Chasing a Blond Moon (17 page)

“Priority?”

He didn't really know, but Trapper Jet's disappearance was beginning to bug him. “Not overnight, but soon should do it.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that'll do it.” He thanked the captain, hung up, and tried to call Nantz, but got her voice mail. “Hey, it's me. I'm headed to Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. I'll have my TX along. I miss you, Mar. By the way, Walter did good. I'll tell you all about it later.” TX was cop jargon for telephone.

He parked at Simon del Olmo's house near Crystal Falls. Simon's truck was gone. His personal truck, an old Ford, was in the garage. It was nearly 3 p.m. and he called Pyykkonen and asked if she needed directions.

“You gave them to me once,” she replied. “Not all women are directionally challenged. I should be there in ten minutes.”

Jefferson, Wisconsin, was an attractive little farm town and county seat about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. It was close to three hundred miles south of Crystal Falls. Pyykkonen didn't have much to say as she concentrated on her driving. They grabbed burgers at a fast food joint south of Green Bay and kept going.

En route he called Roger Guild, a Wisconsin game warden who had responsibility for the county that butted up against Iron County. Wisconsin wardens were limited to fish and game work and did not have full police powers. He had known Guild for several years.

“Rog, Grady Service. I'm headed down to Jefferson. Who's the warden down that way?”

“Wayno Ficorelli, why?”

“I need to plumb his mind.”

“You won't need a long string,” Guild said. He gave him the warden's cell phone number.

“Somebody else I should talk to?”

“No, Wayno's okay, just a little unorthodox.”

“Thanks, Rog.”

“It's cool.” Service stared at the phone. Why was everyone talking like a sixteen-year old?

“What?” Pyykkonen asked, seeing the look on his face.

“Never mind,” he said.

He immediately called his son. “Hey, I thought you ought to know—if you get down to the house, there's a high school kid named Crosbee taking care of the animals. He'll be coming in every night.” It was strange to think that his son was in college and younger than Crosbee.

“Thanks, but I've got homework and hockey.”

“Just thought you ought to know so you wouldn't think we had a break-in.” The words sounded feeble in his mind. “Okay,” he concluded. “I gotta go.”

“You seem distracted,” Pyykkonen said.

“Aren't we all?” he countered.

She looked down the highway and nodded.

He reached Warden Ficorelli on his first try.

“Your dime, start talking,” Ficorelli answered.

“This is Grady Service. I'm a DNR detective up in the U.P. Roger Guild gave me your number.”

“You know Roger?”

“For a few years.”

“Okay, he's one of the good guys.”

“The good guys?”

“He doesn't have his tongue surgically fitted to the bureaucratic butt-cracks in Madison. You a Packer-backer?”

“No.”

“Good, I hate those fuckers. What kind of team can you build wearing yellow for chrissakes?”

“Lombardi did okay.”

“He was a fucking Nazi. Since then, nothin' but pansies and players in yellow.”

Ficorelli wasn't one to let his opinions lay dormant.

“I'm headed down to Jefferson. You know a guy named Masonetsky?”

“Rafe or his old man?”

“Either. Both,” Service said.

“Coupla loudmouths,” Ficorelli said. “I been bustin' Rafe since he was twelve. Everybody thought he was gonna go into the NFL, but he went off to some dink college up your way and hurt his leg and that's the end of that tune.”

Ficorelli didn't know what had happened. “I don't think that's how it went down.”

“No?”

“He failed a drug test. Steroids.”

“Dumb fuck,” Ficorelli said, sounding delighted. “Big dumb fuck.”

“Do you know a guy named Randall Gage?”

“I thought you wanted to know about the Masonetskys.”

“Gage too.”

“Gage is a prick. He runs some archery shit up toward Oconomowoc. Bastard trucks in rabbits and cats and his members have night shoots.”

“That's legal?”

“Fuck no, but the members are a tight-lipped buncha assholes and so far I haven't been able to make a case.”

“You got a tip?”

“Madison got an anonymous letter.”

“I have business with Gage and I also want to talk to Rafe Masonetsky.”

“What business?”

“Gage's membership list.”

“What about the big dumb fuck?”

Ficorelli didn't sound particularly stable, but he decided to confide some of the reasons.

“There's a warrant for his arrest. Drugs.”

“Steroids?”

