No Man's Dog (27 page)

“Let’s leave it to the Colonel,” Mulheisen said. “If this Malachi angle works out, he’ll have the case all wrapped up. I feel bad about dragging you all the way up here. My guess is you’ll be back in Homicide next week.”

Wunney nodded. “Ah well, it got me out of the city for a day. Give me a call, if you’re not doing anything.”

Mulheisen said he would and watched while the man ambled off to his car. There was no point in driving back to the cabin. Joe had taken the Colonel’s car back to Traverse City. Mulheisen wasn’t sure what to do about Joe now that events had taken such an abrupt turn. They had anticipated that Mulheisen might have to go back to Detroit with the Colonel, to look into Malachi’s files, after they met with Wunney. Mulheisen had put his gear in the back of the truck, just in case. Joe had told him he’d be in touch, not to worry.

Mulheisen wasn’t looking forward to explaining to Joe how he’d let the situation get away from him. For that matter, he wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. Hell, he thought, let the Colonel explain it.

He drove back to Queensleap to return the truck to McVey.

“You ain’t staying?” McVey said. “A little too lonely out there?”

“On the contrary,” Mulheisen said, “it was great. I’d like to come back some time. I kind of liked that fishing out there.” He told about losing the trout.

“There’s some big ones in there,” McVey said, “but they’re hard as hell to get out. You’re welcome anytime.”

“I’d like that,” Mulheisen said. “By the way, you said something about Luck wanting that cabin property back. I take it he’s tried in the courts?”

McVey smiled sourly. “More than once,” he said. “He’s been gonna take me to court from the day he heard Tom left it to me. He claims that his old man only left it to Tom on a life lease, which it should of reverted to him, when Tom died. To hear him tell it, ol’ Tom didn’t have no right to leave it to nobody, much less me. But so far, the courts haven’t paid him no mind. There’s something called a common deed, or something. The old man had to of done it. Too late now. But don’t it burn ol’ Imp’s ass!”

“Did he ever offer to buy it?” Mulheisen asked.

“Oh, yeah, but he didn’t offer anything like the going price, and anyway I wasn’t gonna sell. That’s when he began talking about going to court.”

This had all the earmarks of a country feud, to Mulheisen’s ears. It fit with what he had told the Colonel and what he had heard from Luck. Still, he told himself, it was none of his business anymore. To Charlie, he said, “Well, they tell me possession is nine-tenths of the law. Hold on tight.”

McVey seemed surprised. “Ain’t you gonna arrest him?”

“What for?”

McVey cracked a knowing grin. “Well he must of done something, or you wouldn’t of come up here pokin’ around.”

Mulheisen shook his head. “I don’t have any authority. I’m just a retired cop.”

“Oh sure,” McVey said. He winked. “Wal, I won’t blow your cover, Mul. You can count on me. But just between us . . . what is it? FBI? CIA? Or one a them new outfits that nobody knows about? Never mind.” He waved an understanding hand. “Better if I don’t
know. Well, you come back, maybe in the spring, and we’ll go catch us a mess a trout.”

Mulheisen put his stuff in the Checker, thanked Charlie again, and waved good-bye. He stopped in Manton for a leisurely lunch at a friendly country-style restaurant. The cherry pie was exceptionally good. He took the opportunity to call home.

His mother was out bird-watching, the nurse said. “I can see her, she’s out in the field. Shall I call her?”

“No,” Mulheisen said. “Just tell her I’ll be back, probably about dinnertime, but don’t wait for me.”

18

Northern Spy

J
oe felt that Mulheisen had made a mistake, but he didn’t feel that he could say anything. Mulheisen should never have let Tucker breathe once he had him running.
Don’t give the man air,
he’d said to himself when Mulheisen had Tucker babbling. But Mulheisen had eased up once he got the concession on Malachi. Still, Joe had to admit, it was a delicate thing. You get the guy talking and admitting stuff, eagerly filling you in, justifying himself . . . it’s not so easy to tell when enough is enough, or too much, or maybe the tension can go up another notch.

