Chasing a Blond Moon Page 9

  “You can say I got retired early. You want to hear about the paw?” he held up the fingerless stump.

  “Not if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Hey, people like this shit, especially women. Kunashir is an island in the Kurile Islands, north of Japland. It’s a dink of an island, maybe a hundred miles long, a place full of mountains and no more’n three hundred people and even more bears. The subspecies there is Ursus arctos yesoensis, the same animal that inhabits the Japanese far north of Hokkaido. This is one kooky bear, not like others, get me? It has a long, narrow head and a reddish collar. It hunts and kills people for sport, though this is popular bullshit and not science. Are you scientifically trained?”

  “No. What’s this got to do with your hand?”

  The man smiled. “Some people call me Shatun, do you know this word?”

  “No.”

  “It’s Russkie. In some parts of Siberia bears depend on certain mast crops—ya know, nuts and shit. If it’s a lousy harvest, the animals begin killing people. They move around until they kill and eat enough to get fat and only then do they hibernate. I think this is a real life illustration of Maslow’s theories. Shatun means wanderer, and these fuckin’ bears won’t stop until they’ve gotten what they want.”

  Maslow? Service thought. “You’re a shatun?”

  “Fucking-eh, right. I been around, see,” the man said. “It’s not exactly a complimentary handle, but we don’t get to pick what others call us.”

  Service felt a lecture coming, and wondered what the hell the man could contribute.

  Shatun/Sager signaled the bartender and held up two fingers on his right hand. She soon came with two glasses and a bottle of clear liquid, a plate of Italian bread, a bowl with olive oil to dip the bread, and a bowl of black olives. Her skirt was too short and Service saw that she had a nasty bruise by her left knee. Sager pushed a glass to Service and lifted his own. “Stoli,” he said. “The primo shit.” They touched glasses and drank. The man’s hit was much more substantial than Service’s.

  Service wondered how much high-test vodka it would take to be over the legal point-one blood alcohol level. “What did your father do in Chicago?”

  “I never knew my old man. I grew up on the street with a bunch of Croatians. I was born a wanderer and I ain’t bitchin’.”

  Service tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the olive oil.

  “I had a consignment for one of the Kunashir animals, but the fuckin’ Russkies got tipped and they play the game rough. By the time all the fingers were gone I figured I’d better make a deal, so I bought my way out. I like the Russians: They got black fucking hearts, but peel the black back and it’s pure green. Which reminds me, information ain’t cheap.”

  “Mr. Scaffidi said to remind you that you’re not supposed to shake me down.”

  Shatun/Sager laughed. “You’re right, Service. Mr. Scaffidi says it’s on the house, it’s on the house.” He shrugged to let Service know it wasn’t a problem.

  “Why are we here?” Service asked, wondering once again what sort of clout Ralph Scaffidi had.

  The man held up his hands. “Hey, crossing the border ain’t no picnic these days.”

  “You can’t come? Or you choose not to?”

  “We’re here, let’s leave it at that.”

  Service nodded.

  “It’s been said that maybe you’re finding some . . . weird shit among your bear population, am I right?”

  “What exactly can you do for me?”

  “Who knows? God, maybe. I’m just a retired stiff on a fixed income, but maybe I can give you a name.”

  “Telephone books are filled with names.”

  “Let’s not joust, Service. I went to Kunashir for a chink named Mao Chan Dung. He’s a major parts dealer on the Siberian–Mongol border. He sent me to the island, said it was a sweet deal, and then the cocksucker set me up.” He held up his hand. “I keep score, know what I mean? You don’t keep score, people take more than some fuckin’ fingers.”

  Shatun/Sager took another swig of vodka and popped an olive in his mouth. “I give you a name, maybe you take somebody down, and I get a little payback.”

  “We scratch each other’s backs.”

  The man held up his glass of vodka. “You tell me what shit’s been going down and we’ll see where a little talk leads us.”