“No, something else.”

“You want my help?”

“That's why I called. We'll be in town in about ten or so. Got the name of a good motel?”

“Hell with that motel shit,” Ficorelli said. “You can bunk with Mom and me.”

Service fought a snicker. “You live with your mother?” The man sounded like he was in his early thirties.

“You got a problem with that?” Ficorelli asked.

“No, no. But there's two of us.”

“We got room.” Ficorelli gave him directions and promised to meet them at ten.

“We have a place to bunk tonight,” Service told Pyykkonen. “That will give us all day tomorrow to do business. We can talk to the cops tonight, get everything coordinated, make sure the warrants are in, check on subpoena status.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said.

Ficorelli and his mother lived in a farmhouse a mile north of town. It was surrounded by fields filled with dried field corn that rattled in the breeze.

The warden was no taller than five-six and small-boned, but jutted out his jaw like a feisty dog ready to do battle over anything. His mother was frail and gentle with blue hair, and blue veins showing through her pale cheeks.

Ficorelli met them with glasses of red wine. “Made this myself,” he said, beaming with pride. He was still in uniform. His mother had loaded a table with snack food and made pasta while they munched.

“How can you eat like that and stay so skinny?” Pyykkonen asked their host as he hoisted spoonfuls of food and swallowed without chewing. He ate like some sort of constrictor, Service thought.

“I fuck a lot,” Ficorelli said, breaking into a laugh.

Pyykkonen glared at Service, who raised his eyebrows in answer.

Service stepped onto the porch to try Nantz again and heard Ficorelli yip.

When he stepped back into the house, the warden's cheek was red and he was eating silently, his attention focused on biscotti.

Pyykkonen stared at Service. Her look was not one of amusement.

11

Mama Ficorelli was up early the next morning and when Service came down to the kitchen she was already piling food on the table. The aroma of baking bread filled the house like an airborne intoxicant.

“Did you sleep all right?” Mama asked.

“Yes, fine.” But he hadn't. He had left another voice mail with Nantz and still hadn't heard from her.

Sometime during the night he also thought he heard voices in the next room—Wayno and Pyykkonen—but he decided that was ridiculous and went back to sleep.

Limey came down to breakfast before Ficorelli and sat on the side of the table, next to an open chair. Her hair was frazzled, and she looked like she hadn't slept much. An insipid smile was pasted on her face.

“Good morning,” she said with more enthusiasm than Service was accustomed to.

Mama Ficorelli was serving blueberry pancakes when her son came bouncing into the room and plopped in a chair beside Pyykkonen. The antagonism of last night seemed to have dissipated.

Service ate in silence, thinking about the day ahead, wondering if Rafe Masonetsky and Randall Gage were going to help give the two investigations new directions and impetus. When he tuned in, Pyykkonen and Wayno were talking about porcupines and ladybugs. Service tuned them out and tried to get Limey's attention, but she was locked on to Wayno and it took a while.

“What?” she asked.

“We set on a subpoena for the archery club?”

“No,” she said. “The prosecutor says we don't have enough to justify one.”

“Not even if Pung was a member?”

“He's a prick,” Ficorelli said, joining in. “Don't worry, Service. I've got a plan. We don't need a fucking subpoena. We'll get the list.”

Pyykkonen smiled supportively.

Service exhaled and returned his attention to a cup of hot coffee.

After breakfast they thanked Ficorelli's mother and Service thought he saw Wayno's hand on Pyykkonen's rump, touching her like this wasn't the first time.

Outside Wayno gave them directions to the
jung
and told them he had some things to do before they joined up at 10 a.m.

Service and Pyykkonen cruised into town and checked out a place called Bipedal Bowling, where Rafe Masonetsky worked. The sign said,
only two-lane bowling east of wyoming. burgers: five for a buck.
The parking lot for the bowling alley was behind the building with the red brick facade. It was small, unpaved, and there were few lights.

“What the hell does that mean?” Service asked, pointing at the sign.

“We're in Wisconsin,” Pyykkonen said. “They think differently down here.”

“Why the hell won't the prosecutor cooperate?”

“He's cooperating—on the warrant for Masonetsky. We'll have an extradition order by tonight. It's all set.”

“Good. But what about Randall Gage?”

“Don't worry, Wayno has a plan.”

Wayno? “Last night you looked ready to kill the guy.”

