death’s door, but the old trapper could be the poster boy for self-reliance.

  When they got to McInnes Arena, Walter announced that Coach Blanck wanted to see Service.

  “Blanck?”

  “He’s one of the assistants.”

  The name jarred Service.

  Following his son, they made their way to the coaching offices and there he saw the man who had been the reason for his decision to not pursue professional hockey. Toby Blanck was older, but looked fit. The last time he had seen Blanck he was being carried off the ice bleeding profusely, his skull fractured. Blanck had been critical for a week before pulling through.

  When Blanck looked, up a huge smile spread across his face as he stood up and extended his hand. “Geez, Banger himself.”

  Service had no idea what to say. He had once nearly killed the man.

  Blanck’s voice was warm and inviting. “Hey, that stuff way back when? No hard feelings, Grady. It was just hockey, eh?”

  Service nodded dumbly.

  “So you’re Walter’s dad?”

  Another dumb nod.

  “You and Walter have a chance to talk?”

  “I was out on a call all night,” Service said.

  “Yeah, woods cop; good for you, but I wouldn’t want your job. You were a cop on the ice and you’re still one, eh? I admire that. Listen, Walter and I had a candid talk about his future here.”

  Grady Service had no idea where this was going.

  “You want me to leave?” the boy asked the coach.

  “No, I’m not gonna say anything to your dad I haven’t already said to you.”

  Service felt trapped and not sure why he was feeling so.

  “Have a seat,” Blanck said.

  Service sat, staring across the desk at the man he had nearly killed in his final collegiate hockey game.

  “We had Walter on skates,” Blanck said. “Our doc cleared him. We’re impressed as hell, eh? But his age is a concern. He’s just sixteen. College players are older than juniors and there’re academics to consider. This is a tough school and jocks don’t get cut a lot of slack. We think it would be in Walter’s best interests to redshirt him this year. He can skate with the team, but no games to preserve his eligibility and he won’t be traveling with the club, so he can use that time to pound the books. We’ll give him a full ride next year, so no money worries. This year we’ll let him get settled in. He got his GED, and he scored out of sight on the ACT, but he hasn’t been in a classroom for two years. We think it will be good for him to get that part of his college life well under control. Truth is, as soon as the scouts see him, he’s gonna get drafted, and if he performs like we think he will, the offers and pressures will start coming. It’s not like when we were playing, Banger. The NHL’s expanded so much that they are desperately looking for talent and pushing hard to get players into the fold as early as possible. There’s one other thing. Coach Forrester is going to retire at the end of this season and I’ve been offered his job. If Walter redshirts, we can star
t out together.”

  Service was at a loss for words. The man he had nearly killed was now coaching the son he never knew he had.

  Service looked at his son. “How do you feel about this?”

  Blanck spoke for the boy. “Walter said you’re his dad and it’s your decision.”

  “It’s Walter’s game and he’s the student. It’s his decision.”

  Walter said nothing and Service got the impression that he was being set up, but he couldn’t imagine how or why. “Does he need to make a decision today?”

  “Not till the players officially report later this month.”

  Service stood and reached across the desk to shake Toby Blanck’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, meaning alive, not necessarily as a coach.

  “Me, too, and we’ll be really glad to have your son here.”

  On the way out of the arena with his son beside him, someone shouted. Service turned to find Dr. Kermit “Rocky” Lemich, a former hockey player and now a professor at the university. Last fall Lemich had helped him solve a difficult case.

  “Hey, Banger. Your kid’s enrolled, eh?”

  Service nodded. “Thinking about it.”

  “Listen, you bugger, you promised you’d get involved with kids and do some coaching, but you haven’t, so I took the liberty of talking to Walter and Coach Blanck. He’s gonna help me coach a bantam team when he’s not practicing with the Huskies. It’ll do him good, and one way or the other I’ll be getting your family back into the game.” Lemich laughed, pivoted, and walked away whistling.

  “He’s crazy,” Walter said. “In a good way.”

  “Goaler,” Service said, drawing a chuckle from his son. “Why do you want me to make the decision?”

  “You’re supposed to be my father. Aren’t you up to it?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Isn’t it? You invited me into your life, so I figure if you’re my dad, you should do your job.”

  “How do you feel about redshirting?”

  “I don’t like it, but it makes sense and I like Blanck. Did you really beat him up?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “He said you were a great player.”

  “I’ve got to get moving,” Service told his son.

  “You’ll pick me up tonight?”

  “We’ll be here.”

  Nantz was sitting in the truck. Service got into the driver’s seat and Walter stood by Nantz’s window. “See you tonight,” he said.

  “We’re late,” Service said, putting the truck into gear and pulling away.

  “That was abrupt,” Nantz said.

  “I told Bearclaw ninety minutes.”

  “Family comes first,” Nantz said. “The job will always be there.”

  Her tone was so soft that he wasn’t sure he had just been chastised. “You ever feel like you’re in the Twilight Zone?” he asked her.

  “Every day—with you, Service.”

  2

  You look like you swallowed a bucket of lemon drops,” Nantz said as Service raced south on the two-lane M-26.

  “I don’t understand him,” he said.

  “You mean your son. His name is Walter,” she said.

  “He told me the assistant coach wanted to see me, so I walked in to find a guy I nearly killed back in college. He’s going to take the head coaching job next season and he wants to redshirt the boy so he can get his academics in order. The boy hasn’t been in class for two years.”

  “Walter, not ‘the boy.’ What’s your objection?”

