Hard Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  “Musicians in and out of there, West Coastals and drug suckers and the like?”

  “I’d guess, but that’s all it would be is conjecture and bar talk,” Gillian said. “I once heard old man Gavrilaitis owned the world’s largest collection of Gibson Les Paul guitars with Seth Lover humbuckers.”

  “Can that be parsed into English?” she asked.

  “You don’t pick?”

  “Only my nose and the occasional nag,” she said.

  “I played some. Humbucker’s a sweet gizmo takes the hum and white noise shit out, you know, pulls the buzz and interference out of the background. Fenders and Gibsons are real cool.”

  Gillian had a Dubya/Alfred E. Newman look to him, with massive elephant ears, not the sort of person whose countenance sang out musician, never mind guitarist. “Bump you later, Jack.”

  Rocky Tidd said he heard from Kokko there was to be some sort of big get-together at Fender Camp over the Fourth and that the gathering was “primo for dumping his shit.”

  The night of July 3, Turco located Fender Camp and walked the perimeter as a steady flow of vehicles drove down the ungated two-track. No wire fencing, only a few no trespassing signs, and the absence of a gate suggested the owner wasn’t over-amped with security concerns. Not that getting into the camp would be a piece of cake. It wouldn’t. She couldn’t charge in on the say-so of a single informant, and she had no evidence as probable cause other than Kokko’s track record and Tidd’s tip. She had pretty much concluded about the best she could do was show up tomorrow with a smile, say howdy, and look around. It was lame, but it was all she could come up with.

  Shooting erupted suddenly, so many rounds that she lost count, but she could plainly hear bullets coming down through the trees and leaves as their upward trajectories lost momentum, and gravity pulled them home. Good grief! Every day some segment of the American public becomes more and more like the damn PLO, whipping out their AKs and cranking rounds straight up in celebration or sadness, and never mind the unlucky schnooks who happened to be standing under a plummeting spent round.

  Shooting provided reasonable cause. Turco went back to her truck and drove out to the camp road, where she got wedged between pickup trucks, PT Cruisers, four-wheelers, and motorcycles, all of them raising a humongous cloud of fine reddish gray dust. When they finally entered an open area, she could see even through the dust a field filled with haphazardly parked vehicles of every imaginable description and make.

  As she parked and got out, more rounds went off, and one thunked down on the roof of a new VW bug beside her. Turco got down on her hands and knees and felt around until she found the spent round, which she stashed in her pants pocket.

  Standing up, she blinked wildly as she found herself trapped in a surging crowd of Elvis Presleys, all in checkered leather suits and shiny boots, all streaming toward a huge circus tent, which suddenly illuminated with floodlights and a sign that proclaimed, Upper Great Lakes Region Top 100 Competition: Loyal, Prayerful Order of God’s Lifting Up Professional Female, Male, and Transgender Elvis Impersonators.

  “Oh my,” she said out loud. She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scream, but one thing was clear, that among so many oddly garbed folk, she stood out. If she walked into the big top, Kokko would surely see her and split. Better to scour the parking lot, find the asshole’s cherry red Chevy pickup, and surveil it until he showed. For the ideal pinch she needed to see him deal drugs, but this was a detail that would sort out or not. Such were the vagaries of law enforcement.

  Multiple bands were warming up in the humid night. She could hear squeals and screeching amps, drum thumps rattling like distant heartbeats, chords being strummed. She always kept several changes of clothes in her truck for emergencies and was in the process of deciding how to dress (favoring a short white sundress with spaghetti sandals to show off her legs) when someone grabbed her neck with a sleeper hold, and she felt herself tumbling into lalaland, no decisions to be made there, but with all these men there had to be a few straight ones, and maybe going braless would make good bait, yeah, that would work good—if she could get past this asshole who was in the process of assaulting her. Her final thought before sleep was: This frickin’ jerk knows his stuff.

  She awoke in the dark, propped against a tree, her butt on the ground, a pine needle stuck in her buttock. She could hear music thumping somewhere off in the distance, and she had a low-grade headache. A dark figure sat near her. She immediately tried to gain control and mumbled, “Who are you, and where am I, and why am I here, and all that shit?”