  The man was an enigma and Service was having a hard time getting a feel for whether he was real or full of shit. “Last year one of our bear guides found an animal shot, its gall removed. The rest was left to rot.”

  “They take a paw?”

  “No.”

  “When these people take a gall, they usually take a paw with it—to prove freshness. This sells well in Asia,” the man said. “What else you got?”

  “We’ve had at least one bear released from a barrel trap and there seem to be rising tensions among some of our less-than-kosher guides who run hounds.” He made a mental note to call the Ketchums on his way to visit with Griff Stinson.

  “You got more?”

  “A professor from one of our universities was found poisoned by cyanide. The poison was in figs, but we also found two galls in the fig container. The professor was Korean.”

  “Born here or an immigrant?”

  “Immigrant.”

  “Name?”

  “Pung Juju Kang.”

  “Okay,” he said, pouring more vodka into Service’s glass. “You believe all this stuff is connected?”

  “I don’t have any evidence; it’s just a possibility.”

  “Right, and the common denominator is bear. Usually you don’t hear shit about bears. They keep to themselves and suddenly people who got interest in bears start some funny business.”

  Service nodded.

  The man drained his glass in one long swallow and wiped his lips with his napkin. “A man’s gotta honor his hunches. If the money mavens understood just how much stiffs like you and me operated on intuition and hunches, they’d ignore us and hire witches and warlocks.”

  “I wasn’t really at the stage where I was looking for help,” Service said. “I have these things, but no evidence.”

  “Are you a musician?” the man asked.

  “I like music, but I can’t read it.”

  “When I was young I loved jazz. I was a tapyor. That’s Russian for tickler.” The man arched his good hand and tapped on the table as if it were a piano. “Hey, I had no talent to play even when I had all my fingers, but jazz took my soul, ya know? You dig jazz?”

  “Some of it,” Service said. What the fuck was he talking about and why all this Russian shit? “I thought you were from Chicago.”

  The man sighed. “I’m from Chicago, sure. Other places, too. They got music in Chicago, right? To understand jazz is to understand investigation—the ability to see and feel what’s underneath the obvious. People who don’t appreciate jazz tend to hear the melody, but they never feel the underlying chords and discordant notes that drive the music, see? When you study jazz you begin to appreciate levels.”

  Service understood, but had no interest in discussing the philosophies of investigation.

  “You sound like an investigator,” Service said.

  “Hey, you’re in a business, what separates the big boys from the jerk-offs? Competitive business intelligence, marketing research and such. We do the same shit, right? Do you know the word maskirovka?” the man asked.

  “I think it’s Russian for camouflage,” Service said. He had learned this in the marines.

  The man smiled benignly and shook his head slowly. “That’s a definition that equates to listening to the melody. Camouflage comes from the French camoufler, meaning to blind or to veil. Maskirovka is more encompassing. It means deception and entails concealing activities by means of deception, including camouflage,
but also including misdirection and misinformation. Maskirovka was at the heart of Soviet defense during the Cold War—hiding from America not so much what they had, but that which they didn’t have. Follow?”

  One minute the man sounded like a professor and the next like a chump. “Meaning that you have to listen to what you’re not hearing with as much interest as what you are hearing,” Service said.

  Shatun Sager snapped the fingers of his right hand. “Bull’s-eye! You’re a smart guy—just like Mister S says. The people you’re looking for aren’t easy to see. The barest of clues is often all you got to go on—that and the feeling that claws at your guts and makes your balls burn. This is an ancient trade, well organized. You can’t know until you investigate further, but it’s not unusual for the organization to create turmoil as it moves into a new territory—to deflect the attention of competitors and the authorities from its activities. As for its own operations, these are usually quiet and efficient—damn near invisible. These people operate around the world and they’ve learned by trial and error what works and what doesn’t work.”

  “Are you telling me there’s a Russian poaching operation here?”

