by Dave Balcom
She started by entering Mickey’s number. She spoke softly, explaining what she was doing and what I was seeing as she flipped from one screen to another.
I was watching intently, and then I stopped her. “Can you go back one?” I flipped through the notes she had sent me and found the last page.
“That address, the one in Grayling, what’s that all about?”
“Let’s see… Oh, it’s a mailing address that is different from the address of the property. You know, like for your property in Oregon this space would be blank because they’d mail your tax notices, alerts to zoning variance requests in your neighborhood, stuff like that, right to your house.
“But up here, with all the non-resident owners, there are a lot of places that have separate mailing addresses.”
“But, Grayling?”
“And it’s a commercial address. James Street is one of the main drags in Grayling. You ever been there?”
“Only a couple of times that I wasn’t just driving through… bought a bow at the Fred Bear place once, and there was a fly shop I used to stop at… Mickey’s mom, after she divorced his dad, ended up marrying a guy and living in Grayling. I don’t think I was ever there with him, but I wonder if that’s where that address is?
“She still running a business?”
“Oh, I doubt it. She must have died years ago. I met her, and she was really old then. I remember when Kathy divorced Mickey, she left him broke, really busted, and he ended up staying with his mom in Grayling while he recovered.”
“That when you met her?”
“Yeah, but it was at her house, out in the country a bit. I never knew if she had a business or not.”
“Grayling isn’t an hour from here. We could go there on our way home this afternoon.”
I wrote down the address.
She entered another of the numbers; the screen blinked and a new page showed the legal description of another property. She started flicking through those pages. “I think this is his home place on Copper Creek… hmmm, look at that…” and then she started flipping backwards through the various screens. “This deed has been transferred!”
She pointed to the ownership line. “‘Next Cool Place, LLC,’ and look at that, ‘Charlotte Buchanan, managing member.’” She paused, “And look at that, this deed was transferred last Friday!”
Betty was sitting at a desk reading something, her head was down and she was focused. Another woman stepped out of a glass enclosed office. “Hi, may I help you?”
“I was hoping to ask Betty a question,” I answered, seeing Betty look up, “I’ll handle it, Mrs. Bridges,” Betty said, stepping between us, “Yes?”
“Betty, that hectic day you had last Friday? Was it all one group of people transferring deeds?”
“Yes, Mrs. Buchanan and her attorney, and that Ray Means guy, were in here for several hours. They had all this property that had belonged to Mr. Buchanan before he died. He didn’t leave a will, so his estate just cleared probate, and they had all the items and stuff to put into the deed to transfer ownership to Mrs. Buchanan, and then they transferred all those deeds again to some limited liability company.”
The weight of the responsibility returned to her voice. “It took nearly all day. I typed and typed and typed. And you think they were grateful? I don’t think they said ten words to each other and it was as if I was transparent to everyone but Means,” she gave her impression of a shudder, “that guy’s creepy. I told Detective Lawton when he was here. Means was with Ronnie a couple of times I met Ronnie after work…”
I thanked her and returned to Jan’s side. “I think you’ll find all the properties have been transferred. What mailing addresses are they using?”
“Crocker’s offices in Lansing, I’m guessing.”
“In the title search area, what addresses were they using when Mickey owned them?”
She flipped through a couple of screens. “Right here. That’s a different address in Lansing… I’m guessing that’s a home. I’ll bet Mickey never changed the mailing address when he remarried…”
“I don’t think there’s anything more we can do here… let’s go to Grayling,” I said.
As a youngster, the drive to Grayling on M-72 always seemed longer than the posted 24 miles. The country of yellow pine and sandy soils stretched in what seemed endless monotony, broken only by the crossing two branches of the Manistee and then the Au Sable, two of the state’s fabled, blue-ribbon trout streams.
“Tell me, Jim. What was your attraction to Mickey back then? What was the appeal? It seems to me that he reflected almost everything you are not. Everything I’m learning points to him being a plunger; a guy whose only loyalty was to himself and who would take any kind of risk for his own rewards.
“He drank like a fish, from all reports, and he took drugs; hell, he dealt drugs. What part of that picture attracted you?”
I thought back to those days when I was trying to find myself. I was just married and madly in love, but scared that I might have no future that was different from my past, a past I had vowed to walk away from and not look back.
As the green on either side of the road just blurred by, I started thinking about her question. Just what had made me come to know and like Mickey Buchanan? Traffic was scarce on this perfectly paved ribbon that seemed to take me back in time.
51
I had been born old, it seemed. The younger of two boys, I had been a baby when my older brother was in his teens. He was the apple of my father’s eye. I was my mother’s pride and joy.
My big brother left for the Army while I was in sixth grade. We had both been raised to take care of ourselves. Our old man taught us to box when we were young; our mom taught us to cook, sew and keep house.
After my brother left, my mom became sick. I took care of the house. Made meals, did dishes, ironed laundry, and cleaned. I was Cinderfella at the age of 13 while my mom suffered and my father tried to keep the family afloat in a sea of medical bills.