  “What are you doing in this damn Elvis mob?” a vaguely familiar voice asked.

  “Bite me,” she said, adding, “Did we have sex?”

  The figured laughed. “Charley Vincent,” he said, “you hard case you. Hell no we didn’t have sex. Are you suggesting that’s an option, Turco?”

  “C.V.?”

  Vincent was a detective in the Wildlife Resource Protection Unit, the Department of Natural Resource’s undercover investigative branch. “Sex is never an option with you, asshole. The drug team asked me to handle a case.”

  “Which case?”

  “Bobo Kokko, drugs.”

  “No shit. We’re on his case, too. The group here is having a venison roast in honor of Elvis. Guess who’s providing the fare?”

  “What an idiot,” she said and saw by the silhouette that her colleague was in neither civvies nor uniform. “Good God , C.V., is that asshole getup you’ve got on really necessary?”

  “You are obviously unfamiliar with the principles of undercover blending in, ma’am.”

  “Is that like passing?”

  “Pretty much. Listen, Lurleen, anybody not in costume here gets the heave-ho. No costume, no can stay. They’re real hard-asses about it.”

  “Who, Elvis trannies?”

  “Don’t levy value judgments, Officer Turco. Away from here these are some normal productive folk.”

  “If you say so,” Turco said, her words dripping sarcasm.

  “We have to get you made up,” the detective said.

  “We?”

  “Our people, Fish and Wildlife, FBI, Homeland Security, Immigration, BATF—hell, the whole law enforcement mob is here. The feds have information leading them to believe Arab terrorists have infiltrated the Elvisian community.”

  “Why would they think that?” she asked, and it occurred to her that mob was a good term for the gaggle of law enforcement personnel. What this was going to be, she knew, was a memorable goat rodeo.

  “Elvis swap meets. These folks sell guns to each other, lots of guns.”

  She thought for a moment. “Okay, I’m in, but you got to get me into an outfit.”

  “Other agents may not like this,” Vincent said.

  “Fuck them, C.V. I’ll find Kokko’s truck and stay with that.”

  “He’ll be dressed as Elvis,” Vincent said.

  “No duh. Which flavor?” she said.

  “Not sure, ma’am, but thank ya varra, varra much,” he said in a crude rendition of Elvis speak.

  “You know Kokko’s got a court date on last year’s drug case?” she asked.

  “We’re aware.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this shit?”

  “Need to know,” he said. “You know how feds think.”

  Actually, she didn’t. Nor did she want to. What she said was, “Uh-huh, where’s my damn costume, C.V.?”

  “I’m on it,” he said, “ma’am.”

  “I’ll wait right here,” she said.

  “Thank ya varra, varra much.”

  As soon as Vincent was gone, she followed him, which wasn’t difficult. C.V.’s white leather jumpsuit illuminated like a chemical light stick. Back in the lot, she veered off to find Kokko’s truck, and as providence
would have it, she bumped into a person in a checked leather jumpsuit who mumbled, “You wan’ score weed, blow, speed, pixie dirt?”

  What the fuck is pixie dirt? “One-stop shopping, that your spiel?”

  “You want to eat it, snort it, or fuck it, I got it for ya, ma’am.”

  “How much for your best weed?”

  “Garden Green’s primo with supermax THC, little lady.”

  “Price?” Dillweed.

  “Twenty for two lids.”

  Too weird to be real. She knew this voice. “The good shit, right?”

  “The best,” he said.

  “Good, hit me,” Turco said, and when Kokko handed her two small bags, she gave him $20 and slapped a cuff on his wrist, grabbed the other, and got that one, too, all before he could even react.

  When he did, what he said was, “What this is, motherfucker?!?”

  “Clean up your vocabulary, son. Our Elvis didn’t use that kind of language.”

  “Ya, what would you fags know about the real Elvis?” he challenged.

  “Well, he was heterosexual, unlike you and yours, and he was a person of color.”