  “Russian, Chinese, Korean, fucking Martian—it don’t matter who, get it? They all use the same methods cause they work! Why reinvent the fucking wheel? All I am sayin’ is based on your wimpy evidence, you could have an operation in the early phases here, and it’s now you have the optimal opportunity to intercede. Wait too long and you lose.”

  The man refilled his glass and swigged his vodka and pointed a crooked finger at Service. “You, my friend, gotta look at what you’re not seeing and hearing.”

  “Feel the chords, not listen to the notes.”

  The man held up his glass. “You understand.”

  “You have a name for me?”

  “There’s this asshole down in Grand Rapids. His name is Irvin Wan. He took the name of the great jigaboo roundball player and he’s known now as Magic Wan. He owns several clubs, is involved in drugs, numbers, skin, all that shit. Makes his dough off human weakness.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “Wan owns a lodge in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and he’s an avid hunter.”

  Service’s logic told him this was unlikely to take him anywhere, but he had no evidence and no other options. “Where’s his camp?”

  “Don’t know, but I can ask around if you’re interested.” The man suddenly held up his hands—“on the house for Mr. S, just so we’re clear on that, right?”

  “Magic Wan.”

  “That’s him. Sleazy little prick.”

  “What’re the names of his clubs?”

  “The main one is called the Nude Inn. It’s in a burg called Kalamazoo; can you fuckin’ believe that’s a real place and not just a fuckin’ song title from the brown shoe army days?”

  “He lives in Grand Rapids, but has a club in Kalamazoo?”

  “Right. Skin trade guys sometimes don’t like to stir shit where they live.”

  “You obviously want Wan.”

  “He works for Mao Chan Dung.”

  “You know this or this is a hunch?”

  “I make it a point to know shit I need to know.”

  “What do you get out of this?”

  “Dung likes to open new turf. Asia and Russia suck. Dung set me up and hey, all’s fair, right? But now maybe I get him back where it gets him most—in his bank account. Like Ralph said, it’s our duty as citizens.”

  “But you live in Canada.”

  “If you say so. Forget superfluous and irrelevant shit, man. You don’t need to know where I live. It don’t matter, see? They don’t got no category yet for world citizen. One more thing. You need to talk again, don’t look for me here. You call Ralph, capisce?”

  “Va bene,” Service said.

  The man spit his vodka out laughing.

  6

  On the drive from the Soo to McMillan, Service kept thinking about Ralph Scaffidi, who had never been a mobster but seemed to know a helluva lot of people who knew a helluva lot about shit mobsters knew about. He tried to call Joe and Kathy Ketchum, but couldn’t run them down. Then he called Treebone and asked him if he had somebody in Grand Rapids who could do some research for him. Tree said he would get back to him with a name. Service knew he could always call in another detective from the Wildlife Resources Protection Unit, but the lead was so thin right now, he didn’t want to get a lot of DNR people involved.

  Griff Stinson’s camp was a few miles north of the village, on the south bank of the Tahquamenon River. Unlike most Yoopers, who lived in towns and kept remote camps (usually for R&R from their wives and kids), Griff’s camp was his year-round home. The small log cabin had been built around the turn of the twentieth century with the trademark small doors of that era. Small doors kept heat inside. Griff’s wife was sprawled beside the driveway on a chaise lounge. She wore a red two-piece bathing suit.

  “Hey, Vernelia,” Service said, sliding out of the Yukon.

  “He’s out back in his shop, hey,” Vernelia said. She was a generation younger than her husband, a woman in her late forties who still turned heads in town and had a colorful history of hell-raising before inexplicably and suddenly settling down with Stinson. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a topknot, and the couple’s brown miniature dachshund, Cootie, was lying at her feet. Cootie looked at Service and began wagging her tail.

  Stinson’s shop was a metal outbuilding with a concrete slab floor and oil heat. The outfitter used it to store equipment and to tinker with new bait recipes.