  “They want me to make the decision.”

  “So make it.”

  “It’s the boy’s decision.”

  “You make decisions for others all the time.”

  “I won’t make this one for him.”

  “You’re not being rational, Service.”

  “First the kid tells me I’m not his father and now he tells me to act like his father. What the hell does he want?”

  “Jesus, Grady. He’s sixteen. He lost his mom last year. He’s got a stepfather who doesn’t give a shit about him. He wants what we all want. He wants stability and he wants to be wanted. This isn’t rocket science.”

  “So he dumps the decision on me to test me?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Exactly.”

  “You think this is all right?”

  “Jesus, Grady. Stop whining. Walter can’t come right out and ask you to be his dad because he’s afraid of being rejected, so he gives you a little test to see how you handle it. Didn’t you test your own father?”

  “Nobody tested my old man—not if they wanted to still have their head attached.”

  She smiled. “Well, I don’t think Walter is looking to get the shit kicked out of him as a sign of affection, though with you men it’s often hard to tell,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that men get bent out of shape over the oddest things.”

  Service began to grind his teeth and stopped talking.

  “What exactly does Betty want?” she asked after a suitable pause to let him calm down.

  “She found an old guy last night. He’s more than a hundred miles from home.”

  “So are we,” she said, grinning.

  “It’s not a joke. He’s blind and got one leg. Everybody calls him Trapper Jet, but his name is Ollie Toogood. He was a pilot in Korea, shot down, a prisoner for two years. He came back to the U.P. after the VA cut him loose and he’s been here ever since. My old man used to take me to visit him. He makes his living off a small pension and trapping. Been up on Mitigwaki Creek since the late 1950s.”

  “Violet?” Nantz asked.

  “He feeds bears year-round and rumor is that he lets people come in and pop the bigger ones for a fee.”

  “You’ve investigated?”

  “It’s only rumor about the fee, but it’s a fact that he feeds bears. I’ve seen as many as a dozen around his shack at one time. I think every bear biologist in the state has been to see him at one time or another. Great chance to study the animals, and in the shape Jet’s in, it doesn’t hurt to have people out there from time to time. He’s never applied for a bear permit.”

  “So we’re rushing to his rescue.”

  “His and Betty’s. The two of them are likely to tangle before too long. If Blanck hadn’t been in such a yank to talk, we’d almost be there.”

  “Relax. An extra hour won’t make a difference.”

  “I know, but since Joe died last year, I’ve been feeling like there’s more I could have done to look after him.” Joe Flap was a longtime DNR pilot who had lost his FAA license but continued to fly. During his career he had been in so many accidents that his nickname was Pranger. Last fall his luck had run out and so had his gas, and he had died in a crash near Escanaba. Service had found him and called for help, but his old friend hadn’t made it. He had felt remorse ever since.

  “We all die,” Nantz said. “You can’t save everybody, Grady.”

  “I can try,” Service said.

  “Not everybody wants to be saved.”

  “Horseshit,” he said.

  Nantz laughed. “Whenever you get into a discussion you don’t want to have, you always say ‘horseshit.’”

  “Horseshit,” he repeated. She rubbed his arm, leaned over, and kissed him on the shoulder.

  “When you get old and frail, I’ll save you,” she said.

  “Horseshit,” he said.

  “Really,” she said, “it only seems like there’s suddenly so many things to think about, but Jesus, Grady, you live in perpetual chaos. What’s different about this—that it’s not job-related? That you have a son to think about and now maybe you are thinking about this old guy, too?”

  “Something like
that.”

  “Well, I guess that makes me part of the trinity of burden.”

  “You’re not a burden.”

  “No, but we have responsibility for each other, so that puts me over on that side of the scale.”

  “Goddammit, don’t twist everything around,” he snapped.

  “I don’t have to twist anything. I just let you spit them out and spin until they choke you.”

  Another period of silence ensued.

  “You want to save the old man,” she said, “and I wouldn’t want to interfere with noble ambitions.”

  “Because they’re so rare?”

  “I’ll take the fifth on that,” she said with a coquettish smile. “Seriously, what would he be doing so far north?”

  He looked over at her. Even after their fourteen months together, he still found himself watching her. Her long neck had a bit of a curve, which she didn’t like, and her lips, according to her, were too thin. Sometimes she was merciless in self-appraisals, withholding credit where it was obviously due. Like her blue eyes that had a range of intensity equal to an industrial laser (too big, they bulge like a bug). She constantly fretted about her hair (too fine and did it seem to him that it might be thinning? It had happened to her mother), her legs (all thigh, calves too damned thin), her fingernails (why couldn’t she stop chewing them?), her feet (like a damn duck’s). The list was endless and he had learned to simply listen, understanding that she was venting feelings, not looking for his ham-handed attempts at making her feel better.

  Sometimes he tried to look at her objectively, but such efforts invariably failed and he always reached the same conclusion: The sum of her was bigger than the parts and she was the most beautiful and interesting woman he had ever known. What he loved most was that she was alive, engaged in life, willing to stick her nose wherever curiosity led and to hell with consequences.

  “With Jet, you can’t tell,” Service said. His father had always said that there was some deep secret in the trapper’s life and that it had been this that sent him into the backcountry to live alone. “When I took over my old man’s territory, I inherited Ollie Toogood.” Service’s father had been a ­conservation officer before him, and by chance Service had ended up standing guard over the same area that his father had taken care of for so long.