“I was. He grabbed my ass while you were outside.”

“And you slapped him. I saw the mark.”

“Not that hard.”

“And now the ass-grabber is Wayno?”

“Leave it alone,” she said. “When I was a rookie in Lansing, my first supervisor was a woman, the first female sergeant in the Lansing force. I had another officer grab me one night on patrol, so I asked her what ­someone should do when that happened.”

Service watched her while she drove.

She glanced at him. “She said, ‘First, decide if you like it.'”

“So you didn't like it?”

“I liked it just fine,” she said, “but I didn't want him thinking he was in control.”

“What was all that talk about porcupines and ladybugs?”

Pyykkonen looked over at him and smiled. “Porcupines have sex every day of their lives, and the orgasm of a female ladybug lasts up to nine hours.”

Service mulled it over for several minutes as they moved through town. The slap and antagonism had been replaced by bedroom hair and red eyes, and the sex habits of porcupines and ladybugs. “Jesus!” he blurted out. “You slept with him?”

“Not that it's any of your business, but yes. It was my decision and now you're wondering, am I Macofome's regular squeeze, or what? Again, that's equally none of your business. I sleep with whoever I please, when I please. As I understand it, you've gotten around yourself.”

Service stared at her. Had she been checking up on him, and why? The thought made him wince.

“If men can do it, women can do it,” she said. “Welcome to the twenty-first century. Sex is just sex.”

They met Ficorelli about a mile south of the
jung,
which had the formal name of Oconomowoc Korean Archery Center (OKAC).

The little warden was jacked up on adrenaline. “You make your request. If he cooperates, fine. If not, step back and let me take over.”

“What's you plan?”

“I'll take care of it,” Ficorelli said.

The OKAC was an old barn that had been re-sided and re-done. The range itself was built at the back of a housing development, with a treeline to the north and homes on both sides. Service saw a large sign with Chinese characters. The one he had seen in Pung's photo? He felt encouraged.

Randall Gage came out to meet them. He was a short, dumpy man wearing a padded black coat and black felt boots that stretched up to his knees. He wore a Fu Manchu mustache, carefully trimmed, and had dark eyes, which made him look menacing.

“Mr. Gage, I'm Grady Service. You talked to my colleague, Officer Candice McCants.”

“I figured I'd see somebody,” he said. “I've talked to my lawyer. You can't have our list. It's an unwarranted intrusion of privacy.”

Ficorelli didn't wait for Service to react. “Okay, Randy, let's talk a different matter. State law does not allow the discharge of an arrow within one hundred and fifty yards of an occupied dwelling. This is called the safety zone rule.”

“I
know
the law,” Gage replied. “It applies only to hunting and we are not a hunt club. We are an archery shooting range.”

“Did you or did you not complain to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department about someone who shot a deer on this so-called range?”

“I did, but I did not file a complaint. We took care of that through club rules.”

“Where did this happen?”

Gage pointed to a side of the long range.

“There?” Ficorelli asked, seeking confirmation.

“Yes, I just said there.”

“What happened to the member?” Service asked.

“As a consequence, you dumped him?” Ficorelli said.

“Our members are very serious about rules.” Gage looked confident. “He was dismissed.”

“A club rule was broken,” Ficorelli said.

“Yes,” Gage said. “What point are you so ineptly trying to make?”

“This,” the little warden said. “A rule was broken on your property. In breaking your rule, two state laws were also violated. A deer was killed out of season and an arrow was discharged within the safety zone.”

“I never filed a complaint,” Gage said, his eyes beginning to dart.

“I'm filing the complaint. You've just confirmed the violations.”

“It was not inside the safety zone,” Gage insisted.

Ficorelli pointed to a tree and a fence behind it to the east. “See the green roof beyond the fence? It's fifteen yards from the house to the tree, and from that tree to your first target is one hundred and twenty yards, meaning you're fifteen yards short of the required safety requirement. I am going to ask the prosecutor to close you down for safety violations.”

“We're a range,” Gage said.

“You admitted to the killing and to the distance. I have no choice but to act.”

“You little bastard.”

“As a matter of fact,” Ficorelli said. “I am a bastard. My mom never married my dad. I don't consider that a negative.”

“I am going to call my attorney,” Gage said.