Mulheisen had gotten what he wanted: the key to Malachi’s data, which was probably the key to the whole business. That had been finessed, Joe had to admit. He hadn’t quite seen it coming himself. He wondered if he would have taken Malachi as the point of entry.

In the morning, with Tucker hungover and morose, Mulheisen had played it coolly. He revealed that he had earlier arranged to meet a cop who was temporarily assigned to assist Tucker’s task force. This Wunney apparently had some inside information for Mulheisen. Joe and Mulheisen hadn’t discussed it; Joe didn’t know what it was all about. The opportunity for Mulheisen to explain
hadn’t arisen, and anyway he’d claimed that he didn’t know what Wunney had.

Joe admired that. Going behind the Colonel’s back to one of his trusted assistants was a good ploy. Joe wondered, though, if Mulheisen couldn’t have used it to effect while questioning Tucker. By the same token, he wondered if they shouldn’t have used the al-Huq/Hook angle to some advantage. But in the few minutes that he and Mulheisen had found to discuss the night’s work, Mulheisen had said that they didn’t have enough information.

“Let’s just sit on it,” Mulheisen said. “It could still be useful. The thing is, we really don’t know if it’s the same guy. But I asked Wunney to check it out. Maybe he’ll have something.”

“Oh, I’ll bet it’s al-Huq,” Joe said. “Incidentally, did you know that one reason Tucker was looking to recruit you was that he felt it would give him an inside track on any revelations about Wards Cove that your mother might recollect?”

Mulheisen smiled at that notion. “I don’t think there’s much to hope for from that quarter,” he said.

Tucker had seemed quite indifferent about meeting with Wunney. To Joe’s mind, it meant just delaying whatever revelations there might be about Malachi. Maybe good, maybe not. The plan was that Tucker and Mulheisen would go on to Detroit, after meeting Wunney, to retrieve Malachi’s files and see if they could turn up something that would expose Luck, depending of course on what transpired in the meeting with Wunney.

Joe could see the logic of all this. He would hang out here, shuttle the Colonel’s car to Traverse City, retrieve his own vehicle. Yet he couldn’t help feeling that Tucker had held out on them. A little pressure last night might have revealed something more, something useful. But he thought, all in all, Mulheisen had played it well.

Joe felt . . . how did he feel? Like a man halfway to town and unable to shake the feeling that he’d forgotten something. He missed
Helen. If he’d brought her along, he thought, they might have been able to work something better. He felt he needed to be in two places at once. Roman would also have been useful, but Joe had felt that he couldn’t linger in Detroit once he’d learned that Mulheisen was up north, talking to Luck. Where was Roman now? Probably hanging out at the Sedlacek place, Joe thought. One thing Joe wasn’t going to do was call there. Old lady Sedlacek didn’t like him, Joe was sure: she didn’t feel he was good enough for her brilliant daughter, had led her astray, taken her off to remote Montana—Siberia. It would be his luck to have to talk to her if he called the house. She might have heard from Helen, who probably by now was pissed at Joe’s leaving her. No, he’d have to forget about Roman.

The Echeverria factor still nagged. Call it the Itcheverria, he thought; it demanded a Scratcheverria. He wished Helen were here, she’d appreciate that gag. Thinking about it, Joe called his service and found that he had a message from Caspar. His return number was in Chicago.

“Kinda early ain’t it, Joe?” Caspar said when he answered. He was obviously awakened from sleep.

“You’re getting used to civilian life, Caspar,” Joe said. “In the joint you’d have been up for a couple of hours. So what’s up?”

“I met a guy,” Caspar said. “He says Echeverria might be in the States. He’s got some deal with the government, some kind of protection. But nobody knows where he is for sure.”

They discussed the reliability of Caspar’s contact—so-so, Caspar thought. It just added to Joe’s discomfort. Caspar would try to find out more.

Joe called Brooker Moos to see if he had any new information. Moos didn’t have anything, but he was antsy. His paranoia was on the boil. He’d been getting more indications that someone was trying to get to him, monitoring his lines, he thought. But when asked to describe how he knew, it just added up to funny clicks, slow
transmissions, missed connections. Joe wasn’t sure how to interpret this, just paranoia, maybe. Brooker, however, had noticed that references to Joe had declined. He wasn’t getting any responses on his filtering system. Of course, he admitted, he’d pretty much cleaned up the info on the Web, so it was bound to decline, theoretically. “I mean, that was the idea,” he said.