  Kokko tried to pull away. “You bitch, you callin’ Elvis a colored boy!”

  “No, a person of color. Where’s your truck, asshole?”

  “Fuck you,” Kokko said.

  “Easy way or hard way, Bo?” Lurleen Turco asked her prisoner, who stood a foot taller than she.

  The man answered with an elbow, which she calmly stepped under as she drove a fist sharply upward into his armpit, which dropped him to his knees, where she struck the heel of her hand against the side of his head and toppled him into the dirt. She hauled him back to his knees. “Glad you chose the easy way, asshole,” she told him as he moaned. “Behave or you’ll ride the lightning, dude.”

  “You carry a Tasmanian?” Kokko mumbled.

  Moron. “You bet.”

  “I’m allergic,” he said.

  “To what?” she asked.

  “Life, I guess.”

  She stifled a laugh. “Take me to your truck.”

  “Fuck, I’m ’pose to find it in the dark?”

  “I have a flashlight, dimwit.” She started to walk with him but changed her mind, took him to a tree, undid the cuffs, and redid them with his arms around the trunk. He was too dazed or high or both to resist. “You can stand right there, and we’ll let the Elvii tribe sing in the sunrise for you,” she said.

  “How such a bloated up hillbilly get all that money and poontang?” Kokko asked her. “I ain’t never understood that shit.”

  “Ask the people here; I expect they could tell you.”

  “They ain’t normal.”

  “We are each unique in our maker’s eyes,” she said.

  “What the hell’s that ’pose to mean?”

  She noticed he was tall and sort of ruggedly handsome in the low light. Until this moment she’d never noticed. “I don’t have the slightest idea. You got a wife, Bo?”

  “Hell no, nor a girlfriend. I don’t like being chained down. Something about me scares women.”

  “You mean you turn them off.”

  “Hell, I get some every day,” he bragged. “Pound them cooters regularly.”

  He was totally gross and disgusting. “Yeah, what about today?”

  “Ever’ damn day,” he bragged.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Kokko.”

  “Okay, it’s been a while maybe, you know, with all the court shit and such you got me into, Turco.”

  “You got yourself into it. How long exactly, a week, a month, a year?”

  “I ain’t been keepin’ count,” Kokko said.

  Lurleen Turco blinked and gasped. God, I can’t be this desperate. This is totally sick! I disgust myself.

  Detective Vincent intercepted her in the woods. “You get lost?” he asked.

  “Momentarily,” she said. “Kokko’s handcuffed to a tree over that way.” She handed the detective the two plastic bags. “I bought these from him. He and the evidence are all yours.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away, out, home”

  “But it’s your bust.”

  “My gift to you. How many people are here?”

  “Three hundred, and a hundred impersonators.”

  “Everybody makes the top one hundred, that the deal?”

  “Brilliant marketing, eh? Seriously, where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Alone? There’ll be a big party later today.”

  “Count me out.”

  “You antisocial?”

  “Might just be,” she admitted, thinking all evidence pointed toward a lot more days in the dry spell.

  Over near the big top a voice blared, “All backup bands, ten seconds until the Group Elvis Anthem, say again, ten seconds.” Guns began to fire into the air, and Turco ducked instinctively and plodded toward her truck as the crisp morning air flooded with countless electric guitars and drums and three or four hundred voices singing more or less together “Any Way You Want Me.” And Lurleen Turco thought, At least I still have some standards.

  Henry VIII

  The day ahead was the kind Amiziah Imus loved best: no complaints to follow up, no warrants to serve, no nothing, just strap his butt into the truck, pick a route, and go see what’s happening. And in thirteen years as a conservation officer in Marquette County—the biggest county east of the Mississippi, filled with ne’er-do-wells and violators of every stripe—Imus figured he’d seen it all.

  He called in service to Station Twenty in Lansing and to the county. The county dispatcher immediately asked him where he was.

  “Leaving my residence. Diorite.”

  “One One Twenty-two, we’ve got a traffic situation on County Road 496 and M-28.”

  “What sort of problem? One One Twenty-two.”