  The bear guide was a veteran of Korea. He wore a faded Red Wings cap and had a pipe clamped between his teeth. The wiry Stinson was in his mid-seventies and clean-shaven. He was in the center of his work area with a large barrel that gave off a sweet scent.

  “New formula?” Service asked. “Vernelia said you were back here.”

  Stinson grinned. “She sittin’ out there in her underwear?”

  “Looked like a bathing suit to me.”

  “Underwear, same thing,” Griff said. “She likes to sit out there in that chair givin’ the pulpy drivers hard-ons.” He didn’t seem particularly bothered by what she was doing.

  “Seems like you gotta try something new every year,” the guide said, using the cut-off handle of a canoe paddle to stir the slurry in a stainless steel drum. “Take a whiff.” Service stepped close to the barrel, sniffed tentatively, and backed away.

  Griff said, “Mashed Brazilian waffle cones, red gummy bears, bulk black maple syrup, day-old stop-and-rob freeze-burgers, and mini-PayDays.”

  “They’ll smell that for sure,” Service said.

  “Mr. Bear always sees the world through his nose,” Stinson shot back. “It’s gettin’ ’im to stop and eat interests me.”

  A horn roared from a passing truck. “That’s three,” Stinson said.

  “Three?”

  “Vernelia gets them truckers all worked up and then they get her all worked up. Six honks and she’ll be back here beggin’ me to give her some sweets.”

  “Maybe one of those drivers will slam on his brakes and step over to talk to her.”

  “Her choice, what she does,” Stinson said. “Here ’cause she wants to be. Someday, she don’t want, she’ll be gone.”

  “You’re okay with that?”

  “Fully growed woman got the right to choose. What can I do for you?”

  Service was not so sure he could be so nonchalant about Maridly having a dalliance, though he had to agree with Griff that people had the right to decide what they did and who they did it with.

  “You borrow a trap from Joe and Kathy and have a bear get loose?”

  Stinson sat down, took a foil pouch of tobacco out of his shirt pocket, and loaded the bowl of his pipe. “You hear that from?”

  “Bear
claw.”

  “How’s Betty doing?” Stinson asked. Griff and Bearclaw had been an item many years back.

  “Still doin’ her job,” Service said. He had no idea how serious it had been or why it had ended.

  “Will till the day she packs it in,” Griff said. “That gal’s got her a big dose of dedication and an ironclad notion of right and wrong. She liked sex, you know that? Loved it, but not with the lights on. Lights on was wrong, but anything went with the lights out. How does a person get to thinking like that?” Griff looked up and seemed to ponder his own question.

  “No idea,” Service said.

  “Vernelia, she don’t ever want the lights out.”

  Strange day, Service thought. “You had a bear get loose on you?” Service asked, trying to steer Griff back to the point of their meeting.

  “Don’t believe it got loose. I’m thinkin’ maybe somebody give it some help.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Lock pin was scraped and bent.”

  “Bear’s work?”

  “What bear’s strong enough to bend three-quarter-inch steel? What happened was I had this big old boar over to Gimlet Creek and he tore up couple of my satellite camps. First time I put it down to fate and lousy hinges on my window shutters. Second time I figured he’d keep on tearing stuff up less I moved him, so I put out a barrel.”

  “And you got him.”

  “Sat right there in a tree stand and heard him go in and the gate come down. I climbed down, checked the cage, and come home to have dinner and sweets with Vernelia. Next morning the animal was gone, the trap busted.”

  “You’re figuring tampering?”

  “Wasn’t an animal did that to steel. Somebody took that animal.”

  “Took it?”

  “I found the trail. Had Cootie with me and she followed the trail to a tote, where it disappeared. Way I read it, somebody dragged the animal out to a truck and drove away.”

  “When?” Service asked. It would take a tranq gun and drugs to do this, and neither was readily available. He decided to add this fact to his list.