Joe decided it was time to head for Traverse City. Exchanging vehicles could be tricky, he thought. He expected that Tucker’s crew would be watching his vehicle. They’d probably tagged it, stashing a tracking device. He’d have to go over it pretty carefully. One thing he didn’t want was to have to deal with any of those agents, Dinah Schwind among them. They might try to pick him up, although he expected that Tucker would have contacted them, maybe by now, and cleared him from interference. But then it had already occurred to him that Tucker’s vehicle might be similarly bugged; maybe the Lucani knew all along where the vehicle was. Joe kind of wished he’d not taken the Colonel’s car last night, but it had been a judgment call: if they’d tracked him to the Park Place Hotel, they’d have had plenty of time to bug his pickup and he’d wanted to get clear of Traverse City without interference.

He decided to sweep the Colonel’s car before leaving. He didn’t find anything. It was now midmorning. Presumably, by now Mulheisen and Tucker would have met with Wunney, in Cadillac. Joe decided to take a chance on the exchange. He drove to Traverse City. Just to give himself time, he left the car in a parking lot by the bay and hiked over to the hotel. There was no one around. Evidently, the Colonel had called off his people. Joe swept his own vehicle without finding anything, then cleared out his room and checked out of the hotel. No one approached him.

What now? Joe felt at loose ends. Go back to the cabin? He could do that. But for what? Sit around and wait for Mulheisen to call? He didn’t think so. Then he got an idea: why not visit Luck?
It was still early, not quite noon. Mulheisen would have met with Wunney by now and was probably on his way back to Detroit.

He found Luck conferring with a group of his guards. They were gathered in a clearing surrounded by tall pines, from which a great camouflage netting was suspended—doubtless, from above, it looked like forest. There were a half-dozen men, all in the black military outfits, armed with assault rifles. Luck was haranguing them, with Hook standing by looking like a trusted lieutenant, but Joe wasn’t close enough to hear. Evidently, it was heat about security. Joe lingered in the trees, watching to see who went where, then he slipped away to the house. As he’d expected, Luck came back to the house alone. He was naturally surprised to find Joe sitting in a chair in the living room with a Llama 9mm automatic in his lap.

“How did you get in here?” Luck asked.

“Trade secret,” Joe said. He introduced himself without getting up, although he could see that Luck already knew who he was.

Luck recovered his usual affability quickly. “Can I get you some coffee?” he asked. “A drink?”

“No thanks,” Joe said. “I just stopped by to get acquainted. You’ve been splashing my name all across the Internet. What’s that about?”

Luck shrugged. “Just trying to keep my fans posted on your activities.”

“Yeah, well it’s not polite,” Joe said. “I don’t appreciate the publicity.”

Luck didn’t seem bothered by that. “I’m happy to remove any of that stuff,” he said. “I take it you’ve been conferring with Colonel Tucker. Are you now ‘on board’?”

Joe nodded. “To a degree. First, I thought I’d check out the operation, see if it was something I wanted to be associated with.”

Luck relaxed, sat down across from him. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I haven’t seen much.”

“I could give you a little tour. When did you see the Colonel?”

“Last night,” Joe said. “He says that you’re part of the team.”

“Come to think of it,” Luck said, “I probably ought to get confirmation from Tucker before we take the tour. Just a matter of security.”

“According to the Colonel, you guys go back a long way,” Joe said. “Vietnam. He didn’t say much about later activities. But it looks like we’re fellow Lucani. We ought to have some kind of secret handshake, or a password.”

“Shibboleth, you mean,” Luck said, with a smile.

“Shibboleth,” Joe said. “Maybe we could get special rings, or whistle the opening bars of a Dixie Chicks tune.”

“Except I don’t know any Dixie Chicks tunes,” Luck said.

Joe confessed he didn’t either.