  “Situation is all we know, deputy requesting assistance from a conservation officer.”

  “Which end of CR 496, east or west?”

  “East,” the dispatcher said.

  “ETA five minutes.” Now what?

  When Imus reached M-28, he found traffic stopped and backed up to the horizon in both directions. He drove up the shoulder to a Marquette County sheriff’s cruiser and parked as a blue goose pulled in behind him. The problem was immediately clear: a black bear of no more than 120 pounds sitting with splayed legs in the westbound lane, sunning himself and enjoying the attention of people with cameras. Not too smart: Unwary bears invariably became deceased bears.

  “What’s his problem?” Imus asked the dep.

  “They teach you guys to talk bear, eh.”

  Imus immediately concentrated on the animal but saw nothing obvious. “He hurt?”

  “He ain’t much of a talker,” the dep said.

  “Sometimes words aren’t needed,” Imus said.

  “Tell me,” the deputy said. “I got a wife.”

  Imus knelt near the bear, careful not to get too close. Bears were quicker and more agile than they appeared to be. “What’s your problem, Henry?” No idea why that name came to mind or why he’d be thinking of Herman’s Hermits and their classic song. He hated Herman’s Hermits, the mop-head British twinks.

  He went back to the dep. “Get us a couple hundred-yard gap to let the little guy make a move. When he’s gone, we can let people go on their way.”

  “We’ve already got a lot of pissed off motorists,” the troop said.

  “Let’s deal with what we have to deal with first. They’ll get over it.”

  Imus pulled his shotgun out of its case, unloaded the slugs and buckshot, and replaced the killing ammo with cracker shells. When the traffic was rearranged, he walked over toward the
bear and fired a round. The bear pawed listlessly at him. Three more shots earned only an irritated chuff. Imus took off his hat, spread his arms like a scarecrow, and ran yelling at the animal, which hopped off the road but only onto the grass just off the shoulder. Imus drew his .40 caliber Sig Sauer and fired rounds into the dirt on either side of the animal. Nary a flinch. Shit.

  “Just shoot the sucker,” the deputy said. “It ain’t like we got all day here.”

  In thirteen years Imus had been forced to euthanize two problem bears in school zones, and he had trapped and relocated five others, all of which had later been treed and killed by houndsmen. This was his eighth bear, and no way was this little guy going to die. In the past he’d made the mistake of telling people where he released animals. Not this time. He knew this might not be a cause-and-effect deal, but it felt that way. Not this time. “I’ll take care of it,” he told the deputy with a snarl.

  “You ain’t got the stomach to put it down?” the deputy asked sarcastically.

  Imus’s icy stare shut him up. “Joke, man,” the deputy said weakly and turned away.

  “Would be easier to shoot the damn beast,” a troop argued.

  “We are not shooting En-ree,” Imus said assertively.

  “Who the fuck is En-ree?” the troop asked.

  Imus ignored him, watched traffic normalizing into two lanes, and headed for the field office to fetch a culvert trap, which he hooked to his truck. He stopped at Fernie’s Pizza and got a half dozen of last night’s fare from the morning pitch pile sale, gassed up his truck, and bought a bag of bite-size Baby Ruth candy bars.

  The bear was exactly where he had left it, contentedly watching traffic from his roadside vantage. Deps halted traffic again, and Imus backed the trap toward the animal, stopping it twenty feet away on the road shoulder. He lifted and set the rear hatch, connected the bait trigger, and dumped three pizzas inside. When the animal stepped on the trigger, the hatch would slam shut behind it and lock him in.

  The bear watched his every move, and when Imus tossed a piece of pizza toward it, the animal stood up, waddled lazily over, and wolfed it down. Imus backed up toward the trap throwing pizza chunks and finally pitched the biggest chunk into the cage, stepped forward, and held out a piece to the bear. When the animal stepped forward, he pitched the piece into the trap, and the bear sailed past him, went to the pizza, and stepped on the trigger. When the door came down, the bear was busy scarfing down pizza, drool cascading from his tan snout.