“Good. I'll call the prosecutor and we can get the both of them out here, and while we're at it, we'll need your membership list in order to talk to those involved. Once they're under oath we'll be asking them about night shooting of rabbits and cats.”

“You think you're pretty smart,” Gage said, holding his cell phone.

“C'mon,” Ficorelli purred. “You do, too. Your ass is against the wall. My colleagues from Michigan want to confirm the names of some of your members. Is that too much to ask in return for looking past your transgressions?”

“What are the names?” Gage asked.

“They want to read them on the list for themselves,” Ficorelli said.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“No,” the warden said. “I'm trying to save you from lying. If you don't show them the list, I'm gonna go forward on charges and then we'll get the list and then we'll charge your ass with perjury and conspiracy.”

Gage pivoted and went quickly into the building.

Ficorelli stood calmly.

Gage returned and held out a folder. Ficorelli nodded at Service.

Service took the folder, went to an outdoor table and sat down with Pyykkonen standing beside him. Both Pungs were members. There was a line drawn through Terry's name. The Masonetskys were both members; Rafe Masonetsky's name also had a line drawn through it. The elder Masonetsky was a member of the club's board of governors. His kid had been suspended in college and kicked out of the club. He was undoubtedly an unhappy parent.

“Rafe Masonetsky shot the deer,” Service said.

“I don't have to disclose that,” Gage said, trying to maintain some dignity.

“Terry Pung's name is crossed out.”

“At his father's request,” Gage said.

“Is there a record of that?” Service asked.

“No, it was a personal conversation.”

“When?”

“Early August.”

“Why?”

“That's between father and son,” Gage said.

Which was not long before the elder Pung turned up dead. Cause and effect? “Thank you, Mr. Gage.”

“Shove it,” Gage said, snatching the folder back and stalking away sullenly from the three officers.

Service looked at Ficorelli and smiled. “You nailed that one.”

“Told you I had a plan,” he said.

The Wisconsin State Police insisted on being in on the arrest so as to facilitate the transfer under the extradition order. After processing, the prisoner would be officially turned over to Pyykkonen, who would take him back to Houghton. They spent most of the day talking to various officials and getting a tactical plan in place. In the end it was decided that there would be a city cop named McYest, a county deputy named Mawbry, a trooper named Kalminson, along with Service, Pyykkonen, and Ficorelli, whose role was primarily that of observer.

McYest drove by the bowling alley around 9 p.m. and reported that Rafe Masonetsky's truck was in the parking lot. The alleys closed at eleven and employees were usually gone by 11:30. The decision was made to assemble in the parking lot at 10:45. After some debate, the team also decided that Kalminson and Pyykkonen should enter the premises and make the arrest inside as close to 11 p.m. as possible. McYest would position himself out front on the street. Mawbry, Service, and Ficorelli would be in the rear parking lot as backups.

Service had been involved in hundreds of arrests during his career and knew from experience that while most situations went as planned, some went down the toilet, and almost always without warning. He had no feelings one way or the other about this one.

It was dark, the parking lot poorly lit. Pyykkonen and Kalminson were inside less than thirty seconds when a tall, powerfully built man came striding out. He wore dark baggy pants that hung around his hips and looked ready to fall. He ambled deliberately, showing no haste. Ficorelli whispered, “Rafe.”

What had gone wrong and where were Pyykkonen and the Wisconsin trooper? Service asked himself as he stepped forward from the shadow of the truck to block the man's path.

“Rafe Masonetsky?” Service said.

“Dude, who wants to know?”

Service jiggled the badge hanging from a chain around his neck. “Detective Grady Service, Michigan DNR, Mr. Masonetsky.” Ficorelli moved along the far side of the truck to get behind the man. Deputy Mawbry headed for the door to let the others know Rafe had somehow gotten outside.

“How's it goin'?'” Masonetsky said. He seemed calm.

“You're off early tonight,” Service said.

“I got a date, dude.” Masonetsky pivoted to look at Ficorelli. “What is your
problem?
” The football player looked back at Service. He was no more than three feet away and made Service feel small.

Service had been waiting for Pyykkonen and Kalminson but sensed he had to act before the man bolted. “Rafe Masonetsky, you are under arrest.” He carefully listed the charges and quickly moved into Miranda, reading the prisoner's constitutional rights from the plastic card he carried at all times.