I graduated high school with a 90 M.P.H. fastball, my virginity and a sense of responsibility intact. When the pro scouts had approached my folks about my signing a contract to play ball, they wouldn’t hear a word – I was going to college; That was that.
When my mom died, I was a freshman in college. My family disintegrated. My old man sold the home place and took an apartment in Grand Rapids.
I was adrift; living with him in the summers as I played ball and worked, but we rarely had a meal together. We were more like two guys sharing an apartment that he paid for.
I went off the deep end, and finally dropped out of school in my sophomore year. Then it was the Navy, just beating my draft board.
During boot camp in San Diego, there was a competition that would someday be known as a form of Iron Man. This involved a five-mile run and three-mile swim.
Three of us from our boot camp company saw the notice of competition and applied. It was just one of the things you did when you were young and physically fit. You tested yourself, one way or another.
As we milled around before the start, I couldn’t help but notice how really fit-looking those guys were. They appeared to be rugged, and tough, and I couldn’t help but wonder how I would stack up here. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was tough enough to compete with them.
I had been in the middle of the pack when we hit the beach, and I was the second one out of the water on the other side of the bay. I was pretty chuffed with my performance, but I kept it to myself and let my company mates do my bragging.
Two days later a very young looking E-8 chief with a chest full of medals came to talk with me about a new outfit based loosely on the Underwater Demolition Teams of World War II and the new amphibious troops that would eventually be called SEALS.
“It’s Special Forces stuff. We’d like you to volunteer for that duty. If you don’t end up making the cut, you’ll at least know that you were asked.”
I told him that I was interested in getting out of the N
avy with a trade. I wanted to be a radioman or a jet mechanic.
The next day he came back with a young-old looking Lieutenant. They had my Navy aptitude test results.
I couldn’t hear well enough to be a radioman. “You’re about as mechanical as a bag of hammers,” the Chief told me.
The Lieutenant, however, thought I might benefit from Air Traffic Control School. I went for it.
I trained in Brunswick, Georgia. St. Simons Island was still a sleepy little summertime resort then, and I blossomed at ATC School and found a haven fishing from the beaches and piers on St. Simons.
As the final days of school approached, my friendly E-8 chief came to visit. He invited me to attend a “special camp” in the Okefenokee Swamp for two weeks of my scheduled 30-day leave after my graduation.
“It’ll be fun, and hell, what would you do anyway? There’ll still be time for leave, and you’ll meet some interesting people.”
From that camp to the next, it was only a matter of time until I had been assigned “temporary duty” into the world of special forces; training with some of the most skilled and violent men any of the armed forces could contribute.
We were schooled in T’ai Chi Ch’uan from the very first day, sometimes six times a day, but it would be four months before we would throw even a mock punch.
We did forms, ran, swam, worked the physical training course, and became proficient with all types of weapons.
“You always want a weapon. If you can’t have a gun, find or make a knife. No knife? Find a club. If you can’t have a club, improvise. Here’s an ink pen; make a weapon out of it if you can, because this weapon will be better than no weapon.”
We heard that speech daily for four months, too.
Basically, we were trained in demolition, radio procedures, and code work. We were prepared to go places and raise hell where the military and civilian leaders could deny any involvement.
There were tests every Saturday. On Monday there’d be two or three guys missing.
After eight months, there were 22 of us left representing Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. We all had real jobs, like my ATC training; but we were all available for assignments at any time.
Then we were distributed out into the military world to stay in shape, do our forms and wait for assignments.
I was deployed three times, twice to Southeast Asia where I never saw Saigon, and once to the Middle East which was hot and beautiful.
It was time to re-enlist as I returned from my third mission, but I was pretty beat up and so I became the first member of the team to decline. The physical rehab and the debriefing took 13 weeks. My last mission had been attached to a Seabee outfit that called Quonset Point, Rhode Island, their home. That’s where I stayed and healed while the military finished rewriting my Navy career and making sure I wasn’t going to be bragging about my real career anytime soon.
I went from the Navy to marriage and college – more duty, more responsibility. I found myself “free white and 21” as they say, but with little in the way of real life experiences… Then I met Mickey and the boys in Lake Lucy.
Jan interrupted my reverie, “Earth to Jim, Earth calling Jim… I didn’t mean to send you off to another world. I just haven’t heard anything about Mickey that jibes with what I see and hear about you.”
I took my eyes off the road and glanced at her. She was looking at me intensely, and I could see she was serious with her probing.
“Everything I know of you is controlled and caring; responsible, to yourself and to others. You reach out to people and they respond to you because it’s so obvious you care about them… That doesn’t sound anything like the Mickey I’m coming to know.”
I pulled off the road at the entrance to the Camp Grayling National Guard training center. I parked and we sat akimbo, so we cold be facing each other. I didn’t know if I could explain it in a way she could understand, but I knew I had to try.