“By the way,” Luck said, as if the thought had just struck him, “you didn’t have something to do with Mulheisen’s abrupt departure a couple of nights ago?”

“Mulheisen! He was here? Well, I guess he would be. He’s the kind of guy who keeps poking around. Hard to keep anything from Mulheisen, although he never seems all that intrusive, does he? Just always around. I’m not usually happy to see Mulheisen. So what is this operation of yours? The Colonel says it’s just a bunch of patriotic yokels. What’s the story on that?”

Luck seemed disposed to explain, in a general way. He talked about the patriotic movement. According to him it was just ordinary citizens with reasonable concerns about the federal government, its interference in personal lives and activities. It was all about law and private rights.

Joe was interested. He talked about his place out west, the problems with privacy. Luck responded. They traded comments about private land, taxation, the interference of agencies that had
no business interfering. Luck was impressed with Joe’s description of the extent of his property in Montana, the fortunate disposition of national forests and Bureau of Land Management holdings as borders. The idea of a couple of thousand acres, nicely sequestered, seemed enviable.

“It’s different here,” Luck said, “the available acreage is limited. It’s all owned by someone, been in the family for ages, that sort of thing. You can’t buy them out, even if it’s worthless marshland. That farm next to me, for instance, it hasn’t been used or even visited by the owners for decades. But will they sell? Never. It’s owned by people who live in Illinois. They inherited. I don’t think any of them have even seen the property in a generation.”

“You remind me of my neighbor,” Joe said. “He says he doesn’t want to own everything, just the land next to his.”

Luck chuckled. “Well, it makes things easier, doesn’t it?”

“How much do you have here?” Joe asked.

“By rights, it should be close to a thousand acres,” Luck said, “but there are some legal disputes. My grandfather had quite a bit more, but through some legal chicanery I’m down to just a few hundred. I’ve been working on that. I think I’ll win out, eventually, but it takes up too much of my time, it’s expensive, and, hell, it’s just plain not right!”

“I hear you,” Joe said. “I thought I had a good deal with my neighbor, but now he wants to run cattle. That’ll mean brand inspectors coming around. They can walk right onto your land, without a warrant, no warning. And if you want to divert a little stream, you have to file a plan with Fish and Game. That has to be inspected and approved, and approval doesn’t come easy. You practically have to file an environmental impact statement to bury your garbage. More agencies. The Forest Service wants to survey, take a census of your trees, your riparian rights, whether you’re complying with best forest practices. It goes on and on.”

Luck was nodding his head eagerly. “It’s probably worse here in Michigan,” he said. The problem was the long tenure of settlement, compared to a state like Montana, where there were sizable tracts of privately owned land.

“Other than privacy,” Joe said, “what do you need with all this land?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Luck said. When Service smiled at him, he smiled back. “All right . . . you’re Lucani. I accept that. The Colonel told me as much. The plan was a little different, in the beginning. I got interested in the patriot movement. It wasn’t difficult to drum up interest, but the people you get, they’re just bumper-sticker conservatives. No fire in the belly. Then I got online. There are thousands of guys out there who are truly pissed. Most of them are pretty much like the locals. Their idea of activism is to join a group like the one I started. They get together, spout off some antigovernment sentiments, plaster a flag on their SUV, maybe go to a liberal gathering and shout some angry words. But there’s always a few willing to throw a bomb.”

“Literally?” Joe said.

“Oh, sure,” Luck said. “It’s like the old anarchists in Russia, back in the days of the czar. But we don’t want that.”

“You don’t?”

“No. It’s too helter-skelter,” Luck said. “What you want to do is get them into a more organized environment. It’s the age-old process: identify the true radicals, divert them into a program with an actual philosophy. The irony is, the buffoons, the bumper-sticker flag-wavers, they make a good cover. You get investigated, the feds, or whoever, see the buffoons and they report that. You’re just a group of harmless cranks. I had a different notion entirely.”

Basically, as he explained it, Luck had gotten interested in the security business. Guards, equipment, protection for wealthy clients. He’d worked in that for a while and then he saw that the
people who were really making the money were offering not just rent-a-cops but actual troops.