“The attraction was that he was everything I hadn’t been. He was larger than life, really. He was reckless and fun-loving and contagious. I never took him all that seriously, but I was leaving a past that had not really prepared me for judging anything about Mickey.
“We all know opposites attract. Well, in Mickey I found a lot of opposites, but I also found some real similarities. He loved to hunt and fish and he was good at it. He could laugh at himself and have you laughing so hard you couldn’t catch your breath.
“He was a very complex guy. But I never really knew him, and when we left Lake Lucy, I only kept a loose connection with him. We were living in Cadillac and he stopped by from time to time, on his way to fishing or hunting, and that was our connection.
“Then one day I realized I hadn’t heard or seen him in months. I tried to call him and his phone was disconnected. Then I found out he was getting divorced from Kathy.
“He was the first of our group to take up golf. It was a perfect fit for him. He had that great hand-eye coordination that made him so good at pool and so good with a shotgun, and he loved to gamble. He improved really quick.
“One day he gets up to take a golf day. He was still building houses with Rick then. That day he was meeting some guys to play on a famous course, Warwick Hills down in Flint. It was a big deal, and he was up at four-thirty in the morning, and Kathy woke up with him.
“She fed him breakfast, made sure he had lunch money, and kissed him as he was leaving. She even asked what he wanted for dinner that night. He didn’t suspect a thing.
“He returned home that night and the place was empty. A brother-in-law and another guy had watched Mickey drive out of town, waited half an hour to see if he was coming back, and then backed a trailer up to the house and they loaded everything up.”
Jan registered shock, “That’s cold.”
I nodded. “Arctic. She had always taken care of their bills and stuff. He had no clue. She hadn’t made a mortgage or car payment for months. She had been intercepting the dunning notices.
“She took everything, even the toilet paper. Left him his clothes – a couple pairs of jeans and a few tees. When he came home he had sixty-five cents in his pocket. His house, his truck – everything was repossessed. She had broken him.”
“Wow, what had he done?”
“He hit her. I don’t know the details, never asked and didn’t care. I knew she could really push his buttons, so I guess they were drinking, and she was riding on him about something, who knows?”
She tilted her head. “You should see your face when you say ‘he hit her.’ You really didn’t approve did you?”
“I thought he got off light. Kathy’s a tough lady, and she knows how to shoot, too.”
“But he recovered.”
I knew he had, but we had not spent much time together after that. Sandy and Kathy had remained close so most of what I knew about his life was from her. “I think he learned a big life lesson. I hear he never hit any of his other wives.”
I pulled the car back onto the highway and we drove into Grayling in silence.
52
“There,” Jan pointed. “Twenty-one North James Street; Military Mailbox?”
“It’s probably a convenience address for members of the Guard who don’t want their mail going through company clerks. You know there’s no privacy in the military, none.”
Inside the small building we found the front wall, other than the door and a window, along with the side walls and two partitions were covered with mailboxes such as you find in a post office lobby. The back wall consisted of another window and a door to a back room. The window provided a service counter for walkup customers, and we saw a young man sitting on a stool behind the counter.
Jan went looking for Box 101A. I approached the young man as Jan cried, “I found Box one-oh-one, but not one-oh-one A.”
The youngster was reading a fly fishing magazine. “Want to mail something?” He asked without looking up.
“You do that?”
“Sure, packages, whatever. We
can do it through the USPS or any of the other delivery companies. You shipping something?”
“No, actually.” I stalled for a second, and then went on, “I’m working on a story for the Mineral Valley Record, and I ended up here. I’m trying to find and interview the person who rents Box one-oh-one A, you know him?”
“I’m sorry, guy. I don’t know, but even if I did, I couldn’t help you. I mean, that’s why people use our addresses. They don’t want someone else knowing about their mail, you dig?”
“I do, but the guy in this case is dead. I’m just trying to find someone who can tell me about him. The trail leads here. Couldn’t you give me some help?”
The kid was shaking his head when Jan plopped her press credential on the counter. “Really, we’re not scammers. We’re just following a story,” she said.
“You just don’t understand what you’re asking…”
“No, you don’t understand,” Jan interrupted. “We don’t want to see what’s in his mailbox, we just want to know who it is, and if we can contact him or her.”
The kid raised his eyebrows at her show of intensity. “I’ll have to make a call.”
He used the phone that had been hiding under a pile of brown paper on a cluttered bench. He punched in a preset number and waited; his back to us.
“Dad?” He spoke too softly for me to make out what he said. He listened for a few minutes, and I heard him say, “Okay, thanks.”
He came back with a smile on his face. “My dad tells me that you should check with the attorneys, Lynch and Lynch. He said Old Mr. Lynch himself had told him if somebody ever came looking for that box, we should direct them to him.”
“Where is this office?” I asked.
“It’s on Down River Road,” and he gave us directions.
The law office was in an old brick home on a shady street that I knew would turn into a road that would take you back to Kalkaska by way of Manistee Lake. The offices were also closed for lunch, so we backtracked and found a restaurant out on Old Highway 27 and had lunch of our own.